The emergency lights of the Pelican flickered, casting long, bruised shadows across the ruined control deck. Outside the cracked forward viewport, the sleek, angular hull of the Aegis dreadnought blotted out the stars, its bow bristling with charged railgun batteries and locking target acquisition lasers."They're not even waiting for us to power down," Felix said, his voice entirely flat as he caught himself on a drifting conduit, floating inches above the dead deck plates. "Look at the sensor logs. They’ve already initiated boarding pods."Odette didn't look at the screen. Her fingers danced frantically over a secondary diagnostic tablet, bypassing three fried circuit breakers to force-restart the ship's internal dampeners. "They want the drive core intact, which means they aren't going to fire unless we force their hand. We have less than forty seconds before those pods latch onto the airlock.""Forty seconds is generous considering the hull is currently held together by spite and

"Breathe, Odette. Just breathe," Felix said, his voice entirely devoid of its usual sarcastic edge as he watched the rhythmic rise and fall of her shoulders.Odette didn't open her eyes, her back pressed hard against the crisp, white synthetic padding of the New Meridian medical bay cot. "I am breathing, you idiot. What I am not doing is listening to you tell me for the fifth time that the ship is gone.""I didn't say the ship was gone," Felix muttered, leaning against the sterile wall with his arms crossed tightly over his chest. "I said it was converted into a very rapidly expanding cloud of expensive scrap metal.""Same thing," she snapped, finally cracking one dark eye open to glare at him. "How long have we been here?""Three weeks," a crisp, automated voice chimed from the wall terminal before Felix could answer. "Your neural stabilization levels have finally returned to baseline, Ms. Vance. Though considering the amount of corrupted violet radiation absorbed during your little