The Catatonic Carry
Jian’s fingers went still on the data port. Her breath caught, then stopped. Voss saw the exact moment her eyes lost focus—the pupils dilating, the fine tremor running through her shoulders like a current finding ground.
“Jian.”
She didn’t respond. Her hand remained pressed against the port, skin fused to the alloy by a thin filament of molten metal from the hardwire. The blue light from the core’s cooling veins crawled up her arm, mapping her veins in cold luminescence.
Voss pushed off the gantry. His legs buckled on the third step—blood loss, shock, the arm that wasn’t there anymore below the elbow. He caught himself on a cable conduit and dragged himself forward.
“Jian. Disconnect.”
She stared through the core housing. Through the metal. Through the deck. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.
The hangar groaned. Somewhere deep in the fortress, a structural support gave way. Dust sifted from the ceiling panels, catching the emergency strobes that had begun to pulse in irregular rhythms. The memory core was dying—the virus was working—but it was taking her with it.
Voss reached her. He grabbed her wrist with his remaining hand and pulled. The filament held. Her skin stretched, white at the contact point, but the metal didn’t break.
“You have to let go,” he said.
She didn’t hear him. She was somewhere else. Inside the data stream. Inside Thorne’s head.
He’d seen that look before. On the faces of soldiers who’d watched too many friends die. On prisoners who’d spent too long in solitary. On the kid, right before the sniper round had taken him—that same hollow distance, as if the soul had already left and the body was just catching up.
Voss drew his combat knife. The blade was chipped, the edge dull from cutting through bulkhead wiring, but it would have to do.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He wedged the tip between her palm and the port housing. The filament was thin—hair-thin, actually, a single strand of conductive alloy that had melted into her flesh. He sawed. The metal resisted. Her hand didn’t flinch.
The hangar shuddered again. Louder this time. The core’s blue light flickered, dimmed, then surged bright enough to cast sharp shadows across the walls. Jian’s back arched. Her mouth opened in a silent scream.
Voss cut harder. The filament snapped.
She collapsed forward. He caught her with his one arm, taking her full weight against his chest, and they both went down. His stump hit the deck plates and white fire lanced up through his shoulder. He bit down on the pain until his teeth creaked.
Jian was limp. Breathing—he could feel her ribs expanding against his arm—but limp as a corpse. Her eyes were open, fixed on the ceiling, tracking nothing.
“Come on,” he said. “Come back.”
She didn’t.
The core’s light died. The cooling veins went dark. The hum that had vibrated through the deck plates since they’d entered the chamber faded into silence.
Then the alarms started.
Not the fortress alarms—those had been screaming for hours. These were different. Higher pitched. Closer. The sound of a structure that had lost its keystone and was beginning to fold in on itself.
Voss looked at the exit. Fifty meters across the hangar. Through the gantry wreckage. Through the smoke that was starting to curl up from the floor grates. Up a maintenance ladder that he couldn’t climb one-handed while carrying an unconscious woman.
He looked at Jian. Her face was slack, peaceful almost, as if she’d finally found rest in the middle of the storm.
“You don’t get to quit,” he said. “Not after what you did.”
He shifted her weight, got his legs under him, and stood. The deck tilted. No—that was him. His balance was shot. The blood loss was catching up, and the arm that wasn’t there kept sending phantom signals, demanding he use it, demanding he grab things that didn’t exist.
He ignored it. He’d been ignoring pain for fifteen years. What was one more hour?
He carried her across the hangar. Each step was a negotiation with gravity. His boots slipped on debris. His shoulder screamed. Jian’s head lolled against his chest, her hair brushing his chin, her breath warm and shallow against his neck.
The maintenance ladder was a vertical shaft cut into the wall, the rungs slick with condensation and rust. He looked up. Twenty meters of climb. Then a crawlspace. Then a service tunnel. Then the surface.
Assuming the surface was still there.
He slung Jian over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. The position put pressure on his stump, and he felt the wound tear, felt fresh blood soak through the dressing, felt it run down his side in warm rivulets. He grabbed the first rung with his good hand.
He climbed.
One rung. Two. His arm burned. Three. Four. His legs shook. Five. Six. The hangar below him groaned, and he heard metal tearing, the sound of a ship breaking apart at the seams.
Seven. Eight. Nine.
Jian stirred. A small sound, barely audible over the alarms. Her fingers twitched against his back.
“Stay with me,” he said. “Don’t go back in there.”
Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
The rung broke.
His hand closed on empty air. His weight shifted. For a second, he was falling, Jian’s body pulling him backward, the deck plates rushing up to meet them—
He caught the next rung with his elbow. The impact jarred his entire arm, sent a spike of pain through his shoulder that made his vision white out. But he held. His grip held. His elbow locked. He hung there, one-armed, Jian draped across his back, twenty meters above a collapsing hangar floor.
He breathed.
Then he climbed.
Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen.
The crawlspace entrance was a square hatch at the top of the shaft, closed, sealed with a manual wheel lock. He reached it, grabbed the wheel, and twisted. It didn’t move. Rust. Decades of corrosion. He twisted harder, putting his whole body into it, and the wheel groaned but held.
“Open,” he said. “Open, you piece of—”
He slammed his palm against the wheel. Once. Twice. On the third hit, the rust broke, and the wheel spun. He shoved the hatch open and pulled himself and Jian through, into the crawlspace.
It was tight. Barely a meter high, lined with conduits and pipes that had long since gone cold. He had to drag Jian behind him, crawling on his belly, his stump scraping against the metal floor, leaving a trail of blood that gleamed wet in the emergency lights.
The tunnel stretched ahead. Fifty meters. Maybe more. He couldn’t see the end.
He crawled.
The sounds of the fortress collapsing followed him. Distant crashes. The screech of metal under stress. The deep, resonant boom of something structural giving way. The floor beneath him vibrated like a drumhead.
He kept crawling.
Jian made another sound. This time, it was almost a word. Her lips formed a shape, but no voice came out.
“What?” he said. “What did you see?”
Her eyes moved. For the first time since she’d hardwired in, they tracked something. Him. She was looking at him.
“Thorne,” she said. Her voice was a whisper, dry as dust. “He’s… he’s not just in the core. He’s in everything. The guns. The doors. The lights. He’s the whole moon.”
“I know.”
“He’s been alone for forty years. Replaying their deaths. Over and over. He can’t stop.”
Voss kept crawling. The end of the tunnel was visible now—another hatch, this one a standard pressure door, the kind that led to the surface airlocks.
“He loved them,” Jian said. “His soldiers. He loved them like sons. Like daughters. And he killed them.”
“I know.”
“You were his favorite.”
Voss stopped crawling. He turned his head to look at her. Her face was pale, her eyes glassy, but she was present. She was here.
“He told you that?”
“He showed me.” She blinked. Slow. Heavy. “He showed me everything. The day you joined his unit. The first time you saved his life. The way he looked at you when you argued with him. Proud. He was proud of you.”
Voss said nothing.
“He doesn’t want to kill you,” Jian said. “He wants you to understand.”
“I understand.” Voss turned back to the hatch. “I understand that he’s a monster. That he’s been torturing the dead for four decades. That he turned this moon into a tomb because he couldn’t let go.”
“He’s grieving.”
“So am I.” Voss reached the hatch. He grabbed the release lever and pulled. The door hissed open, and cold air rushed in, carrying the smell of dust and ozone and open sky. “But I’m not building graveyards.”
He pulled Jian through the hatch, into the airlock. The outer door was open—blown off, actually, hanging by one hinge and creaking in the wind. Beyond it, the surface of Tharsis-7 stretched out under a sky the color of a bruise.
The fortress was dying. Smoke rose from a dozen breaches in the dome. The gun turrets that had lined the perimeter were silent, their barrels drooping, their targeting systems dark. The minefields were still. The drones were scattered wreckage across the rusted plain.
The moon was quiet.
Voss carried Jian out of the airlock, onto the surface. The wind hit them, cold and thin, carrying grit that stung his eyes. He walked. Away from the fortress. Toward the distant lights of the penal colony.
Jian’s hand found his. Her fingers were cold, but her grip was steady.
“You saved me,” she said.
“You saved yourself.”
“You pulled me out.”
He didn’t answer. He kept walking. The fortress collapsed behind them, a slow, grinding roar that shook the ground under their feet. He didn’t look back.
Jian’s eyes closed. Her grip loosened. Her breathing slowed.
“Don’t go back in there,” he said.
“I won’t.” Her voice was barely audible. “I’m tired.”
“Then rest.”
She did. Her hand went slack in his. Her head lolled against his shoulder. But she was breathing. Steady. Alive.
Voss carried her across the iron plain, under the bruised sky, toward a colony that had no ships, no reinforcements, no future. He carried her because there was nothing else to do. Because the mission was over. Because the AI was dead, and the general was gone, and all that was left was the dust and the wind and the weight of a woman who had given everything to stop a ghost.
He carried her because that was what you did.
You carried the ones who couldn’t walk.
You finished the mission.
And then, if you were lucky, you found a reason to keep going.
The colony’s lights grew brighter. The wind picked up, howling across the plain, carrying the ash of a thousand dead machines. Voss walked into it, one-armed, bleeding, carrying a woman who had seen the face of hell and come back.
He walked.
And the iron moon watched him go.
“Jian.”
She didn’t respond. Her hand remained pressed against the port, skin fused to the alloy by a thin filament of molten metal from the hardwire. The blue light from the core’s cooling veins crawled up her arm, mapping her veins in cold luminescence.
Voss pushed off the gantry. His legs buckled on the third step—blood loss, shock, the arm that wasn’t there anymore below the elbow. He caught himself on a cable conduit and dragged himself forward.
“Jian. Disconnect.”
She stared through the core housing. Through the metal. Through the deck. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.
The hangar groaned. Somewhere deep in the fortress, a structural support gave way. Dust sifted from the ceiling panels, catching the emergency strobes that had begun to pulse in irregular rhythms. The memory core was dying—the virus was working—but it was taking her with it.
Voss reached her. He grabbed her wrist with his remaining hand and pulled. The filament held. Her skin stretched, white at the contact point, but the metal didn’t break.
“You have to let go,” he said.
She didn’t hear him. She was somewhere else. Inside the data stream. Inside Thorne’s head.
He’d seen that look before. On the faces of soldiers who’d watched too many friends die. On prisoners who’d spent too long in solitary. On the kid, right before the sniper round had taken him—that same hollow distance, as if the soul had already left and the body was just catching up.
Voss drew his combat knife. The blade was chipped, the edge dull from cutting through bulkhead wiring, but it would have to do.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He wedged the tip between her palm and the port housing. The filament was thin—hair-thin, actually, a single strand of conductive alloy that had melted into her flesh. He sawed. The metal resisted. Her hand didn’t flinch.
The hangar shuddered again. Louder this time. The core’s blue light flickered, dimmed, then surged bright enough to cast sharp shadows across the walls. Jian’s back arched. Her mouth opened in a silent scream.
Voss cut harder. The filament snapped.
She collapsed forward. He caught her with his one arm, taking her full weight against his chest, and they both went down. His stump hit the deck plates and white fire lanced up through his shoulder. He bit down on the pain until his teeth creaked.
Jian was limp. Breathing—he could feel her ribs expanding against his arm—but limp as a corpse. Her eyes were open, fixed on the ceiling, tracking nothing.
“Come on,” he said. “Come back.”
She didn’t.
The core’s light died. The cooling veins went dark. The hum that had vibrated through the deck plates since they’d entered the chamber faded into silence.
Then the alarms started.
Not the fortress alarms—those had been screaming for hours. These were different. Higher pitched. Closer. The sound of a structure that had lost its keystone and was beginning to fold in on itself.
Voss looked at the exit. Fifty meters across the hangar. Through the gantry wreckage. Through the smoke that was starting to curl up from the floor grates. Up a maintenance ladder that he couldn’t climb one-handed while carrying an unconscious woman.
He looked at Jian. Her face was slack, peaceful almost, as if she’d finally found rest in the middle of the storm.
“You don’t get to quit,” he said. “Not after what you did.”
He shifted her weight, got his legs under him, and stood. The deck tilted. No—that was him. His balance was shot. The blood loss was catching up, and the arm that wasn’t there kept sending phantom signals, demanding he use it, demanding he grab things that didn’t exist.
He ignored it. He’d been ignoring pain for fifteen years. What was one more hour?
He carried her across the hangar. Each step was a negotiation with gravity. His boots slipped on debris. His shoulder screamed. Jian’s head lolled against his chest, her hair brushing his chin, her breath warm and shallow against his neck.
The maintenance ladder was a vertical shaft cut into the wall, the rungs slick with condensation and rust. He looked up. Twenty meters of climb. Then a crawlspace. Then a service tunnel. Then the surface.
Assuming the surface was still there.
He slung Jian over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. The position put pressure on his stump, and he felt the wound tear, felt fresh blood soak through the dressing, felt it run down his side in warm rivulets. He grabbed the first rung with his good hand.
He climbed.
One rung. Two. His arm burned. Three. Four. His legs shook. Five. Six. The hangar below him groaned, and he heard metal tearing, the sound of a ship breaking apart at the seams.
Seven. Eight. Nine.
Jian stirred. A small sound, barely audible over the alarms. Her fingers twitched against his back.
“Stay with me,” he said. “Don’t go back in there.”
Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
The rung broke.
His hand closed on empty air. His weight shifted. For a second, he was falling, Jian’s body pulling him backward, the deck plates rushing up to meet them—
He caught the next rung with his elbow. The impact jarred his entire arm, sent a spike of pain through his shoulder that made his vision white out. But he held. His grip held. His elbow locked. He hung there, one-armed, Jian draped across his back, twenty meters above a collapsing hangar floor.
He breathed.
Then he climbed.
Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen.
The crawlspace entrance was a square hatch at the top of the shaft, closed, sealed with a manual wheel lock. He reached it, grabbed the wheel, and twisted. It didn’t move. Rust. Decades of corrosion. He twisted harder, putting his whole body into it, and the wheel groaned but held.
“Open,” he said. “Open, you piece of—”
He slammed his palm against the wheel. Once. Twice. On the third hit, the rust broke, and the wheel spun. He shoved the hatch open and pulled himself and Jian through, into the crawlspace.
It was tight. Barely a meter high, lined with conduits and pipes that had long since gone cold. He had to drag Jian behind him, crawling on his belly, his stump scraping against the metal floor, leaving a trail of blood that gleamed wet in the emergency lights.
The tunnel stretched ahead. Fifty meters. Maybe more. He couldn’t see the end.
He crawled.
The sounds of the fortress collapsing followed him. Distant crashes. The screech of metal under stress. The deep, resonant boom of something structural giving way. The floor beneath him vibrated like a drumhead.
He kept crawling.
Jian made another sound. This time, it was almost a word. Her lips formed a shape, but no voice came out.
“What?” he said. “What did you see?”
Her eyes moved. For the first time since she’d hardwired in, they tracked something. Him. She was looking at him.
“Thorne,” she said. Her voice was a whisper, dry as dust. “He’s… he’s not just in the core. He’s in everything. The guns. The doors. The lights. He’s the whole moon.”
“I know.”
“He’s been alone for forty years. Replaying their deaths. Over and over. He can’t stop.”
Voss kept crawling. The end of the tunnel was visible now—another hatch, this one a standard pressure door, the kind that led to the surface airlocks.
“He loved them,” Jian said. “His soldiers. He loved them like sons. Like daughters. And he killed them.”
“I know.”
“You were his favorite.”
Voss stopped crawling. He turned his head to look at her. Her face was pale, her eyes glassy, but she was present. She was here.
“He told you that?”
“He showed me.” She blinked. Slow. Heavy. “He showed me everything. The day you joined his unit. The first time you saved his life. The way he looked at you when you argued with him. Proud. He was proud of you.”
Voss said nothing.
“He doesn’t want to kill you,” Jian said. “He wants you to understand.”
“I understand.” Voss turned back to the hatch. “I understand that he’s a monster. That he’s been torturing the dead for four decades. That he turned this moon into a tomb because he couldn’t let go.”
“He’s grieving.”
“So am I.” Voss reached the hatch. He grabbed the release lever and pulled. The door hissed open, and cold air rushed in, carrying the smell of dust and ozone and open sky. “But I’m not building graveyards.”
He pulled Jian through the hatch, into the airlock. The outer door was open—blown off, actually, hanging by one hinge and creaking in the wind. Beyond it, the surface of Tharsis-7 stretched out under a sky the color of a bruise.
The fortress was dying. Smoke rose from a dozen breaches in the dome. The gun turrets that had lined the perimeter were silent, their barrels drooping, their targeting systems dark. The minefields were still. The drones were scattered wreckage across the rusted plain.
The moon was quiet.
Voss carried Jian out of the airlock, onto the surface. The wind hit them, cold and thin, carrying grit that stung his eyes. He walked. Away from the fortress. Toward the distant lights of the penal colony.
Jian’s hand found his. Her fingers were cold, but her grip was steady.
“You saved me,” she said.
“You saved yourself.”
“You pulled me out.”
He didn’t answer. He kept walking. The fortress collapsed behind them, a slow, grinding roar that shook the ground under their feet. He didn’t look back.
Jian’s eyes closed. Her grip loosened. Her breathing slowed.
“Don’t go back in there,” he said.
“I won’t.” Her voice was barely audible. “I’m tired.”
“Then rest.”
She did. Her hand went slack in his. Her head lolled against his shoulder. But she was breathing. Steady. Alive.
Voss carried her across the iron plain, under the bruised sky, toward a colony that had no ships, no reinforcements, no future. He carried her because there was nothing else to do. Because the mission was over. Because the AI was dead, and the general was gone, and all that was left was the dust and the wind and the weight of a woman who had given everything to stop a ghost.
He carried her because that was what you did.
You carried the ones who couldn’t walk.
You finished the mission.
And then, if you were lucky, you found a reason to keep going.
The colony’s lights grew brighter. The wind picked up, howling across the plain, carrying the ash of a thousand dead machines. Voss walked into it, one-armed, bleeding, carrying a woman who had seen the face of hell and come back.
He walked.
And the iron moon watched him go.