"Elena. This is a Liberty engineering pad. Can you access it?"
She turned, took the pad from me with shaking hands. Her fingers moved across the interface with unconscious familiarity, the muscle memory of her previous life. The screen flickered, displayed a menu, then opened to a log file.
"It's Will's pad," she said, voice breaking. "His authentication signature. His personal encryption. He..." She scrolled through entries, and I watched her face cycle through hope and horror and grief. "He saved two people. Got them into the stasis pods. Sacrificed his own spot to maintain the power systems manually."
"Is he in the other compartments?"
"The log says... he put Lisa Tran and himself into stasis in Compartments Two and Three. Set up the beacon. Jury-rigged the power distribution to keep the pods running." She looked up at me, tears tracking down her face inside the helmet. "He's alive, Vaxon. He's in stasis. We can save him."
The hope in her voice was painful to hear, so fragile, so desperate.
"Then we find those compartments. Er'dox, coordinate with Elena on the derelict's power grid. Locate the active stasis pods. Medical team, prepare for emergency extraction."
The comm chatter increased as the team mobilized. Elena clutched the datapad like it was precious, which it was, proof of survival, proof that her guilt wasn't justified, proof that her people had fought as hard as she had.
We moved deeper into the derelict, following power signatures toward the remaining intact compartments. The corridors grew more damaged, evidence of the wormhole's violence everywhere. Elena navigated by instinct and memory, guiding us through sections I couldn't have identified.
"Compartment Two is just ahead," she said. "The power routing suggests the stasis pod is still active."
We rounded a corner and found it, a sealed airlock, emergency power indicators glowing faint green. The door cycled slowly, painfully, as if the mechanisms were exhausted from months of operation.
Beyond it, a single stasis pod. Frosted from cold, life signs showing steady on the external display. And inside, visible through the frost, a human form.
Female. Dark hair. Mid-thirties.
"Lisa Tran," Elena breathed. "She's alive. Oh my god, she's actually alive."
I activated the medical team. "Prepare for stasis pod extraction. We have one survivor confirmed. Repeat, one survivor confirmed."
But Elena wasn't listening. She'd already moved past me, toward the second intact compartment where Will's pod should be. I followed, maintaining proximity, my protective instincts screaming at the reckless speed of her movement through unstable corridors.
The second airlock. The door cycle. The moment of terrible anticipation.
Inside, another stasis pod. Active. Life signs steady. And Will Peters's face visible through the frost, Asian features, early thirties, the peaceful expression of someone in deep cryo sleep.
Elena collapsed.
Not physically, her suit kept her upright. But emotionally, completely. She pressed her hands against the pod's surface, forehead against the cold metal, and the sound that came from her was pure relief and grief and guilt wrapped into something too complicated for words.
I moved to her side. Placed my hand on her back, feeling her shoulders shake through the suit's rigid plating.
"You found him," I said quietly. "Elena. You found him."
"I took too long." The words came out choked. "Six months. I spent three months being happy while he was here, alone, keeping himself alive on emergency power and hope."
"You found him. That's what matters."
"Is it?" She looked up at me, her face devastated behind the faceplate. "What if I'd looked sooner? What if I'd started scanning the moment we reached Mothership? How many days could I have saved him? How much suffering could I have prevented?"
"You couldn't have known."
"I should have known. I should have?—"
The proximity alarms screamed.
My tactical display lit up with threats, multiple contacts, approaching fast, weapons signatures unmistakable. Raiders. At least three ships, possibly more, drawn by our activity in the debris field.
"Hostile contacts detected!" Tor'kesh's voice crackled through the comm from Mothership. "Commander, you have incoming. ETA four minutes."
