I tried to, I really tried not to start crying, but I couldn’t hold myself any longer. It was the first time I’d ever seen someone die… and someone who’d recently helped me nonetheless. All this because of an encounter with an Imperial ship… I started to break down as Lauren pulled me through the hallways. At one door she stopped and quickly pushed me into the room, it was a small storage area. Lauren sat me down, got on her knees, put her rifle against the wall and then clasped my face in between her hands.

“Luna, Luna, listen to me.” She stared into my eyes, I could barely tell due to the tears. “Luna, I really need you to calm down right now. What you just saw… I know it’s hard, I know… But we can mourn Sparks later, together, when this shit is dealt with.” It’s hard to believe that not too long ago it was me who was comforting her. It must be her training and combat experience that just let her flip the switch like that. But for me…

“Ellie, anyone near us?” Lauren asked.

“Not right now, Commander. The coast is still clear.” I heard Ellie through my earpiece as well.

“Okay… Luna… please calm down. I need you to watch my back. Breathe in… and out… in… and out…”

Her icy calmness somewhat managed to calm me down, too.

“O-okay…” I wiped the tears out of my eyes with my sleeve.

“Good.” She reached for her hip, where she had holstered her pistol. She grabbed it and handed it over to me, holding it by the barrel. “I know you’ve not seen any combat, but you do know how to handle this, right?”

I nodded and took the pistol in my hands. “I’ve been through basic training, yes.” Basic training with basic human weaponry, but I wasn’t the best of shots.

“It’s not that far to the armory anymore, but the resistance will definitely be heavier there than it is here.” She handed me a couple of magazines as well. “If anything else, just try not to shoot me, okay?” She gave me a wink. I really didn’t know how she still managed to crack a joke at this time. But it did manage to get a little bit of a chuckle out of me.

“Commander, an enemy patrol is going to pass by your location in two minutes.” Ellie shared. “It’s a group of four.”

“Let’s clean those bastards out and then continue our way. We’ll let them go past and then shoot them in the back.” Lauren said.

And so she did, Ellie told us the moment the Imperial troops had passed. The Commander waited five more seconds so they couldn’t hear the door opening, and with a couple of short bursts, she quickly got rid of the threat.

“Luna, now, let’s go.” She signaled me along and I followed. Ellie tried to guide us through paths with low enemy density, it made us take a few corners. A left, a right, one more to the right and left again.

“Commander, I can not guide you around any further. If you want to break through to the armory, you will have to get past a blockade that’s been set up by the enemy entities. The blockade in the hallway in front of you is the least heavily armed one I could find.”

“You’ve done an amazing job so far, Ellie.” Lauren thanked our AI guide and checked the ammo clips of her weapon. “How many enemies are in this choke point?”

“Twelve.” Ellie replied quickly. “But they are in cover.”

“Hmmm.” Lauren then guided us into a nearby room so we were out of the hallway for a while. “Okay, can you give me a sitrep of what is happening throughout the rest of the ship while I try to think of something?”

“Ok, Commander.” Ellie said before she started her situational overview. “On most floors the fighting is still going on but casualties on our side have been limited. It looks like the enemy didn’t expect much resistance and went in unprepared. A lot of our people have managed to barricade themselves into safe rooms. The enemy has tried to breach these unsuccessfully. Our Dokazuuk allies have teamed up with the engineers and have managed to push back the enemy out of the hangar bay. Right now, they are setting up plans to push back the enemy even further by mounting gunship weapons on improvised trolleys.”

“That’s great news.” Lauren smiled while looking into a couple of storage lockers. “So this concentration of force the enemy has set up here… if they were acting at random, how come they focussed their efforts here?”

“They must’ve noticed that a lot of our people were trying to head this way.” Ellie replied. “Other than that, they were probably lucky to have deployed most of their forces on this floor, as it’s in the center of their breach.”

“I see…” Lauren then opened another one of the supply storage lockers. “Aha. This will be useful.”

I walked up to Lauren to see what she’d found. She’d found a big mobile fire-extinguisher unit. It had a big sticker on it saying that it had been found to have a defect and was in storage waiting for repair.

“Looks like it’s still pressurized… The nozzle must just be malfunctioning.” She inspected the tank more closely. “Ellie, can you remotely control the trolley mechanism?”

The trolley it was seated on activated and moved a couple of centimeters in every direction. “I can, Commander.”

“Good.”

“What’s the plan, L… Commander?” I asked.

“Well, this will be our distraction.” She patted the pressurized tank and then took a couple of oxygen masks out of an emergency storage locker on the other side. “I’ll knock off the regulation valve, after which Ellie will drive this straight into the barricade set up by the enemy. With any luck, they’ll shoot it, making it blow and giving us an even bigger smokescreen than what the regulation valve will give us.”

“Do you want me to do anything else, Commander?” Ellie asked as well.

“Do the people at the armory have the capability of sallying out?”

“Doubtful, Commander.” Our AI comrade replied. “They haven’t even had time to equip power armor, they’ve just been on the defense constantly.”

“Alright, then just tell them that we will be coming from this direction. I don’t want us to break through and then just get nailed by friendly fire.”

“Yes, Commander.” Ellie went silent for a bit so she could tell the defenders what our plan was.

In the meantime, Lauren just kept inspecting the fire suppression trolley. I was hesitant to take her out of her focus. But in the end I didn’t need to as she looked up from her inspection and then looked at me. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m… not… I think…”

“Understandable. But I think you are doing fine for now. We just need to get a little bit further.”

“Do you think the plan will work?”

“I think it’s incredibly risky. I don’t even know if they have some kind of ‘see-through-smoke’ vision or not.” She looked down at the ground for a second before looking back up. “However, we do have the element of surprise and if we manage to knock them off-balance, introduce chaos into their lines, I think we can break through just fine. Let’s get those bastards off my ship. Make them rue the day they messed with Humanity’s finest.”

I nodded. “Let’s give them hell.”

“Hell yes.” Lauren smiled.

It was at that moment Ellie came back from giving her report. “The armory knows about the plan. Once I give the sign, after you’ve broken through the barricade, they’ll lay down suppressive fire into the other corridors to give you a cleaner shot at reaching them.”

“Alright, thanks for that.” Lauren got up and patted the fire suppression system a couple times. “Let’s get this into position so we can get our plan into action.”

My nerves flared up the closer we got to the moment of truth. But luckily, Lauren’s confidence and guidance managed to keep me calm enough so I didn’t lose my mind.

“Ready?” Lauren asked, her oxygen mask already on.

I gave her a solemn nod and put on my mask as well.

“Okay, let’s do this. Try to stay close to me.” She stood up after loosening the valve a bit and with one powerful kick, she sent the valve flying. Filling the space we were in in a white fog. I could just barely see Lauren’s back in front of me as she waited for Ellie to have moved the trolley into the next hallway. We heard some firing, swiftly followed by an explosion.

“The hallway is completely filled with smoke, Commander.” Ellie commented. “The enemy is moving erratically.”

“Go.” Lauren started moving, with me close behind her.

When we moved around the corner, a shadowy figure in the fog was met with three shots from Lauren’s rifle. It dropped as we moved on. Another shadowy figure to our left met the same fate. Shots from the front whizzed by. Lauren shot into the fog, the sound of fleshy thuds meant she’d hit her third target as well. But she was so focussed on that that she didn’t see the next figure coming in from the right. Luckily my aim was true and with a couple of bullets that threat was neutralized as well.

It looked like the plan was going splendidly… at least, right up until I got tackled by a figure neither of us had spotted from the left.

I was on the ground, with an imperial soldier staring me down... My oxygen mask, on the floor, just outside of reach. I was gasping for air.