The next two days passed in silence. Tense, on edge, the crew lost themselves in their duties, their own personal darknesses. Time felt strange, strung out, at times fast, at times painfully slow. Tessa spent as much of it in Ben’s arms as she could manage, and the sounds of their soft, gentle lovemaking brought a certain hazy lightness to the time spilling out before them, slipping away into memory behind them. Packing her bags in the last five hours before their arrival in system, Tessa played one last strain on her saxophone, something sad and soulful, something fitting as the last notes she would share with it, with the world, with Dimitrov, before leaving it all behind for a past where she didn’t belong. Two hours from Earth, a short blip came over the QE transmitter, was announced quietly, somberly, by the admiral herself.

Twenty-seven ships spotted by Deepglass five. Contact lost with Jupiter station. Ships holding at Mars and the homeworld. Godspeed, Hephaestus.

Aiming for a spot several thousand kilometers outside Mars orbit, the Hephaestus popped back into normal space right in the middle of a firefight between Coralate forces and the crippled remains of a Commonwealth armada that was trying to retreat, trying to regroup closer to Earth, closer to the reinforcements HQ had promised were coming. It took fifteen seconds to charge the Hephaestus’ ship to ship cannons, but even that wasn’t enough, didn’t come soon enough. Before the admiral could even get off a shot, before her pilots could be called and rallied to deploy in rigs that wouldn’t have stood a chance against the heavy fire of the Coralate fleet, the Hephaestus was burning, venting atmosphere and struggling to escape with the rest of the Terran forces, struggling to stay alive against ever-widening odds. In Operations, the admiral bared her teeth, set fingers hard into paneling, knuckles whitening. Systems designed to compensate for inertia shuddered, blew, and then everything was in the air, spinning, crashing. Fire rolled across deck plating, shot through open hallways, lashed and caught at the edges of furniture, crates, doors, and still the admiral held her ground, rode out the rolling, the bucking and the shifting of the ship until her navigator had a chance to lock the flailing systems down and put the Hephaestus into more level flight. Suppression systems kicked online, and then the husk of the ship was moving again, fighting to clear the maximum range of the Coralate weapons while there was still a ship to fly. The admiral cursed, breathed.

“Dammit! Push her harder!” She yelled. “We will make this! I’ve seen it! Where the hell is the Von?”

There was no time to ask for clarification– in an instant, space bent, and then the battered shape of the warship popped out of nothingness and into the middle of the battle. The sound of a grin came clear across the frequency as the Von pivoted, slid in sideways against the Coralate offensive, ship to ship emitters already flaring, burning hot lines across acres of scorched silver hull. “Hephaestus, this is the Von der Tann IV.” Hilleboe. “You look like you could use a hand.”

“Don’t think we don’t appreciate it, Captain Hilleboe.” The admiral’s response came tired, eaten by static, words she had rehearsed a thousand times in her mind. She licked her lips, cleared her throat, forced herself to face the inevitable. “But there’s not much left of my ship. I’m declaring a 7700 and ordering all hands to abandon before the drive goes critical.” The pause hung in the void like a glacier, solid and cold, chilling. “I trust you’ll be around to pick up the pieces?”

“Yeah.” Came the loose response. The admiral looked up, glanced through the battered viewer to the bulk of the Von, watched as it burnt under the Coralate’s harsh rays, spun silently, presenting fresh sides to the enemy.

“Roger that, Hephaestus.” Hilleboe managed, losing himself in another, more final pause. “Godspeed, Admiral Blavatsky.”

“And to you as well.” She breathed, then glanced at her tactical officer, nodded once, firmly.

“Set the self destruct, then get to the pods.” She hesitated, watched as he swallowed, nodded. “Get everyone to the pods.”

“Lets give the Coralate something to remember us by.”