The Space Between Us (3)
First Steps
Kira opened her mouth to issue some kind of warning. Or a threat. Or maybe just sarcasm.
Then the cryo-wrap dissolved. The thin stabilizer mesh clinging to his body shimmered for half a second, lost cohesion, and then dropped away in the curling tendrils of steam—evaporating into the air like it had never existed.
And there he was.
All of him.
Kira spun on her heel so fast she nearly dislocated the other shoulder.
Oh.
Her brain managed just one other word:
Proportional.
She stared hard at the nearest wall panel. It wasn’t even an interesting wall. Just conduit and old insulation. But it would do.
She heard him shift behind her. She refused to supply the mental image. This would not do. She couldn’t look at him. And she couldn’t keep her back to him.
“Do you intend to kill me?” she asked, still facing the wall.
“Do you always begin conversations this way?”
“Do you have any clothes?” Her voice cracked up an octave.
“I was frozen,” he said, calm as a glacier. “Not vacationing.”
He moved again, and she tensed.
“I don’t see any luggage,” he added.
She hadn't exactly thought this through. On the other hand, she hadn't expected his clothes to literally dissolve in the steam.
"I assume you don't intend to kill me—despite holding that pistol," he said.
"Don't be too sure," she said.
He laughed. Big, hearty. Entirely amused.
“Why wake me just to kill me?” he asked. “You could’ve just cut the power and left a meat popsicle to thaw and rot.”
It was a fair point.
"We've established that my plan wasn't to kill you—unless I have to," she said, still facing the wall. "But back to my question…"
“The one about whether I plan to kill you, or the one about my wardrobe?”
"Both," she said.
"How long have I been asleep?" he asked.
"Do you always answer a question with a question?"
"Do you? Where am I anyway?" he asked.
"Okay, I can't talk like this," she said. "Let me find you something to wear."
She heard his bare footsteps padding quietly behind her.
Too quietly.
Great. Now he was stealthy. And naked.
She stopped.
He stopped with her, a few paces behind.
"Could you just, you know, stay there?" she asked.
"As you wish. I'll loiter here in all my tactical disadvantage."
“Good,” she said, not trusting herself to look back. “I’d hate for your tactical disadvantage to become my strategic problem.”
"Great," he said. "I'll just stand here shivering while you go on a scavenger hunt."
"Were you processed here?" she asked.
"I don't know where here is."
"Cryonic Detention Facility 1414-A," she said.
"Sorry, but that doesn't help me."
"In orbit around Kaeilin's Moon, Gliese-442c."
"Gliese?" he asked. "I know where that system is, but I wasn't aware we had a jump gate there yet."
Jump gate?
She turned slightly, as if to glance back, then snapped her head forward again.
He was talking about jump gates—Einstein-Rosenberg bridges. Wormholes.
Tech from a very long time ago, before the development of jump drives.
“I was processed on Andonia,” he added. “Then transported here as a popsicle.”
“So, you probably don't have any clothes here waiting for you. I'll try to find something. There are a couple of other corridors I haven’t explored. Back toward the airlock,” she said, moving back towards the bridge.
Behind her: silence. Too silent.
“You’re not still moving, are you?” she called over her shoulder.
“Hear your magboots clicking?” he asked.
She glanced down.
“Yeah?”
“It’s natural to you,” he said. “You move from the bridge out to one of these wings where there’s centrifugal gravity—station spin. I’m barefoot. The closer we get to the central spoke, the lighter I get. I’m practically floating now. You’re still clicking along.”
“I thought I asked you to stay?
"You did, but moving warms me up a little."
"I'll tell you what," she said. "You can follow me to medbay. There are at least some things to wrap up in. Thermal blankets."
"Sounds glorious," he said.
She led him back to the bridge, aware of the clicking of her boots as he glided along just behind her—naked. At the medbay door, she stopped and waved him in.
“Thermal wraps should be in that cabinet.” She gestured without looking. “Middle shelf. Just don’t take the foil blankets unless you want to crinkle like a snack bag.”
He slipped past her. “I’ll try to preserve your dignity by putting on pants. Or at least pant-adjacent fabric.”
She sighed. “Definitely do that.”
The door hissed shut behind him.
Kira lingered a moment, listening. Drawers opened. A faint rustle of packaging.
She went to the bridge console. "Let's see if we can get some central gravity going," she said.
It took only a few moments to find the control and turn it on.
She heard the telltale sounds of a whirring beneath her feet as a gravitics core spun to life, slowly at first as gravity began to pull her gently to the deck. It was part of the gravitics design—a gradual increase in gravity when it is first engaged.
She turned and headed back toward the unexplored wing. But after a couple of minutes, the feeling of not knowing where he was seemed somehow worse than him being naked a few meters behind her.
Thankfully, she did find a locker with guard uniforms. She had no idea what size he wore and none of them were labeled SIZE: REANIMATED-GOD.
She grabbed several of the larger sizes and returned to find him seated on the bridge, wearing what looked like a surgical gown, torn in half, a pair of stretchy trauma sleeves repurposed as thigh wraps, and a grim sense of dignity.
"I suppose you've read this," he said, indicating his incarceration record.
"Why do you think I have the pistol?"
She handed him the clothing.
"Thank you," he said sheepishly. "I'll go try this on."
He headed back to the medbay, holding the clothing packages behind him to cover his exposed buttocks.
Kira was almost disappointed.
He came back looking like a beefy security guard—broad-shouldered, uniform zipped halfway, sleeves rolled. She wasn’t sure if that made her feel more or less comfortable.
Great. Now he looked like someone who could arrest her for trespassing on a ship she’d already stolen.
“It’ll do,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” she echoed.
He dropped into one of the chairs at the bridge station, idly spinning the seat back and forth with one bare foot.
She glanced over at him, really looking for the first time.
“There were boots and socks in the locker,” she said. “I didn’t know what size.”
He didn’t respond right away.
“My attorney said it’d be ten years, max—once the political upheaval was over. I picked cryo. Figured it’d be over in an instant. Figured it was the only way to stay sane.”
“It’s been a lot longer than ten years,” she said.
He nodded faintly.
“Everything I know is gone,” he said. “Everyone.”
“What did you do?”
“You know—the typical story. Got drafted into a civil war. Followed orders because they’d shoot me if I didn’t. Then they sign a peace treaty, and the concession is that all the drafted grunts get labeled war criminals, while the politicians get rich off the spoils.”
He leaned back in the chair, staring at the ceiling.
“Classic,” he said.
Kira looked at him for a long beat.
“Well,” she said. “There’s some good news.”
He glanced at her.
“What’s that?”
“Nobody remembers you were a war criminal.”
He would've given her a crooked smile, had he been capable of it—but his face was unaccustomed to crookedness.
"That's a good point."
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Actually, pretty good,” he said. “At least physically.”
“I probably should check you over in the medbay,” she said.
“Why?”
“To make sure there are no gotchas. You know—failed organs. That kind of thing.”
“Makes sense,” he said. “But I think you’re just trying to get me naked again.”
“Look,” she said. “You’re still my prisoner, so no flirting.”
“Nope,” he said. “I’m done doing that.”
“What?”
“Being a prisoner.”
She blinked.
“What about the other?”
He gave her a slow, unapologetic smile.
“You’re the best-looking woman I’ve seen in 274 years.”
"Cut that out."
"Look," he said. "If you were a man who—for 274 years—got to see you every time he woke up, you'd understand."
"You've only woken up this one time."
"A mere technicality," he said.
"If I'd known that, I'd have worn something uglier," she said.
"Yes, that EVA suit is so hot."
"Hey!" she said. "Don't kink-shame the vacuum-sealed aesthetic."
"Fair enough," he laughed.
They sat in silence for a minute.
"Now what?" he asked.
“Now you send a distress signal and wait for someone to come.”
He looked at her.
“Someone’s already here,” he said.
He hesitated. Then, softer—
“So. Help.”
"Oh, no. No. No. No. My task was to keep you from dying, not to become your taxi."
"So, you're saying that you wouldn't respond to a distress signal? It's a virtual rule of space travel."
"Maybe in your time. In my time, it's a good way to get yourself killed."
"So, not everything is better in the future."
"That's for sure," she said.
He spun in his chair, this time letting it spin until it came to a natural stop.
"Have you got anything to eat? As you might have noticed, they don't keep food around for frozen prisoners."
"I wasn't joking about the medbay," she said. "We should do a once-over before you eat anything."
"Fine," he said. "You can be my nurse."
"Perfect," she said. "I was a field trauma nurse for six years."
She turned, already walking to the medbay. "I'm very qualified."
He followed her and lay on the diagnostic table while she worked.
When it was done, Kira stood over the diagnostic display, arms folded, jaw tight. A slow scroll of data moved down the screen, the computer pinging softly every few seconds as it catalogued vitals, anomalies, and cryo-readjustment markers.
“Well?” Kane asked from the diagnostic table, one arm slung lazily over the backrest. “Am I dying?”
“Not today,” she said. “But your heart’s a little underdeveloped.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I’ve heard that before.”
She snickered. “I mean the muscle. Mild atrophy. Not dangerous, but if you try sprinting or doing anything dramatic, you might pass out and make a dramatic thud."
“Dramatic thuds are my specialty.”
She ignored that. “You’ve also got some neural desync—right hemisphere’s lagging behind. That could mean delayed reflexes or minor hallucinations. Should clear up in a day or two.”
He blinked. “That explains why I feel like I’m answering questions I haven’t heard yet.”
“And your immune system’s sluggish,” she added. “Nothing critical. Just… don’t lick any moldy surfaces.”
“I’ll try to contain myself.”
She tapped the screen off. “You’re stable. But no heroics. And no weird food. Really, you need a few weeks of cardiovascular work to rebuild stamina.”
“Hopefully whoever rescues me brings me to a gym.”
She leaned against the diagnostic table, debating with herself.
Finally, she said, “I'm staying planet-side for a few weeks. I could get you that far. Check on you once in a while,”
He looked up. “Really? Changed your mind?”
“It’s the nurse thing,” she said. “Started when I found a wounded bird on my parents’ lawn when I was six. The trick is—how are we going to get you out the airlock to my ship without an EVA suit?”
"There have got to be EVA suits on this station somewhere," he said.
"Probably," she said. "I haven't been end-to-end. You wanna look for one while I grab the power module from your crypod?"
He nodded and headed off to scour the orbital.
Kira grabbed her rolling cart, wheeled it back to his cryopod on Wing A, and disconnected the SMA. She didn’t need the extra jump capacity, but you don’t leave ten grand in credits behind when it’s that easy to pick up.
She found a storage closet with mostly useless equipment— thermal paper rolls, a case of outdated holotablets, wires with century-old connectors, oxygen masks with dry-rotted seals, way too many earplugs, and crew uniforms still shrink-wrapped in plastic.
From the latter, she picked out three more sets of clothing for Kane, but dumped the rest on the deck in Wing A, freeing up five plastic totes. She wheeled these to medbay, collected the drugs and portable medical devices, and labeled each tote using a portable engraver—which she also claimed for herself.
She was just finishing when Kane arrived wearing most of an EVA suit. It was tight across the chest for him, but it would work for now.
"Ever done EVA?" Kira asked.
"Spacewalk? Yeah. About fifty times. But, to be fair, it's been nearly three hundred years. Weird, but if feels like only yesterday."
She chuckled.
"Just want to make sure you're not going to panic out there."
"I've been enclosed in a tube for about ten times longer than you've been alive. I think I'll be okay."
She nodded. "You ready?"
“I wonder if these suits will communicate,” he said, tapping the helmet.
“Oh. Good question,” she said. “Do you have a choice of frequencies on the transceiver?”
He studied the panel on his wrist. “Looks like I’ve got about sixteen channels. Most of them are ISA standard—broadband UHF.”
She nodded. “Then we’ve got overlap. My suit scans for legacy bands. If we’re lucky, it’ll handshake and suggest one automatically.”
“And if we’re unlucky?”
“We’ll shout through our visors and hope lip-reading survived the apocalypse.”
But Kira was right. Her suit did a proper legacy handshake with his, and they tested them before placing the heavy helmets on their stiff collars and locking them into place with a spin.
"Check, Check," came his voice into her ears.
"Loud and clear."
"Same," he said.
Kane wheeled the cart, laden with totes of medical equipment and drugs.
Once they were back at the airlock, Kira used the panel to close the inner door.
She pressed the egress sequence and checked her HUD, watching as the external air pressure dropped.
"Glad that's working," she said.
"What's that?" Kane asked.
"Airlock doesn't work right in reverse," she said. "It didn't repressurize for ingress."
"How'd you get in?"
"Brute force and ignorance," she said.
"Perfect. That's how I normally operate."
"Somehow that does not surprise me," she said as she opened the external door, exposing them to space.
"Nice looking freighter," he said.
"Thanks. I call it the Wren."
"Somehow that fits you," he said. "Do you want to tether these crates?"
"No. Watch this," she said.
Kira picked up the first tote held it out the airlock and pushed it, untethered, toward the Wren.
Kane watched in fascination as the ship responded by illuminating the crate. A red laser traced the outlined of the crate, and an articulating arm snatched it from the void and fed it into an open airlock on the Wren where it was automatically lashed in place by a robotic storage system inside the airlock.
"Nifty," he said.
"If you make the right investments," Kira said. "Salvage goes more smoothly."
She sent the next four crates, while Kane watched, each gathered in and secured automatically by the Wren's salvage systems.
Next, she turned toward him and clicked a tether to his belt, connecting them together. Then, she disconnected the tether between the Wren and the orbital and connect it to her belt.
"Okay," she said. "Don't try to step out. Just let yourself float. My winch will pull us in. Don't make any unnecessary motion."
He nodded and waited.
Kira touched her wrist. Kane felt a tiny tug, and the tether reeled them across the void to the Wren's airlock.
Once they were sealed inside, they removed their helmets.
"You okay?" Kane asked. "Something wrong with your arm?"
"Brute force and ignorance, remember? In any case, welcome to the Wren. This is my home."
Kane looked around, surprised by the tidiness of the ship.
Not that he’d expected chaos. But this felt intentional—everything had a place and a purpose. Tools were stowed but ready. Gear was arranged, not displayed. It wasn’t just clean. It was lived-in with discipline.
Maybe too disciplined. Like someone who didn’t trust the inside of her own mind.
Like Kira.
He wondered how long she’d been alone. And how much longer she could stand it.
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.
I really appreciate all the detail you put into how things work!