POV: Mark
I don't know how long I stayed kneeling with the little girl, but at some point, she had broken away from me and returned to eating her snacks by her mother's body. I finally snapped back to reality when I saw her stand up and make her way to the door of the bridge.
"Hey, kid, where are you going?" I called out to her, but she ignored me and continued walking, reaching the door, which automatically opened, and making her way down the corridor while using her hands to guide her. I stood up and walked after her, following her through the corridors of the ship until we reached a room.
She made her way inside the room, and I entered after her, calling for her again. "Hey kid, what are you..."
My voice trailed off as the little girl made her way to the bed of the room, placed her hands on the wall panel, and moved one of them, slipping inside it. She then grabbed the panel and slid it back into place, making the wall almost seamless once again.
"I guess that explains why the drones didn't detect her. She was hiding," I muttered.
I pressed my hand in the same exact spot she had and removed the panel from the wall. Inside, the little girl was sitting down with her knees to her chest while she gripped a bloodied teddy bear. I could see how she was sniffling again.
"Hey, kid, come on out, you can't stay here," I said to her, but she ignored me again. I reached my hand inside and softly touched her, causing her to perk up and look my way. I saw as her hands gripped the teddy bear even harder, and she started to tremble.
"Hey, it's okay," I said, my voice as soft as I could make it. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm going to take you to a safe place. But for that, I need you to come out of here."
However, the little girl ignored my words, her eyes looking nowhere and everywhere at the same time. I could barely see her face through the darkness of the crawlspace she was in, and the soft orange and red tones of the shifting lights were of no help. However, I could tell that she was scared.
I reached out to her again, softly wrapping my hands around her arms, slowly trying to pull her my way. That was a bad idea. She started screaming and kicking like a scared wild animal that was snared in a trap.
"Kid, I'm just trying to help you," I said, taking on all the kicks she was throwing. My enhanced body barely allowed me to even register that I was getting kicked, so it wasn't something that bothered me.
"Buuuhhh, nuhhh, buuhhh buuuh, buuhh, nuuh," the girl screamed incoherently until I managed to pull her out of the crawl space and pick her up, instinctively carrying her against my shoulder. She slowly stopped kicking and trying to break free from me, and used one of her hands to touch my face, calming down after she had explored my face with her hand.
"Buhh buuh buuh? Nuhh buhh, buhh," she said again. I was able to understand her now and realized that she wasn't screaming incoherencies earlier...
I felt my heart sink once again as I realized that this girl was not only blind. That she had not been ignoring my words this entire time because she wanted to or was in shock, but that life had been rather cruel to her. I realized that she was also deaf and mute...
"Jesus..." I let out a heavy sigh, feeling my eyes begin to water again. "How can life be so cruel..."
I felt like the world's biggest piece of shit when I realized fully the extent of the little girl's situation. I held her in my arms, carrying her and doing what I had seen so many people do when their kids were crying. I started bouncing her against my chest while fighting the overwhelming feeling and desire to cry.
"Shh," I shakily said to the little girl, and I felt her rapidly fall asleep.
I made my way back to the extraction bridge and climbed up the ladder. It was a challenge, given the fact that I only had one arm to pull myself up, and was trying not to wake up the sleeping child in my other arm.
Once I stepped back into the Shepherd, Marcos' voice rang out through the extraction bridge's console. "Sir, is that a child in your arms?"
"Yeah," I said softly. "I found her inside. Her mother was a slave kept by the captain of the ship... she was among the dead."
"Oh," he said, showing a strangely human tone. "I'm terribly sorry to hear that. She must be so traumatized."
"I don't know," I said. "She might be. But unfortunately for her, she is both blind and deaf. So I don't think she knows much of what has happened throughout her life, let alone the past few days."
"Hmm," he hummed. "I think the medbay may be able to correct genetic abnormalities. My creator did make it so that it activates the regenerative process in the body's cells."
"Really?" I asked, feeling a spark of hope ignite in my heart.
"Well, I'm not sure if it would actually be able to do something," he said. "But in theory, it might."
"Then screw it," I said, already moving in the direction of the medical bay. "It doesn't hurt to try."
"That, it does not," Marcos agreed.
I entered the medbay and softly lay the sleeping girl on the skeletal chair. I slowly and softly strapped her to it to prevent her from moving from there, as I also wanted to return to the pirate frigate. There was something I had in mind.
"Hmm," Marcos hummed once again as a syringe quickly poked her arm and drew some blood. The action woke the little girl, and she started to panic, trying to break free of her restraints. "A quick DNA analysis indicates that she is eight years old. No public records information about her, meaning she doesn't technically exist."
"I don't think that matters for now," I said.
"You're right, sir," he agreed with me. "Given her age, weight, and height, I will administer a proper dosage of anesthesia to keep her in place and not complicate the process."
Another syringe poked its way through a hole in the back of the chair, administering a dose of anesthesia that quickly put the panicking girl to sleep.
"Commencing the healing process," he stated as the chairs started to glow, and the girl along with it. "The process should be done within the next thirty-two hours, sir."
I finally happened to get a good look at the girl in better lighting. She was an adorable child, though the signs of dehydration and severe malnourishment were pretty evident. Judging by the fact that she was a slave's daughter and adding to that her disabilities, she was severely mistreated by the pirates aboard that frigate.
"I'm going back to the frigate," I stated, my clothing morphing back into the suit I had on earlier.
"I'll keep my eye on the child," Marcos said.
Once I was back inside the ship, I made my way to the body of the girl's mother. I then gently carried her back to my ship, a slightly bigger challenge than when I carried the girl, but doable thanks to my enhanced body.
I took the body to the medbay and laid her on a table. I then asked Marcos if there was anything that could be done for her, as I wanted to give her a proper send-off.
"Well, I guess I can do some cosmetic work to make her resemble the images I was able to find of her," he replied.
"Images?" I asked while taking a seat next to the little girl.
"Yes, sir. Images," Marcos reaffirmed. "I scanned her face and ran her against the database of missing and unconfirmed dead people of the Empire. She was among them."
"And when the hell did you get access to that?" I asked, confusion written across my face.
"There are a lot of things I got my hands on while you were in the pen," he said matter-of-factly. "And even with all of that, and my own programming included, I have not even reached 25% of my memory storage."
"Jesus Christ, just how much space do you have?" I asked, surprised at what he had just told me.
"One hundred and Twenty Quettabytes," he replied. "Or something you'd be more familiar with, about one hundred and twenty billion Zetabytes. For even better reference, roughly one hundred and twenty quadrillion petabytes.
"Damn," was all I managed to say as I blinked twice at that revelation. "Okay, never mind what I asked. What's the woman's identity?"
"Her name was Lystren Caleth," he stated. "She was reported missing nine years and two months ago, on February 12th, 2976."
"Hmm," I hummed. "She's had a beautiful name."
"That she did," Marcos somberly agreed. "Her name quite literally translates to Child of Light or Child of the Stars."
"And I'm the one who snuffed that light," I said dejectedly.
"Captain..." Marcos' voice rang throughout the medbay softly. "There is no point in beating yourself over this. There was no way you could have known they were aboard it, and even then, what would you have done? Allow yourself and the people you were paid to defend to be killed?"
"That's easy for you to say," I muttered. "You're not the one who pulled the trigger."
"Look, Mark," he said, using my name this time. "You did what was right. Unfortunately, what is right doesn't always come without consequences for those who are merely bystanders. I may have only come to be a few months ago, but I have noticed that when we act, there are far more variables outside of our control than there are in our control."
"I guess you're right," I said in a low voice as I felt my eyes beginning to burn. "Close the extraction bridge, I'm going to move us away from the frigate."
"I will, Mark," he said.
I stood up from the chair I was in and made my way to the bridge. Once inside it, I took control of the Shepherd. The extraction bridge had already finished closing, so I detached us from the pirate frigate and flew us 30,000 kilometers away from her.
"Mark, are you not going to take the frigate?" Marcos asked as his avatar materialized in front of me.
"No," I said softly. "It feels morally wrong and repulsive to profit from it after what I discovered."
I smoothly maneuvered the Shepherd to turn and face the frigate off in the distance. I then manually redirected power to the weapon's systems and aimed at the frigate with all ten of my railguns.
"I know I cannot erase my mistakes," I said, more to myself than to Marcos. "But I will not allow these bastards the opportunity to continue using this vessel for their atrocities across the stars."
My finger hovered on the firing button for a second before I pressed it. I felt a tear run down my cheek as all ten of my railguns opened fire simultaneously, pushing the Shepherd back a bit. I watched as all ten slugs struck true on the frigate's broadside, but nothing happened. So I fired again.
This time, the slugs impacted what I can only assume to be the reactor core of the ship, as blue flames erupted throughout her, escaping through the holes I had punched. Then a sudden blue wave erupted from her as the ship exploded, sending chunks in all directions.
I watched the flames extinguish almost instantly after the explosion. I rerouted the power back to the engines and thrusters as I turned the ship around, making my way back to the three freighters to finish this escorting job.
After a few minutes, I rejoined them, instantly receiving a direct communication request from all three ships. I patched them all through into one single call.
"What can I do-" I didn't even get to finish working on my question before I was bombarded by theirs.
"What the hell happened over there?" asked Chikie.
"Are we under attack again?" Alenxandria inquired.
"Are you doing alright?" Seas asked, seemingly the only one of the three sensible enough to see the pain in my eyes.
"One question at a time," I said tiredly.
"I'll go first," Alexandria spoke before the other two. "We got notice of you firing your main weapons a few minutes ago. What the hell is going on? Are we under attack?"
"Yeah, what she just asked," Chikie said.
"Alright," I let out a sigh. "It wasn't anything of the sort, no new attack or anything to be worried about. I noticed that it was a CIV naval frigate that had been commandeered by the pirates, so I decided to finish it off. Can't let them get their hands on her again and continue doing even more fucked up shit."
Sean was the next to speak, his question more sensible. "I can't help but notice that you look like you're not all here. Are you doing alright? What's wrong?"
I let out a long and heavy sigh. "Physically, I'm peachy. Mentally though... I don't know, man. What the hell am I even doing?"
Chikie piped up before anyone else could speak. "Well, spit it out, merc. What's wrong with ya?"
I stared blankly at the faces that floated on a screen before me. "I... I fucked up. That pirate frigate... when I shot its engines out, it appears I also damaged the inertial dampeners... and killed someone in the process."
Chikie frowned. "You killed a pirate? So what? Good riddance if you asked me."
"It wasn't just the pirates," I said. I looked down at my hands and watched them shake. "There was this slave... and this little girl... and... and..."
My lack of words to explain what I had witnessed and done set the mood of the call. I spent the next twenty or so minutes explaining, through broken words, what I had seen. I told them about the video feeds, about the little girl's situation, and I was honest about my feelings. I told them how I felt worthless, and my desire to live had all but disappeared.
"I... I can't even begin to imagine how you feel," Sean said, breaking the silence that had lingered for about five minutes after my confession.
I didn't look up from my shaking hands. "I feel like I traded an innocent life for money. I feel like I don't even know who I am anymore, like I'm a monster. My attack caused a blind and deaf kid to lose her mother, to be abandoned by her scum pirate of a father, and be left to die because she was a 'burden.' I'm the one who created her current situation."
Alexandria, who had been silent with a mask of shock plastered across her face, finally spoke. Her usual aggressive tone was gone, replaced by something subdued.
"Mark," she said, carefully using my first name. "What you did to that pirate ship was not done out of malice. It was an action to protect us. The fault lies entirely with those monsters who used a slave and her child as human shields, and with the father who abandoned her. You reacted to an active threat. This tragedy... this is the galaxy's fault, not yours."
She paused, taking a visible, ragged breath. "I've lost people to pirates. I've seen the collateral damage of these battles. It never feels clean... but you saved all of us. You saved our livelihoods. And now, you saved that child."
Chikie was the last to speak. He looked away from the screen for a moment, then back at me, his eyes surprisingly gentle. "Listen, merc. I've been flying these routes for forty years. I've done things, seen things... things you don't even know the half of. The void is brutal, and the only reason we aren't all drifting corpses right now is because you decided to kill every last one of those bastards. You did your part and found the kid, brought her aboard. You're trying to fix what you've done. That's not the work of a monster, that's the work of a decent man who got an unfortunate gut punch from fate. Now it's time for you to collect yourself and finish the job. You get us to Florera, and then you figure out what you're gonna do with the little one."
Their compassion was unexpected and broke the last of my defenses. I nodded, unable to speak, and quickly cut the comms channel. The faces disappeared, leaving only the quiet glow of the bridge.
"Marcos," I managed, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand.
"Yes, Mark, what they just did was offer you grace," He said softly. "It's something you should accept."
"They're right. I need to finish this and then figure out what I'm going to do." I took control of the ship, my focus returning, but fundamentally altered.
I looked ahead, staring at the viewport screens as the view of the little girl strapped into the glowing skeletal chair burned itself in my mind. "Her mother's name was Lystren, right?"
"Yes, Mark," he replied.
"Then I think this is the least I can do to pay our respects to her. I'll name her something similar, something that signifies hope in this damned void. When she wakes up... her name will be... Lyra."
"Lyra," Marcos repeated. "A beautiful choice, Captain."
"And please, Marcos," I said. "Don't call me 'Sir' or 'Captain,' I feel undeserving of titles. Just call me by my name, as you've done a few times."
Marcos' avatar materialized in front of me, a gentle smile plastered on his face. "As you wish, Mark."
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