Amid a spray of bullets, Talyn, Wrench, Nigel, and Tristan rush to the cargo doors and force the seals – letting the explosive decomp suck them out into space.
Aadi meanwhile, stays on the elevator and heads up to the top deck to meet Anath and Maurice in the armory with the girl.
As this goes on, Julia runs to the nearest porthole and leaps headfirst at it – shooting the window out with a single shot just before impact! The window shatters!! The room explosively decompresses!!! Julia lodges solidly in the porthole at her fat waistline!!!! The ship explodes!!!!! Julia is shot out of the porthole at 128,000 miles per hour!!!!!! Her brains relocate to her boots!!!!!!! They never find the body!!!!!!!!
Like a blazing sun – the fireball of the exploding ship engulfs the little bug – taking it out with it!
Inside, everyone is violently torn to shreds along with the entire ship – and doubly so for Anath, Aadi, Marice, and the girl – when the girl also detonates for some reason along with the ship!
Outside, Talyn, Wrench, Nigel, and Tristan are slammed by the shockwave and blown into space – though Nigel is nailed through the chest and killed by a chunk of shrapnel from the ship.
When the fireball finally goes dim, Only Talyn, Wrench, and Tristan remain alive.
Unfortunately… Both Talyn and Tristan were hurled off-trajectory by the blast of the ship.
Wrench’s aim for the Cardinal is true however, but… He comes in on it at over 400 miles per hour – accelerated by the blast far more than his firearm can compensate for – and crashes in through the bridge viewports.
At least he got to go down with his ship.
As for Talyn and Tristan… well, I wish I could say they had each other for company, but after a few hours tumbling through empty space, neither was in sight of the other any longer and the comlinks were now out of range.
At least Tayln had his emergency beacon.
But they had to retrofit the ship just to get out this far into space. Would anyone ever come out this far to find him? Would he be able to last long enough for them to rescue? How long can a person go without water? Hmm… only two hours of air left…
THE END