‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

  ‘Can you stop it please? My vision is still awful. My right eye is nearly blind. My right arm is still practically useless and I’m still nauseous. I still get vertigo whenever I stand up and the pain hasn’t subsided. Everything’s the same as yesterday, and the day before that and the day before that.’. There was a vicious undertone to his words. One that was reserved to men who hadn’t yet come to terms with his newly crippled status.

  ‘Alright, alright. There’s no need to get angry. I’m just following the medical protocols.’

  ‘Forget about the protocols, Ala. I’m not going to get better. The damage is permanent.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Voss. The doctors will patch you up when we get back to Fosfat.’. She walked over to him, gave him a hug and kissed him on the forehead. A gesture he accepted despite his cantankerous state.

  ‘No they won’t. They wouldn’t even if they could. They don’t have the means and even if they did, it would be too expensive. Slum dwellers like me are a simple equation to them. They’ll only invest in us if they think there’s going to be a worthwhile return.’

  She wanted to go against him, but she knew he spoke the truth. He’d have to come to accept his fate and they’d have to come up with convincing arguments why he shouldn’t be discarded by the Fifth when they returned to Fosfat. If they even managed to make it back there. The hunter killer squadron that was after them followed them relentlessly through each jump.

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  ‘There’s only one man I know who could fix me up.’ Voss lamented. ‘And I watched him get executed twenty years ago.’

  ‘Your father?’

  He didn’t respond to her question. Too busy sinking away into his own thoughts again, as he often did since waking up from his coma. She shrugged and left him by himself. After a while he got up from his chair and stumbled back to bed. A conflict raged inside his head. The same recurring conflict that had plagued him since waking up. Part of him wanted to give up. Accept that this was the end of the line. None of his grand plans would ever come to fruition. Then there was the voice that told him to keep going. To push through this ordeal and find a cure for his current state. A voice that scolded him for even entertaining the idea of giving up. The same voice that had kept him going when he saved Ala and himself from the warfleet. The voice had a point. He couldn’t give up, ever. It didn’t matter how damaged he was. He had made it this far and had set everything in motion. He had to see this to the end.

  He laid there in their bed for a long time, allowing both sides to fight it out until the voice won out. It always did, despite the defeatisms unending attempts.

  He had to do something. There had to be some way to get them out of their desperate situation. Some way to get rid of those hunters chasing them through half the galaxy. A way to throw them off their tail.

  He grabbed the bed frame with his left arm and used all his might to get up from the bed. The vertigo hit him instantly and he nearly toppled over. The wall next to the bed broke his fall and enabled him to regain footing. He had to get to the central computer. He had to find it.

  What should have taken him twenty seconds, took twenty minutes instead. When, guided by the fierce inner voice that refused to accept defeat, he finally made it to the computer chair, he fell into it. It took a while for him to recuperate from the effort. Eventually the nausea and dizziness subsided and he got to work. There was something he remembered. A recurring anomaly in the ships logs that he hadn’t heeded much attention to before. He had been too busy with their mission and it hadn’t seemed important to him back then. It did now. This could be their key. This could be what saved them from those hunters. He was certain of it. Would he be able to convince Ala though?