Triko groaned as yet another missile slammed into the ship's hull, his head knocking against the metal bulkhead he was slumped against, blood pooling at his feet in a sickening puddle. How many missiles had hit the ship? How many more could the ship take? Triko didn't know. How many of his crew was left? Perhaps he was the only one now. Triko could still remember, with sickening accuracy, each of their deaths.
The sage but delicate Zoltan named Ilius, who was savagely torn to pieces by mantis attackers early in the fight, exploding in a green flash, leaving no trace but the burn wounds on the mantis' body. Numaria, the strong and silent Rockman warrior, who left the pilot's chair to heal and was hit by an errant missile upon entering the medbay. With their strong pilot dead, the hits only became worse. Kletzil, their mantis shields operator, clumsily trying to fix a massive fire in the shields room, only for the hacking pulse to begin, locking the doors of the burning room and turning it into a death chamber. Triko didn't remember much about Kletzil, except for a few chats in the ship's galley when off duty.
"You have a dangerous job, my friend", Triko remarked one evening.
"How so?" clicked Kletzil questioningly.
"You have to defend us from boarders, regardless of where they are or how many there are. Tell me, when you enter a room to fight, and you see four of your mantis brethren, armed to the teeth and viciously ready to fight, do you ever scream?"
"No. Kletzil sometimes nervous, but Kletzil never afraid. Kletzil has honor. Kletzil is fierce warrior, and Kletzil never screams. Kletzil stared at him proudly and suspiciously, his insect eyes full of reproach.
Frantically beating against the locked walls of the burning shields room, Kletzil's screams echoed through the ship. It seems he could feel fear after all.
Triko groaned and shifted slightly, the bloodstain standing out on his uniform. He could tell he was injured, and badly. He considered getting up, and trying to go to the medbay, heal himself, fix something—anything, really, would be better than sitting, slumped against a wall and waiting for the end. Then, he remembered that the medbay was broken. And probably on fire. Like the blood pooling steadily at his feet, the energy drained out of Triko. He slumped back against the wall with a pained sigh.
Triko reflected on his life. He wondered if he had made the right decision, joining the crew of the Dyphus. He was never really at home on his home planet, and when the civil war came, tearing cities apart, he was the only one of his friends who didn't join the clean, official-looking and charismatic ranks of Colonel Tuco and his Rebellion. Joining a crew of dissenters, Triko made his living attacking and scavenging the crafts of both sides of the war. Was piracy really the best choice?
Where did we go wrong? The battle seemed similar to all others he had faced with the rest of his crew. A mantis ship, bloodred against the blackness of space, loomed on the horizon. The mantis were pirates themselves. It was only fitting that they fight. This mantis ship, however, seemed different. It had crew from all 6 of the known races. It had a Hacking system, no doubt purchased from some black market. Their initial message was addressed to a slug at the helm, wearing a carefully tailored blue Federation uniform. And after Numaria died and the fight started to go to hell, their desperate surrender, appealing to their humanity and Federation values, was addressed to the very same slug, which callously dismissed the message with a flick of its wrist.
"Surrender is not an option".
As the dying ship creaked and groaned, Triko sat, listening to the soft crackling of the flames and the slow hiss of oxygen leaving the ship from a thousand breaches. The clanging and rustling of Mantis shock troops was gone now, the ship abandoned, undoubtedly stripped of all useful components. It wouldn't be long now…
Presently, Triko heard a rustling beside him, and a figure that he vaguely recognized as human crawled into the room, stopping to rest beside him.
"Triko?" the newcomer asked, in exhausted disbelief.
Triko turned to look at whoever it was, and found himself staring into her lost, stormy, still beautiful green eyes. Elisabeth.
"Elizabeth", Triko began, looking over her. Her uniform was charred and torn, stained by fire and by blood. Her golden hair was dirty and disheveled, cascading down her shoulders in a waterfall so different from its usual tight regulation braid. Her face was cut and bruised, no doubt from the first hit of the battle when the weapons system was taken offline by a stray missile. Worst of all, however, Triko could see a deep gash in her waist, from Mantis, from missile, from something. All he knew was that it wouldn't heal anytime soon. Somehow however, Triko did not seem to notice the injuries. Triko did not seem to notice the dirt or the dishevelment. Indeed, Triko's first thought was, she's beautiful.
From the day he joined the crew, Triko always admired Elizabeth. He had joined late, with no experience, and was quickly relegated to idly manning the onboard automatic door system. From the sullen glances of Numaria, who resented the disturbance to her no-nonsense crew, to the easy laughter of everyone else, enjoying their off-duty time without him, Triko had always felt lost and excluded aboard the Dyphus, an outsider living with a tight-knit family. Elizabeth, however, was different.
From Triko's first day aboard the Dyphus, Elizabeth had been outgoing and friendly. She would sit next to him and eat lunch when everyone else turned him aside, entertaining him with her bubbly laugh and radiant smile. And at night, when everyone else had gone to bed, she would stay up with him, talking, laughing, and most importantly, teaching him how to man the weapons system, in the hopes that he would be able to learn some skills to help the rest of the crew. Elizabeth had taken him under her wing, so to speak, and perhaps they might have been more than fellow crew members with enough time.
Time, however was something that looked like they would not have enough of. Triko was beginning to lose feeling in his fingertips, and Elizabeth was growing pale.
"Triko", she gasped, in a raspy voice much unlike her own. "I can't feel my legs".
"It'll be fine", Triko tried to sooth. "We'll come out of this alive".
"Don't try to pretend, Triko. I know we're gonna die"
Elizabeth's voice broke. She looked down at her hands, rough with calluses from hours of manning the engines. Through the many weeks of FTL travel, Elizabeth was the strong, implacable one, helping the rest of the crew, and Triko especially through the trials and tribulations of space travel, being a helping hand, emotional support, and a rock, even more so than Numaria the literal Rockman. Now, however, she looked ready to cry.
"I don't want to die, Triko", she gasped out, on the verge of tears.
"Hush. Don't think about it. Relax", urged Triko. "Think happy thoughts. Happy thoughts".
"Triko. I'm cold"
Triko scooted over, and Elizabeth leaned into his side. Triko extended his right arm, wrapping it tightly around Elizabeth's shoulders. Elizabeth's head slowly came to rest on Triko's shoulder, her golden hair pressed against his cheek. Trembling against his side, the tears finally came, in heavy, juddering sobs. Triko awkwardly patted Elizabeth on the shoulder.
Throughout the Dyphus, the ship's systems began to power down, the eve-present beeping and flashing alerts replaced by the silence of deep space, the occasional creak of a no longer stable hull, and the sobbing of the ship's only two remaining crew members. The fires were long extinguished by the vacuum of space, as the cabins slowly began to depressurize. With no more chance to survive than before, but no longer alone, Triko and Elizabeth waited for the end, together…
There are no more life-signs remaining on the ship. You strip it of useful materials.
No one aboard the Gila Monster ever even bothered to learn the Dyphus's name.