Downfall, Epilogue
17 Jun 2017User4296
Siegel Station, Hoji SystemEmpire Space
September 3302
Word travels fast on a station. As soon as my name appeared in the medical database, the computer cross checked that against its message system, either incoming, outgoing, or internal. It was one of these internal messages that was then flagged and sent to my PDA.
That message had brought Talia and I here, as we both stared at the "SIDRA BERNARD" nameplate on the door.
"Friend of yours?" Talia asked.
I nodded.
"Girlfriend?"
I shook my head. "No. Met her on a job. In many ways, it's my fault she's here. I thought she was dead."
"Oh." Talia paused. "You'll want to be alone, then. I'll be down in the lobby when you're done."
"Yeah." I pushed the door open and made my way into the room. As the door closed, I could hear Talia's footfalls on the carpet as she moved down the hallway.
The room was darkened, save for the light that came in through the window. The hospital was located on the outer rim of the station, I saw, where the rotation could provide standard Earth gravity. The area around the hospital appeared to be a large park, with trees and small lakes separating the many buildings that dotted the habitation ring.
Sidra's bed was pushed up against the window, and she sat staring out of it. She didn't look over as I entered, and I didn't say anything. We let the silence hang for several moments.
"I didn't expect to see you again," she said, finally.
"I thought you were dead."
"How did you know?" she asked.
I walked over to one of the chairs and dragged it across the room, leaving a trail in the plush, red carpet, and sat a few feet away from the foot of the bed. "He recorded it and sent me the video. What happened to you?"
"He shot me," she said, her gaze never leaving the park outside the window. "It hurt. A lot. Barely missed my heart, but it hit my spine. I'm... mostly paralyzed."
"I'm sorry," I said.
She briefly smiled. "But... the good news is, the doctors say my treatments are going well. They'll say I'll be able to walk again, they just aren't sure when."
"Progenitor Cells are pretty amazing," I offered.
She looked down, and her tone shifted. "He took Cassandra."
"I know."
"Killed her parents."
"I know."
She looked over at me, finally, tears in her eyes. "Tell me you saved her."
"I..." My voice caught, and I looked down.
She closed her eyes then, and tears rolled down both of her cheeks. A moment later she looked back over to the window. "Is she dead?"
"Yes."
"You couldn't save her." The tone of her voice said that this wasn't a question, but a statement.
I answered her anyway. "No."
"Can you save anyone?" she asked the window.
I looked at her for a long moment, then allowed my gaze to wander out the window, trying to see what she saw.
"Get out."
I stood and pulled the chair back across the room, replacing it where I had retrieved it, and began moving toward the door.
"Did you kill him?" she asked, as I reached for the handle.
"Yes," I replied.
"For real this time?"
"He's not coming back, if that's what you're asking."
"Good."
The door slid open at my touch, and I left the room.
***
Talia and I walked in silence for a long while after leaving the hospital ward. It wasn’t until we had reached the main shopping arcade for that section I turned to her. "So... care to explain how you found me?"
She shrugged. "Wasn't hard, really. I just returned to the system I fought that Viper in, and began a basic search pattern. I found a wreckage matching an Anaconda a few jumps away - it hadn't traveled far before it had blown up. I assume that was you?"
I shook my head. "Let’s call him an… unhappy employee."
She cocked a brow. “Anyway, yours – as far as I could tell - was the only escape pod still left in the system… and even then, it was inside of a nearby asteroid belt. The interference made it nearly impossible to find."
I felt a pang of fear at that, and thought back to the rest of the events of the Anaconda, which were slowly piecing themselves back together as time passed. Did the bridge crew and the engineers - people I had spared - die anyway? There were horror stories about stasis systems that failed, leaving pilots awake and powerless to do anything but wait as their power supply and oxygen ran out. At least those with working stasis systems went in their sleep. In theory.
"What happened to the Viper?" she asked.
"I, uh, convinced the gunner to blast it a few times. You had nearly crippled it, so it didn't take much more after that," I shrugged.
"Damn. Had the Anaconda not gotten involved-" she started.
"You would have had him. By the way, remember the guy who we had thought thrown Tucker out the window?" I asked.
"Yeah?"
"That was the pilot."
She laughed. "Son of a bitch. Small world."
We walked in silence for a while longer, passing stores and groups of people as we went. Before long, we reached one of the trams that led toward the stations shipyards. Suddenly, I felt tired.
"It’ll be nice to grab some real sleep in my bunk back on the Illaria," I observed.
"I... have something to show you," she said.
***
The ship was a mess.
Before me sat the twisted wreckage of an Imperial Courier - my father's Imperial Courier - which had been tucked into one of the station's many repair bays. The fuselage sported a fair number of dents, one of the wings was twisted, and the other wing appeared to be missing entirely.
"What happened?" I managed.
Talia looked down at the deck, sheepishly. "Well, I barely managed to jump into supercruise after the fight with that Takamura guy. What I didn't expect was the band of pirates I had stumbled upon the next system over."
I looked up at the wreckage, then back to Talia. "That sounds like quite the tale."
"It was. Maybe I'll tell you sometime. Anyway, the short version - I barely managed to get your Courier back here in one piece,” she sighed, then continued, and began speaking more quickly with each sentence. “It… took a while to do it, then I needed to call in a favor for the Asp I used to come found you, and that took time-"
I held up my hand. “Look, it’s… okay. Ships are... only things. As long as you lived, I'd say that's all that really matters."
At about that moment, the dock master had wandered over. "This heap yours?" he asked. When I nodded, he went on. "It's been sitting here for about a month or so - you want it fixed, or are you gonna get it out of my face?"
I shrugged. "How much will it cost?"
"Ah, that's the thing. Normally, we'd process your insurance and you'd pay a bit out of pocket for repairs. However, since this has been sitting here for so long, the claim has lapsed, so you're looking at..." He punched a few things into his PDA, and he finally quoted a number.
"You've got to be kidding me. I don't have that kind of money," I replied incredulously.
He shrugged. "Could always scrap it. Few useful modules left on it we'd pay you for."
I sighed and looked back over at the ship.
"What will you give me for it?"
***
"I am so sorry," Talia said, a few hours later.
Both of us were looking up at a Cobra Mk III, which was just about the only thing left on the shipyard's for sale list I could afford. Whatever personal effects they could salvage were already on the new - that term was used loosely - ship.
"I blame insurance companies," I said, shrugging. She laughed.
"Still. I'll make this up to you. I have some work coming in I may need help with," she said.
"What kind of work is this, exactly?" I said, turning toward her. "Besides that, where'd you learn to fly? Navy trained?"
She winked. "That, too, is a story for another time. One final thing," she said, and then whistled.
A border collie came bounding across the hangar bay, and very nearly bowed me over.
"Jack!" I laughed, and patted the dog on the head. Just as quickly as the dog had become excited, he seemed to regain his composure, and had sat down nearby.
"Thank you," I said. "I mean it. Thanks for not leaving me to die out there."
We awkwardly hugged. She laughed, and then turned to walk away after the embrace had ended. "Don't mention it. And… try not to blow up ships with you still on them anymore, okay?" She waved over her shoulder as she moved off.
“Good advice,” I said.
END