After a brief, quiet debate between Becker and Summerville on the CIC, Becker orders the Major to instruct Alabama to execute fire control in all compartments, evacuating the air to space.
Alpha and Delta squadrons engage the enemy fighters and suffer extremely heavy losses in the first exchange. Bravo squadron escorts Echo on its bombing run against the other Ghost Bear frigate, then move to aid the others against the enemy fighters. Between Echo’s light torpedoes and a naval-grade torpedo from Agamemnon, the other frigate is destroyed. Becker orders all efforts made to salvage materiel while Janks takes several platoons of marines to secure Alabama, which they do with little incident.
Between arial bombardment and a deft BattleMech assault by Colonel Vail’s Black Knights, the Prinis Prime refinery is secured undamaged. Shortly thereafter, Bravo squadron destroys the mechs guarding the old listening post and its hidden depot, and the special forces group lands to secure the facility.
3010-12-31:
Death by depressurisation is not a pleasant death, or so I have been told. I think. Not that I remember specifically, but I know what happens.
If it is an explosive one, the pressure drops so fast that the lungs don’t have time to get rid of the expanding air, and basically, the lungs might rupture. The part about people actually exploding is partly a myth, but only partly. It is possible, but then you have to start out by a lot higher pressure than people normally work in. Still, the cells in the body will swell, but they are elastic enough that they most likely wouldn’t burst. They’d be unconscious within seconds, most likely.
In the inner areas, where the air would probably have to be pumped out, it would be slower. They would probably have time to realise what was happening, and that death is not pretty. When you get near vacuum, water starts boiling at body temperature. Tears, saliva, the moisture in a person’s lungs, will boil. If you’re lucky, you lose consciousness. If not, you live for up to a few minutes, while the cells in your body swell. If you try to hold your breath, your lungs will rupture. If not, there’s no more air to breathe around you. Hell of a way to go.
And that’s what we did to the Alabama’s crew. What _I_ did.
Major Summerville managed to get control over the Alabama. So we depressurised the ship. Is there a difference between that and if we had blown the ship apart, leaving the crew to die in the explosions, direct hits, depressurisation? Yes and no. But letting them die by having their ship betray them, that’s ugly.
I just need to remember that they were given the chance to surrender. But it is difficult, knowing who these people are. Had things gone differently two centuries ago, they could have been our descendants. And knowing how the military worked, we might have relatives on board those ships. Still. They are dangerous, fanatical, and set on destruction. And they are good at what they do.
We lost far too many in that fight. At least it went better on the ground; the refinery is secured. A lot of the enemy ground forces chose to kill themselves rather than surrender when they realised they had no way off the planet.
They might just be brainwashed fanatics. If not, it might say something about how they treat their prisoners. What a cheerful idea.