Seeds and Ash
Copyright© 2026 by G Younger
Chapter 23: The Aftermath
The shuttle drifted.
Not toward anything; just outward, following momentum’s indifferent trajectory while fuel reserves ticked toward zero and Oblivion receded into a frozen pinpoint behind them.
Lynk monitored the environmental systems: oxygen at sixty-three percent, temperature holding at four degrees Celsius, and power cycling between battery reserves that wouldn’t last another week.
The vibration beneath his feet had changed from rhythmic certainty to mechanical exhaustion, as though the shuttle itself had grown tired of pretending it could carry them anywhere that mattered.
Inaya’s breathing had changed, too.
It was shallow and irregular, her ribs barely moving beneath the thermal blanket he’d wrapped around her shoulders. Blood had seeped through the field dressing on her abdomen, spreading in a dark bloom that wouldn’t stop, no matter how much pressure he applied.
Inaya had told him to leave it, that she’d felt worse, and with a bit of rest, she would be fine.
She’d lied.
Lynk knew because her pulse had dropped and shock had set in. Her body was shutting down.
He’d seen this progression in the tactical databases. From what those told him, her survival window was measured in hours, not days.
“Lynk.”
Her voice emerged barely louder than the shuttle’s background noise.
He moved closer, kneeling beside the makeshift acceleration couch where he’d strapped her in. Her eyes found his, and her pupils dilated in the dim emergency lighting.
“I need you to—” she said, then stopped, swallowed, and tried again. “I need you to understand something.”
“Conserve your strength.”
“No, listen to me,” she said, the commander’s authority bleeding through her pain.
He held up his hands in defeat and motioned for her to continue.
Her hand moved toward the data pad secured to her belt, fingers trembling.
“Before we launched, I altered the crew manifest. I added your designation to the official records.”
Lynk tried to figure out what that meant, but the implications cascaded in different directions, with varying interpretations of its meaning.
“You listed me as equipment?” Lynk finally asked.
She pulled the pad free and pressed it into his palm.
“No, I listed you as crew, human crew. According to the manifest, you’re now a Cognitive Specialist assigned to colonial integration protocols.”
The pad’s screen activated under his touch. He scanned the manifest, found his entry exactly where she’d described.
Lynk Vassar. Age 18. Cognitive Specialist. Human.
Not a replicant.
Not equipment to be salvaged or abandoned according to corporate asset management protocols.
“Why?”
The question emerged quieter than he’d intended.
Inaya’s mouth curved into not quite a smile, more like satisfaction bleeding through exhaustion.
Her breathing hitched.
“Because Quinn was right about one thing: they were never going to let you live. The AIM protocols, the independent thinking, the moral autonomy—all of it violated three different interstellar treaties. So, once we returned, they’d have classified you as contraband and used your body to create more replicants.”
Lynk’s fingers tightened on the pad.
“But if you’re human,” Inaya continued, “if you’re documented crew with full legal status—”
“They can’t touch me without prosecution.”
Her eyes held his.
“They can’t touch you at all. You survive this, you get home, you’re protected. The corporation can’t claim you, and the government can’t confiscate you. You’re yours.”
The weight of that settled into him. Not the legal mechanics—those he understood immediately—but the underlying choice she’d made, the risk she’d accepted.
“You falsified colonial records. That’s—”
“Treason if they found out, yes.” No hesitation; no regrets. “I was willing to accept those consequences.”
Was.
Past tense.
Lynk watched blood seep through the dressing again, watched her vitals continue their decline on the medical scanner still strapped to her wrist. Commander Inaya Vaughn, who’d created him in desperation and had chosen to save him through deception, who’d given him legal humanity before he’d learned what humanity meant.
“Xavia,” Inaya whispered suddenly, her gaze shifting past his shoulder, “recheck the starboard seals; I heard something breach.”
Lynk touched her hand; Inaya’s fingers were colder than they should be.
“Xavia’s gone,” he said gently.
“She—” Inaya blinked and tried to focus. “Right. Yes. She’s gone. They’re all—” Her breath caught. “Rex?”
“Gone too.”
“Geo, Chyna, Issis, and Quinn?” Her voice cracked on the last name. “All of them?”
“All of them,” Lynk confirmed.
Inaya’s tears came again, silent and exhausted. She’d run through grief’s sharper edges down on Oblivion, but loss had momentum. It kept returning in waves that eroded a little more each time—Lynk should know because he had the same feelings.
“Just us, then.”
“Just us.”
She squeezed his hand. Barely any pressure, but he felt the intention.
“Don’t let me die out here,” she whispered, “not drifting; not alone.”
Lynk’s mind worked through variables: damaged systems, minimal power, one functioning cryogenic suspension unit in the shuttle’s rear compartment.
It might work.
If he could adapt it by rerouting power, then he could convert the suspension chamber into something resembling stable stasis until...
Until what?
Until rescue that might never come?
Until the shuttle’s orbit decayed and they burned up in some planet’s atmosphere?
Until the battery died and Inaya froze in suspended animation, from which she’d never wake?
He didn’t know. But uncertainty felt better than watching her vitals continue their slow collapse while he did nothing.
“Rest,” Lynk said softly, already moving toward the rear compartment. “I’ll find help.”
Inaya’s eyes tracked him, skeptical even through pain.
“Liar.”
“I’ll try to find help,” he amended.
That earned him something closer to her real smile; it was brief, but genuine.
“Better.”
Lynk pulled open the compartment’s emergency panel and began working through the suspension unit’s diagnostic systems. Power cells were functioning at eighty-one percent; cryogenic fluid reserves were adequate; the biometric sensors were calibrated to human physiology.
He could do this.
Behind him, Inaya’s breathing had steadied slightly. It wasn’t an improvement, just the temporary reprieve shock sometimes offered before the final decline.
Lynk rerouted power from non-essential systems; the lighting dimmed further, and the shuttle’s hum dropped another octave.
But the suspension chamber came online.
Green indicators across the control panel, temperature dropping to preservation levels.
He had perhaps twenty minutes before Inaya’s condition became irreversible.
It would take fifteen to prepare the chamber.
Five to get her inside and initiate the sequence.
He had no room for error.
Lynk’s hands moved with purpose through the setup protocols while behind him, Commander Inaya Vaughn whispered orders to ghosts and bled quietly into the dark.
The sensor ping jolted Lynk from a shallow rest.
He hadn’t slept; replicants didn’t require the same depth of unconsciousness humans did to recharge.
Now the console lit up with contact alerts.
Three signatures, all large and equipped with military-grade propulsion systems that cut through the void with the confidence that comes from overwhelming firepower.
Lynk pulled himself to the navigation station and activated the long-range scanner. The contacts resolved into clear silhouettes: destroyer-class vessels, angular and predatory, their hulls painted in the charcoal and crimson of Vaughn Conglomerate defense contracts.
The transponder codes verified what he already suspected.
VC Sovereignty, VC Dominion, VC Precedent.
Corporate warships, not rescue vessels.
Lynk stared at the readout while variables cascaded through his mind. Vaughn Conglomerate had sent them to Oblivion, had orchestrated the entire colonial expedition as cover for weapons retrieval. Quinn had been their instrument, their willing collaborator in condemning a thousand people to death.
And now they’d arrived.
Not to save survivors, but to secure assets.
The lead ship’s hailing frequency activated, and a calm, professional voice filled the shuttle’s cabin.
“Unidentified shuttle, this is VC Sovereignty. Transmit your identification codes and prepare for retrieval.”
Lynk’s hand hovered over the response controls.
Behind him, Inaya’s suspension chamber was running with a steady rhythm, her vitals displayed in stable stasis. She was wounded but preserved, alive in the technical sense, even if she couldn’t wake without the medical intervention these ships certainly possessed.
He could save her.
All he had to do was respond and transmit the shuttle’s identification. Lynk could let them pull the shuttle aboard.
And then what?
They’d find Inaya’s falsified crew manifest, discover she’d listed him as human, and run genetic verification that would expose the deception within minutes. They would confiscate Chyna’s research data, analyze Quinn’s final transmission, and classify Lynk according to whatever protocols governed the handling of contraband replicants recovered from failed corporate operations.
Inaya had given him legal protection.
But only if he survived to use it.
The hailing frequency repeated; someone’s patience was thinning.
“Unidentified shuttle, respond, or we will assume hostile intent.”
Lynk looked at Inaya’s suspended form, then at the data core containing everything Chyna had learned about the Griss and their unknown creators, followed by the manifest, declaring him human.
As the three warships closed in, relief felt premature.
His finger moved toward the transmit control. Lynk’s fingers moved across the communications panel with deliberate precision, not toward the standard identification protocols the warships demanded, but toward a different sequence entirely.
Quinn’s encrypted transmission had used corporate military channels. It was the same quantum routing architecture, the same authentication protocols, relay systems designed to punch through stellar interference and deliver data packages across impossible distances.
The systems Lynk could access from this console.
He pulled Chyna’s research core from the shuttle’s auxiliary storage—her final work, compiled and compressed. Genetic breakdowns of Griss biology, structural analysis of the vault beneath Oblivion, protein mapping from the hybrid dissolution, and theoretical frameworks about the Architects who’d engineered it all.