Captain Hiro Subaru looked at the screens around him. His ship was doomed. Nothing he could do would change that. His crew would have to abandon ship and hope for a rescue from Command.

“Mr. Gilbert,” he said into the intercom. “We're going down. Start moving people to the life pods. We want to save as many as we can.”

Subaru took a second to rub his bald head before replacing his cap. He hated to lose the Argo. It had been a good ship the last twenty years. This was the first defeat it had taken in its career and it was catastrophic.

The bridge crew would be the last to leave. The other sections had to get clear while they fought their enemy. If they succeeded in winning the battle, he could pick up the life pods and his surviving crew. Losing meant Command would have to send someone out there to Saturn to fix things.

“Mr. Cranston, take us in,” ordered Subaru. “We'll need to protect the life pods from attack. Miss Glad, fire at will. Burn up the magazines. We're not going to need them.”

Miss Glad, who hadn't been a miss in a long time, set the Argo's rail guns to fire at the closest target. The shells would chew through another ship like a saw as the Argo passed by.

She fed target resolutions to the missile batteries that sat behind the rail guns. She set up the firing sequences to fire in waves so that a target would use up its counters on the first and second waves before the third hit. If the first wave actually wrecked the first target, secondary targets would be moved up in the profile.

Subaru watched the screens at his station. Cranston's flight path took the Argo across the bow of the enemy ships. Their rail guns chewed up a fighter screen trying to launch missiles at his ship. The deck rocked as missiles flew from his ship. He doubted any of them would hit, but he had to hold on as long as possible.

“Miss Glad, Mr. Carmicheal,” said Subaru. “Report to the life pods. There's nothing more you can do here. Mr. Cranston, turn us on heading 190 by 150 by 10. Then you can go too.”

Miss Glad checked her firing solutions before standing. She looked across the bridge. Carmicheal was in his control panel with a tool kit. He ripped some of the cards and hardware out of the panel. She helped him pack up so they could head for the elevator to take them off the bridge.

Cranston set the automatic pilot with the course the captain wanted. He knew that it would take the Argo into a crash course into one of the moons. That didn't matter if enemy fire did for the ship.

“I can stay, Captain,” Cranston said as he stood. “This course will carry the Argo clear of the enemy fleet, but there's no way to say they will chase you.”

“Report to your life pod, Mr. Cranston,” said the captain. “Only I'm allowed to go down with the ship. If things work out, you'll be able to pick me up after the battle is over. I'll see you after the action.”

Both men knew that was a hopeful lie. Subaru would probably be turned to atomic dust when the enemy recovered from the onslaught the Argo had handed out. They wouldn't let the ship continue to sail after this.

“Go ahead, Mr. Cranston,” said the captain. He gestured at the emergency ladder. “There's no need for both of us to die.”

“Yes, sir,” said Cranston. He saluted before he hurried to the ladder. He doubted the life pod would make it away from the conflageration, but he wanted to escape if he had a chance.

“I think most of the crew are off, Captain,” said Gilbert over the intercom.

“Do a sweep and then take off, Mr. Gilbert,” said Subaru. “There's nothing else you can do.”

“Aye, sir,” said Gilbert. He cut the connection.

Subaru checked the missile load. Miss Glad's firing courses had used up most of the magazine payloads. Automatic systems reloaded the tubes, but there was almost nothing to reload now.

If he survived, he made a note to put her up for promotion. She deserved that for the knife's edge she had given the Argo.

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An explosion rocked the Argo. He checked the system. A missile had blown part of the hull away near the stern. There was nothing he could do about the hole and partial fire down there.

He checked the integrity of the bridge. He could lose most of the ship as long as nothing punched through his command center. Miss Glad's handiwork made it unlikely they would hit an active missile getting ready to fire which would cause a chain reaction through the ship. If they hit the engines, he would have to rely on momentum to keep him moving away from the exchange of fire.

He checked his sensors. He had lost clusters of them, especially near the missile impact area. He still had enough to tell him that the enemy fleet had lost several ships and suffered major damage on most of the rest. The fighter screen had suffered more than a few losses thanks to the rail guns sending arcs of fire into them.

Miss Glad definitely needed a promotion after that. He smiled. She was the best gunnery officer he had ever met. He wished he could send his log to Command to follow up on that.

He patted the arm of his chair. The Argo still shook from the rail guns turning and firing when they could at any of the fighters still chasing him. He doubted their officers wanted them to keep following after a certain distance.

The Argo needed to turn and attack again if he wanted to inflict more damage on the enemy. It was the best he could do to protect his crew. The enemy could not be allowed to chase the life pods down and destroy them.

He took control of the helm from his seat. He typed in a course correction and asked the Argo to comply. The battleship turned to face its enemies in a long loop. The engines clicked as they pushed the ship across the system.

He set his face.

The Argo could be destroyed as it charged back into the fray. He wanted his ship to stay together long enough to be the victor in this. Giving the enemy a black eye was just not enough at the arm's reach he was fighting.

The rail guns sent the rest of their ammunition across the void at the enemy. They punched holes as the Argo sailed on. Return fire blew holes in the body of the ship. Subaru watched his screens as the Argo slowly died.

The rail guns ran out of ammunition as he came out of the crowd. The Argo turned from one missile impact redirecting her flight. The engines went offline.

Subaru watched as one of the moons filled his screen. He tried to restart the engines from the bridge several times. He checked the distance reading on his screen. He might be able to get down to engineering and do something as long as nothing else exploded.

He went to a locker next to the emergency ladder. He pulled a suit out of it and pulled it on. He checked the air tanks and pulled the straps on. He fitted a helmet to the neck clamps and secured it.

He had time. He could get down to engineering and restart the engines. Once he had some semblance of control, he could divert to an orbit, or land on the moon. Then he could think about informing Command the results of his actions.

He would need to get spare chips for the radio to do that.

Subaru started down the ladder. Gravity snapped off. That couldn't be good, but it might make it easier for him to move through the Argo. He pulled himself along the ladder until he was at the right deck. He pushed out in the corridor and kicked toward the stern.

He floated along, passing through bulkheads that kept air escape to a minimum to keep the crew alive. He found a couple of dead bodies floating in the corridor. They had been damaged by fire too much to be recognized. If the Argo didn't break apart, maybe he could bring the bodies back for identification.

He couldn't do anything else with the Argo heading for an impact that might cause the ship to break up on the surface of the moon. He had to ignore them if he wanted to save the ship. Then he could worry about rescuing his crew and dealing with his dead.

The captain reached engineering. He opened the door and slid inside. The door snapped shut behind him. He groaned at the large hole in the side of the section. Parts of the hardware were gone. He floated to the closest screen to see if there was anything he could do.

Subaru realized that the essential power had been diverted from the operations systems when the screen failed to boot up to allow him command access. He looked around. There should be a spare control panel next to the huge reactors that ran the Argo. That gave him a chance to take control.

He kicked over to the control panel and removed the lid with sharp pulls of the tabs at the corners. He started punching in commands to bring the engines back online. He looked at the screen. When it came back to life, he knew he had succeeded. He saw a flicker of yellow light. The engines were coming back. He just needed a few more minutes of work and he would be able to fly the Argo from Engineering.

After that he could work on saving his crew and getting his ship to a dock capable of fixing the problems it had.

He worked until the screen looked fully operational. He felt the grip of gravity as he struggled to the screen. He had to bring the ship to a stop.

Then he could work up solutions to the rest of his problems.

The Argo hit the moon. He slammed into the engine casing. He tried to pick himself up. He had to keep fighting. He found he couldn't feel his limbs. He needed to pick himself up. He knew he could do it.

He couldn't move anything. Why couldn't he move?

Liquid started pouring into Engineering from the hole in the side of the ship. He looked at it as it started covering him up. Maybe he could use that. Maybe he could swim to the door and get back to the bridge.

He felt the liquid solidify around his body. He tried to reach for the panel to pull himself up out of it. His arms wouldn't obey his thoughts. He looked at the flood pouring into the space. There was nothing more he could do.

Captain Subaru waited for the inevitable. Eventually his oxygen ran out and he drifted off to sleep forever inside his watery tomb. Ice fell down on top of the Argo. It remained in place as more ice covered it.

A cursory search turned up nothing as the wounded ship lay underneath the refrozen debris field. The small trickle of power Subaru had initiated hadn't even turned on the beacon to alert searchers where the great ship had come to rest.

The review board had declared Subaru a winner of the medal of honor after a review of the logs and interviews with the crew had shown that he had fought hostile forces to a standstill to protect his crew. The Argo was declared destroyed in an explosion and not enough of its body could be salvaged by the Navy.

A marker would be planted on the moon to mark the passing of the great ship and its commander after the war for Saturn was over. Historians would examine the battle for many years. It would be declared a fight the Argo couldn't have won, and the infliction of the enemy losses had been luck and some amazing skill at work.

The surviving crew would serve on other ships. None of them would forget their missing captain and his destroyed command.

And thus the legend of the Argo and its last captain sailed into being.