III
JulesFor a few seconds, she could do nothing but stare.
The ship was ablaze, from bow to stern, wearing the fire like a second skin. Dark space lit up like a newborn sun. The vacuum would extinguish the radiance soon enough, but for the few seconds while exploding bulkheads and ruptured hull plating allowed oxygen to escape, the flames lived. There wasn't an inch of the hull across the capital ship not on fire.
Elemental demons danced across the cracking plexiglass windows, invaded the vast turbines of the main engines and battered down airlock doors. They ran like wayward children through the hallways and slipped into the air vents, igniting fluids, greedily consumed furnishings, and sucked away flesh before the final damning explosion.
To those screaming, the fire's cackle sound
