“Atmospheric drag,” Elara muttered

The void was usually silent, but today the Vanguard was humming a low, dissonant note that vibrated right up through the pilot’s crash couch.
Elara tapped the console. The fusion drive was a high-strung thoroughbred; it demanded precision, perfect mixtures, and constant attention. She’d been running it hot for three cycles, fueled by a restless energy that felt like an itch beneath her skin.
The humming deepened into a shudder. The localized sensor array showed clear space for parsecs. No asteroids, no radiation storms, no pirates. Just the endless black.
“Atmospheric drag,” Elara muttered, though there was no atmosphere out here. It was an old habit—externalizing the problem. If the ship was shaking, something outside must be hitting it.
She felt the familiar spike of adrenaline, the urge to do something. The vibration felt like a threat, a predator nipping at the hull. Her response, as always, was velocity.
“Override safety protocols. Increase reactor output to 115%,” she commanded.
The ship’s AI hesitated. “Warning. Reactor harmonics are already unstable. Increasing flow is ill-advised.”
“Do it. We punch through the turbulence.”
The engines roared in compliance. The G-force slammed Elara back into her seat. The Vanguard leapt forward, tearing at the fabric of space.
For a second, the acceleration felt like a cure. The sheer violence of the movement masked the underlying vibration. But then, the feedback loop caught up.
The shudder didn’t smooth out; it turned into a violent rattle that shook the fillings in Elara’s teeth. The cabin temperature spiked ten degrees in as many seconds—a fever heat that fogged her helmet visor.
“Core temperature critical,” the AI droned, its voice distorted by static bleeding onto the comms. The navigational display wavered, the star charts blurring into indistinct light. Brain fog, digitized.
“It’s getting worse,” Elara thought, her heart hammering against her ribs. The noise was deafening now, a screaming alarm that felt like it was coming from inside her own skull. She interpreted the chaos as the invisible enemy gaining ground. She couldn’t stop now. Stopping meant letting the turbulence win.
She reached for the manual throttle, her hand shaking so hard she almost missed it. “Push it. Maximum burn. Get us out of this.”
She slammed the throttle forward.
The ship screamed.
And then it choked.
There was no explosion. Just a sickening mechanical gagging sound from the stern. A master safety valve, buried deep in the fuel intake manifold, slammed shut to protect the core.
The warp field collapsed instantly. The Vanguard dropped out of lightspeed like a stone hitting water. The roar died. The vibration ceased.
Silence hauled Elara forward against her restraints. The sudden lack of movement was profound. The only sound was her own ragged breathing in the pressurized helmet.
She sat frozen, hands hovering over the dead controls, waiting for the blow. Waiting for the asteroid she hadn’t seen, or the pirate vessel she hadn’t outrun.
Seconds ticked by. The sensors slowly cleared of static. The cabin began to cool.
There was nothing out there. The void was empty and still.
“Report,” she whispered, her voice raw.
The main screen flickered back to life, displaying the diagnostic log in brutal crimson text.
[LOG ENTRY: 13:42] Fuel Injector 4 detecting isotopic containment.
[LOG ENTRY: 13:43] System diverting power to stabilize core.
[LOG ENTRY: 13:45] Pilot override received. Increased fuel flow initialized.
[LOG ENTRY: 13:48] CRITICAL FAILURE. Intake manifold constricted. Emergency shutdown.
Elara stared at the data. The fuel. She’d taken on “clean” cells at the last station—standard grade, supposed to be safe. But they were laced with something the Vanguard’s delicate core rejected.
The realization hit her harder than the G-force.
The vibration wasn’t space fighting the ship. It was the ship fighting the fuel.
Every time she felt the shudder and responded with speed, she hadn’t been escaping the danger. She had been opening the throat of the engine wider, pumping the poison faster into the heart of the machine. The running wasn’t the cure; it was the accelerant.
She slumped back in the crash couch, exhausted in the newfound quiet. The ship hung motionless in the dark, dead in the water, but finally stable.
Elara reached out and popped the seal on her helmet, taking a deep breath of the cooling air. She didn’t need to go anywhere.
“Computer,” she said softly to the empty room. “Initiate manual fuel purge. Vent the tanks.”
She watched on the monitor as the contaminated cells were jettisoned, tumbling silently away into the dark. She was going nowhere fast, and it was the safest she had felt in cycles.