The medical bay was quieter than Jessica had expected. She'd imagined something clinical and sterile, but the ship had adapted the space to feel less threatening...softer lighting, walls that curved instead of cornered, even what might have been music playing at a frequency just below conscious hearing.

  Deke lay on the medical platform, his arm suspended in some kind of regeneration field that glowed a soft blue. The area shimmered like heat over pavement, knitting muscle fiber in microscopic pulses. The bite wound looked worse now than it had on Pyros Tertius...angry red with burns around the edges where superheated air had rushed through the torn suit material. The ship's medical systems were working on it, knitting flesh and treating thermal damage simultaneously, but it would take time.

  Khamm had administered something for the pain, and Deke's eyes had that slightly unfocused quality of someone riding the edge between consciousness and chemical peace.

  Maddie sat beside him, holding his good hand. She'd barely left his side since they'd returned to the ship. Jessica stood near the door, giving them space but unable to leave entirely. Vorrin had taken the male Snarric to Orryx for transfer into the prepared habitat, and Khamm had disappeared somewhere...probably to process the mission's failure in private.

  "Wasn't supposed to go like that," Deke mumbled, his words slightly slurred. "Had a plan. Good plan. Grab 'em both, get out clean, prove I could handle it."

  "You did handle it," Maddie said gently. "You saved one. That counts."

  "Killed one too. Hero and villain all in the same moment." He blinked slowly, fighting to focus. "Math doesn't work out in my favor there."

  "It was an accident."

  "Yeah." He was quiet for a moment, staring at the ceiling. "They weren't kids."

  Maddie frowned. "What?"

  "The storm. On Earth. I said I saved kids. A boy and a girl, trapped in a flooding house." Deke's voice was getting quieter, the pain medication pulling him toward confession. "Wasn't kids. Was kittens."

  Jessica felt her breath catch. She moved closer without meaning to.

  "There was this house," Deke continued, his words coming slower now. "Water rising fast. I heard this sound, this crying. Thought it was a kid at first. Went in through a window, water up to my chest. Found them in a cabinet on the second floor...two kittens, maybe six weeks old, scared out of their minds. Their mom must've been trying to keep them safe when..." He trailed off.

  "You went into a flooding building for cats?" Maddie asked, and there was no judgment in her voice, just wonder.

  "Yeah. Stupid, right? Should've been helping people, doing something useful. But I heard them crying and I just..." He made a helpless gesture with his good hand. "Couldn't leave them. Got them out, found a dry spot, and made sure they were okay. Then the big surge hit, and I got caught in it. Next thing I knew, I was waking up on this ship."

  Tears were streaming down Maddie's face, but she was smiling. "That's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard."

  Deke looked confused. "It's pathetic. The General would've... he'd have said it was weak. Risking your life for animals when there were people who needed help. Not manly. Not..."

  "Stop," Maddie interrupted firmly. "Just stop. You risked your life to save two helpless creatures that were scared and alone. You heard something suffering, and you ran toward it, not away. That's not weak. That's... that's everything good about being human."

  "I lied about it, though," Deke said, his eyes starting to drift closed. "Made up the kids. Made it sound more heroic. Less embarrassing."

  "You were embarrassed about being kind?" Jessica asked.

  "About being soft," he corrected. "The General raised me to be tough. Strong. To make hard calls and not let feelings get in the way. And there I was, risking my neck for a couple of cats because I couldn't stand hearing them cry."

  The regeneration field pulsed, and Deke winced slightly as it worked on the deeper tissue damage.

  "You know what I think?" Maddie said, squeezing his hand. "I think you're exactly the kind of person who should be on this mission. Not despite saving those kittens...because of it. You see something suffering, and you can't help but try to fix it. Even when it's dangerous. Even when it might not work. Even when people tell you it's stupid or weak."

  "I killed the female Snarric," Deke reminded her, his voice breaking slightly.

  "You were trying to save them both," Maddie insisted. "And you succeeded with one. You held onto him through everything...the pain, the fear, the guilt. You didn't let go. That male Snarric is alive right now because you cared enough to hold on even when it hurt."

  "Doesn't feel like enough," Deke mumbled, the medication finally pulling him under. "Never feels like enough..."

  His eyes closed, his breathing evened out into something approaching sleep. The medical field continued its work, blue light pulsing in a steady rhythm.

  Maddie wiped her eyes, still holding his hand. "He saved kittens," she said to Jessica, her voice full of emotion. "He saved kittens and thought it was something to be ashamed of."

  "The General sounds like he did a number on him," Jessica observed.

  "Yeah." Maddie looked at Deke's sleeping face. "But he's not the General. He's someone who hears suffering and runs toward it. That's worth more than all the tough-guy posturing in the universe."

  Jessica thought about the male Snarric, alone in his new habitat. About Deke refusing to let go even when his arm was being torn apart. About the strange parallel between saving kittens from a flood and trying to save apex predators from extinction.

  Both born from the same instinct...the inability to turn away from suffering.

  Maybe Maddie was right. Maybe that was what this mission required.

  She left them there...Maddie keeping vigil, Deke sleeping off the pain and the confession. She had her own conversations to pursue.

  *  *  *

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  She found Orryx in his workshop, a space she hadn't visited before. It was part laboratory, part repair bay, with tools and equipment scattered across workbenches in organized chaos. The male Snarric's habitat was visible through a transparent wall, and she could see the creature pacing the perimeter, testing boundaries, searching for something that was no longer there.

  Orryx sat at a workbench, his prosthetic and natural hand working in tandem as he disassembled one of the capture cubes. Components were spread across the surface, and his scanner displayed code or schematics that Jessica couldn't begin to understand.

  "How's Deke?" he asked without looking up.

  "Confessing his sins to Maddie," Jessica said, moving closer. "Turns out he's softer than he pretends to be."

  "Most people are." Orryx adjusted something with a precision tool. "The ones who work hardest to appear tough are usually the most fragile underneath. It's why they need the armor."

  Jessica watched him work for a moment. "What are you doing?"

  "Looking for the vulnerability. The opposition disabled our cubes remotely, which means there's an exploit in the system...a backdoor or override protocol that Thessarn and the others know about." His prosthetic hand held a component steady while his natural hand probed it with the scanner. "I'm trying to find it and patch it. Though knowing Thessarn, he's probably left several exploits, not just one."

  "You sound like you know him well."

  "I did. We worked together for almost two years." Orryx set down the scanner, his expression thoughtful. "Thessarn was brilliant...still is, presumably. Strategic, patient, always thinking three moves ahead. He saw patterns others missed. That's what made him so valuable to the mission. It's also what made him so dangerous when he left."

  "Why did he leave?" Jessica asked, settling onto a stool near the workbench. "I mean, I know the philosophical reasons. But what was the actual breaking point?"

  Orryx was quiet for a long moment, his hands stilling on the components. "There was a rescue that went wrong. Not unlike the Snarrics, actually. A breeding pair of flighted creatures from a world experiencing atmospheric collapse. Beautiful things...wings like gossamer, songs that could make you weep."

  He picked up another component, turning it over in his hands. "We captured them successfully, brought them aboard, and transferred them to their habitat. Everything by the book. But one of them...the male...couldn't adapt to captivity. He kept trying to fly higher than the habitat allowed, and kept crashing into the barriers. We tried everything...adjusted the space, modified the gravity, even introduced environmental enrichments to distract him. Nothing worked."

  "What happened?"

  "He flew himself to death. Literally. Just kept throwing himself at the barriers until his body gave out. The female watched the whole thing. When he finally died, she stopped eating. Stopped moving. Just sat on the perch we'd built for her and faded. Gone within a week."

  Jessica felt her chest tighten. "That's horrible."

  "It broke something in Thessarn. He'd been the one to capture them, to assure everyone they'd be fine. When they died, he took it personally. Started questioning everything we were doing. Khamm tried to help him through it, but..." Orryx shook his head. "Sometimes grief and guilt combine into something that can't be reasoned with. He left not long after and took a few others with him. Stole one of the shuttles from the hangar and flew off into the void. Formed the opposition."

  "Was Kaelan one of them?"

  "Kaelan." Orryx's voice shifted, taking on a quality Jessica couldn't quite identify. "No, Kaelan wasn't rescued. He was crew. Original crew, actually. Before my time."

  Jessica sat up straighter. "Really?"

  "He was hired as the habitat specialist...someone who understood ecosystems, could design environments that would actually support rescued species instead of just containing them. He taught me everything I know about caring for them." Orryx's prosthetic hand traced patterns on the workbench. "He was good at it. Not just competent...exceptional. He could read animal behavior like it was written language, could predict needs before they became problems."

  "So why did he leave?"

  "Philosophy." Orryx set down the component he'd been examining. "He believed that removing creatures from their natural environments, no matter how well-crafted the artificial one, was fundamentally wrong. That we were prioritizing our need to save things over the creatures' right to exist naturally...or to die naturally."

  "But he stayed for a while," Jessica observed. "If he felt that way from the beginning..."

  "He didn't feel that way from the beginning." Orryx's expression was complicated. "Or maybe he did and convinced himself otherwise. It's hard to say. We were..." He paused, seeming to choose his words carefully. "Close. Worked together every day for over a year. He taught me to see what the rescued creatures needed, and I taught him to appreciate the machinery that kept everything running. We made a good team."

  The way he said it made Jessica wonder about the nature of that closeness, but she didn't push.

  "After the flighted creatures died," Orryx continued, "Kaelan started talking differently about the mission. Questioning things he'd accepted before. He and Thessarn spent a lot of time together, reinforcing each other's doubts. Eventually, Kaelan decided he couldn't stay. Said every day he spent maintaining these habitats was another day of contributing to imprisonment disguised as salvation."

  "That must have been hard," Jessica said quietly.

  "It was." Orryx picked up his scanner again, focusing on the cube components with perhaps more intensity than necessary. "But I understood his reasoning, even if I didn't agree with it. That's the problem with this whole situation...everyone has valid points. Kaelan isn't wrong that captivity changes creatures, potentially harms them in ways we can't fully measure. Thessarn isn't wrong that being rescued without consent carries its own trauma. But Khamm isn't wrong either...that extinction is permanent and preservation, however imperfect, gives species a chance to continue."

  "So what do we do?" Jessica asked. "How do we navigate a situation where everyone's partially right and partially wrong?"

  "Carefully. Thoughtfully. With the awareness that we're going to make mistakes and cause harm even when we're trying to prevent it." Orryx held up a small component. "Like this exploit. Thessarn left it deliberately, knowing we'd eventually discover it. When we patch it, he'll find another. It's not about stopping us permanently...it's about forcing us to question every action, to hesitate, to acknowledge that we might be wrong."

  He set the component back down. "The difference between us and them is that we're willing to try despite the uncertainty. They've decided that trying causes more harm than not trying, so they've chosen inaction. Both positions are defensible. Both are also flawed."

  Jessica thought about Deke, holding onto the male Snarric despite his arm being torn apart. About Maddie's tears when she learned he'd saved kittens. About the female Snarric falling into the lava while her mate tried to follow.

  "I don't know how to feel about any of this anymore," she admitted.

  "Good," Orryx said, and there was approval in his voice. "Certainty is dangerous. It makes you stop questioning, stop adapting. The moment you're absolutely sure you're right is the moment you've stopped being careful."

  Through the transparent wall, the male Snarric had stopped pacing. He'd found a heated section of volcanic rock and settled onto it, his body language radiating exhaustion and loss. He looked small somehow, despite being an apex predator. Just a creature alone in an unfamiliar place, mourning something he didn't have the language to express.

  "Will he adapt?" Jessica asked.

  "Maybe. Some do. Some don't." Orryx followed her gaze to the Snarric. "But thanks to Deke's refusal to let go, he has the chance to try. That's more than he'd have had if we'd done nothing."

  "And less than he'd have had if we'd done it perfectly."

  "Yes." Orryx returned to his work on the cube. "That's the weight we carry. Every mission is a balance between something and nothing, between harm and hope. We do our best and accept that our best is often inadequate."

  Jessica watched him work, his hands...one organic, one mechanical...moving in perfect synchronization as he tried to patch a vulnerability that would probably be exploited in some new way the next time they attempted a rescue.

  Trying to save things that might not want to be saved.

  Using technology that had been deliberately compromised by people who used to be friends.

  Carrying the weight of partial successes and complete failures with equal measure.

  "Orryx?" she said quietly.

  "Hm?"

  "Do you regret it? Being here, doing this, knowing it's all so complicated and uncertain?"

  He stopped working, considering the question seriously. "Every day," he admitted. "And every day I wake up and choose to continue anyway. Because regret and purpose aren't mutually exclusive. You can doubt everything you're doing and still believe it's worth doing. That's not weakness. That's wisdom."

  Through the wall, the male Snarric shifted slightly, his eyes closing. Resting, if not at peace. Alive, if not happy. Saved, if not whole.

  It wasn't perfect.

  But it was something.