A Winter Wonderland

[Spectre]

January 13th, 827 A.S.
Tau-31 system, Border Worlds

Contact

Data Servers
Deck 18, Midships

---

The crackle seemed to give them hope. For the first time in four months, sound was coming from the small speaker in the side of the panel, marking their first contact since their escape from Leeds.

Ambre breathed a sigh of relief. "Finally. I think that's it, ensign.. try and raise a link with whatever nearby forces you can. If our intel was right, then this whole system should be under control by those Crayterians.."
The ensign nodded, working while Ambre and Nina looked on, soon beginning to send the message out.


As they worked to establish contact, the fighting continued raging, the crackles caused more by the stress on the ship's superstructure than any real fault in the wiring. Indeed, while they worked, two of the mutineers closed on the server room, remaining rather quiet in their approach. Near the end of Ambre's transmission, they burst in, incapacitating the ensign. A short scuffle rang out, leaving one of the mutineers dead at the hand of Ambre's boot knife, while the other brandished a sidearm.

"Arrêtez!" he shouted, aiming the weapon at his captain and her executive. "I'm not letting you send this message, Captaine! Have you lost your damn mind?!" His tone was erratic, and Ambre could tell. His mind was full of the propaganda the mutineer leadership had been spreading around, claiming Ambre's dedication to letting the ship be blown apart, or something. Their talk was more out of general hate than any real reason.

"Put the weapon down, Sous-Lieutenant. That's an order." Ambre, meanwhile, remained calm. Her experience with ending the lives of her own crew, while she didn't enjoy it, brought a level of experience she didn't want. It seemed necessary, though, and certainly was coming handy here. "You don't know what's going on. That gunnery officer has been filling your head with lies and slander. No weight-"

He jerked his hand, pointing the weapon at Nina, who seemed rather alarmed with it all. She'd never been in a situation like this, held at gunpoint with the snap of a neuron being the difference between life or death. "You don't know that!! What good will come of it, huh?! You make contact, we get found, and they execute us all for being perpetrators to their darkest hour!"

Ambre couldn't come up with an immediate response. His points were rather valid, if exaggerated. Regardless, contact needed to happen.
"What would you prefer, Sous-Lieutenant? That we freeze to death in space, wait for them to find us frozen our here in the middle of this field? The engines are out, mon ami. We aren't moving. We've tried for weeks, and nothing. This is the only solution."

He jerked his hand again, shouting out. "Non!"
With a swift snap of his finger, the gun rang out. Ambre couldn't hear after it, instinctively lunging forward and flinging her knife at the Sous-Lieutenant, catching him in the eye and dropping him cold. A moment passed afterwards. Then another. Each was measured in heartbeats, her blood pumping. She didn't enjoy killing done personally. It was a cruel and pointless task. Add in that they were her own crewmates, and it brought a tear to her eye just thinking about it.

As Ambre caught her breath, she could hear the ringing being replaced by the sound of a loud thud to her right. She turned her head, Nina's motionless body lying face down in a pool of her own bodily fluids. She knelt down, tapping her insignia.
"Boffrand to Medical. Data Center, emergency level fourteen. Executive down."
From the short-wave comm device sounded out a small 'Oui' as she tried to cover the gash in Nina's neck. The high powered shot didn't do much straight damage, it seemed, but an artery was definitely severed. People didn't tend to live after these sorts of things.


Medical teams arrived within a lengthy moment, taking Nina off to medical. Ambre would have joined, but reluctantly the mission came first. No point in saving her executive if the ship was doomed.
Ambre stepped back over to the console, finishing her transmission, casting it out into the system for pickup. As the ensign came to, he expedited the process, using what power he could to ensure it reached the other end near Holman. Once out, Ambre breathed yet another sigh.

With hope, it would spell rescue. If not, then perhaps the Sous-Lieutenant was right.
Perhaps she was the death of the ship.

---