Destiny's Young Heroes

"What is this?"

"It's a one way ticket to the stars, Captain."

James stood over the man, looking down at him. His eyes were wide and white and his hands were shaking. James' own hands were clenched into fists by his sides. This was it, he thought, this was where he would earn his promotion. He would be a hero and rise to the ranks of Admiral in no time. After all, they'd already begun to lose the war. They needed heroes.

"You're a goddamn traitor," James said with a sneer, "you're helping them."

The man on the floor shook his head frantically. "No!" He was clutching a small black box with both hands so tightly that his knuckles had turned white. "No, I swear to God I'm not! It's just a radio!" The man began to sob freely now, looking up at James with pleading eyes as he pressed himself back against the bulkhead of the ship's engine room. "I swear it's just a radio!"

"Then why are you running away?"

The man looked down at the floor again, defeated. It didn't take many people to run a spaceship, but it took enough that most could recognize each other over long periods of time. This man was one of two who worked in engineering and knew how to fix engines that had been blown out by enemy fire or lost power from an EMP blast. If he left them without fixing their engines then they weren't going anywhere anytime soon and they all knew it.

James had been chasing him through the ship for what felt like hours. Finally he had cornered him here as he'd tried to climb into an escape pod that would have taken him all the way back to Earth if it wasn't for James' quick thinking convincing the computer not to open its doors until after the man was subdued.

He grabbed the man by his shirt before pulling him up off of the floor and slamming him back against the wall again, hard enough that this time blood spattered out from where James' hand made contact with his face.

"Why are you running? What is this?" He threw up the black box in his hand so that it smacked against the engineer's cheek before tossing it aside again, where it hit another wall and shattered on impact with a loud rumble of clattering metal parts falling onto the floor around them both.

"Answer me!" James screamed right into the man's face as he threw him back against the wall again, feeling gratified as blood began dripping down and hitting his own face from where they were pressed together against one another's foreheads as James held him there as tightly as he could while screaming at him some more. "What is this? What did you do!? What did you do!?"

He didn't know why he wanted answers more than anything else, but suddenly he found himself repeating those three words like a mantra - What did you do? What did you do? What did you do!? - for what felt like hours until finally he heard someone yell out behind him - "Captain! Captain! Let go! Please let go!" And when James opened his eyes everything went dark around him and suddenly there were hands on his shoulders pulling him backwards away from where he was pressed against… nothing anymore because when James opened his eyes again he saw only blood on the wall where last there had been a head attached to an engineer who was no longer breathing; who had stopped breathing when James pulled away and stepped back next to see what all this fuss was about behind him now that chaos had broken out all around them with crew members running around cluelessly trying to figure out what they should be doing while others stood paralyzed staring at their dead friend in disbelief before finally someone snapped out of their shock and ran forward shouting - "Call security! Call security! Someone call security right fucking now!" - which only meant that things were about to get even worse for everyone involved because no one ever really wanted to call security except when they themselves were worried about being blamed for whatever terrible thing everyone else was about to witness so things were about to get very bad very fast indeed unless someone stepped up and took control of things before things could spiral any further out of control.