Trapped: Chaos Core Book 1 by Randolph Lalonde

pieces sticking out when she tried to
cradle his head in it, and it came away covered in blood. He was
bleeding profusely everywhere. Aspen’s mind raced as she tried to
find a way to save him. There were emergency kits aboard, but there
was nothing that could help him there, and she knew for a fact that
there were no automatic medical treatment systems aboard. If they
were ever present, they were ripped out to make room for luxury
cabins.
    He reached up and
caressed her face. “It’s okay,” he breathed, pain creasing his
forehead. “We were together. I can’t believe you got us out. I
did okay? I didn’t slow you down?”
    “You were perfect,”
Aspen said, kissing his forehead and brushing his hair from his face.
“Rest, just rest. There must be an emergency kit here, maybe
something to slow this down.” She started to get out from under him
but he gripped her tunic. She let herself be dragged down to kiss
him, and tasted blood on his lips.
    He looked to the
cockpit window and saw space. “I’m free,” he said. “I’m
free with you,” he struggled with another breath.
    “You’re free,”
Aspen said. “I love you so much, Larken.”
    “Love you too, always
loved you,” he said. “Find someone who-“ he struggled.
    “Shh,” she said,
brushing her lips against his. She didn’t want to be told to move
on.
    “-makes you laugh,”
he finished. “I always loved watching you laugh. And don’t let
her get you.” He breathed. “I…” His chest quaked, his hand
gripped hers hard, and he breathed rapidly, blood gurgling in his
chest and sputtering through his lips. There was panic in his eyes.
    “Larken, I love you,
I’m so sorry I did this. I love you.”
    His eyes finally lost
focus, he stopped breathing and he fell limp. Aspen stared at his
face. This would be how she would remember him, she knew from
experience. When the artificial intelligences took over and killed
most of the people in the Countess’s household she saw people she
grew up with die, and no matter how wonderful those people were, she
could only ever remember their faces as they were in the throes of
panic or fear.
    Larken would forever
look like he was in pain and afraid. She wouldn’t remember holding
his hand in the garden when they were children, without recalling how
he clutched hers as his body failed him. Memories of staring
contests, and nose-to-nose closeness where they would look into each
other’s eyes would conjure up a memory of his dead gaze.
    The navigational
computer beeped, indicating that the emergency jump coordinates were
calculated and the ship was in position. There were alerts on the
combat scanner’s screen – ships were coming to get them. Aspen
slowly got to her feet, crossed to the console and confirmed that she
wanted to make the jump and the ship began hyper-accelerating into a
wormhole of its own creation.
    Aspen checked all the
security systems to make sure there was no one else aboard, cut power
to the transponder and curled up in the back corner of the cockpit.
“I got out,” she whispered to herself. “But I left half of me
behind.” Not for the first time, Aspen wished her tear ducts would
allow her to cry. Her sobs came anyway, so hard that her stomach and
ribs hurt by the time she felt numb.

07
    Spin slowly realized
that she had to make sure she had full control of the ship, then get
rid of the pilot. Half numb to the world around her, she went through
the motions of adding herself into the system then crashing the
security software, taking the seconds it took for it to restart to
add herself as the new captain. If the main console weren’t already
unlocked, she wouldn’t have been able to do it, but the pilot was
busy getting the ship ready for take-off when she killed him.
    “You’re going to
spin in space forever, asshole,” she said to him as she turned the
seat towards the door and pushed him face first onto the deck. “I’ll
have to write something on your forehead just in