Though darkness followed light, their victory against the Dawn of Fold had been relatively short-lived. Suletta did not much recall what had happened after the Quetta Plant raid, but she did recall hearing the screams of her friends and comrades as their School fell under attack. Asticassia was probably gone, though she didn't know what had struck. She and Miorine had barely had the time to board Aerial, GUND-ARM Inc's flagship item, before all was white.
Now, as Suletta stirred awake, she realized that she was, in fact, probably not dead. Which was strange, since one would expect whatever detonation wiped out Asticassia to have taken Aerial, her and Miorine out as well. And yet, here she was, feeling two arms grab the collars of her space suit and start violently shaking her. A ringing in her ears that she hadn't registered until now started fading out.
"...letta!" A familiar voice cried out.
"Wake up..." Aerial?
"Suletta!" Miorine! Suletta jolted awake, slamming her helmet against Miorine's by mistake. The white-haired young woman ahead of her put a hand over the helmet and paused, checking for damage. With a sigh of relief, Miorine Rembran, the white-haired beauty of the Rembran family and daughter to the leader of the Benerit group, looked at Suletta and offered a weak smile, "You're okay..."
Suletta gave a nod, stunned, then said, "W-We're alive...?"
"It certainly seems so..." Miorine replied, then checked her suit's diagnostics and added, "We've been floating blindly. I can feel there's zero gravity around us, so... It's very likely we were spaced by whatever blast hit Asticassia..." before turning to the blank viewscreens of Aerial. She told Suletta, "Wake Aerial up. I feel like we may wanna start transmitting maydays if we want to survive..."
Suletta nodded. Was probably a good idea to get Aerial to her feet at this very moment. She started tapping several buttons on the side-mounted chair console. The craft glowed as its main systems returned, with Miorine hanging onto Suletta's chair as the vehicle powered itself. The viewscreens that connected them to the outside world powered after a series of other essential systems, revealing something that caused the two young ladies' eyes to shoot wide open.
As the visual displays that showed the outside and the Heads-Up Display system of the Gundam powered on, the sight of the great void came. Space itself, dark velvet pockmarked by white spots, was however not empty. Ahead of the girls, lay the husk of a vessel of unrecognizable design. A hull that was black as the dark sky beyond it, with white stripes and bearing an eagle's insignia, floated, split in half from bow to stern by what seemed to be energy weapons fire.
Gun batteries that had until some time ago tracked targets now lay, dead, on the ship's hull. A massive central cannon's bore was visible to the girls, big enough to fit the Aerial through and split in half by whatever had struck it. Flecks of armor floated in space, somewhere between molten and solid, while expended casings and undetonated ammunition that had flowed out of the ship's armories hanged in the void.
The destroyed warship, which had the name Trafalgar written in fading white military font letters on one of its swiss-cheese'd battle plates, was not the sole thing that stunned the young women. As Suletta fearfully craned Aerial's visual sensors around, she saw a hundred ships in the same shape. Some were halved, others seemed to have been completely shattered. Some remained whole, sans a precision shot to where their reactors must've left all of them dead in the water.
What more, floating around them and within the broken hulls, thousands of corpses of men and women, faces frozen in grimaces and screams, floated. Body parts were missing off some, others looked like they'd been burnt to a crisp. Many more still had died from the horrific decompressions their warships must have suffered. Suletta, whose usual skin tone was somewhere around a very light tan, was suddenly paler than bone as she stared at the gruesome sight around them.
Miorine, meanwhile, took her helmet off and gagged, turning away from the sight of the dead and diving into Suletta's arms out of instinct. Both attempted to keep their lunches down, while Aerial seemed to speak to Suletta, her screens flashing a pale blue. Suletta replied, "I know, Aerial... What could have...?" her eyes locking onto a young woman, her face the calmest of the lot, mouth slightly agape as she floated in space.
Shrapnel had torn at her clothes. The blood that pooled around the impact points and flowed out into space had frozen, like some sort of sick renaissance painting. The young woman, a blonde-haired beauty, was pale, eyes rolled almost to the back of her head and blood that had once foamed at her mouth now a simple scarlet. Her grey uniform seemingly started to whiten out due to unshielded exposure to solar radiation.
Aerial chirped again, this time audible to a surprised and fearful Miorine. Suletta seemed to do as Aerial instructed, slowly panning down utilizing the lightest puffs from their jet thrusters. The mech craned its neck down and the visual sensors picked up what lay below them:A burning planet. Massive fires raged across swathes of the continent below them, azure detonations flashing across areas still-untouched by the bombardment.
Aerial's visors magnified the image and the two women's jaws almost dislocated. Bulbous hulls, like those of ancient sea monsters from the tales, floated above the planet at very low orbit. Hundreds such ships of various, unbelievable sizes fired plasma batteries down at the planet, lines of fire left behind. Around the ships, smaller craft ranging from Corvettes to the smallest fighters and Drop-Ships floated, collecting debris or just protecting their wards.
"My god..." Miorine's voice cracked, "... Those are..."
"Not friendly..." Suletta murmured, knowing full-well what they were staring at. She, however, was not willing to accept what she saw below them. A burning planet, bombarded from the heavens by alien warships. The world was as alien to them as it probably was to the creatures turning it into glass, but the human ships around told of a Colony world that had come under siege.
Miorine swallowed, trying to keep her stomach's contents down. She was surprised at her own gut's resilience not to completely cover Aerial's internals with the lasagna she had for lunch mere hours ago. The remnants of oceans boiled away under intense barrage from the enemy vessels, while the unknown assailants' beams also melted the ice caps, as it seemed.
"They're burning the planet..." Miorine finally voiced the obvious, her tone distraught, "A human colony..."
Suletta's eyes darted from ship to ship, watching as they deployed strike craft. An alarm blared, probably Aerial trying to warn them of something. The redhead gasped and yanked the directional thruster controls, a gentle puff sending them deeper into the debris field of the warship Trafalgar beside them. The magnetic lock on the feet of the mech activated, locking them to the remains of the hangar deck of the ship. Suletta then quickly grabbed Miorine's helmet, put it back on her head and locked it into place, then dived back to the console, letting out several worried whines as she disabled any and every system that was nonessential, including, for the moment, Life Support.
Miorine coughed, then turned to Suletta and asked, "What are you doi-?!" demandingly, but Suletta cut her off and covered her suit's speakers. She put her index to her own helmet's mouth and showed Miorine to be quiet. The white-haired girl had never seen that kind of fear in the eyes of her groom before. Suletta then turned her around and pulled her into a close hug, staring out over her helmet at the void beyond.
Miorine, much to Suletta's surprise, put her hands over the girls and nodded, gazing out at the void herself. Both girls swallowed as a quiet hum began to echo around them. It grew ever-louder, though there normally should not have been sound in space, and with it grew the pits in the girls' stomachs, their hearts beating so hard and fast, they could hear each-other's beat in the Aerial's cockpit.
Miorine warily whispered, "We're in the shadow, right...?" as she saw the light of the system's sun peering through one of the open hangar doors. Suletta hummed an affirmative, though it sounded more like one of her usual whines. As the hum drew closer, the girls braced. They watched with fearful eyes three teardrop-shaped fighters appeared in a wedge formation.
Their 'tails', the directional systems of what seemed to be highly-capable anti-gravity propulsion systems, angled 'up', the alien craft banking to the left. Aerial's subdued warning systems blared, the two girls gazing out of her eyes staring at the teardrop fighters as they moved away at almost Mach-speeds. As the dots of the starships faded out into the distance, both girls allowed themselves to breathe.
The young Mercurian breathed heavily, leaning into her seat and murmuring, "This is insanity... We shouldn't be here. What happened to Asticassia?" as she stared out. She slowly powered on Aerial's systems as Miorine seemed to be doing what amounted to pacing in Zero-Gee, that being flying from wall to wall of the enclosed cockpit and thinking, her heart audibly racing, beating into her ribcage hard enough for the thump to register in Suletta's ears.
Or maybe it was her own racing heart...
The redhead swallowed, taking her helmet off and breathing the recycled air of Aerial, before looking over diagnostics on the Mobile Suit. She found no irregularities among the suit's various systems. Not even on weapons, out of which all were registered as present. She spoke, "Aerial... Where even are we...?" to which the machine seemed to more actively beep in reply.
Miorine took a moment to register it, taking her own helmet off and stating, "Those Terrorists did something to us. They're probably playing a trick, trying to make us feel unsafe, or, or, they're trying to mess with us by putting us in some sick artificial reality game..." And deep within, behind a steely voice that Suletta knew her for, lay the unspoken prayer that she was right and this was just some sick prank or a method of 'torture' that could later be escaped from. The redhead sadly felt that that was not the case as of right now.
Suletta gave her an awkward smile. Despite wanting to possibly attempt to correct her 'bride', the young woman instead suggested, "W-we should... See if there are any survivors on the ship. Gather food, water, anything... And maybe find a way home...?" her tone meek. That seemed to bring Miorine out of her moment of stupefaction. She looked to the worried groom with a frown, then gave a quick nod to her.
The young Mech pilot from Mercury gave herself a mental pat on the back for managing to thing of something sane enough to calm miss Rembran down. She gently moved Aerial behind one of the bulkheads of the place, then set it to power saving and opened the front hatch. The cockpit depressurized with a hiss and , suddenly, the sole noises audible to both young women were their breathing, heartbeats and the transmission from the other's suits.
The zero gravity environment meant the two young women needed to keep close to the walls of the vessel in order to keep moving. They gently pushed themselves off of Aerial's frame and onto the lowest point available on the ship's hangar deck, noting the grating at the bottom and digging their gloved fingers into it. They gripped onto the metal floors, looking around at the cavernous area from which fighters were presumably launched.
Said fighters, however, were not Mobile Suits.
Some of the vehicles, still in their berths, looked like angular, Delta-wing aircraft with a single rear finlike tail, almost like manta rays. Though these mantas were armed with high-caliber cannons mounted above what seemed to be the cowlings of the engines, as well as a bomb bay. One such craft was currently being loaded, as one of the trolleys nearby floated freely by the open bomb bay, a massive missile with a small radiological warning sign attached to it.
"Nukes..." Murmured Miorine, "Never thought I would see a weapon of mass destruction this close..." As they pushed themselves forward. The weapon seemed to be disaffected, however, or so Miorine noted when she saw that there were other bits floating around it that weren't connected. Probably the initiator and detonator for the warhead, that which the crew hadn't had time to install via the automated trolley.
The trolley itself looked like it had a multitude of arms attached to it, to which Suletta remarked, "G-Guess that may be why we don't see any crew...? Hangars could be getting depressurized or something in order to launch the fighters..." and she motioned to the open hangar door. However, they soon saw corpses, many of which were sprawled across the floor, some floating, below some gantries. There went that theory, Suletta thought as they floated on toward a corridor.
Suletta cast a quick glance back at Aerial and murmured something to herself, then climbed into the corridor with Miorine, both of the girls turning the flashlights on their suits on as the darkness of the place became scarily obvious. Pushing through the corridors, the pair met a few more crewmen's corpses along the way, as well as the blasted-out areas where decompressions took place thanks to plasma hits.
The two travelled past one hole that lead to the void, stopping only to peer out toward the great darkness, to see the aliens' ships travelling through, around and above, several thousand kilometers away from the hulk of the carrier they found themselves in. Down below, the enemy battleships still burned away at the planet's surface, travelling in criss-crossing patterns from the destroyed poles to the center. Both also noted the sheer thickness of the ship's armor and various bulkheads. It was layers upon layers of what seemed to be Titanium with criss-crossing bracing bars and other enhancements... Neither commented on that, though.
Miorine stated, "This is incredible..." her voice low, afraid, "Aliens. They have to be..."
"I haven't seen a single Mobile Suit among the destroyed ships, either," Suletta added quietly, looking around the massive debris field. She saw fighters like the one in the hangar, split in two, or broken to pieces beside what seemed to be either the fleet's frigates, or something greater than that. They resembled firearms in shape, with the bottom-most section protruding out from between the armored engines being a hangar. The ships had four prongs, two on a vertical axis and two smaller ones on a horizontal. The vertical axis's top prong had a similar, massive cannon's barrel visible, while the bottom seemed to just be antennae and radar systems, parts of which were destroyed.
The frigates themselves were scarred. Some actually missed the bow sections, others their engines. Others even missed the conning towers and bridges. Horrifyingly enough, the debris field seemed to be a sprawling one with a distance of thousands of kilometers to the last metallic bodies in the fleet. They saw some of the alien vessels, manta-like and bifurcated designs, acting as tugs that pushed vessel remains into the debris field.
"There," Miorine voiced, right hand outstretched, index pointing toward a few purple chunks in the field. Her other hand held onto the edge of the hole. Alien ships, torn in half, armors pockmarked by holes from presumably the missile tubes of the ships around them and even from the supersized cannons, floated alongside their former enemies. Though no alien corpses could be discerned among the dead from this area. The heiress voiced a wary, "At least we know it wasn't completely one-sided..." before turning and casting herself off, further down the hallway, "Let's move, Suletta."
"R-Right! Right behind you..." The Mercurian replied, then pushed herself to follow her fellow Spacian. They trailed farther along, moving slowly via the inertia of their travels, farther up. Suletta looked left and right, her helmet light peering through the open doors. They passed by classrooms, recreational areas, barracks, basically the pilots' and troops' areas.
Suletta stopped herself, however, calling out, "Miss Miorine!"
The Heiress swiveled about and stopped herself, then pushed herself off the wall and back to Suletta. The girl caught her 'Groom's' hand and stopped at the door, peering inside and pausing. Soldiers. Men and women, clad in dark-green and camouflage uniforms upon which OD Green armor was layered. Helmets with orange tinted goggles that showed HUDs still online and black-colored weapons floating in the void.
It was an Armory, going both by the writing to the side of the door, the bottom arrow sign that pointed at the door and had the word ARMORY bolded out below the tip and by the stripes on the metal hallway's floor that led to various other points in the ship. Mio poked her head into the room, noticing a hole drilled by plasma into the battle plate that matched yet another hole in the side of the ship that they were travelling through. Several soldiers floated, one of them missing his lower body. Another, a female, her eyes closed, seemed to have died after making peace with the fact that they would perish.
She still cradled a rifle in her hands, rigor mortis keeping the strange piece of equipment tightly clenched in the user's embrace. The rifles were strange. Whereas one had a carry handle and a scope mounted on the top, the other, cradled by the woman, only had a massive cowling with what seemed to be a display screen on its back and a flashlight mounted below the barrel. Both weapons were of a design called 'Bullpup', meant to reduce weapon length while providing the same length of barrel for bullets to travel out of.
Mio hummed, then said, "Let's grab some of the weapons, as well..." before pushing herself inside, much to Suletta's surprise. Grabbing onto one of the lockers, which was open, going by the fact the door swung out with the Heiress's inertia, the girl halted in front of the corpse carrying the rifle with a carry handle. She grabbed the weapon and tugged at it, shifting the corpse's weight over to the side and sending him slowly flying into the wall. He was stopped due to the fact Mio still gripped the rifle he was holding.
The white-haired heiress shuddered, though she knew what she had to do next. Pulling the corpse a little closer and praying to the good Lord up above, should He truly exist, that the corpse wouldn't spring up and give her a heart attack. With that horrid thought, the young woman managed to secure herself to the wall and started pulling at the man's fingers, releasing the grip on the rifle one digit at a time, with sickening crunching of bone and atrophied muscles to boot.
Finally, she managed to release the weapon, gently pushing herself off the corpse and examining it. She shouldered it, murmuring to herself, "Well, would've been useful on Quetta..." before turning to a fearful Suletta. She frowned, then recalled that, yes, in fact, she was still supposed to be angry at her groom for squashing a man in front of her. She sighed, shook her head and called out, "Suletta..."
The redhead let out a yelp like a Tanuki, turning to her and fiddling with her own fingers. Miorine turned toward her and slung the weapon onto her back by the strap, making sure it was secured before pushing herself to Suletta's side. She took the girl's hands and wanted to speak. It took her a moment, however, to find the right words, simply stating, "While I know you probably think I'm still angry at you for what happened on Plant Quetta, I am not. You saved my life and the life of my father back there... My reaction was not the best, but that's because..."
She frowned, which caused Suletta's heart to jump, then told her calmly, "Look... I just never thought I'd see what is tantamount to the nicest person I've ever met, to the point you almost come off as damnably naive, so jovially ignore murdering a person in possibly the most terrifying way, only to jaunt out of the mech she used to do it and just... I was scared."
"I... I'm sorry," Suletta bowed her head.
Mio shook her head, "I'm sorry, too. I should have talked to you about this after Quetta, but..." And she scoffed, "My dumbass father needed someone to take care of him... And pick up the slack. I would've come talk to you on the second day if I didn't have trouble back home..." then looked to Suletta with a more serious look, "That, however, matters little right now. We are in uncharted, dangerous space, facing an Alien armada that is burning a planet in front of us and that has wiped out a human naval force a hundred vessels strong, from the looks."
Suletta looked up to her, worried. Mio nodded and snorted, "I know, lousy pep-talk, but what I'm trying to tell you is, I highly doubt we will make it out of this without more blood spilled... And I do not want it to be either of us dying among these people," before she plucked a rifle up from one of the lockers, as well as several mags of ammo, slapping a fresh magazine into the weapon and extending it to her groom by the barrel, "We're both lousy shots, but I'm hoping we can make it work somehow if we need to..."
Suletta looked at the rifle she now held by its thumbhole grip, then looked it over. She saw the safety, the charging handle and racked it, only to gasp as the weapon's cowling screen lit up, showing the mag capacity. She balked for a moment, seeing the number 60. She thumbed the safety of the weapon and saw it flick off, a red tab appearing, before she immediately put it back on.
Miorine racked the bolt of her own rifle and noted the '32' on the display below the scope, murmuring, "Guess these guys do ammo counting..." before slinging it onto her back again. Suletta did the same, pulling the strap over her shoulder, then extended Mio a hand. The white-haired girl hummed, gave a half-smile, then took the hand, with her groom grabbing the door's edge and pulling both of them out into the corridor.
She then suggested, "Let's follow the stripes to the mess hall and bridge, miss Miorine... Maybe we can get some context for what happened here while on the bridge."
"Good thinking," Her bride replied, before smiling. The redhead beamed at the praise, then continued pushing herself forward with Miorine holding her hand. They, however, remained careful, traversing the halls and passing by even more holes in the hull, these ones smaller, more focused. Some parts of the metal still burned a dull red, to the point the girls advanced via pushing themselves off the metal floor.
They arrived at the mess hall, with Miorine showing the girl to wait. She pulled the rifle off her back and looked it over, then searched for the safety for a good ten seconds, removed it and grabbed the doorframe, pulling herself in through the half-open bulkhead and into the mess, holding the rifle with one hand. She was partially thankful that they were in zero-gravity. The rifle felt weighty.
She still could not shoot worth a damn, though. It was usually the Security hired by Benerit Group that did the fighting, should she ever need such a thing. Well, crash courses usually had a 50/50 chance of either helping the shooter learn or become the next gun-related mistake suicide statistic in some backwater planet's logs. She shook off those thoughts and turned to watch Suletta enter.
... The girl entered almost as if she was a soldier, using the rifle to sweep each corner of the room and the light below to light up the path. Though she'd also apparently managed to flip up the iron sights located in the cowling. Rudimentary things, but would probably be useful. Why they weren't up in the first place eluded Mio. Maybe storage reasons? Who knew.
The girls went to the kitchen, finding possibly a big ol' jackpot. Both girls made a mental note to swing back by here once they were done with the bridge, due to the fact that, despite the ship's damage, there was still food aplenty in the pantries and damaged refrigerators that hadn't spoiled, not to mention water. The pair advanced down another corridor quietly, moving up to the bridge, or, well, floating, via a damaged elevator shaft.
Once they made it to the top floor, where the bridge was, the advance continued. Though, much to their surprise, there was visible damage. A lot of it. A section of the right-most wall of the corridors had been destroyed completely, the remaining metal floating in irregular spherical and ovoid shapes of molten and re-solidified metal. A crewman that was missing three of his four limbs, not to mention half his face, floated out in the void between the two halves of the ship.
The two girls elected to ignore the gruesome sight and pushed themselves forward, deeper in. Miorine murmured, "This is actually starting to get disorienting..." as she pushed herself off the wall and forward. The two arrived at the bridge's door, pausing as they felt their stomachs turn upside down. Miorine gagged and tapped the button to open the door. It opened with a hiss and the spew of oxygen from within like a whirlwind. The two jumped their way inside and landed on their stomachs before the door sealed behind them.
Their suits showed atmosphere and pressure on the bridge, though it was minimal. Just enough for them to live. Scarlet warning lights flashed in some parts of the bridge. In others, the consoles had exploded outward, bulbs broken, sparks flying out of the consoles. However, another certain item told the girls the bridge was safe:Artificial Gravity was apparently a thing for these people.
And it was functioning.
Miorine tossed her helmet off her head, hearing it land with a clang against a console, and near-immediately emptied the contents of her stomach onto the floor, through the grating. She coughed, gagged and pulled out a water bottle she'd brought, before rolling onto her back and pouring the contents both down her throat to wipe away the stinging of the bile and on her face to wash it off.
She sighed, crumpling the bottle and feeling her own weight, the weight of the suit and the rifle pressing down on her, before murmuring, "I hate zero gravity so much..." then turned to see Suletta. The girl leaned forward, breathing heavily and audibly. Mio hummed, then looked up and around, "Seems like the Bridge has some form of auxiliary power... Gravity, too."
"Ugh," Suletta groaned, rifle hanging off her arm, "Gun is heavy..."
Miorine nodded in agreement, then froze with fear as she heard a metallic groan that reverberated across the hull of the ship. She blinked and said, "Okay," her voice a little sharper as she stood to her feet, "Guess hull damage can be heard in artificial atmospheres..."
She marched up to one of the few holographic displays still active. Suletta noticed this and asked her, "What are you doing...?"
"Looking for information, like you said," Mio noted, "Mind getting me my helmet?"
Her little redhead groom complied, picking up the glass and metal item and slinging it under her arm as she walked over to Mio. She watched the girl typing away on a touchscreen keyboard, trying to see if she could access the data on the ship's onboard computer. After several errors, Mio grunted, annoyed, then hit the console, causing it to reboot. She looked to her confused comrade and told her, "... Something wiped the entire shipboard memory. That, or the computer banks are in the other half of this ship..."
"T-That doesn't sound like a Space Walk we want to risk," Suletta stuttered, feeling a lump in her throat. Miorine nodded in agreement, then sighed and tried looking through the Data again... The only thing left was an entry titled COPR. She clicked on it and read the Notice. It was a short message, written by what seemed to be some sort of artificial unit?
"Shipboard AI, VTS-229132-91 to HIGHCOM. Cole Protocol, All Articles enacted. WINTER CONTINGENCY CODE BLACK. God Help Us All..."
Both girls frowned at that, with Miorine noting the eagle emblem on the bottom right. She sighed and read the letters 'UNSC' below the eagle, attached to a ribbon wrapped around a digital globe showing Earth. She searched for anything on that and saw the letters were an acronym, which she quipped with, "Well, guess we know what we can call the humans here... The United Nations Space Command."
"N-Not Space Assembly League...?" Her Significant Other murmured, scared.
The Benerit Heiress shook her head, "Seems not... Let's get back to the Mess and head for Aerial, camp out there..."
"W-What do we do, t-though, miss Miorine? We can't just hang out in space all the time... Not without a place to go to to recharge fuel and oxygen..." Suletta was worried, obviously, which made her weirdly proactive. The weight of their reality had sunk in long ago. Now, it was pressing down on both of them worse than the rifles they carried on their backs for safety...
Miorine replied, "The only things we can do. Find a ship that has power, at least, and duck there until either rescue comes... Or..." And she frowned. She didn't want to even consider the second option. Suletta was about to try and comfort her, but the familiar hum of the enemy's ships seemed to force her not to. Instead, both girls ducked into cover as the atmosphere around them vibrated due to the Alien ships' engines.
The two looked over the edges of a destroyed console they used as cover as an alien ship floated ahead of them, slowly drifting from the left to the right of the massive, thick glass canopy that separated them from the cold void. A searchlight mounted to the bottom of the alien ship swept over the bridge, forcing the two women to duck, Suletta covering her mouth as her teeth chattered against one-another.
The strange ship veered off, much slower than the fighters. It seemed like a massive transport of some kind. Both girls once more let out breaths that they'd held until the ship passed and, with it, the vibrations diminished to the point they disappeared. Miorine murmured, "We have to get to the Aerial. Grab food and water and jump ship before they decide to send some of their own after us..."
Suletta nodded. With that, both girls slid their helmets on and once more depressurized the bridge, stepping out into the stomach-turning zero-gravity and back down the way they'd come no less than an hour ago, moving fast enough to reach the mess hall within fifteen minutes, the armory in another two and, finally, the hangar in twelve. They climbed aboard Aerial, with Suletta turning it on and initiating a passive scan of the area while Miorine put their food somewhere where it wouldn't be obstructing them.
The girls looked at a display on Aerial's HUD and saw them. A couple of ships still pinged with reactor activity and energy. One that was close to them, however, meant they had to peer out to see it. And when they did and they zoomed in on it, they saw it had been gutted from bow to stern. Suletta swallowed and shook her head at Miorine, who nodded in confirmation.
The next ship was on the other side of the debris field. It had no engines, as could be seen from this distance, but was otherwise whole, its reactor still emitting traces of activity that could be passively detected. The redhead looked fearfully to Miorine, who stared at their last hope with a stern gaze. She ordered her groom, "Short thruster boosts, Suletta. There's moving debris around us that can shield our own movements if we're careful... Jump when I tell you too..." and she eyed some of said debris, chunks of ship moving around them due to gravity or other forces.
Suletta tensed, hands tightly wrapped around the controls of Aerial. She thanked the lord her suit didn't allow sweat to slip through its gloves, because her palms were completely soaked. According to calculations, a short, half-second burst of speed from the thrusters would get them moving at decent enough speed that, without adjustments and, hopefully, without alien intercept, they'd be able to make it to the ship several thousand kilometers away within four hours. If spotted, or needing adjustments? Maybe more, maybe less... Maybe...
Mio clapped a hand on Suletta's shoulder, causing the young woman to tense, then started the countdown, "Three... Two..." And she squeezed Suletta's shoulder, "One..." before the inertial dampeners kicked in. The quiet thrum of the thrusters' half-second burn propelled them forward while they also utilized Aerial's limbs to cast themselves off from the carrier Trafalgar, now the tomb of thousands of the UNSC's finest. They were parallel to a chunk of debris and would hopefully be registered as such by the aliens' advanced sensors...
ETA, provided nothing bad would happen? Three hours and fifty-nine minutes on the dot.