Too close. If that had hit us?—
"We're still in the dense part of the debris field," Zorn said, checking our position. "High collision risk. The pod's maneuvering thrusters have minimal fuel, but I can try to navigate us toward clearer space."
"Use the fuel. Getting pulverized by debris doesn't help anyone."
He worked the controls, firing thrusters in carefully calculated bursts. Each one precious, each one bringing us incrementally closer to safety or further from rescue, impossible to know which.
I watched the debris field through the viewport—twisted metal catching starlight, the frozen corpse of a vessel that had carried hundreds of refugees toward what they'd hoped would be a sanctuary. All those lives, all those stories, reduced to wreckage spinning through the void.
Would have been their tomb. Nearly was ours.
"I was going to wait," Zorn said suddenly. "Before telling you. Give you more time to heal, to process. Make sure it was real and not just trauma bonding or crisis-induced attachment." He glanced at me, his expression vulnerable in a way I'd never seen. "But facing death puts things in perspective."
"Yeah." I leaned against him, letting myself accept the comfort of his presence. "It really does."
"No regrets?"
I thought about that. About the life I'd left behind on Earth, the career I'd built, the person I'd been before the Liberty disaster. About the trauma and displacement and impossible adjustments I'd faced on Mothership.
About finding connection with someone who saw past my walls, who understood that healing was work and not weakness, who loved me anyway.
"No," I said. "No regrets."
The pod continued its slow tumble through space. The distress beacon continued its automated signal. And we held each other in the cramped darkness, waiting for rescue or death, uncertain which would come first.
But no longer uncertain about what mattered most.
The life support console beeped. Warning notification. Something had changed in our status.
Zorn checked the readings, his markings flickering with sudden tension. "Hull micro-fracture. Port side. Not critical yet, but it's spreading. Probably impact damage from debris."
"How long?"
"Four hours until it compromises seal integrity. Six hours until catastrophic failure." He pulled up repair protocols. "I can seal it from the inside if we have the right materials?—"
"Medical adhesive." I was already moving to the pod's emergency kit, pulling out supplies. "It's designed to seal organic tissue, but the basic chemistry should work on metal if we modify the application."
We worked in coordination. Me preparing the adhesive compound, him identifying the exact location of the fracture. The pod's interior was so cramped we kept bumping into each other, his elbow in my ribs, my knee against his thigh, an awkward dance of bodies trying to occupy space never designed for two.
"There," he said, highlighting a hairline crack spreading across the inner hull. "And there. Multiple fracture points radiating from a central impact."
I applied the adhesive carefully, working the compound into each crack with surgical precision. The material set almost immediately, hardening into a seal that was temporary but functional. Not perfect, but enough.
Maybe enough.
"That should hold," I said, checking my work. "For a while, anyway."
"Long enough." Zorn pulled me back against him, away from the sealed fracture. "We just have to survive long enough for Mothership to find us."
Just. As if survival was ever simple. As if we didn't both understand that every passing hour reduced our chances, that debris fields were massive and scanning was difficult and rescue operations took time we might not have.
But I'd learned something important over the past months. Something Zorn had taught me through patience and stubbornness and refusing to let me self-destruct.
Sometimes survival wasn't about knowing the odds would work in your favor. Sometimes it was about refusing to give up even when the odds said you should.
"Tell me something," I said. "Something I don't know about you."
He looked surprised by the request. Then thoughtful. "I hate medical dramas."
