Vengeance in the Void

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. The wails are cutoff, suffocated by a void too vast to pierce and too empty to resonate. The sound is not muffled or muted, it is lost; obliterated in a nothingness so dense that an inch may as well span lightyears.

Soldorius Ortain was steeped in silence. The last remnants of his ship burst in a fantastic drama of flashes and colors, a distant light show to fill nothing but his eyes. A stark deafness marked the end of his journey, a stoic hush at odds with the eruption of his life. The Pilgrim's Ferry was lost. Its inhabitants and crew were lost. He was lost.

Beyond the clear pane of his visor, he could see their corpses leering at him. They drifted in lulling stagnation, eyes hollow, and faces twisted into cries of terror and rage that penetrated his mind without ever molesting his ears. He had partaken in their meals, shouldered their burderns, shared in their laughter. He had known them, each scowling visage a haunting shadow of their impression upon his life. They were gone now, floating husks of space debris, shells as empty as the void that claimed them.

He closed his eyes, hiding their faces, shuttering his vision from the judgment of their cold, collected gaze. It failed to shut them out, their screams all the louder upon the images plastered behind clenched lids. His breath broke the silence, a sweet vibration upon his eardrums as the trembling bursts of air strained to fill his lungs. There was sanity in those rasps, an escape from the unadulterated silence that filled the endless sea of space.

The stars had called to him once, the boundless universe spurning longings within his heart no finite entity could satisfy. He had stared into that starlit blackness, his soul awakened and stirred by the unknown and its secret treasure troves of glorious and hidden potentials. He hadn't had a stomach for the navy nor the silver-lined pouch to buy his passage off the ground. He had dabbled as a merchant, though his earnings could barely finance his small booth, much less a venture beyond the sky. When the enlisters had come, had chosen him, had offered passage to a new world across the cosmos, it had been an impossible dream come to life. He never questioned why he'd been chosen, never dared risk reality discovering its horrid mistake.

He had been a fool. Of course he had. Soldorius was a fool, spawned from a long line of men no less wretched in their minds than he. There had been so many clues, so many signs that his great fortune was a curse. He had put them out of his mind, banished them each from the realm of consideration. The state of the ship, the kind of people who filled its halls, the emphasis on his lack of folks to leave behind. This relocation had been his chance, his opportunity to be something more than just inadequate and alone.

Yet it was those very traits that had furnished him a ticket. The Pilgrim's Ferry: a valkyrie to escort undesirables from the battlefield of life. They had all been doomed, every last soul aboard. Their destination had indeed lain beyond their planet, a voyage past the stars into the very heavens themselves. They had been promised paradise, and so were sent to the Elysian Fields.

He had realized only moments before, enough time to pull on the suit and watch the calamity unfold. Their ship had been rigged, marked for demolition. They were the refuse to be purged, the detritus of life to be disposed of with the rubbish ship. Sent out a month's distance to avoid any taint of their elimination from staining their home world, they were the sacrifice upon the altar of the common good and vanity.

Yet the very suit that had saved him now imprisoned him in shame. Opening his eyes once more, he was further from the remnants and the faces filled with rage. He should be among them, he more than any. He had always been disposable. He had always been a fool. What great worth set him apart from the countless victims strewn about that tiny hell?

Distorted scowls ensnared his mind, cold eyes crying out to justice for an explanation of his fate. Alone again. Inadequate. Little more than living debris.

The jarring snort of his sniffle surprised him, the harsh sound rattling against the icy silence of his tomb. Suddenly, he was aware of moisture on his cheeks, a heaviness to his lashes, and a quiver in his lip.

Teardrops? He was crying. Yet the vacuum held little more mercy for this. Even if the void had been filled with his tangible sorrow, there was no one near to take in his lilting sobs. This was the true emptiness of space. Not a lack of molecule, but of soul.

There was nothing there, nothing that surrounded him. It smothered him, encased him, devoured him, digesting body, mind, and spirit. Closing his eyes once more, he surrendered. Only one path left for his feet to trod. Death called for him, claimed him, a resplendent bridegroom waiting upon the altar.

Then came a tug. It was slight at first, barely the whisper of an insect's breath. It grew steadily, however, the pull of a lover, not forceful yet unrelenting. His eyes sprang open. Not debris, not detritus, not the blushing bride of Death. He was alive. Soldorius Ortain was alive.

The force that drew him grew stronger, a stiff breeze rolling into a tempestuous gale. His breath quickened with each moment, sucking life back into his lungs. He was alive. He breathed. The others were all gone. There was only him now. He was their only hope of survival, the last remnant left to live for them all.

He was hurtling now, his stomach lurching as his body sped down. Down? Yes, he was moving downward, away from the blackness towards a horizon of blue. Heat filled his consciousness, his suit a hardened skin of flame, every inch ablaze.

The snapping jolt of his first chute nearly shattered him, every bone in his body rattling from the force. He was no longer blazing, the gray alloy of his suit untarnished by the flames. The second chute whipped him once again, though not as violent as the first. He was still falling, plummeting towards a mist he could barely see, but he was slowing now.

The explosion of water and hiss of steam were more magnificent and beautiful than any orchestra or song. Trembling from the impact, trembling from his fear, trembling from the sheer ecstasy of being alive, he paddled weakly towards the shore. Minutes? Hours? Years? He lost all sense of time in the lulling of the waves. As he approached the shore, he heaved himself upon the dark red sand, the last tendrils of his strength emerging not from muscle but from will.

Heedless of air or atmosphere, blind faith assuring he could breathe, he shed himself of the gray coffin that had escorted him from the Pilgrim's Ferry to the ground. A moist breeze caressed his skin, golden sunlight bleeding crimson as an old day winked out its life.

Soldorius looked up into the twilight, stared up at the heavens till all that remained was an inky blackness riddled with a million stars.

The corpses' grimaces were lightening. He was no longer alone. He held within him the hope of a thousand lives discarded, those faces alive only within his heart and mind. He had somehow been chosen. Fate had enlisted him. He would be their voice of vengeance, the shout of justice to pierce the stars, and no vacuum would stifle his cry.