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The battle above Aeos was the beginning of the end of the SRF 001 Aquila-B. When their shields began to collapse under the phantom barrage, Joe had torn open the panels beneath his console to manually reroute power. Because of him, the next round of shots had fried their training room, the item creation console, the starboard aft cargo bay, but the shields had held over the bridge and the engines. And Joe had caught the energy feedback- through his fingers and straight to his heart- and had died screaming against the deckplates with his eyes wide open.
Eddie had died when they weren't looking, below decks in auxiliary control encouraging their alien engines not to give up. Ohta found her, and radioed back to the bridge before a secondary explosion took out the internal bulkhead. Hiro took over the navigation console, and Huang's hands tightened on the gunnery controls.
In the aftermath, Eldar's emigration ships scrambled to patch breached hulls and venting atmosphere, and Crowe fought to stem the bleeding from Huang's leg, where a broken part of the console had pierced her armour. At the same time, working around each other's arms, Huang had yanked open every release on his own torn uniform to bandage his stomach with cold fingers. Her first aid had kept him alive. His had failed to do the same for her.
While Crowe had sat with Huang, keeping vigil over his first officer's last breaths, Hiro had gone to sleep and bled into his brain, from damage none of them had recognised. And Crowe became captain of an empty ship, silent with the echoes of a dead crew.
He was proud of all of them.
He was ashamed of himself.
He readied the Aquila one last time, and plotted his course for Earth, towards the Calnus, and the Missing Procedure.
***
There was no awareness within the singularity. Time existed without passing, and Crowe's lack-of-self stretched thin across more dimensions than he could perceive. The universe twisted, compressed, turned in on itself, and then Crowe snapped back into being, the last breath of the Aquila's filtered air forced from his lungs as he fell back against the sand. Unconscious, he breathed in a new, alien world.
Across the star ocean, currents rippled, and the nav console of Arumat's telepathic little Sol pulled up new coordinates.
***
Arumat slid his fingers up Crowe's sides until he found the hidden releases for the composite breastplate. Its bright, illogical blue accent-lighting is dark, as it was during Crowe's final transmission. He unstrapped the connected shoulder-pieces, leaving the synthetic reinforced fiber matrix of the earthling's underarmour. Where the breastplate rested, it was undamaged, but Arumat went gently, especially as he neared the patch-job across Crowe's stomach.
He released each buckle down to Crowe's waist before peeling it back to either side, found the pressure bandage he expected beneath. It was spotted through, but dark, a hue he had learned to associate with old human blood, not fresh. He pressed three spread fingers to the unbandaged flesh of Crowe's stomach, felt it give gently at each point he tested. Damaged, but not still bleeding internally.
Arumat's Sol came at his thought, landed softly beside them in the sand. The standard Eldarian first aid supplies were in the aft cabinet, low down. Arumat reached behind them to extract a smaller pack, stamped 'SRF' in black lettering.
Crowe's body was heavy and unconscious as Arumat shifted him, muscle tension returning as the salt air touched the wound, abdominal muscles clenching beneath Arumat's fingers as he cleaned away the dried seepage. Arumat pressed down the edges of the fresh dressing, moved his gaze to Crowe's face only when the wound was sealed once more.
Crowe's eyes were open. Arumat waited until they found focus.
"What... happened?" Crowe rolled to his side, pushed up on one elbow.
"You survived." Arumat looked away, watched the ocean. His ears buzzed with memory, with Crowe's voice, giving him the same message he now returned.
Beside him, Crowe's breath caught, then resumed. Deliberate. Stronger. And Arumat's fingers unclenched from around the crumpled mess of the sterile dressing wrapper.
"I guess I'd better keep going, then."