The ship that carried Bella this far into space was a drab and dingy thing. The hull groaned like a dying monster as it hurtled across the stars, and the sounds of every fresh impact with a meteor or other piece of celestial garbage reverberated deep into her personal quarters. Every one of them made her flinch as they pushed little visions of her death inside of her skull. The whole of it was undecorated, barely furnished, and permanently smelled of dust that she was constantly forcing herself not to clean. 

She'd give almost anything to back there right now. 

Space does not need monsters. Space [i]is[/i] a monster. Bella stares wide eyed into the open maw of the roaring, roiling sea of stars, and realizes she must know better than to exhale with relief. Poseidon's grand kingdom exists for no other reason than to remind people how small and utterly pathetic they really are. And then, having done that, its secondary purpose is to kill them. 

There's no emotion her heart can conjure right now beyond terror. On a proper ship, you pray, point your engines, and then pray again while the ship and the gods handle everything else. But on this shuttle, every twitch of the controls sends an unpleasant swooping sensation down Bella's spine that settles in her stomach. She growls constantly, feathering the flight stick first one way and then another, rocking the plush cruiser this way and that in what little flecks of empty space she still has to find her bearings in. An errant fleck of rock or steel or... something else knocks against the side of the transport, and the entire thing rattles horribly. The plating on this thing is so thin it might as well not exist. She has no weapons. The only point of this shuttle to begin with is to stroke Odoacer's ego as she pops from ship to ship in the relative safety of the space between one of her blockades. 

Her claws tighten around the controls in a death grip. Bella shakes her head. It is essential she master this, and now. Just ahead of her the cockpit fills with the awe-inspiring sight of the World Eater's sapphires. The merest drop of its frozen blood is enough to tear her to shreds. There would not even be enough left of her to commune to the gods and whatever resting place Hera would leave for her. The sound of her growling now fills the entire shuttle. 

She pushes down on the controls and dives under the first sapphire with surprising grace. It's several agonizing seconds before she can see anything else. Seconds where all she has to contemplate is the horror of Poseidon's most terrifying pet. Such power, frozen here. If she were braver, bolder, and more foolhardy... no. She mustn't dwell on it. And yet, wouldn't even the merest fraction of this crystal be enough to grant her powers undreamed of? And if she dug even deeper and cracked open the core of an arterial clot...

Her window fills with colors beyond the ghastly blue, and the line of thought ceases immediately. What she sees is enough to make her heart drop into her stomach anew. The Princess has been here, there's no doubting that. The sheer number of mines floating in front of her now would be laughable for any other target. But it's just as clear they don't have her yet, or there wouldn't be the tiny flares of plovers flitting about from spot to spot in obvious search. It's suicide to go in there. She'll be spotted for sure. 

No. The real suicide would be to delay. Another minute to the minefield. Maybe thirty seconds beyond that until she's spotted, and from there, just moments before word reaches Odoacer's ears. She's going to be furious. The only things keeping Bella alive right are the possibility of retrieving the Princess and securing the Empress' permanent protection, and the simple hubris of the Armada. But neither will last long. If she's lucky, she'll make it halfway to the leviathan's corpse before ELF weapons render this thing a barely mobile (if especially fancy) tub. Or worse. They could do much worse. They [i]will[/i] do much worse. 

Bella turns up the throttle on the shuttle and darts toward death at utterly reckless speeds. Soon, Redana, soon. It must be soon, before it's never.