Chapter 14: Weightless

  It took them over four hours to find me.

  After the confrontation with Varr, I went straight to the decompression terminal tucked away in the maintenance corridor of Deck 19.

  The engineering supervisor glanced up as I entered the Suiting Bay, but said nothing.

  He didn’t have to. He saw the look in my eyes.

  I walked past him in silence and pulled one of the larger EVA suits from the rack.

  But even as I put the EVA suit on, I felt it—the memory of his collar still in my grip. Not physically. Just the ghost of it. The tension of the fabric between my fingers, the way he looked at me, breathless, stunned.

  Those eyes. Not defiant, not afraid—just hurt.

  It clung to me. Shame, maybe. Or something worse: the faint echo of a bond I hadn’t meant to break.

  I didn’t have a plan now. I just needed to be alone.

  It was the only thing I could think to do.

  I stepped into the airlock alongside two others—engineers, both human, clearly headed out for exterior maintenance. One was male, the other female. Thankfully, neither spoke.

  As the hatch sealed behind us, I caught the faint, acrid scent of metallic gunpowder inside my orange-and-white helmet. The smell of open space lingered in the filters like the ghost of a weapon discharged long ago—like gravitational waves, just another echo of how our universe formed.

  The man was absorbed in his H-interface, the other hand gripping the clipped-on tool bag at his hip. As the airlock cycled, the noise began with a deep, hissing roar as the air evacuated—then dropped into utter silence. Only the sound of my own breathing remained, and the faint, steady hum of the rebreather PLS system on my back.

  But the young woman, long dark hair curled into a bun, stood in the corner—looking directly at me.

  Her insulated spacesuit like my own, grey with large once-white boots with a stripe of light orange running up the side, was slightly dirtier with scorch marks near the legs. She had obviously been doing this a long time. I admired her.

  But her hazel eyes searched for mine, something cautious—almost fearful—etched into her expression.

  I looked back, and through the glass of my helmet, she must have seen it: there was nothing to see—no anger, no pain, only absence.

  Woman to woman, I think she understood exactly. Her gaze dropped to the floor. Mine returned to looking forward, teeth clenched and fists tight inside my gloves.

  The outer airlock opened in perfect silence. Only a faint vibration from the door’s mechanism thrummed through the soles of my boots.

  Beyond it—the open vacuum of space. The void.

  The Milky Way stretched before me like shattered glass sewn into the fabric of space—unblinking, indifferent.

  And as I took a breath—my first steady one in hours—something shifted. A strange calm settled over me at the sight.

  As we stepped outside, the last remnants of artificial gravity fell away. The pull I’d just felt inside the airlock faded into nothing. My feet lifted gently from the deck, weightless and free.

  I let the sensation take me, drifting as I reached out and clipped into one of the service rails that ran along the hull—thin lifelines stretched across the skin of the ship, anchoring us to something solid in the great, empty silence.

  I glanced to my right. The girl was looking back at me again, her hazel eyes cautious, uncertain—maybe even afraid.

  As the Sun crested the curve of the Earth, its light caught her silhouette, painting her in soft gold. A long shadow stretched out behind her across the gunmetal hull of the Resolute.

  They were clearly headed toward the forward systems array—but my path led elsewhere. Forward, and down.

  I held her gaze for a moment, unmoving, as the first rays of sunlight washed over us both. Even through the insulation of the suit and space between us, I could almost feel her warmth.

  I appreciated that she was looking out for me—a small, silent gesture of solidarity and reverence. One I rarely received on this ship.

  I gave her a slight nod to let her know I’d be fine. She returned it without hesitation, like a wolf acknowledging another across a snow-covered clearing, then turned in silence to follow her supervisor.

  I watched them drift away, that faint smile still lingering on my lips. The first in hours.

  The view they had to work in was breathtaking.

  In its own way, the first time in open space was always a spiritual experience for any astronaut.

  But this wasn’t my first time.

  Looking ahead again, I gave a firm kick off the maintenance ladder and drifted upward—gripping the safety clip loosely in one hand, letting it glide smoothly along the tether line. My body floated forward across the hull—effortless, like a swimmer gliding through silk.

  Within seconds—like a ghost flowing across water, I reached the underside of the ship. I peered over the curve of the hull and clipped onto the next safety line, my other hand closing around a cold maintenance handle for balance.

  The Earth was beneath me now.

  A vast, breathing world of blue sky, drifting cloud, and sprawling land slowly rotated above me as I clipped into the line.

  We were passing over central Europe, the first light of dawn spilling across the continent like a soft promise.

  Through the cloud cover, I could just make out the faint outlines of northwestern France and the United Kingdom—familiar shapes half-lost in mist.

  No matter how many times I saw it, it always struck me. Always reminded me of why we fought.

  And despite everything we lost, how much we still held onto.

  The souls below were just a fragment of the billions who might not have been here if not for the sacrifice of the Vanguard during the Viren War.

  Thousands of us died defending The Reach. By some miracle—or sheer defiance—the war never reached Earth.

  For most of my adult life, it had been home. And the thought of its skies burning like so many other worlds in the Commonwealth still filled me with dread. Even after twenty years, the gratitude I carried wasn’t comforting. It still haunted me.

  And until time itself gave out, I knew I would keep losing something inside me.

  The Viren War hadn’t just claimed millions of lives—it shattered billions of minds. Not even the finest medicine in the Helion Commonwealth could mend what it broke inside all of us.

  Its legacy wasn’t heroism, or collected in medals. It was the quiet undoing of souls—ripped apart and flung across the stars. The nightmares didn’t end. They circled back, again and again, like a curse stitched into eternity.

  Until time without end, we were all carved from ruin.

  And the blood—no matter how many times I scrubbed—never washed from my hands. The visions stayed, seared into the backs of my eyes. Every scream, every torn body, every pleading voice I silenced. Burnt into memory.

  Etched into me like scars beneath the real ones.

  Pushing forward, I drifted beneath the ship—seeking the middle, where the hull would shield me from every angle. Somewhere no one could see me. Somewhere I could finally disappear.

  I passed a newly commissioned gun emplacement on my right—a towering ten-meter housing encasing a five-meter railgun. Black and silver, angular and still gleaming.

  More of them dotted the ship’s underside like silent sentinels, ready to rip open the void. Just another invention with the power to erase lives from existence. Efficient. Impersonal. And painfully familiar.

  Floating behind the turret, I reached out and clipped into a nearby service anchor point.

  Slowly, deliberately, I crossed my legs beneath me—hovering just above the Resolute’s hull in silence. The tether held firm.

  I carefully leaned back, weightless, letting my body tilt until I was staring straight down with the hull at my back.

  Down into the Earth.

  Letting it envelop me.

  The pale blue orb filled my entire field of view—horizon to horizon in every direction.

  In that moment, I needed a conversation with something that carried no judgment. No blame. No memory.

  Far below, a cyclone twisted over Indonesia—an immense engine of wind and pressure. Jet-lightning danced upwards through the upper stratosphere, bright threads of fire etched across a storm-grey canvas.

  I wondered if it would take anyone’s lives today. A perfect, brutal symmetry. Designed to give as much as it takes.

  An eye of Mother Nature: balanced. Indifferent. In control.

  Death was never something technology could solve. It remained the great equaliser—across planets, across species.

  Sometimes it came quietly, a solitary step into the void.

  Other times, it was witnessed—by those cursed to see it unfold.

  And worse still, there were those chosen—or forged—to deliver it.

  And as the Earth turned silently beneath me, I let the thoughts come.

  No distractions—just the steady rhythm of my breath inside the helmet, and the slow, deliberate thud of my heart.

  It had been so long since I let myself feel this.

  Normally, I buried the memories and emotions—deep, where they couldn’t reach me.

  Where they couldn’t hurt.

  But today, I had to try and let something go.

  The Viren not only almost took everything from us—including my own life, and nearly my sanity. They also awakened a new presence within me—an onrushing tide, thick with the seething fervour of my ire.

  And in return, we and the Commonwealth took everything from them.

  The darkest stain on our so-called peaceful democracy wasn’t the battles we fought, or even the lives we lost.

  It was what we chose to destroy when we finally had the power to end it all.

  The Viren's home world—gone. We reduced it to memory and nothingness.

  Like holding the head of an entire species under water…until the movement stopped.

  The Titan—a machine built for a single, terrifying purpose: to destroy entire planets—was completed one year and two months after the Battle of Gjallarhull.

  The Viren entered the Commonwealth under the pretence of diplomacy—welcomed by our open arms and shared ideals.

  But they never signed the treaty. They saw only opportunity.

  They took what they wanted—stripping solar systems bare of resources, propping up puppet governments, spreading lies about who we were.

  They were advanced enough to uncover the Architects’ Schematic, just like us—but not evolved enough to understand what it meant.

  Peace. Harmony. Coexistence.

  These were words without meaning to them.

  The enslavement and genocide of Gjallarhull and its people was the final breaking point—a sin too great to be washed away by diplomacy.

  And for the first time in millennia, the values of the Helion Commonwealth were abandoned entirely.

  Some called it necessary. Others whispered it was the moment we desecrated the cornerstone of our entire civilisation.

  On August 6th, 2223 at 08:15 am, The Titan fired—driving a one-hundred-kilometre wide wound into the surface of the Viren home-world, Gargantcien.

  The impact plunged into its iron-rich mantle. Seconds later, the core ignited like a tinderbox. What followed wasn’t destruction. It was erasure.

  The planet’s thermonuclear death bloomed outward in silence—a fireball that lit the void like a false sun, scattering molten rock and planetary marrow across millions of kilometres.

  A supernova, not of stars—but of consequence.

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  Over five hundred of us stood shoulder to shoulder in the HCS Abaddon’s forward observation deck, watching in stunned silence—or unrestrained applause—as fifteen billion lives were snuffed out in a single, blinding instant.

  Some cried. Some cheered. Many just stared.

  Thirty other Vanguard ships flanked beside us, their open comms flooded with a cacophony of cheers, choked sobs, and the raw voices of those crying with relief—like survivors celebrating the end of a nightmare they barely escaped.

  But as the flash lit my blazing eyes, I felt nothing.

  I just stood in absolute silence, mouth closed—impassive. And I wasn’t alone in that.

  After years of fighting—of killing—after hearing the screams beneath our fists, claws, and boots, most of us had forgotten how to feel.

  The moment didn’t bring closure. It brought numbness. As if reality itself had stalled, stunned into stillness.

  At the sight, K’arreth standing next to me grabbed my shoulder, cheering—stomping along with most the others—but I couldn’t tear my gaze away.

  It was as if I heard the collective screams of an entire species, all at once… and then nothing. Nothing but shattered silence.

  It was haunting. And yet, beneath that horror, I felt something give way.

  A weight I hadn’t even known I was carrying.

  The devil on my back—who had kept my eyes locked on looking into the darkness, forced my hands into violence—finally loosened its grip. It was like reality shifted beneath my feet.

  Exactly fifteen minutes later, the Viren Empire surrendered—unconditionally, and all at once.

  Across the galaxy, every Viren ship fell silent. The gunfire ceased. And, in time, so did the dying.

  The Helion Commonwealth claimed to reject capital punishment—but thousands were still executed in the tribunals that followed.

  Some even during their surrender.

  The end of a society bent on domination was the forging of another—our own—into something just as capable of suffering, and of dealing it out in kind.

  For the Viren, the backlash was catastrophic.

  We nearly wiped out their entire species.

  And in that moment—amid the roaring cheers and thunderous applause echoing through the ship—K’arreth turned to me.

  He cupped the side of my face with a trembling hand, eyes searching mine not for permission, but for something deeper.

  And then he kissed me.

  Our first. Intense. And certain.

  Amid all that death, it felt like fate had reached through the void to give us one thing untouched by war.

  I didn’t flinch. I didn’t feel fear.

  Only the overwhelming, impossible sense that this… was destiny.

  And as I embraced him holding his hair, something inside me finally gave way: A flood of longing, of relief, of everything I’d held back for years washed over me all at once.

  Through every horror, every hellhole we clawed our way out of—he had never left my side. Never. And in those final years, we had saved each other more times than I could count.

  Not out of duty. Out of something deeper. Fiercer. Unspoken until now but unshakable.

  Love.

  And in that moment—his forehead pressed to mine, the cheers of our shipmates echoing around us like distant thunder—I made a silent vow.

  I would never leave his side again.

  Not in war, not in peace, not in anything that came after.

  And somewhere in the way he held me, I felt that promise returned.

  Fierce. Wordless. Eternal.

  Our love was forged in the crucible of war—tempered by fire, sharpened by loss—but what it became was a force stronger than gravity.

  Something beyond science. Beyond reason.

  And that’s how it was.

  For years...

  Until six months ago.

  And now...

  Now he was gone.

  The grief within me was bottomless—an ocean without shore—only matched by the quiet, burning anger that I hadn’t been there at the end. If not to save him, then at least to hold his hand. One final time.

  But in some strange, cruel way, the emotions cancelled each other out. Grief hollowed me; rage burned through the hollow. And somewhere in between, I shut down entirely.

  For hours I sat motionless, reading the same words over and over on my H-interface—clinging to the hope that they were wrong. That some clerical error, some glitch, had twisted the message. A cruel joke. That it wasn’t real. That he wasn’t gone.

  But there was nothing to be found. No error. No reprieve.

  K’arreth had been taken from me.

  After everything we survived—every battle won, everyone we barely crawled away from...

  After all the wounds we dressed for each other, hands trembling, blood still warm...

  After the nights we lay side by side, breathless, broken, but alive...

  He was cut from my life in an instant. Gone like a pulse of light.

  No warning. No goodbye.

  And what was worse—I had no one else.

  No family. No home. No one left to hold my name with kindness.

  Because the final legacy of the Viren War wasn’t just the bodies, or the silence that followed.

  It was the creation of something else.

  Not a soldier.

  Not a hero.

  But a monster.

  Me.

  The part of my soul I cut out from my chest was carved away in the name of survival, in a world collapsing into ash.

  It wasn’t courage that kept me breathing. It was something older. Harsher.

  A sharpened instinct—not just to survive, but to destroy more completely than the enemy. To erase the threat so thoroughly that it could never rise again.

  I became the fire that razed the field.

  I was the one who threw gasoline into the forest of my mind.

  And when the smoke finally cleared, nothing of the girl I once was remained.

  Reduced to ash.

  Reduced to ruin.

  And in some small way, I even came to enjoy it…

  I got good at killing. Real good…

  An expert in dealing death and destruction.

  And the violence—the lives I took with my own hands—it didn’t just cost me my sanity.

  It cost me my home.

  I was cast out from Drakar'Ven Alpha—the world of my half-Drac’kari heritage.

  Ostracised. Never allowed to return.

  The black letter came to my Academy dorm on Earth, six short weeks after I joined the Vanguard. A sealed verdict. No trial. No chance to speak.

  Just silence. And finality.

  At first, I thought it was a mistake. I was only a cadet, barely sixteen!

  But when the reports eventually came in, when they later learned what I had done at Gjallarhull—what I had become—how many I had killed—the image of me spread like wildfire.

  Not the ‘Heroine’ of Gjallarhull. Not the ‘image’ of Ashur’na herself.

  I was the half-human monster with the claws and the rifle.

  The name that stirred fear in enemies… and shame in my own people.

  Across Dra’Kathen, I became legend—not for honour, but for desecration.

  A walking scar on the memory of a race that had spent millennia cultivating spiritual peace.

  They called me a black stain on their society.

  A soul gone feral. The Wendigo.

  Proof that the old rage still lived in our blood.

  And what we were still capable of.

  I was the only Drac’kari to ever fight in the Viren War.

  Even if I was half-human, it didn’t matter. Blood was blood.

  The Drac’kari had taken a sacred vow—abstinence from all conflict, in word, thought, and deed. A warrior race that had once burned through their own galaxy had laid down their arms, centuries before I was born.

  And the Commonwealth, to its credit, honoured that vow.

  No conscription. No pressure. No shame.

  But I broke it. Willingly and deliberately. Because when the Viren came, I couldn’t stand by and watch the fire spread.

  I couldn’t watch my friends die without being beside them.

  Dra’Kathen Alpha was a world of harmony. Technology existed, but only as much as needed. Life moved with the forests, not against them. There were no walls. No wars. No weapons, except to hunt for food.

  Some resented them for that—for their abstinence, their silence during the war. But I understood why. Because long ago, we were the monsters.

  Long before Fold Travel, before the Commonwealth—the Drac’kari were feared. Not for their numbers, but for the savagery with which they fought. And the joy they took in it.

  So they buried it. All of it. They rebuilt a world from ash, and in doing so, rewrote their place in the stars.

  And then I—a girl raised in their forests, taught their hymns, their meditations—spat blood back onto the page of their teachings.

  I was a violation of everything they’d built.

  Not just an embarrassment. A sacrilege. An apostate heretic.

  And so, I never returned…

  Not in thirty years.

  To be honest, the program I built in the Tessereactor suite—it wasn’t just for training.

  It was a ghost. A facsimile. A desperate attempt to convince myself that the birds, the trees, the sound of wind on silver leaves—weren’t just inventions of grief.

  That I hadn’t imagined it all as a child.

  That I had once truly belonged somewhere.

  And at that very moment, the Resolute passed over the horizon, and I was slowly plunged into absolute darkness.

  The sun slipped away behind the curve of the Earth, and a steady coolness crept over me—muted only by the thermal layers of my suit.

  Ahead, far below, I saw it: a sprawl of golden light—cities across North America and Canada, burning like candles in the dark. Each one a flame for a soul still breathing.

  I felt like I might fall into it all...

  And then I looked up—and I almost gasped.

  The aurora had risen—ribbons of green and blue, rippling across the sky like spirit animals, dancing their eternal migration across the curve of the world. They shimmered silently above the polar night, weaving between stars in three dimensions.

  The light reached down and bathed my face through the visor.

  And in that stillness, suspended in shadow and colour, I closed my eyes.

  I thought of him. I thought of K’arreth.

  Wherever he was in the cosmos—dust, memory, starlight—I knew he was still with me. In some quiet, impossible way, I felt him there beside me.

  And that’s when it came—like a dam breaking.

  The tears surged without warning, an unstoppable tide.

  They traced hot lines down my cheeks, pooling against my face.

  My sobs echoed in the sealed chamber—loud, ragged, intimate.

  As I was bathed in the dancing cosmic lights.

  "I'm so sorry, K’arreth," I whispered through the ache.

  Secretly hoping he would take my now outstretched hand.

  "I’m so sorry I wasn’t there. Not to save you. Not even to hold your hand."

  My breath hitched.

  "I will always love you."

  Always.

  Over three hours passed as we drifted in orbit—circling the wounded beauty of the planet below.

  Sometimes I stared down at the swirling blues and greens, sometimes I closed my eyes, lost in memory, in mourning. In silence. In meditation.

  My form illuminated into the sunlight, or cast into darkness.

  And slowly, something shifted. A calm settled over me. Not peace exactly—but something close.

  A fragile stillness. A fragile kind of acceptance.

  The storm inside me quieted, just enough to let thought through.

  For the first time since that day, my mind felt clear.

  I knew what we had to do.

  And I hated that some of it—deep down—was all about revenge.

  That creature inside me, the one forged in war, hadn’t died with him.

  It was always still there. And always would be.

  Hungry. Focused. Waiting.

  Varr wasn’t ready. Not yet.

  But as I floated there, suspended between stars and sea, a plan began to take shape. A way to prepare him. To prepare us. A way to survive what was coming.

  To win.

  I had never given up before. Not during the Viren War. Not beside K’arreth. Not when the cost of survival stripped me of everything but my name.

  And I wouldn’t start now.

  Failure wasn’t in my blood.

  I’d rather die fighting—with his name on my lips and vengeance in my fucking heart.

  "Commander?"

  The voice startled me.

  Crisp, sudden—cutting through the soft hum of my rebreather. I’d forgotten to switch off my comms unit.

  Of course they’d find me eventually.

  "Yes, Eli." My voice sounded calmer than I felt.

  I stayed reclined against the hull, staring up at the Earth. I didn’t want them to see my face—not now.

  Not like this. Not yet.

  "The Captain has summoned us to his ready room. He wants all of us present."

  But the next voice wasn’t Eli’s.

  "Commander… I’m sorry."

  It was Kalen's.

  I turned my head slowly to the right. Just ten meters away, two figures drifted in the silence—Eli in his grey-and-orange EVA suit, towering and unmistakable, and beside him, Varr, smaller, folded into himself.

  The long shadows of their bodies stretched across the hull, cast by sunlight refracting off Earth’s limb.

  "You’re a hard one to find," Eli said with a soft chuckle, trying to dissipate the tension. His voice distorted slightly through the channel. "Nice spot!".

  But Varr said nothing else. He floated beside the Khevarin like a ghost tethered by guilt.

  I watched them both for a moment—silent, studying. Something about their shapes together made me pause. The contrast. The calm. It almost made me smile.

  Varr’s hands were held tightly together. His posture uncertain. Guilt radiated from him in waves.

  And then I saw him look up—really look.

  His helmet tilted backwards, glinting off the sun and illuminating his expression.

  The Earth now caught in his visor. His eyes widened. His mouth parted. He forgot himself for a moment. Let wonder in.

  It was beautiful. It made my chest ache.

  "Enjoying the view, Ensign?" I asked, clipped but not unkind.

  He flinched. Snapped his gaze back down to me.

  "Commander…" He hesitated; voice roughened by raw emotions. "I’m really sorry. I didn’t know…"

  He wasn’t looking at me—just at the ship, rotating slowly in the void, as if afraid to meet my eyes.

  I held his gaze a moment longer, letting silence do what words couldn’t.

  I knew he meant it. And it was enough.

  But I didn’t answer the apology. I didn’t need to. He was still learning. Still burning.

  "Tell the Captain I’ll be ten more minutes," I said quietly. "Then I’ll come find you. Understood?"

  Eli nodded first in his helmet, ears flat against his head. Varr followed, slower.

  I turned back toward the Earth—my home. My exile. The blue light spilling across the ship’s underbelly.

  "Yes, Commander," Eli said. His tone, for once, was solemn.

  They drifted away in silence—slow arcs along the safety lines, disappearing into the curve of the ship.

  I lay back, letting silence reclaim me.

  Below, the oceans turned. Whole weather systems spun. Cities glittered like stars made of lives.

  The balance of it all—it was perfect.

  They wouldn’t like what I was about to propose. But it was the only path I saw.

  For them. For us. For the thing inside me that refused to die quietly.

  We had to go to Dra’Kathen.

  They needed more than drills and simulations. The Tessereactor was a ghost of real danger. A pale shadow.

  They needed wilderness. They needed to learn how to survive on the land. They needed reverence. They needed to understand pain.

  They needed to learn how to hunt. Varr needed to know how to hold a sword.

  And I needed to return to the forests—