Chromium

15.1

First draft

Soft electric light bathed the tactical room, a small and windowless chamber located in the heart of the ship. The walls on the tactical room were taken up by a dozen monitors showing inconsequential data only an expert tech, an engineer or someone like Mitchell could hope to decipher. Aside from the pilot who was standing near a console, Omen, Reyes, the mercs, and a couple of closemouthed, battle-hardened pirates were sitting around the table. Sarah was conspicuously absent, but since she wasn't part of the landing party, it wasn't that surprising.

"It's bigger than I thought." Dia observed, glancing up at the holographic image floating above the conference table. 

The immensity of the space station made the Nostromus look smaller than it was. Aegis IV's shape was peculiar. It looked like some sort of ring enclosed in a deformed U or a horseshoe. Dia studied it attentively. While the inner ring was mostly intact, the main section - that odd horseshoe - had taken a big beating.

"Big...and riddled with holes like a sieve." Rodriguez commented.

"I'm not surprised." Willis shook his head, his eyes falling on Dia. "I never understood why you imperials insist on building all those windows on your warships. It's a structural weakness." 

Dia blinked, surprised by the studied nature of his statement.

"Outer space is boring." Rodriguez said, agreeing with him. "There is not much to see in any event."

"I can't imagine a ship without windows." Dia suppressed a shiver. "It feels like a nightmare to me." 

Rodriguez shrugged. "Most of the imperials are used to living on the planet's surface, Sweetheart. For us, it's exactly the opposite. Our worlds had been poisoned long ago. The only way to survive was to learn to live underground." The merc glanced at Dia, "You've been on Daxum, you know what I'm talking about."

"We were forced to adapt." Reyes interjected. "You never had to."

"Actually, the Navy brass tried to solve the problem a few decades ago." Omen contradicted him. "They took the best cadets from the Academy, a few veteran officers, and a decorated captain, and sent them into deep space." He shook his head. "It was a disaster. Sailors in the Imperial Navy are supposed to be in space for months, even years sometimes, but just a few weeks later, many of them started experiencing psychological problems. They felt suffocated, many became claustrophobic, or mentally ill. In the following months, their performance dropped dramatically and many sailors started questioning the chain of command. In a few cases, they even turned against their superior officers. When they came back, six months later, a few sailors faced court-martial, while most of them left the Navy. In the end, just a handful of them passed the test."

Dia made a visible effort to gather herself together. "I can see why. When I first came onboard the Nostromus, I was baffled by the lack of windows."

Reyes shot Omen a cold glance. "We are getting off topic." 

Dia faked a cough, drawing his attention back to her. "What happened there?" She pointed to the hologram. "Work of your resourceful crews?" 

There was a lot of debris floating above Aegis IV. It almost seemed like a part of the station had been destroyed.

"Mitchell?" Reyes asked in a slightly mollified tone.

"According to the available data, it appears unlikely." Mitchell keyed her console, magnifying the image. 

Dia tipped back in her chair as the pilot went off into her technobabble, and explained in great detail why she was wrong. She tried to determine the nature of the weapon in use from Mitchell's description, but she the only thing she was able to understand was: "...damage is not consistent with the low energy weapons the Syndicate usually employs."