[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/NISMglX.png[/img][/center][center][h2][color=#b9dde9]Laurey Karlin[/color][/h2][/center]There was a great chasm of silence as Laurey stared at the ‘captain’, save for that chiming in her head from so much magic. For the corporeal plane it passed in less than a second, but for Laurey it stretched like spacetime around a blackhole. It wasn’t that Natasha had spotted a weakness to exploit, something only visible to a veteran and not a green engineer, a faint hope Laurey had held onto, no… it was that they needed a release? Were the kids that unstable that their counselor wouldn’t be enough. They needed regular suicide-runs too? Their ship was breaking a military blockade, one of Grand Admiral Kherol, he of Proxima infamy. What were they hoping, that he’d let a rogue combatant off with a kiss on the cheek and a number to call? They needed to scram. What the fucking fuck were they - 

The world turned diaphanous, and Laurey forced herself to stay, biting down on her tongue. Copper pangs and strawberry pain. The kids were forming up, ready to go. The one called Nero lusted for combat like a rutting buck. It didn’t seem like a battle she would win, and dissent now would only throw more trouble into a sticky situation.

Yet Laurey questioned her place.

“As you wish, ‘captain’.”

The ship shook and Laurey cursed. She was at the comms console and inspecting the screens for a report. The shields seemed to have held, but they were hot.

With comms online she piped a message to the boarding party: Omnitools on streaming/record for combat analysis. 

As the breach came into existence Laurey observed that her legs were shaking. There was a lump in her throat and a growing pressure in her chest and it was really happening. Fuck fuck fuck. The word tumbled over infinitely in her mind as she rushed from the bridge. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. She almost made it to her bathroom before she threw up.