Our newly acquired warship and the cargo fleet under it's protection was enroute to Makemake, the ruling seats of the Order of Salvation. Mei and I were sure that The Council would meet our demands since they had no power to oppose a fleet like ours. And if it was a civil war they asked for, they would get it.
Meanwhile, we still had to deal with the fighting in the distant decks of the ship. We were still far from being the only people aboard.
"Hey." said Mei. "I found the ship's original identification. This happens to be the Russian torpedoboat Norilsk. It had reportedly went missing a few days before the Earth campaign against the machines."
"Before the Earth campaign? Why would the Alliance send a ship away from Earth just when it needs warships the most?" I asked. "It makes no sense."
"I don't know..." said Mei. "Oh, but I have an idea. Maybe the Alliance, or the Federation-Alliance Joint Command had some sort of a weird plan like the one we tried... A desperate but crazy attempt to turn the tides of the war. Maybe these ships were on a secret mission at the time."
"A plan... one that failed like ours?" I said. "Interesting theory. But this brings up another question."
"Which is?"
"Why a single ship?" I asked. "What could a single ship even do?"
"You are right." Mei said. "Why would just a single warship be sent away from battlefield?"
"This is not good..."
"Why?" Mei asked.
"Because, this either means that this was not the only warship sent away from Earth for whatever crazy plan they had, or..."
"Or?"
"Or this ship is more powerful than we realize. But either way, we are clearly not aware of the full power of the force that was sent away from Earth and therefore survived the apocalypse. We need to acquire the entirety of that force if we are to unite people." I explained.
"How do you suggest we do that?"
"For now, let's keep our eyes open for any other surviving warship, and whenever we have the chance, let's inspect the systems and records of this very ship. We should eventually find a clue."
The sound of an explosion interrupted our conversation.
"That sounded close." Mei said, worriedly.
"Yes it did, indeed." I replied, with the same worry.
"How did they get so close? I thought they wouldn't dare pass through an artificial radiation belt that can render most devices inoperational. Sounds like suicide to me."
We heard a few knocks on the bridge's door.
"Open up!"
We remained silent for a second.
"Is that the Order or the Imperium troops?" I asked.
"No idea." Mei said. We immediately grabbed the ultraviolet laser weapons we had stolen earlier, and aimed at the door.
"By the Emperor's orders, you are under arrest!"
"Oh, that's the Imperium, alright." Mei said. "What do we do?"
"Only if we could see how many they are..." I said. I was getting more nervous every second.
"This is your last warning. Open the door or face the consequences!"
"They are risking death just to get to us through the radiation fields." I said. "This is beyond plain stupidity. There must be another, bigger motive for them to be that aggressive."
"Their motives don't matter right now!" Mei said. "How do we get out of this?"
"I don't know, I can't tell if they want the ship or us more." I said. "If you were the Imperium-"
"I would naturally want both." Mei said. "Kagan, this is not helping, they will break open that door eventually! How do we fight back!?"
"Listen!" I yelled. "Unless you move away from the bridge, I will set the ship to self-destruct!"
The movement behind the door stopped immediately. There was a few seconds of silence before I got an answer.
"So be it. We are now getting away from the bridge. Please, don't make any stupid moves."
Mei looked at me in shock.
"I can't believe that worked." she said.
"I got my answer." I said. "It is this ship that they want to protect more. Otherwise they would've guessed that I wouldn't gain anything by destroying the ship."
"Or maybe they just don't have enough military knowledge to know that." Mei said.
"I doubt so. This is more like common sense."
"Okay, but what now? We won't keep them back for eternity."
Suddenly, we saw a part of the bridge's wall disappear in smokes.
"I was right!" Mei yelled at me. "Your stupid bluff didn't work!"
We started shooting through the small opening to prevent enemy troops from infiltrating the bridge.
"Mei, the hazard suit!" I said. "Get the air tank!"
I pushed a button on the bridge, which instantly started depressurizing the entire ship. Mei quickly understood my desperate plan, and ran by me to share some of the oxygen in the hazard suit. I started feeling some pain because of the rapid disappearance of the external pressure on my body.
A few Imperium troops managed to make it into the bridge, but were shot dead by Mei. The rest of the crew, on the other hand, suffocated to death.
"Okay." Mei said. "I don't know how you did the depressurization, but you can now repressurize the vessel. This air tank won't keep both of us alive for long. The engineering hazard suits are not spacewalking equipment."
I chuckled nervously.
"I just dumped the entire air into space, not back into the life support reserves." I said. "It will take the ship a while to regenerate air."
"You idiot!" Mei got angry. "Are you trying to kill us too!?"
"Sorry, I got no choice." I said. "I was in a rush, if I didn't act early enough, we would've been dead!"
"What do we do until the ship regenerates enough air pressure then?" Mei asked. "The hazard suit won't last."
"Let's get to an airlock and find spacewalking suits." I said. "They should be able to keep us alive long enough."