Beige slumped into the pilot’s seat with a resigned sigh. He leaned his head against the headrest and gazed out through the open canopy at the web of catwalks and lattices that crisscrossed the hangar bay’s ceiling. The pilot’s story had been Beige’s greatest fear.
“Sir?” Victor’s holographic sphere sprung to life before him. “Did you learn anything?” The AI’s tone was cautious, aware that the mercenary’s mood was troubled.
“Yeah,” Beige murmured in response, closing his eyes. He recounted what he had found out in the bar. Victor listened intently, slowly bobbing up and down in midair. As Beige came to the end, the hologram came to a standstill.
“What do we do now?” The AI inquired after a moment of silence.
Beige slowly opened his eyes and looked at the orange orb before him. He remained silent.
“We should investigate the site of the attack,” Victor suggested.
Beige averted his gaze, defeat clouding his eyes.
“If the attacker was what I think it was-,” he began.
Victor pulsed angrily.
“Sir,” he interrupted the mercenary, “we have not been given conclusive proof of what has become of Miss Sable. We came out here to investigate. We are not done yet.” The AI’s tone was determined, almost rebellious. Beige glared at the sphere in surprise.
Victor was right, Beige knew. Things were looking bad for Olivia, but what the man in the bar had told him did not mean that she was gone for good. She had dropped off of his scanners, nothing more. A sly smile cracked the mercenary’s lips. He wouldn’t lose hope just yet.
“Alright, alright,” he conceded, raising his hands in mock defeat. “Not like I could stop you anyway. Ship’s controls are all yours, after all.” He chuckled softly.
Victor’s bobbing slowed down, performing what resembled a nod.
“That is correct, sir,” he replied. The ship’s engines sprung to life and the canopy slid shut around them. “Fasten your seatbelts, please.”
The Inspiration slowly crept through the nearly impenetrable mist of the Edge nebula, cautiously maneuvering around the sharp-edged asteroids that littered the Omicron Minor system. A few clicks behind it, the anomaly to Omicron Zeta receded into the clouds, the ripple in spacetime vanishing out of view.
Beige gazed out of the canopy into the green void around them, scanning it for any signs of hostiles.
“Got the coordinates plotted?” He asked.
Victor’s orb pulsed before him as he finalized the input of the directions the pilot at the freeport’s bar had given them. A waypoint marker appeared on the navigation screen.
“Done,” the AI announced.
Beige glanced down at the plotted route.
“Not far,” he observed. Victor bobbed once to agree. Beige looked back out into space, thinking about what they were about to find. “Odds are that whatever’s left of the convoy will have drifted apart a good bit.”
“No need to worry, sir,” Victor chimed in. “I have already calculated the wreckage’s most likely locations.”
Beige gave the hologram a faint smile.
“Of course you have.”
* * *
Tendrils of green fog continued to reach out and grasp at the Osprey’s hull as the ship passed through the clouds towards its morbid destination. The system seemed still, apart from the tumbling rocks and occasional flashes of far-off lightning.
Banking around a particularly large asteroid, the ship came to a standstill, its searchlights springing to life, casting cones of illumination into the nebula.
“We are here, sir,” Victor announced.
“Yeah,” Beige muttered as he gazed straight ahead at a ragged shape looming a few hundred meters before them. The rear half of a transport slowly floated through the mist, propelled by the gradual leakage of oxygen from what remained of its contained compartments.
“Scanning.” Victor’s sphere spun slowly around its axis. “The wreck matches the data on Captain Rosary’s ship.”
Beige swallowed.
“I sure hope Sable’s in better shape,” he murmured to himself. Then, to the AI, “Let’s keep looking.”
The Inspiration’s engines flashed and the ship cautiously inched forward.
“I am not picking up any automated beacons,” Victor observed.
Beige shook his head.
“It’s been too long, they’ll have shut off by now,” he explained. His head was on a swivel, glancing around for traces of additional wrecks and signs of potential attackers. He breathed slowly, trying to keep his taut nerves calm.
Minutes that felt like hours to the mercenary passed before Victor spoke up again.
“I have found something.”
Beige leaned forward in the pilot’s seat.
“What?” He inquired expectantly.
Victor’s holographic orb stood perfectly still for a moment, in complete silence, before slowly descending to the surface of the dashboard.
“It is…,” the AI hesitated, as though unwilling to share its findings out loud, “Miss Sable’s ship, sir.”
Beige’s heart plummeted into his guts. He glared out into the eerie scenery before them, spotting with his own eyes what Victor’s scanners had discovered. Half obscured in a cloud of microscopic metal dust tumbled the remains of the ship Beige knew only too well, the ship he knew Olivia would never leave in this condition if she could help it.
The Sutinga’s nose and cockpit were gone, vaporized from the main hull. The starboard wing drifted nearby, torn from the ship. A massive hole nearly bisected the fuselage, exposing fuel lines, wiring, parts of the reactor, and what had once been the cargo bay and makeshift living quarters.
The mercenary slumped back into his seat and closed his eyes.
“Any sign of an escape pod?” He whispered and clenched his fists in fear of an answer.
Victor remained silent for a moment, searching. Then he answered in a dejected tone.
“No, sir. Judging by the damage, it likely never ejected.”
For a moment, Beige was still. Then, in a fit of sorrowful rage, he slammed his fist against the canopy - again and again until the skin on his fingers split and blood splattered against the glass. Victor watched in silence as the mercenary howled a barrage of curses into the uncaring void of space around them and violently flung his arms about as though to tear it all apart himself.
Minutes passed.
Exhausted, defeated, Beige sat in the pilot’s seat, breathing heavily. His eyes stared at the half-molten, half-shredded metal shapes before them.
“I promised we’d find her,” he broke the silence, his words barely audible. “Now we don’t even have a body.”
Victor remained quiet.
The mercenary reached up with his hand and rubbed his eyes, suddenly feeling incredibly tired. Opening them again, he noticed the blood smeared across his fingers, and pressed them gingerly against his flightsuit to stem the flow.
One more time, he glanced out into the nebula, taking a last look at the shattered remains of Olivia’s ship. Then he averted his eyes in shame and sorrow.
