The Cold Vacuum of Space

The United Dominion has promoted Dragon to Admiral. Soon his job puts him in imminent danger, in a deadly battle between fleets. A somewhat short Science Fiction story.

He couldn't believe his luck.
Well, it may have been rude to call the opening of the position "luck," since it involved the death of the previous Admiral. Still, the man could hardly believe the fact that he was being promoted to Admiral. Nicknamed "The Dragon" for his ferocity on the battlefield, most didn't even bother using his real name anymore. He preferred Dragon at this point, since everyone called him that anyway. He and his brand new frigate, the Spartan, would soon lead the United Fleet. He soon won a large battle for the United Dominion, incurring minimal losses. However, the killing still took its toll on him. He was used to smaller battles, with a few deaths. That was fathomable. But fights between Frigates involved hundreds to even thousands of deaths. He would remain sullen for days after a battle, trying to forget about those he killed and those on his side lost. Soon, however he would get sucked into the next battle. The cycle went on and on. The United Dominion and its adversary, the EVE Empire, were locked in war, and in war there was no time for depression.
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The holo-radar went crazy. It started projecting ships all around them, and a giant mass directly in front of the Spartan. It suddenly became apparent what was going on.
There was a star flying their way. A STAR. He was completely stunned. How could they possibly send a star hurtling their way? He had no idea that the EVE Empire was so advanced. That didn't matter now. He had to get the remaining fleet out. This battle was lost. The star disrupted the sensors with its electromagnetic radiation. The gravity started pulling in all of the ships within reach. The blinkdrives would only work when the ship was already moving very fast to enter the galaxy-encompassing wormhole network of "Slipspace." It could take them anywhere they wanted to go, ripping spacetime to put them anywhere, instantaneously, without too many side effects. This would be a close one. He informed the fleet about their planned destination. They would rendezvous there soon. The Spartan, however, was too close to the star to escape its gravity well now. A plan had to devised now, because now, they were falling faster and faster towards the blazing ball of death!

Dragon knew what to do.
Well, everyone did too. Run like hell. But the how was a problem.
Everyone else tried to escape by flying away from the star.
They could get away with it.
Their ships had much less mass then a frigate.
Everyone probably thought he was crazy.
But he had to start flying towards the star.
His sensors could detect it clearly now.
This was going to be a lot harder than he thought.
He threw the engines sideways and fired in his swift descent.
The star's gravity flung him fast around it.
He picked up more than enough speed to enter Slipspace.
It's normally a bit shaky going in there with a ship in, well, ship shape.

The intense heat and gravity had a serious effect on the ship's condition, though. Expected, because they were just entering the atmosphere of the star as they jumped. First noticed by the bridge crew upon the instantaneous transport through Slipspace was the breach in the bridge's hull. The bridge crew flew out, with the airlock bulkhead to the bridge automatically sealing off.
Everything went red, then black. Well, except for he bodies of his crewmates. Those never faded from his mind.



Dragon awoke in the medbay.
His body in shock, he let nature run its course, vomiting in the convenient bag next to him.
He had to purge the chemicals from his body.
Above his bed was a display of the remaining fleet's new location.
Instead of ships or a star, there was nothing but a nebula, some friendly ships trying to recover, and pieces of the Spartan.
The Spartan was in pieces.
The intense heat and gravity damaged the ship so bad the normally just shaky trip tore their ship to pieces.
The section containing the bridge was dark. "No lifesigns detected," a prompt next to it told him.
The breach was too large to repair.
The section containing the blinkdrives and the shuttle bay exploded with the heat and stress.
The Antimatter that fuels the blinkdrives tends to do that. Very finicky stuff.
A chunk containing the normal interplanetary engines, shield generator, and crew quarters however, were mainly fine, but floating pretty far away. Evacuation pods and shuttles were all around it, presumably to bring the surviving crew to a functioning ship. The engines wouldn't work as expected without the entire amount of the programmed mass there anyway, so they might as well have been totally destroyed. As for the other chunks, he was thankful for the emergency airlock-bulkheads each room was equipped with. They saved many lives. Only the rooms directly breached had an air problem. Still, many lives were lost.
The Medbay was obviously fine, since he was in it and not dead, but what else was part of this chunk?
Upon recalling the layout of his ship, Dragon remembered the comm and sensor arrays were were above the medley, along with the mess hall and the supercomputer down the corridor. He couldn't remember what else was nearby, not that it would help. For all he knew, the Medbay could be floating, abandoned, all alone. He wondered if the hallway outside was even attached. The entrance of a doctor from it answered his question. The doctor informed him that he was only able to be saved because his corpse happened to fly by a repair shuttle, who was then able to retrieve it.
He hoped the damage was no worse than what he'd already seen.
He wished that nobody else had to die in the cold vacuum like he did.
He felt more sorry than ever for his opponents.
Because no death is worse than a space death.
Unable to voice the pain or your regrets.
Body unlikely to be recovered.
Hundreds of billions of miles away from family.
Lost, breathless, to the infinite black.

Author's Note

My first and currently only story. As I only want to improve, leave an honest review and I've me some tips if you have any. Yes, I realize the formatting towards the end is more like a poem. Yes, that is intended.