The Space Between Us (2)
Kane Valentine
"What am I doing?"
She asked it out loud, but there was no answer. Just her own voice reflecting off titanium infrastructure.
She tapped the cracked terminal, opening the secure hatch to Block A before leaving the bridge, making her way along the wing. Pods lined both sides, staggered—A-1 on the left, A-2 a few meters farther on the right.
A-19, the only active one remaining, sat on the left—upright in a cradle of scorched alloy, secured with four titanium clamps and a faded ISA designation stenciled in red:
CRYO-PENAL UNIT A-19 – SPECIAL MATERIAL CLASS
DO NOT UNSEAL WITHOUT HIGH-LEVEL OVERRIDE – ARTICLE 12-C
It wasn’t sleek or elegant. The cryopod looked built to contain, not preserve—an industrial sarcophagus sealed in frost, armored against time. The surface was pitted, crosshatched with microfractures, and braced with a glowing vent line that pulsed faintly with residual heat. A dull hum came from somewhere deep inside—low, steady, like a heartbeat caught in a machine.
A viewing panel was inset into the upper third of the pod, fogged from within. Kira wiped a gloved hand across the outside, clearing just enough to peer through.
The man inside wasn’t old. Not exactly.
He was large—broad in the shoulders, thick in the neck and chest even beneath the compression wrap of cryo-stabilizers. Muscles corded across his frame in ways that suggested manual labor—or maybe something more violent. His face was strong-jawed and still, pale from stasis, but unscarred. Too perfect, almost. Not handsome in a soft, charming way, but cleanly built—like someone engineered for intimidation.
And yet there was something boyish about him. Maybe it was the lashes, too dark for someone that pale. Maybe the slight upward tilt of his brow. Maybe it was just how young he looked—like time had paused for him while it punished the rest of the galaxy.
She was certain he was both older and younger than she was.
Kira felt a flicker of unease. He looked like someone who should’ve grown into a monster by now.
But he hadn’t.
He was waiting.
The cryo readout flickered:
CRYO INTEGRITY: 4%
CORE POWER SOURCE: MAS CELL – STATUS: ACTIVE
BIO-SUSPENSION: NOMINAL
SUBJECT ID: CLASSIFIED
She left him there and returned to the bridge.
The one working console buzzed faintly, still running in low-power mode. She tapped through the interface with her good hand, pulling up the pod’s deeper logs. No external network. No remote files. Just a simple record tagged to UNIT A-19.
SUBJECT NAME: Valentine, Kane
ID CODE: ISA-GR-77-0473 / Omega Level Security
SENTENCE TYPE: Permanent Cryo Detention (Blacksite Authority)
SENTENCING DATE: UNKNOWN
INCARCERATION LENGTH: 273.8 Years
POWER CLASS: SMA-CELL: ACTIVE
She scrolled lower. The charges section flickered once, then resolved.
PRIMARY CHARGE: Crimes against sentient life / Unauthorized orbital engagement / Population-level devastation (See: Orbitfall Protocol breach)
NOTES: ISA records conflict. Civilian Tribunal 912 identified subject as war criminal. Military Command Register 7B lists subject as decorated war hero. All formal review requests denied. Record sealed under Article 12-C.
Kira stared at the screen.
War hero. War criminal. Depends on who writes the history.
The corner of her mouth twitched.
“Of course you’re complicated,” she muttered. “And Kane Valentine? That’s not a real name.”
But the chill it left in her stomach? That was real enough.
She told herself he wasn't her problem anyway, and as far as she could tell, he wouldn't be worth anything, so the safest thing to do was to just pretend all the squares on the grid had been red. They would be soon enough, anyway.
More importantly, she went in search of fuel. She wasn’t running low—three-quarters of a tank remained—but it still mattered. Especially if the source was free. She would sell the materials from the medbay to refill empty tanks a dozen times over, so burning a half tank to get from the surface to the moon and back had already been a win.
Still. It was worth looking.
She found what she was looking for on a subdeck, below and aft of the bridge. A pair of canisters, about three meters long.
She looked them over.
"Oh, you beautiful things," she said. It wasn't just the tanks. It was the auto-distribution manifold to which they were attached.
Kira found a rolling cart and wheeled the tanks back to the ship. Two tanks: one holding 41 kilograms of liquid Helium-3, the other 43 kilograms. They weren't full. Each was designed to hold 70 kilograms.
It was a godsend. The Wren's helium storage was just 80 kilograms. With these, she could hold nearly triple the fuel volume when full. She had the perfect place to mount them under the wings of her ship. And with an intact manifold system, all she needed was longer insulated hoses.
LongER burns, more independence. One day, she'd be able to afford a ram scoop to skim He-3 for free. She stored the tanks in the port cargo bay—a project for later.
But something else was powering the orbital. Batteries wouldn't last two centuries. There could still be a huge He-3 reservoir and a fusion reactor. Nothing portable, but possibly a future refueling spot.
But what about the cryogenic pods? There had to be a local power supply for each so that they could be transported with a self-contained power cell.
What was an SMA cell?
She had an inkling of hope and went back to the bridge terminal.
She scrolled back to the only active pod. The one with Kane Valentine in it.
POWER SOURCE: SMA-4 Series (Stable Matter/Antimatter)
OPERATIONAL DURATION: 329.2 Earth Years
ESTIMATED TIME REMAINING: 13.6 Earth Years
CORE MASS REMAINING: 21.1 mg
TOTAL DISCHARGE POTENTION: ~3.8 TJ
CONTAINMENT STABILITY: Green / Sealed
EXTRACTION WARNING: Manual breach will trigger failsafe destruction or cascade instability.
ACCESS TIER REQUIRED: ISA Blacksite – Omega Lock
The pod was powered with antimatter.
Of course it was.
Of course it was the very thing she needed for her jump drive.
Twenty-one milligrams of it. That was good for 21 jumps. The antimatter in his pod was worth over ten thousand credits. Enough to make her forget about the medbay salvage for a hot second.
Then, she had a thought.
There were 512 pods. Not all had run dry. Some had failed in other ways.
She scanned the manifest. Over one hundred of the pods still had working SMAs. Her breath caught.
There was forty-four grams of antimatter onboard. Enough for forty-four thousand jumps.
Worth twenty-two million credits. Enough to retire for four lifetimes.
She stared at the screen. It felt like an imaginary amount of money.
The only problem?
Owning it would make her a target. Selling it would make her a fugitive.
Using it?
That would make her unstoppable.
Or dead.
Probably dead.
But that had never stopped her before.
And if she didn’t take it?
Someone else would.
She told herself she’d just take a little. Enough for a few dozen jumps. She could come back for the rest.
But even as the thought formed, she knew it was bullshit.
A plan formed in her mind. She would find a lone asteroid. Store the material. Mark its position and orbit, and Jump to it whenever she needed to restock. Nobody would ever find it.
But, she needed to get it converted into a usable form. Back aboard The Wren, she spread the haul across the engineering bay floor. On the worktable, three modules stood like war trophies—their containment indicators glowing green.
Stable. Gloriously, stupidly stable.
The problem was simple:
The Wren wasn’t built for stolen blacksite tech.
The SMA cores were modular, sure—self-contained and replaceable. But their coupling interface hadn’t been used in over a century, and it had never been compatible with a civilian jump drive held together by hope and spare parts.
So she improvised.
Two cryo housings became raw material. A third gave up a dozen thermal converters. She yanked relay pins, cooling coils, and a high-voltage dampener.
By the time she was done, she had a Frankenstein interface no sane person would trust.
But Kira was only borderline sane.
This kind of work—the dangerous, duct-tape kind—made her tick.
It wasn’t pretty. The shielding was patchwork. The stabilization armature was lashed in place with wire. One loose ground and The Wren would light up like a beacon of poor decisions.
But when she slotted the first core and watched the power levels stabilize?
She grinned.
It was crude. But it would jump.
She sealed the coupling, ran diagnostics twice, and didn’t bother a third time.
If it blew, it blew.
At least she’d die warm.
Then she climbed into the pilot’s chair, still in her suit, shoulder aching, and stared through the forward viewport.
The orbital drifted, motionless and dark, silhouetted against the distant burn of Gliese-442c. A forgotten ring of failure and frost.
And inside it: Kane Valentine.
Still sleeping.
Still powered.
Still waiting.
She had what she came for—three cores installed, more in the hold, twenty million credits strapped to her spine.
She had everything.
So why wasn’t she moving?
She drummed her fingers on the console, glanced down at the power register, then back at the orbital.
You don’t owe him anything.
He’s a war criminal. A sealed file. A myth soaked in blood.
She told herself she was just being cautious. But when had she ever been cautious?
Maybe I should recheck the coupling. Maybe one more scan.
But it was a lie.
And she knew it.
She wasn’t hesitating because of fuel.
She was hesitating because she couldn’t leave a man to die.
Even a mass murderer.
So she lied to herself one last time:
It’s just ten jumps. That’s all his pod is worth. Someone will find him. Eventually.
Just because no one had in over two centuries didn’t mean anything.
Right?
She stared a moment longer.
And then she went back inside.
She changed her mind at least thirty times between the airlock and the terminal.
Like picking petals from a daisy.
I unfreeze the mass-murdering sociopath.
I don’t unfreeze the mass-murdering sociopath.
She stopped at the console. No more hesitation. She keyed the override and confirmed the release.
Then turned and walked toward Wing A.
She arrived just in time to see fog curling from the pod’s open door—tendrils of mist snaking into the corridor like she’d summoned something from hell.
But he still stood inside.
Black hair and beard half-shrouded in vapor. Unmoving.
A whirr. Then a click. Then the sound of an electric charge.
The man gasped.
He took one huge breath—then collapsed face-first into the mist.
Nothing moved. Not for thirty seconds.
Then, slowly, he rose.
First to his hands and knees. Frost clung to his shoulders. Steam curled off his skin.
He lifted his head.
Then rose to his full, impossible height.
It was as if she were watching Thor step out of myth.
For one surreal moment, Kira almost expected him to lift his hand and call for Mjölnir. As if it would tear through vacuum and steel and station plating just to land in his palm. Because that’s what he looked like:
A god unburied. A myth breathing again.
If Thor were a mass murderer.
And then he turned.
His eyes—ice, like a frozen lake on a clear blue-sky day—locked on hers. Melting frost dripped from his eyelashes.
He smiled.
Not wicked. Not smug.
Just… warm. Like someone waking from a nap.
“Hi!” he said brightly, like they were meeting at a docking port cafe, except with him half dressed.
Kira stood there, pistol in hand, and blinked.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said.
Stephen B. Anthony is the author of Transmigrant, an epic science fiction thriller, available on both Amazon and Audible. The first seven chapters are available on this website for free.
Oooooooh I hope this is a romance brewing. I love the way you described Kane!