Chuck Schading

This piece was written for Twist in the Tale’s May 2024 1,000-word short story contest. The prompts were Sci-Fi (genre) / Intersteller Adventures (sub-genre) / rebel (character). The story had be written in seven days or less.

For a moment, Tagg Masterson thought he was floating in the flooded stone quarry back home, the summer sun beating down on his scrawny teenage frame, his fingers and toes trailing in the cool dark water. How many hours had he and his friends floated there, dreaming of the day that they too would head into space and join the fight as their fathers and brothers had?

The piercing din of the alarms quickly brought clarity. 

He was suspended between the airlock and the environmental control console, his foot caught in a cargo net, the rest of his body drifting aimlessly around the cabin as far as the ropes would allow.

Everywhere he looked, pulsating red and yellow emergency lights screamed through the haze. 

In his mind, he took stock:

He was breathing. So there was air.

He was in midair. So there was no gravity.

The bulkhead to his left was buckled, but he wasn’t floating aimlessly through space. The ship was intact. Intact enough, at least.

Tagg took a deep breath and vomited, the contents of his stomach spilling out in all directions, hanging there like a Sunday morning hangover that just wouldn’t quit. A sharp pain in his side too. A concussion and broken ribs, most likely. 

He slapped himself in the face a couple times and reached up — or was it down? — and untangled his boot from the cargo net. He slowly kicked off the bulkhead and propelled himself through the ship toward the command console, effortlessly gliding past glistening spheroids of blood and the lifeless body of his co-pilot, Lt. Danzo Panzi, bobbing like a cattail on the water.

Tagg checked his watch as he drifted through the debris that had been dislodged during the attack — everything from rations and toiletries to chunks of the ship itself. 

A toothbrush tumbling through the air, its bristles worn. 

A bottle of Brio Venzla, the one that they had planned to share when all was said and done.

A holo of Danzo’s wife Xaxai, her silver skin pulsating as she held their infant son.

It had been less than an hour since they were intercepted near Nebula 32678. Masterson and his squadron were bait, and he knew it, but he still hadn’t expected to encounter the force they had. A couple of ships maybe, but not an entire fleet.

It was a simple mission. Feign an attack on the Decimians’ Blessed Ambassador, blinding the bastards to the fact that she was already dead, poisoned in her bath house and replaced with a clone hours before. 

“Bait and bolt, people,” Commander Flux had said. “This’ll be the easiest run you’ve made since you left terra firma.”

Only this time Tagg had been the only one who was able to run. 

The Decimian battle cruisers vaporized five of the ten rebel fighters before the red alert was even sounded and made short work of another four. As with everything, the Decimians were ruthless and efficient. 

Ruthless when they took over Earth. Ruthless when they destroyed Tagg’s hometown and everything in it, the houses and markets and even the quarry. Ruthless when they killed everyone he knew who hadn’t already fled.

The Decimians believed in subjugation or annihilation. 

Earth refused to be subjugated. And so it was annihilated.

Yet here was Tagg Masterson, still breathing. 

Still existing. 

Still floating.

The last thing Tagg remembered was hitting the throttle, accelerating, blindly pushing his damaged ship as fast and far as it would carry him. Past the nebula. Past the rings. Through the Tarsus wormhole. Out into the farthest corner of the galaxy itself. And it was traveling still.

Tagg grimaced as he pulled himself into the command console, its surface disconcertingly warm. The massive monitor was cracked, even shattered in places, but still it flickered back to life with a manual reboot. Outside the viewport, there was nothing but an infinite field of black dotted with white. The nebula was nowhere to be seen. 

He checked the systems one by one. 

Navigation. Propulsion. Communications.

All out. 

No way to find home. No way to move. No way to call for help.

He was left weightless. Inside a rudderless ship. With a dead best friend.

He thought of Xaxai and that summer at the quarry. How he had told Danzo about the off-world girl at the market, the first he had ever seen.

How her translucent gown had flowed behind her like a wave, her glowing skin beneath pulsating like a beacon. 

How she moved in hypnotic, almost musical strides, each step a carefully orchestrated note. 

How her voice was like a melody, enchanting all who heard it.

How he had looked at her and she at him.

“Do you think we could be with her?” Tagg had asked. “You know, like would it work?”

“I don’t know if you could be with her, moon dick,” Danzo had said with a laugh as he splashed water into his lifelong friend’s sun-drenched face. “But I think I can!”

Tagg saw his own face reflected in the command console’s monitor, Danzo’s body floating behind him. At least the cocky bastard had been right. 

The next morning, Tagg said his goodbyes and did his best to make repairs to their ship.

To propulsion. To comms. To navigation.

But it quickly became apparent there was nothing he could do.

So over the coming hours and days and months, he floated. And thought. 

About Danzo. About the quarry. About his father and brothers who had died out here before him. About the Decimians and the rebellion and a home planet that was no longer even habitable. The pointlessness of it all.

And then one day, out on the horizon —  if there is a horizon in the deepest reaches of space — he saw a light.

At first only a flicker. 

And then a glow that grew slow and steady.

Like a beacon pulsating in the black.

Floating on the water. 

Floating in space.

Calling him home.