The Chaos Machine: Choose Your Own Adventure For Edward
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The Chaos Machine
Floating in the ether inside a dead ship 3,000 light years from the nearest Community Pod, Edward was blessed with an abundance of time to think about the woman he left behind in hopes of finding riches among the stars.
He knew her face better than he knew his own. The way her smile burst out like the birth of a universe with heat, passion, beauty, and a touch of the impossible. The eyes he’d never fully understood—sculpted sharp and serious, an exotic and dangerous emerald-green possessing mystery as impenetrable as a goddess’ chiseled into the frieze of a temple.
Touching her had always felt like a violation of something sacred and to let go of her was to fall away from the sun into an inescapable void. He couldn’t bear to even stand apart from her in a small room or sleep more than an inch from her warm skin inside their cramped, twin-sized bed.
Why had he left her? He was often unsure, remembering only some vague hope that two years of hard work for the X-Verse Mineral Exploration armada would reward him with wealth. That wealth could buy her the life that would either lift him up to her level or pull her down to his. A new house, a retirement account, college for whatever kids would come along, vacations, clothes, a future. That’s why he left—to become worthy of her.
After hundreds of hours in simulators, he was assigned to a freshly minted and absurdly-priced X-42 Scatterbug, the smallest craft to ever possess its own Chaos Machine. Looking like a thin, rounded pond creature racing along the water’s surface, the ships were capable of flying through harsh atmospheres for trips to planet surfaces, able to withstand extreme heat, and knocks from space debris. It was the most maneuverable and adaptable machine ever sent to space.
The Chaos Machine was the key, the thing that made space exploration possible. Not even fully understood by its own engineers, the Chaos Machine was notoriously fickle, but the most important invention in the history of mankind. It was able to create gravity and transport a ship instantaneously across the universe. Until the first models of Scatterbugs came along, the Chaos Machines were only installed in the Community Pods that first ignited the interstellar space race. X-Verse needed single person ships to scout out natural resources among the vast oceans of debris floating amid the solar systems.
And Edward was awarded the most advanced Scatterbug ever built to seek out his fortune. Yet, three weeks into his first assignment, Edward jumped right into an asteroid belt and impacted a storm of ice crystals which ruptured his power cell. Ten days later, no ability to call for help, his emergency back up only able to sustain his life support systems for another twelve hours, Edward awaited death in a 2 trillion-dollar casket.
Edward’s dead Scatterbug wasn’t entirely dead though. There was the thermal flare. Intended to signal passing ships, Edward guessed that firing the thermal flare could also nudge his dead ship toward a passing asteroid. A tethering hook could be shot to the asteroid’s surface and, if Edward was lucky enough, there might be a convertible energy source that could be mined from the giant rock. He’d already patched the power cell, it just needed food. If his emergency backup could convert whatever he found on the asteroid into fuel, then he could wake the Chaos Machine and jump back to Earth. It was his only way back home. His only way back to her.
As he eyed a listless asteroid slowly drifting toward his ship, lights appeared. Very distant, but clearly man-made. Someone had jumped just outside of the asteroid belt. He clicked on his instruments. Fuzzy and depleted, the monitor was still able to focus in on the lights. Edward knew immediately that it was not a Community Pod. Shaped more like a naval destroyer, it was a thing meant to seek and destroy, a thing to avoid at all costs. A Solar Hopper owned by Regency Science and Energy, a rival corporation with no qualms about pirating in order to stake their claims on resource-rich planets, moons, or, in this case, asteroid belts. They’d come up with their own version of the Chaos Machine and were bent on destroying X-Verse’s monopoly on deep space exploration.
Despite the horror stories he’d heard during training about Regency, Edward doubted they would kill him. He could signal, they would see it. They would take the ship, of course. They would steal the technology, they would interrogate him, perhaps ransom him back to X-Verse, but his chances of survival were better inside their ship hull than trying to pull energy out of a random asteroid.
He looked back to the drifting rock, guessing at how much hydrogen and oxygen it might possess.
WHAT DO YOU DO?
Mine the asteroid OR Signal the Space Hopper?
A tall column of blue fire burst from the top of the Scatterbug, like a glimmering horn sprouting from its skull. The craft fell into a gentle rotation, but Edward feathered the stability jets to keep the craft in one place. Each blast of the jet was taken from his oxygen reserves and wouldn’t be enough for propulsion, just enough to keep the Scatterbug faced to the Space Hopper. He wanted to be discovered by X-Verse’s most brutal competitor, he wanted them to see his beautiful ship, like Edward was holding a prime tenderloin filet out to a rabid mongrel.
The thermal flare burned for nearly thirty seconds, surely long enough for the Space Hopper’s tracking cameras to pick up the abnormality, identify the small ship, and alert the crew. Edward sat in the cockpit, hand on the control stick, thumb resting on a black button with a red ring that controlled six pulse rockets. The lone offensive weapons the Scatterbug possessed. Two would be enough to irreparably rupture the Space Hopper’s hull, but that ship didn’t scare Edward. It was what brutal machines that beast might belch out.
Rumors and stolen, cryptic blueprints hinted at a militarized fleet of small, unmanned ships being produced by Regency. X-Verse executives had long accused Regency of preparing to launch an arms race, but had never possessed hard proof of Regency producing ships with overtly offensive capabilities. Three Community Pods went missing over the last year and a half though, all without a single transmission for help. Maybe one loss could be explained by a catastrophic error in their Chaos Machine, but three? Everyone at X-Verse and the wider space community suspected that Regency had stepped over the line from corporate bully to outright pirate.
A red light burst to life on Edward’s display. The oxygen reserves were almost depleted. He realized for the first time that the Space Hopper could just wait. Knowing that the ship was distressed with a wary, desperate, and perhaps dangerous pilot on board, the captain of the Space Hopper could just let time kill Edward, so their rescue mission would instead only be a recovery mission. Interstellar Laws handled both instances differently. A shrewd captain would know that a dead man required much less paperwork than a survivor.
Just as Edward began to look back at the drifting asteroid with new-found appreciation, the Space Hopper gasped a bright, beaming light that burned into the cockpit. Edward held up his hand to block the light. He could make out shadows within the light, but couldn’t focus on anything more.
A light shield comprised of millions of micro-flaps closed on the Scatterbug, shutting off his view. Edward’s eyes burned, but at least he knew that the Space Hopper had made a decision. Whether salvage or rescue, they were coming.
And perhaps they wouldn’t wait if they wanted to salvage. They could simply kick him out into space. Make him walk the plank, just like a proper pirate crew would. Oddly, the thought amused him.
A loud clank announced metal impacting the ship’s hull. The ship tugged forward. They were pulling him in. Edward thought of the space suit. In theory, he could hide from them. Perhaps escape out the air lock and drag behind the ship, detach as they were reeling the ship in, then find another way into the Space Hopper. Get on board on his terms. He couldn’t fathom how he would be able to refuel the Scatterbug and escape the cargo hold of the Space Hopper, but it felt better than just waiting and putting his fate into another’s hands.
But he could reason with the captain. They would have the ship one way or another, but the pilot would be valuable too. He could promise to feed them information in exchange for his life. Buy time, offer to show them the capabilities of the Scatterbug in exchange for a trip back home.
A trip back to her.
Perhaps, this way, he’d have an even better chance of slipping through their fingers, saving his Scatterbug, and returning home a hero.
WHAT DO YOU DO?
Try to slip in undetected? OR Negotiate with the captain?
They met on her 21st birthday. She never remembered because she was fabulously drunk by the time they bumped into each other at a crowded, artsy dive bar. She passed out on the shoulder of a drag queen while Edward was discussing theoretical physics. He laughed with the drag queen about his inability to hold a woman’s attention, then lifted her into his arms. It was the first time he’d actually felt her, shocked at how little she weighed and how perfectly she felt curled against him. She insisted on taking her car back to her house. He wanted to take his own, even offered to come back in the morning to give her a ride to the bar. She refused again, so he left his vehicle behind to deliver the beautiful woman safely home in her own chariot. He carried her inside, put her to bed, then walked seven miles back to the bar. A frigid downpour erupted halfway. It was brutal and exhilarating. It was the first time in his life that he felt truly noble.
As Edward eased out of the airlock and hooked onto the bottom of the Scatterbug, he thought of how electrifying that rain felt on his face. Like he was in a movie, the camera retreating, him dancing in the puddles, forever warmed by love at first sight.
He was in a new movie now. A death at every turn movie, the kind you don’t survive in the real world and he was trapped with his nerves inside the stifling space suit. The airlock sealed him outside. All he heard was his thumping heart and his short, tense breaths. He gripped the tether, then used his other hand to pull against a bar just beneath the air lock. He needed to stay underneath the Scatterbug and, hopefully, out of view. He did inch his helmet away from the hull just enough to eye four small ships shaped like six-pointed Christmas stars on the top of a pine tree. They were attached to chains which they used to drag the Scatterbug toward the Space Hopper. The ships were small, too small to contain living pilots, but they did possess rows of small missiles attached to each of the ships’ wings, like righteous angels of death.
Out of nervous habit, Edward felt for the data pad affixed to the outside of his suit on the chest. It was his lifeline during space walks, his link to the Scatterbug and the Chaos Machine within. That data pad would also be his key into the Space Hopper, provided he could find the entrance before his oxygen ran out.
Edward unhooked as they approached the gaping cargo door of the Space Hopper. He’d never seen one of the transports up close and could now see how it dwarfed X-Verse’s Community Pods. The Space Hopper wasn’t meant for colonization and exploration, it was meant to control area like the naval aircraft carriers on Earth. Where the Space Hopper jumped, it owned.
Once the shadow of the Space Hopper swept over the Scatterbug, Edward pushed away, dropping below the entrance and gliding beneath the Space Hopper. With a control built into his right glove, he flexed his right finger to release oxygen out of his tank through a jet that sent him veering back up to the Space Hopper hull. He gripped along the smooth surface, grasping for any angles. The sheer metal swept by, he released another blast to push him into the hull. His body rolled. He caught sight of a protruding bar and jammed his arm through, catching it in the crook of his elbow. His shoulder groaned as tendons strained, but his momentum stopped as his body flailed. He steadied, looked around him, noticing an airlock fifty feet further beneath the hull.
He pulled himself close to the hull, then pushed along the bottom toward the air lock. His trajectory was separating from the ship, but he had nothing to grab onto. He waited. The air lock approached, but his direction sent him drifting. He released more oxygen. He moved back toward the hull as the air lock came within grasp. His gloved hand met the release bar, but slid off. He emptied his oxygen tank, correcting, pushing him back toward the air lock. Red lights flashed inside his helmet, a robotic voice insisted “Return to ship immediately. You are out of oxygen.” He felt the air go stale as the tank stopped circulating.
Edward’s breaths were bigger than he wanted as he retrieved his data pad from off the chest of his suit. He pulled a cord from the side of the pad, found the port on the control screen next to the air lock, and plugged in his data pad.
“Begin emergency open air lock,” Edward said as calmly as he could manage. “Do not notify ship personnel.”
On the data pad, a swirling circle indicated that the machine was thinking and communicating.
“Permission required for boarding,” the data pad read. “Request permission?”
“No, emergency open on grounds of International Salvage and Rescue protocol,” Edward said. “Do not notify ship personnel.”
The data pad was thinking, negotiating with the Space Hopper computer, both programs likely confused by the odd request. Edward knew that international space law allowed for emergency boardings of ships, but usually in response to an SOS broadcast.
The air lock gasped out air, the release bar turned, then the latch swung open. Edward climbed in, pulling the air lock shut behind him.
He was safe for the moment and alive for as long as the crew didn’t throw him back off the ship. By now, his Scatterbug would be covered with Regency scientists, perhaps mercenaries too. He couldn’t stowaway forever, he needed a way back home.
He could send a broadcast if he could find the communications computer. Call in the cavalry and hope for the best. Refueling the Scatterbug and escaping the cargo hold seemed impossible, but perhaps with the right diversion, he could buy enough time.
WHAT DO YOU DO?
Diversion? Or Send A Distress Signal?
Edward was startled that the enemy looked no different from those at an X-Verse Community Pod, wandering the halls of a corporate building, or playing on company indoor soccer teams. They were just people. Talked the same, looked the same, not surly and devious, no telltale markers of evil intentions. Just bored, laughing, and going about their day.
But capable of killing. Maybe. Probably. Not worth risking his life.
So Edward crept through the halls, having long-ago discarded his space suit. He kept close to the walls, ducked under windows, and only eyed the crew to know where not to go. He gripped the data pad tight to his chest.
Edward didn’t know the layout of the Space Hopper. It wasn’t part of his training since X-Verse never envisioned a time that a Scatterbug pilot would ever attempt something so dumb as a boarding an enemy ship. Edward was surprised at how different the Space Hopper was from the simple, wide open halls of the Community Pod. The Space Hopper was cramped, more like the World War II Naval Destroyer that his father took him to when they visited California. All tight turns, metal stairs, and obscure instruments, nobs, and buttons that meant something to somebody on that ship but made no sense to Edward.
The maze actually comforted him, since it was much easier to sneak into the guts of the Space Hopper. Plenty of dark corners to duck into, plenty of alternate paths to circle around clusters of chatting crew members. It seemed almost too easy.
So, of course, the intercom buzzed to life.
“We have a stowaway, initiate lockdown! We have a stowaway, initiate lockdown!”
Hushed questions, then hurried, clanking footsteps. Edward froze in place, cursing silently. As far as he knew, X-Verse didn’t have a plan for being boarded, so he didn’t have a clear idea of what lockdown would entail. Surely the personnel would hide away in locked rooms to avoid becoming hostages, the Scatterbug would be swarmed with sentries, the captain would be sealed up in the control room. Then men with weapons would scour the ship looking for him. Probably a short-range stunning device, blunt objects, but surely nothing with projectiles, not with the threat of a hull puncture. Though he did remember something about Russian cosmonauts taking shotguns up into space.
Did they just not see evidence that he opened up the air lock, were they guessing, or had they found the Space Suit he crammed into the incinerator chute? It seemed like such a brilliant idea, but got stuck.
“Dumb, Edward, dumb.”
He took a breath to clear his mind. He had to get moving. They knew the ship, knew its obvious hiding places that Edward would think were just as clever as stuffing his Space Suit where it wouldn’t fit. The only thing he was certain of was he needed to find the heart of the ship. If he wanted to panic everyone on the ship and draw them away from the cargo hold, there was only one sure way to do it.
A long gangway stood before him, each step a gentle clank no matter how careful he shifted his weight. Beneath him, another level with lights glowing from windows he couldn’t see into, but they also couldn’t see up to him. He proceeded with as easy as footfalls as gravity would allow.
He smelled them before he heard them. Harsh aftershave like mildew and dried autumn leaves. Edward didn’t know if it was the constrained space or the man just had no regard for others stuck on the ship with him. Edward was halfway across the gangway now, unwilling to take another step, sure that if he could smell them, they would hear him move. Edward waited, hearing fabric rustling, approaching steps, a grumble about “drills.”
Then they were beneath him. Clothing was vaguely military like a militia from a third world nation without the means to produce proper uniforms. No helmet, just a brimmed hat, no patches aside from a Regency logo. They both held batons about a foot and a half long, metal, would definitely leave a bruise, maybe a skull fracture. He noticed a button near the grip and guessed that it would release an electrical current to add some sparkle to their little hurt machines.
They paused and both looked over a data pad featuring a layout of the ship. Edward peered down over their shoulders onto the green and black design, looking for landmaks, seeing flashing red dots that he assumed equated to sentries wandering the hallways, looking for the stowaway.
If he survived this, she would love this story. They often talked of boarding a train as hobos, going wherever the tracks took them, stay the weekend, and find a way back home. They spoke of it so much Edward really assumed it would happen. Just as he had assumed the same thing of marriage.
Instead, he fled to the other side of the universe.
One of the men muttered “clear” into a microphone hanging around his neck, then the pair walked on. Edward smiled. He’d seen what he needed to on their data pad and, in just a few more turns, he was there.
The Chaos Machine.
The room was small and dark. Unguarded because who would be dumb enough to sabotage a Chaos Machine? It could lead to the instantaneous death of everyone on board or jump them right down the throat of a black hole. But it wasn’t about being dumb enough, it was about being desperate.
The Chaos Machine was a tall glass cylinder with tiny bursting lights, micro suns and universes popping into and out of existence. A million micro Big Bangs happening over and over again as particles collided in incredible speed and intensity, creating the chaos that allowed the ship’s computer to hack physics on the quantum level.
Edward had read three books on his own Chaos Machine, but still felt he understood so little about it. Even the engineers that developed the first Chaos Machine admitted that they had no firm idea how or why it worked, but only that it did. It told reality that the ship had its own gravity, that the ship was no longer in Point A, but was now on Point B a trillion miles away. A god. Humanity was mass producing gods.
But gods that were easy to confuse.
Edward plugged his data pad into a port next to the Chaos Machine. Regency’s version of the Chaos Machine was essentially a stolen design from an early X-Verse version, so Edward knew just what to do. A few lines of code here and there, unplug the data pad and await the chaos inside the machine to spill out across the entire ship.
He turned for the door. It slid open before he punched the button and two sentries with sparkling batons stood in his way. They grinned like jackals, now looking evil.
But Edward grinned bigger.
The Chaos Machine pulsed a bright white. All three men flew away from it as gravity swiveled 90 degrees. They fell into the wall in a heap. A sharp sting hit Edward’s back as the baton shocked him. He rolled away, grabbed the baton and smacked one man in the face. The spark sent him into convulsions. Edward jabbed the other in the gut, the man immediately jerking and twisting as electricity coursed through his veins.
Edward retrieved his data pad and ran along the wall, leaping across a hallway, having only a vague idea of which direction to head for the cargo hold. A white pulse belched from the room with the Chaos Machine, gravity swiveled again and Edward rolled to the ceiling. He regained his feet, scrambling ahead, having to jump over webworks of pipes and emergency sprinklers, but making good time. He knew the pattern and timing of the gravity shifts, which the rest of the crew didn’t, so if he kept his head, he might have a chance of refueling the Scatterbug, opening the cargo hold and fleeing into the relative safety of space.
But his own Chaos Machine would need thirty minutes to warm up after he started the engine. It needed time to get the micro Big Bangs blooming, to give his computer the chance to jump Edward back home. He could speed for the asteroids, try to dodge between the floating boulders and risk an impact, perhaps another rupture, or stand and fight the Christmas Stars of Death, hoping to survive long enough for the Chaos Machine to wake up.
WHAT DO YOU DO?
Flight? OR Fight?
By the time Edward reached the cargo hold, the gravity had shifted over a dozen times. He was battered, his lip dripping blood, but he imagined he was in better shape than the crew. His stomach boiled acid from the nausea-inducing gravity swings, but he pushed forward, running along the ceiling and jumping up to climb through the door leading into the massive cargo hold. Supplies and tools were tossed around the ceiling with some men crumpled into sickening heaps like broken rag dolls, some hanging from the floor up above, gripping anything locked down.
Edward worried that crew would soon reach the Chaos Machine to debug the program. Time was running out. Based on his pattern, gravity would swivel two more times before it would be on the floor again. His Scatterbug, as he suspected, was clamped onto the floor, now thirty feet above his head. Along the right wall were three rows of Christmas star drones, locked into place, awaiting their chance to seek out something to kill. He counted twenty-one, ready to be unleashed on whoever defied the Regency empire.
Edward felt the gravity tug to his right. He clung to the door, absorbing the shift, steadying himself as everything in the room not locked down crashed along the wall. Bodies collected into a pile, blood streaks marking their paths. Death. Something he was responsible for. It was a hard thing to comprehend, something he knew he would only be able to untangle once he was safely back on Earth. Something he would have to answer for, if not with jail time, then with guilt and uncertainty.
He shut off that part of his mind and lifted his data pad. He tapped onto the link to his ship and waited for the connection. A swirling circle flashed to a green infinity symbol. Diagnostics ran on the Scatterbug as the computer stirred awake. Regency had refueled the ship as Edward hoped. They’d want to fire the ship up so they could examine its capabilities, steal what they could before kicking the ship off into space and returning home to show off what they learned. They could claim salvage, but there would be difficult questions that followed, specifically about the missing pilot. Better to steal and dump.
This reassured him, that he must have made the right decision. Kill or be killed. Edward initiated the start-up cycle for the Chaos Machine and waited for gravity to shift again.
But then gravity was gone. They’d reached the Chaos Machine and shut it down.
“There he is!” a voice shouted from the floor. A man clinging to a bolted down metal crate pointed at Edward as a handful of other survivors looked in Edward’s direction.
He scanned the cargo hold, looking for a port to plug his data pad into. Along the far wall, a small monitor glowed next to the cargo doors. Edward pushed off the wall, gliding across the cargo hold. Infuriated threats sounded off across the room as the survivors gathered their courage. A wrench spun past Edward’s head, bouncing off the cargo doors. Edward caught the wrench and wedged it under his armpit. He guessed he had a few minutes of zero gravity before the Chaos Machine reset. He’d need to be inside the Scatterbug by then with the cargo doors open. He couldn’t fight inside the Space Hopper. He needed room for his ship to maneuver.
Edward slammed against the wall next to the monitor, clinging to the frame of the cargo doors as his body bounced. He settled, pulled out the cord from his data pad and plugged it into the monitor. As he’d hoped, the controls weren’t encrypted since Regency hadn’t anticipated an intruder boarding their ship.
Metal groaned and the Scatterbug unsettled from the floor, drifting up slowly. A yellow light began flashing, an electronic horn sounding.
“Shit! He’s opening the doors! Get to the controls!”
Edward gave himself one minute before the doors opened. Men were pushing off various spots in the cargo hold and floating toward Edward. Edward lifted the wrench and slammed it into the monitor. Sparks and broken glass spewed out. He pushed away from the wall toward the Scatterbug. He wielded the wrench as a weapon, threatening the men floating past who dodged and rolled away from him.
He released the wrench, lifted the data pad and tapped a button. The Scatterbug’s rear air lock gasped open. He reached the hull, quickly pulling himself along the outside of the Scatterbug, swinging around the end and slipping through the air lock. He closed and sealed the door, a rush of relief following. The pressurized chamber hissed, equalizing, then the other end of the air lock slid open to allow Edward to pull himself along the ship toward the cockpit.
Through the forward windows, he saw the men floating toward the Scatterbug, the light still flashing yellow. Two men were digging through the wires of the monitor beside the cargo door. Edward punched buttons, scanning his systems, arming the missiles, warming up the propulsion system. The familiar hums and buzzes as welcoming as a lover’s “hello.”
A thud brought his attention up. A crewmember was on his hull, climbing toward the window wielding the wrench Edward had left behind. The crewmember raised it, preparing to smash the window.
The doors growled open, the empty space sucking the air out of the cargo hold. Everything loose tumbled out the opening doors. The man released the wrench and clung to the Scatterbug, meeting Edward’s eyes. For a brief moment, Edward wondered if they would have been friends if they’d met any other way.
But then the man was gone. Gasping and freezing, he fell into the infinite. His body would likely never be recovered.
The propulsion system fired, the Scatterbug shot out through the cargo doors and zipped out through the floating debris, a body bouncing off the hull. Edward swung the Scatterbug around, his thumb resting on the black button with a red ring. The drones would be released soon. He only had six missiles. He could just destroy the Space Hopper now, wait for the Chaos Machine to wake up, then jump home. He felt the resistance of the button. His thumb begged to press down, but he hesitated. He checked the timer for the Chaos Machine. Nineteen minutes. He would need to survive a swarm of drones for Nineteen minutes, then he was home and there would be no more death for today.
His thumb moved from the button and he waited. With fourteen minutes and twenty-eight seconds, the drones poured out of the cargo hold and turned for the Scatterbug. Edward pushed the thrusters into full power, speeding at the drones. He unleashed a single missile into the swarm, hitting the lead. It burst into a fireball, winging drones around it. The swarm belched out a flurry of smaller, quicker rockets.
Edward turned the Scatterbug away, pointed down toward the Space Hopper, leading the rockets behind him. He veered from the Space Hopper, caught the swarm breaking off into two groups, one trailing him, the other trying to cut in front of his path. He turned again to split between them. He jerked over to plunge into the tail of the second swarm. It burst off in all directions, pulling off the rockets confused by the mess of heat signatures.
Edward pulled away, seeing on his radar that two rockets still followed him and were closing. The first swarm was now speeding his direction. Another cloud of rockets were released. Explosions erupted from his right where drones failed to outrun their own weapon systems.
Again, the Scatterbug turned, this time away from both swarms and toward the asteroid belt. The rockets closed quickly. Edward wound through the first smaller rocks. Explosions from behind as some of the cloud didn’t register the obstructions in time. Still more death followed.
Edward wound around a larger asteroid, dipped around another, the cloud thinning as rockets couldn’t make the turns in time, built for speed instead of agility. The Scatterbug escaped the asteroid belt to meet the swarms. He unleashed three missiles in quick succession, right through the center of the swarm. Two exploded, destroying or disabling six drones. The Scatterbug slipped through the debris, forcing the swarm to veer around, unloading another wave of rockets. Edward pointed the ship back toward the Space Hopper, opening up the jets and racing for the ship. The rockets were almost on top of him as he reached the hull, dropped down beneath the Space Hopper and climbed back around the other side. As he suspected, the Space Hopper disabled the rockets when they got to close, not wanting to risk the ship’s integrity from a rogue explosion.
The swarms slipped around both sides of the Space Hopper. Edward steadied the ship into position next to the Space Hopper, daring the drones to fire.
A buzz erupted on his monitor. A communication. It echoed several times before Edward finally punched the monitor, answering the call.
A woman appeared, blonde, pretty, but stern. Edward could tell from her eyes that she was trying not to appear enraged and rattled.
“Move again and we will fire,” she said simply. “Surrender and we will take you back to Earth for trial.”
Edward rotated the Scatterbug to face the Space Hopper.
“Fire and I destroy your hull and kill your crew,” Edward said.
The captain looked off-screen. A crewmember stepped into frame and whispered into her ear. She nodded and the crew member moved away. She looked back toward Edward.
“You’ve killed twelve of our people,” she said. “Why?”
“Just trying to get home,” Edward said, thinking of the love of his life. Wondering where she was, if she still loved him, if all of this had been worth it.
“We would have taken you home if you would have just asked us,” the captain said. “What did you think we would do, just kick you out into space and leave?”
Edward flushed red, furious and suddenly unsure.
“Yes,” he answered.
The captain’s eyes narrowed.
“Really?” she asked, her eyes wide, almost hurt. Her surprise unnerved him. A green light appeared on his display, announcing the Chaos Machine was online.
“I’d seen your drones packed with rockets that could destroy my shift several times over,” Edward said. “We know you’ve taken three of our Community Pods. I wasn’t going to be next in line.”
The woman was either good at pretending or sincerely had no idea what he was talking about.
A voice drew her attention away. She nodded, looked back to the screen.
“Go home, pilot. Tell X-Verse that you single-handedly started a war. Then consider your life, knowing that, no matter where you go, we will find out who you are and we will make you pay.”
Edward looked away from the screen to the swarms of drones, rockets trained on him. Knowing that he would replay this event for the rest of his life, he second-guessed every decision he’d made, haunted by every life he’d taken.
But those drones are war machines. Regency are pirates. I had no other choice. This thought would become his mantra for decades to come, repeating it when the nightmares came, knowing that he would never fully convince himself that it was the truth.
The End
