Seeds and Ash
Copyright© 2026 by G Younger
Chapter 24
The med bay droned with the quiet efficiency of machines built to preserve life. White surfaces reflected sterile light from panels recessed into the ceiling, casting everything in a clinical light.
Inaya lay beneath a clear stasis dome on the central examination table, her chest rising and falling with the slow rhythm of medically induced suspension. Tubes ran beneath the transparent barrier, delivering fluids and monitoring vitals through interfaces that dotted her skin like mechanical parasites. Her face held none of the tension Lynk had grown accustomed to reading. The lines around her eyes had smoothed, her jaw unclenched, her expression settled into something approaching peace.
She looked smaller than he remembered.
Lynk stood beside the table, his hands at his sides, his eyes fixed on the curve of her cheekbone and the faint scar tissue where shrapnel had opened her abdomen. The wound had been sealed with synthetic tissue, the edges bonded so cleanly they’d left only a thin line of disrupted pigmentation. In six months, the doctor had said, even that would fade.
She would carry no visible reminder of Oblivion.
The psychological scars would run deeper.
Behind him, medical personnel moved through their routines with practiced silence. They’d asked him to leave twice already, but both times, he’d remained exactly where he stood, and both times, they’d decided not to press the issue. Something about his stillness suggested he wouldn’t move until he chose to.
Footsteps approached from the corridor entrance. They had a different rhythm from those of the medical staff: heavier, more deliberate.
Someone of authority was coming.
Lynk didn’t turn.
A man in a white coat entered his peripheral vision and stopped on the opposite side of Inaya’s stasis dome. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, with gray threading through dark hair and surgical scars on his hands that spoke of decades of precision work. His identification badge read Dr. Hassan Mir, Chief Medical Officer.
“She’ll live,” Dr. Mir said.
It was a statement, not meant as reassurance. His tone suggested he’d delivered this news countless times before, to numerous people who needed to hear it.
Lynk nodded once.
Dr. Mir’s gaze shifted from Inaya to Lynk.
“The abdominal trauma was severe, but the cryogenic suspension prevented cellular degradation. We’ve repaired the arterial damage and replaced approximately thirty percent of her lower intestinal tract with bioprinted tissue. She was minutes from complete organ failure when you got her into that cryo-chamber.”
“I know.”
“You saved her life.”
Lynk’s jaw tightened. The words felt wrong, like credit claimed for something that shouldn’t require celebration. He’d watched six people die on Oblivion. Saving one didn’t balance the equation.
“When will she wake?” he asked.
“Seventy-two hours minimum. We’re keeping her under to accelerate healing and prevent psychological trauma from manifesting before she’s physically stable.” Dr. Mir paused, his expression shifting to something more clinical. “You should know that the Vaughn Conglomerate has requested a full debriefing from both survivors. Intelligence officers will want your testimony regarding what happened on Oblivion.”
“When?”
Dr. Mir’s eyes flicked toward the dome. Lynk had already spotted the cameras hidden there.
“Whenever you’re ready, but not here. She needs rest, not witnesses.”
Lynk didn’t move.
“Mr. Vassar,” Dr. Mir said, voice firmer now. “You’ve been standing in this bay for six hours without food, water, or rest, and your medical scan shows signs of exhaustion and dehydration. Whatever you think you owe Commander Vaughn, destroying yourself won’t help her recovery.”
“I’m fine.”
The doctor stepped back from the table.
“You’re collapsing. There’s a waiting room down the corridor. I recommend you use it.”
Lynk’s gaze remained fixed on Inaya’s face. He observed the slow rise and fall of her chest, the faint pulse visible beneath the skin of her throat.
Three days felt different in silence.
Lynk occupied the corner chair of the waiting room, a space designed for anxious visitors and exhausted doctors cycling between shifts. Chairs upholstered in gray fabric lined walls painted a shade intended to calm without drawing attention. A viewport offered a view of distant stars.
He’d left the med bay six hours after Dr. Mir’s suggestion, not because the doctor had convinced him but because remaining served no functional purpose. Inaya wouldn’t wake sooner for his presence. The stasis field kept her suspended in chemical twilight, her healing progressing according to protocols written by people who understood biology better than he ever would.
Still, he returned.
Every eight hours, Lynk walked the corridor from his assigned quarters to the med bay’s observation window. He stood there for twenty minutes, watching the monitors display vital signs that remained stable, then retreated to the waiting room, where sleep came in shallow fragments.
The Vaughn Conglomerate intelligence officers had tried twice to schedule his debriefing, and both times, he’d postponed, citing medical observation. They’d accepted the excuse with thinly veiled irritation, but they’d accepted it.
They wouldn’t wait much longer.
On the morning of the third day, movement flickered across the observation monitor mounted in the waiting room. Lynk’s eyes tracked the shift: a spike in neurological activity, with the respiratory rate increasing from a sedated minimum to a waking threshold.
He rose and crossed to the med bay’s entrance.
The night-shift nurse glanced up from her terminal, recognizing him. She’d stopped questioning his presence after the first day.
“She’s waking,” the nurse said. “Give us ten minutes to run diagnostics.”
Lynk waited in the corridor, counting seconds while listening to the muted sounds of medical staff moving through routines designed to ease patients from chemical suspension to consciousness without shock.
Nine minutes, forty-three seconds later, the door slid open.
Dr. Mir stepped out, a stylus tucked behind one ear, and a datapad held loosely at his side.
“She’s asking for you.”
The stasis dome had retracted, folding back into the examination table’s base. Tubes still ran from interfaces on Inaya’s arms, but the quantity had decreased, life support replaced by monitoring.
She lay propped at a thirty-degree angle, her eyes open but unfocused. Her skin held the pallor of someone who’d spent too long in artificial twilight. When Lynk approached, her gaze tracked the movement slowly, pupils dilating as they found him.
“Lynk.”
Her voice scraped past damaged tissue, the syllables blurred by medication and disuse.
He stopped beside the table.
“Commander.”
Her mouth twitched into not quite a smile, but something attempting the shape.
“Inaya. Just ... Inaya.”
He nodded.
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Inaya’s hand shifted against the sheet, her fingers curling, then releasing. Her eyes never left his face.
“How long?” she asked.
“Seventy-four hours since we docked; three days.”
“The others?”
The question carried weight that Lynk felt settle across his shoulders.
“Dead, all of them.”
Inaya’s throat worked, swallowing against something that wouldn’t go down; she closed her eyes. When they opened again, the medication couldn’t quite mask the calculation running behind her expression—tallying names, faces, responsibilities that would never be fulfilled.
“Quinn?”
“Dead.”
Something flickered across her features, not grief or relief, but something between the two that Lynk recognized had no name.
“The Griss?”
“Destroyed. The Falcon’s core breach triggered a chain reaction through Oblivion’s biological infrastructure, and the planet’s systems failed. There were no survivors detected in the debris field.” Lynk paused. “But Quinn’s transmission—”
“I know.” Inaya’s voice hardened despite the rasp. “I remember.”
The silence stretched while outside the viewport, stars wheeled in their ancient patterns, indifferent to human survival or extinction.
Inaya’s gaze drifted to the ceiling, then back to Lynk. Her expression shifted to something sharper, more focused, despite the medication blurring her edges.
“Why did you save me?”
The question hit without preamble. It was direct and to the point.
Lynk stood motionless. He’d anticipated interrogation from Vaughn Conglomerate intelligence: questions about the mission parameters, Quinn’s betrayal, the Griss technology, and what remained salvageable from the wreckage. He’d prepared answers that contained truth without revealing everything.
But he hadn’t prepared for this.
Lynk blocked the camera’s view and leaned in closely.
“The walls have ears,” he warned before answering her question. “You altered the manifest; you listed me as human, which gave me legal protection I didn’t—”
“That’s not what I asked,” Inaya said, her voice cutting through his explanation. “I want to know why you brought me with you. You could’ve left me on the Falcon and triggered the overload remotely. You could’ve escaped alone with fuel to spare.”
Lynk’s jaw tightened. The calculus had been simple at the time: there were insufficient resources for two passengers, the probability of success was higher with reduced mass, and the logical solution was obvious.
Except he’d chosen differently.
“The shuttle had limited fuel. Alone, I would have achieved a stable orbit. With you aboard, we barely escaped the blast radius.”
“I know. So why?” Inaya asked.
He searched for the reasoning he’d followed in those final seconds aboard the dying shuttle. Logic had dictated one choice, but he’d made another.
Chyna’s words surfaced from memory, spoken in the lab when she’d defended his capacity for growth.
He’s learning. That’s the point.
“Because we’re friends,” Lynk said.
The words felt insufficient even as he spoke them, too small to contain the complexity of what had shifted inside him during those weeks on Oblivion. Watching Rex laugh, seeing Chyna’s curiosity despite fear, and feeling the weight of Inaya’s hand on his shoulder in the observation bay.
Friendship seemed a fragile word for what he’d learned about connection.
But it was the only word he had.
Inaya stared at him, her expression caught between surprise and pain, her eyes bright with medication or emotion.
“Friends,” she repeated, as though testing the word like unfamiliar territory.
“Yes.”
Her hand shifted across the sheet, fingers extending toward him in an offering.
Lynk reached out and took it.
Inaya’s grip weakened after thirty seconds as sleep claimed her again, pulling her back under with chemical inevitability. Lynk withdrew his hand and stepped away from the examination table as Dr. Mir returned, his stylus already moving across his datapad.
“She needs rest; real rest, not vigil-keeping,” the doctor said without looking up.
Lynk didn’t argue. He crossed the med bay to the viewport that dominated the far wall. Reinforced transparisteel offered an unobstructed view of the void beyond the station’s superstructure.