There once was a boy who called his mother Death. For all he saw was death in the woman’s eyes as she floated in the dark emptiness beyond the thin blue veil.

The blood that ran down Lieutenant Alligan’s face should have long turned cold and hard, exposed to the air of the base’s blasting environmental systems as it frantically attempted to keep the crew alive. But how could the old space station do so? When every deck, every cargo bay and doorway was filled with the lifeless forms of its children, who had minutes earlier ignorantly enjoyed its dated sanctuary.

“Just a few more metres,” Alligan whispered in faltering tones to the young boy who trailed at her heel. “A few more metres, just down this corridor.”

“Mummy, you’re hurting me,” the boy cried as he wrestled against her vice-like grip.

“Sebby, we just need to keep going,” she begged over her shoulder as she tightened her grasp further, the slender form of her fingers constricting the blood flow of his little arms, turning them pale and white.

The child grabbed onto a nearby door handle, clutching the anchor point with unexpected strength.

“No!” He cried petulantly. “I want to go back to the daycare.”

“We can’t go back,” Alligan’s voice cracked. Dare she reveal the truth to the boy? How does one impress life or death urgency on a child without breaking their fragile hearts? “We’re going somewhere better!”

“But all my friends are in the day care.”

A flash of bloody horror lept across Alligan’s heart. Twisted bodies and frozen faces, drowning in the clunking of heavy boots and hissing respirators.

There was no friendship in that place anymore.

“And we’ll see them later, but right now, Sebby, we need to go this way.” Her voice faltered again through the lie. In the pit of her stomach, it hurt her to lie to him, even in service of saving the boy’s innocence.

“Please,” she entreated.

“Can I have a jumja stick when we get there?” the boy’s brow crinckled with frustration.

“We can have one each.”

“Fine, but I want to pick first.”

The boy had loved his mother, despite her frequent refusals to allow his adventures. Her smile had always been his warm reward, but a frozen face cannot smile with anything but fear. 

Alligan pulled the boy’s form close against her, willing his bony frame to break the bonds of physics and meld into her body where it would be safe. A few metres away, a trio of tall figures surveyed the corridor back and forth, the muzzles of rifles tracking their watchful gaze as masked faces concealed a cruel grin of satisfaction. Across the corridor’s floor lay a dozen bodies, arrayed in a ghoulish tableau of their final moments. An Andorian man reached across the cold floor towards the trio, his face forever fixed in a blood-thirsty scream, whilst next to him, two women reached towards one another, their fingers now forever parted by inches.

The rest lay on their faces where they had fled.

She knows she would have fled too, had it not been for the boy.

The lieutenant dared not breathe, dared not think, lest the churning of her thoughts was enough sound to betray their location. A single word hung in the emptiness of her mind.

‘Leave,’ she begged to the ether. ‘Leave.’ 

Eventually, the drumming of boots signalled the departure of the mysterious warmonger’s alien forms, leaving Alligan behind with her charge. Two shallow breaths alone in the corridor.

It is a curious thing to be the son of death, to know that it is not a titanic hooded being or burning winged angel. She is not an umbral shroud that creeps and crawls through cracks in windows or snakes under doors. She is simply your mother, pale and silent. 

“When I say go, we’re going to walk quickly and very quietly across the corridor and into that room.” Alligan released one of the boy’s shoulders to point towards a set of doors that hung ajar nearby, their orange forms tilting in awkward angles against the geometric shape of the bulkhead. Large black marks framed the portal, tell-tale signs of energy weapons fire and explosions, dark edges still burning the air with a metallic tang.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes mum.” He nodded his small head, sending a rogue forlock bouncing across his forehead, which he brushed aside with his delicate hands. “Like we’re playing grandmother’s footsteps?”

A pang of pain cracked across her heart.

It was all a game; dodge the sleeping lions, don’t get tagged, hide from the seeker.

“Exactly like that.” Alligen squeezed his shoulders. “You’re very good at that game, aren’t you?

“Not as good as Elijah.” The boy rolled his eyes at the thought of his small-time nemesis.

“Well, when we get to the end, we can tell Elijah that you played the hardest game there is.”

“And won?”

“And won,” she croaked.

Please let us win, she silently begged.

Mother death is a quiet parent, she does not play games nor read you stories. She does not tuck you in as the walls become cold and the lights become dark. She can only watch, unblinking, across the bridgeless gap between here and there.

“Run Seb, and keep running!” Alligan ordered as she lifted her phaser over the top of a tumbled crate she had taken as makeshift cover.

“I don’t want to run anymore, mummy,” the boy cried as he cowered in the corner, his back against the pot-marked wall, tears streaming down his eyes.

“I need you to be a big boy for me now.” She depressed the large red button on her phaser, summoning a wide beam of orange energy that lit up the corridor as it sailed onward, impacting a tall soldier in the chest. With a sickening thud, he fell to the floor like a balloon suddenly bereft of air.

“I’m scared!” The boy wailed as a series of purple blasts sailed across his mother’s head, narrowly avoided by a well-timed duck beneath the crate’s paltry cover.

“I know baby, but the time for hiding is over. We have to run.” Alligan pleaded as she pointed to the large airlock doors that led from the boom arm to K-74’s Gamma Module, where she hoped escape pods would still be sat in their births. “Are you ready?”

He looked back with two disc-like eyes, a heavy sheen of tears spreading across them.

“I’ll be right behind you,” she promised, the taste of the half-truth bitter on her tongue.

The boy offered a nod as he rose to his haunches and prepared to run.

“Ready.” She turned the phaser to full.

“Steady.” She squeezed his shoulder one more time.

“Run.”

There once was a boy who called his mother Death. She had not followed in his footsteps, though she had promised him it would be so. She was almost out of sight now and though he pressed his hand to the fizzing blue surface, he could not reach her as his world fell away. Disappearing beyond the  window of broken walls. 

“Life signs?” Mellasitox begged in a whisper.

“Sporadic across the station, none visible in the broken module,” Encore confirmed with a short hiss of frustration. “Forcefields have failed, and the module is exposed.”

“The attackers?” Mellasitox asked.

“The majority of the force have departed; there are only a few small craft circling the station.”

“Guards?” Sehgali offered in a grim tone.

“Vultures.” Mellasitox ground her teeth in an attempt to control her rising anger.

All attention fell onto the captain at the centre of the bridge as everyone waited for her instruction. Vengeance was not the Starfleet way, and years later, each would believe they had simply wanted to pursue justice.

But in the silence of that room, every breath stank of fury.

“Red Alert, all hands to battle stations.”