Destiny

D E S T I N Y

"Name one hero who was happy." 
– The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple." 
– The Importance of Being Ernest, Oscar Wilde

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SADIE OKAMURA'S LITTLE WORLD WAS AWASH IN RED. Pulsing lights, swirling alarms, a visual cacophony of little flashes spread out before her and the two other crew members. The Destiny was a ship destined to survive, but it certainly didn't feel like it.

"What's going on here, Dorian?" she asked.

The lieutenant faltered, eyes swiping over the display, and then over the console in his hands. EMERGENCY flashed in big red letters across the central screen. "I – I'm not sure. It looks like we've been hit by space debris. Possibly an unchartered asteroid."

"It looks like it?" Felicity's voice held no fear, only frustration as she leaned forward from Sadie's other side to look at Dorian. "Have we, or have we not come into contact with extra-terrestrial debris?"

"We..." His hand was moving rapidly over the console as he searched for the problem. He shook his head. "We've lost all the rear and right-side cameras. We're completely blind on half of the ship."

"What hit us?" Felicity growled.

"Does it matter?!" Dorian shouted back. "We've been hit. All we can do now is deal with it."

"Lieutenant, relay damage," Sadie instructed Dorian calmly – or as calmly as she could manage. It felt as though there was a thunder storm in her heart.

"Thrusters are down. Engines are failing. Life support, miraculously, is in check. Heat shields are down. Fault protection is overloaded. CO2 scrubbers have failed. Telecommunications are–"

The lights flickered and went out. Felicity swore. They all listened as the constant hum of the engines softened, slowed, and dropped away into silence. The ship stilled.

For a few minutes, all was silent. Sadie could hear the shaky breaths of her comrades as their hearts thundered away in the inky night. She could barely see two feet.

"What do we do now?" Felicity's question splintered the silence like rock smashing glass.

Sadie had no answer. Neither did Dorian, it seemed. "I don't know," he said.

"Well that's just great, isn't? Powerless, engineless, floating through unchartered space with our only help over a thousand light years away, and none of Destiny's crew knows what the hell they're doing."

"Thanks for vocalising the situation, Lieutenant," Dorian snapped back. He asked Sadie, "Do you feel better, Captain? Because I feel bloody fantastic."

"Oh don't give me that immature crap, Dorian," Felicity said. "Act your age, for once!"

"I'm not the one–"

"Everyone shut up," Sadie interjected. Just then, the backup generator kicked in, lighting the control room a sickly green. Dorian sighed and took a seat on the dull metal floor, his back up against the wall, his legs out in front with one knee bent.

"Is that it then?" Felicity asked. "You're just giving up?"

"I've seen the damage. It's irreparable. Our mission is over."

"So you're just going to sit there until we run out of oxygen?" She looked at Sadie with wide, desperate eyes. It was the look of a woman who realised she had an ending – and that it was no longer some distant, intangible nightmare. "Surely there's something we could be doing with the time we have left? I can't simply sit back and wait to die."