In the twelve years I’d served aboard this ship, not once did I expect to be tasked with the objective that I’d been given. The ship’s oxygen supply was limited, everyone knew that, but frequent shipments of oxygen from the federation’s capital kept us alive. Everything changed when the last shipment was seized by rogue vessels.

I knew what sacrifices must be necessary to get us by while the next shipment was on its way. I suppose I had no one else to blame but myself for volunteering, but I had determined that volunteering was the only way I myself would survive this purge. The captain himself supplied me with a list of all the passengers, in order of their value to the wellbeing and sustainability of the ship, determined by computer algorithms. One look showed me that this data was heavily biased in favour of upper class members of the ship, but I dared not to digress against the plan of my superiors. One by one was I supposed to disable life support to the quarters of each passenger until only the valuable members of the ship were sustained, and the crew capacity had decreased to a quantity at which our current oxygen supply would last us until the next shipment.

The terminal booted almost instantaneously and a second later I had entered in the passcode to be greeted with a welcome screen. My heart pounded in my chest as I typed in the command to display the list of passengers, a task which took forever to do given the sudden clumsiness of my hands. My heart skipped a beat when I pressed the enter key. The screen flashed as it showed the list of passengers. With a sigh, I ran my fingers through my hair and considered what options I had. If any. Thud, thud, thud sounded the keys as my digits squabbled onto each one. The little sips of my drink had turned into large gulps as I longed for the spirits to numb my sorrows. It had some affect, I guess, as the world turned to a blur around me and my eyes grew heavy.

I had been dormant when the sound of a rock bouncing of the ship’s shield had brought me out of my half-conscious state and back into the world. A empty bottle lay on the floor, what content of it remained poured out over the floor. As I pieced together my surroundings, the blueish hue of the display dragged my attention back to the task at hand. With a jittery mouse I sorted by the execute tag and ticked the box to select all items on the list. The computer froze up for a second as thousands upon thousands of names were selected. The swirling of the room resumed, this time from the millions butterflies flying around in my stomach rather than the liquor. Each key took all my effort to press down as I typed in the command to disable the supply of oxygen to the sleeping pods. My heart beat with the speed of a thousand horses, echoing through my chest each time. I stared at the clock for what seemed like an eternity; every second felt like an hour as they passed. I’d had enough of putting it off. I struck the enter key and left the room. As I walked away I worried about greater things than the restlessness which would follow.