Stars in Close Orbit

More about Stars in Close Orbit

The station was dying long before the alarms found their voice.

They said the fracture began in the reactor core, in a cascade
of tolerances no one could reconcile in time. Others insist it
started years earlier, in rivalry disguised as professionalism,
in contests that burned hotter with every narrow victory.
Officially, the cause is listed as structural failure under
compounded stress.

No report records the argument that came just before the first
overload spike.

By the time evacuation orders echoed through the corridors,
lifeboats bloomed into the dark like frightened seeds. Crews
fled. Systems went feral. The great wheel tore itself open,
shedding decks and atmosphere in a slow, majestic unraveling.

Only two figures remained in the collapsing heart of it.

They have crossed each other’s trajectories too many times to
remember which collision was first. Each knows the other’s
reflexes with the intimacy of a scar. Even now—bulkheads
rupturing, gravity stuttering, fire writing in the air—they
circle as they always have, locked in a geometry neither will
abandon.

Outside, the station shatters into drifting continents of
wreckage. Inside, their blades still meet in sparks bright
enough to be seen across vacuum.

Some bonds are forged in loyalty.
Some in duty.

Theirs was forged in opposition so absolute that even the end
of the world cannot pry it apart.

Two stars in close orbit do not flee when the system collapses.
They burn each other until nothing else remains.