Page 4

A new me.

I roll over on my thin mattress and press a button on the wall. Instantly, the slab-like shelf extends outwards – letting me emerge from my cramped little compartment.

As I blink in the dim light of the larger dormitory, I observe that it’s packed full. It’s difficult to believe I’m just one of two hundred souls crammed into this modular, space-faring dormitory – and that this unit is just one of many carried aboard the Elnor.

The richer passengers travel more comfortably, of course. The wealthy will rent private rooms – and Imeanentire rooms, with bathing and toilet facilities, and everything. If that’s still too uncomfortable for them, those who can afford to do so can sleep out the month-long journey in a state of cryo-sleep. That way, they don’t even have to experience the monotonous frustration of sub-light space travel.

I’m bitterly jealous of those idle rich. My only consolation is that if piratesstrike our vessel – as happens, especially out in Untamed Space - those rich bastards will be fucked.

As if I wouldn’t be? I’d be no better off than they would be – just awake for the experience.

Can you imagine that? To have escaped the horrors I’ve seen, only to be taken by pirate-slavers myself before I reach my final destination.

I shake my head.

Just two more weeks.

If I can just endure two more weeks in this tin-can hell-hole, I’ll finally be free –reallyfree.

I’ll be independent and established on a lush, fertile,safeplanet. I’ll finally be able to put down roots instead of always glancing over my shoulder, wondering who’s hunting for me.

I’ll finally havepeace.

That’s what I need. That’s what I’ve always needed – especially after what happened to Ling.

My heart aches.

Maybe, after a few years on X12, the nightmares will stop.

Maybe then, I’ll be able to sleep through the night without being woken by the image of her face.

I clamber out of my compartment, closing the shelf and locking it behind me. My muscles are stiff and tight as I stretch them beyond the confines of my morgue-like box.

Gripping the edge of the ladders on the side of this bank of compartments, I stiffly make my way down to the central deck. Whenever the steel toecaps of my boots clang a little too hard on the way down, I hear groans and curses through the thin walls of the individual sleeping compartments.

I check my movements – I don’t want to wake anybody up. Nobody on this vessel is looking for trouble, but when you’re traveling with two-hundred other people who each paid as cheap a rate as I did, you don’t want to risk pissing any of them off.

I mean, tough luck for them if I do. How many times a night am I awoken by the sound of somebody loudly clambering down this same ladder?

I envy the bastards in the luxurious transport rooms, or those in cryo-sleep. As always, the rich have everything – and the poor, like me, get nothing.

It’s bitterly ironic. I used to fight the good fight – righting the worst injustices in the galaxy. Now, I’m just as powerless as those I’d once risked my life to rescue.

My boots reach the deck, and I stretch my legs as I exit the dormitory unit and emerge into one of the central hallways of the Elnor.

A short walk down the hallway is the small bar and viewing station where I like to come and gaze out across the nothingness of space. It’s not like there are any other views to be had on the Elnor, but I still enjoy it.

There’s a stillness to space – an eternal calm I wish I could feel inside my own churning gut.

I don’t make it to the end of the hallway, though. Somethingclunksaheadof me.

I jump, startled – and then immediately feel a dagger of shame in my belly.

There was a time not that long ago when nothing would have scared me. Just a year earlier, I wouldn’t have even flinched at the loud, unexpected noise.

Now, I find myself jumping at shadows, and seeing danger around every corner.

Right now, I’m shivering at the creaks and groans of this old spacecraft. I know in my head that these noises are typical of a modular space cruiser – but that doesn’t make my crawling nerves tingle less intensely, or my fists unclench.