Water vapour from warm breath, and vaporizer smoke, slowly curl through his teeth and rise towards the frosty ceiling as Praxis sits on his desk, staring at the quiet dark screen which rises from the surface at an angle. Suddenly, there's a loud blip and the screen fills with information while the hidden loudspeaker comes to life. ”As per your request to inform you, we have received confirmation that the A-H-SF-2 has reached maximum FTL velocity. Our ETA to target point N is ten hours, twenty-one minutes, and forty-seven seconds. Second-in-command out.”

For a moment there's no perceptible reaction as the diminutive arctic fox breathes in and out steadily, his eyes half-open as he continues to stare the screen which has gone blank again… the intensifying smoky haze above him obscuring the harsh white lighting.
”Point of no return… it can not decelerate fast enough to avoid ending up inside the detection zone, even if I wanted to call of this assault.”, he finally speaks up to talk to the thin air before him, the heating element of the vaporizer giving off an intense flash of bright reddish glow as he inhales deeply.

”You will prevail. They will all die.”, a harsh and growly disembodied voice calls out to him from somewhere below, causing Praxis to blow out a long stream of smoke between his canines.

”I will not make any assessment of that until we've seen the battle to the end – I would not under-estimate the commander we will face, or the force under his command. However – if he has seen through my deception, we are lost. If he has not - ”, he muses in his low-key, high-pitched voice, trailing off as he holds the vaporizer in the air while the fingers in his other mechanical hand flick against the desk almost imperceptibly.

The voice from below him answers with an ominous howl, a pair of gleaming wolf eyes rising above the edge to meet the artic fox's gaze. There are no words, only a tacit notion of approval until a few seconds later the screen springs to life again – prompting Praxis to attend the mundane duties of commanding a fleet again.

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