The shipping cube glided over several kilometres of rolling farmland and winding canals before entering the wild gullies and crevasses of the mountains. Tolly looked around the stark grey interior of the container. The walls were thick and cold, giving no sense to the world outside. A feed from an exterior camera showed through her terminal screen, which, try or not, she found herself glancing back at every few minutes.

  The compartment smelled of stale rot. Rot that she now realised was coming from the Ensign’s wounds. Without some proper antibiotics, far above anything she had in her measly medkit, he would be dead by morning.

  Despite the smell, hunger started to wiggle its way in on the edge of her psyche, and she realised that she hadn't eaten in nearly twenty-four hours, not since the churro that Connor had taken from her after only one bite.

  “Gods, I'm hungry,” she said, hoping to end the long sullen silence between her, Soren and the sleeping ensign. Soren nodded without looking her way.

  He wasn't speaking, and for the last three hours since they left the streets of Risen, his gloom had steadily increased. At first, the good captain had seemed relieved when the shipping cube’s doors slammed shut, sealing them off from the carnage on the streets. Minutes later, shock had set in. He chose a corner, slumped into a ball and had been staring blankly at the wall ever since.

  “Lamb,” Soren said, breaking the silence.

  “I'm sorry?” Tolly asked.

  “Lamb, tabouli, and we split a bottle of red Akaviri. That's the last thing I ate,” he said, and Tolly realised we meant him and Blane. She changed the subject before realising that doing so might lead Soren back into silence.

  “What restaurant did you take her to?”

  Soren hesitated before answering.

  “The Sea Witch on East Wing Street. She had the carp. I said I'd take her again before the flock left the system.”

  “Sounds delicious,” said Ensign Mennit, waking from his nap. Soren perked.

  “Ensign, how are you feeling?” Soren asked numbly.

  “A bit sore from the chin down. How do I look?”

  Tolly shone the light from her tablet across the dimly lit compartment. She nearly let the ensign see her bewildered expression.

  His face was flush. He had an empty stare on, and his eyes didn't seem to react to the light. His neck was noticeably swollen, with black pustules leaking a translucent fluid onto his naval jacket.

  “Jackson?” Tolly said, still sitting across the compartment from him. “Jackson, can you lift your arms for me, please?”

  The Ensign’s face strained for several seconds. His mouth contorted as he tried to reposition his limbs.

  “N–nope,” said Jackson with a wince.

  “Ensign?” Soren asked.

  “I'm sorry, sir, ma'am. I'm sorry, but I can't.”

  “It's okay, Ensign.”

  “Soren?” Tolly started, “I don't mean to be blunt, but you do know what this means don't you?”

  “Tolly, don't. If you're going to say what I think you are, I don't want him to–”

  “She's saying the gods are calling my name, sir,” a resigned Jackson said. “It's alright. I've served you for many years. I'm glad for it. Sure, this isn't the most idyllic way to spend my last hours, but I'm glad I had the chance.”

  “Without you, Ensign Mennit– without your skill, I'm certain I'd have died in that crash. You have made me, our Flock, and the rest of the Federation proud today.”

  “I sure hope so,” said the ensign. “Sir, any idea what hit us?”

  “I was hoping you had an idea,” admitted Soren.

  Ensign Mennit considered for a moment, “It’s the damnedest. I didn’t see anything on the scopes. One second we were flying, all systems green. Next, I remember thinking to myself, ``gods, this is it.”

  “You’re saying nothing hit you?” Tolly asked, confused.

  “Nothing. I’m certain of it,” said Mennit. “Sir, if I may?”

  “Yes, Ensign?”

  “I know the signs. I know what's coming for me. We were trained to feel for the signs in the academy, and it's not something I want to experience. Can you– can you do me a favour–?”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  The compartment erupted in a flash of light and rapturous noise that sent Tolly into a daze. When Tolly regained her composure, she found Soren, his arm raised towards the Ensign. His hand bore an antique sidearm that had tight ribbons of smoke curling upwards from the barrel tip. In a fit of adrenaline, Tolly stood and immediately wretched onto the compartment floor at her feet.

  The ringing in her ears, still white-hot, didn't stop her from rushing the captain and snatching the gun from his already loosened grip.

  “Why did you do that!” Tolly bellowed. “he was your man!”

  “You've been trying to get me to leave him behind since the beginning. Don't now switch this around. You saw it too. He was in pain. He wasn't making it out of here. You said it yourself; there aren't any hospitals in the desert.”

  “Yes but, did you have to do it like that! He deserves, deserved better than that. You executed him in cold blood. There's no way that was legal, let alone conscionable.”

  “It's what he was asking for,” Soren argued, still sitting. His hand now wrapped around his knees as he curled against the wall. “It's what he wanted.”

  “You're disgusting; you know that? I can't believe my sister was out with you!” Tolly spat.

  “Take hold of your words,” Soren said. It sounded like a threat.

  Tolly raised the weapon, pointing the muzzle a metre from his face.

  “Get on with it,” Soren said, his demurity returning. “I'd rather that than live in this fresh hell.”

  Tolly’s heart raced, and she felt her forefinger gripped firmly over the trigger. How she wanted to end his miserable existence, wipe the planet clean of his wickedness. But if she did, how could she live with it?

  “You–” she started but then stopped. Without another word, she dropped the gun on the floor and slunk back to her side of the space. The walls around her were painted with brain matter. She didn't dare look over at the Ensign’s doubtlessly headless corpse. She knew if she did that, she would never dig herself out of the pit that she could see Soren digging for himself.

  For the remaining hours of the flight, Tolly resigned herself to a shallow existence staring at the ceiling’s central lantern, flickering as the electrical current flowing through it fluctuated, or so Tolly guessed.

  The shipping cube came to rest in the foothills on the edge of the mountains. Far to the north, nothing but a wide expanse of sandy dunes stretched for leagues out of sight. A hot wind blew southward, shaking the small treeline of enik that edged the sandy plain. A gust of hot air flew into the cabin as the doors creaked open, accompanying a blast of evening light. The sun was already beginning its descent, giving the atmosphere a subtle tangerine glow. Soren stepped out of the cube before her, walking with purpose out into the open air.

  “What are we going to do now?” Tolly asked. “We don't have a casket. Do you expect us to just leave him here?”

  Soren stood looking northward out onto the dunes. With his hands on his hips, his image seemed to sizzle under the beating sun.

  “Let him lay. He's better off where he is.”

  “Let him– are you kidding me? You shoot the man in cold blood, and now you won't so much as bury him?”

  “Bury him in what, sand? Won't do anyone any good. Unless we bury him five metres deep which, by the look of your gear, I don't think you have an excavator tucked away, he’ll be uncovered in an hour the way these sands are shifting. Best leave him in the box. Not likely any animal's going to be able to pry it open and scavenge him for parts.”

  “What about not an animal?”

  “The monsters? What need would they have to come out here for one pale corpse?”

  “Why not burn him, then? In the past thirty hours, I've seen cities packed full of bodies, followed shortly after by hordes of unseen-before-horrors, things that literally jump right out of an old vid loop. No, I'm not ruling anything out.”

  Tolly turned and stepped back into the shipping cube, retrieving her pack and terminal. She knew how to start a fire from the weeks of survival training she had endured at the Academy. Reaching into her pack, she pulled out a large field scalpel and a roll of enik-weave bandage.

  In a patch of sand just outside the cube’s open bay door, Tolly set about stripping the bandage into tiny strips using the scalpel. Then, after she had amassed a fist-sized bundle of the stuff, she pulled out the remaining house wine.

  Tolly took a swig of the wine before handing it to Soren. He took a swig then dumped the rest of its contents onto the sand at the man’s feet.

  After pouring out a vial of potent alcohol from her pack, she held the bottle above the nest of bandage scrapings, focusing the fading sunlight until a tiny trail of smoke appeared. Quickly she added more of the bandage and blew. The fire took, and she immediately scooped up the smouldering nest on the edge of her scalpel, rushing it into the container.

  Much of the gore in the cabin had dried already, making lighting the fire easy. She gagged as she stepped back in, having already acclimatised to the air outside. Once the fire began to take, Tolly rushed out, not wanting to stick around.

  “I'm sorry, Tolly,” Soren said.

  Tolly didn't dignify him with an answer. Instead, they took off westward, strafing the dune sea to the north while staying clear from the woods to the south.

  “We can't follow this route forever,” she said to Soren, who was trailing several metres behind her.

  “Yeah, and why's that?” he said.

  “Desert won't go on forever. We'll hit dense woods before long,” she checked a map on her terminal. The desert stretched far northward, almost to the edge of the continent and Bordeaux's northern sea. There was a symbol on the map marking her last known location. It wasn't fixed to her current location as it should be. The symbol was instead locked onto Ternor Stadium, the place where the whole nightmare started.

  “You said communications stopped around midnight with your flock?” Tolly asked. Soren wasn't listening and was instead fixated on the vast, featureless expanse to the north. “Captain?”

  “Hm– yes? Yeah, that sounds about right. Memory's a bit spotty from the crash.”

  She stopped, letting him catch up.

  “Hold on,” she gestured for him to stop. “You might have a concussion.”

  She held up one finger in front of his face.

  “Tell me, what flock are you from?”

  “Cattleheart flock”

  “Ok. Good. And what planet are we on?”

  “Bordeaux.”

  “And, what's my sister's name?”

  “Blane.”

  “And Blane's last name?”

  Instead of answering, he paused. Looking up at her there were tears welling in his eyes.

  “I– I never asked.”

  “Well, then. You seem fine enough for now. Although, we won't be able to tell for sure until we get you into a proper facility for a full brain scan. You might just be suffering a little dehydration.”

  “Lovely,” he said.

  Tolly stood and started off walking again.

  “It's Ignacio, by the way. Her – our – last name is Ignacio.”

  From behind her, he could hear him mutter back, “Blane Ignacio...”