The pilot compensates and fires again—this time a heavy weapon strike that punches through my weakened shield and slams into the left side of my cockpit.
Pain detonates through my torso in a white-hot surge.
I feel rather than see the breach—metal fragments tearing into flesh, heat blooming beneath my ribs. The world narrows to sharp light and the metallic taste of blood at the back of my throat.
“Captain!” Rethan’s voice breaks across comm. “You’re hit.”
“I’m aware,” I manage, forcing my hands steady on the controls.
I trigger one final concentrated burst into the interceptor’s exposed engine core.
It explodes in a violent flare that blinds my sensors for a fraction of a second.
The threat vanishes.
The pain does not.
I guide the crippled craft back toward the cruiser, vision swimming slightly as blood soaks through my armor at my side. The docking clamps catch me just as another wave of Alliance fire streaks past.
“Break pursuit pattern,” I order once I’m back inside, my voice lower now but steady. “Shift toward contested boundary.”
“Alliance fleet maintaining chase,” Rethan reports.
“They won’t pursue beyond the disputed line without Council sanction,” Elara says, her gaze locked on the expanding star map. “Not after what just aired.”
“Let’s test that,” I reply.
The cruiser roars forward at full burn, Reaper craft tightening around us in battered formation. Alliance ships continue firing, but their arcs grow less aggressive as we approach the jagged demarcation line where jurisdiction fractures into argument.
Another screening vessel detonates behind us, shielding the cruiser from a final heavy strike.
The moment we cross into contested space, Alliance pursuit falters.
Their formation breaks.
They hold position.
We do not slow until their signatures shrink to distant glints.
The war room falls into a tense quiet broken only by damage reports and casualty lists.
“Pursuit disengaged,” Rethan says at last.
The words do not feel like victory.
They feel like debt.
I brace one hand against the holotable and feel the tremor in my own muscles.
“Medical,” Rethan says sharply, stepping toward me. “Now.”
“It’s superficial,” I reply.
Blood drips steadily from beneath my armor, pooling dark against the deck plating.
“It is not,” Elara says, her voice cutting through the chamber with cool clarity. “Sit down.”
I do not argue with her.
