The Choice

Exploration meets justice in this thrilling new sci-fi short story from S. H. Miah.

Nasser Tufayl leads the Wreckers, a rag-tag group of contractors struggling for money in a peaceful outer space.

But a military retrieval mission threatens to tear that peace apart.

And Nasser juggles billions of lives to make the ultimate choice.

S. H. Miah weaves a tale in which one man's ambition meets the hardest decision of his life. A story you don't want to miss.

The Choice

The briefing room had always been far too cold for Nasser Tufayl's liking. About the size of the typical seven a side football pitch he played in on weekends, the room created the sense that Nasser was small, rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things. As though he was being briefed upon, instead of briefed to.

The walls had been coated in sleek grey paint, despite being made of solid titanium in the first place. Strong, sturdy, yet the colour far too harsh. Whilst military bases elsewhere on Earth required to exude an aura of invincibility, Nasser was merely a contractor part of a team of contractors—he didn't have to buy into the aesthetic of it all.

A surgical smell drifted through the still air that Nasser breathed. The smell of not just cleanliness and sanitation, but an utter lack of bacteria or grime or even germs at all, no matter how impossible that sounded. Two strips of light zipped across the seven foot high ceiling, connecting one wall to its opposite like a zipline. The bulbs were rigid tubes made to resist the hardest shocks, even if a bomb exploded right beneath them. The light they emitted wasn't warm—no, it only made the room feel colder, and darker.

A meeting table, made of a similar metallic finish to the walls, sat bang in the centre of the room as though it owned the place, rather than the place owning it. Stock metal chairs stationed themselves around the table like guards, their seats far too chilled for Nasser to sit down.

So he opted to stand, at the foot of the table, leaning over the back of one of the chairs, his wreckage gear laid out on the table. Helmet with a breathing tube attached, the other end of it connecting to the thick oxygen tank that supplied enough for four hours. The rest of the gear followed suit, a onesie style astro-suit different from the two-piece most explorers used nowadays. Even the military had adopted them for greater flexibility and mobility in battles that didn't exist.

After all, peace had exuded across galaxies for hundreds of years. Warfare, battles, fighting—things of the past. Things that had passed.

But Nasser always stuck with his one-piece astro-suit, because, as he liked to, he didn't fit in with the cold, clinical aesthetic of the military. And the rest of those who decided that was what every other agency should strive to look like.

Around the table sat familiar faces who were in line with that military aesthetic. Robyn, a fabulous explorer in her own right, and the brains of their operation. Angie, a man who could probably rip the meeting table off its welds should he so wish. A tall man, a head and a half over Nasser, with muscles thicker than most oxygen tanks. A special astro-suit had to be made for him, in fact, such was his size.

Tye sat to Nasser's left, twiddling his thumbs as if he couldn't care in the world. He was as antagonistic as he was brilliant—which was to say he was excellent at both exploring old wrecks as well as pissing Nasser off. A mean smirk constantly formed on his face, like he'd gotten permanent surgery to look that way.

Nasser quickly glanced away from him and to the gentleman—though he was far from gentle—cloaked in military garb with a rifle holstered to his spine, seated at the head of the table. A weathered look overshadowed the man's face, wrinkles not from battles lost and won but from mountains of paperwork turned in and filed. Not a scar in sight, with that badge on his left breast not one of honour but of proof.

Proof that he was a fraud—masquerading as a tough commander when, in truth, those like Nasser were the ones handling the field work when required. That man just sent out the cheques like a good little machine in the cog of the military.

After all, hiring contractors and taking the credit was a tale as old as time. Nasser would know, since he'd been in the business himself at one point, in a distant past he wished to forget.

Regardless, that fraud of a commander, one so-called Timothy Wargle, tapped his fingers on the table, creating a hollow noise much like the sound of a ping pong ball being flicked around Wargle's empty head.

Papers shuffled around the man's hand as though he was playing a cheap magic trick. Nasser wasn't buying it. He sighed, leaned more of his weight onto the metal chair, and spoke directly.

“What's the actual mission, aside from all this…legality and waiver riff-raff we gotta sign?”

A vein on Wargle's forehead nearly popped, but he schooled his expression with all the practice the military had given him. “We must follow procedures, Wrecker Tufayl. Procedure, therefore, dictates that the briefing be handed out in written form as well as verbal, whilst expressed and understood in both.”

Nasser clamped down on the urge to grab the briefing papers and read them out himself like he was at a kid’s poetry recital. Sure, he got the need for a system and pre-ordained order to things—he did it himself on his own briefings for his team of wreckers.

But this…this was just unnecessary. Just a waste of time that Nasser had to suffer through to reach the real juicy parts of the mission.

And the payment, of course. Nasser could never forget about that.

“Fine,” Nasser relented, body deflating as he resigned to his fate of another twenty minute droning at the hands—mouth—of Wargle. “Let's get on with it, and then get out.”

The rest of the team nodded their agreement, wreckage gear already half-donned except the helmet and oxygen tank. Nasser held himself back from shuffling his own astro-suit on, in case Wargle took that as slight disrespect.

And with the fakest smile Nasser had ever seen—and he had seen a fair few many—Wargle began speaking.

***

“All that for a bloody retrieval mission?” Tye snorted whilst sitting in the cockpit of Wreck-2400, the small-scale, military-grade spacecraft Nasser had procured, through trusty old contacts, for his team of Wreckers.

“He’s too right,” Angie muttered, heaving himself over to the dashboard where Nasser sat and inspecting the dials to ensure nothing was untoward. “A location and description is all we need, right. All the random terms and stuff—just hand it over and we'll sign it, then get to the real fun.”

Nasser agreed with both of them—not that he'd ever tell Tye that. That man would never let the fact go, and Nasser didn't fancy another eighty years of Tye’s annoying warbling.

Nasser leaned back in his comfy leather chair, allowing the self-massage feature to ease out the knots in his upper back. Though Faster Than Light (FTL) travel was a staple of the modern age, flights to distant places in the galaxy still took far, far too long for his liking.

But hey, he wasn't a scientist working on the speed of space travel, and he did have the best leather chair on the market and a top of the range spacecraft. And a crew that could pass time quicker than anyone else.

So he probably shouldn't feel hard done by.

Blue lights on the dashboard flickered, signalling their distance from Earth as well as from nearby solar systems on a radar-like system. Nasser paid no attention to the information—after all, no war meant no threats to look out for. Just a comforting ride through the vast yet alluring darkness of space in all its glory.

The military were too lazy to clean up the messes of the universe, messes they caused in the first place, so they contracted the Wreckers to help—for a fee, of course. Nasser was running a profitable business here, after all.

Barely profitable, most months teetering on the balance of breaking even, but that was beside the point.

Apparently, some loose debris from an abandoned military operation a hundred years before skirted too close to the black hole at the centre of the milky way for their liking. The black hole’s name being Sagittarius A*, though how it got that name Nasser hadn’t a clue.

Before it got sucked over the event horizon and became lost forever, Nasser and his crew would need to fly to the west side of the black hole and zip across the edge, find the old wreck, and retrieve whatever they could from within.

Tye was right. A bloody retrieval mission didn't require an hour and a half of briefing, the extra half just for Wargle to piss Nasser off. They were professionals, and knew what they were doing. All they needed to discuss was time, place, and payment.

“How much longer till we get there?” Nasser asked, leaning back in his chair and resisting the urge to prop his feet up on the dashboard. He couldn't deface his spaceship like that.

Robyn, sitting a few metres to his left and in charge of steering the spacecraft as well as other logistics, replied, “Another twenty minutes, sir. Would you like the diagnostics to be displayed, engine pressure and the like, sir?”

“That's fine,” Nasser said, before tucking his head into the crook of his neck and closing his eyes. “I'll take a power nap since I got time—Allah knows I need one—and then we'll get on with the mission.”

“Always sleeping, aren't you, sir?” Tye jabbed from Nasser's right.

But Nasser, awfully proud of himself, didn't take the bait. A fifteen minute nap didn't hurt anyone, not with how safe space travel was compared to a few hundred years before.

And Nasser was the captain, so he did have a few privileges. Power naps being one of them. Not having to deal with paperwork being another—Robyn was a godsend.

Before sleep pulled him down under, a sinking feeling entered Nasser's stomach. A feeling that told him today's mission would be anything but ordinary.

Told him it would be out of this world.

***

Black holes were few and far between, especially when compared to the absolute vastness of space and the myriad of planets and stars orbitting the black hole. From a distance, of course.

Thankfully, the event horizon had been meticulously marked by a barrier built by humans long ago, a ring of sorts made of solid metal that orbitted the black hole just far away enough not to get sucked in itself. The ring covered about a third to a half of the black hole’s circumference, but that gave enough signal for any unaware spacecraft to steer well clear.

That metal glinted in the darkness of space as the Wreck-2400 closed in on its west side, before stopping entirely. FTL travel meant being able to escape orbits and generate enough force to control your own orbit, but the laws of black holes couldn't be broken still.

There was a long way to go before that became possible.

And there was always the risk that something went awry on the mission, completely haywire, and someone fell into the black hole. A permanent and grisly death, nasty business, and not something Nasser particularly wanted for himself.

Not something anyone wanted, to be fair.

Naturally, missions near a black hole paid dearly well. And Nasser would get that money, and enjoy it to its fullest.

No haram stuff, though. Nasser knew not to dabble in that side of life on Earth. Would ruin his business and, more importantly, his relationship with Allah.

And he wouldn't trade his faith for the world.

“Docking complete, sir,” Robyn announced, and the crew disengaged their safety straps.

Nasser got up, stretched his legs, and turned to Robyn. “You got a signal on that pulse?”

Robyn shook her head as she grabbed the helmet of her astro-suit. “Not yet, sir.” Her eyes were fixed on the radar, scanning, her brain working overtime as it always did.

Nasser wondered if she ever took a break and just…relaxed like the rest of them did. Sometimes, Robyn worked as if sleep didn't exist, as though she operated as a machine and not a person.

“What's with this pulse thing anyway?” Tye asked from behind Nasser. Tye was rummaging about in his astro-suit for something, causing a shuffling noise.

“New technology,” Angie said, bunching his arms like he was crushing watermelons between his biceps. “The military has made some tech that can hone in on particular frequencies emitted by particles. You, uh, should know about this, Tye.”

“Well, now I do,” Tye muttered.

Timothy Wargle, or more likely one of his team, had picked up a pulse signal of an old abandoned military expedition from long, long ago. Perhaps over a hundred years had passed, in fact. Which was why the briefing had been so utterly dragged out.

Retrieving that artefact of sorts was the mission they'd given the Wreckers.

And the Wreckers were happy to oblige. For a price, of course.

Through the viewport, Nasser glimpsed the swirling black hole in front of them, along with the ring-like wall protecting them from it. They'd docked up a ways away from the wall, just for their own safety, before securing themselves in an easy orbit around the black hole.

The thrusters on their astro-suits would be enough to push against the current once they found whatever had created the—

“Got the pulse, sir,” Robyn said, gesturing to a location screen directly overhead. “But it's very faint now, almost nothing, sir. I find it hard to believe that it somehow managed to reach Earth, if I'm honest.”

“So something with a strong pulse that got weaker over time?” Nasser said, inhaling the sterile scent across the cockpit. “That's awfully strange, isn't it?”

Nasser shrugged. He wasn't supposed to figure out the why behind what he was meant to retrieve. Just retrieve it and get the funds deposited to his account, preferably with as little work as possible.

“So we getting this or what?” Tye asked, peering at the location system. A white dot indicated the pulse's last location. The dot didn't blink, meaning the pulse wasn't active.

Strange, that. Nasser had seen nothing like it in all his years at the military in addition to as a wrecker.

“Yep, we are,” Nasser answered. “And you're the one getting out first this time, Tye.”

The glare on Tye's face made Nasser feel the smallest zing of satisfaction, just as Robyn steered the ship towards where the pulse had come from.

That gut sense from earlier hadn't vanished in the least, however. The sense that the pulse meant more than Nasser could ever know.

***

The pulse turned out to be within an old spacecraft, or perhaps a space chute given its tiny size. It was roughly a quarter, maybe less, of the size of Nasser's spacecraft when viewed from the outside. But that was, perhaps, where the comparisons ended.

Rust was more evident on the spacecraft than anything else. Across its rather odd cylinder-like frame, a frame not used in spacecraft for over a hundred years, paint and other little bits had been chipped off by the wear and tear of space.

But space itself couldn't cause something like rust. It was a vaccum, after all, with no air flowing through it to weather the surface of a metal. Space couldn't cause those dark spots along the underside of the metal craft either—almost as if the black hole had tugged at it before letting go. Or as if the spacecraft had attempted to burn itself.

Strange, that. Very strange, and Nasser's curiosity was piqued.

Tye had, as promised, exited the Wreck-2400 first, with Nasser behind him. Robyn followed his tail, whilst Angie engaged the airlock behind them to ensure their spacecraft's insides weren't exposed to, well, space.

Silence engulfed them, whilst the darkness welcomed them into the midst of outer space. Despite coming out here, into the void, his entire life, Nasser had never gotten used to the fluttery sensation it gave to his stomach.

But wonder could only last so long. They were here on contract, after all.

The closer they edged to the wreck, thrusters allowing them to move opposite to the orbit they were captured in, the more bizarre it seemed.

Those dark spots weren't just random across the metallic frame. They were circular, and uniform. Wrapping across the underside of the spacecraft like polka dots, one after the other, as though someone had used its surface for testing paint.

“Should we enter in from the front, sir?” Robyn said through Communications, or Comms. Her voice crackled once more. “It appears, well, destroyed, sir.”

Robyn's eyes were always the sharpest, but they didn't need sharpness to notice the utter calamity that had befallen the spacecraft's entrance.

Where the front airlock of a spacecraft usually was—it had been caved in, as though broken through and patched up afterwards. Wargle had explained that the wreck was an ancient military spacecraft, but what was it doing out here then?

And how had it gone unnoticed by those building the ring around the black hole a hundred years back?

Questions Nasser wanted answers to, that curiosity within him incited.

And getting answers would require digging deeper.

Nasser breathed in a lungful from the oxygen tank attached to his back. Pure oxygen, after all, always tasted nicer than regular air on Earth, or the mixture of nitrogen and oxygen they breathed on the Wreck-2400.

“There's an opening on the side,” Nasser muttered through Comms, pointing to a slight hole formed by the fragments of metal chafing against each other, likely over tens of years. “If we move it out the way, we can make it inside and see what this pulse is about.”

“The man for the job is here,” Angie said, bunching up his muscles even though he was inside the astro-suit. Impossibly, the muscles still looked gargantuan.

“By the way, sir, the signal is getting weaker as we go closer,” Robyn said, the location readings attached to her Advanced Location Device (ALD). “Frequencies are stretching out further too, sir, as if whatever is inside can sense us coming.”

Tye, on Nasser's left now, flicked a hand towards the spacecraft, as if trying to catch the pulse like a ball. “Any ideas about how that's possible? I ain't ever heard anything like it.”

“Let's just get inside first,” Nasser said. “Once we're in, we can rummage around and see what's up.”

“I'll get to clearing things up,” Angie said, with Nasser lending a hand. Since the hole was tiny and rubble in large chunks, there was little need for Tye and Robyn to help. They remained floating behind, assessing the situation on the ALD.

Nasser picked up and moved rubble to the side, letting it float around as everything did. Angie followed suit, and together they made quick work of the entrance, carving a big enough gap for each of them to fit inside.

Angie would struggle, but just about make it. Why on Earth he spent so much time in the gym, Nasser hadn't a clue.

All the while they readied themselves to enter, Nasser thought back to what Tye and Robyn had said earlier. That the idea of a pulse weakening the closer living matter (in this case them) got to it…that idea made little sense. In fact, it seemed downright impossible.

Pulses didn't react to life. How did it even detect life?

Nasser's curiosity dinged as though a chime went off in his head. “Everyone ready?” he said, turning to his crew.

They all nodded…not that Nasser could see the gestures clearly since the helmets on astro-suits were pretty bulky and thick.

He took it as an affirmative anyhow.

Nasser turned to face the spacecraft, ready to retrieve whatever needed retrieving, and then cash whatever cheque needed cashing.

“Then let's go.”

***

The spacecraft's insides were, well, about as antique as a craft could get. Nasser had seen builds like these during childhood museum visits, but to see one in person was fascinating.

The first thing that struck him, and likely the rest of his crew too, as they entered the craft was the sheer whiteness of everything. A stark white, shining as though the sun's essence had been poured onto the walls in its absence.

It was almost blinding whenever they swept their beam flashlights against a wall or ceiling. Perhaps the spacecraft had run out of air because, like bits of the outside, the walls were swept with rust and chipped off paint. Strangely, though the entrance was near-destroyed, the insides further down were clean.

Far too clean for Nasser's liking.

As if Angie had come in here for a quick sweep to spruce things up a little. That man loved cleaning for some reason, a tendency that none of the crew shared.

“Are we heading further in?” Nasser said, glancing over at Robyn and her ALD.

“Yes, sir. It appears to be at the end of this hallway.”

The hallway wasn't large at all, just tall enough to fit Nasser's frame whilst Angie needed to crouch. The ceiling bashed Nasser a few times, like Tye after a zinging joke, and the walls narrowed inwards the closer they got to the other end.

The pure oxygen tasted almost stale as Nasser breathed it in, and the silence in his mind and over Comms told him the story.

They were all enraptured by the details, astonished, flabbergasted. Speechless.

The place was an antique wreck, both mechanical and electric equipment covering the sides. Machines Nasser didn't know how to operate or understand.

If Wargle only needed the object that had created the pulse, then the wreck itself—it was theirs to keep, surely.

It wasn't as if the original owners would come back to life and reclaim their belongings or something. There was no lost-and-found bin in the after life, after all.

And hey, if the dead crew were going to heaven, what would they care about their abandoned wreck finding a new home in the Wreckers’ business account as extra income?

And an antique like this would fetch a hefty price. Nasser could almost see the pound signs floating across his helmet's visor, alongside the dials telling him how much oxygen he had left, as well as the pressure outside his astro-suit.

Then a detail caught Nasser's eye, a detail he hadn't realised until now.

And a crucial detail, too.

The closer they edged to the end of the hallway, taking measures to ensure they inspected everything with a sharp eye, the less flashlight usage they required.

A door led right at the end of the hallway, and something inside that door was emitting light. Blasting it out, in fact.

Something inside this abandoned old wreck was alive and kicking.

In that next room, white light beckoning Nasser towards it.

Nasser didn't need to think twice.

That thing was, surely, the source of the pulse.

***

The helmet provided Nasser an insulated feeling on all sides, the stale yet pure oxygen flowing into him as he led the Wreckers across the final bit of chipped wall and rusting metal to the end of the corridor.

Anticipation flooded through him as he switched his flashlight off and stowed it against his hip. The world behind them plunged into darkness. The world before them brimmed with light.

“What is that thing?” Tye muttered across Comms. “Ain't this place meant to be dead?”

“I haven't got a clue,” Angie said, heading ahead with Nasser whilst the other two brought up the rear.

“The pulse is so faint it’s barely detectable, sir,” Robyn said. “If we get any closer I suspect it will stop entirely.”

Nasser licked his lips, stepped forwards again, legs and arms weightless as he pushed himself towards the opening, lit by a brilliant light, at the end of the hallway.

He rounded the corner, one hand clutching the wall whilst his legs drifted beneath him.

And he stared at what met him.

The room itself was bland, white chipped walls and strewn debris like the rest of the spacecraft. But in the centre of the room, like a glorified idol of sorts, sat something near otherworldly.

Some sort of glowing white object, circular in nature, fizzing and crackling and pulsing yet Nasser never heard a sound.

Mind boggling. Fascinating. Utterly so.

The object didn't appear to be resting on anything, held up by anything. It hovered, as though invisible hands cradled it from below.

It rotated on an axis Nasser couldn't see. Couldn't detect no matter what equipment he used.

In almost every sense of the word, the white glowing rotating ball was magical.

The air Nasser breathed tasted sweet, like strawberries grown organically instead of in a lab. And he drank the scent in.

Strangely, beneath the ball were black dots embedded in the ground, as though the floor had been burnt. They corresponded well with the dots Nasser had noticed when viewing the spacecraft from outside.

This ball, surely, was what Wargle wanted them to retrieve. An ancient artefact that could be displayed in museums, so every child could ignite their minds with the same wonder that flowed through Nasser now—

“Wait,” Angie said, grabbing Nasser’s arm and pulling him back just before he could step into the open room.

Nasser's arm yanked back, whilst Angie held him steady by the shoulder. Angie wouldn't do that for no reason, not to the captain of the ship.

“What's wrong?” Nasser asked over Comms.

Angie let go of his shoulder once Nasser's balance stabilised. “We can't go in there, because that thing'll explode as soon as we do.”

“What?” Tye said from where he stood besides Robyn. “What are you on about?”

“It's an old story from hundreds of years back my Ma used to read to me,” Angie said. He ushered them back, and they retreated to the centre of the hallway, surrounded by dimness.

The other end of the hallway still brimmed with white, alluring and enigmatic, urging them to go and explore.

Tye used a flashlight to illuminate their faces as though Angie was telling ghost stories around a campfire back on Earth.

“I've never heard of this,” Nasser muttered. And he was a wide reader, too, at least before he began contracting and had to be in outer space for weeks at a time managing a ship.

“It's a tale only told in the area I grew up,” Angie said. “Makes sense you wouldn't have heard it.”

“Can you just get on with the story, mate?” Tye said.

“By the way, sir, the pulse is starting to increase in strength,” Robyn said, ALD still in her hand, still flashing out blips as a white dot on a blue screen.

“That's part of it,” Angie said. “That thing, in the stories at least, is a bloody bomb that uses a pulse to get people closer, and then when the pulse stops, the thing explodes all at once. And as a warning, it sends out black flames of sorts, which would explain the spots at the bottom of this wreck. It’s a bloody strong weapon, that is.”

“How strong?” Nasser asked.

“Stronger than disarmed nukes,” Angie muttered. “A hundred times stronger.” Angie jabbed a thick finger in the direction of the stark white light.

“We go in that room, and our ship dies as well as us. That's how powerful it is.”

Nasser paused, then gestured to the rest of the team. “I think we need to get out of here first, then talk.”

***

Back on the Wreck-2400, Nasser sat in his comfy leather chair in the spacecraft’s meeting room. The oak wood table stretched before him comforted his interlaced fingers, whilst the temperature regulators made it so an easy warmth spread through the air.

The meeting room, about twice the size of Wargle's prison, was where all plans were made and details hashed out.

And this thing they'd found, whatever it actually was, certainly warranted their attention.

“So it's a weapon,” Tye said, sitting to Nasser's left beside Robyn. Their gear was off, facial expressions clear to see.

Tye held a look of annoyance, a permanent feature of Tye, in Nasser's eyes.

“Does Commander Wargle know about this, sir?” Robyn asked. “That the retrieval mission concerns a weapon, I mean.”

Nasser stared off into the distance, wondering what he, as captain, should do.

“I don't think so,” Nasser said. “Wargle is a shoddy commander at best, but even he knows to keep state secrets…well, kept secret. Telling us of all people means he thought it was scrap work all along.”

“What if it isn't a weapon?” Tye said. “What if we all just got this one wrong? The legend is some massive phoney?”

“Do you want to test such a theory?” Angie spoke from a seat to Nasser's right. “Such a weapon's existence is a threat to us all. The risk of us going into that room to retrieve it is not worth our lives. Or the lives of others.”

Nasser nodded. “If we get that to Wargle, there's no telling what he'll use it for. We've had peace for hundreds of years—we can't just let one planet take a weapon worse than anything we've ever seen.”

“But lying to the commander, sir,” Robyn protested. Ever the stickler for the rules, her worst trait in Nasser's eyes, a needle in the haystack of good ones. “That isn't in protocol.”

Nasser shook his head. “Lying to save millions of lives, heck billions of lives—that's something we have to do. If we let someone take the weapon, they'll be able to replicate it and cause war on a scale we've never seen before.”

“And what about the weapon itself?” Tye said. “We can't just leave it here and wait for someone else to find the pulse and come get it.”

Nasser shook his head, the idea already formed. “Nah, we're chucking it in the cosmic dustbin of the milky way—that black hole, Sagittarius A*. The ring only covers about a third of it—we hook a harpoon onto the wreck, we can steer it over the ring and then escape orbit ourselves.”

It was the perfect plan. If they chucked the weapon into the black hole, it would get warped into a world no man had explored, no man could explore.

And the ancient weapon, capable of decimating lives with a technology lost to mankind—it would never be recovered.

In the process, Nasser would save billions of lives.

He glanced at his comrades, and grinned at them. They may be a rag-tag group of nobodies in a galaxy with billions of people, but they weren't going to let humanity risk war.

Nasser sighed, leaned back, and stared into the bright lights above him. Beautiful lights, bulbs a warm colour of blue like the sea back on Earth. He'd chosen the lights, after all. Beautiful lights for the galaxy's best crew.

“Robyn, get the harpoon ready,” Nasser said, sitting back up, determined to carry out his plan. “We're taking that thing to Sagittarius and then taking ourselves back home. I need a good nap after this one.”

“What about Commander Wargle, sir?” Robyn said.

“I'll feed him a bunch of stuff, don't you worry,” Nasser said. “I've got him in my back pocket. I just hope he doesn't dock pay cos we didn't retrieve the actual thing.”

Tye and Angie chuckled (though Tye did attempt to hide it just a little) and they all set off to the cockpit to ready the harpoon and the rest of their equipment.

Because they were ready to save lives.

An hour later, and the weapon and its surrounding spacecraft were essentially no more—unless someone was crazy enough to dive into a black hole for it.

Nasser gazed at the wonder of the stars as they circled back around and headed towards Earth once more. The comfort of his seat exuded a peace within him akin to the peace he tried to protect with his decision.

A decision well taken. Damn well taken.

He looked at the array of lights in the deep dark of outer space, an assortment of amazing reds and blues and yellows mixed into the black, and wondered what the Wreckers’ next mission would bring.

A hell of a lot of money hopefully, for one.

And maybe—Nasser deeply hoped—another opportunity to save the world.

Feel free to read any of my other free short stories, or click the all fiction tab above for info on where to find my longer works.

JazakAllahu Khayran for reading.