The crew has drifted from the mess table to their berths, like planets spinning out from an extinguished star. They were still laughing as they went, making worse and wilder guesses about why I chose tonight to break out that bottle of scotch they all thought I was going to take to my grave.

I only drank a sip of it myself. Couldn’t risk it loosening my tongue – couldn’t let them get the answer out of me. Just a sip, enough that I could still smile back at them while thinking of how unfair it all is.

Ren, almost too tipsy to stay on her feet, promised to take another look at the comm tomorrow, solder whatever wire’s loose and get us talking to the galaxy again. I smiled somehow, fuck, somehow, and didn’t tell her I was the one who’d scrapped the comm in the first place.

Ten minutes after the last broadcast came through. Ten minutes of sitting and trying to think of some other way, while the comm purred and the galaxy didn’t listen to how unfair it is.

We’re a small crew, a tiny ship. Everything we do is illegal, but only like littering in a consortium station is illegal. There are only two ways we could have wound up with a red-class warrant slapped on us. One is that some newly-elected, tough-on-crime political suit is trying to make a point. The other, much more likely, I think, is that someone set us up somehow. We’re taking the fall for someone else, but it won’t make any difference to how hard we hit bottom.

We can’t outrun a red mark like that. We could try, could probably run them a hell of a chase, but it would still only make for a good hunting story in the end. And they would make us pay for it.

If I tell the crew, they’ll say let them try. Death before detainment and all that. But they don’t know how these things work, how deep those marks can cut. I’ve seen.

I’ve seen, and I can’t let that happen to them. Do you understand? I led them this far, led them out here, and it’s my responsibility to lead them to the safest port still available. Even if that means carrying an empty bottle with me as I walk to the cockpit, leaving it to stand like a blind, whistling night watch on the console. Taking one last look at the dark comm screen, our voice already silenced to the galaxy, then stooping in the clutter underneath to find the wires that will let me tear loose all last-ditch safeguards and throttle the oxygen enough that my friends and crewmates sleeping blissfully in their berths will never wake.