The Crucible
As the station rocked with the force of explosives detonating, Admiral Mathis tightly gripped the edge of a table. It didn’t take long, a mere moment actually, for him to realize that the conference was under some sort of attack. This was no coincidental malfunction, this was a historic assasination. With the Consul, Chancellor, and a plethora of Coaition and Alliance big fish present, no event was more prime for targeting. Station security was a joke, and not a good one at that. A dedicated organization or a handful of professionals could execute something like this, and apparently they had.
As he processed the situation through his head, he began to rise up, and not in a figurative manner. If he hadn’t been clutching the table, which happened to be bolted to the ground, he’d have floated to the ceiling. Instead, he kept himself grounded. Looking to the Consul, he saw the coalition’s leader departing behind a wall of security. Attempting to communicate with her proved fruitless, with the commotion that had erupted drowning out his words long before they reached the ears of the Consul or her security. Regardless, her security was the primary mission now. Fortunately, her own detail seemed to be fully capable of managing her extraction.
Of course, there was the matter of his own survival. The air was getting thin and it was getting thin fast, a bad sign for everyone onboard the Crucible. If he didn’t get off of the station, he would be dead long before the repercussions of this tragic disaster were felt across the galaxy. Having scoured the schematics of the Crucible, especially the areas pertinent to the conference area and the path to it, prior to the conference, he had a fairly good idea on how to get to the hangar as quickly as possible. Slipping into the hallway, he kept his hand at his blaster as he ducked into a corridor. The route was less direct but considerably less crowded, allowing Mathis to slip out a bit quicker then his fellow delegates.
Maneuvering was difficult without gravity, forcing Mathis to push off of surfaces and walls, all while using whatever he could find on the ground to keep himself grounded. As the air continued to thin, breathing became more labored. Time was running out. Mathis was knew he had to move quickly.
After a short while, he emerged into the main hallway, an unavoidable obstacle. The hall was crowded with panicked civilians, but the hangar was just ahead. As he expected, his shuttle was destroyed by the detonations, but he was unconcerned with that development. As soon as the situation had unraveled, he had initiated an ongoing transmission with the Relentless. At any moment a Coalition shuttle would be entering the hangar, carrying a squad of soldiers ordered to extract him and other essential coalition personnel who were still onboard the station.
As he pushed through the crowd, surrounded by panicking civilians, he heard the Consul and her personal security detail approaching. Looking over his shoulder, he saw them preparing to move through the crowd. These would be the priority individuals for his extraction team, with Mathis having noticed the Consul’s personal transport had been destroyed in the hangar. All of these thoughts, however, were relatively meaningless when the sound of blaster fire cut through the commotion. While the sound cut through the commotion, the blaster bolts cut through the crowd. People dropped in all directions, either cowering in fear, unable to stand, or dead. Mathis was among those in the third category, having taken a bolt in the back. The commotion had been transmitted to the Relentless, though it had been difficult to distinguish everything from the sound of the crowd. Admiral Ryan Mathis lay lifeless, face down amongst a heap of corpses, courtesy of the Consul of the Coalition.
