A space battle, Captain Douglas Garcia mused, never could decide what it wanted to be. Either too far away, with nuclear fireballs reduced to flickers of light, or so close in your face that even AIs struggled to keep up with missiles coming in thick as white on rice. If there was a middle ground he must have blinked and missed it, especially now as Scorpia lashed out at an incoming wave of Abyssal missiles.

"Point defense guns eight through twenty depleted. Reload ten seconds." Her squadron-mates reduced to scattered wreckage, Scorpia alone faced down a wave of missiles meant for five. Five destroyers together had point defenses to be reckoned with; one destroyer, shields depleted and desperately retreating to the main battle line, did not. Her own missiles replied, flaying a pursuing Abyssal destroyer and forcing the other two on her tail to turn away, but it was cold comfort in the face of the approaching cloud of steel.

"Five - four missiles projected to impact, port forward quarter." Scorpia's defensive pulse laser arrays scored one last kill. It required the combined fire of four arrays to overcome the energy-scattering of the Abyssal material - another reason the kinetic weapons' reload cycle couldn't have been more badly timed.

"Initiate full starboard roll, bow down twenty starboard fifty. All hands, brace for impact." Garcia gripped his armrests tight and leaned back as his destroyer turned and accelerated away from the incoming missiles. He grunted as a few gs bled through the inertial dampers. A small timer counted down the seconds to impact: five, four, three, two, one-

Scorpia shook and groaned from the hits. "Hull breach, venting stern port and starboard quarters! Fire, decks five and six!"

"Vent burning compartments, damage control parties to affected sectors. Divert capacity from bow to stern shielding."

"Understood, increasing shielding astern!"

A harsh metallic buzzer sounded. "MAC, reloaded!"

"Priority comm, Admiral Williams designates RU-22 as priority target." Verdant, Scorpia's AI, highlighted the target in question on the main display, a single dot at the forefront of a sea of red that outnumbered UNSC fleet interposed between it and the burning planet of Roseport three to one. "Your orders, sir?"

Garcia glanced at the incoming reports. The Abyssals on Scorpia's tail had fallen back in search of easier prey and no other immediate threats presented themselves, though in between the waves of missiles being exchanged it was hard to tell who was or wasn't targeting Scorpia. The destroyer's angle and position might also let it slip in a cheap shot on the battleship's unguarded side. "Slave our FC to the battlenet, prepare for evasive maneuvers."

"Yes sir." Scorpia's main propulsion went dark as maneuvering thrusters fired to swing her two MACs towards a distant Abyssal battleship. "Coordinating with fleet fire control… adjusting for fire control dispersion factor… locked." The hull shuddered as both cannons discharged their 800-ton rounds. The battleship began maneuvering as soon as it detected the inbound salvo, but the combined power of the fleet's fire control systems had already overcome its sensor jamming and accounted for its most likely course changes. Half a fleet's worth of main battery rounds bracketed and slammed into the enemy vessel, whose shields took twelve direct hits - enough to annihilate a sizable asteroid - on the chin and shrugged them off. The armor absorbed eight more, but the next round found something vital and the ship broke in two. "Target destroyed."

A whoop went up on the bridge as the battleship disappeared from the display. "Nice shot!" Garcia exclaimed, allowing himself a small fist pump. With the priority target destroyed, individual ships and divisions resumed dueling their Abyssal counterparts, jousting with MACs and energy projectors. He dialed the propulsion back up and set the ship back on its previous course, then pressed the PA button. "All hands-"

A sensor officer shouted in alarm. "New contacts! Fighters, four zero zero klicks!" Angry red dots popped onto the display, Abyssal aerospace craft dropping their stealth as they ignited their engines and burned hard into wide turns. "They're turning-missiles spotted! Countermeasures active, jamming at full power!"

Verdant cursed, a shade of anger clouding her calm voice. "Clever sonuvabitch. Sneak up while I'm looking the other way."

"Focus, Verdant! Bow up sixty port eighty, war emergency power!" Scorpia's PDCs and laser arrays lit up the sudden volley of missiles bearing down on her unguarded starboard broadside. The remaining secondary turrets joined in as well, taking potshots at the fleeing fighters. Streams of tungsten arced through space, slashing through the missile formation, hitting one or two but mostly going wide. Garcia could only imagine the hell the aiming mechanisms were going through, jittering multi-ton turrets back and forth as the fire control systems struggled to agree on velocity, position, and angle.

Just when things couldn't get worse, the sensor officer spoke again with the tone of dead man. "Nuclear signatures detected."

"That's not a hit we can afford to take," Verdant whispered. "Permission to take over maneuvers?"

"Granted. All hands, brace for high-g maneuvers! Repeat, brace, brace, brace!" Garcia slapped the high-g alarm. The bridge crew leaned back into their crash couches, wincing as needles poked their skin and injected the drugs that would keep them conscious. As shrill alarms blared, sailors throughout the ship secured equipment before they raced for their own couches, or strapped themselves to padded walls with elastic webbing designed for such situations. Taking one last full breath, Garcia muttered, "This is the part I hate!"

That last part came out as a grunt as maneuvering thrusters fired all along the hull. Scorpia's hull, screaming under dangerous levels of structural stress, twisting through space under Verdant's superhumanly steady hand, swinging and jolting back and forth to snake through the missile cloud. One missile made it through and hit the dorsal armor belt, searing away the ablative coating and ripping a large section of plate off of its mountings. It also scorched the structural plating underneath, but the spaced armor absorbed most of the damage, and the crew barely felt the impact through the g forces leaking through the inertial dampers. Another strayed too near the main propulsion and came out the other side a melted, harmless wreck. One more struck a piece of damaged armor plate ripped off by the violent maneuvers and exploded four hundred meters to port, turning gunmetal grey into charcoal black. Despite the drugs in his system Garcia felt something in his right eye pop. Blood began trickling down his cheek a moment later. "Verdant!" he gasped, "shoot those damned things down!"

"I'm trying, sir. It's not quite that simple-." Verdant cut herself off with a surprised noise. Fifty kilometers off Scorpia's aft port quarter a slipspace portal tore open the inky blackness. Clawing back into reality like a kraken breaching the ocean surface, an Autumn-class heavy cruiser and her escorting destroyers slid out of the rip in space-time, just in time to body-block three missiles with her fresh, powerful shields. The point defenses of the ships then combined to shoot down the rest and maul the fleeing fighters, with most of the kills going to the cruiser's much more capable suite.

The elephant on Garcia's chest disappeared as Verdant ceased her wild maneuvering. He shot straight up, gasping for breath, and hurriedly wiped the blood from his face. Palpable relief and a cheer flooded the bridge as Scorpia's shields finally began to rebuild and she reduced thrust, much to the relief of Garcia's good eye. "Get me a damage report," he ground out against the pain.

"Heavy damage to the dorsal armor belt. Medical reports multiple burn, shrapnel, radiation, and vacuum injuries." The officer turned around with a grim expression, sporting a black eye and bloody nose. "One of our primary shield capacitors was destroyed along with multiple PDCs and a secondary turret. The MAC loading equipment is also damaged." He hesitated, then went on, "Any attempt to fire could result in power failure."

Garcia's good mood vanished like fog in sunlight. "Lovely." Out of the corner of his good eye, he noticed an incoming comm request from the cruiser. "Steady on this course. Get repairs started on the MAC." With one hand over his bad eye, Garcia accepted the request. "This is Scorpia, thanks for the assist. I owe you one, uh..."

"Captain Khalid, and you're welcome Scorpia." The damaged sensors finally ID'd the cruiser, now burning to match course with Scorpia, as the Hope Springs Eternal. "Compliments of Admiral Williams. Looks like he sent us just in time."

"Much appreciated." Garcia couldn't help but let a sour note slip into his voice. "Cut it a hair too close for my liking."

Khalid dipped his head. "Fair. Our bad - had to take care of some business first." That business had left its mark, in the form of plasma scars, craters and ragged holes along the cruiser's broad flanks. He paused, then continued hesitantly. "Are your comms down? We've been trying to contact you."

"What?" With a growing sense of weariness, Garcia pointed at the comms officer. "Status on our comms."

"Yes sir…" The officer pressed a few keys on her console. A few moments passed, then her shoulders visibly sagged. "Long range communications array has been heavily damaged," she said, in a long-suffering voice.

"In general, nukes and communications don't mix well," Verdant supplied. "I'll tell damage control to get on it." Garcia waved the AI off with a mental flick, pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off a growing headache and desire to drink. Yet another few days his ship would be laid up in the Reach orbital docks. Assuming we make it back at all.

"Uh, that's a yes, Eternal. Our LR comms are fried until further notice."

"Roger that. Link your short range to our array, we'll relay your messages." Khalid paused to take a message from one of the other destroyers, then continued, "The last civilian evacuation ship just formed up with BattDiv Two. Our remaining ground forces need evacuation ASAP. Admiral Williams is ordering all ships to form a battle line over the landing zones to screen the extraction." A data packet containing maneuvering orders arrived over the comm. Garcia gestured for Verdant to unpack and apply it. "Your slipspace drive isn't damaged, is it?"

"No, thank God."

"Good." Khalid sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He appeared haggard and gaunt, illuminated in red battle lighting. Garcia could make out damage behind him, including where a railgun round seemed to have penetrated through and through the compartment. "We estimate less than two hours before the ground forces are overrun. Once that happens…"

"Roger that. Our shields are back up, we'll follow your lead." Garcia signalled to the flight officer. "Prepare for ground transport ops."

"Yes, sir. Flight deck, stand by for ground ops."

Khalid nodded. "Good to hear. Lock onto our nav beacon so you can piggyback into our portal."

"Roger that. Scorpia out." Garcia cut the connection, then looked back at the display. "Verdant, give me the quickest low orbit insertion burn you've got. We're not staying here a moment longer than we have to."

"Affirmative, sir."

"Also, one more thing. Please don't blow my other eye."

Perhaps it was just his imagination, but Garcia thought he saw Verdant's holographic lips twitch into a smile. "No promises, sir."

Shrapnel struck a Pelican in its port engine as it maneuvered amidst Abyssal AA fire. Smoke began seeping from the dropship, but its pilot managed to hold it steady while the extinguishers took care of the fire. A Rapier fighter circled protectively as it clawed for altitude, a cargo of worn and weary marines cradled in its belly.

Mud and debris showered on Sergeant Julie Armandez as another volley of artillery fire smashed into Alpha Base. She crawled along bottom of a muddy trench, doggedly making her way forwards through the hell raining down around her, what remained of her platoon behind her. Some marines returned fire with the remaining howitzers and mortars, but counter-battery fire silenced those guns one by one. She crawled by a gun pit containing the smoldering wreckage of one of the guns, along with the shrapnel-riddled bodies of four marines.

"Great idea, evacuating in the middle of an artillery duel," growled Corporal James Laughley, crawling beside her. "'Oh, I had no idea this was going to make us the biggest, fattest target on this entire goddamn plan-"

Laughley sputtered and choked as an empty ammunition box landed in the trench, and splashed muddy water in his face. Satisfied that her second-in-command had shut up, Armandez forged onwards. Small groups of marines huddled along the sides of the trench, waiting their turn to sprint across no-man's-land to landing dropships. Some threw smoke grenades, keeping the LZs carpeted with a constant dense cloud of multi-colored fumes. Others, in defiance, fired small arms and light AA guns at Abyssal aircraft flying back and forth overhead. A rocket team scored a lucky hit and an Abyssal fighter burst into flames as another wave of Pelicans and their escorts broke through the clouds.

"Eight birds incoming! Stand ready!" An officer with his arm in a sling and a whistle in hand stood by a set of ladders propped up against the trench. Several groups of marines made their way towards him, and Armandez made sure her unit was among them. He looked up at her approach and nodded. "Sergeant," he said with a grim nod, "flight plan looks a little turbulent today."

"Captain Mayfield! Still alive, then?"

"Well, someone had to stay behind and make sure you monkeys didn't jump the queue." Mayfield effected an exaggerated shrug. "I drew the short lot, so here I am, zookeeper. You're assigned to Zone Two."

"Crazy bastard volunteered, didn't he?" muttered Laughley, shifting from toe to toe trying to keep track of the dropships. "Thirsty for that DSC."

Mayfield pretended not to hear, instead peeking his head up above the parapet heedless of the ongoing bombardment. The remaining artillery crews drew on reserves of strength to increase their rate of fire, and seemed to suppress the incoming fire just a little. The officer hardly blinked when a piece of hot metal that caused Laughley and Armandez to duck whizzed inches from his cheek and only bent down when one took his helmet clean off. He picked it up and examined the ragged hole punched through the brim, then dusted it off and fixed it back upon his head, hole on prominent display. "Well?" he barked as several marines stared at him, "Carry on! Those Pelicans will be here in a hot minute, and they aren't waiting for you!"

"Barking mad," Laughley said, and Armandez nodded in agreement. They turned their gazes back towards the approaching dropships, just in time to see a squadron of Abyssal fighters force their way through the escorting drones and strafe the formation. One Pelican veered away, hull aflame and control surfaces shot to pieces, and crashed into the ruined city below. "Fucking dammit, come on, come on!" The rest of the dropships broke formation and took evasive maneuvers, their CAP circling protectively around them. "Come on flyboys, steady now…"

"Get more smoke on the LZs, fire chaff and flares on my order!" Mayfield barked. He stood on a firing step to gain a better vantage point, and Armandez caught him licking bone-dry lips. "Now!"

Mortars fired with a series of pops to scatter canisters of chaff and brilliant flares into the air around the LZs. The CAP broke off to engage inbound fighters, leaving the inbound craft to thread their way through the city at almost ground level. One shook when an Abyssal cannon round pierced through its starboard wing but managed to settle into its final approach. At the very last second, when it seemed they would overshoot the base entirely, the dropships turned around and burned hard, slowing to a near stop within seconds. They touched down inside the protective embrace of the smoke clouds and dropped their ramps, dimly lit interiors beckoning to waiting marines.

"Go, go, go!" shouted Armandez as Mayfield blew hard on his whistle. She clambered up the ladder and stood on the parapet, helping her marines to scramble up and waving them on towards the Pelican hovering in LZ Two. A shell burst nearby, spraying another group with shrapnel. Several marines fell, and their comrades picked them up without missing a beat and piled into a waiting dropship. Armandez waited until the last marine went up the ladder, looked back once - Mayfield, crazy bastard, was still standing straight up, waving marines on and getting the next groups ready- then dashed across no-man's-land. Something tugged at her calf as she went, but she paid it no mind. Tripping over the threshold, she landed in the dropship's bay in an untidy heap.

"Your leg's bleeding!" someone said as a few sets of hands helped her up. The pain was white hot, but a quick touch told her it was only a flesh wound with nothing embedded.

"Never mind that, get us outta here!"

"Roger that-"

Laughley cried out in alarm. "Wait!" He pointed out the still open ramp. "Abbies in the perimeter!" A section of the beleaguered perimeter wall disappeared in a flash and bang of demolition charges. The first Abyssals through were cut down by machine gun fire, but more quickly replaced them, accompanied by tanks forcing their way through the narrow openings. At least the artillery seemed to have stopped, Armandez noticed, even as marines and Abyssals began trading small arms fire.

"Shit!" The Pelican shuddered as its nose mounted cannon went to work, spraying 40 millimeter SAP rounds into the Abyssal ranks. It helped, but its effectiveness dropped as the Abyssals began fanning out into cover and focused fire on the transports. "LZ's too hot, we're taking off!" the pilot shouted, bullets flattening themselves against the hull armor. The engines spooled up with a whine and Armandez felt acceleration begin to push her into her seat.

"No, dammit!" Laughley pushed his way towards the bay door dual-mount machine guns. He grabbed the triggers and played the guns like a hose, painting the air with tracers and forcing the incoming fire to slacken. "Come on, get in, get in!" Two other Pelicans joined in, and a dozen or so marines decided to take their chances and broke cover. Dodging and weaving beneath a blanket of covering fire, they miraculously made it unscathed, crawling beneath rattling brass ejectors into the Pelican bays.

An alarm sounded from the cockpit, followed by an angry shout from the pilot. "We're going to overload, we leave now!" Armandez and another marine lunged forward to drag Laughley off the guns. Pinning his shoulders to the wall while the other marine strapped him into a seat, she spared one more glance out the closing ramp. Pistol in hand, Mayfield rallied the remaining troops to himself, standing tall while directing their fire to cover the escape of the dropships. He managed to catch Armandez's eye, gave her a grim nod and smile, then caught a round through his chest. Her last glimpse of him was of black, corrupted blood streaming from the wound and his mouth as he gunned down the offending Abyssal with his pistol, yelling something she couldn't hear.

"Buckle up! Scorpia FLIGHTCON, Echo Three Eight, I'm RTB and requesting a flight path." Unsecured marines went tumbling as the Pelican accelerated, going nearly vertical in a bid for altitude. Armandez grabbed hold of an overhead handle and caught a marine falling past her. They hung together from the single, creaking handle until Armandez managed to swing them both into seats. Other marines weren't so lucky, crashing into walls, seats, each other and the rear ramp. The Pelican wobbled with the sudden, random changes in its center of gravity, and for a moment seemed the pilot would lose control. It thankfully straightened out, then immediately shook again when something hit the port side and opened a gash in the hull through which Armandez could see clouds streaming by. She yelled for a patch kit while the pilot went evasive.

A few marines forced the patch onto the hull just as the internal pressure began dropping while the others struggled back into their seats. The dim lighting and cramped compartment seemed to press in on Armandez. With no viewports, she could only judge the situation by the rattling of flak off the Pelican's armor and the number of times sudden turns and decelerations gave her whiplash.

"Yea, though I walk in the shadow of the valley of death, I fear no evil…" Someone prayed, quite loudly, despite the forces of acceleration and gravity still crushing them towards the rear of the dropship. A muffled curse sounded from the cockpit right before a burst of ten millimeter rounds sawed through the cargo bay with a characteristic whine, perforating the Pelican's dorsal and belly armor. Automatic sealant systems quickly patched the small holes, along with the ones created when a trailing missile burst in a cloud of chaff. Laughley broke off his cursing with a hiss and his face turned stark white. His right hand flew to his neck, trickling blood from shrapnel cuts, and he resumed his cursing with even greater ferocity.

Armandez reached over to help, but before she could do anything her body was thrown forwards against the restraints. A sudden engine cut off left the cargo bay in free fall, causing marines to float for a brief moment before the pilot pushed the throttle forward once more and slammed everyone back into their seats. A dull pain throbbed in her rear, though it was nothing compared to how tight her cheeks were clenched. "Got fighters on our six, hang tight!" The pilot piped up over the intercom before the Pelican snapped into a corkscrew that pressed them to the walls.

"Shiiiii-"

Several marines reached their limit and vomit dispersed through the compartment. Armandez scarcely noticed, even when a near-miss missile shook the entire dropship. Her seat transmitted the violent vibrations caused by the engines being pushed to the red line and beyond as the Pelican gave all it had and more to break contact. The hull shook some more as the pilot fired the remaining chaff, flares, and a few ANVIL missiles. She heard a faint cheer from the cockpit which she took to mean one had scored a hit.

"We need - goddamn fighters!" Laughley gasped. "Where's the damned - CAP!"

The lack of support was made painfully apparent when an explosion almost threw Armandez from her restraints. Four marines slumped over in their seats, blood running freely from the backs of their heads. Through a hole in the wall, she could see flames trailing from the port engine and half of the wing, the other half blown away. Forget aerodynamics, the Pelican was flying on pure thrust.

"Get a patch on that!" Armandez ordered, knowing that no one could respond. The automatic sealants kicked in, slowly filling the holes, but it was like trying to plug Swiss cheese. For every hole they filled in another one appeared, and the Abyssals' aim was getting better. Laughley quietly swore once more time and fell silent, breathing heavily. Armandez closed her eyes and tried to resign herself. Maybe if I relax, it'll go quicker. She paced her breaths to calm herself, wanting to set a good example in her last moments. In, out, in, out, in, out-

"Echo Three Eight, this is Scorpia Flight, inbound three o'clock high. Check your fire." Armandez's eyes shot open and she quickly tapped into a newly established tacnet. A wing of Rapier fighters fell out of the sun's glare, diving in perfect sync. The Abyssal fighters were too focused on the Pelican to notice the fighters swooping down upon them until it was far too late. The Rapiers swept through the alien formation, shields flashing with deflected return fire. Missiles leapt from their pods and rotary cannons screamed, downing half the Abyssal fighters in one pass.

The remaining Abyssals broke off the pursuit and their formation as the Rapiers pulled up for their second pass. They reassembled to face the human fighters head on, bringing their powerful frontal shields to bear. In response, the Rapiers split off into two groups, one going high and one going low to force the Abyssals to expose their weak points to at least one angle of fire. Their cannons roared once more, but their aim was thrown off by a sudden burst of acceleration from the aliens. The Rapiers overshot and the Abyssals capitalized on their mistake, volleying missiles into the disorganized formation and downing three fighters.

A general groan rose from the Pelican's passengers. Armandez gave in to the urge to swear. "Come on, flyboys, get it together dammit!" Laughley nodded in agreement, while carefully holding a cloth to his neck. "What the hell are you paid for?!"

As if responding to her comments, the Rapiers lit their afterburners and screamed after the Abyssals. The alien fighters attempted to get behind them with a wide vertical loop, but the Rapiers read the maneuver and intercepted them halfway through the turn, cutting perpendicularly across the Abyssals' flight path. A flash of cannon fire later, the tacnet registered free of hostiles.

The radio crackled. "Apologies for the wait, had to fight our way down to you. Get inside of our formation, we'll get you to Scorpia safe." Waggling their wings in victory, the Rapiers formed up alongside the Pelican, shepherding it through the thinning atmosphere and into the cold embrace of space. As gravity disappeared from beneath her, Armandez had to coach her heart into restarting. The whole ordeal had probably shaved years off her life, but the relief of finally getting to orbit and having an escort made it all seem not so bad. "We made it," she sighed, sagging into her restraints.

Laughley gave her a strained grin in return as he started clumsily wrapping a bandage and gauze around his neck. Acceleration returned, gentler this time, as the pilot nudged the Pelican onto a low-profile burn. Chatter broke out among the marines, happy they had somehow survived, but subdued by the knowledge that not everyone had made it. A few of them took advantage of the calm to check on their incapacitated comrades, but the slump of their shoulders told the story.

Armandez let out a heavy breath, then clapped Laughley on the back. "Alright, man?" She took the bandages and tied them off behind his neck. "That looks nasty."

"I been better, sarge," he said. "Been worse too." He glanced over at the four dead marines, and the numerous injuries that adorned the rest. "Could be a lot worse."

"Always could be." She patted his shoulder one more time, then sat back as exhaustion finally hit her. The Pelican bay gradually silent as the dropship flew onwards, guarded by the Rapier flight. Besides taking care of each other's wounds, nobody felt much like speaking. It seemed that to do so would break the solemnity of the moment, especially as they drew close enough to the fleet to connect to the battlenet. Caught up in the meatgrinder of the surface, Armandez hadn't paid much attention to the space battle, but viewing the battlenet she now realized the enormity of the losses the fleet had suffered. With over half its ships destroyed or disabled and most of the rest damaged, the fleet was a mere shadow of its former self. The losses the marines suffered seemed almost trivial in comparison.

"Hey sarge?" Laughley spoke so quietly that Armandez almost she was hearing things, especially in comparison with his earlier cursing. "You think… the guys we left behind…"

"..." Armandez stared at her boots. "... they let us escape. Remember that; don't let it go to waste."

"Yeah… but I-"

"Fuck right off with that thinking." She turned to look him in the eyes. "What do you think the Captain would say if you kept beating yourself up like that?"

"..." Laughley cracked a half-hearted smile. "He'd call me an idiot and tell me to get back on the firing line."

"Exactly." She paused as the pilot announced their imminent landing on Scorpia. "So chin up, and make yourself presentable. I'm not having you embarrass us in front of the whole ship."

Laughley hastily brushed off his uniform and patted down his hair as the pilot guided the Pelican into the embrace of Scorpia's hangar shields. A gentle deceleration pushed the marines into their chairs before they touched down with a thud onto an empty landing pad. The ramp unlocked, allowing atmosphere to flood in with a hiss. Armandez stood up as soon as the restraints were off, helping Laughley out and shouting for a corpsman. A medical team ran over and she handed off her wounded men to them to take to the nearest infirmary.

"Sergeant, we should check that leg out," said a corpsman, noticing the shrapnel wound on her leg. "That looks nasty."

"Right, just a moment." Armandez turned around to look back at the scorched and beaten Pelican, then out of the hangar bay shields. The battlenet gave her an overall impression of the situation, but she felt the need to see it with her own eyes. Not that there was much to see; only the occasional flash and fireball betrayed the positions of ships in the inky blackness of space. "How are casualties?"

The corpsman grimaced. "Not good. We've taken a beating. We can hold out for a little longer, but if we can't get out of here soon…"

"Right." She took one last look, then shook her head. "Out of the frying pan and into the fire, eh?" She motioned for the corpsman to lead her to an infirmary. "Get me fixed up and put on a repair party. Whatever I can do to help, so I can get out of this hellhole."

He huffed in amusement. "I don't think anyone would fault you for that. This way, sir."

"Ground ops complete, all evac ships have docked."

"Incoming missiles. Engaging point defenses."

"Shields steady at fifty percent, cannot rebuild further."

"Seal the hangars, cease flight ops. Coordinate our defenses with the overall battlenet through Eternal." Garcia ground his teeth at the shield readouts. "Inform damage control that fifty percent is unacceptable, give me at least seventy or God help me I'll come down there and fix them myself!"

"Unadvisable, Captain." Verdant commented from the sidelines, avatar's face slightly strained as she duelled Abyssal intrusion attempts. "Fine naval officer you may be, you wouldn't know an energy director from a power feed."

"Not helping, Verdant." A flash of light from the display caught Garcia's attention. Without fanfare or so much as a distress call, the cruiser Masquerade caught no less than five energy projectors straight through her length. Fire spewed from her disintegrating hull as her atmosphere ignited and her escorting destroyers scattered, and sensors registered only a few escape pods before she went up in a horrendous, beautiful, and completely silent explosion. Morbidly entranced, Garcia almost failed to notice the proximity alarm warning of incoming rounds. "Get those goddamned shields up! Bow port thirty degrees, angle against incoming fire."

A pair of mass driver rounds flattened themselves against Scorpia's armor belt. The plating buckled and warped and the hull bulged inwards but held even as the ship shuddered violently under the impact. "Minor damage, all systems operational," Verdant reported.

"Weapons status?"

"All loaded, ready to fire."

"Fire staggered volley on my mark… mark!"

With a howl of fury, Scorpia spat her reply into the void, as did every other ship in the fleet. Missiles spewed from their pods while laser arrays and plasma lances pumped shot after shot across tens of thousands of kilometers of space. Abyssal point defenses lashed out at this wave of fire but were unable to prevent it from crashing against their shields and hulls in a tsunami of violence. Ships charged their main batteries as the barrage subsided, and the massive energies being gathered seemed to make time slow down on Scorpia's bridge. A moment passed, and three hundred ships fired MACs and energy projectors as one in a display that sent shivers down Garcia's spine. He unconsciously leaned backwards from the sheer force of the discharge and as Scorpia screamed her own rage at the Abyssals. Uncountable needle-thin beams of raw plasma outpaced the six hundred slugs that flashed towards Abyssal ships at .2 light speed. They raced past frigates and corvettes savagely knife-fighting in the no-man's-space between the two fleets, mauling each other like rabid dogs in an alleyway brawl in an attempt to employ their deadly torpedo batteries against the enemy's capital ships. The Abyssals, still partially blinded by the radiation storm unleashed by hundreds of nuclear detonations, regained sensor vision just in time for the energy projectors to strike, followed by the wrath of the MACs.

"Registering thirty… forty… fifty four hits. Four cruisers destroyed, six damaged, two battleships heavily damaged and one destroyed," Verdant quickly reeled off the battlenet data that Garcia was too busy to read. "Got them!"

Not good enough, the Abyssals seemed to reply. Cruiser Division Seven, the All That Glisters, King of Kings, Jabberwocky, Enuma Elis, and Babylon Garden, disappeared in a brilliant hail of plasma lances and a ball of nuclear fire. Battleship Ishtar retreated under heavy bombardment, her hull pockmarked with fires and shedding armor and atmosphere. To Scorpia's port, destroyer Taurus took a glancing hit that broke her shields, wiped out one of its main propulsion units and continued out the other side. Cassiopeia, zigzagging to dodge a bracket of plasma beams, detected a stealth torpedo too late to stop a fatal turn which carried her directly into its path. Garcia's mouth went dry, knowing that that could easily have been Scorpia. "Set wide-spectrum scan for torpedoes. Status on point defenses?"

"Heavily damaged, but operational at thirty percent capacity."

"Missiles?"

"Magazines for pods 1 through 27 are depleted, 28 through 50 are at 25 percent stocks."

"Missiles and railguns will cease action and standby, do not fire unless I order so. Get the MACs reloaded, make sure the repairs are holding. Initiate reload cycle on the point defenses." Garcia turned his attention back to the main display and noticed the fleet maneuvering to mask its propulsion from the Abyssals. A smart move, but a touch too late considering how many ships struggled to complete the turn due to their damaged engines. He motioned for the helm to turn Scorpia bow on to the Abyssals. "Contact Hope Springs Eternal, request maneuvering orders."

"Yes sir. Initiating tight beam-"

An incoming comm alert buzzed in Garcia's ear, preempting the comms officer. Captain Khalid appeared before him, even more haggard than the last time Garcia had seen him, and cut right to the chase."Scorpia, Admiral Williams orders you to attach and subordinate your ship to my squadron." He paused, grabbed a canteen and sucked down half its contents. "Provide point-defense support and prepare for action. The fleet is preparing to break orbit and advance to the IJP."

Not even a 'how do you do', eh? Garcia held back the urge to swear, opting for a slightly incredulous, "What?"

"Watch your tongue. We're trading three of our ships for one of theirs," Khalid snapped back. "Would you like to just sit here and take it?"

"...no."

"I'm glad you under-" The feed fuzzed out as Eternal took a hit. All eyes snapped to the battlenet display, waiting with bated breath for the damage report. It resolved after a moment, showing a direct mass driver hit on the bow. It was a testament to her design and construction that Eternal hadn't exploded on the spot, but the sheer force behind the hit disabled two power distribution pathways, destroyed a dozen compartments, opened a dozen more to vacuum, and caused the cruiser's bow structural integrity to falter. Her status flickered between green and yellow, dipping into red for a breathless second, before it eventually settled back on green as repair parties got the damage under control. A hearty cheer went up for the cruiser's stubbornness and Garcia heard Verdant breathe a virtual sigh of relief, cut short by a series of alerts. A ragged wave of missiles, hot on the heels of the mass driver round, approached the ships. Scorpia's tireless point defenses engaged the bogies, combining with Eternal, cruiser Hic Sunt Dracones, and destroyers Betelgeuse and Virgo to wipe them out almost as an afterthought.

Garcia offered a silent thanks to Eternal for drawing fire away from the fragile destroyers. "Verdant, signal that we are complying with orders. Move us into escort position off Eternal's starboard, put secondaries and point defenses on high alert," Garcia ordered, "and get that channel back!"

"No need for that, though your escort is appreciated." Khalid reappeared, sporting a bloody nose. Behind him, something on the bridge looked to be on fire. "We have detected that the Abyssal fleet has moved out of range of their slipspace jammers at the IJP. Admiral Williams plans for our corvettes to perform attacks on the enemy rear via precision jump. The fleet will simultaneously break its orbital position and advance to the jump point." He paused to look over at a display on Eternal's bridge. "Corvettes are preparing to jump now. Be ready."

"Roger that." The channel cut off. On the tacnet, the surviving corvettes broke formation to burn for safe jump distance in a deliberately chaotic fashion meant to look like a rout. The fleet simultaneously intensified fire and maneuvered into an aggressive formation to draw attention from them, and the Abyssals ignored the apparently panicking ships to concentrate on the larger threat. As MAC rounds and energy projectors flew back and forth, the corvettes jumped to slipspace. "Lord speed your way," Garcia whispered, before an alarm alerted him to an incoming energy projector. "Hard to port!"

Scorpia fired her starboard maneuvering thrusters but the plasma beam bent to track the destroyer. It seared along her flank, burning away much of her starboard armor plating and weapons mounts, damaging coolant lines and opening compartments to vacuum, though by some good fortune neither the engines nor the structural plating sustained important damage. Verdant appeared in her holotank and said something about point defenses being heavily degraded. Garcia quickly ordered damage control and rescue parties to the scene, but felt his jaw tighten at the thought of yet more of his crew slaughtered like fish in a barrel while he sat pretty on the bridge, safe and helpless.

While Scorpia burned and struggled to regain her course, the fleet traded another salvo with the Abyssals. The destroyer's MACs gained some measure of revenge by helping to finish off a battleship and kill two more cruisers in exchange for cruisers Mare Tranquillitatis, River Plate, and Cleanup Crew, and heavy damage to battleship Revenge. He offered a quiet prayer for the crews' souls, even as rescue ships combed through the wreckage in a futile search for survivors. "Verdant, status on the corvettes?"

"Slipspace willing, their attack should commence in ten minutes."

"Got it, keep me posted." His thoughts were underlined as Cruel To Be Kind, firing its MACs on rapid cycle and maneuvering in formation as part of CruDiv 5, suffered a penetration that wiped out its bridge and almost all of its staff officers. "Fuel status?" he called out, more to fill the nervous silence than anything.

"Thirty percent reserves."

"And our slipspace drive?"

The helm officer took a moment to quietly consult with engineering before reporting, "Light damage, but it'll hold. Maximum jump distance is one hundred light years."

"Can we sustain Cole jumps?"

"Yes sir. Shall I start plotting?"

"Do it," Garcia ordered. "Verdant, help out."

Verdant flickered as she split off a personality fragment to assist the helm officer, momentarily giving her whispered update a kind of double-voice. "The fleet is assuming a defensive formation." Wanting to conserve strength until the critical moment, Admiral Williams gave orders for the remaining battleships to form a loose half-sphere and for lighter vessels to array themselves in a honeycomb pattern centered around the battleships. While the formation dispersed and reduced the fleet's firepower, it also presented no particular salients or points where the Abyssals could strike from multiple angles. A textbook defensive maneuver, it would keep the fleet alive a little longer… at least in theory, which Garcia held onto even as the Abyssals casually focused fire on cruiser Avalon. Meanwhile, the frigates broke away from their knife fights and retreated, trading parting shots with their Abyssal counterparts and flinging torpedoes as they fled for the safety of the battle line. They had succeeded in their mission, stopping stealth fighters and torpedoes from getting through to the UNSC line, but at a terrible cost. "Eternal has passed us a maneuvering solution."

"Implement it. And let's cover those frigates. MAC status!"

"Both barrels hot, repairs are holding."

"Verdant, inform Eternal we are engaging enemy frigates and to expect torpedoes. Fire control, target that frigate, cover our own." Garcia designated the target, then paused as another UNSC volley flew past. When the dust settled, it revealed a trio of destroyers destroyed and a cruiser damaged but left the frigates unmolested. He motioned for the firing process to continue and waited a second for the firing solution to resolve.

"Fire!" The first pair of shots went wide as Abyssal sensor interference played havoc with the fire control systems, alerting the Abyssal frigate to its predicament. It immediately began maneuvering, erratically changing its speed while turning and unleashing a salvo of missiles. Scorpia couldn't yet detect them, but Garcia was sure a spread of torpedoes was right behind them.

"Captain, Eternal is signaling an evasive turn. Dracones, Betelgeuse, and Virgo are turning as well, signaling that they are supporting us."

"Acknowledge them. Helm, turn to avoid torpedoes. Weapons, fire pods 28 through 35, aim to bracket target." Scorpia turned 45 degrees to starboard and four degrees up from her previous course while firing her own missiles. Her point defenses engaged the enemy missiles at 600 kilometers while her salvo forced the enemy frigate onto a straight-line course. The frigate replied with a volley of plasma beams at Virgo, but her turn carried her neatly out of the way, allowing the shots to fly harmlessly off into space. In return, the frigate's shields buckled under the strain of two hits from Betelgeuse's main battery.

"Solid hit! Enemy's shields are weakened, reading forty percent absorption capacity."

"MAC reloaded."

"Send Captain Kawabe my compliments. Keep up the pressure, fire one!" Unable to turn without running into a cloud of missiles, the Abyssal ate a MAC round that shattered upon its shields but broke them in return. "Fire two!" The second round missed, but sensing weakness, CruDiv 11 pounced like a pack of hyenas. Another MAC hit, followed by a pair of nuclear warheads, then a quintet of plasma lances which burned through its armor and lit it on fire. Two more plasma lances punched through the melted and bubbling armor and must have hit something vital, because the frigate shuddered and exploded in a brilliant fireball. Scorpia's reactors temporarily went to 110 percent, accelerating to avoid a spread of last-ditch torpedoes while the division's point defenses worked them over like a shredder on paper.

"Energy signatures dissipating, kill confirmed. No further torpedoes spotted." The sensor officer allowed himself a fist pump. "We're in the clear."

"Woohoo!"

"Suck it!"

"Eat shit, alien sonsabitches!"

The cheers of the crew nearly drowned out a comm from frigate Balmung. "Thanks for the assist, Scorpia." She, along with the battered and burning Mystletainn, fell into formation, hiding behind Eternal while their shields rebuilt and they put out fires and patched holes. "We'll stick with you from now on."

"Roger that. Take your maneuvering orders from Captain Khalid on Hope Springs Eternal." Garcia allowed himself a satisfied smile as the screen cut off. "Good job, everyone. Turn to regroup with the fleet, and notch one more kill."

"The frigates are squawking heavy casualties and widespread equipment failure. I don't know how useful they'll be," said Verdant, cutting down on Garcia's buzz. He shot her an annoyed look.

"You don't have to be so blunt about it," Garcia chided while skimming the automated reports. "Their main batteries and torpedoes are still functional. Propulsion isn't bad either, though we might have to tow them through a portal." He turned to the helm officer. "Matter of fact, helm, prepare tow links, just in case."

"Understood, sir!"

"Thank you." Garcia turned back to Verdant and continued, "Give optimism a try, it isn't dead yet."

Verdant failed to reply for a bit as she got the ship back into formation just in time to join in another fleet salvo. Scorpia leaned back, hurling her steel at an appreciable fraction of lightspeed towards an unlucky trio of destroyers and a cruiser, which exploded under the gentle ministrations of two battleship divisions and five cruiser divisions. The Abyssals were happy to trade it for concentrated fire on the battleship Perseus. Her damaged shields went quickly, and her armor soon after. The mighty warship, a grand gleaming symbol of the UNSC's strength, disappeared in a brief puff of light and dust that quickly vanished into the uncaring gloom.

"Escape craft detected, but others are assisting. Three minutes until corvette attack," Verdant whispered. Garcia nodded, watching the MAC charge bar climb. Despite his outward calm, marred only by sweat lining his brow and his rumpled collar, his heart pounded as the seconds ticked down, each one longer than the last. Surely the fleet wouldn't sit on its thumbs for much longer? The corvettes couldn't pull their mission off without some kind of distraction. They'd be blown up as soon as they jumped in.

"Raise Eternal, find out the plan for coverin-" Garcia resisted the urge to roll his eyes when yet another incoming comm cut him off. Can't get a thought in edgewise today.

Perhaps sympathizing, Khalid kept the comm brief. "All units CruDiv 11, prepare to advance on the Abyssal battleline. The frigates will take out the slipspace jammers. Shields front, and good luck." The communication cut out as quick as it came, and the display registered the ships around Scorpia bringing their thrust up to full power.

"All units are coming to full burn," reported the comms officer. "Receiving orders… confirmed. Admiral Williams orders all units to set a course for the IJP, keeping enemy fleet to bow port quarter, in formation diamond wedge." He looked over at Garcia. "What's our move…?" He trailed off, seeing Garcia's brow furrowed and his gaze distant.

"Captain, your orders?" the helm officer and Verdant asked simultaneously, the helm officer tentatively and Verdant in an impatient bordering on insubordinate tone.

The question snapped Garcia out of his tactical musings. "Helm, maintain speed and formation with Eternal. We can't afford to go freewheeling off. Verdant, implement our specific maneuvering orders." As the crew leapt to carry out his directions, he turned to the weapons officer. "All active batteries will fire until out of ammunition."

"Yes sir, bringing all batteries online. Targeting missiles… " Scorpia's surviving railguns came to life, slamming eight-ton shells outwards at ten rounds per minute per gun from dual-mount turrets. With even the near-bottomless stocks a UNSC warship possessed nearing exhaustion, the missile pods disgorged their remaining contents in staggered volleys, designed for salvo survivability rather than maximum weight of fire. However, this did not mean the volleys were sparse, and space once again became more steel than vacuum as hordes of missiles trailed MAC rounds and energy projectors on a collision course with unwary Abyssal warships. The Abyssals seemed taken aback at the UNSC's advance as several of their ships received fatal hits, perhaps not believing the humans could have the audacity to go on the attack after an entire battle on the defensive. Their first shots missed, underestimating the acceleration of their targets, as they began to return fire in earnest rather than their heretofore lazy, semi-coordinated potshots.

"Cooling systems are damaged, operating at reduced capacity," the weapons officer warned. "We have to reduce our rate of fire or we risk overheating our guns."

"Do it, just keep them firing!" Even a little slower, Scorpia still held nothing back, expending the rest of her missile reserves and draining the power banks of her laser arrays. The fierce barrage clouded Abyssal sensors with debris and radiation, so much so that they didn't notice a series of slipspace portals opening up behind their lines.

With a flash of light, corvettes coming out of slipspace lit their propulsion and dashed towards the Abyssal rear. Distracted by the ferocity of the UNSC battleline, the Abyssals were slow to respond. The corvettes closed to nearly point-blank range before firing. Their torpedoes forwent their usual stealthed approach in favor of speed, lighting their powerful fusion drives as soon as they cleared their launchers. Their onboard guidance systems coordinated with each other and the corvette squadrons, forming a local fire control network that battled through the Abyssal haze. The torpedoes homed in on the capital ships, caught flat-footed in wide turns as they tried to bring their main batteries to bear on the scattering corvettes, and mercilessly delivered their payload to the Abyssals' doorsteps.

"The diversion worked! Registering massive Cherenkov spikes - the corvettes have engaged the Abyssals!" Verdant reported, tone pleasantly surprised. "Multiple kills confirmed. The enemy formation is broken. Now's our chance!"

"Full forward thrust! Set a course for the IJP! Cover the frigates on their attack run." Scorpia's propulsion roared back to full thrust as Balmung and Mystletainn, rearmed and repaired along with their fellow frigates, soared past on their way to attack the slipspace jammers surrounding the IJP. A few Abyssal ships lashed out at them on their approach, focusing down and disabling frigate Kris with a hit to the engineering spaces, but for the most part their attention was held by the corvette attack. The frigates quickly closed with the stationary, fragile slipspace jammers and launched nuclear missiles and MAC rounds from multiple angles, first bracketing and then putting shots on target that overwhelmed their shields and engulfed them in balls of fire.

"Jammers destroyed!"

"Verifying… registering positive manifold gain. Our way is clear."

Admiral Williams' voice came through the comm. "All ships, proceed to the IJP and jump on my signal."

"Finally, something's going to plan!" Scorpia began charging her slipspace drive, maneuvering to throw off a few incoming missiles which her brutalized defenses feebly swatted at. The battleships and cruisers formed up into a vanguard, shielding the fragile transports that huddled within protective balls of destroyers. Slipspace portals appeared around them as corvettes, those that hadn't been destroyed, jumped to rejoin the fleet. They left an Abyssal fleet in disarray, multiple capital ships destroyed or disabled and sensors blinded by radiation and debris. Some smaller ships, unscathed by the daring strike, fired on the UNSC independently, but nothing approaching the coordinated salvos that could quickly destroy the mightiest battleships.

"One minute to full drive charge, thrust set full ahead."

"Bow up twenty degrees, get the ship clear for jump," Garcia ordered. He reviewed the tactical net one more time, making sure there was enough space for the straight run that a slipspace jump required, and that none of the Abyssal guns were looking at Scorpia. Luckily, they all seemed concentrated on the battleships. He reached for the PA system to address the crew. "All hands, clear the decks for slipspace jump. Repeat, make the ship ready for slipspac-"

A chill went down Garcia's spine, and he involuntarily dropped the mic. The bridge crew looked at him with concern, but he couldn't stop his hands from trembling. Something big was coming. He found the mic and steadied his hands with great effort. "Belay that order! Secure for radical maneuvers!"

"Captain?" Verdant worriedly asked, "What's wron-"

"Slipspace rupture detected, high mass object in transit," reported the sensor officer, disbelief in his voice. "Resolving now."

"That's - that's -" Even Verdant was rendered speechless at the massive vessel that exited the slipspace portal, two thousand kilometers distant from the IJP. The battlenet estimated it at anything from fifty to seventy kilometers long, off the charts sensor clouding making it a struggle for a fleet's worth of networked fire control systems to achieve so much as a missile lock. Its size made it appear almost stationary as the portal closed behind it, a sun-bright glow in its rear giving a hint as to the size of its propulsion. Even the Pantheon-class battleships were dwarfed by the thing - Garcia could almost feel a tremble of fear go through Scorpia's hull as he truly realized how powerless he was.

Somehow, his crew managed to maintain their calm and professionalism. "New contact, unknown classification. Designated hostile, X-class, unable to resolve details."

"Radiation spike detected. Hostile is charging weapons… hostile has targeted Scorpia."

"Firing solution achieved, estimate seventy percent hit probability."

"All units, target that unknown! Fire at will!" Every ship that had a gun brought it to bear on the massive enemy vessel. Everything from energy projectors to PDCs fired, unleashing a storm of ordnance that could have swept away the mightiest Covenant fleets against the behemoth's shields. The first energy projectors hit followed by heavy MAC rounds impacting with earth-shattering force, enough that Garcia thought that some progress was being made. Perhaps that giant was all bark and no bite.

Verdant swore, echoing Garcia's own groan of disappointment as the data started trickling back through the battlenet. The concentrated fire of the entire fleet, at essentially spitting distance, might as well have disappeared into the aether for all the good it did. He doubted that the dreadnought had even noticed. "Break formation, evasive maneuvers, war emergency power! Reload all weapons!" Garcia shouted, echoing the commands coming across the battlenet. "Get us out of the line of-"

Garcia froze, as did the officers and sailors around him, as a lightning bolt struck through his brain and ran down his spine. Something deep within him, a primal fear that he didn't even realize he possessed, roared to life. His tongue twisted uselessly as he tried to speak and his throat sealed itself off. His limbs refused to obey his will, or what little he possessed of it as an overwhelming, oppressing sense of malice filled his mind. He heard Verdant shouting at him, but her voice came from a distance, and it was all he could do not to curl up into a ball and cry, let along answer her.

"... brace!" Garcia's nostrils filled with the smell of burning hair, even as he was slammed out of his seat when all of Scorpia's port emergency thrusters fired. The killing intent lessened, enough so that he could lift his head and try to take stock of the situation. "Captain!"

"Jump!" he cried, voice cracking like a child. "Jump! Jump now!"

"Massive damage, decks one through seven are gone!" Verdant answered in place of the helm officer, slumped over and out cold from a blow to the head. Time seemed to slow as Garcia looked around the bridge. Three fires burned, barely contained by the suppression systems and feeding off oxygen from the life support lines. Consoles laid shattered everywhere and the main display was down. The walls were scorched, melted and bubbling in places, and half the structural beams were bent and twisted beyond recognition. "The engineering spaces are compromised. We jump now, we blow up!"

By some miracle, the comm array was still partially active and receiving - not that the messages it caught were of any real comfort. "Bellerophon, our propulsion is down!"

"Massive casualties!"

"We're crippled and burning, I need help!"

"Poseidon is not responding to communications."

"Mayday, mayday…"

"My God," Garcia breathed, prompting a derisive laugh from Verdant.

"Now what was that about a little optimism?"

"Shut up." Perhaps it was luck, maybe divine intervention, but the dreadnought's barrage concentrated mainly on a single battleship division. Athena, five cruisers and eleven destroyers were gone, deleted from the universe, but the other two hundred-ish surviving ships were relatively untouched.

Only relatively though. Half the fleet was reporting damaged or destroyed slipspace drives, and most ships had suffered at least some propulsion damage. Some could still jump, mainly a few lucky cruisers, some battleships and the transports protected within them, but that left around 150 cruisers, destroyers, frigates and corvettes to the not-so-gentle mercies of the regrouping, vengeful Abyssals. Not to mention that behemoth of a ship, hanging languidly like a guillotine above the necks of the fleet.

Garcia started running through his options. "Can you raise damage control parties?"

"Negative, our internal comms are cut."

"How about Eternal?"

"She's not responding to comms. Her engines are lit, but I think that blast burned through her comm array." Verdant paused. "Cherenkov spike, she's jumping."

"Blast." Garcia could not blame the cruiser for fleeing, any sane man would have done the same. "Do we have any maneuvering control?"

"I can light one main thruster and that's it."

Just as the comm chatter reached a panicked, fevered pitch, a singular voice somehow forced itself above it all. "All units, this is Admiral Williams." The admiral's voice cut through the cacophony of distress calls clogging up the battlenet. Every ship fell silent as he spoke. "I have assumed command of Ozymandias. Our drive is still operational and we will open a slipspace portal for ships with disabled drives to jump through. Ozymandias will remain behind and delay the enemy. Godspeed, and get out of here!"

A moment passed, and a swirling portal opened up off of Ozymandias' bow. Seizing the reprieve with the desperation of condemned men, her escorting destroyers fired off the rest of their missiles and dove through. After a moment of hesitation, other battleships fired up their portals as well, broadcasting nav beacons on full power to guide their smaller brethren. As ships piled in their drives screamed in agony from the strain, only the stabilizing gravitational tides of the IJP allowing the portals to stay open under so much stress. Mass drivers, plasma lances and missiles whittled the battleships down as the rest of the Abyssals finally regrouped from the corvette attack, but they would take quite a bit of punishment yet.

This is our only chance. "Verdant, propulsion status."

"Down for the count," she said, calmly resigned. "I just lost the last engine and I can't raise the engineering spaces, and we can't exactly send anyone to call on them." She gave a pointed glance at the damage control display, where the engineering compartments were displayed in the angry red of vacuum exposure. "Oh, and the big one is charging its weapons again. Just thought you'd want to know."

"Where's Eternal? Can she tow us?"

"She's jumped, everyone's either jumped, dead, or running." Battleship Hades received a hit to its citadel and detonated shortly after. The portal she sustained snapped shut, cutting an unfortunate frigate in half and leaving others flat-footed, scrambling for another exit while Abyssal ships picked them off one by one.

"Goddammit!" Seeing escape so close yet being unable to maneuver towards it was utterly maddening. Garcia chewed his lip in frantic thought; maybe Scorpia could vent atmosphere for propulsion? Or perhaps use the recoil of the MAC somehow? Whatever happened it needed to happen fast—

Scorpia jerked underneath his feet, then the sensation of gradual acceleration took over. "We're moving?" Verdant pressed a finger to her temple in concentration. A moment passed, and her eyes widened. "We're under tow - Balmung and Mystletainn are linked to us. They're still active?"

"Does it matter?! Can we help?"

"I have control of emergency thrusters, firing now!" Scorpia's last few emergency rockets fired, hurling her forwards and just out of the way of a plasma lance that speared through space fifty meters off her stern. Someone within the ship got a power line restored, and the display flickered back to life showing Balmung and Mystletainn straining like dogs on a leash attached to Scorpia. "We're on a heading towards Ozymandias. I think… I think we can make it!"

"Come on… !" Garcia felt utterly pathetic, rendered a mere spectator in potentially the last act of his life. It was like taking part in a horse race strapped to the belly of a lame stallion, one in which the audience was issued assault rifles. Balmung and Mystletainn hauled with all their might, slowly picking up speed, doggedly advancing despite the volleys of fire falling around them.

"Ozy's shields are at 25 percent… not good."

"Don't jinx it Verdant. Almost there…!"

But it was not to be. The Abyssal leviathan fired again, tearing through the last of Ozymandias' shields and ripping massive holes in her armor. The slip space portal quivered and shook, but remained open. Every ship making for it poured on the speed, Balmung and Mystletainn included, but it just wasn't enough.

An energy projector hurtled towards Ozymandias in slow motion, aiming straight for a breach in her armor. Garcia felt a bitter taste fill his mouth. To be so close only to see salvation denied… that was a special kind of messed up. For once, Verdant didn't have a snarky comment, though he could hear her desperately, fruitlessly trying to raise the engineering spaces. He closed his eyes and gripped his armrests tight, trying to resign himself to his fate, but also to try and coax one last bit of thrust out of Scorpia's engines through sheer force of will. Come on old girl, you've still got fight in you. The act made him feel immensely foolish, but he persisted. You can do it… !

"What the—" Someone must have heard his prayers, or perhaps there was still someone alive in engineering, because for the briefest of moments Scorpia's engines lit up once more. The force of the main propulsion, something Garcia thought he'd never feel again, slammed him back and hurled Scorpia the last few kilometers into the portal right before Ozymandias took the fatal hit and snapped the portal shut in a fiery detonation.

Minutes passed, and an eerie quiet filled the bridge. The sudden silence was suffocating, but Garcia hardly dared gasp for breath. Slowly, he popped open one eye, and then the next, trying to persuade his brain and body that he was, in fact, alive. "… Verdant?"

"Yes sir?"

"Are we…"

"Affirmative, sir. We are in slipspace."

The fight drained out of Garcia's body. He dropped his face into his hands, letting out a deep, shaky sigh. A few moments passed while he breathed deeply, before Verdant's gentle cough prompted him back up.

"Sir? Do you have any orders?"

He had to take a minute to collect himself and make sure what he said would be something resembling coherent. Orders? God, what can we even do? Looking at the damage reports and estimated casualty lists, Garcia could feel himself slipping into a hole of despair. It's going to take a miracle to save Scorpia from the scrapyard.

"Sir?"

"Right." Garcia could almost feel the same despair he felt coming from the ship itself, deep, powerful, and dark beyond measure, and knew that this of all times was not the time to flake out. He had an example to set. "ETA to Reach?"

"Assuming Cole jumps, one day."

"Okay." Miles to go before we sleep. It would be a struggle to hold the ship together for the entire jump, but for the sake of the crew he had to try. "… try to restore internal comms." Garcia rubbed his eyes, suddenly exhausted beyond belief, and looked around at the bridge officers, just now beginning to stir. Veterans of seven years of war against the Abyssal horde, each and every one of them, and not a meaningful single victory to show for it. And now, with this... perhaps it was foolishness to keep fighting. What could mere men do against the monsters of the void? At this point, it would take a miracle to save humanity. An angel from heaven, perhaps. Garcia thought about it for a bit, then laughed quietly. As if heaven still cared about humans. Whatever gods there were, they had not followed humans into the stars.

"Captain, are you there?"

Garcia sighed. "Yes, Verdant. I'll see who I can wake up here. Then… I guess I'll go below and see what I can do to help."

"... and enough oxygen to last three hours, if we don't spring another leak."

Private Ling finished his report in a depressingly resigned tone. Hospital Corpsman First Class Chiho Hikowa thought about reprimanding him, but decided that she couldn't blame him. She settled for a single F-bomb.

"Might wanna work on that bedside manner, doc." Crewman Vasiliev smirked up at her from the floor, one arm held up as she wrapped a bandage around it. The smirk turned into a yelp when her knee dug into his side.

"Be a smartass to the person measuring out your morphine, see how that works for you."

"Shut up, you two," ordered Lieutenant Parks, pacing around the small infirmary and running a hand through his hair. "You're wasting oxygen."

"And you aren't?"

"I'm thinking, wiseass." He stopped his pacing and leaned against a wall, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Are you sure the radio isn't working at all?"

Ling rapped his knuckles against the spall-riddled shell of the radio. "You want to try it? Be my guest." He gave the thing a resentful look, as if he were about to drop kick it across the infirmary.

"I could try banging on the wall," offered Vasiliev, pointing at a wrench laying on a nearby table. "Better than nothing, and it's not like I'll be of much use anyway else."

Parks glanced over at him, then to Hikowa. "Doc?"

"I don't think that'll be a problem, as long as you don't overstrain yourself like an idiot," she said, tugging the bandage firm for emphasis. From Vasiliev's wince, it seemed to work.

"Got it, got it." He swung his arm gently back and forth a couple of times, then stood and picked up the wrench. Looking about hesitantly, he asked, "Should I tap out anything specific?"

"SOS. Three short, three long, three short." Vasiliev nodded and went to work. Out of the corner of her eye, Hikowa noticed Parks motioning her to come close. She gestured for Ling to keep an eye on Vasiliev, then went over. "Doc, be real with me here," Parks whispered, "What are the chances someone comes for us?"

Hikowa's brow furrowed as she thought. "Well, there's vacuum on the other side of that door." She pointed at the entrance to the infirmary, sporting a large makeshift patch made out of duct tape and thick sheets of isolation plastic. "And we're in slipspace. The ship's shot up so bad that we're down to the backup to the emergency life support, and it can barely keep up with four of us, so I'd wager the rest of the ship is slowly suffering carbon dioxide poisoning. We have no breathing gear. Add all that together and…" She sighed and sat down heavily in a chair. "I doubt anyone even knows or cares we're stuck here. So, we're kinda fucked."

A heavy silence fell over the infirmary after that. Ling and Vasiliev continued to tap with the wrench, to no avail. Hikowa could feel the atmosphere getting stale and heavy as the badly damaged life support slowly failed. As a last resort, she ordered everyone to lie down to conserve energy and reduce oxygen intake, and turned on several battery fans to circulate the air. Vasiliev and Ling still made the occasional tap against the wall, but as their arms grew heavier their blows grew weaker and weaker to the point where they could barely lift the wrench.

Bit by bit, Hikowa felt her thinking grow slower and her body grow heavier, sure signs of oxygen deprivation. From a clinical perspective, she supposed it was interesting to observe how death by hypoxia played out. From a personal perspective, she thought it was a dumb fucking way to die. "Hey… Doc…" Hikowa turned her head toward the sound of Ling's voice. "Does it hurt? Going this way?"

She hesitated, then decided that honesty couldn't hurt. "Yeah. It's a fucking pain in the ass."

"Fuck me…" Ling weakly lifted his head. "Well, fuck this. I'll try to get some morphine and trip balls until I bite it." He tried to crawl towards the containers containing doses of morphine, but was so weak that he just scrabbled pathetically on the floor. To Hikowa's oxygen-deprived brain it was kind of funny, but she lacked the breath to laugh. Frustrated, and with the last of his strength, Ling threw the wrench towards the container but whiffed it wide. The wrench skittered across the floor, clanged against the door, then spun into a corner.

"Nice going… asshole," Vasiliev snarled with all the vehemence he could muster, which amounted to very little. Ling flipped him off, then dropped his arm to the floor, exhausted by even that minor effort. Closing her eyes, Hikowa could begin to feel a tight and burning sensation in her lungs, and did her best to relax and get as comfortable as she could.

When the knocking began, she thought she was hallucinating. After all, there couldn't possibly be someone at the door, could there? No way Captain Garcia would spare anyone to come out here on S and R when there was so much repair work to be done. But as the knocking continued, she looked to her side and met Parks' gaze. There was confusion writ in his expression, which confirmed she wasn't the only one hearing the knocking.

"Someone…?" he gasped, and Hikowa gave a small nod in confirmation. At this point, both Ling and Vasiliev were mercifully passed out, and Hikowa didn't have the breath to even whisper. With great effort, Parks propped himself up on his elbows and gathered all the air into his lungs he could. "Help! We're in here! Help!"

The knocking stopped. Hikowa felt her brief spot of hope drain out of her, leaving her even more tired than before. A curse formed on her lips, but died out when a pinprick of light shone from the door. The pinprick turned into a line that snaked its way around the frame, glowing bright white and red. It connected back to its start, leaving a rectangle that glowed with heat around its edges. A brief moment passed, which Hikowa felt like an eternity, and the door fell inwards.

A rush of oxygen accompanied it, instantly relieving the pressure on her lungs. Hikowa tried to suck in as much as she could, but ended up in a violent coughing fit. She heard hurried footsteps, then felt hands on her body lifting her up and propping her against a wall, patting her back as she hacked out her lungs. "Who… who are you?" she managed to get out, between coughs.

"I'm Dawn," her savior replied. Hikowa tried to look at her, but couldn't muster the strength to turn her head. "Don't worry, just rest."

"Can't… gotta… help the others…"

"Hey, hey, relax!" She felt a comforting hand on her shoulder. A wave of calming energy emanated from where it touched her, soaking deep into her bones. "Don't worry about a thing, I'll take care of it. You'll be fine, because I'm here now!"