Onboard the Numia, an hour after Cortia had seen the dead body of Tyler and ran screaming to report it to the rest of the crew, Haxel was restrained and locked up in the brig, while the rest of the crew gathered outside his barred cell and argued over the recent murder.


(Music: "Disinformation", by Avery Alexander)


"How is this even a fucking discussion?!" Shouted an outraged Barris, head of all two military police onboard; his trainee, Chloe, was loyal and dedicated to him, sticking by his side with trust in her senior and superior officer.

"Yeah, this is ridiculous!" She piped up. "He's a murderer. He killed his Captain, the leader of this whole damn vessel, and he won't even confess as to why!"

"No fookin' way!" Rogers interjected harshly, stabbing his finger at Barris and Chloe. "Neither o' you shites 'ave seen the degeneracy that fookin' Captain was gettin' up to at the front o' the ship! And don' forget about the New Year's horseshite, hittin' the fookin' backboard with a waitress when he was s'posed to give his bloody speech!"

"Being promiscuous isn't cause for fucking MURDER!" Naomi, the Systems Officer, shouted from the sidelines. "Did any of you even see what happened in there?! He BUTCHERED the Captain's face into mush!"

Several of the crew covered their mouths to beat back the waves of nausea; all of them had glimpsed the dead body, several of them having vomited at the sight of it. Several of the crew in the brig glanced over at Haxel, who was sitting in the barred cell, drained entirely of the will to live.

"Look," Derek tried to reason with the group. "There's definitely a reason as to why this happened. We've all known Haxel for at least a year now- and many of us have known him for multiple. He's consistent; loyal; obeys authority without question. Hell, he's been a stickler for the rules since he was first commissioned on the ship! What kind of sense does it make that he'd turncoat and go full psycho for no reason, against his direct superior?"

"Enough with the emotional arguments!" Chimed in Aisha, an Engineering intern with a college diploma who was serving under Rogers. Because of her free-thinking nature and the lack of rigidity in Engineering, she was independent-minded and had drawn her own conclusions on this Haxel-Tyler debate. "The fact of the matter is, Haxel killed our captain. We don't have any witnesses to the crime, and the only person who witnessed the dead body and spoke to Haxel was Cortia- and she's in no state to talk right now."

Aisha jabbed her finger accusingly at Haxel, pressed against the wall listlessly.

"For all we know, we have a madman onboard. We need to have a discussion and vote on what to do with him. Once we finish this mission -and it's an easy mission- we can head back to our Command Center and revive Tyler."

"Yer talkin' far too much for yer rank, Aisha." Rogers beared down on her. "We can 'ave that debate on Haxel, but do NOT fookin' revive that piece o' shite!"

"You're insanely confident on your assumption, Rogers." Barris pointed out. "But you haven't provided what crimes he committed, nor evidence for them. Are we just supposed to take your word for it?"

"You know exactly what crime has been circulating around the ship, Barris."

"An unsubstantiated allegation, nonetheless."

Rogers narrowed his eyes, gritting his teeth and preparing a scathing reply- until the crew's Chef & Boatswain, Dalya, clapped her hands once; loud enough to reverberate through the brig and gather everyone's attention.

"Let's be civil about this." She spoke calmly and orderly; as if this chaos and strife hardly bothered her. "We should address a few things. I wanted to organize a proper forum of discussion so we didn't devolve into a civil war. Firstly, there are three garrison officers here who have no stance on this so far, the same as I."

She gracefully waved her hand across the three; Jackson, Stacey and Franklin, all of whom waved awkwardly.

"I spoke to them before we all gathered in this brig, to ask them their thoughts on what had occurred and the... rumors spreading amongst the crew. They are all undecided on the course of action to take. It's clear that most of you have come to your own conclusions, but some problems are still at hand. Primarily, Cortia was the only witness who spoke to Haxel and saw the body, based on what our CCTV shows us."

"Wait, doesn't CCTV have audio?" Asked Chloe. "Or isn't there CCTV in the bathroom to show what happened?"

"No, and no." Naomi replied tersely. "Firstly, wiretapping laws, and secondly, recording people in the bathroom is insanely illegal and unethical."

Chloe groaned in frustration. Dalya continued her hypothesis.

"Another thing is," She stated. "Alina has been held up in the gunnery station this entire time. Hasn't come out for the meeting and ignored all our notifications to her holopad. Derek went in to speak to her, and it wasn't good news. She had to be involved. I want to get information from both of them, the only issue is... Derek administered some assessments, and it seems all three of them have some... profound PTSD."

Her eyes focused on Derek, prompting him to explain his assessment. He turned nervously to the others.

"All three of them were unresponsive, emotionally and cognitively. I've prodded them lightly with a number of questions, and received no answers. Due to this, I've... had to diagnose them with Acute Stress Disorder, which is the early... precursor to PTSD."

"Why..." Franklin spoke up hesitantly, put on edge by this unseen development. "What happened to them?"

Derek, with a weary and deeply saddened face, shrugged in resignation.

"It's probably the... murder itself. Seeing trauma of that magnitude can overwhelm the brain and cause dissociation as a defense mechanism. There could have been other things going on, but that's the only definitive causation we have right now."

"Are any of them physically injured?" Stacey asked tentatively.

"No, I ruled that out as a cause for the catatonic state. The only injuries were the... abrasions..."

Derek covered his mouth with his shoulder, trying to fight back the nausea. Going over a case like this, knowing the perpetrator was his long-time friend... what an awful predicament.

"The... abrasions on... Haxel's hands."

The room was dead silent for a long moment; reminded once again that a gruesome murder had taken place, and none of them had the facts as to why.

Then suddenly, a voice pitched up from the very back of the crowd; a hulking, pot-bellied older man with a deep and scratchy Italian accent.

"This seems pretty sketchy," said Sal, the quartermaster of the ship. "Co-captain kills his captain with his bare hands. A crime of passion. Bein' a vet on this rig for 4 years, I can tell you that Haxel's been the most down-to-earth and reliable out of the whole crew. The Ohrres Mission; the Battle of Gilar, that narrow escape from the Helgan Armada only six months ago."

His eyes slid across the crew slowly, measuring their faces. Being the Quartermaster, he naturally was granted the third-highest authority on the ship when the captain and co-captain were incapacitated. He could easily play the authority card and order Haxel's release, but the last thing he wanted to do was alienate the crew. Sal had a bit of an idea of what went down in the bathroom, and it most certainly involved Alina in some form.

And if his theory turned out to be true, he would be all for keeping Tyler dead and promoting Haxel to Captain. But the first thing they needed was evidence.

"My point is," He began to finish. "Everyone here has seen how reliable and disciplined he was. The atrocity of the crime shouldn't prevent us from investigating the cause and what led to this. We already have a basis to rely on- that Haxel would not kill randomly, especially like... this."

The crew was silent once more, pondering on his words regardless of their stances.

"I guess the only thing we can do right now," Barris conceded. "Is wait until Cortia or Alina come to."

"That makes sense." Chloe said, parroting her superior.

The others nodded solemnly, comfortable with that outcome.

Be-beep!

Naomi was slightly frightened as her holopad beeped, steadying her nerves and tapping on it to bring up the notification. Her face quickly paled white as she looked at the contents of the holopad's projection.


(Music: "Danger Close", by Sarah Schachner)


"One fuckin' disaster after another!"

The outburst worried the crew, and she quickly elaborated.

"LRS is detecting- oh FUCK! The Armada's zeroed our location, we need to FTL out of here now! Wait..."

She frantically scoured the contents of the holopad as the crew became frantic from the news and quickly filtered out of the brig to head to their stations, while a few strategists stayed behind to plan their next moves.

"This didn't appear on the sensors before. What the hell?! We might be in luck! A Canaris Battle Cruiser is only a few AU away, but it's using Stealth-Tek to hide its presence! We can port to their location and request aid, but we need to do it in five minutes, before it re-pings!" Naomi exclaimed desperately, looking with frantic eyes at the assembled crew.

"A single cruiser?" Barris questioned her in disbelief. "How the hell is a single cruiser going to fight back against an armada of pirates?!"

"It's not an overwhelming favor to either party!" Aisha pointed out. "Canaris battleships are the most feared throughout the galaxy. If it's a cruiser, those alone can take on entire fleets of whatever stolen ships the pirates are using!"

"An armada, though?" Rogers muttered.

"We don't have time to deliberate for long!" Naomi barked. "Make a decision NOW!"

The remaining crew looked to one another, nodding their heads in unanimous decision.

"Let's go seek rescue!" Derek said.

"Agreed." "Yes. "Sounds good."

With the affirmations made, the crew immediately dashed for their stations, with Sal heading for the cockpit to take command of the wheel. He was incredibly nervous; while he'd had sufficient pilot training for scenarios like this, he was nowhere near the skill level of evasion whilst in combat, or making calculated moves in harrowing dangerous situations.

He badly wanted to let Haxel take the reins, but he knew he wasn't in any mental state to do that, nor would the crew approve, by any measure, his ability to pilot a ship when he'd just murdered the captain brutally.

"This situation fucking sucks!" He cursed under his breath as he handled the console.

He quickly boosted up the FTL drivers, pulling up a screen that flashed dozens of warning notifications about the imminent armada heading their way. His mind flared with stress and he went to work, flicking knobs and switches whilst radioing the other crewmates for updates, safety checks and approval checks.

"FTL is good to go!" Naomi reported from over the radio.

"Got it, starting up now!"

He practically slammed the FTL handle forward, almost losing his wits and composure as the armada's time of arrival narrowed down to minutes. Once the Numia reached this Canaris cruiser, they would only have around two-dozen minutes to communicate the situation, request aid and find a good substitute for the piloting role in preparation for the upcoming battle.

The faint dread of death was pervasive in every crewmate; they could sense a life-threatening situation when it approached them. And like rats in a cage, they fought with clawing desperation to find a way out of it; even if it meant entangling others to help.

BWWWWWW-IP!

The Numia made its warp-jump, traveling tens of millions of miles in mere minutes, and Sal fell back into the chair in temporary relief, huffing breathlessly as the mere task of escaping was heavy enough of a burden on the mind. He thumbed his radio to get in contact with Derek.

"Derek, I'm gonna need you to get Alina coherent and sane enough to man that gun!"

"What?! Sal, the murder only happened an HOUR ago! You can't expect me to-"

"IT'S LIFE OR DEATH, DEREK! The reserve garrison are dust compared to her shooting! Get that broad on the gun or you can be sure our chances of survival drop considerably in the next twenty minutes!"

He turned off the radio, concentrating on formulating a more complex plan in his mind. He knew that this cruiser, and whomever was piloting it, would not appreciate the white elephant gift the Numia was about to bring them; which means he'd need to beg for mercy and aid.

Beg for mercy and potentially get obliterated by an angry Canaris cruiser, or definitively die or (worse) get enslaved by a pirate armada. Great options.

He looked at the FTL data readings. Five minutes until arrival.

Five minutes to think up a plan that saved everyone onboard.