The Last Run of the Starbreaker

If there had been a single moment I should’ve noticed something wasn’t right, it was that morning—standing in the narrow corridor of the Starbreaker, half-blind from sleep and caffeine, as a swarm of maintenance bots zipped past too fast and too many for the hour. My brain lagged behind my body, still waking up. Space does that to you. Out in open void, humans sense speed like a sixth instinct. Even locked deep in a cruiser’s mid-hulls, you feel it in your gut.

Had I been less distracted fiddling with the loose strap on my uniform collar, I might’ve realized we were moving faster than the Starbreaker had ever pushed before. Faster than any cruiser in her class should go. But instead of paying attention, I was caught in a losing battle with a stubborn button when three engineers sprinted past, faces pale as ghostlights.

The truth hit me only when I reached the command deck.

Captain Vega DeLeon, the man I’d served with through six cycles, stood motionless in front of the central console. Not pacing, not shouting, not scribbling flight adjustments on his pad. Vega had never stopped moving in all the years I knew him. Even on leave, even drunk off half a distillery, he couldn’t sit still. But there he was, draped in the black and silver formalwear from last night’s Founders Gala, eyes locked on a handheld message screen, as if it were the only thing anchoring him to reality.

“Captain,” I said, giving a sharp salute with more habit than heart. No response.

“Vega?”

Only then did he seem to notice me. His eyes were rimmed red, not from drink, but exhaustion and something else—fear. He shoved the screen toward me with a curse under his breath.

“Idiots,” Vega muttered as I grabbed it. I squinted, but the letters swam. My mind couldn’t focus through the cold creeping up my spine.

“They sent it to us.”

“Sent what?” I asked, pulse rising. “What’s going on?”

Vega exhaled hard, a sound I’d never heard from him before, like a man too angry to swear.

“The Delphia Station. They’re venting atmosphere. Oxygen breach. By now, they’ve already hit hypoxia. That’s their SOS.”

Delphia. A colony station with nearly twelve thousand people. Families. Crews. Children.

“But why us? Why not the Harbinger or the Solace?” I asked, trying to wrap my head around it.

“They should have called them. But I don’t think they did. Maybe a comms blackout. Maybe worse.”

“And… can we make it?”

Vega didn’t answer right away. He ran his hands through his cropped silver-streaked hair. The silence said enough.

“I’ve had the Starbreaker burning her cores to ash for four hours already,” he said at last, voice low. “We’re still five and a half hours out. We needed three.”

That was impossibly fast. Even with Vega’s reputation for pushing ships beyond design, we were tearing through subspace lanes like a comet on fire.

“We’re short?” I said. The words felt hollow.

He nodded grimly.

A cold weight settled on my chest. There was no backup. No cavalry coming. Delphia’s people were already as good as dead unless we pulled off a miracle.

“Any way to hail the others?”

“Ria’s been hitting every frequency since the message came in. Nothing. Either they’re out of range or…” He didn’t finish the thought. Or they’d abandoned ship. Or they were already gone.

“And even if we make it… we can’t carry that many,” I said quietly.

Vega collapsed into his command chair. His formal coat fell open, showing a wrinkled uniform beneath. He looked suddenly old.

“Not even close. We couldn’t fit a third of Delphia’s crew, let alone civilians. And we don’t have enough O2 canisters to keep them breathing if we tried.”

Around us, the command deck buzzed quietly with the skeleton crew. Officers half-asleep in rumpled clothes. Some still in gala suits.

“We need emergency stations. All passengers back into stasis,” I said, words tumbling out before I fully realized I was speaking. “Wake the stewards. Prep medical. Every engineer not on shift needs to be on deck now.”

Vega gave me a slow nod, like a man underwater. I activated the comm and sent the orders. Sirens blared through all thirty decks of the Starbreaker.

“It won’t be enough,” I said under my breath.

“No,” Vega agreed, staring at the floor. “Even if we emptied our entire O2 reserve… ten minutes of life, maybe.”

Silence settled like a shroud. My mind spun through possibilities, each worse than the last, until my hands clenched into fists.

“I can go,” I said.

Vega’s brow furrowed. “Go?”

“In the Lance. Slingshot me ahead. I’ll reach Delphia in time, maybe get their drones operational again.”

“They have drones already. If theirs can’t patch it, neither can you.”

“But maybe theirs were sabotaged. Maybe something else happened. I’ll find out.”

I scanned the deck for the message screen, found it fallen under Vega’s chair. Picked it up again, eyes flicking through the last garbled lines. No details. No follow-up.

“It’s too late, Nova,” Vega muttered. “They’re burning O2. By now…”

“I know,” I said. “But we can’t just drift along hoping they’re dead. Someone has to try.”

For a long time, Vega didn’t answer. He only looked at me with that sharp old stare, like he was searching for the kid I’d once been—before promotions, before executive officer’s stripes.

“You really think it’ll matter?” he asked softly.

I shrugged. “I think I can’t sit here and do nothing.”

A bitter laugh escaped him. “And of course, it has to be you. Can’t be one of those fleet cadets. I have to send my second-in-command like some ancient war drama.”

“I’m the best pilot you’ve got, Captain.”

Vega groaned, scrubbing his face with both hands.

“If you wreck my ship, Nova…”

“How many kids you think are on Delphia?” I asked quietly.

He didn’t answer.

Twenty minutes later, I was strapped into the Lance—a high-speed interceptor barely the size of a cargo crate, but loaded with every repair tool, O2 cylinder, and survival kit we could scrape together. At my age—forty-nine—I wasn’t the hotshot pilot anymore. But this wasn’t about winning medals.

Vega’s voice crackled through my helmet as the countdown hit final mark.

“Alright, everyone,” he said to the whole crew. “One of those maneuvers fleet command won’t let you write home about. Mark in three… two… mark.”

From inside the Lance, I felt the Starbreaker twist in a maneuver no sane cruiser should attempt, slinging me forward like a slingshot pebble.

And then I was gone. Alone in the void. My nav systems locked onto Delphia’s last known coordinates. No turning back. No room for fear. Only the rush.

Four hours later, my systems began slowing me from a suicidal blur down to approach speed. At T-4:27, I broke into Delphia’s perimeter.

And saw the other ships.

The Harbinger and Solace were already there. Silent. Lights dead.

My heart flipped. Relief? Fear? I didn’t know. But as I got closer, I saw it—the scorched hulls, the drifting debris.

They hadn’t answered because they couldn’t.

The Lance’s comms flickered. One last transmission crackled through the static.

“TURN BACK! AMBUSH! DO NOT APPROACH! S. LIVINSTO—”

And then silence.

The Starbreaker never got that warning. The comms officer on duty—an isolationist sympathizer—had intercepted and deleted it. Whether through politics or madness, he chose silence.

An hour later, Vega brought the Starbreaker into the kill zone, blind.

They never had a chance.

I didn’t either. But as the Lance drifted closer, I throttled her up, eyes narrowed against the growing dark.

Some things, you don’t run from.

Even if it’s the last run you’ll ever make.