“Now that we’re all set up, we’re going to start at the beginning. We’re going to ask you some simple questions first, just to acquire a baseline. Please state your full name.”

“Samford Rowen Larsen. But no one calls me Samford except for my grandfather, and you can blame him for that ah – unique – family name too.”

“Please keep your answers direct Mr. Larsen. What is your date of birth?”

“February 29th or March 1st, depending on the year… I know I know, direct answers. Apologies sir.”

“Where were you born?”

“Bozeman, Montana.”

“Where did you attend university?”

“The Naval Academy, Annapolis.”

“And you went straight to space flight training after graduation?”

“No sir. Command Officer training, then flight school.”

“What was the highest rank you held in the military?”

“I was discharged as a Captain.”

“Ok Captain, now to the real questions.”

“I’m not a Captain anymore sir.”

“Noted. Now tell me about the Farragut incident.”

“Slingshot complete sir. We’re gearing up for the final burn.”

“Don’t hold back Lieutenant,” Captain Sam Larsen ordered, leaning over the pilot’s chair in the rather cramped bridge of the SS Farragut, jovially clapping the shoulder of the woman seated there. “We’re going put this new engine through its paces this run, not baby it like we did on the way here.”

“Yes sir.”

“Excellent,” Sam stepped back a foot, just enough so he wasn’t breathing down his pilot’s neck, but close enough for a prime view. He had a seat of his own, but it was further back on the bridge, where the view was obstructed by other duty stations. He missed the view from his piloting days. Humanity might be reaching further and further for the stars, but they were still new enough to this frontier for the pristine starscape to be a thing of infinite wonder.

And think, Sam thought, of the view these new kids are going to get if this works.

The Farragut was on the Earth-Mars circuit, testing a new drive system. The engineers said it would cut the travel time by half. Outside the world of theory, Sam thought they’d be lucky to cut the time down by a third. The first half of the trip – Earth to Mars – they’d taken it easy, keeping on the low side of the engine’s tolerance limits, running the engineers ragged as they ran diagnostic after diagnostic to ensure nothing was going wrong. Now that that was out of the way, they’d done a few laps around Mars, letting the planet’s gravity add to their momentum and slingshot them back to Earth. This time they were going to punch it.

“Everyone ready to make history?” he asked with a grin, and was answered by whoops from the assembled bridge crew. “All those stars are about to become a lot closer.” The responses to that were more varied; the stars they were going to visit first (either by name or merely pointing), the little green men they were going to find on any newly discovered planet, or the planets they were going to have named after them.

Larsen allowed them their fun for a few moments – whether in space or in the sea, sailors needed these moments of brevity to keep them sane – before calling everyone back to order. “Back to work everyone. Najmus-Sahar, at your discretion.” Their focus was back in an instant, the crew as well-oiled of machine as the ship they tended to. Sam felt a rush of pride warm him as he observed them work, before turning his attention back to the sea of stars.

There was a part of his heart that ached as the pilot called out successive speed increases, while the view outside remained the same. He knew it was a foolish hope, and that the stars were too far away for his eyes to notice any distance they’d travelled, but he could never quite abandon the sight he’d envisioned after watching television shows during his youth – the stars blazing out into golden streaks in their wake.

“Approaching maximum speed now Captain,” Najmus-Sahar announced, her voice loud and clear over the background prattle of the other officers; the navigators with minor course corrections and the engineers with status reports. “In T minus 3… 2… 1…”

No one ever knew if they reached the target speed or not. Because at that moment, Sam Larsen’s world exploded.

“You haven’t described anything after the engine failure. What happened next?”

“A concussion apparently. That’s all I remember.”

“They say you saved the ship.”

“They say.”

“They still have no idea what caused the malfunction?”

“The official report labels it as inconclusive.”

“I know what the official report says Mr. Larsen. I want to know what you think.”

“All I know is what was in the report sir, I was a bit too busy dying to do an after action investigation.”

“There were rumors that it was sabotage.”

“It wasn’t.”

“That was blunt. What makes you so sure?”

“I know my crew sir, there’s not a person on that ship who would have done that.”

“You know your crew? They’re not your crew anymore.”

“Maybe you’ve never been responsible for people before. If you were, you’d know that it’s a responsibility that never goes away.”

“And yet, you want to join the Osiris Mission as a civilian official? How do you plan to handle that?”

“That’s not my crew. The colonists will be my responsibility.”

“You’re sure you can separate yourself like that? Military command has been your whole life.”

“I’m sure.”

“Let’s get back on track Mr. Larsen. Describe your injury.”

Awareness came back to him slowly. At first he swore he was flying, drifting through the vacuum without a suit, unbothered by the lack of air. He reached out to touch one of the stars, somehow sure it was possible, even when logic told him it was a million miles away. And it worked, the heat of the miniature sun warming his fingers as he cradled it in his palms. He thought of how beautiful it looked, how perfect, before it exploded in his hands, and he screamed as his whole body was engulfed in fire.

Then gravity found him, and he was falling, falling, falling. Even the stars lost their hold on the astral plane, plummeting into nothingness along with him, becoming those bright streaks he had always longed to see. They disappeared one by one, until even the smallest, most distant light had blinked from existence, and he fell in utter blackness, registering his movement only by the wind rushing in his ears.

A lifeline came next, in the form of a rope in blinding white, cutting through the dark as it tumbled towards him. He reached for it, but it slipped through his fingers, curling protectively around his waist. When it was secure he realized his mistake, the bright white revealed as a flash of lightning. The electricity raged through him as the rope cruelly yanked him to a halt, and he snapped in half.

He hit the ground in pieces, and knew that he would never touch the stars again.

Sam opened his eyes with a gasp, which was quickly drowned out by a small scream, followed by a hushing noise. His body felt heavy. Ungainly. There was something… something was missing. But his brain was too lethargic to determine exactly what.

“Sam? Can you hear me son?”

His head turned far too slowly and it took far too much effort. Sam felt like he’d ran a marathon by the end of the small movement. His father was standing there, an arm wrapped around his mother. They were both pale, his father obviously trying to stay strong for his trembling wife. Ah, Sam thought, the screamer and the shusher.

“Dad,” he acknowledged, annoyed to find his tongue was as slow to react as the rest of his body. “I’m back on Earth.” It was a stupid statement – of course he was back on Earth – but he knew his father would get the implied question.

“The Farragut got you back here. But… but you were in medical stasis for a long time…” His dad hesitated, and that’s when Sam knew something was very wrong.

“Oh Sammy,” his mom finally regained enough composure to speak, only to promptly lose it again, collapsing on the edge of the bed, pushing his hair back and kissing his forehead repeatedly. Sam tried to be accommodating about it, and move over a bit to give her more room. But he couldn’t do it. His shoulders shifted, but his legs… his legs…

“Shit,” the word fell from his mouth as he struggled to push himself up on his elbows. “Shit. SHIT.” His mother tried to push him back down, but Sam wasn’t having it, another hurdle added to his troubles. He managed it in the end, finally reaching a position where he could see.

His legs were still there. He just couldn’t feel them.

“It will be alright son,” Dad assured him. “You’re already scheduled for surgery. You will walk again.”

The rational part of him told him to reassure his parents, all optimism and hope. Of course I’ll walk again, he needed to say, I’m not the least bit frightened. Unfortunately, his tongue had a different idea. “The lightning broke me in half,” was all he managed, before passing out once more.

“How many surgeries did you have to repair the damage to your spinal cord?”

“Five.”

“Aside from the final surgery, were any of them even remotely successful?”

“No. You could have shattered every bone below my ribs, and I wouldn’t have noticed.”

“How did you feel after four unsuccessful surgeries? Did you start to lose hope?”

“Not as long as the doctors kept coming to me with new ideas.”

“But the final one was experimental correct? That couldn’t have been reassuring.”

“The last three were experimental. The final one was different because of they used a computer chip to bridge the spinal cord instead of something organic.”

“And it worked perfectly?”

“I walked in here didn’t I?”

“Did you hop right out of bed, or go to rehab?”

“Yes, I went to rehab. I hadn’t walked for months.”

“Then, after all of this, you apply for a government position. One that takes you back into space. Why?”

“There’s more than one way to serve sir. Just because one door closed doesn’t mean there aren’t others still open.”

As a child, he had always climbed to the roof of his house – much to his mom’s horror – to look at the stars. They had always looked so much closer out here. In the cities, covered in lights and pollution, they were lucky to even see a star. It was nothing like out here, where they glittered in the sky like diamonds hung in the night. Now, after coming up here again as an adult and discovering he was angry at the atmosphere for distorting his view, Sam debated whether he’d become spoiled or jaded. Maybe a bit of both, he decided.

“When I came here to ask if you were climbing the walls Captain, I didn’t expect the question to be so literal.” Sam jumped, caught himself, and then slid down the shingles a few feet where he could see into the yard. His former commanding officer, Admiral Benjamin Wilson, was down there, and he looked pissed.

“I’m not a Captain anymore sir,” Sam informed him, not bothering to hide the weariness in his tone. He was getting tired of telling everyone this. He was moving again, shifting to the edge of the roof, dropping over the edge, hands on the gutter and feet on a window sill, navigating back to the ground using handholds afforded by the wall and window. His footing was sure, born out of long practice, and only people who had seen him do this before would have realized how much slower he was now. Once on solid ground once more, Sam turned and walked towards Wilson. His gait was off, obvious proof that his brain was permanently ahead of his legs. “They discharged me after I was undeclared unfit for duty.”

“You think I don’t know that? I signed those damn discharge papers.” Yep, Sam decided, definitely pissed.

“I saw your signature sir, but for some reason you’re here anyway.”

“What, you think you can break your back, disappear to the middle of fucking nowhere, and the world would just forget about you?”

“Honestly? Yes.”

“I was going to send you to Kostrama.”

That stung, and Sam didn’t even bother to hide the fact. He’d pushed hard to get on that mission, as soon as they’d announced the design phase of the project. The engine the Farragut had been testing would have been for the Osiris, had it worked. None of that would be happening now. “Sorry to ruin your dreams. I should have thought of that before I got blown up.”

“I might not be able to put you on report anymore Larsen,” Wilson replied, “but that doesn’t give you free reign to be a smartass.” Sam couldn’t figure out what Wilson wanted from him. Did he want him to fight for his commission back? They both knew that was impossible. Did he want him to break down crying because he hadn’t been tapped for Osiris? That wasn’t going to happen either.

“My apologies sir.” The words had the crisp military diction, complete with a special emphasis on the ‘sir.’ But it still managed to sound sarcastic. “Why are you here, sir?”

“Because if you get off your ass, you can still go.” So he wanted a fight then. If anything, that just made Sam angry. He found he was alone in anger now, for Wilson looked almost sad. The idea that the admiral pitied him made it all even worse.

“You planning on rescinding those discharge papers and forcing a doctor to approve me for duty? Because that’s what it’s going to take.”

“You’re making me regret coming here Larsen.” Wilson sounded peeved again for a moment, before calming. “Kostrama is going to be a colony. You don’t need to be in the military to get on that ship.”

“So you want me to go from sitting on my ass on Earth… to sitting on my ass on Kostrama?”

“I want you to be a leader. That’s what you’re good at.” Wilson held up his hand to stop another rebuttal. “Civilians have leaders too. And I know one who’s hiring.”

( Made with Carrd )