Front Runner

22,690 AD

Aboard Shuttlecraft, Near the Center of the Galaxy

The cold hiss of the cryopods stirred Rosco from his deep slumber, his senses slowly reconnecting with reality. The Intelligence Protocols woke the two, deeming that they had reached a safe enough distance from the moon.

Rosco sat up slowly, his chest heavy with unprocessed emotions. He glanced at Amadeus, who was emerging from his own cryosleep, eyes red and sunken. There was a quiet between them—an oppressive silence that felt heavier than the weightlessness outside the shuttle.

Neither of them spoke for a while. Rosco busied himself with the console, checking diagnostics, anything to avoid the conversation he knew was coming. His fingers moved with mechanical precision, but his mind was a storm of unresolved guilt and pain.

Amadeus, however, wasn’t one to let things lie.

"You’re really not going to talk about it, are you?" Amadeus said quietly, though his voice carried a sharp edge.

Rosco froze for a moment, his hands hovering above the controls. He wanted to say something, anything to deflect. But he couldn’t find the words.

"You’re going to pretend like none of it happened. Like we didn’t just watch Inez die. Like Invictus wasn’t just blown to hell. Like Roland didn’t—"

"Stop." Rosco muttered, his voice barely above a whisper.

"No!" Amadeus snapped, his tone rising with the pent-up frustration. "You don’t get to just shut down, Rosco. Not this time."

Rosco finally turned to face him, his expression closed off, his jaw tight. He hated this. Hated being confronted like this. But Amadeus’ eyes were filled with something that cut deeper than anger—it was pain. Desperation.

"You think you can just be a robot, huh?" Amadeus continued, voice trembling. "Just shut it all off, push it all down, and act like you don’t feel anything. But that’s bullshit, Rosco. You can’t… you can’t do that to me. Not now."

Rosco clenched his fists, his emotions swirling beneath the surface, threatening to break through. "I’m not trying to—"

"Yes, you are!" Amadeus cut him off, his voice shaking now. "You are! And it’s killing me, man. I’m lost, okay? I don’t know what the hell we’re even doing anymore. I’m terrified. We’ve lost everyone. Inez, Roland… Invictus. It’s all gone. And I feel like I’m drowning in this grief, and you… you’re just sitting there, like none of it even touches you."

Rosco felt something crack inside him. His throat tightened, and for a moment, he couldn’t breathe. He looked down, staring at his own hands, unable to meet Amadeus’ eyes. The truth was, he didn’t know how to talk about it. Didn’t know how to process everything that had happened.

"Amadeus…" he began, his voice hoarse. "I’m not good with this. I never have been."

"Why?" Amadeus demanded, his voice softening, but still laced with pain. "I need to understand, Rosco. I need to know that you’re feeling this too."

Rosco inhaled deeply, fighting back the rising tide of emotions that he’d kept buried for so long. He didn’t want to talk about it. He hated talking about it. But as he stood there, staring at Amadeus—his friend, the only person he had left—he realized he couldn’t keep running from it.

"It’s… hard for me." Rosco finally admitted, his voice raw. "It’s hard because I don’t know how to feel any of this without breaking. I learned a long time ago that it’s easier to just… not. To push it down. To keep moving forward and not let it in."

Amadeus waited, listening closely now, his anger melting away into something more fragile.

"My father…" Rosco continued, his voice barely audible now. "He was a Union Deep Space Navy officer. He died during the war, went down with his ship out in the Belt. I respected him. He was everything I thought humanity should be. Strong. Dedicated. He believed in something bigger than himself. Fought for it. He was what I wanted to be."

Rosco swallowed hard, the memories flooding back like a tidal wave. He hadn’t spoken about this in years.

"When he died… it destroyed my mom. She couldn’t function. She was barely there, and I was just a kid, trying to figure out how to hold it all together. I wanted to talk to her, tell her how much it hurt, but I couldn’t. She was too broken. So I just… didn’t. I took everything and stuffed it down. It became easier to just not talk about it. Easier to carry it alone."

Amadeus’ expression softened, the tension in his shoulders easing. He hadn’t known. He hadn’t realized just how much Rosco had been carrying, all this time.

"I’m sorry…" Rosco whispered, his voice breaking. "I’m sorry I shut you out. It’s just… it’s all I know how to do."

Amadeus stared at him for a long moment, processing everything. Slowly, he shook his head, a small, sad smile tugging at his lips. "I get it, man. I do. But you don’t have to carry all this alone. Not anymore."

Rosco blinked, his eyes stinging with unshed tears. He hadn’t realized just how much he needed to hear those words.

"I need you to make me a promise, Rosco," Amadeus continued, his voice soft but steady. "I need you to promise me you’ll stick with me for whatever comes next."

Rosco hesitated, the weight of Amadeus’ words pressing down on him. He wasn’t used to making promises like this—promises that carried so much emotional weight. But he could see it in Amadeus’ eyes. His friend needed this. Needed to feel like he wasn’t alone.

"Okay." Rosco said quietly, nodding. "I promise. We’ll stick together. We’ll get through this. Whatever’s coming, we’ll face it as a team."

Amadeus exhaled, his shoulders relaxing as if the tension had finally bled out of him. He gave Rosco a small, grateful nod. "That’s all I needed, man."

Rosco offered a faint smile in return, feeling the knot in his chest loosen just a little. It wasn’t much. It wasn’t a perfect resolution. But it was a start.

Amadeus, feeling a wave of relief wash over him, moved on to their current situation.

"So…What do we do now?"

Rosco sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. "We’re running low on options. The only real goal we had was to get away from that moon, but… now what?"

They both stared out the window, as if waiting for some miracle answer to appear in the distant stars.

Amadeus cleared his throat, trying to keep his tone steady. "What about… finding the other Front Runner vessels? Invictus might be gone, but Adamu and Venutia—"

"We have no idea where they are…" Rosco interrupted softly. "No contact. Nothing. They could have been destroyed right after us for all we know. We’d be searching blind. They could be anywhere in the galaxy."

Amadeus ran his hands through his hair in frustration. "So what then? Go back to the moon? Maybe the bunker—"

“You saw what that ship was about to do to the colony.” Rosco cut him off, his voice firmer now. "That bunker wouldn’t have saved us and it can’t save us now."

Amadeus fell silent, his mind racing but coming up short every time. He hated the feeling—the crushing weight of hopelessness settling over him like a heavy shroud. For a moment, he almost wanted to give up. But he couldn’t. Not after everything they’d been through.

"What if…" Amadeus spoke hesitantly, almost afraid of the answer. "What if there’s a habitable planet somewhere nearby?"

Rosco perked up slightly, looking over at the console. "Now that might be possible…" He said, cautiously. "But remember, our star maps are based on pre-departure data from 20,000 years ago. We don’t know how much the galaxy has changed. It’s a long shot."

Still, they had to try. Rosco inquired with the Intelligence Protocols.

"Are there any records of habitable planets within a reasonable distance from our current location?"

The response came immediately, the cold voice of the protocols filling the cabin.

“AVAILABLE STAR MAPS INDICATE A POSSIBLY HABITABLE PLANET APPROXIMATELY NINE LIGHT YEARS FROM CURRENT POSITION. HOWEVER, ACCURACY OF DATA CANNOT BE VERIFIED.”

Amadeus let out a low whistle. "Nine light years, huh? That’s… not exactly close."

Rosco’s eyes darkened as he quickly ran the calculations. "It’s not." He said quietly. "We can barely hit a fraction of a percent of light speed. At maximum velocity… it would take us 90,000 years to get there."

Amadeus’s heart sank. "Ninety… thousand years?"

Rosco nodded grimly. The enormity of the number hit both of them like a tidal wave. The thought of spending that long in cryosleep—if the shuttle even made it that far—was beyond comprehension.

"And if we don’t go?" Amadeus asked, his voice betraying the growing sense of desperation.

Rosco shook his head slowly. "If we stay here, we’ll run out of supplies eventually. We’ll starve, or suffocate. There’s nowhere else to go. No other options."

They sat there for what felt like an eternity, the weight of the decision looming over them like a shadow.

Amadeus was the first to speak again, his voice trembling. "So… we have to do it then, don’t we? We have to just throw ourselves into the void like that?"

Rosco looked over at his friend, and for a moment, the fear in his own chest flared up. The thought of stepping into those cryopods again—knowing that this time, they might never wake up—it was enough to make his hands tremble. But what other choice did they have?

"We don’t have a choice." Rosco finally said. "We program the Protocols to get us there, and… hope. That's all we have left."

Amadeus rubbed his face, trying to hold back the tears that threatened to spill over. "Hope…" he muttered, his voice hollow. "That’s not exactly reassuring."

Rosco sighed, his own emotions bubbling just beneath the surface. "I know." he admitted softly.

For a long moment, they just sat there, stalling for time—not wanting to get into the pods again. The fear was palpable, gnawing at both of them, but there was also a strange sense of acceptance. This was it. The end of the line.

They had no way of knowing what would happen. No way of knowing if the cryopods would hold, if their bodies would survive the eons. They didn’t know if the habitable world even existed. They didn’t know if they’d ever wake up.

But as Rosco stared out into the stars, he felt something shift inside him. A quiet resignation. They had come so far, survived so much. To give up now would be a betrayal of everything they had fought for. This was their last ditch effort. They would throw themselves headfirst into the abyss, and whatever came next… they would face it together.

"Let’s get this over with." Rosco said finally, standing from the console. He looked at Amadeus, his expression somber but resolute. "We program the Protocols and get back into the pods."

Amadeus swallowed hard, his throat tight with emotion. "Yeah." He whispered. "Let’s do it."

Together, they set to work, their movements mechanical but steady. The Protocols were programmed to guide the shuttle on the long journey through space, to keep them safe, to wake them if they ever reached their destination.

The two of them stood side by side, looking at the cryopods—those cold, unfeeling machines that had already claimed years of their lives. Now, they might claim all that was left.

Rosco glanced at Amadeus, his heart heavy with unspoken words. "You ready?"

Amadeus laughed weakly, shaking his head. "Hell no, but let’s do it anyway."

They climbed into their respective pods, each of them acutely aware that this might be the last time they saw each other. The soft hum of the machines as they began to boot up filled the cabin, and the eerie, sterile light of the shuttle dimmed around them.

Rosco looked across at Amadeus, catching his gaze one last time before the lids closed. There was fear in his eyes, but also something else—a flicker of hope. However small, however faint… it was there.

"See you on the other side." Rosco whispered, his voice wavering slightly.

Amadeus nodded, his eyes glassy. "Yeah, Rosco. See you on the other side."

The cryopods sealed shut, and as the darkness closed in around them, the two of them were left with only their thoughts. The cold, inescapable truth settled over them as they slipped into the deep, dreamless sleep of cryostasis.

They had thrown themselves into the abyss, hoping it wouldn’t swallow them whole.

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