The usual caveat: it’s a very rough draft! Enjoy!
“Sir? Captain, are you all right?”
McClaren heard the voice as if from far away, through a dull ringing in his ears. He tried to open his eyes, and was rewarded with a thousand hot needles lancing into his optic nerve. He hissed with the pain.
“It’ll pass in a minute, captain,” the voice said again, closer this time. Chief Harkness. “You must’ve gotten a big jolt,” she went on quietly, her hand on his shoulder. Her touch felt very warm. “Fucking alien bitches,” she suddenly spat.
He smiled grimly. Whatever had happened to the ship, he was glad Harkness had made it. This far, at least.
“How many,” he asked her, squinting up into her worried face. “Do you know how many of the crew…are okay?”
For a moment she didn’t answer, but looked up at someone else. His eyes followed her and found Amundsen, kneeling at his other side.
“Twenty-three survivors, sir,” he said quietly. “Including yourself.”
McClaren couldn’t hide his shock. “Twenty-three? Out of a crew of two hundred eight?” They helped him sit up. The aliens had gathered the human survivors in Aurora’s main galley.
Amundsen was only grateful that it hadn’t been the lower galley where he had been forced to abandon Raj Kumar. The ship’s XO was not among the survivors, and Amundsen had seen enough in the rest of the ship to know what must have happened to him. “Yes, sir,” he said. “That’s all. Everyone else is…” He shook his head slowly.
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