by quentin bourne

You are the crew of the Coralus, a rickety old freighter carrying much needed relief supplies to a settlement on the planet Ithaca, which has been cut off by ion storms for the past year. You work for the Galactic Relief Foundation, a grand name for an organization which very much fails to live up to it. You're really just a handful of ancient ships who make runs to deliver donated goods to settlements in need.

Half an hour ago, your Maintenance AI warned you the ship's power core was over heating. You scrambled to shut everything down so you could wait for repairs, but something overloaded before you could manage.

Twenty minutes ago, the Maintenance AI told you that the engine room had flooded with radiation, and all bulkheads have been sealed for your protection because the radiation would otherwise kill you in a matter of hours.

Two minutes ago, the Maintenance AI informed you that safety protocols had failed catastrophically and that the only way to prevent the ship from being blown into space dust was for one crew member to manually vent the engines while another manually shuts them down at the same time.

The implications are not lost on you: for everyone else on the ship to survive, two of you must die.

The AI informs you that you have two hours until the engine explodes. You have two hours to decide.