Chapter 7 - Regret

Luca eased back from Emily, her hand on his arm. He pushed the thought away. His crew needed him focused on what came next, not dwelling on dead soldiers who’d made a stupid tactical call.

“You good?” Emily kept her voice low.

“I’m alright,” he replied.

He rolled his shoulders slowly, his back aching from where he’d hit the deck. The bridge stretched out around him, bathed in the harsh red of emergency lighting. Warning displays flashed on every panel and every breath still tasted like smoke.

“Status report,” Luca said.

Ryan looked up from where he’d been hunched over a diagnostic panel, his face streaked with grease, dark circles under his eyes. “Thrusters are green and holding full burn,” he reported. “Power distribution’s a coin flip every five minutes, so don’t get used to the lights staying on.”

Danny was slumped against the wall, his white uniform making his red hair look like flame in the emergency lighting. His freckled face was pale with fatigue, but his eyes were alert. “Life support is holding, assuming that eighty percent keeps climbing the way it has been. I want another reading before I call it good.”

The Mission Charter notification pulsed in his interface, a blue glow that felt almost mocking. He blinked it open, the familiar text scrolling past before he’d fully processed what he was looking at.

[Mission: Alpha Centauri Survey Expedition]

Checkpoint 1: Depart Sol System with a qualified crew - [Pending]

Pending. Right. They were still in the asteroid belt, still in Sol System, still running for their lives from forces that wanted to take everything they’d worked for. Of course, the first checkpoint required leaving the system. The UER wanting to stop them was one more thing to deal with.

He forced himself to focus on the crew. Zoe was still at the navigation console, her dark eyes fixed on the sensor display, reading something the rest of them were missing. Her uniform was pristine except for a few grease stains on the sleeves from their earlier repair work, but she looked like she hadn’t slept in two days and was running on spite.

“How far out are we?” Luca asked her.

“Still in the belt,” she replied without looking up. “But we’re making good time. Once we clear the outer markers, we’re out, and it’s open space to the Kuiper Belt, then we align to the Oort Cloud Passage.”

His thoughts snapped back to Genesis Platform, to Dad and his brothers. Were they safe? The last transmission had cut off mid-sentence as static obscured whatever came next. He had no idea.

Luca wandered the ship’s corridors without meaning to, following familiar routes he’d traveled hundreds of times while moving cargo and equipment during construction. But the Triumph felt different now, scarred by the electrical fire, marked by the violence that had come after. This wasn’t the same ship he’d helped build. Eventually his feet carried him to the mess hall.

It had been almost twelve hours since they left the Genesis Platform, and the mess hall was a mess. Every surface was covered with sealed crates and boxes that had been piled in the past few days before the UER arrived.

He stood there too long, staring at it, until he finally tore his eyes off the stacked crates. What should have been their communal space looked more like a warehouse.

“This is depressing,” Joey said, kicking at a box labeled ‘Atmospheric Sample Containers’ that had somehow ended up next to a large box that read ‘Pasta’. “We’ve got a five-hundred-million-credit starship, and we’re living like refugees.”

Luca didn’t say anything, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand. That word, refugees, hit a little too close to home.

“Come on, come on,” muttered Ryan, tossing aside a box of water recycling filters. “I know I saw it somewhere...”

Luca leaned against the bulkhead and let his legs breathe. Every muscle in his body had stopped cooperating.

“What are you looking for?” Joey asked, settling onto the floor with his back against a crate marked ‘Emergency Medical Supplies.’

“The most important piece of equipment on this entire ship,” Ryan replied, diving deeper into a storage locker. “More important than the reactor. More important than life support itself.”

Luca cracked a tired smile.

Backing out of the storage locker, Ryan emerged triumphant, holding a coffee percolator in one hand and a case of Folgers in the other, his grin wide enough to split his face.

Luca laughed. He hadn’t expected it. Maybe he really was that tired.

“Coffee.” Emily stopped moving. “Oh my God, actual coffee.”

Zoe smiled, a real one, her whole face doing something Luca hadn’t expected. Chris laughed out loud and the sound bounced off the metal walls. Even Danny, who usually preferred tea, looked like Ryan had just offered him salvation in a red tin.

“Ryan, I could kiss you right now,” Joey said, and he sounded like he meant it.

“Let’s save the romance for later.” Ryan grinned. “First, we need water. Danny, can you get the dispensers working?”

Luca lifted his head from where he was slumped against a crate. “No,” he rasped, barely audible at first. Clearing his throat, he put a little more force behind it. “As your captain, officially, I’m begging you, please, someone, anyone else make the coffee.”

Ryan blinked. “What? Why?”

“Because you make tar, Ry,” Zoe said. “You know this. We know this. You know that we know this. You’ve gotta have a transmutation skill somewhere in your stat screen.”

“It was... chewy,” Emily added diplomatically, then looked at Chris.

Chris strode forward and snatched the percolator away with a smirk. “Don’t worry, Rossi. Coffee deserves better than what happened to it this morning.” He poured the grounds with careful, deliberate hands. “I got this.”

Luca sagged in relief, eyes fluttering shut for a moment. Ryan rolled his eyes, but Luca’s headache was a dull throb behind his temples, and he didn’t have the energy to care. “Thank God. My body... can’t handle... mud.”

The coffee grounds were dark and rich, and the moment Chris cracked the seal, Luca was back in New Hampshire, Mom at the kitchen counter in the morning, the biggest problem in his life being whether to have another cup or switch to hot chocolate.

“How long?” Emily asked, settling down beside him on the floor.

“It’ll be a few more minutes,” Chris said, leaning on the galley counter.

Luca’s muscles had stopped shaking, which was something.

The crew gathered without any formal invitation, finding spots on the floor and against crates. It looked more like a campout than a crew briefing. Zoe sat cross-legged and somehow still looked alert. Chris sprawled out and seemed perfectly comfortable with it.

“So,” Ryan said with a satisfied grunt. If he was bitter about losing coffee duty, he didn’t show it. “What’s the plan once we get clear of the asteroid belt?”

“First thing is to get the ship properly operational,” Luca said, accepting a steaming mug from Emily. The coffee was perfect. His whole body said thank you. “We’ve got maybe half our systems running.”

“The food preparation area needs to be set up,” Joey added. “We have fresh supplies, can’t let them rot.”

“Living quarters, too,” Emily said. “Our cabins aren’t set up yet, and we need to establish some kind of routine.”

The coffee was working.

“We’ve got time,” Luca said, taking another sip. “Once we hit the Oort Cloud, it’s three weeks to Alpha Centauri. Plenty of time to get organized and…”

The communications alert cut through their conversation, the sharp electronic tone making everyone freeze. It was flagged emergency priority.

“Shit,” Luca muttered, setting down his coffee and scrambling to his feet.

The run back to the bridge felt longer than it was, his legs protesting. The caffeine was already hitting, his thoughts sharpening with each step.

Emily reached the communications console first, working the controls as she tried to clean up the incoming signal. Static filled the bridge, scratchy and thick, then slowly started to clear.

“This is Genesis Platform calling Triumph of Darron. Priority transmission for Captain Rossi. Please respond.”

Dad’s voice came through the static and Luca went still. Even filtered through layers of interference and distance, it was him. He was alive, and he was calling them.

“Dad!” Luca said into the communicator, probably too loud and too eager, but he didn’t care. “We’re here. We’re all here.”

The response took several seconds, long enough for light to travel from their position to the Genesis Platform and back. When Dad’s voice came through again, it was cleaner, the static mostly gone.

“Luca, listen carefully. Genesis Platform is secure. Repeat, Genesis Platform is secure. The attackers were not UER forces. We’re not sure who they were yet, but the situation is now under control.”

They weren’t UER. The relief hit him so hard he had to grab the console. They weren’t fugitives. They’d wandered into somebody else’s war.

“The mission charter remains valid,” Dad continued. “Proceed to Alpha Centauri as planned. You have full authorization and support. Do not return. I repeat, do not come back to the Genesis Platform. It’s not safe for you here at this time.”

Luca slumped against the communications console. The mission was still on. That was everything.

“Your brothers are safe,” Dad added, pausing before the next part. “Matteo... he’s alright.”

He blinked. “Why wouldn’t he be?” he asked. Did Matteo get caught up in the fighting?

His kid brother had been in a firefight. That thought sat wrong no matter how he turned it.

Trust his younger brother to defend their home while he was running.

“There’s something else,” Dad said. “Those two shuttles... the ones that were after you? They were on autopilot.”

“What do you mean?” Luca asked. His voice came out steadier than he felt. “There were people on those shuttles.”

“No,” Dad replied. “They were set to disable your main engines. The raiders used our communications equipment to transmit your exact position and vector to the shuttles. Once you powered up, they would have locked onto your thermal signature. Collision course.”

“So when we fired the thrusters...” Luca stopped. He didn’t kill them. They were never alive.

“They were shuttles,” Dad confirmed. “Weaponized decoys. It was a trap from the start. They were meant to disable the ship.”

Luca stared at the console. He kept seeing the plasma, the explosion, the nothing left. No one had been on those shuttles. His hands shook anyway.

“You need to keep moving, Luca,” Dad said. “I think you’re still being tracked.”

Were they tracked?

“Think,” his father pressed, voice dropping. “Think real hard. Which systems on the Triumph weren’t affected by the sabotage?”

“I don’t...” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Dad, I can’t, my head’s not working.”

“No,” Dad said. “You know what broke. I’m asking you what didn’t. The Triumph was fully geared and cleared, I told you that. The reactor, the engines, they were clean when you left. But the logs don’t lie. Someone compromised the ship, and they were surgical about it.”

Luca felt a chill crawl across his skin. All those systems that went haywire. The fire. The shutdowns. None of it had been random.

“Think, Luca,” Dad repeated. “Which of your systems has been online this entire time? Running uninterrupted. Drawing auxiliary power.”

The answer was right there. He could almost touch it.

He almost had it.