The Birthday Candle
Commander Sora Nakamura found the candle in a supply crate marked for disposal.
It was small, white, and slightly bent from years of storage. Someone had packed it before the invasion, back when birthday candles were manufactured by the millions, back when celebrations were assumed rather than rationed. Now it sat in her palm like an artifact from another civilization.
She should have logged it. Protocol required all non-essential items to be cataloged and either repurposed or recycled. A single candle contained wax that could seal a dozen micro-fractures, a wick that could be woven into emergency repair fiber. Nothing was wasted on Meridian Station. Nothing could be.
Sora slipped it into her pocket instead.
Meridian Station hung in the darkness between Mars and Jupiter, a waypoint for freighters hauling salvage to the inner system. Forty-seven souls called it home, rotating through six-month shifts that stretched into years when replacement crews failed to arrive. The station’s original purpose, scientific research into asteroid composition, had been abandoned after the invasion. Now it served as a refueling depot, a repair facility, and occasionally a hospital for crews whose ships couldn’t make it to better-equipped ports.
Sora had commanded Meridian for three years. She knew every corridor, every pressure seal, every grinding noise the recyclers made when the filters needed changing. She knew her crew’s schedules, their habits, their fears. She knew that Ensign Yolanda Reyes had been crying in the cargo bay after her shift for the past week.
She also knew why.
The station’s common area was cramped, designed for a crew of twelve and currently serving forty-seven. Sora had approved the rearrangement of cargo containers to create a secondary gathering space, but most crew still preferred the original room with its single viewport looking out at the stars. They said it reminded them that something existed beyond metal walls and recycled air.
Yolanda sat alone at a corner table, picking at a protein bar she’d barely touched. She was twenty-three years old. Her birthday had been six days ago.
Sora sat down across from her without asking permission. Commanders didn’t need permission, and waiting for an invitation would only give Yolanda time to construct a facade.
“You’ve been avoiding the crew,” Sora said.
“I’ve been busy, Commander.”
“You’ve been crying in Cargo Bay 3.”
Yolanda’s jaw tightened. “The recyclers are loud there. I didn’t think anyone could hear.”
“They can’t. But I check the motion sensors.”
Silence stretched between them. Through the viewport, a cargo freighter drifted past on approach vector, its running lights blinking against the void.
“My mother used to make a cake,” Yolanda said finally. “Every year. Chocolate with raspberry filling. She’d spend two days on it, even when we couldn’t afford the ingredients. She said birthdays were the one day that belonged entirely to you.”
Sora waited.
“She died on Day 3. I was at the academy when the bombardment started. I couldn’t even get a message through.” Yolanda’s voice stayed steady, the words practiced through repetition. “I’ve had seven birthdays since then. Seven birthdays without cake, without candles, without anyone who remembers what my mother’s raspberry filling tasted like.”
“What was her name?”
Yolanda looked up, startled. In three years of service, no one had asked. “Carmen. Carmen Reyes.”
Sora reached into her pocket and set the bent white candle on the table between them.
Yolanda stared at it. Her hands trembled as she picked it up, turning it over like it might crumble at her touch.
“It’s not a cake,” Sora said. “It’s not raspberry filling. But it’s yours.”
“Where did you…”
“Supply crate. Should have been recycled.” Sora shrugged. “I decided the wax had a better purpose.”
Yolanda’s composure finally cracked. Tears ran down her cheeks, but she was smiling. It was the first real smile Sora had seen from her in months.
“I don’t have a match,” Yolanda whispered.
“I do.”
Sora produced a small packet of emergency ignition strips, the kind used for starting fires in survival situations. She’d requisitioned them from the medical bay, trading a favor with Dr. Chen for three strips that wouldn’t be missed.
Yolanda placed the candle upright on the table, pressing its base into the soft remains of her protein bar to hold it steady. Sora struck an ignition strip and touched the flame to the wick. It caught immediately, burning steady and bright.
The small light reflected in Yolanda’s wet eyes.
“Make a wish,” Sora said.
“I don’t know what to wish for anymore.”
“Then wish for Carmen. Wish that wherever she is, she knows her daughter remembers the raspberry filling.”
Yolanda closed her eyes. Her lips moved silently. Then she blew out the candle, and a thin trail of smoke curled up toward the recycler vents, carrying the wish away.
Later, after Yolanda had returned to her quarters with the candle tucked carefully in her pocket, Sora stood alone in the common area. The viewport showed the same stars it always showed: distant, cold, indifferent to human grief and human joy alike.
She thought about the supply manifests waiting on her console, the maintenance reports that needed approval, the dozen small crises that would demand her attention before the shift ended. She thought about forty-seven souls depending on her to keep the station running, to make the hard choices, to hold the line between survival and collapse.
She thought about a bent white candle and a young woman’s smile.
Command was sacrifice. It was rationing hope the same way you rationed water and air, measuring out just enough to keep everyone going. Sometimes that meant saying no. Sometimes it meant logging every gram and every joule, accounting for every resource down to the last fiber of wick.
Sometimes it meant finding a candle in a disposal crate and deciding that some things couldn’t be measured.
Sora returned to her duties. The station hummed around her, alive with the sounds of forty-seven people working, sleeping, grieving, hoping. Somewhere in the crew quarters, a young woman held a birthday candle that should have been recycled.
The wax would have sealed twelve micro-fractures.
It had sealed something more important instead.
Author’s Note: This story takes place in Year 7 of the Post-Invasion calendar, during humanity’s “Survival Era” when resources were scarce and every station operated on the edge of sustainability. Meridian Station served as a vital waypoint in the salvage supply chain, keeping the flow of recovered Vethrak technology moving toward the research facilities where humanity was learning to fight back. But even in the darkest times, small moments of humanity persisted.
If you enjoyed this story, you can follow the main story arc in The Exodus Rush, the first book in The Vethrak Requiem series.