She looked at him with a demeaning face that told him to shut up and stop being such a drama queen. ‘Calm down and give me the damage report, you idiot.’

With shaking hands, he pulled up the ship’s hull monitoring system. Fearful that the damage they had sustained would render them incapable of making a Lewen jump to safety. Incredibly, his computer reported there was no damage at all.

‘I don’t get it, it says there’s no damage. It’s like we haven’t been hit at all…’

‘That’s what I thought. It was just some scattershot. Ships like that don’t have the type of power to blast straight through a ship’s hull, especially not one as advanced as this Lecetude of ours, or whatever it’s called.’

‘Lecudetude.’ He corrected her. He did it more out of habit than because he cared about such minor errors right now. Right now, the name of their ship was the least of their concerns. ‘I don’t get it though, shouldn’t the heat cause at least some damage?’

‘Don’t be daft, Voss. This ship’s hull is capable of atmospheric entry. It’s made to withstand great heat for prolonged periods of time, so unless they manage to lock in and maintain fire on exactly the same spot, the heat gets dispersed and nothing happens.’

He felt stupid. It made sense when Ala explained it. He knew these things but they had slipped from his mind in the heat of the moment. He hated to admit it, but the fear had gotten to him and had made him sloppy. He slapped himself in the face and scolded himself under his breath. He had to focus and stay sharp. Sergeant’s Reiniger’s voice echoed inside his head. “There’s no mercy in the void, no room for mistakes.”.

‘We’ve lost them for now.’ Ala said. ‘I’m adjusting our direction to put us in the correct course for our slingshot maneuver around the gas giant. We’ll be safe during the first part of that maneuver, as they don’t have any visuals on us and don’t know our location; But as soon as we pass their first perimeter drone, they’ll get a reading of our engine’s heat. If they manage to get us locked in with three separate scanners, they’ll be able to get an exact location. That’s when things will get hairy.’

‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ he asked. Knowing full well there was very little he could do. He felt like a passenger and resented being so useless in this moment of peril.

‘You can shut up and not get in the way.’. She replied. He knew she was right and that was a painful blow to his ego. Their entire mission it had felt like he had held the upper hand. He had been in control and it had been her that had to tiptoe around him. Now that their mission was at its most critical, he mucked it. She was calm and fully in command. He was useless and forced to observe how they were heading towards an almost certain death. A feeling of guilt came over him; one that he could not stand to bear.

‘Ala’ he sighed ‘in case we don’t make it, I want to apologize. I didn’t treat you well during this mission, and I haven’t held you in high regard. If I’m completely honest with you, I’ve often thought that I’d be better off without you aboard this ship. I was wrong. You’re an excellent pilot and a good agent. I appreciate what you’re doing to keep us alive.’

She looked at him with a stern face. For a second he thought she was going to scold him, but then her face softened and revealed a hint of relief. ‘Thanks, but I can’t blame you. I did lie to you and treat you like an expendable tool. It’s what got us in this situation in the first place.’

Their gazes lingered into each other’s eyes for a second or two before they both snapped back to reality. Suddenly it hit him. They did have a chance to survive this, but only if he sprung into action now.

‘Can you give me some time estimates? How long until we’re in danger again? How long until we can jump?’

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‘About eight minutes until we have visuals on their fleet again. Ten minutes tops until they get a read on our location. Fifteen minutes until we can make the jump.’

‘Good. I have a plan. We might just survive this.’ He opened his belt buckle and tried to get out of the chair. A backbreaking task at five G’s. He had to twist himself and wiggle his legs underneath him. Even then it took him all his leg strength to get out of his seat. ‘Damn it, this won’t work unless you slow down our acceleration.’

‘I can’t do that, Voss. The slower we go now the longer we’ll be in their crosshairs. We need all the speed we can get.’

‘I don’t care, just do it, it’s our only chance!’

‘Fine, damnit, but I’m not decreasing acceleration below three G’s or we’ll be dead meat no matter how great your plan is.’

She pulled back the lever a bit and he felt part of the weight lifted from him. Still, the acceleration caused him to carry around three times his weight. He tried to keep a straight face with Ala as a show of confidence, but the truth was that he wasn’t even sure he’d even make it to the back of the ship, where he needed to be. One slip or loss of grip and he’d fall down fast and his body would smack into the back of the ship like a fly getting squashed by a boot. They had no other option though. This was their only shot.

‘I’m going to launch every drone we have as a diversion. Give me the signal when you think it’s the right moment to start launching them. Then accelerate as fast as you can.’

‘Are you sure? We’ll be going at eight G’s overdrive and you won’t be strapped in. That kind of speed is barely survivable if you’re seated properly. There’s no chance you’ll survive it back there.’

‘Damnit, Ala, it’s the only chance we have. Just do it.’

Their eyes locked in for a second time. There was empathy in hers, something they had never shown him before. He gave her an awkward smile, before dropping himself down the back of the cockpit. It was only half a meter and yet the landing felt rough. Three G’s were no joke. He half walked - half crawled towards the hatchway that led to the living quarters.

When he climbed down the ladder towards the back of the ship, it reminded him of some of the toughest exercises the sergeant had put him through during training. Especially the time the sergeant made him climb a ladder whilst carrying Wago on his back. He had internally cursed the sergeant back then, now he felt grateful for those drills. By the time he made it past the living quarters and to the hatchway that would take him to the ship’s stern, he felt out of breath. His legs were wobbling underneath him. Still, he had to push on and hurry through the hatch and to the stern chamber, where the drones were kept. They had twelve drones remaining. Not enough to form a full smoke screen to hide in, but it was all they had, so it would have to make do.

‘Two minutes until acceleration. Start firing those drones!’ Ala said over the ship’s intercom.

Damnit, he was running out of time. He pulled the hatchway open and cursed out loud as he tried to drop through it in a controlled manner. He had intended to lower himself down until he hung beneath the hatchway with his arms outstretched, but his hands were to tired to hold onto the slippery surface. What should have been a half meter drop at most, turned into one that was well over a meter and a half. Not a problem under normal circumstances, but the heavy gravity caused him to fall so fast, that both his ankles snapped on impact during the landing. He screamed bloody murder as a harrowing pain shot through his back. He didn’t have time to wallow over the pain though, he had to push through it. If there was a chance he could save Ala, he had to try. He began crawling towards the computer that controlled the drones and the torpedo tubes. He bit his tongue to stop himself from crying out each time one of his ankles smashed into the steel grates beneath him. He managed to finally reach the stern computer and ordered the drones to create a smoke screen before telling the stern computer to fire at will. The four drones that had already been loaded into the ship’s stern tubes fired at once. The ship's autoloader then came to life and loaded the remaining drones into the tubes one by one.

‘Thirty seconds until acceleration!’ Ala’s voice warned him.

He desperately looked around for anything he could hold himself onto. The only thing he could see was a large cargo net, spanned a few meters away from him. It took him all of his remaining strength to crawl over towards it and stick both his arms through the net. He wasn’t even done wrapping his arms securely into the net, when the ship began accelerating. The force on his body increased dramatically and nearly caused him to pass out, the only thing keeping him awake was the excruciating pain he felt when his legs slammed down to his left due to the heavy force suddenly pulling down on them. His ankles burned and his legs felt as if they were being lashed by faceless ones.

The force pushing down on him grew and kept on growing until it reached the point where he wasn't even able to turn his face anymore. He was powerless to resist and the only thing keeping him from smashing against the wall to his left, were his arms entangled within the net. His vision became increasingly blurry. His eyes felt like they were about to burst. With his last strength he was able to make out the contours auto loader from the corners of his eyes, and he saw that it was loading the final drone into a torpedo tube, which fired as soon as it was loaded. His plan had succeeded. It wasn’t much, but at least they now stood a chance to survive; at least she stood a chance to survive...

The thought was his only comfort as he was hit with the excruciating pain of having his arm nearly torn off. He felt the tendons in his right arm snap one by one until every tendon from his shoulder to his wrist was torn. His arm dislocated from his shoulder and now held together by nothing but flesh and skin. ‘At least she’ll live.’ he whispered with his final breath as his consciousness faded and he slipped into dark nothingness.