Her protective harness deploying around her and her personal quarter's chair, securing both of them to the point where she couldn't move if she wanted to, Farlina gritted her teeth and grasped the arms of her seat as tightly as her hands would allow — violent deceleration was a brutal, lethal thing, if one didn't prepare for it. Forcing her eyes shut in anticipation of the imminent action of the ship's thrusters, Farlina felt herself instinctively seize up, her breathing being reduced to fearful hyperventilating as she became all the more aware of the claustrophobic confines of her chair.
Across the entire Ruthless, each and every crew member was undergoing the same experience, bracing for a deceleration they had only been informed of thirty seconds before. Another instant, and Farlina, her thoughts pushed from her mind, was violently thrust forward in her seat as the Ruthless began decelerating, her harness doing much to mitigate the damage while her body, having been genetically engineered to survive ridiculously high G forces, did even more. Countless personal items — anything that wasn't bolted to the floor or a wall and was not stowed away as combat regulations required — soon found themselves falling to the ground; the nuclear grenade that Farlina had ordered made and sent to her office could be heard bouncing across the floor, and a cursing Farlina had to remotely disable its charge to prevent it from accidentally detonating in her office. It became clear to Farlina, who felt her bones straining desperately against the sudden thrust, that in the face of such overwhelming kinetic power, one could not do anything other than brace oneself, and try not to die — a remarkably difficult task when such a vicious maneuver was being performed on such short notice. Around her, anything that was not bolted to the floor — on a warship, there were surprisingly few objects like this — was hurled into a corner of the room, and though most of the weapons she had affixed to the walls of her office were spared this fate, the chilling sound of the Ruthless's creaking superstructure did nothing to assuage Farlina's rapidly-multiplying fears.
As her genetically-enhanced heart forced sufficient amounts of blood to her brain, defiantly standing against the forces of physics that would otherwise knock her unconscious, the rapid acceleration sent waves of pain rolling through her beleaguered form, the physical stress of the act threatening to tear Farlina in two while the entire ordeal generated no small amount of mental trauma. However, her strained mind a blur of agony, Farlina was not capable of feeling the more subtle emotional wounds by this point; she strained as hard as the ship around her in an attempt to stay in one piece, but under such impossible forces, it sounded like both her ship and herself were losing their respective battles. It was only after three more minutes of unimaginably violent deceleration that Farlina and the rest of the Ruthless earned reprieve, the ship began to speed up again at a gradual rate, and one no longer needed to be strapped into a chair to stay alive. Her breathing heavy, her body shaken, and her head a foggy mess from the ordeal, Farlina, loosening her harness, sent a textcomm as curious as it was furious to Quenthal directly, demanding to know why the Ruthless had decelerated so suddenly, and, from her admittedly ignorant point of view, without reason.
An instant later, and Farlina, coughing and sputtering as her body strained to recover from the deceleration, received an answer — a wayward Nahmatiixian escape pod had been located in the path of the fleet, broadcasting a desperate request for help that was all but silenced by the surrounding Remnant. Rather than condemn the poor sod, and whatever information this poor sod possessed, to a death within the Remnant, Xertaza had decided to bring them aboard, though this action had required a rather abrupt deceleration.
According to the textcomm Farlina had received in reply, the ship's acceleration would be far more gradual than its sudden deceleration, and that as a result, Farlina was able, if not encouraged, to leave the safety of her chair. Eager to escape the clutches of her sweat-stained harness, Farlina, detaching herself from her chair, momentarily relished the feeling of being mobile once more; the next moment, standing from her seat and grunting in pain as she did so, she resolved to witness the interrogation of the escape pod's occupant in person, for she was now both shaken and curious past the point of productivity. Doubtless, she was high-ranking enough to attend the "event," and as she strode towards her office's nearest hypersphere, stepping over fallen articles of miscellany or damaged display items that littered the floor, she observed the opening of the battered escape pod through the lens of interior cameras. As she knew the layout of her office down to the smallest detail, Farlina didn't even need to switch between looking through her own eyes, and looking through the hangar's internal cameras, as she navigated on superior instinct and boarded the nearest hypersphere. Soon, she was underway, heading towards the brig where the prisoner would certainly be taken; Farlina's curiosity surged as a torpedo-like escape pod was carried from a shuttle, and set down before the rifle-sights of roughly two-hundred marines. However, as the escape pod was dropped to the ground, and when it burst open immediately afterwards, the identity of the person within being revealed, Farlina's emotional state shifted within the space of a breath from one of intense curiosity, to one of utter incredulousness, and, finally, to one of great concern.
Rising from the pod, his singed, bloodied head peering hesitantly out from the sparking, crackling innards of the wrecked capsule, none other than Theten, the man who had informed Farlina of Nahmatiix's initial traitorous moves in the first place, surrendered himself to the host of marines surrounding his pod. As he was, almost immediately, grabbed and dragged out of the shuttle bay by force of arms, Theten's tattered Nahmatiixian pilot jumpsuit was revealed, and, mortifyingly, it bore countless blood-stains; wicked, still-bleeding gashes that looked as if they had been made with a serrated knife, and even a few bullet-holes, covered his body. The grisly sight made one thing clear — the barbarity of those Theten had worked with, and those whom Farlina now fought.
As a quartet of marines loaded the submissive, heavily wounded Theten into a hypersphere, and sent him hurtling towards a cell in the Ruthless's brig — the very same place Farlina was heading towards — she hoped dearly that Theten's unique contribution to the war effort would be enough to convince the ever-zealous Xertaza to spare him. Farlina hoped even more intensely that she would be able to make this clear before Xertaza or the other interrogators decided it more expedient to simply kill him and extract any possible information from his implants. After all, Theten had brought crucial information to Farlina, who had brought it to Xertaza, who had then investigated Nahmatiix; there remained the possibility that without him, Xertaza would have failed to act on Nahmatiix's treachery until Tehkria itself had been attacked. After such a service, for him to die within the walls of a Loyalist ship would be a travesty.
Another instant, and Farlina's hypersphere burst open, the dreary, stark confines of the Ruthless's brig becoming visible before her; it was a place so wretched and dull simultaneously that it took conscious effort to move forward through its bleak interior. The brig was the least favorite area of the ship for many, and the number of times Farlina had been down there could be counted on one hand. Striding through the barren, heavily-guarded hallways, walking past cells filled with everyone from those who had turned Traitor, to those ones who had, in light of the recent, horrible events, attempted suicide, Farlina felt more unnerved than she had been in some time. The thought occurred to her that the brig was the exact opposite of the much-beloved "Earth Deck."
After just over a minute of travel from her hypersphere, Farlina had reached the interrogation room reserved for Theten; blocking the entrance was a pair of heavily armed and entirely bored marines, who, despite wearing opaque, solid-metal helmets, seemed to glare at her menacingly. Glaring back at the pair of marines and stating her rank, Farlina received an acknowledging grunt as a reply when the leftmost marine stepped aside, any qualms they may have had being swept away the moment she revealed she knew the Nahmatiixer personally, and wanted to contribute to the interrogation.
Moving towards through the first door to the room that held Theten, rather than the adjacent chamber which coordinated the interrogation itself, Farlina had to pause momentarily for the room's second set of guards to part and allow her entry. Walking between them and opening the door before her, Farlina wasted no time in proceeding into the well-illuminated, yet barren chamber; in the middle of the room, Theten lay on a metallic, comfortless medical table, his numerous and severe wounds being hastily treated by a team of three well-dressed medics. The trio operated in perfect harmony and in complete silence, as textcomms were more efficient, and efficiency may have been all that was keeping the terribly wounded Theten alive. The medics, in this case, were needed to heal Theten's wounds — they were too extensive to be healed by his body itself — though unlike many interrogations, no attempt was made to employ them in a mildly seductive manner: no one had any time for such trivial affairs, least of all Xertaza. Xertaza herself, flanked by five heavily-armed, helmet-less, and stern-faced marines, watched intently and silently, leaning on one of the room's walls as she did so. Doubtless, Theten had reached the chamber through the specialized one-way hypersphere located in the rear of the room, and it was likely that Xertaza had arrived through similar means, which was why they had arrived long before Farlina. As Farlina quietly entered the chamber, Xertaza, leaning against the wall to her immediate left, nodded as if to acknowledge her presence, though behind the simple gesture lay an immense amount of hostility, not directed towards Farlina, but towards the man before her; another moment, and Xertaza had refocused her menacing glare on the wounded Nahmatiixer. It seemed in that moment that she would kill the man before her no matter what he did, if only because she was wrathful, and needed a direct outlet for her vengeance which was less abstract than destroying faraway worlds or armies. Xertaza wanted blood, and she wanted to spill it personally; Farlina was uncertain just how much Theten had left in him.
Throughout the interrogation chamber, silence reigned, in part because no one within it had anything important to say: Xertaza was merely waiting for Theten to be treated, Theten was medically sedated and thus incapable of coherent thought or speech, and the medics, as they were performing a delicate operation, communicated between each other exclusively with textcomms, the speed and ease of which allowed for rapid communication and decision making. Not wishing to break the tense silence, and understanding the need for discretion, Farlina contacted Xertaza via textcomm as she crept into the room, sharing her knowledge of who Theten was, how trustworthy she believed him to be, and the vital fact that he was one of the major reasons why Xertaza had investigated Nahmatiix's loyalty in the first place, before it had done any obvious treasonous acts.
Quickly filtering through the information Farlina had imparted whilst the medics concluded their work, Xertaza looked away from the traitor-to-traitors, glanced directly at an apprehensive Farlina, and answered her concerned expression with a quick smile and reassuring nod; Farlina nearly collapsed with relief. Instead of this, she simply audibly sighed, gave her thanks, and joined Xertaza in leaning against the nearest wall, her eyes affixed to the sedated man before her as she waited for the interrogation to begin — she did not have to wait long. Within a minute, Theten had been reawakened after his hasty surgery, and, as he confusedly sat up on his medical bed and glanced around at his surroundings, his gaze inevitably fell on Farlina. The sight of her sent his slightly fearful expression spiralling into one of pure, incredulous bewilderment — and of great relief.
"F-Farlina? The odds of me reaching the Tehkrian fleet, let alone your ship of all the ships in the Tehkrian fleet, are infinitesimal! At this current moment, if I know anything about probability, I should still be helplessly drifting through the Remnant in a trashed escape pod!" he stammered, through sharp painful breaths, as his lungs hadn't fully recovered from their many wounds.
"Thankfully for you, you're here now," Xertaza responded, before glancing at a nearby marine guard and gesturing at Theten; though a tense silence began to envelop the chamber once more, this tension was instantaneously dispelled the moment the marine guard strode over to Theten, and undid his various bindings. An utterly surprised and profoundly grateful Theten stated his thanks the moment he realized what had happened. As he stretched and admired his newly freed limbs — no doubt a relieving experience after he was trapped in something about as large as a missile for quite possibly more than 24 hours — Theten asked a question, nodding his head towards Farlina as he did so, "I presume, then, that Farlina explained who I was?"
Xertaza nodded once, and then, stepping away from the wall and advancing towards Theten by two paces, she then spoke, "You have provided helpful information in the past, and I removed your restraints because of it. Prove your loyalty again, reveal any other information you might have on our treasonous foe, and I'll do much more than that."
Theten raised his hands in a submissive gesture, bowing his head slightly as he said, "I'll tell you everything I know, which isn't insignificant by itself, but first a question: we aren't travelling from Tehkria towards Nahmatiix on a direct route, are we? You left from a different planet, picked up my pod's transmission, and diverted from your main fleet to pick me up, right?"
"No doubt, the Prime Traitor doesn't need Theten to find out where our fleet is." Farlina said to Xertaza, "There's no need to keep it from him."
Xertaza nodded, "We are — why do you ask?"
Theten's previously humorous and cordial expression vanished in an instant, his flesh turning pale, each breath punctuated with a fearful shudder. Leaping up from the medical table and almost getting shot by the nearby marine guard because of it, Theten explained himself,
"If that is the case, and you've been travelling for as long as it would take you to reach my escape pod, then you have a matter of seconds to avoid a swarm of antimatter mines directly in front of your fleet!"
"Our screening ships would've set them off!" Farlina interjected, fearful
"No, they wouldn't have! These mines are nasty things — they're programmed to trigger only when they detect a certain number of ships in their immediate vicinity, and I know this, because I was on one of the ships that set them up. They're the product of the last three years of Nahmatiix's prototype weapons research efforts, a fusion of Wraith stealth-tech and the Ineffable's antimatter weaponry, and they cost fifteen fortunes to make, each: they're as deadly as you'd expect."
His voice marred by desperation, his words tripping over each other, Theten sputtered, "T-There's no time! Do something before we're blown to fucking pieces!"
Theten's mortified blend of utter concern and raw terror dominated his countenance, and thankfully this emotive expression combined with his foreboding words seemed to have at least some impact on Xertaza. Theten went on, "I'm uploading a set of coordinates to your implants now, these coordinates are the locations of all the mines I know of, though by this point you'd need to fire at them immediately if you're to spare your fleet. Being antimatter mines, if destroyed, they explode, unlike a nuke, and if you don't set them off soon, if those things detonate on your armada, millions of ships will be pulverized!"
Xertaza, never one to be paralyzed by inaction, instantly distributed firing orders across her ship and all the others in the Loyalist formation's vanguard; the next moment, the prison deck — and nearly every other corner of the colossal vessel — shook with the sudden forces of recoil as hundreds of thousands of turrets ship-wide engaged the coordinates Theten had provided. This display was much to the confusion of the rest of the Loyalist fleet, as a thick tide of gauss rounds surged through the Remnant, towards the front of the formation, in search of a target. Moments passed, though scarcely a person across the vanguard drew a breath as they fearfully waited to see whether or not Theten's warning was indeed truthful, and, if it was truthful, whether or not they had been too late in their intervention. The next moment the Ruthless and its vanguard was violently shaken again, though this time they and their vessel were rocked hundreds of times more forcefully, being throttled by the detonation of dozens of gargantuan explosives, rather than the force of their own weapons' recoil. Only a few of the titanic mines were set off in spectacular fashion by Xertaza's intervention, with the rest of them being annihilated in the catastrophic chain reaction that followed, as the golden void seemed to be nearly torn asunder by the incredible explosive force of the detonations. These explosions produced a great tidal wave of flame that threatened to annihilate Lassarha's entire armada, but this thankfully withered into nothingness in a few moments, once it had destroyed only a few of the Loyalist fleet's vanguard ships, and a quarter of its screening vessels — an infinitely better outcome than what would have occurred had no action been taken, but a loss nonetheless.
As the violent quaking of the Ruthless subsided, the chaos induced by an imminent threat being routed by the return of safety, Theten joined much of the fleet in sighing relievedly, the sudden onset and conclusion of the near-death experience doing more to shock him than any of the other events that had occurred that day. Xertaza, her heart beating at a rate only slightly higher than the norm, glared upwards at the ceiling, her eyes affixed on nothing in particular as she entered a state of deep, but fleeting, concentration. Once she had reviewed the status of the fleet, and found it mostly intact, she joined the others in exhaling deeply, though she, being a seasoned commander, was notably less disconcerted than most.
Farlina, her head resting in the palm of her left hand, her hair down, simply half-muttered, half-sobbed, "Fuck! That was close."
A minute passed, and then, shakily rising from his medical bed, Theten then asked, "Where was I?"
Xertaza opened her mouth to speak, but caught herself; instead, she briefly turned to face a trembling Farlina, and sent her a textcomm that read, "You were right to trust this man. Thank you." She then gave Farlina a reassuring pat on the shoulder, before, eager to see what other critical secrets the man held, she returned to interrogating Theten. The Nahmatiixer cordially answered all queries as best he could, and the information he carried was useful, though Farlina, recovering yet still trembling, and no longer being of use within the interrogation chamber, resolved to return to her office.
Bidding goodbye to both Theten and Xertaza, Farlina wearily exited the interrogation room, and then entered the nearest hypersphere; moments later, she was hurtling towards the ship's engineering wing, from which she could organize the repair of any parts of the ship that had been damaged during the detonation. After this, thought Farlina, she would design something brilliant — she hoped this would provide a useful outlet for her anxiety, which, as one would expect, had been greatly amplified after she had almost died. Nahmatiix was still a fairly distant thing, but until the esteemed admirals of the fleet came up with a cohesive plan of attack — at which point Farlina would have to retrofit some parts of the ship so that it could better execute this strategy — there was little Farlina could do other than ensure that the Ruthless was intact, and that she was mentally intact, for the climactic battle to come. No doubt, after that battle, there would be a lot more to repair, if she still breathed.