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Very interesting and compelling end to one of our antagonists - bravo Mr. Davis! ((Theseus, Bridge)) Kurin: You mean surrender? Chax: What! And risk getting stuck in a penal colony again? Last time I was there I was roomed with this Starfleet brat that wouldn’t stop talking about “blue jeans,” “television,” and “gasoline powered cars.” It was insufferable. Fuse: What it comes down to, is the choice between life and death! ::he raised his voice slightly:: Do we wish to die, cowering in a pool of our own excrement? Or do we do what we can to survive? Live to fight another day. I refuse to believe this is the end of the line. ::He looked each crewmember in the face.:: The Captain may be gone, but we are still a crew. Kurin: I’m with Fuse. Chax: But we can still get away. Invert the polarity on the hull plating, make a low-level subspace field, anything! Chax became increasingly angry as Fuse negotiated. He tried to listen, but his mind flooded with all the memories. Memories he didn’t want, memories he had long suppressed. What was his name? Nicolas? No. Bobby? No, but it was a boring human name. A son of an Admiral, too. He sulked around the penal colony. It was insulting. Though it was a prison of sorts, Chax had never lived somewhere so… nice. Which made him hate the Federation even more. The audacity to place someone in a prison nicer than their own home was an insult. And this Admiral’s son, whining and complaining all the time, had no idea what life was like outside of the Federation, the penal colony, or even the Sol system. The sheer privilege of it all made his second stomach churn, and his gizzard clench. There was no way he could go back there. (( OOC: Condensing a bit since there were no open tags.)) Rajel: =/\= As you can see we are backing away. You may want to die, but my crew has a strong will and instinct to survive. Within the next 30 seconds we will be out of transporter range. This is your last chance. Contact us before it is too late. Constitution out. =/\= The channel closed and silence fell over the bridge, broken up by the occasional ping of flexing metal. Fuse: =/\= Bridge to all hands. I won’t make the decision for you, but i’m sure you can all tell that we have found ourselves in a precarious position. The hull is buckling and we only have…::He looked at the data again.:: Two minutes to make a decision. Do we go with the Federation or stay and go down with the ship? All who wish to live report to the galley and prepare for transport. =/\= Fuse: I suppose you have the bridge Chax. Chax: And I suppose you can go to hell. I hope you rot in that penal colony, rot from the inside. Kurin: ? Fuse: ::Shaking his head:: However you may feel about it, some of us want to live. No matter the cost. Chax: Funny that you call prison living. I intend to thrive. Kurin: ? Fuse turned and left the bridge, and Chax started barking orders from his console. He had no time to waste. Chax: Invert the polarity of the hull plating. Can we create a low-level subspace field around us? The bridge was a flurry of activity, every station doing what they could to try and save the ship enough to escape. Yet everything they tried couldn’t stop hull from breaking and heating. Whatever that dust was, it was deadly. Fuse: =/\= Theseus to Constitution. You win. Five souls ready for transport. =/\= Chax cursed under his breath at the cowards as he continued to work. Hull integrity continued to fall at a precipitous rate, as the temperate continued to climb. Bridge Pirate: Chax! The dust is interacting with the gravimetric distortions from the anomalous cluster of stars. If we can isolate ourselves from those distortions, we should be fine. Chax understood some of those words. Avoid the gravity, save the ship. Gravity comes from mass. Warp drive creates a bubble that makes the ship mass-less. At least, that’s what he thought he knew. Chax: =/\=Engineering, we need a warp bubble, now!=/\= Engineering: =/\=Wha- no, impossible between the nebula and the gra-=/\= Chax: Make it possible, or we’ll definitely be dead. The line simply clicked off. Hull integrity dropped below 20%, with atmosphere venting alarms starting to show across the ship. Nothing they couldn’t fix, if they could get away. A message popped up on his display: Engineering requests all possible power, including structural integrity fields. So this is how it had to be, huh? One shot. He was no stranger to life-or-death situations. He approved, and immediately the power levels dropped drastically across ship system as engineering overcharged the warp core, trying to brute-force a warp bubble. Alarms and klaxons wailed, declaring imminent failure. A situational button appeared on his panel: engage warp bubble. It appears Engineering wanted to give him the honors. Chax: To our freedom. Chax pressed the button with cool determination, and he heard the coils charge; faster and to a far greater capacity that he’d ever seen before. More alarms and klaxons, this time because the nacelles were under incredible stress. His held his breath, and clenched all his fists. He began to wonder if he should have transported over. And at the last moment, the charge was released, creating a single, large pulse to establish a warp bubble. In the picoseconds that the bubble formed and propagating outward from the nacelles, the hull atomized into a cloud of plasma. With appropriate temporal resolution, it would be possible to trace the propagation of the warp bubble across the hull, as the sudden and drastic change in the local effects of gravity ripped the hull apart at the molecular level. As it raced across the hull, ejecting superheated plasma in every direction, it ignited the atmosphere in the ship. The plasma conduits routed through the hull were ripped open, too, sending electrified plasma arcing everywhere. Had this occurred over a timespan that Chax could appreciate, it would have been quite a show. But sadly; as the hull surrounding the bridge atomized and the atmosphere ignited, it also blew out into open space, along with Chax. Behind him, the ship exploded outwards as the damaged warp core’s antimatter pods were compromised and began to annihilate into pure energy. But not only was he on fire in the burning atmosphere, he was pushed into the field of superheated plasma. As his body intersected with it, it too atomized. The molecular makeup of his body was far less able to withstand heat than the hull material. But fortunately it did not occur over a time period he, or anyone else on the ship, could experience. The nerves in their bodies didn’t even have enough time to signal “pain.” All Chax or anyone else still on the Theseus knew was existence, followed by non-existence. And the Theseus herself, similarly paradoxically lost. All that she was still existed, but the atoms were all messed about and scattered. Some turned into pure energy. She had lost her identity entirely. (( Elsewhere )) An old man, sick from both radiation and an overdose of anti-radiation medicine, kicked open the cockpit of a warp-capable escape sled with his last bit on energy. Rich Orion air. Soon, hands were all over him, lifting him up and out. - fin - —— MSNPC Chax Captain of the Theseus (Very briefly) as simmed by Lieutenant Lazarus Davis Chief Science Officer USS Constitution-B Podcast Team Facilitator IDIC team member ASDB team member C239510LD0 (he/him, character) (he/they, writer) “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” – Dylan Thomas

Our intrepid leader in motion 🤣🙈