Year 2466. Jupiter's high orbit. Aboard the Atomic Crab, Space Junk Compactor. Crew: 3 people.

  Max felt his muscles made of stone and refusing to react. Half sitting and half standing, with one knee slightly bent, he crouched in a position that was only comfortable in zero gravity. Max stared into nothingness, cornered in the cabins of the Atomic Crab. Although pretending there were separate rooms was being generous.

  A round space trailer, 25 square metres in area and squashed together like a crab shell, was all the living space. On the sides, two engines powered by a tokamak the size of a fridge, tied behind the trailer, a compactor one and a half square long.

  Along the walls were a couple of cots that served as beds, along with a folding table, what they called a dining room, and a couple of square lockers where they kept their changes of clothes. The cockpit was in the middle, or at the front, or at the bottom, it didn't matter. A small porthole marked its presence, along with two well-worn collision gel chairs in front of instruments older than the Sor War, emitting a stench of dampness, armpits and ass. The only pces with any privacy were the airlock and a bathroom consisting of a toilet, sink and shower.

  He thought about moving once more. The only response was cortisol and norepinephrine making an annoying tickle in his rigid muscles and forming a knot that squeezed his stomach. His jaw and lower lip trembled, both from fear, anger, and the sobs he refused to utter. Instead, they came out as weak, gasping breaths that he tried to silence with his hands.

  When he blinked, half of his face protested in pain. He could feel the skin on his left cheek stretched and swollen like a meat balloon. In shades of purple and pink, they deformed his face with a painful asymmetry. He saw it in his own reflection in front of him, through the dim reflection of the cabin's gss. His uncle's knuckles had left an imprint on his flesh, like a hard and permanent reminder; don’t mess with me, you little shit.

  —...no, please... — a plea, in the form of a small, weak voice, could be heard muffled through the metal walls. Lay, his sister. He needed to help her. In a moment, his chest was infted by a deep breath, and his muscles tightened and burned from the torrent of adrenaline that made his blood boil, forcing him to react.

  The sound of an open palm sp cracked like a whip. Lay's cries ceased, and Max's impulse faded. He returned to where he started, paralyzed and powerless, unable to act in the face of the horror unfolding before his eyes and patience.

  —. Shut up... — Milosz Picard huffed next from the airlock, where Lay was being held hostage. He dragged his words due to a sinister cocktail of alcohol and Shunk that kept him in a limbo between daze and euphoria.

  The impure smell of that mixture permeated the surroundings, cheap whiskey and vodka, along with a sour aroma, between lemon, aspirin, rocket fuel, and sweat that reeked of testosterone. The sun was not visible. It was behind the shadow of Jupiter. The weak electric glow of the instruments remained unyielding, and the recessed lights in the walls cast a dim yellowish glow that barely illuminated the filthy and rusty walls inside. With every muffled blow, huff, and sob, they flickered. Max closed his eyes with each one, and then, when he thought he had no more tears to cry, they slowly emerged in the null gravity, some sticking to his eyelids, others floating slowly.

  —. Make it stop. — he prayed and begged silently —. Please, make it stop. — and in response, more blows and painful sobs. Nothing changed, and the horror remained inexorable, and what seemed like a nightmare took the form of a terrifying reality. His sister was there, inside the airlock. His sister was being raped. His uncle was raping her. And Max was doing nothing.

  Like the mixture of substances that unleashed that monster, Max felt a torrent of emotions swirling inside him. Rage screamed at him to fight, to do something, anything. Fear, to flee. Powerlessness, on the other hand, paralyzed him. He remained in a horrible limbo of indecision, debating between an idyll of revenge or whether it would be better to disappear.

  A little tap on his ankle pulled him out of that spiral and startled him. Looking down, a yellow and bck bulky tool with a strap floated carelessly. A Psma Saw begging to be grabbed and turned on. His uncle had forgotten to unhook it from his suit, which he took off inside the habitat instead of the airlock, where it belonged. As he watched it, his eyes slowly opened, and his heart began to beat strongly. He could hear its thumping between his temples.

  Was it a sign from the universe? Or just coincidence? And while he tried to answer, the Psma Saw remained zily floating around him. Then Max realized. Revenge. The possibility of ending that monster that was hurting his sister had appeared right in front of him. But he had to act fast, as time was running out. All he had to do was take it.

  Year 2607. On board of Chronos. Present day...

  The shriek of an arm woke him. When Max opened his eyes, he discovered darkness and chaos. He was immersed inside a bckness like an event horizon and red like blood, too fast to perceive any coherent image. His head throbbed like a drum. His eyes hurt, and in the middle of his skull, a pain simir to a hatchet blow.

  As he moved, a rustling groan emerged. The muscles in his chest and back howled in pain, squeezed by the harness of his seat that had kept him safe from flying out. In an unconscious movement, he hugged himself. He discovered that he still had both arms, and all the fingers on his hand. Then he touched his face. There was a nose. A mouth. Two eyes and both ears. He still had his legs too. Max sighed, and it was painful as well.

  An invisible force pushed him gently and slowly. The seat gel expanded little by little, as it did after a surprising deceleration. He remembered the crash, a shuttle at full speed against the Cargo Bay. Immediately, the metallic smell of blood became present, mixing with fullerenes, silicon, and pstic, assaulting his nostrils. Clouds of smoke and debris floated around him, and then the nightmare made sense. They were in zero gravity.

  When he pced his fingers on the harness buckle to free himself, a lump floated past him. At first, it looked like a mannequin with twisted limbs in an impossible position. A cloud of bubbles from a dark, oily liquid erupted from its interior and zily followed it. Blood.

  It surged from all sides of the body, especially from the limbs where there were exposed fractures. The shattered bones tore through the skin and the uniform. The skull was sunken at one end, and an eye protruded from its socket, weakly clinging to the muscles that had been shot out. The jaw was not only dislocated but shattered. Max could see a mustache over the twisted lips, and then he realized. The corpse belonged to Second Officer Kaleb Galloway.

  —. My God... — he could barely utter. As much as he remembered all the safety protocols, he was still unable to put on the harness. A mistake he made for the first and st time. In shock, he watched as he slowly approached the ground and the blood bubbles burst with zy slowness.

  Max noticed that they were beginning to feel their weight. Someone had activated the rotation of the habitat drum. Either he was not the only survivor, or it had been EREBUS. The arm continued screaming.

  —. Someone turn that shit off! – Max shouted as he freed himself from his seat. The arm kept bring, ignoring his command. He took a breath to reiterate it when it suddenly fell silent. Then, absolute darkness. Three seconds ter, light returned.

  The glow projected by the emergency lights did not do justice to the magnitude of the bloodbath around him. A sughter passed through an uncomfortable monochromatic filter of reddish tones. There were lumps lying on the ground, settled over scattered puddles of blood, which, with the artificial gravity, pulling them again, grew and grew. They didn’t even move. They were corpses. Max managed to count five or six, but he was sure there were more. Not just on the bridge, but throughout the ship. All of them mangled, equal to or worse than Galloway, or what was left of him.

  A horrible thought crossed his mind. Imagining Naomi shattered with her bones pulverized for a fraction of a second was enough to leave him with tears hanging in his throat. His RED was on standby, loading the interface, and when he tried to call her on his HoloPad, he received a cold and exasperating response.

  —. Network Error. Please try again ter. — he tried three times, and the response was the same.

  —. Damn it. — he bit his teeth.

  —. Help. — a voice pleaded.

  When Max turned to the source of the voice, he found Lingxing Liu, slumped over his seat with his left shoulder in an unnatural position, extruded from the joint itself. It was dislocated.

  The sound of a fire extinguisher being activated startled him. Sayuri Sawatari was throwing chemical foam over a smoking terminal that was about to catch fire like dry weeds. Then their eyes met. The Comms Officer had her hair disheveled and stuck to her face, and lines of eyeliner fell from her eyelids surrounding her cheeks as if she had been crying tar. She had puked. She was pale as a ghost and gasping as if she had run a marathon. Max nodded to her.

  —. Help me with Mr. Liu. — she nodded. They returned his shoulder to its original position before he could compin or protest. The crack was like two stones colliding. He let out a torn and agonizing groan from deep within, as he writhed in his seat and spat a string of curses in Chinese. Deep down, he was grateful —. Please, take him to the Medical Deck. — Max ordered, though it almost sounded like a plea.

  —. Of course, Max. — she replied. She took him by the arm, which she passed behind his back, and they both dragged him toward the hallway.

  For a few seconds, Max contempted the disaster around him. The bridge was upside down. The space was no longer visible, and instead, the oppressive metal walls of the armored doors sealed a decompression. There were injured and dead. He still couldn’t imagine how many throughout the ship. He tried to contact Naomi once more. He received the same response from the HoloPad.

  —. Network Error. —

  —. Everyone stay calm. — the helmsman shouted with a wheezing tone that was annoying —. I stabilized the orbit; we’re not going to fall anymore, everyone stay calm. — he insisted, though he sounded more agitated than anyone.

  —. How bad did we get it, Sarraf? – though the question was a formality. The answer was obvious, but he had to hear it.

  —. Horrible. — he replied. A paroxysm of dry cough prevented him from speaking for a few seconds —. We have a hole in the Cargo Bay... — and before continuing, the cough struck once more. His face turned red, almost purple —. There are 114 hypersleep beds floating, and if we don’t do anything, there will be more. —

  —. 114. — Max repeated to himself —. 114 empty beds, right? –

  —. With people. — Sarraf corrected him —. Most died in the crash. The rest will surely be, even if we rescue them. —

  —. Holy mother of God. — Max found himself saying. He hadn’t had time to digest the news when Sarraf’s cough struck again. It was tearing and dry, and hearing it caused him physical pain. When he covered himself with his forearm, reddish stains spttered.

  —. Hey, are you okay? – Max asked, no longer as the First Officer on deck, but as a friend. Sarraf nodded with a smile, but the crease in his eyes revealed the pain seeping through like in a broken dam.

  —. I think I broke a couple of ribs. — the helmsman tried to unbuckle himself from the seat, but Max got ahead of him, and with Xiliya, they helped him out. As they carried him, Max wondered how he ended up practically unscathed. If it weren’t for the seatbelt, he would have ended up with his head smashed against his own terminal. He felt a chill at how close he had come to dying.

  —. Captain! – Max shouted —. I’ll take Padman to the sickbay. I’ll see how the general situation is and bring you a damage report in 20 minutes here on the bridge. — he assumed the captain had heard him. He expected to hear his aged, wheezing voice, but full of authority. Instead, there was only silence —. Captain. — he insisted. And then he saw him, and upon doing so, he was left with his heart in his throat.

  Matkovich was slumped in his seat, convulsing. His artificial heart had stopped for a few seconds. A heart attack. The cybernetic impnts in his body were trying to revive him; however, the organic part that remained was pleading for rest. The old man was teetering in a limbo between life and death.

  They dragged him as best they could to the medical deck. It was chaos. There were dead and injured blocking the hallways, and since there weren’t enough beds, they left them on the floor as they could. The beep of a ft EKG resonated from time to time.

  Amidst it all, Max recognized Naomi. They barely exchanged gnces, and not even a greeting could they share. The priority was the captain, and she attended to him ASAP. Defibriltor. Then an injection of enapril, altepse, and aspirin. She adjusted a couple of nuts and managed to bring him back soaked in morphine. The old man would live to tell the tale.

  After taking care of Matkovich, she attended to him. There Max discovered that he had bruises he didn’t know he had. One between his back and right shoulder.

  She gave him ibuprofen, then injected nanite cubes into the injury. She wrapped it with a couple of orthopedic tapes and bandages. In three days, he would be as good as new. He had gotten off easy, but not for free. He didn’t get to talk to her or smoke a cigarette when Matkovich called his officers to an emergency meeting. Since it couldn’t be on the bridge, it was in his recovery room.

  He looked like a pharaoh on his deathbed, or a vampire returning from slumber. A senile tone could be heard and seen in every word and gesture of the old man. Max hated to admit it, but he was witnessing a vision of himself in the future, streaked, pale, and full of cybernetic enhancements. A life that neither he nor Naomi desired.

  The meeting on damage control felt like a funeral. Every time a bridge officer in charge of a section opened their mouth, it was to deliver worse news than the st. The course correction cost energy they didn’t have.

  Dmitry Daimonji said the reactor was losing coont, and therefore, they had to shut it down. As a consequence, the Replicators had stopped working. Consequently, they would have to resort to packaged rations, as printing fresh food was impossible for now.

  Not only that, nothing could be printed, from cigarettes to tools, because the raw material they used, that is, waste, could not be processed. All that unprocessed and uncompiled waste was saturating the life support. They would have to redirect the energy they didn’t have.

  The cascade failure was becoming noticeable, and there would come a point when it would be catastrophic. But none of the officers had dared to mention the white elephant in the room. That was until it was Gavin Mendoza’s turn. The cargo bay had a hole, and the hypersleep beds were drifting away.

  —. Can you repeat that? – Matkovich inquired. Max was sure he had heard clearly. The pale emergency lights had given the faces a gloomy expression, like the statues of a martyred saint. The question sounded more like a challenge than a genuine doubt, as if pronouncing it were a sacrilege.

  —. 114 passengers, sir. — he repeated after swallowing dryly —. The number keeps increasing. —

  —. Holy God. —

  —. I sent a team to seal the breach. Although I don’t think we can recover that hold entirely. — for the captain, those words felt like a punch in the gut —. There are 315 survivors in that compartment, but we’ll have to relocate them to the others, and the Cargo Bay is at capacity. The other option is to keep them awake, which will mean overcrowding, or adapt some module to leave them in hypersleep and sacrifice several supply holds, which would be horrible for us. It’s that or we write them off and throw them into the void along with the others. — Matkovich shook his head upon hearing it —. Whatever we do, the ship won’t be ready before a week of repairs. Only then can we leave. —

  —. Has the Lohengrin people tried to communicate with us? – he asked, as if he hadn’t paid attention to the previous statements.

  —. No, captain. But we’ve sent messages by all means. Targeting ser and radio signals. The same damn message repeats. —

  —. And the stowaways? –

  —. We’ll take care of it. — Harding replied. He looked at Max and Murat Ayatev for a few seconds, and the three nodded —. We’re just waiting for your order. —

  —. Well, what are you waiting for then? Move your bloody asses, for fuck sake. — the officers nodded in unison and hurried out of the recovery room. Max counted on being able to smoke a cigarette on the way to the armory, but when he was in the door frame, Matkovich raised a hand —. Not you, Max. Wait, I need to talk to you for a second. —

  For a few minutes, the three of them were silent. He, Naomi, and the captain. The urgency for nicotine felt like an itch in his trachea and inside his chest. He exchanged gnces with Naomi, and she shrugged. Max kept opening and closing his hands, with his arms stiff like a trunk. Matkovich sighed, with a rough vibrato.

  —. How are you feeling? – Max asked, trying to break the ice. The captain waved it off.

  —. Just screw tightening. I’ll be as good as new in the next leg. —

  —. Maybe there won’t be another – Naomi added, while checking her HoloPad and examining a bag of serum. Max waited for a frown or a condescending comment, “this girl, for God’s sake” or something like that. Instead, the turquoise walls had become quite interesting and sad. The captain was staring into nothingness with gssy eyes and trembling lips.

  —. She’s right, Max. I’m old. I don’t know if I can take another leg, to tell the truth... — the three knew where the conversation was headed, and both Max and Naomi didn’t like it.

  —. Don’t talk nonsense, captain. You’re an oak. You’ll endure several trips more. We need you. —

  —. No, not this time. — he interrupted him, disheartened —. I think I deserve a rest. A permanent one. —

  —. And why don’t you digitalize? – the captain let out a ugh as if someone had told him a joke. Max didn’t understand the joke and merely managed a smile.

  —. You’re not getting it, kid. I’m stopping here. I’ve lived enough. That’s why I’m handing you the Chronos’ baton. You will be the captain from the Tenth Leg onward, whether I wake up or not. — upon hearing this, Max felt a void in his chest. “Kid.” That word no longer made sense. If it was in chronological terms, he should be beyond elderly. In terms of appearance, he was in the middle of his third decade. He hoped to have a lot of life ahead of him, and he didn’t want to waste it inside a Star Scratcher.

  Nine legs. 117 years had passed without knowing it, of which he had been awake a total of 18. Almost two decades for which the Chronos had been his home. A routine he was used to. But the reasons he joined the crew had ceased to exist a long time ago. Solsys was no longer a shithole, and his uncle Milosz was well and truly dead. That’s why Lay got off the Chronos. She went out to build a life, even beyond the route, even outside Lacaille 8760. Mars was a good pce. Before reaching Lohengrin, Max and Naomi decided they would do the same, but on the way back. A decision they took a long time to make.

  —. I don’t know if I should, captain... — Max began to say, but Matkovich interrupted him.

  —. I’m not asking you, Max. It’s my st wish. — the captain decred —. If I’m asking you, it’s because I don’t trust anyone else for this, and I know you’re capable of taking command. The Chronos needs a leader. A new face. Someone young like you and Naomi. — she opened her mouth to say something, but the captain interrupted her.

  —. There will come a time when Lacaille 8760 will not be the st system on the route, and you have to be there when that happens. When there are pioneers who want to inhabit new worlds. The Nightflyers travel through the stars. We allow humanity to go far, so please, I ask you. I beg you. Don’t leave this ship without a head, because I don’t trust anyone else. — they remained thoughtful, staring into nothingness.

  It felt like fulfilling a father’s wish, accepting an inheritance, or rather a pile of debts. Max didn’t want to be captain of the Chronos, nor did Naomi. For the st year, they had been making pns for a life outside the ship. A cabin in Argyre Pnitia facing Lake Galle sounded good. However, those pns were slipping through their fingers like water.

  The Chronos was a ghost ship of space. They were all part of the ship, but the ship was also part of them, and so it would always be, unless it was destroyed. Max didn’t want that st part either; he just didn’t see himself merging little by little with the ship, as happened with Matkovich and the previous captains. The urge to smoke surged again.

  —. Captain... — he tried to say once more. He had to tell him that with Naomi they would abandon the crew and the ship at the end of the next leg. He could see how a sigh was trapped in Naomi's chest and she opened her mouth to say something when Matkovich interrupted them once again.

  —. We'll talk ter. — he decred, and it didn't sound like he was going to change his mind —. For now, take care of coordinating the security teams, and find a way to expel the intruders from the ship. —

  —. What do you want us to do? Throw them out the airlock? — the captain shook his head in an emphatic no.

  —. We are not savages, damn it. Find a way to return them to the colony. Do whatever it takes to talk to the authorities of Lohengrin. Let them come, or we take them. I don't care, but I want them off the ship one way or another. Is that clear? —

  —. Yes, sir, anything else? —

  —. Yes, go. —