-Aftermath-

 

They say that ‘space’ is cold… whoever ‘they’ are, have no freaking clue to what ‘they’ are talking about.

It had been 21.2 hours since I and the rest of my crew had to jettison off the Plague Bearer Battleship Sentinel 01. So far most of the life pods have maneuvered into close proximity to my location with a few of the life pods still drifting away from the main group, apparently empty or perhaps lifeless. One can always hold out hope that the communication devices and on board thruster controls were just non operational due to the stress of being rocketed violently out into space.

Watching the Sentinel, magnificent as she was, get slowly turned into a melting heap of metal by enemy vessels was probably one of the toughest things I have ever had to witness. Though she did her fair share of damage to those Warrigal raiders, I got to see her go down with her guns still returning fire, have to be proud of her and the crew that remained on board. 

The toughest thing I have witnessed though was seeing that nearly half of the Sentinels life pods remained in the escape ports. Nearly half of my crew dead in the vacuum of space and the other half freezing to death in their life pods, not a good thing to lay on a Captains heart and soul.

Damn! Where were the rescue vessels? The nearest Jump Gate was located in this very same system. Already the Recyclers from the enemy faction had come and gone, clearing the debris from the system with barely a glance at the hapless soul’s helplessly floating out in the cold confines of space. Damn the Warrigal and their corporate cold blooded leadership! Yet, it was better to have remained unseen by them, then to garner their attention.

“Mayday, mayday, this is Sentinel 1, does anyone read me?” a brief pause, then again, “This is Captain Adam Strange of the Om~Lo ship Sentinel 1, does anyone read me?”

All I could hear in reply was the strange static of space… that eerie silence that seems to be listening and waiting for your next words like some kind of predator nightmare ready to swallow you whole.

My throat tightened unexpectantly as the com unit came to life.
“Captain Sir, this is Ensign Michaels… do you see that at 9 o’clock high? Looks to be some sort of battle taking place and boy does it look grand.”

I looked through the Visi-Shield of my life pod into the direction that the ensign had indicated and yes, there did seem to be some sort of battle taking place. Explosions ripping through space, some so small you could barely make them out and other almost blindingly brilliant. The small explosions had to be fighters, corvettes or destroyers, some of the large explosions though had to be Capital vessels judging by the size of the illumination. Soon though, the explosions ceased to happen, with only an occasional rippling of energies of some dying vessel in its last stages of existence the only thing to be seen. Then there was nothing but blackness and the twinkling of stars, as if nothing had ever taken place in that part of space.

The skirmish, if that is what you would call it, lasted approximately 3 minutes.

“Whatever is out there is big and mean.” I said over the general communications, “I am not sure we want them to know we are sitting here, best thing to do is continue to wait and hope for the best.”
My communications monitor crackled with a faint sound, “Kha… ange… th… miral… xi… er.”

My heart skipped a beat or two. The last thing we needed was a run in with the Drekkons. They were known to frequent the fringes of this part of the Ceti Universe, god, let’s hope it is not them.

Again, my communications monitor crackled with that faint sound, “Kha… ange… th… miral… xi… er.”
“COME ON!” I pounded on the monitor with my gloved fist. Again the monitor sounded off, this time though, the message came in crystal clear, “Captain Strange, this is Admiral Lexi of the Om~Lo Empire, over?”

I must have smiled ear to ear, because it felt like my face just split in two halves. Believe me, I felt it the next couple of hours afterwards. I could have hugged that monitor if I wasn’t so cold. “Admiral Lexi, you won’t believe how good it is to hear your voice. I take it you had some business to take care of before you could mount a rescue operation?”

I waited nearly a minute before Admiral Lexi responded, “What are you talking about Captain Strange? I was not aware that you needed rescuing?” Dead silence is all I could respond with. “Captain Strange, are you in need of assistance?”
“Admiral… sir, we have been out here for nearly 22 hours waiting for a rescue! What do you mean do we need assistance?” I was beside myself, knowing that my crew and I could have been out here until we froze!

“Calm down Adam, calm down!” I could hear laughter in the background, which gave me a moment to pause. “Captain, do you realize that the Sentinel 1 and the rest of your squadron came under attack by a fleet nearly 4 times your size? We came out this direction as soon as the battle report floated over the A.I. Battle Directives Computer to see if we could find any survivors, but instead managed to run directly into a Warrigal fleet running the opposite way! Of course we had to take care of business before rescuing all of you.”

I think I could have wept at that moment, knowing that my crew was going to be rescued by familiar faces. Instead, I let out a long cold sigh of relief, “Ai ai sir, we await your arrival with much eagerness and anticipation, Captain Strange out.”

I relayed the Admirals message to the Sentinels surviving crew and even without the communication monitor, I could have heard them cheering.

I think that was the warmest I had felt in the last 23 hours.