Erickson

I stood over the body of the techie who had given me the order to dump the cargo. He was still unconscious and most the rest of the crew was still recovering from being in the pods. My suit had protected me from most of the gravitational forces, they'd already begun experimenting on it again. He began to wake up and I walked to the exit of the room and looked back at him.

"Smart move, you saved the ship," I told him. "But you also caused us to shoot several thousand light years of course with low supplies. You'll be lucky if they don't merge you with the ship." What I said was a reference to effectively killing him and letting the ship absorb his body. "I'm sure I'll see you again, techie."

I wandered off to check the next group of pods and make sure they were being released, boring job but someone had to do it. I had made it through the next three pod stations when I received a call on my private channel.

"Major Erickson," I answered the call as my helmet came up.

"Major," It was the duke. "Come up to the conference room. There's a matter I would like to talk to you about."

"I'm on my way sir." I finished looking at this room and pods and then reported the rooms I'd checked and informed one of the others that he'd need to cover the rest as the duke had requested my presence.

I stepped into the room and that techie was in the room. I smirked and asked, "So are you trying to decide what to do with him for impersonating a superior officer?"

The techie was in the room along with a few security guards and a few colonels. The duke did not look as amused as I did.

"You were at the briefing Erickson," He said. "You know what not being able to reply and tell them we're alive means."

"Correct sir," I answered. "It means we are assumed dead and they will assume that form of space travel is ineffective. Especially when they could send a probe through and detect the debris caused by the ejected equipment."

"This techie is the one that caused us to have this problem in the first place and he should be punished," One of the colonels commented.

"With all due respect sir, you were all safely in your little pods and didn't see what was going on out here. The ship was being torn apart, if he hadn't told me that I needed to eject the cargo because we had too much mass we would have been torn apart as we came out the other side of the black hole, not to mention what would have happened when you genius' turned on the brakes. You nearly killed the girl." I said in reference to the ship. "If it wasn't for the actions of David McAllister we would all be dead right now, you can debate it if you wish but check the damage reports if you still can I think that system blew out too."

A different colonel, the one who liked me, smirked and nodded, "He's right and we all know it."

"Now if that's all you wanted sir I'd like to go back and keep checking on survivors, if we aren't getting any backup we need to keep everyone alive that we can." I added. He waved for me to leave and I left and continued checking all the different rooms.