Captain Malory threw her plastic-tasting coffee in its plastic cup across the bridge where it exploded satisfyingly against the cracked viewport. The dark brown liquid ran down the plexi-glass like tears. She kicked ineffectively against the command chair, leaped down to the helm and kicked the crap out of that too.
All of this with no vocal exclamation. That came when she saw Teri DeMain’s station. Kate Malory yelled with frustration, regret and loss, pummelling the back of the chair with already reddened fists.
As the only active crewmember on board, she was on watch, and should have kept it together but kneeling at her engineer’s desk she let herself cry.
She cried not only for Teri deMain, but for Brian Crowley, whose enthusiasm for his work had ultimately been met only by death, and for Fred Faraday and her friend, deMain’s accomplished father - their loss greater than even she would know, and she had lost so much.
But most of all, she cried because all of it was her responsibility. Not that she thought she had directly caused any of it, but that she was Captain and as such was responsible – accountable even – for the safety and wellbeing of her crew. She cried because she was presiding over the worst space disaster the company had seen in years.
After half an hour, she cried because she simply could not stop until, another half an hour later, composure
had returned, along with the bleak realisation that there may well be more sorrow ahead.