Hellfire - Tyranny

Chapter 2-2

Drake yawned as he entered his cabin. He’d been on the go for far too many hours without a break but it had still taken Sonia chasing him off the bridge to agree to grab a couple of hours of sleep.

With everything that had happened recently he felt he needed to be overseeing things the whole time, just in case. Sonia had put him straight, pushing at him until he finally saw sense.

Truth be told, he did need to rest. Things had been quiet so far and Sonia could handle anything that came up. Drake would be much more likely to be needed as they drew close to their destination and he needed to get some sleep before that happened.

He felt quite good as the door closed behind him. His bed was calling, he was more than tired enough to crash out, and there were no emergencies.

As he moved toward the bed his eyes happened to flicker across the bookshelf. They brushed the image of a tranquil mountain scene and locked rigid, seeing through it to the picture of Catherine hidden on the back where no one could see it.

Drake’s stomach clenched, a huge weight settled onto his chest, and tears pricked at his eyes. He struggled to pull air into his lungs and a part of him was glad for the struggle. Why bother to breathe? Catherine was gone. Gone forever. What was the point in carrying on?

He wanted her back so badly. It wasn’t fair! How could she be gone from the universe? How could she not be out there, going from ship to ship as fancy took her?

Despite knowing full well she was gone he struggled to accept there’d never be another smiling video message telling him her latest plans, or how things had all fallen apart but she’d found the most wonderful opportunity instead. Always happy. Always upbeat. Always smiling.

He might have found it easier if he still had those messages, or even just some of them, but they were gone. Destroyed by the Azimuth when it came to claim him. The messages on his tablet were also destroyed by the hellship, to its great pleasure. The backup copies on his old ship were already gone by that point, lost as his ship was ripped apart by the Azimuth.

He did have something though. Drake’s eyes shifted to the secure locker under his bed, but the thought of opening it filled him with panic. His heartbeat rocketed and he struggled to force breaths down. No. He wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. He shied away from the question of when he would be, not wanting to set a deadline and equally unwilling to admit the time might never come.

He stumbled to his bed and dropped onto it, turned the lights off, and curled up around the pain in his chest. He wasn’t Captain Drake of the Dagger, not at that moment. He was just Solander Drake, older brother of Catherine Drake. Just someone whose heart had been shattered into a thousand pieces which could never be repaired. And nothing in the universe would ever make things right again.