BROKEN UNITY | CHAPTER 03

a short story by Danny van Eck

Sirens pulsed across the valley as evacuation procedures took hold.

Shauni moved quickly down the hillside, the desert beneath her feet fractured and unstable in places. Aid vessels from Corin, Nexun, and Eidolon had formed a wide perimeter around the crash site, offloading personnel, supplies, and stretchers. Their crews moved with haste, disciplined and efficient, but even that order could not outpace the chaos unfolding across the Midway crash zone.

High above, the Valleteian ship Pelagia remained stationed in the upper atmosphere, a gleaming silhouette against the sky. Its sensors were locked westward, tracking the tsunami’s advance.

Survivors continued to arrive from all directions. Some were carried, others limping, and many simply walked in stunned silence. Triage stations filled quickly. Medical tents overflowed. And still, the escape pods kept falling, trailing smoke before slamming into fractured earth.

The evacuation effort had settled into a tense, relentless pace.

Shauni had been moving for what felt like an hour straight. Her arms ached from lifting debris, and her throat was dry from inhaling smoke and dust. The heat had begun to fade, replaced by a stillness that clung to the air, unnatural and heavy. She could not say how much time had passed since the alert first sounded, but the urgency had only sharpened.

One of the aid vessels had just launched, its engines sending a low rumble across the valley. Another circled above, lowering into position for the next wave of evacuees. Despite the coordination, it was clear they were running out of time.

She paused near a fractured support beam to catch her breath when a Zenith Keeper moved past, sweeping the wreckage ahead with a portable scanner. He slowed as their eyes met.

“Pod landed nearby,” he said. “Too far from the others. No responders have marked it yet.”

Shauni fell in step beside him. They crossed uneven ground, weaving through chunks of hull plating and scorched debris. On the far side of a shallow ridge, they found it. A pod had buried itself deep in the ground, its nose embedded in a slope of rock and sand. Only a portion of the hatch was visible, scorched and warped, surrounded by jagged metal.

The crater around it was sharp and uneven, the pod tilted hard to one side.

“Scanner’s picking up three weak bio-signs,” the Keeper said, crouching beside the hatch. “No response to beacon pings.”

Shauni stepped in and peered through the small viewport. Emergency lights flickered inside, barely illuminating the wreckage. Most of the passengers were motionless, slumped where they had been thrown.

But near the door, three figures huddled together. A woman cradled a young girl in her arms, shielding her with her body. Beside them, an older man reached up and placed a hand to the glass, his face pale and blank with shock.

They were alive.

Shauni tapped the panel. No response. She looked to the Keeper.

“The hatch?”

In the distance, the sirens continued, louder now, rising steadily.

The hatch wouldn’t budge. The Zenith Keeper ran his scanner along the twisted seam again, then checked a compact device on his belt. He frowned.

“Cutter’s out,” he muttered. “Overloaded on the last pod extraction. All I can manage is a pry, just enough space for the child, maybe. But not the rest.”

Inside the pod, the woman seemed to understand immediately. Her eyes locked with Shauni’s, then shifted to her daughter. She raised her voice over the muffled hum of sirens.

“Please… take her.”

The little girl sobbed, shaking her head violently. She clung to her mother’s side, refusing to let go. The older man, her grandfather, Shauni guessed, placed a trembling hand on the glass and looked directly at his granddaughter.

“You have to go with them, sweetheart,” he said softly, his voice cracking.

The Keeper shifted beside her, scanning the wreckage ahead. “I could run to get help—”

The siren changed pitch. A deep, rising tone pulsed across the crash zone, sharper now. Urgent. It meant one thing: imminent impact.

The Keeper froze. He didn’t need to say it. They both knew. There was no time. They had to improvise.

Bracing himself, the Keeper jammed a crowbar into the warped frame and forced the hatch open just enough for a child to slip through. Metal groaned in protest, but a narrow gap remained.

“Now,” he said.

Shauni crouched low and reached in.

The girl screamed, tears streaking down her cheeks as she clawed to stay with her mother. Shauni whispered softly, trying to soothe her as she pulled gently but firmly.

“I’ve got you. I promise, I’ve got you.”

The mother pressed a final kiss to her daughter’s forehead, then guided her toward the gap. Her face was streaked with soot and tears.

Shauni pulled the child through and rose to her feet, cradling her against her chest.

As she turned to run, a broken, tearful voice called after her from the pod.

“Thank you,” the woman sobbed. “Thank you…”

Shauni didn’t look back. She couldn’t.

She just ran.

Shauni clutched the child tightly as they ran, the little girl’s sobs muffled against her shoulder. The Zenith Keeper stayed close as they fled through the smoke. The ground shuddered beneath their feet. Shouts echoed across the valley, blending with the sirens and the roar of approaching aid vessels.

Together they climbed a tilted slab of wreckage tiled skyward like the spine of a broken ship. Others were already scaling the incline, seeking refuge above. The Keeper gave Shauni a boost, then followed quickly behind. She adjusted her grip on the girl, who had stopped crying but now trembled uncontrollably, clutching at Shauni’s collar.

From the peak, they saw it.

The sea was coming.

A wall of water thundered over the horizon, taller than anything Shauni had ever witnessed. It swallowed what remained of the lower crash site, sweeping away structures, vehicles, and lives in an instant. The air turned to mist. The roar became all-encompassing.

Shauni crouched low, wrapping herself around the child as tightly as she could, every muscle straining against the wind and water. The Keeper hunkered down beside them, bracing himself.

Water surged around the wreckage, slamming into them with numbing force. Shauni gritted her teeth as icy spray soaked through her clothes. The child gasped and clung tighter, drenched and shivering.

Then, as quickly as it came, the torrent began to recede.

For a few moments, no one moved. The only sound was the wind and the creaking of twisted metal. Water poured off the wreckage like rain. The air was thick with salt and smoke, and the ground below seemed unfamiliar, reshaped by the wave's fury.

Shauni blinked through the haze. Around her, others began to stir. Some cried out for missing companions. Others simply sat in stunned silence, too overwhelmed to speak.

She looked down at the child in her arms. The girl had stopped trembling, but her breathing was shallow, and her skin cold and soaked from the wave.

A low hum grew louder. Engines. A Corin aid vessel hovered into view overhead, its side doors already open. The ship’s hull was scratched and scorched from earlier missions, but it held steady in the sky. A rope ladder descended, swinging wildly in the wind. Soldiers leaned out, shouting over the din and motioning urgently.

Shauni didn’t move at first. Her legs were still locked in tension, her arms too tight around the girl to feel anything else. The Keeper placed a hand on her shoulder, not rushing, just grounding her.

She exhaled, a shaky breath, and gave a small nod.

They moved together. The Keeper steadied the ladder while Shauni adjusted the child’s weight. Climbing was slow, each step a strain against her sore limbs and soaked clothing. But she didn’t stop. The child clung to her again, silent now, too exhausted to protest.

The deck of the ship welcomed her like solid ground after a storm. The Keeper climbed in behind her, soaked through and breathing heavily.

A medic rushed to meet them. “We need to check her for injuries.”

Shauni pulled the child closer, heart still racing. “She stays with me.”

She knew the medic was only trying to help, but her own response caught her off guard. It came from a place of instinct, not reason. She realized, in that moment, that she was still in shock.

The medic’s voice softened, gentler now. “We’ll bring her right back. I promise.”

The girl’s eyes fluttered open for a moment, then closed again. Slowly, Shauni relented. She let the medic lift the girl away, watching until they disappeared toward the back of the ship.

The Keeper sat nearby, silent and steady, nodding once in quiet solidarity.

Commander Veyna approached, damp and worn but composed. You could see the exhaustion in her eyes, but she wore it well. It surprised Shauni that the commander was out in the fields herself. Valleteian high-ranking warriors often mocked the military from other kingdoms. "No traditions and no backbone," her mentor used to say, laughing after a long day of training.

"We’ll reroute you to the Silent Vale aid camp," she said. "Both of you." She started to walk away but stopped for a moment, making eye contact with Shauni. "And thank you—for everything."

Shauni didn’t speak. She only nodded.

As the ship lifted and turned, she watched the ruined valley slip away beneath them. The vast wound carved by the tsunami now shimmered under the waning light, a terrible scar on the land.

When they landed, the air felt heavier somehow, quieter. Shauni stepped off with the girl asleep in her arms and the Keeper beside her. They moved through the camp gates, weaving past rows of wounded and working medics.

A nurse spotted her and approached, eyes widening. “You made it,” he said warmly, and nodded toward a nearby tent. “He’s in there.”

Shauni’s breath stopped for a moment. She thanked the nurse quietly and made her way to the tent, each step a flood of emotion threatening to overtake her. She looked over her shoulder toward the Zenith Keeper, she didn’t know his name, but they were forever bound by this experience.

“I never caught your name,” she said softly.

“Galileo” he responded.

“Thank you, Galileo, for sticking with us,” she said.

She turned and walked toward the tent. Galileo lingered for a moment, watching her disappear into the quiet, then turned back toward the arriving ships to assist the next evacuees.

Shauni lifted the flap and stepped inside.

Rows of beds, soft murmurs, the scent of antiseptic. Her eyes scanned the room until she found him, Alex.

He lay still, wrapped in white linen, one eye bandaged and one leg gone. But he was breathing.

A wave of emotion surged through her, breaking past the walls she had carefully held up all day. Everything she had been pushing down came rushing back, sharp and vivid. The memory of the comet striking, the camp torn apart by debris, the panic as they ran for their lives. She saw Alex falling again, remembered the blood, the way she had gritted her teeth and triaged his leg while the world around them burned. She had fired an emergency flare in desperation, one of the incoming ships saw it. That flare had led them to safety, and to what eventually became the first aid camp in the region.

Shauni stood frozen, the girl still fast asleep on her shoulder as tears fell freely.

He was alive.

And that, for now, was enough.