Oxygen Debt

Senior Flight Engineer Kael Morrow has spent seven years hating Lieutenant Soran Vey since the Ganymede collision that killed Kael's first crew, a catastrophe Soran walked away from with an official reprimand and an expression that never changed. Now their ship has been destroyed, and they are trapped together in an escape pod with ten hours of oxygen and Kael's fractured ribs. Survival demands cooperation, and cooperation demands truth. Soran carries classified data about the Ganymede incident in a neural implant behind his left ear, locked behind a trauma block that only Kael's voice can break. As the pod's CO2 scrubbers fail and the oxygen counter ticks toward zero, Kael must choose between the hatred that has defined his life and the truth that might destroy it. What they uncover is worse than either anticipated: the Ganymede collision was no accident, their current mission was a setup, and the officer who orchestrated both is waiting at the end of their distress beacon. By the time the rescue ship arrives, Kael and Soran are no longer enemies but a single, irrevocably fused weapon aimed at the people who set them up.