Chapter 6: Feeling Alive
The silence in the quarters was a physical thing, a pressure against her ears after the constant, screaming chaos of the last day. Emma stood with her back against the cold door, listening to the distant, metallic groan of the ship. It was a sound that spoke of immense age and unimaginable strain.
With a sigh that came from the very bottom of her lungs, she reached for the seals of her flight suit. The hiss of the pressure release was loud in the quiet room. She peeled the heavy, sweat-stiffened material from her shoulders, letting it fall in a heap at her feet. The air on her skin was cool, almost shocking. She stood naked before the floor-to-ceiling viewport, the endless starfield her only witness.
Her body, usually a source of pride, a fact of her existence she had long since accepted and even used to her advantage, felt alien. The curves and lines were the same, the smooth skin unmarked, but it felt like a shell. Something had vacated it over Picon. She ran a hand over her stomach, feeling the tight muscles beneath, and there was no sensation at all. It was like touching someone else.
The shower was a steel stall in the corner. She stepped inside and punched the control. A torrent of tepid water sprayed from the ceiling, shocking her into a gasp. She let it sluice over her head, her blonde hair plastering darkly to her skull and back. She scrubbed with a coarse bar of military-issue soap, the smell chemical and clean, trying to scour away the phantom grime of nuclear fire and atomized cities. The water at her feet ran gray, then clear. She stayed under the spray until her fingers wrinkled and the chill seeped into her bones, replacing the numbness with something real.
Stepping out, she slicked her hair back and used a thin, scratchy towel that smelled faintly of ozone. Her eyes scanned the sterile room. A metal locker stood against one wall. She opened it.
Inside, hanging with a morbid precision, were three sets of Colonial Fleet officer uniforms—blues, grays, and a formal dress jacket—all in her exact measurements. On the shelf below lay neatly folded civilian clothes: a pair of dark trousers, a simple black tank top, a soft sweater. Her size. She stared at them. The meticulousness of it felt invasive. These were the belongings of a dead woman. Vacancies, the staff officer had said.
Beneath the clothes was a small, unmarked cardboard box. It was taped shut, unopened. No shipping label, just a name scrawled in marker on the side: Ensign Maya Torris. A birthday present, maybe. A care package from home. Something sent before the world ended, now waiting in the dark for a woman who would never claim it.
Emma picked it up. It was light. She weighed it in her hands, the tape dry under her thumbs. The right thing would be to store it, to honor the dead. But the dead were beyond honoring. The dead were ash. A sudden, fierce curiosity, ugly and alive, gripped her. In a world where everything was gone, what did a ghost leave behind?
She dug her thumb under the tape and ripped it open. The cardboard flaps parted.
Inside, nestled in crumpled tissue paper, was a beige silicone shape. A dildo. Medium-sized, nondescript. Utterly, profoundly ordinary.
A laugh bubbled up in Emma’s throat—a dry, cracked sound. Of course. Ensign Maya Torris had a secret. A personal comfort, a private pleasure, something to hold onto in the deep quiet of space. Now it was salvage.
She sat on the edge of the hard bunk, the object cool in her hand. The crude reality of it was an anchor. This wasn't strategy or loss or duty. This was simple, biological need. A way to feel something that wasn't grief or terror. To remind herself she was still an animal, still alive, that her body could still produce a sensation other than crushing dread.
From the shower stall, she took the small bottle of all-purpose cleanser she’d used on her skin. It would have to do.
She lay back on the bunk, the coarse blanket rough against her back. She lubed the toy, the action methodical, almost clinical. Then, without ceremony, she guided it inside herself.
It was a full, blunt pressure. Unsubtle. She closed her eyes, not picturing a lover—there was no room for that softness—but focusing solely on the physical mechanics. The stretch. The slow, rhythmic movement of her own hand. She was chasing a chemical release, a few stolen seconds where her brain would be flooded with anything but the images of burning continents and the silent, judging stars.
Her breath hitched. Her back arched slightly off the bunk. It wasn’t love or passion; it was a systems check. A desperate, lonely affirmation of her own pulse. The climax, when it came, was a sharp, wordless shout into the empty room, a convulsion that left her thighs trembling and her mind blissfully, mercifully blank.
She lay there for a long time, the object still inside her, feeling the last aftershocks fade. The hollow feeling began to return, but it was softer now, padded by a layer of exhaustion.
Sleep came for her like a thief, sudden and absolute. Her hand fell away from her stomach. Her breathing deepened. As she spiraled down into a dreamless void, her body relaxed completely, and the silicone shape slipped out onto the blanket.
It lay there beside her on the narrow military cot, a small, absurd artifact of a lost human life, while outside the viewport, the stars began to streak into brilliant lines of light. The deep, rising thrum of the FTL drives vibrated through the ship’s frame, a lullaby for the damned. Galactica, and its fragile caravan of survivors, made the jump to Ragnar.