Private Log 08.31.3305 06:13
31 Aug 2019Bishop R88
I woke up in the medical bay of the rescue ship. My head was pounding. I was pretty in and out for a while. Eventually, Peter came to see me. He filled in all the blanks. According to Peter, the pirates had attacked the Durango the moment we left the orbital station. They'd demanded we give over the refugees, which they had intended on selling as slaves, or we could jettison ourselves into space using the escape pods and leave the ship and refugees for the pirates. The last option they gave us was they could blow us all to hell.
Captain Frazier thought he could outrun the pirates and get back to the rescue ship. The pirates wouldn't have followed us that close with so many patrols and combat ships about, but they'd disabled the ship's thrusters before we could get close enough to friendly space. After that, they told Frazier he could give over the refugees or we could all die.
He made a choice. It's one I'll never agree with, and that's something I'll have to live with for the rest of my life.
Peter told me the refugees had been put in the escape pods and jettisoned. The pirates took them. Only those too wounded or injured to leave the medical bay were now in the hands of slavers. It hadn't even settled in yet. Peter had to tell me three times before it sunk in, what he was telling me.
The woman with the crushed leg, my burn victim. Without me or Simon there to care for them, that left just Peter. I can't imagine what that must have been like. All by himself, no one to help him. Both patients died before reaching the rescue ship.
Besides myself and Peter, only Frazier and his crew survived. The whole mission, the whole god damn...
...Sometimes, in my dreams...I still see their faces. Not just my burn patient, or the woman with the crushed leg. But all those refugees. They were so scared, the looks on their faces as they realized they were being handed over to pirates. Slavers who would likely rape and torture them before selling them off to even worse conditions. And Simon's face. I see him too. And the medical team on the orbital station. I imagine the looks on their faces as the pilon came crashing down and the landing platform fell apart.
I hear their screams in my sleep...
It's why I had to get away. Why I had to give it all up. I stayed aboard the rescue ship for another two weeks. I worked in the trauma unit as soon as I was well enough and the wound on the back of my head had healed. But more and more I was struggling. I would see the blood, the wounds, and suddenly I was back on the Durango and Simon was on the floor at my feet bleeding out.
As soon as the ship docked and I was free to, I booked passage back to Gateway. I officially quit my position at St. Mary's and sold my condo. I used the credits I'd earned, plus nearly everything I had in savings and bought the Halifax. Now here I am, 3,000 light-years from home, sitting in the cockpit of this tiny hunk of metal, a speck in the vastness of things, telling a computer why I wake up sweating as if I'd just run a marathon...