Ragged Stasis
STARDRIFT – Episode 1: Dead Reckoning (Scene 6)
Lyschus Dyma lay across the corridor and against the wall, covered in dust and other debris. He coughed raggedly so that his whole body shook and began to get up but struggled, stumbling onto his knees.
Haneth rushed to help him. Shaken and shivering he clutched a hand to her and she helped him to stay upright by laying his hand on the trolley handle. This wasn’t enough because he couldn’t hold on.
She eased him forward along the trolley and dragged him onto it. With a little shift there was some place for him next to the Nedrilsten crate and he collapsed, draped over it.
The trolley was now loaded over capacity and the hoverplates were unable to keep it completely off the ground. Haneth pushed on, with the awful screeching of metal scraping against stone floors, leaving gouges she would have been severely punished for only the previous day.
At the hangar the imposing Novice Warden Ahsos was hurrying the last of the novices and other staff from the Dilradasi.
“Novice Beyli! There is no more time. The ship has started the launch sequence.”
He turned back to another novice with a bewildered look on his face. “Move along Kriona, to the stairs beyond the kitchen and get your sorry backside into the tunnels!”
Haneth reached him, gasping for words, out of breath. “It’s the Nedrilsten, and Lyschus Dyma!”
Novice Warden Ahsos’ eyes fell to the load on the glidetrolley. With great speed given his size he jumped forward and took hold of the handle beside Haneth.
Haneth wanted to explain what had happened back at the apartment but Ahsos cut her off. “I will manage the Nedrilsten, girl. You get Lyschus Dyma into his stasis pod.”
The weakness in her own legs nearly made her collapse when Ahsos took hold of the trolley handle and pushed.
“Kriona! Get back here. Give us a hand!”
At a remaining open space in the hold Ahsos and the novice Kriona lifted the crate from the trolley.
Haneth left them and pushed the trolley with only Lyschus onto it to the back of the hold. There was no more to say to them and the bombs were falling close by and they couldn’t hear each other proper anyway.
At the stasis pod she stopped and helped him off. He leaned heavily on her, pushing her to the side so that she could not walk straight. His other arm was wrapped tight around his middle, head dropped as if he had to keep his eyes closed and concentrate with all his might only to put one foot in front of the other.
Haneth pushed back, and steered them to the last open stasis pod. The others were already closed, their amber displays pulsing slowly. It was the only calm thing and she took hold of it as a point to calm herself down, timed her own breathing with the slow rhythm.
This far back in the hold the drone of the bombing became muffled and with everybody else already gone it was strangely quiet and serene.
When they stopped Lyschus Dyma’s legs gave way under him and he dropped down on his knees. Haneth let him slide down and then rolled him on his back. She immediately scrambled down to his feet to loosen his laces and take off his shoes. He had to get undressed to get into the pod and he was not going to manage it by himself.
Once his shoes were removed Haneth looked up. Lyschus Dyma had done nothing to remove any of his clothes. He only had his arms wrapped tight around his stomach, his eyes still closed and the dust making lines across his face from his sweat and the way he was twisting it.
“Dyma, you have to get undressed,” she said and with impertinence grabbed hold of his double wrapped cloth belt to untie it.
A clammy hand gripped hold of her wrist. First Haneth thought it was just to stop her but Lyschus Dyma pulled her upwards closer so that she could hear him. He spoke softly, stuttering with a clenched jaw.
“I am not going to survive the stasis initiation. And even if I did, I won’t survive the sleep.”
Haneth grabbed hold of the front of his tunic. “Dyma, no. There is enough time. You have to take your place.”
His tunic was damp under the dust and Haneth looked down. At the same time Lyschus dropped his arm away. His stomach and lower chest was smeared with a reddish brown mud. No, not mud, blood!
Haneth could not stop. She pulled his tunic from his belt. “Come, I have to help you.”
She found his body underneath, old but still strong, but not for long. A piece of shrapnel had pierced his body just under his rib cage and through the gash in his stomach Haneth could see the exposed intestines.
A haze of tears blurred her vision as her fingers kept fumbling to loosen his cloth belt. “You have little time left, Dyma. We have to—”
Lyschus grabbed her arm again with a hold that was painful. “Not as I am. The stasis fluid will cover the wound but I will die, in the chamber, or when I get taken out, it does not matter. I’m done for.
Haneth wiped her forearm across her face, mixing blood and tears. “But you have to join the others!”
“No,” said Lyschus, as he grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her down and close to him. “I liked you Haneth, you were a good assistant. You’ve only been with me for a couple of days but an old man can tell these things, you have a good heart and a true spirit.”
He took his hands and placed them on either side of her head, his thumbs on her temples, palms cupping her ears, palms sticky from the blood against her cheek and pulled her closer to him so that their foreheads touched. “Open your eyes, look into mine,” he whispered.
Haneth did.
There was a blinding bluish light and a stabbing pain that hit the back of her skull and crashed down into her body, shaking her for a moment and then slowly dissipated, as if she had been struck by lightning that was now leaking away, leaving her weak and unsettled.
“You have to take my place with the others,” said Lyschus.
“Dyma, no—”
“You must!”
It was not his words but the blood he coughed up that made her listen and act. Everything now was a blur as the tears flowed again. With trembling fingers she removed her own clothes, dropping piece by piece on the hold floor.
Only in her underclothes she knelt down and reached a hand to touch Lyschus Dyma on his cheek. “This is not right, Dyma. I should not.”
His eyes were clear despite the ragged state of his face. “This is what it is Haneth Dyma. Even the prophet cannot look at back of his own head.”
A klaxon sounded and the light changed as the hold doors started to close automatically. Through her knees pressed down on the metal she could feel the vibrations of the ship change.
It was all coded and automated, the flight plan and destination secret and encoded, a stealth mission to take the elders and the treasures of the Guzmul Order into hiding until this horrible war was at an end.
And she was going along with it all. But this was not her place. She searched for words to protest again with a hope that Lyschus would change his mind and take his rightful place. But when she looked at him she saw there was no point anymore. He was no longer struggling for breath, head slumped down, eyes vacant, dead. His face had gone soft and peaceful as his soul had left him.
Haneth got rid of her last clothing. She used her own tunic to wipe her face. There were no more tears. Just a quiet resignation.
She climbed into the pod and had her last struggle. There was nobody to lift the lid on and she had to struggle awkwardly herself. When the lid was on the distant rumble of bombing was cut off and the only sound was the gurgling of stasis fluid filling the capsule, bringing a numbness with it.
She calmed herself by counting her breaths but the last moments would not leave her. Not the way Lyschus Dyma had left, the hard grip he had on her wrist. The way he said her name: Haneth Dyma.
Wait, why would he have called her Dy…
© 2025 Gerhi Janse van Vuuren