"That hit would have destroyed us!" Alsin said breathlessly, with white knuckles gripping the helm in front of her as the Hellbender careened between the Yut Molaw and a Rostran ship identified as the Lof Tansa. Debris had been knocked loose from the hull of the Yut Molaw rained across the bow of the Hellbender, and each piece made a sickeningly audible thud. With each impact heard, the crew became slowly desensitized to the sound while somehow being made more aware of the sound’s horrifying implications as if the collective mind were preparing itself for vacuum silence. At’hala watched the viewscreen in horror as it revealed that the Yut Molaw sustained more damage than possibly anticipated. The impact force from the Cambrian caused the ship to rotate off its axis to reveal a glimpse of the gaping hole in its starboard side. It looked as if the Cambrian’s cannons had simply gutted the ship and left it to bleed. At’hala was very still, stricken by the sight of the violence. He looked away when he saw members of the ship's crew floating lifelessly among the debris. Erik had seen similar scenes before, but the same feeling that had built up to the point of bursting during the defense of EF 119 boiled within him now. This is a massacre, he thought to himself. The pieces of the puzzle fit together so perfectly it made his stomach acids burn fiercely against his esophagus.
"They need to fall back. There's no way the Rostran patrol group will win this conflict. They shouldn't sacrifice so much for the three of us," At’hala pleaded uselessly, face still buried in his hands.
"They're not fighting for you, At’hala. They're defending whatever it is we carry. Without it, we are the ones who take the blast from the Cambrian,” Erik said. With that, he ran toward the bridge door. "Stay among the Rostran ships. Put them between the Ministry and us if you can. Move evasively. We're counting on you,” Erik said to Alsin as he stole one last glance at the chaos on the cracked viewscreen. At’hala wordlessly followed Erik through the door with urgency, leaving K’rah and Mun’gale with Alsin in the bridge to fly for their collective fates.
"I just need to know. Before I die, I need to know. I need to know what I was worth to them,” Erik said when he realized At’hala was following him down the long corridor toward the tube. He had no bearing on his own train of thought. At this point, he knew death was certain. The Hellbender was never going to escape the Dreadnaught Mercury. He knew that. He knew that ship and its capabilities better than anyone. A part of him wanted to see what secrets the Hellbender carried so that if At’hala was right and there was some sort of God, or higher existence, or society, or whatever, maybe he could laugh about this in the afterlife. A bigger part of him wanted to see Yuriel. He couldn’t tell if it was love he felt or not, but then again, what does love even feel like? He simply needed to see her. Erik had always wanted to get married and have kids after his service in the Ministry. He would buy a house on a terraformed exoplanet where he could have more land than he would ever need, but that dream seemed distant. He could imagine Yuriel’s face greeting him every morning when he woke, her sun-kissed lips curled up into a smile and her dark hair tangled into a beautiful mess, but that dream seemed even farther beyond the reach of his fingertips with every second that slipped by. He ran down the corridor, lost in his thought, listening to the sounds their steps made. Their footfalls made hollow echoes that reflected off the white, reflectively metallic walls and floor. Erik had
never noticed his reflection in the walls before now. The Dreadnaught Mercury always had such a muted interior, coated in colors designed to psychologically prime the crew for battle. Deep reds, icy blue hues, and blacks were all designated colors for the design of Ministry warships, not white and pale greys like the interior of the Hellbender. The walls were oppressively sterile in nature. The interior chambers he passed all reminded him of being in planetary station medical terminals, recovering the few times he had been injured.
His reflection, however, seemed tired. His beard was ragged and his eyes sagged. His shoulders drooped. Generally, he saw himself looking pretty pathetic, but he had no time to dwell on that.
