Fritz tore down the constricting corridors of Starcruiser-1148, dodging men, machines, and anything else that found itself in his way. The hallways' dim fluorescents tossed just enough light to distinguish objects from shadow, and the small creature nearly moved fast enough to throw doubt on exactly which one he belonged to. Fritz was an engineer, a glorified sort of maniac mechanic tasked with keeping 1148 from flying apart at her seams, and today was little different.

With a sudden turn and a clatter on the ship's metal flooring, Fritz disappeared down a corner without a trace, leaving a few unsettled crewmen staring in quiet disapproval. Nobody 'got' engineers but their own.

Fritz only furthered that opinion. What was supposed to be a clean, crisp uniform was instead a smudged, wrinkled mess hidden behind a tool belt and a mechanics bandolier, and a pair of oversized goggles rapidly clicked up and down beneath his chin in rhythm to a pair of streamlined boots.

But that was only the beginning. Worst of all for his crew mates, Fritz was a 'mutt,' a small alien species that would be best described as a humanoid version of canines found back on native Earth. The Confederacy was filled with alien species found everywhere and anywhere near the Sol system, but to the humans, mutts were hit and miss at best. Not everyone enjoyed working alongside what was essentially a walking, talking dog.

Fritz in particular closely resembled what the humans called a cross fox. Instead of a simple pattern of scarlet and white, his fur was a mottled blend of orange, red, black, and everything in between. His face was a thin, whiskered muzzle with a few splotches of orange and grey across his cheeks, and his deep amber eyes sat beneath two darkened ears that stood up at attention like a pair of vulpine sentinels. He was smaller than a human, standing at roughly four to five feet depending on his digitigrade posture and without counting his ears, and his long bushy tail flared out after him as he took another corner at full speed.

He was currently en-route to a repair job near the ship's outer hull, and he unlocked his small PDA from a strap and clicked a few buttons with the tip of his claw. There wasn't very far now, and Fritz secured the device a mere split-second before valting over a large cargo box and between the security detail hurryingly escorting it through the ship.

"Jesus Christ!" one of them shouted after the fox. Even in wartime, mutts treated everything like one big game...

Almost on cue, Starcruiser-1148 shuddered violently and the lights flickered and buzzed for a few seconds in stark reminder to the battle raging outside. Metal groaned loudly as the ship captains pushed everything to the absolute limit, and countless crewmen around the ship silently reminded themselves how grateful they were that artificial gravity rarely invoked nausea.

For that very second, 1148 was pitched in a hellish battle with thousands of her sister and superior Confederation ships against a common alien enemy just as determined, united, and hell-bent on their opposition's elimination as they were. The ship was likely twisting and flipping in the void of space dozens of times a minute as her miniguns filled the vacuum around them with projectiles, and her thousands of crews' lives largely depended on a mere handful on the bridge.

The hull quivered again. It could have been anything: a weapon impact, a missile launch, or one of their close neighbors exploding into a violent fireball. This deep into the windowless, isolated environment of 1148, nobody knew. They weren't paid to; all they were supposed to do was their respective tasks like cogs in a machine, cells in a living organism, and pray that their ship wasn't the next to be added to the casualty lists.

And so far, Fritz was doing his very, very well. The mutt had just reached his repair objective and quickly flipped out his PDA as he began to diagnose the issue. Command had said it was some sort of faulty sensor on the current deck, and after re-reading the report, the fox clipped his PDA back to his body and took the cover off a maintenance panel to reveal a tangled mess of colored wires and flashing status lights.

He flipped out his multi-tool and stood up on the very edge of his toes as he began to pick around between the wires. The ship's systems were delicate, anything more than a slight change would often throw them off, and Fritz leaned in closer until his muzzle was half an inch from where he was working.

The ship wrenched a few more times, and the fluorescents rapidly clicked on and off as the computer mainframe tried to distribute power to every part of the ship. Fritz frowned and switched his multi-tool's light on to illuminate his working area as he kept poking around with his metal stick. The human crew members were right; the fox never once thought of 1148's shudders as signs of possible, impending death. All they were were obstacles in his job, his little dog-like game of dashing around the ship and keeping everything working as well as he possibly could, and Fritz's tongue suddenly spilled out of his jaws as his face burst into a smile. He'd found the problem.

With a few quick tool swaps, the engineer exposed a faulty wire and pulled it out as far as he could before switching to his cutters and making two quick snips. He then dug around in his pouch and pulled out a replacement wire, and carefully aligned it with the cut edges. One black-furred finger held it in place as grey-tinted goggles slid up over his eyes, and with a few wild sparks that bathed the hallway in bright blue light, the wire was sealed tight into place.

That did it, and the fox's tongue jiggled over his fangs as the ship shook while he pushed the wire back into the uniform mess. The status lights flickered up to green, and with another click, the panel slid up over the mess of wires to hide the slightest sign of the work he'd done here.

Fritz glanced down the hallway, he and his fellow engineers had done countless repair jobs on every inch of this ship, and problems like this were all too common. 1148 had seen more than her fair of refits, some less successful than others, and her crew often joked that the only thing needing updating now was the designers on Earth. Everyone was more than sick of the, "If it ain't broke..." mentality.

Everyone except Fritz, that was. He sincerely found his tasks to be pure fun, and the fox took out his PDA again and idly scratched at his thin, plaid-patterned nylon collar. That was another thing about mutts, instead of the typically issued wrist or leg bands used to monitor crew health and status, they were given collars that looked just like something on a dog or cat back home. They even had a small ID band right above the monitoring sensor that gave their name and task, and the fox quietly turned the strap and grinned.

He honestly loved how the collar looked on him. It was stylish, slim, and fit well, if anything, and he was lucky enough to be completely oblivious to how it was used on Earth. To everyone else, it just made mutts look dumber than they already did. They already acted like pets, did the human crew need to be doubly reminded every time they saw one?

But right now there wasn't a single human in sight, and the fox's claws tapped across his PDA as he watched this deck's sensor status flip to green. He waited for a few more seconds to check that everything was stable, and then swiped up across the device to return to a busy, flashing page that displayed several dozen lines of engineering information and prompts that were little more than gibberish to an outside reader. Fritz quickly scanned the contents, fur brushing across the glass as he scrolled down a few times, and he was just about to close his PDA and request a new job when Starcruiser-1148 gave another violent, heaving series of shudders.

Within a second the ship's lights began to quickly toggle on and off like a strobe, and the fox almost lost his balance as it entered another series of vicious, wrenching shifts and the metal began to loudly groan from stress.

Fritz's paw latched onto a nearby handle, and his body shook as his entire world quaked around him. That weapon impact must have been huge, and as soon as the shaking stopped, Fritz unsnapped his device again and began quickly swiping through the screens.

A voice crackled from the collar, "Attention all crewmen, I repeat, attention all crewmen! We have a major firing control malfunction on deck B7; power systems are failing and current deck Trident Missiles are inoperable," there was a pause, and Fritz's PDA flashed with a route and prompt with more information, "All available engineers, damage control teams, and auxiliary units respond now, primary priority is the Trident Missiles."

The fox's heart jumped. Trident's were the ship's primary defense against anything at least as large as herself, and his PDA began to flash and inform him that he was now assigned to ensuring they came back online. He quickly dashed off in the direction of deck B7. A hit powerful enough to have knocked out that deck must be threatening to tear the rest of the ship to shreds, and Fritz wasn't sure whether he should be excited or disappointed that he might not reach B7 while it still habitable.

He glanced back down at his PDA, now showing a map with a few arrows and blinking dots representing his position and that of his fellow engineers, and quickly clipped it back in its holder. He would have to take a route along 1148's outer hull to get there fast enough, and Fritz turned down another hallway and pushed himself forward with a burst of speed.

It only took a few seconds before the screen on his device began to flash in alert as B7's condition steadily worsened, and Fritz swiped through another set of notifications with a frown. The deck was depressurizing at a lethally fast rate, and he guessed that there were only a few more minutes before the ship would automatically seal off the entire area. From there things would become much more difficult...

But the fox wouldn't let that happen. With a wild, reckless turn, Fritz ripped around a corner and barreled down the very edge of Starcruiser-1148's interior hull. It almost felt deserted, with just the bare minimum amount of equipment on the interior side and virtually none on the outer, and the floors, lighting, and everything else could only be described as completely threadbare. There was good reason; anything this far out was typically reduced to a charred black hulk mere seconds after a weapons impact, and Fritz silently transitioned onto a section with newer metal. Black stains left from the damage before the most recent refit were still visible on the inner wall.

But despite the undeniably inhospitable environment of 1148's outer hull, Fritz had honestly grown to like it out here. It wasn't the ever-present vampiric chill that sapped body heat or the absolutely spartan interior, but rather, the results of them. The outer hallways almost always drove off any human crew who were just passing by, and those required to be there didn't linger for a second longer than they had to. Fritz almost wished there were more repair jobs out here. It wasn't that he disliked humans per se, in fact he enjoyed their company every now and then, but there was just something between them and his species that never seemed to click. The fox never understood why, and the human crew was informed to preferably never let his kind know exactly how much they resembled a certain species of... pet on earth.

Fritz followed a the slight curve in the hallway and picked up his speed. Right now relationships with humans were the last thing on his mind, and after a few more seconds he tore down a ladder and onto B deck. He was almost there, only a few more short minutes until he reached B7, and the fox was just about to check a new alert on his PDA when the ship shook with another series of terrible, violent shudders.

The hallway lights switched off with a click, and Fritz scarcely had time to react before he was thrown into near-total darkness. Within another second 1148 surged right, and the engineer's body slammed into the inner wall before he collapsed onto the floor with a sharp whine.

"Attention, attention, we've had another missile impact on Deck B7!" the small speaker on Fritz's collar crackled loudly, and the fox tried to get back up to his paws, "Damage report! I repeat, I need a damage assessment ASAP. Any nearby crewmen respond."

Fritz blinked in the darkness and ran his tongue around furred lips. If Deck B7 really had taken another hit there couldn't be anything left to salvage beyond a few severely wounded crewmen and a Trident battery or two, and he unclipped his PDA and quickly read the display. He could still access the deck without any extra survival gear, but pressure was dropping more than five times what it had been before. If Fritz were human, right now he would have been wondering how long it would be until B7 was a lost cause.

He was anything but. Within another second the engineer scrambled up to his paws and stared into the pitch darkness. He could hear the lights clicking loudly as the main computer desperately tried to restore power, and the fox glanced down at his PDA. Crewmen were still swarming towards B7 like hungry ants. So far, so good.

For everyone but him, at least. The fox's fingers latched onto a nearby hold in the pitch black, interminable darkness, and he bit his tongue as 1148 shook at another weapon impact. Lights or not, he'd have to move soon, and Fritz turned on a collar-mounted light and began to slowly count to ten.

Almost like a miracle, the flourescents flashed back on at nine.

Fritz paused, carefully watching the lighting's dull yellow glow for the slightest sign of a flicker. His ears flicked up happily at the sign of the light, his tongue jiggling under the pale, unnatural color, and after a couple more seconds, the lighting was stable.

That was his cue. Without another second, Fritz dashed down the hallway with his tail flaring out after him.

But what happened next came too fast. A sudden, paralyzing light flashed across every inch of the hallway interior, and the horrible sound of wrenching, crushing metal threatened to burst Fritz's ears with deafening volume. Air tore out around every inch of his body and pulled at his fur in a sudden, violent rush, and he barely had time to react before everything, light, sound and pressure, faded in mere moments.

They were replaced with pain. In less than a split-second, Fritz felt his entire body surge against a hard surface that filled every nerve with hellish, excruciating agony. Air poured out of his lungs as soon as he hit, and beneath blurred, foggy eyes, he watched as lights swirled around him in quick drunken patterns.

Moisture on his tongue began to rapidly boil off, throwing his nerves a terrible fizzing sensation that almost immediately leapt up to his eyes. Fritz's paws tore up, fingers trying to brush the pain off closed eyelids, and one of his arms rammed into his face in a wild, exaggerated motion.

His claws dug against his face as the stinging just grew stronger. Nothing seemed to help, and in less than a second, Fritz felt the deepest bottom of his ears pop with more pain than they ever had. Immediately his claws were in his black pointed ears; the fox tried to utter a gagged scream as his fingers tore through the fur and flesh deep in one of his most precious senses, but that only seemed to make it worse. He swore he felt blood, some sort of liquid rushing down inside them before silently boiling off, and he started to wildly gasp for air.

But nothing came. It was just like in his nightmares; almost like a cloth or gag was drawn across his muzzle, as much as Fritz gasped and choked, he couldn't breathe. All there was was thick, black nothingness, and his paws kept shifting around his body. There were too many stimuli, everything threatened to kill him with sharp, biting pain, and finally he felt his fingers wrap around his throat.

The fox quietly touched as it trembled beneath his fur, and tightened his grip and closed his eyes before trying to swallow down another breath of air. Still nothing came, and his eyes cracked open to watch the same crazy, blurred flashes of light dance all around him. What was happening? He tried to focus, tried to determine exactly what was going on, and he sudden began to flail his limbs and reach for something, anything, to latch on to.

But there was nothing. Fritz was lost in this hellish sea of torturous suffering and wild, flashing colors, and his blurred, stinging eyes kept watching as the colors swam around him in yet another flurry.

Something suddenly flew by, a flash of grey and red that was much closer than anything else he'd seen, and the engineer squinted as it darted out of his view. The rest of the lights and colors were repeating, which meant that he had to be spinning somehow, and he tried to hold his head as still as he could before the object came back into his view.

Fritz wasn't disappointed. He only had a fraction of a second before it tore back out of his view, but as the grey and red flew past him again, he noticed something more. He squinted tightly, eyes barely able to focus, and slowly read what looked like a number.

"4"

The fox suddenly glanced back up at the sea of light, paws hanging motionless as he made yet another spiral. This object was part of something, "4" as in "Starcruiser-1148," and as he squinted out into the darkness, he realized that they weren't really lights at all. They were ships.

Fritz bit his tongue and shuddered with another burst of pain. He began to fight himself, force his brain to accept anything but reality. It couldn't be, this had to some sort of mistake, and after another second he scrambled to unlatch his PDA.

The device's screen was blinking wildly, and Fritz had to swipe through a dozen notifications before he got to the home screen. Deck B7 had completely lost pressure, the rest of the ship was barely holding together, but then he stared at the text sprawled across the screen in flashing red and black letters.

"---WARNING: HULL BREACH THROUGH DECKS B3-B6!---"

The warning might as well had been a bullet through the fox's heart. Fritz had been on deck B6 right as all this had happened, right on the extreme outer hull, but he still wouldn't accept this. There was one more thing he had to check...

He slowly swiped through the pages to view his position on Starcruiser-1148, and blinked quietly as he watched the dot representing him float out in the middle of nowhere. That was it, there was no denying now, and with an aching, trembling finger, Fritz quietly locked his PDA and slid it back into the pocket holder.

It only took a second before he pulled it out again. Amidst the backdrop of blurry stars, the almost beautiful, soundless war raging around him, there was just one more think he had to check, and he unlocked the device and swiped over to the final and least used panel, "User Life Support."

The results were expectedly dismal. His body was losing oxygen at a lethally fast rate, and it looked like he might even have broken a few bones from when he had hit the debris. But Fritz didn't notice. All his eyes saw was the timer at the bottom, the small pattern of four changing numbers that he'd never seen, and would never see, again.

"User Death Imminent, Seek Medical Attention: 7:32 approximate time until death."

Fritz couldn't take his eyes off it. The number was hypnotizing in all the worst ways, and he watched it for at least another minute before another notification flashed up on the screen. It was met with a fireball of bright red orange.

"---Signal to Host Lost. Please Reconnect Device---"

The fox closed it with a swipe and bit his barely numb tongue in response to another surge of pain. Either Starcruiser-1148 had just been destroyed or he'd simply drifted out of range. He had no idea which, and after another moment of watching the sea of ships, his eyes glanced back down to his PDA.

And as Fritz kept drifting, spinning in the cold, inhospitable void of space while his crewmen's ships exploded into fireballs, he had no idea who was the lucky one.