Orbit Chapter 6
"Commander?" May spoke up, her voice quavering with anxiety, "What's happening to Jose?"
"Just give me a moment, May, I'm finding out," Vanessa told her. She was already tapping at her instruments even as the first fragmentary details began coming in over the emergency band.
"… failure at step two-fifteen of the transformation sequence from guardian to battloid!"
"… uncontrolled max burn on the thrusters lasted ten seconds before the pilot cut the mains…"
The voices weren't panicked, but they were fast, loud, and intense. Vanessa quickly wove her own veritech's sensor data together with the feeds from the far more powerful equipment on Armor Seven and a Cat's Eye unit a thousand kilometers away, to form a complete picture of the situation. It was bad. The fuselage of the Lightning was telescoped out, having malfunctioned just before it would have folded back on itself into a humanoid form. The way the arms, leg thrusters, and wings were flung in every direction reminded Vanessa disturbingly of a body splayed out in the midst of vivisection. It was caught in an endless tumble that would incapacitate all but the toughest and most skilled pilot.
"VT-Seven-one-four, remain on station until the emergency is dealt with," Commander Johnson ordered tersely.
"Aye, sir," Vanessa responded.
"… SRR-One on deck, engines hot, launch in forty-five seconds!"
"… confirming no communication with Lieutenant Reyes since collision with derelict cruiser…"
Captain Mbande was in command of her bridge, ordering general quarters and preparing crash crews and medical. Vanessa traced the course of the Lightning. Already moving at full acceleration for the transformation test, its uncontrolled burn had taken it into the path of a piece of war wreckage; the rear half of a Zentraedi cruiser that had been caught in the blast of a reflex warhead. The hulk was well-known and well-marked, and had in fact been scheduled for routine demolition next year. The YF-4 had only glanced off of the 125 million cubic meter mass, or it would have been reduced to a shiny smear on the scorched and blackened hulk. The problem was where the veritech's high velocity tumble was sending it now. It had already left Area Six and… Vanessa ran the calculations.
"Oh, God."
Her voice was soft, but her words rang loudly in her ears within the narrow confines of her helmet.
"Time to intercept for SRR-1?" she heard Admiral Hunter demand.
"Eight minutes, thirty-seven seconds," came the immediate reply.
"That's too late!" Vanessa warned. "The YF-4 will enter a green zone in under three minutes!"
Now she did hear an edge of panic over the coms, as the monitors confirmed her assessment.
"I'm looking for options, people!" she heard the admiral demand.
Under Admiral Hunter's oversight, the YF-4 Project had an entire fifteen member team along with communications and monitoring gear set up in the secondary bridge annex of Armor Seven. There were technicians, data analysts, engineers from Rockwell Bell, and even a deputy auditor-general from the UEG Procurement Office, but there was very little they could do at the moment besides observe the situation. The Lightning did not appear to be receiving any signals, and was not configured for remote operation in any case. The Search, Rescue, and Recovery craft, SRR-1, readying for launch, was highly capable, with large engines and heavy armor. Its whale-mouthed recovery bay could grapple and swallow a veritech in distress, then flood it with fire suppression material. A full trauma team was standing by to extract Reyes for treatment, before returning him to the sickbay facilities aboard Armor Seven. Except that the intercept would never happen. Jose Reyes and the Lightning prototype would be pulverized by the monstrous clutter of war debris long before SRR-1 could ever reach the edge of the green zone, let alone follow it in at a painstakingly cautious pace.
"What's the status on the standby Valkyries? And where is my BarCAP?" Captain Petrovich shouted, but Vanessa knew the launch-ready squadron and the fighters out on Barrier Combat Air Patrol would do no good.
"… unable to intercept… wouldn't arrive much faster than SRR-1…"
"…lack of reaction mass by the time they kill their inertia and return…"
The technicians were talking over each other in their desperation. There were no cards left to play.
"Can't we do something?" May asked Vanessa, struggling to keep the horror out of her voice. Vanessa ran the numbers.
"Vector, velocity, relative position," she murmured to herself, and then shook her head. "I'm sorry, May. We can't get there soon enough either… unless-"
She checked once more, and took a deep breath.
"May, we don't have much time. Lay in the course I'm sending you now, full thrust, fifteen second burn."
"Full thrust, aye!"
"And I'm jettisoning the gun pod. We don't need to carry around the extra mass, and it's almost empty anyway."
As the trainer maneuvered and its thrusters flared back to life, Vanessa keyed the emergency band.
"VT-Seven-One-Four will make recovery of the YF-4," she announced.
The net lapsed into incredulous silence, and for a few seconds, Vanessa heard only the roar of their Valkyrie's boosters, mingled with the pulse of her instruments.
"Just what the hell do you think you're playing at, Commander Leeds?" Millard demanded.
"They can't make it in time!" The Flight Direction Officer on Armor Seven shouted.
"We can reach the perimeter of the green zone less than thirty seconds after the YF-4 enters," Vanessa responded. "We will follow it in and make recovery. It's our only chance to reach it before the wreckage tears it apart!"
"Neither of you are qualified for this kind of action!" Millard replied angrily. "The green hazard zones are unnavigable and deadly. Only specialized salvage and demolition mecha ever enter them. Reverse course and take up station five kilometers from Armor Seven!"
"I'm sorry sir, I can't do that. Lieutenant Reyes will die."
"Ma'am, isn't he right?" May asked nervously. "I mean, it's our first flight. I'm not sure I can do this."
"I believe you can, May. Remember Barrier Control? Hundreds of incoming beams and missiles; a huge ship to protect. I've seen you fly. We're smaller and more maneuverable, you just have to avoid the obstacles. Nothing's even trying to hit you on purpose. I'll help you... It's your choice."
"I… ok. I want to save Reyes."
"Leeds, I guarantee you that we all want to save Lieutenant Reyes just as badly as you do, but this is no time for reckless gestures! Break off immediately! That's an order!" Vanessa could hear Millard's fist hit the console.
"One moment, Millard." It was Admiral Hunter. His voice was even and controlled. "Lieutenant Commander Leeds, do you believe you can successfully recover the YF-4 and its pilot?"
"I do, sir."
A pause.
"Proceed with the operation. All pertinent information is to be provided to Commander Leeds. SRR-1 will stand by outside the green zone to recover the YF-4 when VT-Seven-One-Four brings it out."
Vanessa released a breath.
"Forty seconds to the perimeter. Get ready, May, I'm going to find you a path."
"… YF-4 now entering the green hazard zone! At current velocity, the craft will…"
"…multiple impacts detected across the entire fuselage! Non-critical so far, monitoring condition of…"
Vanessa let May whisper prayers for Reyes while she tuned and focused her sensor sweep. There was an art to what she was doing, selecting for size and distance. She needed to screen out the billions of fragments theoretically too small or too far away to threaten their Valkyrie. Veritechs were robust; on Launch Day, she had monitored Rick Hunter, then a civilian, crash-landing a Valkyrie trainer through an entire Macross city block. The veritech had survived and been able to fly again after a few minutes of field repairs. She needed to identify the debris that could smash them, send them tumbling, or destroy their veritech outright. There were hulks far bigger than the one that had incapacitated Reyes in the green zone, along with endless lethal fragments of smaller size.
"… VT-Seven-one-four crossing the perimeter in fifteen…"
As they approached the perimeter, she saw that Reyes had been right. They were about to fly into a green cloud spanning hundreds of kilometers in every direction. Vanessa reset the sensors. The solid green block on her scope that denoted the hazard zone exploded into contacts that filled her and May's heads-up displays. Then she felt it. Not fear, that would come after, when she would shake, when the nausea would overcome her. Now, it was a feeling she hadn't experienced since the final battle against the Zentraedi armada. The mile high bulk of the SDF-1 beneath her, her monitors utterly filled by four million hostile ships ahead of her, and a million allied Zentraedi ships, their crews yearning for freedom and hope, at her back. She felt it again. The overwhelming rush of flowing data and dire purpose.
Information High
Every contact was assigned a glittering golden halo. Vanessa's field of view was covered with them, like a numberless chorus of angels. That chorus sang to her. Her breaths were quick, her pupil wide as she took in the data. She adjusted her read-outs, made a snap decision, and changed their course.
"Enter on this vector, May."
There was a correct way to approach the green zone. The passage of the objects through the solar system was immensely fast, but using the right vector, matching speed and direction, could lower the risk considerably. That was not an option for Vanessa and May. To protect their own lives was to risk Reyes's. Allison, confronting the danger ahead, moaned softly, but that didn't stop her from complying.
"… entry in three, two, one…"
"Bring him back," Millard murmured.
VT-714 rocketed into the green zone and entered a hailstorm. Metallic clutter hammered the fuselage incessantly, and left scars on the canopy within seconds. Vanessa ignored the distraction, keeping her attention on the host of golden halos that danced as they warned of disaster and death. In the middle of it all was a pair of bracketed semicircles, like calm blue parentheses, that dipped and bobbed with May's evasive maneuvers. Reyes and the Lightning were tantalizingly close, but still kilometers out of reach.
Vanessa looked always for the path that seemed most clear, without letting the Lightning pull away, updating May's course second by second. May slipped their veritech between Zentraedi cruisers that had been reduced to hollowed shells, like insects that had molted and left crumpled exoskeletons behind. A battered battloid Valkyrie, dead since the war, was a pinwheeling blur in Vanessa's vision. Regult and Recon battlepods drifted with their hatch seals blown, their giant pilots hanging lifelessly at the ends of their restraints and threatening to snag the wings of the trainer. The orbital graveyard closed around them, and May rolled the veritech clear of encroaching wreckage, panting.
"Vanessa…" she gritted out.
"On it!" Vanessa quickly highlighted dense clusters of contacts that crowded in to strike the Lightning or overwhelm May. The cockpit rang with her target lock, and then two, four, a dozen missiles sizzled free of their pods and arced ahead, obliterating the onrushing debris.
Vanessa fired again, again, emptying two thirds of the trainer's payload.
Ahead of them, a green Cyclops Theater Scout, hideous as a spider crab and big as an apartment building, wallowed into view. One of Vanessa's missiles bulls-eyed its bulbous red sensor cluster and detonated, splitting the craft along its centerline. Secondary explosions pushed the upper hull into the wreckage of a Zentraedi drop ship, while the lower half fell, burning, into the corridor Vanessa had just cleared. "May, look out!" Already seeing the danger, May triggered maneuvering thrusters and dipped. Too late.
There was an almighty impact, like Vanessa had never felt in her life, unless she could have remembered the moment Khyron's command ship had plowed through the SDF-1. Her helmeted head snapped forward, then back and to the left as her vision went black for two seconds. Her breath rushed from her lungs, and when her eyesight cleared, bright stars, blistered green hulls, and shining fragments of metal wheeled madly outside the scratched and spiderwebbed canopy. Half of her readouts were red, and screaming for her attention. Back along their path, there was a bright flash. The starboard augmentation pack had been entirely torn loose from the top of their Valkyrie's hull. Booster, fuel, and warheads vaporized, sending ripples in every direction through the debris field.
"…Emergency! We now have a critical emergency on VT-Seven-one-four!"
"… YF-4 is pulling away; still tracking multiple impacts…"
"Dammit! Scramble SRR-Two immediately!" Vanessa heard Millard roar, heedless of the fact that there was no way the recovery craft could reach them until long after they were killed.
"Jettisoning FAST pack!" Vanessa gasped, hitting the toggle to blast loose what remained of the Fuel, Ammunition, Sensor Tactical package, and give her and May some hope of stabilizing their flight. It was no use. The mechanism failed as she tapped the switch over and over with her thumb.
"Jettison failure- Oof!"
The trainer clipped a house sized beam turret that had been set adrift from its parent vessel, jolting them both and changing their direction. That sent them careening into a bottle-nosed Gnerl fighterpod, which they struck even more violently. May screamed with each collision, and then, with an act of will, took hold of her controls again. She worked the maneuvering thrusters, but the damaged and unbalanced Valkyrie was sluggish, and continued to spin wildly.
"We're losing the YF-4!"
"I'm sorry, May! I can't get it to respond!" Vanessa said, struggling against vertigo as she desperately searched her instruments for a workaround. They might die at any second now.
"We're not finished yet!" May yelled back. "Variable Fighter, remember? Guardian!"
"What? Wait!"
Vanessa knew that if the damage to their trainer was too great, if the transformation failed, they would share the fate of the YF-4. Nevertheless, May pulled the small lever marked 'G' and their battered trainer groaned in protest. Actuators and servo-motors as large as barrels began forcing reluctant components and modules into new positions. The entire craft trembled, and the Valkyrie's primary thrusters telescoped backwards and then swung forward, forming legs. The attached missile pods, emptied by Vanessa's repeated salvos, tore away like old scabs and fragmented. Tail fins folded and wings spread. The secondary thruster array lifted up and forward, resting on the upper hull and clearing the arms, tucked under the Valkyrie's belly, to slide back and swing out on their shoulder mounts. More pieces of the augmentation pack were dislodged, until, with a final, loud bang, the second FAST pack booster popped loose and broke up. The Valkyrie continued spinning throughout, throwing all of the FAST pack equipment clear in a glittering arc of debris, like a comet's tail. The transformation to guardian mode was complete.
"Retros!" May called out, and lit the primary thrusters. With full articulation now, she spread them apart, feathering them forward, back, left, right, countering the rotation of the trainer. Vanessa was thrown against her restraints in one direction after another.
"…my God! She's recovered!"
The disbelieving voice from the bridge of Armor Seven blurted across the coms. The bird-like guardian wobbled, then stabilized, and Vanessa looked over her sensors panel, sucking in deep breaths.
"Increasing thrust," May told her, resuming the chase.
"VT-Seven-one-four is intact and continuing the operation." Vanessa reported. "Twenty-five hundred meters to target."
The situation was more desperate than ever. The augmented boosters and their extra supply of reaction mass were gone. There were no more munitions to save them from a tight spot. The Valkyrie vibrated dangerously with each course adjustment. But the chorus still sang to Vanessa. Golden halos still showed her the true path. Again, they found themselves in sync, May threading along the curving, spiraling line that Vanessa chose for her.
The guardian flew between the alligator jaws of a gunship, it's sides bubbled and sagging where its reflex cannon had overloaded and shut down, then May skated them directly along the nine mile hull of a fleet flagship, zigzagging around twisting vortices of wreckage like zero-g dust devils. All along the way, smaller junk continued to hammer at their wounded veritech. The blue icon marking the Lightning pulsed more insistently, until finally, a point of light ahead of them reflected white, red, and gold.
"No! We're too late!" May groaned.
The YF-4 was a mangled wreck. The wingtips were broken off, the head smashed like a soda can, and one arm was missing entirely. The whole fuselage was pitted and dented, and the airframe was bent where it had extended and then jammed. But the transformation to battloid had made it far enough that the curved panel of armor had moved into place to protect the cockpit. It looked as damaged as everything else, but didn't appear to have been breached, or at least, Vanessa hoped it hadn't.
"Don't give up yet, May! Just focus on getting him out of there!"
The prototype was still tumbling limply, but soon its motion would come to an abrupt end. A Zentraedi frigate, in its death throes, had smashed through the broadside hull of the flagship and pierced the opposite side, before becoming trapped. Flayed of outer plating, the wedge shaped, ribbed skeleton of the ship formed a barrier a hundred meters wide and two hundred tall.
"On final approach," May announced, sideslipping the Valkyrie left and right as monolithic chunks of metal continued to threaten them. "Prepare for recovery."
"We're almost out of time - in twenty-eight seconds, the YF-4 is going to hit that protruding hull," Vanessa warned. "I hope you have a plan for grappling the Lightning and stopping us."
"Sort of," May replied, her voice thick with anxiety, as she put on as much thrust as she dared. "Hope this thing holds together!" With that, she pulled the lever marked 'B.' The veritech split across its middle with a terrible grinding sound, folding the fuselage. Their seats realigned themselves vertically at the same time the armored shield slid over the canopy. Vanessa could see their battloid's hands reaching, grasping for the Lightning that spun just in front of them. The proximity alert trilled wildly.
"May! You're not going to make it!"
Vanessa yelled.
"Imminent collision with derelict frigate!"
"Impact! Impact in five seconds!"
Legendary aces Max and Miriya Sterling would have entered the green hazard zone as a matter of course, their skill and judgement unquestionable. Barring some unforeseeable calamity, either of them could have reached the Lightning in a brief, virtuoso performance of maneuvering and evasion, and brought it out, suffering only minor damage to their own veritechs. A pilot of the caliber of Rick Hunter or his late mentor, Roy Fokker, might have duplicated Vanessa and May's desperate course and then managed a last minute save to catch the YF-4 and avoid the mountain of metal that promised death.
Vanessa and May were highly experienced technicians… and completely novice flyers. Natural talent could only take them so far. May hovered above the YF-4 and wrapped the battloid's arms around the stricken prototype a split second after they both flew directly into the nightmare tangle of the frigate's interior, missing a ten meter thick structural frame only by luck. Warped, multi-ton hull plates that drifted in the compartment went spinning in all directions, bulldozed aside by the battloid's shoulders. A dense web of heavy cables wrapped around them and then were snapped by the terrifying speed of their passage.
May threw the battloid's legs forward like a child on a playground swing and triggered the thrusters for another fraction of a second, rolling them head over heels so that their own mecha was between the YF-4 and the approaching interior bulkhead. Both pilot and electronic warfare officer were screaming through the instant that the secondary thrusters on their battloid's back activated in a vain attempt to halt them, and then everything went black.
Quiet. Vanessa awoke to the background hum of the veritech's instrument panels and generator. She hung weightlessly against her seat restraints, their forward inertia stopped for the first time since the emergency began, mere minutes ago. She rolled her head painfully up from her chest using strained neck muscles, and opened her eye. A few of her monitors were dead, the rest fizzed with static, or strobed and flickered. She swallowed with great difficulty, and tested her voice.
"May?" When there was no response, she called out more loudly and urgently, worry building again in her chest. "Allison?"
"Owww…" was all May said at first, but relief flooded Vanessa. She reset her systems and managed to bring a few read-outs back to life, along with the primary monitor. Their battloid still hugged the YF-4 to its armored chest. Reyes's veritech seemed intact, and over the edge of its fuselage, she could see a star field slowly rotating.
"May, are you hurt?"
"Yes! Aren't you?" she answered, as if Vanessa was crazy. "…But I can still fly."
"Good," Vanessa breathed. "Do we have flight control?"
May checked her own instruments. "Ugh, the backpack thrusters are out now. We probably smashed the exhaust nozzles when we hit the bulkhead."
"But we still have the primaries?"
"Yes, I think so." There was a creaking below their feet. "The legs still work. We'll be able to maneuver."
"Ok, let's see if we can get coms back." She thumbed the back-up receiver, and could hear the bridge of Armor Seven again, flavored with more static than before.
"…communications down. Still no signal from VT-Seven-one-four or the YF-4."
"… projections indicate total loss. Total loss of both veritechs…"
"You shouldn't have let my rookies go in there, Admiral!" Millard was saying in an accusing tone. "They weren't ready for it. Your precious prototype wasn't worth their lives."
"How could you possibly believe I risked them for the prototype?" Rick shot back angrily. "My only concern was for Reyes's life!"
"One last ride to the rescue for Rick Hunter?" Millard asked in a mocking tone.
"Enough!" Captain Mbande cut them both off. "This is my bridge! I feel for your losses, but we must maintain discipline and decorum!"
Vanessa shook herself from her paralysis. "VT-seven-one-four reporting! We have recovered the YF-4. We have suffered heavy damage and will need to hand it off to SRR-1 as soon as possible."
After a brief, shocked silence, the bridge crew on Armor Seven exploded with cheers, but Millard quickly shouted them down. "VT-Seven-one-four, just take it easy coming back. Help is on the way."
"Negative, Control. We don't know the condition of Lieutenant Reyes. Every second might count. May, if you can get us moving, I'm sending you a course now."
"Here we go."
May pushed the battloid off of the bulkhead like a swimmer pushing off of the wall of a pool, and tentatively applied thrust. They made their way clear of the hull, and back into the turbulent stew of the green zone. Having matched velocity because of their collision, the debris now seemed to drift lazily around them. That would change as soon as they turned back in the direction of Armor Seven and increased speed. But when May accelerated, a new warning alert pulsed in the cockpit, and she made a sound of dismay.
"Engine overheating?" She cut power to the thrusters, and the warning subsided. But when she tried again, the alert returned seconds later. "I can't maintain thrust, Commander. If I accelerate too much, we won't be able to engage the thrusters for long enough to maneuver around any obstacles!" Her voice was bitter with frustration.
"Maybe we can activate the escape equipment on the YF-4 and carry just the nose and cockpit section. That would reduce the mass we're having to haul," Vanessa suggested.
"I'm not sure if the manipulators survived all the hits we took," May warned her, "but we can try."
"Don't bother," one of the Rockwell Bell engineers advised them. "The escape equipment hasn't been integrated into the prototype yet."
There were groans from the observing officers and crew.
"Make best speed," Millard ordered. "SRR-1 will rendezvous inside the green zone as soon as it is able to reach you."
Agonizing minutes passed as VT-714 continued to limp its way to the edge of the green zone. Instead of another frenetic flight, dodging death, they moved at a crawl, with a wounded friend, and no way to get him to safety faster. Vanessa felt sick, and she could hear May muttering.
"Come on, come on… stupid piece of junk!"
The overheat alarm triggered yet again, and May cut the thrusters, smacking her console angrily. The wrack of war swirled slowly around them, seeming to mock their efforts. The pulse of her instruments only reminded Vanessa of a heart monitor, and that she had no idea if Jose's heart was still beating. A close call might have actually seemed like a relief, but there was none, just a continually building tension that had them both feeling frantic by the time SRR-1 came into view through the debris field.
The much larger rescue vehicle was a slab-sided, utilitarian vessel. Its bridge was offset on the upper hull to make room for oversized grappling arms. Below them was a bulging recovery bay, its mouth yawning to receive the YF-4. At a few meters distance, May gently loosened the battloid's arms, and Reyes's veritech drifted into SRR-1's waiting grasp. The veritech disappeared into the bay, and the hatch sealed, allowing fire suppression and medical teams to begin their work.
"Please be ok," May whispered.
"Standby, VT-Seven-one-four," Millard ordered. "SRR-2 will arrive shortly to recover you."
"Negative!" May called back, her voice broken but defiant. "VT-Seven-one-four will escort Lieutenant Reyes home!"
"You can't keep up," Millard told her, not unkindly.
"Then… then VT-Seven-one-four will return to Armor Seven under its own power, sir!" May insisted.
"Lieutenant -" Millard began, but Vanessa interrupted, her voice tight.
""If Lieutenant May says VT-Seven-one-four can return under its own power, then it is capable of doing so, sir."
Captain Petrovich's voice joined the coms. "One-one-five squadron is on station. The Stormblades will escort you home, VT-Seven-one-four."
Millard hesitated. "Very well, return to Armor Seven," he said reluctantly.
The midnight blue veritechs of the Stormblades formed up around Vanessa and May's limping Valkyrie, the flight leader throwing them a silent salute. They remained in battloid for the remaining flight, not trusting its ability to change back to fighter mode, and anxiously waited for any scraps of information they could catch regarding Reyes's condition. They both breathed gusty sighs of relief when the brief report came.
"Pilot is in serious but stable condition. Preparing to dock and transfer patient to Armor Seven Medical."
Arriving long after SRR-1, the Stormblades peeled away, and VT-714 entered the cavernous landing bay. As the hatch sealed, May rolled the battloid onto its back and the slow increase of artificial gravity brought it to rest with a muffled clatter. The head tilted forward to rest on the chest plate, and their seats were extended up the shaft and out into the bay. Vanessa tiredly released her restraints and hauled herself over to help May, who was battling a jammed buckle.
They both staggered upright, hands on each other's shoulders, and looked into each other's eyes. Vanessa saw a chaotic mix of emotions; fear, pride, anger, worry, doubt, relief, all vying for dominance. She felt equally confused. Certainly there was no great sense of triumph or vindication. So much was still unresolved. She looked over at their Valkyrie. The fresh yellow and black paint was nearly gone. Only a few flecks of color remained, while the rest of the hull had been scoured to bare metal and composite alloy by its perilous journey through the green zone. The transparent green covers over the head's sensors were cracked and broken. It gave the impression of a fallen knight lying in state after a terrible battle.
"May, I - I…" she trailed off, not knowing what to say. They leaned into one another and slid to their knees, unable to keep their feet any longer. Quiet tears flowed under their helmets, and Vanessa felt her body begin to tremble. A green light lit up on her helmet's status display as the bay repressurized. The crew access hatch slid open, and a jubilant crowd of Armor Seven crew and aviators, as well as a good number of the command track candidates, burst into the bay. They made it over the threshold, and went silent, taking in the state of the Valkyrie and its flight crew.
Millard pushed through roughly. "Clear this deck immediately! Crash recovery crews and medical response only! I want my people taken care of!"
Vanessa and May pulled off their helmets, let them drop to the deck, and waited, still supporting each other, as the medical team surrounded them. Vanessa's eye caught Millard's impassive expression one last time as she and May were wheeled out of the bay.
Next time… inquiry, traditions, and uplinks…