Tobias S. Buckell is a New York Times-bestselling author born in the Caribbean. He grew up in Grenada and spent time in the British and US Virgin Islands, which influence much of his work.

His novels and over fifty stories have been translated into eighteen different languages. His work has been nominated for awards like the Hugo, Nebula, Prometheus, and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Author.

He currently lives in Bluffton, Ohio, with his wife, twin daughters, and a pair of dogs. He can be found online at www.TobiasBuckell.com

A COLD HEART

Tobias S. Buckell

In the mining facility’s automated sickbay she’d put her metal hand on your chest and said, “I’m sorry.” The starry glinting fragments of ice and debris bounced around the portholes. Twinkling like stars, but shaken loose of their spots in the dark vacuum.

They shot her hand, but she had pushed the raiders right back off her claim. The asteroid was still bagged and tagged as her own to prospect. You never told her they were all dead now, mere bloodstains on the corridors of Ceres, but one imagines she suspects as much.

“I have a cold hand, but you have a cold heart,” she had said. “I can’t love a cold heart.” And it’s true.

Strange place to part ways, but she’s been thinking about it for a while. Susan knows her path.

“You’ll keep hunting for your memories?” she asks. “That corporate data fence?”

You nod. “I’ll have more time on my hands.”

It’s a strange thing to image a whole brain down to the quantum level. Crack a person apart and bolt a stronger skeletal system into him. Refashion him into a machine, a weapon to be used for one’s gain. Then burn the memories out. Use the lie of getting them back as a lure to make that human serve you. But stranger things had been done during the initial occupation of Earth.

Now you’ll be having those back. You want to know who you were.

You want more than just the one they left you to whet your appetite.

Your first encounter with the Xaymaca Pride’s crew is an intense-looking engineer. Small scabs on her shaved head show she’s sloppy with a blade, and there’s irritation around the eye sockets, where a sad-looking metal eye has been welded into the skin somewhere in a cheap bodyshop. “You’re the mercenary,” she says. “Pepper.”

You’re both hanging in the air inside the lock. The pressure differential slightly pushes at your ears. You crack your jaw, left, right, and the pressure ceases. The movement causes your dreadlocks to shift around you, tapping the side of your face.

“I’m not on a job,” you tell her. “I don’t work for anyone anymore.”

But you used to. And there’s a reputation. It’s spread in front of you like a bow wave. Dopplering around, varying in intensity here and there.

Five years working with miners, stripping ore from asteroids enveloped in plastic bags and putting in sweat-work, and all anyone knows about is the old wetwork. Stuff that should have been left to the shadows. Secrets never meant for civilians.

But that shit didn’t fly out in the tight tin cans floating around the outer solar system. Everyone had their noses in everyone else’s business.

“The captain wants to see you before detach.”

Probably having second thoughts, you think. Been hard to find a way to get out of the system, because the new rulers of the worlds here want you dead for past actions. You can skulk around the fringes, or even go back to Earth and hide in the packed masses and cities.

But to go interstellar: you eventually get noticed when you’re one of the trickle of humanity leaving to the other forty-eight habitable worlds. Particularly if you’re one of the few that’s not a servant of the various alien species that are now the overlords of humanity.

The bridge crew all twist in place to get a good look at you when you float into the orb-shaped cockpit at the deep heart of the cylindrical starship. They’re all lined up on one plane of the cockpit, the orb able to gimbal with the ship’s orientation to orient them to the pressures of high acceleration.

Not common on an average container ship. Usually those were little more than a set of girders cargo could get slotted into with a living area on one end and engines on the other.

The captain hangs in the air, eyes drowned in shipboard internal information, but now he stirs and looks at you. His skin is brown, like yours. Like many of the crew’s. From what you’ve heard, they all hail from the Caribbean. DeBrun has been smuggling people out of the solar system to points beyond for a whole year now.

“I’m John deBrun,” he says. “You’re Pepper.”

You regard him neutrally.

DeBrun starts the conversation jovially. “In order to leave the solar system, I need anti-matter, Pepper. And no one makes it but the Satraps and they only sell to those they like. They own interstellar commerce, and most of the planets in the solar system. And according to the bastard aliens, you do not have interstellar travel privileges. I’ve let you aboard, to ask you a question, face to face.”

You raise an eyebrow. It’s a staged meeting. DeBrun is putting on a show for the bridge crew. “Yes?”

“Why should I smuggle you from here to Nova Terra’s Orbital?”

A moment passes as you seem to consider that, letting deBrun’s little moment stretch out. “It’ll piss off the Satraps, and I’ll wait long enough so that it’s not obvious you’re the ship that slipped me in.”

DeBrun dramatically considers that, rubbing his chin. “How will you do that?”

“I’m going to steal something from a Satrap.”

“Steal what?”

“My memories,” you tell him.

DeBrun grins. “Okay.

We’ll take you.” “Just like that?”

“You know who we are, what we’re planning to do?”

You nod. “An exodus. To find a new world, free of the Satrapy.”

“Not to find,” deBrun says. “We found it. We just need to get there again, with five ships. And having you distract the Satrap at our rally point . . . well, I like that. There are a lot of people hiding on that habitat, waiting to get loaded up while we fuel. The first people of a whole new world, a new society. You should join.”

“The Satrap at your rally point has something I want.”

“So I’ve heard. Okay. Jay, shut the locks, clear us out. Our last passenger is on board.”

Jay and DeBrun could be brothers. Same smile. Though you’re not sure. You don’t look at people that much anymore. Not since Susan. You don’t care anymore. You can explore the fleshy side of what remains of you after you get the memories back.

Because they will make you whole again.

The ship’s cat adopts you. It hangs in the air just above the nape of your neck, and whenever the ship adjusts its flight patch claws dig into the nape of your neck.

Claws, it seems, are a benefit in zero gravity.

No matter how many times you toss the furball off down the corridor it finds its way back into your room.

How many wormholes between Earth and Nova Terra? You lose track of the stomach-lurching transits as the cylindrical ship burns its way upstream through the network.

You dream about the one memory you still have. The palm tree, sand in your toes.

It could have been a vacation, that beach. But the aquamarine colors just inside the reef feel like home. It’s why, when you heard the shipboard accents, you followed the crew back to this ship and chose it. The oil-cooked johnny cakes, pate, curry, rice . . . muscle memory and habit leave you thinking you came from the islands.

You don’t know them. But they are your people.

At Nova Terra, slipping out via an airlock and a liberated spacesuit, you look back at the pockmarked outer shell of the ship. It’s nestled against the massive, goblet-shaped alien habitat orbiting Nova Terra’s purplish atmosphere, itself circling the gas giant Medea. The few hundred free humans who live here call the glass and steel cup-shaped orbital Hope’s End.

You’re a long way from home now. Hundreds of wormholes away, each of them many lightyears of jumps. Each wormhole a transit point in a vast network that patch together the various worlds the Satrapy rules over.

Too far to stop now. You only were able to come one way. This wasn’t a round-trip ticket. You’ll have to figure out how to get back home later.

Once you have memories. Once you know exactly where that palm tree was, you’ll have something to actually go back for.

The woman who sits at the table across from you a week later does so stiffly, and yet with such a sense of implied ownership that your back tenses. There’s something puppet-like, and you know the strings are digital. Hardware buried into this one’s neuro-cortex allow something else to ride shotgun.

Something.

She’s in full thrall, eyes glinting with an alien intelligence behind them. The Satrap of Hope’s End has noticed your arrival and walked one of his human ROVs out to have a chat. That it took it two days for it to notice you, when you’ve just been sitting out in the open all this time, demonstrates a level of amateurishness for its kind.

Then again, Hope’s End is sort of the Satrapy’s equivalent of a deadend position. A small assignment on a small habitat in orbit. The real players live down the gravity well, on the juicy planets.

“I know who you are,” the woman says. Around you free humans in gray paper suits stream to work in the distant crevices of the station. Life is hard on Hope’s End, you can tell just by their posture. The guarded faces, the invisible heaviness on the shoulders.

You say nothing to the woman across from you.

“You are here without permission. Do you know I could have you killed for that?”

“You could try that,” you say. “The cost would be high.”

“Oh, I imagine.” She leans back, and flails an arm in what must be some far-off alien physical expression badly translated. There is a pit, a cavern, somewhere deep in the bowels of Hope’s End. Somewhere with three quarter’s gravity, and a dirt pit, and a massive recreation pool. And slopping around is a giant wormy trilobite of an alien. “I know a lot about you. More than you know about yourself.”

Indeed.

The thing you need is that cavern’s location.

Until you get that, everything is a dance. A game. A series of feints and jabs. Your life is the price of a single misstep.

But what do you have to lose? You don’t know. Because you can’t remember. It was taken from you. The Satrap owns everything you would lose by dying. You’re already dead, you think.

“So why haven’t you killed me?” you ask the Satrap.

“The Xaymaca Pride,” it says. “They’re sneaking people around my habitat. As if I wouldn’t notice. And they’re hoping to leave . . . for a new world.”

“You believe deBrun’s propaganda?” you ask. Because even you don’t half believe it. The man is slightly messianic. He’s probably going to lead them all to their deaths, so far from Earth. Alone among uncaring, hard aliens the likes of which haven’t even bothered to make it to Earth.

The Satrapy is vast. Hundreds of wormhole junctions between each habitable world, and dozens and dozens of those linked up. And the Satraps hold the navigation routes to themselves. The few individual ships out there blunder around and retrace their steps and are lucky they’re not shot down by the Satrapy’s gun banks in the process.

“DeBrun destroyed his own ship upon return from the Fringes,” the woman says. “He has memorized the location in his head.”

“Ah. So you believe it is true.” A ship. There were corporations on Earth that couldn’t afford an interstellar ship. Not a small act, destroying one.

“Many people raised funds to create this . . . Black Starliner Corporation’s fleet,” the Satrap’s thrall says. “I believe the world he found is real. Unspoiled and real. And I want it for myself.” That last bit is lashed out. There is hunger in that statement, and a hint of frustration.

This Satrap is trapped up here, while its siblings cavort on the surface of Nova Terra. They have thousands of humans and aliens in thrall at their disposal, chipped with neurotech that let them create an army of servants they can remote control around with mere thought.

“I am stuck in this boring, metal cage. But I have great plans. Would you like to know how you got that scar above your left inner thigh? The jagged one, that is faded because you’ve had it since you were a teenager?”

You stop breathing for a second. Unconsciously you run a hand down and trace the zig-zag pattern with your thumb.

“You were climbing a fence. Barbed wire curled around the top, and you were trying to get over it into a field. You slipped. You were so scared, for a split second, as it ripped open your leg. The blood was so bright in the sun, and the ground tumbled up toward you as fell, in shock.”

When you break the stare, you’ve lost a little battle of the wills. “So you do have them.”

“I love collecting the strangest things,” the Satrap said through the woman. Now that you are paying attention, you see that her hair is unwashed, and that there are sores above her clavicle. “I have two thousand humans, in thrall to me. Many other species as well. And I’ve used these eyes to pry, sneak, and attempt my way on board. I want John deBrun. I’m tired of watching these free humans skulk about.”

“So go pick him up,” you say.

“Oh, yes. I want to sink my tendrils into deBrun’s fleshy little mind and suck those coordinates out. But he remains on that damn ship, with guards ever at the airlocks. I’ve learned he has protocols for an attack, and anything I can do leaves me too high a risk of him dying in a large attack. So I want you to bring me John deBrun. It is the sort of thing, I’m told, you are good at.”

“And in exchange you give me my memories back?”

“You’re every bit as sharp as your memories indicate you ever were,” the woman says, and stands up.

“What if I refuse? What if I go after the memories myself?” you smile.

“You are alone, on a station, where only a few hold their own freedom. Every other eye in here is in thrall to me. Most of the time, they are free to engage in their petty lives, but the moment I desire, I could command them all to rip you from limb to limb with their bare hands. I considered it. But I think instead, we will both be happier if you bring John deBrun to level A7. Portal fourteen. My security forces will be waiting.”

And there is your way in.

You wait in the shadows.

You’ve often been something that goes bump in the night.

The Satraps consider themselves gods to the species they rule over. But sometimes, gods want other gods killed. In theory their reasons are arcane and unknowable. But as far as you can tell they are the usual: jealousy. Covetousness. A desire for more power.

Sometimes gods want other gods to die, and you decided you didn’t just want to go bump in the night and scare people. You decided you could aim higher than being just a human assassin. And when the Satrap of Mars decided it wanted the blue jewel of Earth, you let it sharpen you into a weapon the likes of which few wished to imagine.

All that gooey alien nanotechnology that burrowed through your pores, all that power . . .

Behold the giant slayer, you once thought, looking in the mirror.

You weren’t supposed to live, but even jealous alien eyes from the dusty red ruin of Mars couldn’t imagine the hells you would face to continue feeding your quest. It had no idea the depths of your anger. The strength of your resolve.

It didn’t know you had such a cold, cold heart, and that it had helped make it so much colder. You were already steel, and artificial sinew. It only furthered a transformation that had begun long ago.

·

The gun that John deBrun points at your head when he comes into his quarters is capable of doing much more than give you a headache. He’s good. Knew you were in the room. Maybe considered flushing out this part of the ship, but instead comes in to talk.

He’s keeping his distance though.

“You’re here for the coordinates, aren’t you?” he asks.

You nod. “I am.”

You keep your hands in the air and sit down. You want John as comfortable as possible.

“If it’s not me, someone else will come. They’ll cut your head off and run it back to the Satrap. What I have in mind is a little different.”

John shakes his head sadly. He lifts up his shirt to show several puckered scars. “You’re not the first to try. We have systems in place to deal with this. Every possible variable. I have to assume that everyone is trying to stop me. Other humans, my own crew, people at Hope’s End. I’m tougher than they realize.”

“You’ll want to do this my way,” you say.

“And why is that?”

“Because it is happening, John. This right now is happening: I will take you to the Satrap. Because I have come too far, and done too many things, to not go there and get my memories back. Nothing else matters to me. Not you, your ships, your cause, the people in this habitat. There is nothing for me there. There is everything in the Satrap’s den.”

John shakes his head. “Do you know how much they’ve taken from us? You think your memories are the worst of it? Let me lay down some history on you: there’s always been someone taking it away. They took it away from people like us when we were transported across an ocean. Taken away when aliens landed and ripped our countries away from us. Claimed our planets. There’s a long, long list of things ripped away from people in history. You are not alone.”

“Unlike them,” you say, “what was taken from me is just within reach now.”

“At a price,” John says.

“Everything has a price,” you say, moving toward him.

John blinks, surprised. He’s been thinking we were having a dialogue, but you were waiting for the gun to dip slightly. For his attention to waver.

He’s a good shot. Hits you right in the chest. A killing shot. One that would have stopped anyone else. The round penetrates, explodes. Shrapnel shreds the place a heart usually rests.

But that is just one small part. One bloodstream.

That faint hiccup of backup pumps dizzies you slightly as your blood pressure shifts and adapts. You cough blood, and grab John. You break his hand as you disarm him and knock him out.

For a while you sit next to him, the horrible feeling in your chest filling you with waves of pain.

Eventually that ebbs. You evaluate the damage, glyphs and messages ghosting across your eyeballs as your body, more alien machine than human, begins to process the damage and heal itself.

You won’t be facing the Satrap in optimal fighting condition.

But you’re so close. And if you delay, you invite the risk of the Satrap sending someone for John. That could be messy. And it won’t give you the one thing you really want out of all this: an invitation into the Satrap’s personal cavern, deep past its layers of defenses.

Hello there you slimy alien shit, you’re thinking. I’ve got a treat for you.

Just come a little closer, and don’t mind the big teeth behind this smile.

You snap the ammonia capsule apart under John’s nose and he jerks awake. You’re both in a loading bay near the rim of Hope’s End. Water drips off in a corner, and the industrial grit on the walls is old and faded. A section of the habitat that has fallen into disuse.

“Don’t do this. You should join us, Pepper. Leave all this behind. Start something fresh.”

“That’s not what’s happening right now,” you say. “The direction of this journey was set a long time ago.” The door at the far end of the bay creaks open.

“You can’t kill a Satrap,” he says.

You lean next to him. “Your ships, they were never going to leave Hope’s End. The Satrap here gave you enough fuel to bring those people here. But right now, you’re being given dribs and drabs of antimatter. Enough to go back and forth to Earth. But not enough to make it back where you want to go with a whole fleet, right?”

John is silent.

You laugh. “The creature strings you along, until it can get what it wants. And then every single person who came here, well, they’ll truly understand the name the few hundred free humans scraping by here gave it. Won’t they? Hope’s End. Because even if you’re free, you’re not free of the Satrap’s long arm. And you’ll be the one who lured them here with tales of a free world.”

John lets out a deep breath, and slumps forward.

“But listen to me. Work with me, and I’ll help you get what you need. Do you understand?”

“Neither of us will walk away alive from this,” John says. “We are both dead men. We’re talking, but we are dead men.”

The empty-eyed vassals of the Satrap encircle you, a watchful, coordinated crowd that sighs happily as their eyes confirm that you have indeed delivered John deBrun.

“I want my memories, now,” you say, holding tight to John.

“Come with us.”

Somewhere deep inside, hope stirs. Anticipation builds.

Caution, you warn.

You’re both herded deep into Hope’s End by ten humans in thrall to the Satrap. Away from the green commons, below the corridors, below the subways and utility pipes, out of storage, and into the core ballast in the heart of the structure. The shadows are everywhere, and fluids drip slowly in the reduced gravity.

Muck oozes from grates, and biological mists hang in the air, thick on the lungs.

The Satrap’s subterranean cavern is dim, and the wormy trilobite itself slouched in a dust pit at the center. The long tendrils around its maw socketed into machines, and from those machines, controlled anyone unfortunate enough to be in thrall.

A curious adaptation. You imagine the Satrap evolved somewhere deep underground, where it could lie in wait and plunge its neuro-ten-drils into a prey’s spine. And then what? It could use predators to grab prey, without harm to itself? Use prey as lures, dangling around that eager, gaping mouth.

“Finally,” all ten voices around you say in unison.

John is shoved to the floor in front of you, and you move into the next section of your plan. You reach up to your back and use carbon-fibre fingernails to rip into the scars on your back.

This hurts.

But pain doesn’t last forever. Not the pain of your skin ripping apart, or your fingers pulling. The pain of grabbing the handle just underneath as you pull the modified machete of your shoulder blade with a wet tearing and hiss.

Memory strata reforms the blade’s handle to fit your grasp, and the black edge of the blade sucks the light into it. The molecular surface is hydrophobic, the viscera and blood on it slide off and splash to the floor.

The Satrap’s thralls move toward you, but you put the edge of the short blade against the back of John’s skull. “Don’t.”

As one, they all pull back.

You could have killed John with your bare hands, you don’t need the sword. This is part statement. Theater to help the Satrap realize that you’re far more dangerous than it has realized. Because, if it can get away with it, the Satrap will have both its prize and keep your memories.

And that isn’t going to be happening.

“Give me my memories,” you tell it.

“Let me have my new world,” it replies in ten voices.

Ten. That’s all it has surrounding you.

But you want those memories, so the standoff continues. You broadcast your implacability. You will not be moving until you are given those memories. And first.

“Tell it half the coordinates,” you order John. You push the edge of the machete against his neck. Let’s dangle the prize a little, you think.

“No,” John says firmly.

“John,” You kneel next to him. And you whisper, “it will die with those coordinates in its head. Trust me. Don’t hold it to just yourself now, let it go. Let go of the burden. Let me help you. And then this will be all over.”

But you notice something in his response.

He has been sharing the burden. Someone else knows the coordinates. Who? His first mate. Jay. There was a bond there, you remember.

John stumbles to his feet. “If you want the coordinates, you’ll have to rip them out of my head yourself,” he says to the Satrap.

And why would he do that?

His body is warm, near feverish. A Satrap wouldn’t notice. Not a Satrap that had people under thrall to it with sores on their skin. But you notice.

You’re not the only player in this game. John has a different plan. A plan to protect the coordinates. A plan to give his people time to grab what they need: fuel. He’s got a bomb in him. Hidden, like your machete.

Well done, Mr. deBrun, you think.

Something moves from in the shadows. A large man with shaggy hair, seven and a half feet tall, muscle and fat and pistoned machine all stitched together like an art show gone wrong. A glimpse of what you could have been, if you’d been designed for strength and strength alone.

In the palm of his oversized hand, a brick that leaked superconducting fluid. ShinnCo logo on the outside and all. The last time you saw it . . . the last time you saw it, you’d woken up in a room and a man in a suit had sat with it in his lap. He’d explained to you that you were in that box. Everything that had once been you, at least. And now they owned it. And by extension, you.

“A copy of your memories,” the Satrap says. “You’ll hand deBrun over. I know you. I have tasted your memories. Partaken of you.”

“You know who I was, know who I am,” you say. “That was the me before, I’m the me after they took all that, sliced me apart, rebuilt me, and deployed me.”

You grab John’s head, and before anyone in the cavern can twitch, you slice his head off and hold it up into the air. John’s body slumps forward, blood fountaining out over the rock at your feet.

“How long before the dying neurons are inaccessible in here?” you shout.

Everything in the room is flailing, responding to the movements of the Satrap’s tendrils as they shake in anger.

You ignore all that. “Give me. My memories.”

The Satrap calms. “You are too impertinent,” the mouths around you chorus. “I am near immortal. I know the region the man was in. I will continue hunting for that world, and I will eventually have it. But you . . . ”

The large man crushes the memory box. Hyperdense storage crumples easily under the carbon fiber fingers and steaming coolant bursts from between his knuckles.

Fragments drop to the ground.

You stare at them, lips tight.

“Ah,” the Satrap sighs all around you. “Now those memories only live inside me. They are, once again, unique within flesh. So . . . if you kneel and behave from now on, I’ll tell you all about your life. Every time you complete a task, you will return and bow before me right here, and I will tell you about your life. I will give you your past back. Just hand me the head, and kneel.”

“You actually believe that I will hand you this head, and take a knee?” you ask.

“I do. From here, those are your only two choices. So the question is . . . ”

You throw the head aside and hold the machete in both hands firmly.

As expected, half the men and women in thrall scrabble for the head. There’s a twinge of regret. Maybe John would have been able to hide in his ship if you hadn’t shown up. Maybe he would have been able to sneak enough fuel to his ragged fleet to make for that hidden world.

But you doubt it.

And here you are.

Killing the puppets who are in thrall to the Satrap is a thankless task. They are human. Many of them would not have asked for this life. They are people from the home world who fell on hard times, and were given a promise of future wealth in exchange for service. If they live long enough. Others were prepaid: a line of credit, a burst of wealth for a year, and then thrall. Others are criminals, or harvested from debtor’s prison. Prisoners of war left over from various conflicts.

The Satrapy is “civilized.” So it says. It doesn’t raid for subjects. They have to, nominally, be beings that have lost their rights. Or agreed to lose them.

Doesn’t mean most can’t see what thralldom is.

But you kill anyway. Their blood, sliding down the hydrophobic blade to drench your sleeves. The three nearest, beheaded quickly and cleanly. There’s no reason to make them suffer.

You walk through a mist of their jugular blood settling ever so slowly to the ground in the lower gravity. The Satrap, realizing what’s happening, pulls humans around itself. One of them holds deBrun’s head in their arms covetously.

The big guy is the artillery.

He advances, legs thudding, even here. Dust stirs. You walk calmly at him. He swings, a mass-driver, extinction-level powered punch that grazes you. Because what you have is speed. Mechanical tendons that trigger and snap you deep into his reach.

Just the whiff of his punch catches you in the ribs, though. They all crack, and alloys underneath are bent out of shape.

Warning glyphs cascade down your field of sight.

You ignore it all to bury your blade deep into the giant’s right eye socket, then yank up.

Even as the body falls to the ground, you’re facing the Satrap once more.

“I’ve already called my brothers and sisters down on the ground to come for you,” it says through the remaining puppets. “You are dead.” “People keep telling me that,” you say. And maybe they’re right.

The puppets come at you in a wedge. All seven. It’s trying to overwhelm you.

You use the machete to cut through the jungle of flesh, leaving arms and limbs on the ground. And when you stand in front of the Satrap, it wriggles back away from you in fear.

“Let me tell you a memory,” it begs through speakers, using the machines now that it has been shorn of biological toy things.

“It’s too late,” you tell it. “I’m dead.”

You drive the machete deep. And then you keep pushing until you have to use your fingers to rip it apart.

There’s a sense throughout the habitat that something major has shifted. Free humans are bunched together in corners, and others are dazed and wandering around. The rumor is that the Satrap has suddenly disappeared, or died. But what if it comes back? What happens when other Satraps arrive?

You find the docks and a row of deBrun’s crew with guns guarding the lock. They stare at you, and you realize you are still covered in blood and carrying a machete. Everyone on the station has given you a wide, wide berth.

“If you wanted to steal fuel, now’s the time,” you tell them. “The Satrap’s not going to be able to stop you. Everyone out there doesn’t know what to do.”

There are some other alien races sprinkled in throughout the station. But they seem to have locked themselves away, sensing something has gone wrong.

Smart.

“Who did the captain leave in charge, if he died?” you ask. They don’t answer, but take you back into the ship, and the first mate comes up.

“You’re in charge?” you ask.

“Yes,” he nods. “I’m John.”

You frown. “He called you Jay on the bridge, when I came out.”

The first mate smiles sadly. “John deBrun. The junior John deBrun. Jay because we don’t need two Johns on the bridge. Though . . . I guess that won’t happen anymore.”

“He gave you the coordinates, in case he was taken.”

John’s son nods. “You were taken with him, by the Satrap? You were there?”

You pause for a moment, trying to find words that suddenly flee you. You change direction. “You have three hours to steal as much fuel as you can before forces from the planet below arrive. We should both be long gone by then. Understand?”

“Three hours isn’t long enough.”

You shrug. “Take what time you have been given.”

“You don’t understand, we’re taking on extra people. People we didn’t plan to take on. That adds to the mass we need to spin up. We have the other ships docking hard, and we’re taking refugees from Hope’s End. People, who if they stay, will be back in thrall at the end of those few hours. We won’t have enough fuel to get where we need to go. Maybe, three quarters of the way?”

And out there in space, you were either there or not. There was no part way. No one was getting out on foot to push a ship. Those are cold calculations. They come with the job of captain. Air. Food. Water. Carbon filters. Fuel.

“Sounds like you need to shut your locks soon,” you say. “Or you risk throwing away your father’s sacrifice.”

“I will not leave them,” John says calmly. “He may have been able to. You may. But I will not. We are human beings. We should not leave other human beings behind.”

“Then you’d better hope your men hurry on the fuel siphoning.”

You have no use for goodbyes. You leave him in his cockpit. But you stand in the corridor by yourself in the quiet. Your legs buckle slightly. A wound? Overtired muscles sizzling from the performance earlier? You lean against the wall and take a deep breath.

When you let go, you stare at the bloody handprint.

You lost it all. So close, and you lost it all.

And now what? What are you?

You’ll never have those memories. They aren’t you anymore. You are you. What you have right now, is you. What you do next, will be you. What will that be?

A cold heart and a bloody hand. That’s what you’ve been. What you are.

You turn and go back into the cockpit.

“Is the planet real?” you ask. And look at John’s son for any hint, any sign of a lie. You can see pulse, heat, and micro-expressions. Things that help you fight, spot the move. And now, spot intent.

“It’s real.”

“There is another way,” you say.

“And what is that?”

“Take me with you. Get as much fuel as you can, but leave early. Even if it means we only get halfway to where you are going. I killed the Satrap, and everything protecting him. And it wasn’t the first. When we run out of fuel, we’ll dock and I’ll rip more fuel out of their alien hands for you. For you. Understand? I can train more like me. When your fleet passes through, those that stand against us will rue it. I will do this because there is a debt here, understand?”

John looks warily at you. “You were with my father. He didn’t kill the Satrap?”

“There is a debt,” you repeat.

“He helped you?”

“Give me weapons. The non-humans on the station, they enjoy a position of power. They have avoided mostly being in thrall, as we are the new species for that. So even though we have time, they will figure out what we are doing and act against us. You’ll want me out there, buying you time.”

John nods, and reaches out a hand to shake.

You don’t take it. You can’t take it. Not with his father’s blood still on it.

“Weapons,” you repeat. “Before your men start dying unnecessarily.”

Cycled through the locks, deBrun’s men behind you, you walk past the stream of frightened people heading for the ship.

You stand in the large docking bays and survey the battlefield.

This is who you are. This is who you will be. This is who you choose.

A cold heart and bloody hands.

When this is over, when you help deliver them to their new world and repay your debt, you can go home to Earth. Stalk for clues to your past. See if you wander until you find that palm tree on the island you remember.

But for now, you are right here.

Right now.

Waiting for the fight to come to you.