With the verdict laid bare, unease spread through the deck. Blue had fallen silent beside me, and even Green. Whom I had always known to be unshakably composed...had stiffened.
Her expression remained controlled, but her eyes betrayed her, flicking back to the projection with something uncomfortably close to doubt.
"I have a question."
Gray broke the silence first, his voice cutting cleanly through Hina's briefing.
"Isn't that…" He hesitated, eyes lifting toward the rotating image of Hyperion. "…practically turning us into a sacrifice?"
The word lingered in the air, heavier than anything spoken before it. No one rebuked him. No one tried to laugh it off. Even Blue remained still.
*Clack*
Hina stopped pacing.
*Hunnnn*
For a moment, the only sound on the main deck was the low hum of the ship's systems—steady, indifferent. Then she turned to face us fully.
Gray met her gaze without flinching. No challenge in his posture. Just the question, laid bare.
"..."
Hina did not answer immediately.
When she finally spoke, her voice was quieter, it was not softer, but measured and deliberate.
"If this were a sacrifice," she said, "I would not be standing here to justify it."
A few heads lifted. Mine included.
She gestured toward the projection of Hyperion, its massive silhouette rotating slowly in the air.
"The Confederacy's original proposal was to cycle multiple crews through the Expanse. Incremental jumps. Short-range surveys. High attrition, statistically acceptable."
Her jaw tightened but it was ever so subtle.
"I rejected it."
The words landed harder than any raised voice could have.
A ripple passed through Alpha Team. Green's fingers curled at her side. Blue blinked, surprise breaking through his usual composure.
"This ship," Hina continued, "carries over two thousand souls. Engineers. Navigators. Medical staff. People who did not sign on to vanish beyond the edge of the known universe. Even they, them have families to return to"
Her eyes swept across us—not as a commander inspecting assets, but as someone counting faces.
"I will not gamble their lives."
The projection shifted. Hyperion isolated itself from the surrounding schematics, alone now against the dark.
"That is why this mission falls to Alpha Team."
Gray's expression hardened. "So we go instead."
"Yes," Hina replied without hesitation.
"Because you are trained for uncertainty. Because you volunteered knowing the risks. And because—" She paused, just long enough for the truth to surface. "—someone must choose who bears the weight."
Silence followed. Not the stunned kind. The heavy kind. The kind that settles once everyone understands the cost.
I felt it then. It was not fear, not pride—but responsibility, pressing down like gravity.
Hina straightened, heels clicking once against the deck. The familiar decorum returned, crisp and unyielding.
"This is not an order issued lightly," she said.
"And it is not one I expect you to accept blindly."
Her gaze found mine again.
"But it is the only way the crew survives."
The projection dimmed.
"Decide."
I stared at the screen, thoughts racing at a pace I hadn't known I was capable of. Seconds stretched into something immeasurable as my senses sharpened against my will.
The shifting data on the projection, the heavy breathing of the crew around us, the expectant weight of my captain's gaze pressing down like gravity.
But no one spoke, and the silence lingered, awkward and strained, as if the deck itself were waiting for something to break.
And then-
"This is madness!"
Pink's voice cut through the stillness, sharp and unrestrained. The ever-carefree edge she carried was gone, stripped away and replaced with something raw, almost furious.
"Why did you reject the proposition?!" she demanded, stepping forward. "It was the brightest minds humanity had to offer! They were the ones to signed off on it!"
A murmur rippled through the deck. She wasn't wrong. We all knew it.
The Confederacy's strategists. Its scientists. Its architects. Weeks of simulations and probabilities had all pointed to the same conclusion. However at that time, all had agreed;
Hyperion was expendable.
Alpha Team was not.
"..."
Hina did not answer immediately.
She stood there, hands clasped behind her back, posture immaculate, eyes steady but it was not cold, but resolute. When she finally spoke, her voice was measured, carrying effortlessly across the deck.
"Because they were optimizing for outcomes," she said. "Not people."
Her gaze lifted, however it was not to the projection, but to us.
"The Expanse is an unknown on a scale we cannot afford to brute-force," she continued. "Multiple expeditions would drain what little margin humanity has left. Ships. Crews. Time."
A pause.
"And time," she added quietly, "is the one resource we no longer have."
Something clicked then. Not all at once, but enough.
I looked back at the projection. At the fuel curves. The supply thresholds. The projected return probabilities that never quite crossed into certainty.
She wasn't sending us to die.
She was betting that if we succeeded,
humanity would finally have an answer.
And if we failed—
"Humanity would still learn..."
Hyperion could return. Carry warning instead of victory. Proof that the Expanse was too vast, too costly, too dangerous to pursue blindly.
Time would be bought. Not much, but it was enough.
"You.."
My breath caught.
She had chosen us not because we were expendable…
…but because we were capable.
Hina's voice hardened, just enough to remind us who she was.
"I chose Alpha Team because you can adapt where models cannot. Because you can retreat if retreat becomes necessary."
Her eyes flicked, briefly, toward the surrounding crew.
"And because I will not gamble two thousand lives on a theory."
The deck was silent again.
Not stunned.
Not fearful.
But Resolved.
For the first time since the briefing began, I understood the true weight of her decision.
She wasn't condemning us.
She was trusting us, with humanity's last margin for error.
---
The briefing ended without ceremony.
Orders were issued. Protocols resumed. The deck slowly came back to life, voices hushed, movements deliberate. Alpha Team broke away from the crowd, our steps heavy but sure as we made our way toward the hangar bay.
No one said it out loud, but we all felt it.
This was the point of no return.
The hangar doors parted with a low, resonant groan, revealing Hyperion's expedition vessel nestled within—sleek, compact, and unmistakably out of place beneath the colossal shadow of its carrier. Lights flickered to life along its hull as systems began their final checks.
I took one last look back.
Hina stood alone on the observation deck above, framed by glass and steel. She didn't salute. She didn't speak.
She simply watched. As if committing the moment to memory.
*Tzzzzt*
The clamps released.
"Engines online, Klisnitov meters are stable"
Our vessel drifted forward, engines humming softly at first—then brighter, stronger—until the void embraced us. The hangar doors sealed shut behind, and the stars stretched endlessly ahead.
Hope, fragile and defiant, slipped free of the ship.
Behind us, unseen, Hina remained at her post. Captain of a vessel full of lives she had chosen to protect, watching the last, best chance she had ever commanded disappear into the dark.