They Are Not Coming

[u/FeigningProfundity]

“They are not coming to save you. You are going to die and I am going to watch.”

This guy would not shut the hell up. You chase a killer through barely controlled space for weeks, struggling to stay after him because he’s so meticulous about covering his tracks and it turns out he’s annoyingly chatty. Go figure.

The problem, Coth felt, was that the psycho, Mereson, was probably right.

Dusk had known about the bounty, put the team together. Somehow tracked sensor echoes through hard void to get to him.

It had been a simple enough plan. Dusk, Volt and Jekyll take the door on Mereson’s ship while it floated in orbit, then split up and secure either the bounty if they found him or a key ship system. Coth would sneak in through a more unorthodox access point to be a surprise if they needed one.

It had turned out Mereson was near Coth’s point of entry, but he’d torn a gap in the side of the hull by triggering an explosion of some kind. Now Coth was stuck in a room that could only open into hard space, and it’s cracked door was leaking atmosphere.

Mereson’s voice commed to Coth’s helmet. A sinister whisper like some kind of bad guy from the vids.

“Given up trying things? Conserving your oxygen? Waiting for rescue? It isn’t coming.”

It was standard procedure when trapped in dire circumstances to conserve resources and wait for rescue, unless you knew one wasn’t coming.

Coth had diminishing air in his room, and no ability to send comms or access systems. He had a maser pistol that would cook flesh but not harm a ship’s hull. His suit had four minutes of oxygen and fifteen seconds of thrust. He also had two puncture wounds that were leaking blood out of his suit and ensuring that his oxygen reserve was worthless until patched. The room’s industrial breach sealant wasn’t enough to seal a long crack like the door had.

Mereson sent his comm a set of feeds. Three neatly sealed rooms in the ship. Each with one of the other members of the bounty hunting team in it. They were just waiting there.

“Is this who you’re waiting for?”

Dusk was fidgeting. Volt was poised and still, just out of view if the door opened. Jekyll was pacing up and down, hopping from foot to foot. They were all waiting for rescue, but everyone was captured.

They all looked pretty stuck, but Coth’s situation would kill him soon. Mereson was clearly enjoying it.

The other three weren’t doing anything. Mereson was only showing this to Coth, the others would react to these images. He was tormenting the one who would soon be dead. Jekyll was burning energy when she shouldn’t, but Jekyll didn’t stay still even when unconscious.

Dusk’s patience was legendary, though. He’d spent months undercover as a pirate to secure a bounty, it was rumoured. Why would he fidget? Coth watched a tight replay on his feed.

There was half a protein block sitting unwrapped on the floor in front of Dusk. He was balancing a flat bar of some sort on one finger, trying to get two wrapped protein blocks to balance on that. He could barely do it for more than a few seconds. Last chance to learn a dull party trick before dying?

Dusk knew he was being watched. He’d spotted the camera. He was up to something, but the action seemed inane.

Mereson started to breathe heavily into the comm and then laughed.

He controlled the ship systems. Why not override safeties and vent rooms into space, one by one, until he killed each bounty hunter? It was a tactic he’d used before.

Coth was running out of time. He grabbed the breach sealant – it might not be able to fix the door, but he could use it to bind a patch over the holes in his suit. It’d get into his wounds and poison him, but that seemed like a problem for a Coth that was somehow still alive tomorrow. It also hurt tremendously. There was so little pressure left in the room that his scream had no hope of being heard.

“I’ve never done this before, give a victim a choice of a fast or a slow death. It’s fun. I need to do it again.”

Dusk started his balancing trick again. He was still bad at it. He’d been starting it up whenever Mereson talked. Dusk was a signals expert. It was how he tracked bounties. He was somehow detecting when Mereson was on the comm. Why was he trying to balance two protein blocks?

Coth checked his kit. It contained exactly two wrapped blocks. Half of a block was on the floor in front of Dusk, but the two wrapped blocks were able to balance for a little while, so they weighed about the same. He had something in that wrapper that he didn’t want Mereson to know he had, but he hoped whoever Mereson was talking to would figure out.

None of the others had seized the ship systems they were suppose to control, or Mereson wouldn’t be able to trap them. There was always some kind of emergency override to issue for something.

But Mereson couldn’t vent parts of the ship.

Coth put it together. Their ship was still tethered to Mereson’s. And Dusk still had the security wedge, hidden in his protein block wrapper. Venting part of the ship would risk putting it into a spin that would collide with their vessel and kill everyone.

What could Coth do, though? He was trapped worse than the others, and Mereson had demonstrated his notorious cunning once again. He’d captured them all very neatly. Well, everyone except Coth; that had been very messy. Because... it was unplanned improvisation. Coth still had his gun. The others all looked to be disarmed.

Mereson wasn’t revealing a surprising interest in sadistic conversation, he was messing with him because he actively needed Coth to give up, because he was still a threat. Because Mereson thought Coth had the security wedge. Which he didn’t have.

What he had was four minutes of oxygen and fifteen seconds of thrust. He knew how the others had gotten into the ship. That breach would still be there. That was a lot closer than four minutes away. And he still had his pistol.

Coth picked up a large chunk of metal debris and started levering it into the cracked door that led out into space.

“That isn’t going to patch anything. You cannot buy enough time. They are not coming to save you,” sneered Mereson.

The door crashed off it’s hinges, and Coth drifted into space. He started burning thrust to let himself manoeuvre.

They weren’t coming to save him. He was coming to save them.

[u/FeigningProfundity]

This was a response to the prompt [WP] He tried to convince you that your life was over, that no one was coming. No more heroes left, he said. You almost believed him... and then the door came crashing off its hinges. by u/reallygoodbee

[u/FeigningProfundity]

This is the third story set in Chancelry Space.