“You’re an idiot,” Rogers said to himself. “You’re a god-damned idiot fool moron stupid idiot.”

The Flagship was really, really big now. The engines would be firing any second. He had to time this right. But he was an engineer; he’d done the calculations for acceleration and inertia and all that. He just wished he hadn’t left the piece of paper with the numbers on them in the control room.

Rogers jumped.

His body flew into the weightlessness of space, and he threw his VMU jets to full blast. He hadn’t done this in a while, however, so he only really succeeded in sending himself into a flat spin that did not at all help his nausea. By the time he got it under control, he’d managed to shoot himself a sizeable distance from the Awesome, and he was more or less on course to get to the hatch. Space seemed awfully big, awfully quiet. Rogers’ own breathing made his ears ring.

Looking at the heads-up-display on his helmet, Rogers saw that he had less air reserves than he’d expected, probably from using them in the flaming control room. That meant he was probably going to have to choose between breathing and making it back inside the Flagship, which was not a choice he was looking forward to making. He hoped everyone inside was alright.

LOW FUEL, said a message that popped up on his HUD.

Glancing back at the Awesome, he could see the engines flaring to life. Full speed would be in just a few seconds. Once he got inside, he’d perhaps have a minute or two before impact. He could see the hatch, a big gaping hole in the side of the ship used by maintainers in case they had to do any external repairs on the escape pod ejectors.

Almost there, Rogers thought. God, it was quiet.

NO, SERIOUSLY, LOW FUEL, said another message on the HUD.

“I know!” Rogers shouted, immediately wishing he hadn’t wasted the oxygen. Just by eyeballing the distance between him and the airlock, he knew he wasn’t going to make it.

With a couple of sequenced button presses inside his touch-sensitive gloves, Rogers began to reroute his oxygen supply to the air vents. His lungs reacted immediately by expanding for more air, but Rogers moderated it as much as he could, tears welling in his eyes from the effort. Why did it always have to be so hard? Lately, it seemed like he was dating hypoxia.

Rogers glanced at the Awesome one last time. He was going to miss that ship. And its crappy paint job.

The artificial gravity of the ship seized him and he crashed to the floor inside the airlock.

Pushing himself to his feet and resisting the urge to take off his helmet—one side of the airlock was still open to space, after all—he stumbled deliriously over to the control panel and started slamming every button that even remotely might be considered the “close the friggin’ airlock” button.