Vice Captain Aria

Log Entry: 3162.10.26 Situation Summary: The Vigilant Dawn sustained catastrophic damage after an assault by the Gravewind Corsairs. Primary thrusters offline. Life support functioning at 47%. Communications jammed. The crew is attempting emergency repairs while drifting dangerously close to the Rift’s gravitational well. --- Chapter I — Vice Captain Aria Venn The emergency lights painted the bridge in blood-red hues, pulsing in rhythm with the heartbeat pounding in Aria’s ears. Sparks hissed from a shattered console beside her as she pried open a maintenance panel. “Come on… come on,” she muttered, fingers slick with coolant as she reconnected a severed conduit. The ship groaned like a wounded beast around her. Vice Captain Aria Venn had served aboard the Vigilant Dawn for nine years—once a symbol of precision and calm command. Now, she was the pulse holding chaos together. The captain was trapped under debris in medbay, half the engineering crew were dead, and the pirates’ ion torpedoes had torn through the navigation core. She wiped a streak of soot from her cheek and keyed her wrist comm. “Bridge to Engineering—status report.” Static answered. Then a voice, weak but alive. “Still patching coolant feeds… radiation spiking in core compartment three. If we don’t stabilize soon—” “Do it,” she cut in sharply. “I’ll reroute auxiliary power from weapons to life support.” A pause. “But that’ll leave us defenseless.” Aria stared out the viewport. The stars looked wrong—like they were bending inward, spiraling toward something unseen. “We’re already defenseless,” she whispered. Behind her, alarms howled again. She stood tall, spine straight, eyes cold. Even now, as the Vigilant Dawn bled out into the void, she refused to break. If the Hive found them first, there’d be no graves to mark. Only silence. Only the Xytheron.