Sparks drift from our outer hull to die in the dark. It’s a damn miracle that we didn’t breach, but it might have been kinder if we had. We’re not going anywhere, which means our only options are to die fast or slow.

The helm is a crushed mess at the end of the forward corridor, like compression on a wound. I don’t want to know what’s left of the pilot. Quick for them, at least, while the rest of us talk circles around the engines, thrusters still operational, but no way to tell them to fire or where we would be going.

We can’t even agree on what the hell we must have hit. There was nothing on the sensors, nothing between business as usual and the world crashing to a halt, crushing in to two thirds of its previous size. Even now, wrestling the port diagnostic camera around, we can’t see it. Whatever we’re drifting against, spinning off of it and grinding sparks here and there, it’s invisible to every mode on the camera and the naked eye.

Which means there’s nothing to block our view of what else is out there. And all I can think is, maybe we’re just a bird that ran into some cosmic window. Whatever is out there, it’s big, rippling light and drawing shadow across the void with its movements. Maybe it’s sorry for us, leaning down and trying to decide whether to let us try to limp away or just put us out of our misery.

I don’t know. I don’t know what to hope for. We’re bleeding fuel, bleeding time, only a question of whether we run out of heat first, or air. Whatever it could do to us might be quicker. But the stars blink and dim as it bends over us, and I know that, whatever something like that might see as pity, it would be one last moment of terror and agony for us.