Occam knelt in the center of the hangar, a titan crouched in prayer, palm outstretched like an offering. A ladder extended from the cockpit hatch to the waiting hand, but Arthur didn’t climb yet. He watched as the crew filed out of the garden in silence, their steps too heavy, too measured—like mourners leaving a grave.
Mina was the last to exit. She looked back twice as though she’d forgotten something. When she caught his stare, she offered a small wave, a reassurance meant more for him than for herself, before boarding the Razor.
Because of Hitori’s training regime, Arthur had said his goodbyes to those laid to rest in the garden an hour earlier—alone, unless you counted the ghost from his former employer…
Hitori appeared full-sized beside him as Arthur lingered by Daiko’s pod. The sight was uncanny, like the man was alive attending his own funeral—and yet he seemed cold, without an ounce of sadness.
“What do you even say at a funeral for someone like him?” Arthur murmured.
“In the years I observed him, he seemed to only talk about this moment, but he never expected a funeral. He’d been healthy until the moment his heart gave out.”
“What did he do with all that time?” Arthur asked. “He finished Occam, sure, but how’d he keep himself busy otherwise?”
Arhtur thought of the book Daiko left him, safe in his belongings aboard the Razor—worn but preserved. There simply hadn’t been enough time to read and train and sleep and eat…
“He toiled,” Hitori continued, “though he despised the behavior in his youth. Every day he found a piece of his work to refine, polish. In the end he had a good eye for what could be improved, even if his hands lagged behind.”
Arthur doubted he’d ever worked so hard and diligently at anything in his life—perhaps no one ever would again. His insecurities bit into him.
“I know you said there are contingencies if we fail. But what if we get out there, join the war, and none of this works—what if Occam doesn’t work?”
“Occam is perfect. Nearest thing to it anyway. If he fails, it will be because the pilot led him astray.”
Arthur paused and took a breath, steadying himself. He’d had as much practice taking Hitori’s barbed truths as he had movement mechanics these past two days.
“Fine. Say I fail. What happens then? The war will keep going, and Occam will have been…” He couldn’t even finish, it was beginning to feel sacrilegious talking about any of Daiko’s perceived short-sightedness as the man laid dead in front of you.
Hitori’s gaze drifted across the pods—caskets lined in neat rows—before answering. His gaze lingered on Daiko’s pod as though staring through it, to an underworld beneath.
“If you survive and Occam is destroyed? Then you’ll salvage the core and bring it back here to rest with its maker…”
As Arthur waited for the crew to make their final checks aboard the Razor, Arthur pressed his fingers to his brow at the memory of the Hitori’s comments.
Sometimes their conversations flowed so easily Arthur forgot Hitori wasn’t human. Then it would say something like morbid—the bit about the core especially—like the crew’s lives mattered less than the machine Daiko built. Arthur had been asking what they would do if everything failed, and Hitori’s answer was to bury a meck’s core?
Thinking about it now, Arthur wondered if he was the heartless one. Maybe that was the most humanizing and thoughtful answer a complicated sequence of code could make—maybe it was Arthur that was thinking about this backwards.
“It’s time,” Hitori said, “they’re secured.”
Arthur tugged at the collar of his cryo suit, wondering if the thin air or his nerves made his head spin. He climbed Occam’s pinky and let the ladder carry him skyward as it retracted into the cockpit hatch. On the ground, Hitori dissolved, pixel by pixel, only to be waiting for him in the cockpit. He’d already warned Arthur that once they left the hangar, he would lose much of the freedom Daiko’s projection network gave him.
What a shame you won’t be able to surprise me in the bathroom again.
The cockpit sealed, and the HUD flared to life with a crystal-clear image of the hangar. Arthur still marveled at the illusion, even after hours of training.
Atmospheric readings blinked in the corner: oxygen thinning fast, gravity dampening. Arthur pictured the hangar’s gravwell engines groaning beneath the floor, then watched them flicker out as the HUD rendered their schematic like a dying heartbeat.
He switched on Occam’s own gravwell, a soft churn filling the cockpit. The blueprint vanished. For once Hitori said nothing, and Arthur counted the silence as a victory.
Now came the test.
He scanned the short list of queued commands—tiny, imperfect cheats Hitori had helped him set up. Bundled movements to nudge him back on course when his aim veered. He checked each repulsor one by one: tapping clockwise, counter-clockwise, then crosswise, each producing a sputter of thrust that tugged him just off-center.
Zero-g maneuvering was brutal. A one-degree slip became five, then ten, until those corrections turned to chaos, but if Arthur avoided corrections all together, then he never reached the target at all. Hence the commands. Hitori wouldn’t auto-corrected for him, even though it was still unclear if he could, but Arthur often felt invisible hands pulling at his sticks anyway, unseen glances drawn to the right screen at the right time. It made Arthur wonder, if Occam was so advanced, why did it even need him?
“We don’t have very much time, Arthur,” Hitori said.
Arthur shook the persistent thought away, and guided Occam down the hangar. By the time they reached the gate, the last breath of atmosphere had bled away.
No going back now.
A miniature Occam shimmered into being beside Hitori. The tiny version crouched low, and wrapped its hand around a colossal lever that stretched across the floor like an old fashioned track switch.
“Once you disengage the lock, you’ll be able to lift the gate.”
Arthur watched the miniature Occam perform the action twice more.
“And if the door still doesn’t open?”
The rendering blinked away.
“Then we’ll try something else. One thing at a time.”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Arthur?” Mina’s voice cut through the comms. “Everything okay?”
“We’re handling it,” Hitori answered before Arthur could speak. The channel clicked shut, “move.”
Arthur bent low. When Occam’s fingers closed around the lever, a sudden weight dropped into the sticks—something he was finally beginning to recognize. He heaved. The lever ground, then gave, turning ninety degrees—the floor rumbled like a lock tumbler.
The rumble paused. Began again. Then stopped.
“What’s happening?”
When Hitori didn’t immediately reply, Arthur reached for the coms to hail the Razor.
“It’s jammed,” Hitori said at last. “See the lip below?”
Arthur squinted, spotting a faint gap where the gate rose from the floor.
“You’ll have to lift it manually.”
Arthur’s throat went dry. “What about the engine? I thought the power was diverted—”
“Looks like there wasn’t enough power after all.”
“Did we do something wrong?”
“You forget that Daiko Hitori was unable to test the opening mechanism because he’d exhaust the power necessary to re-stabalize the atmosphere.
Arthur stared at the lip, disbelief prickling. Daiko had planned for everything except the door?
“What are you waiting for?” Hitori pressed. “Hands under the gate. Pull.”
Arthur dragged his gaze up the titanic wall. The gate could swallow a ship whole, it must’ve weighed tons.
“You’re forgetting about the lack of gravity. Occam is more than strong enough to push past the mechanism.” Hitori said.
Arthur crouched, setting his hands beneath the lip but when he tried to lift, it didn’t budge.
He shook his hands out, amused for a moment as through the HUD he saw Occam’s hands mimic the movement. Then he regripped the lip.
“With your legs this time.”
Arthur looked through the cockpit below at Occam crouched, hips very near his heels like he was about to snatch a barbell from the ground.
Right. With my legs.
He felt into the grieves around his shins, tapped the pedals to align his hips, and with a grunt stood with as much speed as he could muster.
The gate rocketed skyward, so fast Arthur barely released before it slammed into its casing. Metal shrieked. The entire ceiling rippled outward, lamps bursting, panels peeling. Then the ceiling itself cracked and sagged, drifting downward in the dead air like a sheared glacier.
“Damnit,” Hitori’s voice sharpened, “launch!”
Arthur froze, staring at the descending ruin. It would crush everything.
“Launch!” Hitori barked again.
A blue light lit the back wall of the hangar as the Razor’s boosters came to life. Arthur felt another rumble beneath his feet as the release was triggered and the Razor barreled toward the door—toward him.
“You’ll have to jump on.”
Arthur’s hands jerked, “What—”
“Now!”
The Razor hit the gate threshold. That phantom tug pulled his sticks, and Arthur obeyed. There was a crash, and then tumbling chaos.
Occam clung to the Razor’s nose, both arms braced across the hull, one foot jammed against the spoiler. The ship cartwheeled through the void, and Arthur with it, riding like a rodeo fool hanging on for dear life.
The dashboard blazed red with alarms. Symbols tilted and swam until the HUD rotated itself upright, trying to make sense of his perspective.
Hitori appeared front and center, cutting through the noise.
“Correct trajectory—twenty-two degrees. Follow the commands.”
Arthur’s heart hammered. He’d just set those command queues, but now the process felt completely foreign. His eyes slid to the proximity alert: a dotted red line projecting their path, screaming toward a looming asteroid. A timer bled in the corner: 0:52.
“Hitori, we’re going to cra—”
“Follow the commands!”
Arthur tried the maneuvers he practiced, but he was pinned to the wrong side of the hull.
“On your belly. Flip!”
Arthur obeyed, but the moment he let go of the Razor, its propulsion ripped it from under him. He spun loose into open black, alone.
The blue outline of the Razor’s boosters dwindled ahead. Panic surged with the shrieking alarms. The proximity alert split: one line veering wide with him, the other showing the Razor barreling toward the asteroid. The timer read twenty nine seconds.
It was over. He hadn’t realized failure could come so fast. He’d only just lifted the gate and now… Everything had happened so fast.
A growl tore into his ear, dragging him back.
“Focus. We need to save the Razor. Adjusting trajectory—you’ll have one shot.”
Arthur watched Occam’s miniature rendering land and push off a nearby asteroid then bee line straight to the Razor.
Arthur felt the tug as new commands loaded, twisting his sticks part of the way toward the smaller asteroid. He leaned into the suggestion.
“Repulsor wells fully loaded. Inertia dampeners engaged. Land and jump, Arthur. Land and jump.”
Everything spun.
“Hitori, I don’t know—”
“Eyes on the Razor. You’ll make it.”
Arthur locked onto the shrinking blue thrusters. Occam’s feet slammed into the asteroid as a glittering command string raced across the HUD with thirteen seconds to go.
Repulsors roared, pressing Arthur back in his seat despite the dampeners.
Eyes on the Razor.
He stared ahead, tears streaming down his face as the Razor grew large against the backdrop of a skyscraper-dark asteroid, swallowing the stars. He glanced at the timer.
8 seconds.
The repulsors cut out, and Arthur spread his arms wide.
3 seconds.
Contact. The sticks wrenched as Occam’s grip clamped the Razor’s hull. Commands cascaded, firing repulsors to drag their course aside.
But not enough. The asteroid still filled his HUD save for the sliver of open space to the very right side. Arthur leaned to the right, yelling with every ounce of strength he had, pulling the Razor and Occam into a barrel roll.
“Impact!” Hitori barked.
Arthur braced, eyes shut as the collision came like the screech of metal on stone—but it was brief. The alarms cut out. Silence pooled in the cockpit, so deep Arthur wondered if everything till now had been a dream.
“Adjust repulsors. Take us to cruising speed,” Hitori said.
It took a beat for Arthur to realize Hitori was speaking to him. When he did, he scrambled to comply, fingers clumsy but finding the right sequence. The Razor’s nose aligned, their trajectory steadyed, and Occam fit snug against the hull exactly where he’d intended to be all along.
He’d done it. Somehow.
Minutes passed before Arthur trusted himself to breathe again. He finally took in the sight beyond the HUD—space stretching endless all around him, studded with stars sharp as glass. Compared to this, the hangar had been a bottle, stale and finite. Out here, he felt small. Smaller than ever before.
The crew!
Arthur reached for the coms, but the holo vanished beneath his finger.
“They’re fine,” Hitori said, “shaken, but fine.”
Arthur sagged with relief, lungs burning as though he’d been holding back air.
“You adjusted well at the end,” Hitori added, “your instincts preserved the Razor, and Daiko’s dream.”
He hadn’t failed. Not yet.
The nav display confirmed it: two days to Quay. Two days with a liter and a half of water, three goo tubes, and a bucket. The thought almost made him laugh.
One by one, the holos retreated to the corners of the cockpit, until only Occam’s miniature rendering remained. Arthur let himself lean back, and stretch.
“Now,” Hitori said, voice mechanical, “let’s review what went wrong.”
Arthur stifled a groan. He wanted to argue but knew little would come of it. So he leaned forward, and watched a replay of the launch, of every decision he made, and became acutely aware of how close he’d come to ruining everything.
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