The lifeboat screamed across every frequency Marko’s tablet could reach.
He stood in the hangar, listening to static crack into voices twelve, maybe fourteen survivors riding a hull that had sheared clean during the last jump.
The civilian transport Meridian had lost an entire compartment to metal fatigue and thirty-three minutes of compounding pressure, and now a piece of it tumbled through the black with people inside and air bleeding out faster than the seals could hold.
Tyrol’s voice cut through the chaos.
“Dabrowski, I need reach-time on that boat.
Best case, worst case, and what we’re actually looking at.” Marko pulled the plot onto his tablet.
The lifeboat’s trajectory painted a clean line across the tactical screen too far for a Raptor to match velocity and dock before the next jump window, but close enough to make every second count against them.
The Board woke without being asked.
LIFEBOAT MERIDIAN SECTION 7.
HULL INTEGRITY 41% AND FALLING.
ATMOSPHERIC BLEED 2.3% PER MINUTE.
SURVIVORS: 13 SOULS.
RESCUE WINDOW: 14 MINUTES TO JUMP COMMIT.
Fourteen minutes.
The Raptor sat on the deck Boomer’s bird, fueled and ready, the hatch open and the crew prepping for launch.
Marko read the numbers the Board had just handed him, cold and exact, and felt the old cold settle into his gut like a stone.
FULL RETRIEVAL: 19 MINUTES MINIMUM.
JUMP WINDOW INSUFFICIENT.
TRIAGE REQUIRED.
“Dabrowski.” Tyrol’s voice, harder now.
“I need that number.” Marko’s mouth opened.
The truth sat right there, ready to be spoken: You can’t get them all.
The window’s too short.
Pick who you’re reaching for or you lose the boat and the Raptor both when the fleet jumps.
He closed his mouth.
Pulled the plot closer.
Let the Read settle on the lifeboat’s structure, the hull peeling back rib by rib, the air pressure dropping in a curve he could see without the Board telling him.
There had to be a third door.
There was always a third door if you hunted hard enough.
The overlay shifted.
Rendered the lifeboat’s interior in amber wireframe thirteen people clustered in two groups, one near the primary hatch, one deeper in where the hull was cracking and the air was going first.
The Board marked them with calm, cold precision: reachable in eleven minutes, unreachable in fourteen.
Marko’s hands moved across the tablet.
Ran the docking sequence three different ways.
Tried a hot approach that traded safety margin for speed, tried a shallow angle that bought time on the back end, tried prioritizing the fragile section first and bleeding minutes on the transfer.
Every permutation came back the same.
Eleven minutes to dock, pull the forward group, and clear.
Nineteen to get everyone and fourteen until the fleet jumped and left anything still out there to die alone or get scooped by the Cylons.
He tried again.
Ran it a fourth time with Boomer’s bird red-lining its engines, the docking sequence stripped to nothing, the margin for error gone entirely.
Eighteen minutes.
Eleven and nineteen.
The window was fixed.
Some of those people could not be reached no matter the order, and hunting a better sequence was just burning the time that would save the ones he could actually pull.
Tyrol was beside him now.
“Dabrowski.” Marko looked up.
Met the Chief’s eyes.
Said what he’d been refusing to say for three minutes that had just killed people.
“Forward compartment first.
Eight souls, maybe nine.
Eleven minutes if Boomer doesn’t waste time on the dock.
The aft section” His voice stayed level.
Procedural.
The same tone he’d use to log a repair.
“the hull’s already failing.
They won’t last to extraction even if we had the window.” Tyrol’s voice went flat.
“You’re sure.” “I’m sure.” The Chief turned.
Keyed his headset.
“Boomer, you’re pulling the forward group only.
Priorities are speed and your own hull.
Aft section is a no-go.” Boomer’s voice came back tight and furious.
“Chief, there are people in that section” “I know.
You don’t have time to reach them and live.
Forward compartment, now, and back before the jump clock runs out.” The line went silent for three seconds.
Then: “Copy.
Forward only.
Launching.” The Raptor spun up.
Marko watched it lift, felt the deck shudder under the engine wash, and turned back to his tablet so he wouldn’t have to see Tyrol’s face.
Amber wireframe tracked the extraction in real time.
Showed him Boomer’s approach, the docking sequence, the hatch seal.
Showed him nine people moving through the primary hatch, one of them limping, all of them alive because Marko had picked an order and stuck to it.
Showed him the four in the cracking hull, still breathing, still calling for help on a frequency nobody was answering anymore.
Four minutes left.
Boomer cleared the lifeboat and burned hard for Galactica.
The rear compartment’s hull buckled.
The air went fast after that outpacing the bleed rate, outrunning every projection, and Marko knew the crack had finally gone all the way through.
The voices stopped.
Tyrol stood beside him, silent, watching the same plot.
When the bird touched deck and nine survivors stumbled out alive, shocky, whole he let out a breath and said, very quietly, “Good call.” Marko said nothing.
Amber text logged the rescue.
FIX CONFIRMED.
HOLDING.
9 RECOVERED.
LOSS: 4 SOULS, AFT SECTION, RETRIEVAL WINDOW INSUFFICIENT.
STANDING WATCH ADVANCED.
Nine recovered.
Four lost.
The tallies sat there, amber and exact a save Marko would trade back if he could and a silence he’d chosen with open eyes because the alternative was losing thirteen.
The Chief walked away to meet the survivors.
Marko stayed on the deck, staring at his tablet, at the empty plot where the lifeboat had been.
He’d run the reach-times himself, given the order with his own mouth.
Saved the reachable and abandoned the rest, and it was the correct call, and the four who’d died back there had done it listening to engines that came close enough to hear and then turned away.
The hatch.
The old hatch, the one from the old life.
The man behind it, calling Marko’s name until the name stopped and the water rose and proved what Marko already knew.
This time he’d picked the door himself.
Looked at the reach-times the Board handed him, found the only sequence the window allowed, and made the call without lying to himself that it was anything but triage.
It held.
The ones he’d chosen to save were walking off Boomer’s Raptor right now, breathing Galactica’s air, alive because Marko had been right about what the clock allowed.
It held.
And the ones in the aft section were gone, and Marko had known they would be when he opened his mouth, and he’d said it anyway because letting Boomer waste time chasing an impossible pull would have killed everyone.
He logged the call and closed the tablet.
Walked back toward the berthing area, past survivors wrapped in blankets, past crew who were already calling it a good save.
The Board’s overlay flickered.
THE RECKONING STANDS.
THE FIX HOLDS.
ARITHMETIC ACCEPTED.
Arithmetic accepted.
Marko kept walking.
The wound wasn’t abstract anymore.
It had a weight now, and a pitch the frequency where the voices cut out.
Four.
Four people he’d chosen not to reach, and the choice had saved nine, and he’d do it again if the clock ran the same way.
That was what they never told you about triage.
It didn’t matter if you were right.
You still heard them stop calling.