A Crash

    Returning to Rear Admiral Graves took no more than two minutes all told, and he hadn't been missed. Graves was checking the hall outside of the bridge for anything that might mean them harm an, and judging by the not-quite relaxed way he held the weapon, he didn't see anything. As Kevin moved up by and then past him, the Admiral fell into step, and they walked in silence.       As they moved to the comm center, they searched for signs of the toothy creatures that had been plaguing the, almost surprised that they hadn't been attacked again. But no , Kevin thought to himself, this isn't surprising at all.  If Blanchard had been right, he would be walking into the belly of the beast, and he was sure that the creatures could bide their time and wait for their meals to come to them. But this is too quiet. There should be some - any - where are they?     " Like a crypt."     Kevin turned and looked at Graves, who did not seem to reali...

    "Codes, codes, codes," he thought aloud. "The codes will be here somewhere." Kevin searched through the drawers of the desk in the office of Captain Andere. The man's body was cooling downstairs, and he had given him a mission, though not all of the means to complete it.     As he was looking through a few drawers in the trophy case behind the desk - stacked with medals of valor, photos of what had to be family and friends, and small odds and ends - he accidentally knocked over a model ship - the placard had said SSV Normandy - and that's where he found it: taped to the underside of the ship's base was a command code that could only be the self destruct sequence.     Interesting hiding place...     For a brief moment he wondered what other secrets were hidden here, but knew there was no time for that now. Maybe next time he had a chance to raid a superior officers things he would have more time. He ran off, back down the stairs and headed out ...

     Kevin rose after a moment paying his respects to Captain Andere. He didn't recall much about the man, but knew he had been a strict, calm, and fair leader. Any remaining crew had lost a great man.      Graves didn't bother him while he had his silent reflection, and in fact held one of his own, though his eyes darted continually to the door, resting there more than on the corpse of the captain. Eventually he broke the silence. "We need to get off this ship Lieutenant..."     Kevin nodded and made sure his weapons were fully loaded. He realized he was running low on shells for the shotgun and decided to switch back to the pistol for the time being; either until he was in dire enough need to switch back, or his ammo in the pistol got too low. He asked Graves how he was doing ammo-wise, and was not at all surprised to find that he had what amounted to little more that a fistful of bullets. That was to be expected if he took a full cl...