The Gray Waters of Morality

Grievance set his comm system to transmit queries on regular intervals to any other human ships that might have entered the unknown system through the same or other wormholes. The queries offered ISK to any pilot who could give the location of a wormhole out. After several weeks of fighting sleepers, their ragtag fleet was low on supplies.

Suddenly a transmission came through from a human Buzzard class craft. "Coordinates of a wormhole transmitting" Grievance entered them into the navigation computer and engaged the warp drive. They landed near a tiny wormhole that appeared near collapse just after the Buzzard disappeared through it. There was a distinct possibility that it would not support the mass of his ship, let alone the rest of their small fleet. Darkside's battleship would certainly not make it. Grievance had not only his own crew, but also the six thousand man crew of Darkside's ship to think about. He had to get out in order to guide a corp mate with a prober back to the wormhole to guide Dark's battleship out.

Grievance saw Voyk's Thorax and Daniel's pod drop out of warp next to the wormhole. He had anticipated the possibility of this scenario the moment he accepted the others to his fleet. The capsuleer parted the gray waters of morality and space with the knife of energy transmitted by his warp disruptor at Voyk's ship.

Voyk's Thorax met the challenge and burned towards him, his lasers flashing into the Rupture's shields. Grievance activated his autocannons and loosed his drones on the Thorax. Looking with concern as the shields dropped along with the range to the Thorax, Grievance was concerned that his long range barrage cannons would be able to track and pulsed his micro warpdrive. It was not needed as he could clearly see that the Thorax armor was melting much faster than his own, and he hadn't even activated his repper yet. "He transmitted a message to Voyk's pod emerging from the crumbling ship, "Safe journeys" knowing full well that only the capsuleer would awaken in a clone vat as his crew boiled and froze in the unknown space of a distant galaxy. Voyk transmitted, "Good flying" just before his pod burst under the autocannons. Daniel's pod was next, some men could never bring themselves to self destruct and face death even though they knew their clone would awaken once again. Death was death.

As debris floated around the Rupture and began to swirl around the event horizon of the tiny wormhole, Grievance transmitted to Darkside, "I will be back, God willing"

As his ship fell through the liquid watercolors and came out on the other side, Grievance watched his navigation computers with hope turned to acid as they reported, "Unknown Constellation. Unknown System. Uncharted Planets..."