Page 33 of Fated in A Time of War

ALICE

I ’m awake before Krall, submerged in the soft glow of the command console.

It's dim, but the LEDs and flickering instrument panels lend this cockpit a heartbeat—punctuated with the faint pulse of the ship’s revived systems. The hum is low, more of a whisper than a roar, but it’s enough.

Enough to tell me we’re not stranded, not yet.

I move quietly, but purposefully, across the narrow bridge.

The air tastes faintly of electronics and recycled coolant, with a trace of Krall’s spice-tinged aftershave lingering on my clothing.

I check systems—atmospheric stabilizers, power distribution, navigation array.

Power reads green across the board, though I award myself an eye-roll for installing booster circuits from the transport mech yesterday.

It’s reckless, but brilliant. Or at least… necessary.

“Alright,” I murmur to the empty cockpit, voice soft. “Ready when you are.”

The viewport frames it all: ruins of Tanuki—charcoal skeletons of steel, charred foundations of what once was a home, now half-swallowed in dust and early morning haze.

The haze drifts across the broken skyline like shrouds over a battlefield.

Flying away from this place almost stings—like leaving a graveyard behind.

Maybe it is one, after everything that’s happened.

I plant a hand on the rail, press my forehead to cool polished steel. I whisper a prayer—not for safe passage through the void, but for the one we’re navigating now. Our lives. The broken parts. The next breath.

Then Krall shifts behind me, groggy, spine coated with dust, guilt, and something warmer—hope. He rubs at the back of his neck and says, “Ship runs?”

I don’t turn, don’t smile yet. “She breathes,” I say quietly.

He steps closer, towering but gentle, the hum resonating through my ribs. “Let’s fly home,” he whispers.

I turn then, meet his eyes. His face shows me everything I already know—tired, still bleeding, ready. I press a hand to his cheek and taste salt.

“You earned this,” I say.

He grunts, nodding once.

We strap in side by side, hearts on our chests, living again in a world that doesn’t hate us yet. The controls hum, circuits coil to attention—it’s functional, ready. We’re not just moving through space; we’re passing through the darkest night into something like dawn.

Together.

The ship jumps, metal groaning like it’s waking from a nightmare. G-forces press me into the seat, breath hollowing my chest in rhythmic pulses. Outside the viewport, Tanuki's rising dust clouds shrink into a haze against the blackness of space. We’re leaving the graveyard behind.

The console’s glow flickers—LEDs bright, circuits humming life into a shell of scavenged steel. Then a ping, soft but insistent, echoes through the silence. A new blip on the command board. Alliance forces. A cruiser. Orbiting above us.

I glance over at Krall. His jaw clenches, eyes fixed on the alert.

He swallows hard, as if tasting regrets.

The hangar light casts dark lines across his face, sharp angles softened in the dim.

He could respond. Call for extraction. Fulfill orders.

Report what happened. The toll of war, the deaths, the war crimes—all of it.

But he doesn’t. Instead, his hand slides across the console, hovering over the beacon. My heart pounds, as if knowing the meaning of the moment before he does. His fingers curl around the switch. A breath. A flick.

The ping is gone.

“No signal,” I say softly, not needing to explain what that means.

Krall doesn’t look at me. His voice, when it comes, is gravel and resignation. “I’m not theirs anymore.”

There’s no bitterness in his tone. Just absolute clarity.

His words fall around me, echoing like a promise. My throat tightens. I don’t say anything. I don’t need to.

My hand finds his, our fingers thread together. It’s heavy warmth on cold metal, and it tells everything. It says I’m here. I stay. It says we’re together, not as soldier and doctor, not as memory and name—but as two broken souls glued by reckoning and hope.

We rise higher, piercing the thinner air, until the view beyond shifts from haze to darkness. Stars spill across the screen—pinpricks of light hugging solos and constellations I don’t recognize. Space doesn’t care who we are or what we did. It just is.

The hum of the engines in the background, the steady breathing of life around me—it should feel like victory.

It doesn’t.

Not yet.

But it feels like something better.

Possibility.

And for now, that’s enough.

We sit there, side by side, ascending into the unknown. I lean my head against his shoulder. He doesn’t move. I don’t want him to.

Because here—in the absence of orders, in the echo of that abandoned beacon—we’ve found something neither war nor the world could ever take from us.

Our own small hope.

On the viewport, blue shadows yield to slow gold.

League space beckons ahead. We punch the course into the nav console—first to the outer fringe where Ataxians and exiles have carved out a home among ruins that look nothing like what we left behind.

It’ll be quiet there. More importantly, it’ll be free.

I trace the jumps: Waypoint 1, align vector, watch for the gravity wells of abandoned moons. The hum of the console under my fingertips is electric promise. My fingers tremble—part nerves, part wonder. Krall’s hand slips into mine, grounding everything.

“Ready?” I whisper, even though the engine’s already whining to life.

He nods. Not because he needs to; I see the light in his eyes, steady and feral. He watches my brow furrow as I compensate for vector drift, account for solar wind. He memorizes the shift in my shoulders when the nav readout glows green. He knows. She’s not just his mate. She’s his compass.

When I look at him, he catches my gaze and doesn’t look away.

“You’re incredible,” he says, voice low and rough, like he’s testing the words on his tongue for the way they feel.

I flush, normally shrug the compliment off—but not now. Not with the future hanging untold before us. I reach up, brush a fingertip across the scar near his jaw—one that’s jagged, still pink around the edges, sunrise etched into his skin. He closes his eyes at my touch.

“You’re my peace,” he says.

Heat blooms in my chest. It’s real. Not something forged in need or desperation. It’s softer. Harder to wield. It’s been built in the echoes of moments like this one—rudderless and still, finally steady.

“I’m yours too,” I reply, voice quiet, but raw.

He shifts closer, shoulder brushing mine. His breath is steady in my hair, warm. The engine drone hums louder, and the starfield outside warps into a tunnel of light. We slip through the threshold without a word.

Silence falls between us, not empty, but full. Full of every decision that led us here. Every horror. Every mercy. Every quiet moment we’d snagged amid chaos. That’s cultivated something new. Something sacred.

The console pings again—arrival time approaching. Lease coordinates. Docking port reserved. Our new chance.

Krall squeezes my hand, and I slide my thumb over his knuckles, committed. He doesn’t say anything. I don’t need words.

I glance at the nav log. Our destination isn’t perfect. It’s not home—not yet. It’s a place where we can begin stitching ourselves together again. A place of atonement, community, exile and home.

He shifts, whispering, “Whatever happens next?—”

I cut him off with a quiet laugh. “We face it together.”

He smiles, honest and soft. His eyes—those bruised coal eyes—glisten in the shifting starlight.

We’re not soldiers anymore. We’re not bound by duty, orders, or religion. Sheathed by scars, sure, but unbroken.

He’s not my warrior.

And I’m not his captive.

We’re something new.

Something forged in the fire of Horus IV.