Part 19

    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 clip to drop a single monster.

    "So what's the plan?" Graves asked. "I'm sure Andere told you something."

    "He did," Kevin replied. "He wanted to send a message home, tell them what happened. Then we're setting the ship to blow and headed planet-side in an escape pod."

    Graves had a look of consternation on his face when Kevin looked back at him. "Setting him to blow? This ship alone was hundreds of millions of dollars to get where we are, as well as years of research. We can't throw any of that away." He was borderline frantic.

    "Sir, if we let these things planet-side, they'll do the same thing they did here, but on a global scale. I don't want to risk that, no matter how much money went into the ship."

    "There has to be a different way..."

    He thought for a moment. "I have a feeling that this," - he held up the drive - "is all the research that was available on the ship, and maybe a message from the captain about what happened on the ship. Instead of blowing the ship, we could maybe do a short burn to get it out of orbit? Send it into deep space before we escape. We'll save the ship, but the monsters will still be here. But regardless, we need to leave."

    Graves pondered and, after a moment, nodded his approval, then rechecked that his pistol was loaded, which - of course - it still was.

    Kevin wondered to himself if he shouldn't just start the self-destruct sequence now, never mind Graves' opinion. The man technically outranked him, but he seemed to not be thinking of the larger picture, which could prove to be an issue in the long run.

    He though about it a moment longer, and decided that he probably shouldn't start the sequence now, with no way of knowing how long it would take. Another though came to him, and before it fully formed, he started toward the stairs to the upper deck and the captain's office, with a low and swift "be right back" shot in the direction of the Rear Admiral.