The bridge quickly emptied.<br/><br/>In the absence of the Admiral, the XO, a Colonel, was in charge.  He was a tall man, with an unnaval like stocky build.  His head was bald, and one of his eyes was a solid, colorless white.<br/><br/>His first order was to subdue the idiot who had hijacked the COM and overran the normal evacuation broadcast.  One of the everpresent guards stepped forward and put a bullet in each kneecap, dropping the Ensign where he stood.  The second guard smashed the butt of his rifle into his skull, and his pained shrieks were abruptly cut off.<br/><br/>"All right, you know the drill," the Colonel boomed over the sirens, simultaneously silencing the murmurs of the bridge crew.  "Make for the emergency craft."<br/><br/>He pushed a button on the command console, and the view from Edgar's camera - which was covered in droplets of blood and panning aimlessly over deep space - disappeared from the main view screen, replaced with a countdown timer in bold red letters.  With the engines and the main power planet gone, the<em>Traveler</em>had turned into a drifting hunk of metal running on emergency generators.  There was nothing left to go "critical".<br/><br/>Instead, the timer showed how much time was left until conditions inside the ship became inhospitable due to dropping air pressure and temperature, as well as the exterior damage that was slowly flooding parts of the ship with raw solar radiation.  5:09.<br/><br/>Jonn was among the fifty or so bridge personnel briskly walking towards the command life pods.  There were ten, ten people per pod.  They had more than enough.  He noticed that all video terminals were broadcasting the countdown as well.  A handful of marines were pointing their guns down an empty corridor, ensuring that a stray person wouldn't hijack the reentry vehicles.<br/><br/>3:23<br/><br/>The Colonel, having purged the military databases of the<em>Traveler</em>, arrived just as the last of the bridge crew were shuffling into the pods.  Calmly, the older man walked into the nearest craft, sitting next to the GO and Jonn. The hydraulic seal hissed shut, followed by the airlock.  The lifepod was now secure: smooth sailing from here on out.<br/><br/>Jonn scratched wistfully at the side of his nose, looking around at the panicky officers clustered in the oval shaped escape craft.  He had left his books back in his cabin.  Undoubtledly, they'd be destroyed in reentry.<br/><br/>2:49<br/><br/>Chemical thursters roared to life, shooting the small ship out of the side of the cruiser like a bullet from a gun.  Jonn's vision blurred, and his head was jerked violently to the side.  The terrific g-forces pushed the air out of his lungs.  A few panicky seconds later, the fearsome vibrations ceased.  The officers all took in deep lungfuls of air.  A few were passed out.<br/><br/>Trying his best to ignore the stabbing pain behind his right eye, Jonn settled in for a long flight to the planet.  The<em>Traveler</em>had been roughly a hundred thousand kilometers hypoplanar of Novus to begin with.  If the lifepods were liberal with their fuel, they could expect to reach Novus in roughly ten hours.  And with distances like that, the slightest miscalculation could send them careening past the planet and below the solar plane, at which point their pod wouldn't run into anything for thousands of millennia.  Interstellar space was<em>very</em>big and almost completely empty, after all.<br/><br/>The navigations officer sincerely hoped this pod had been graced with a good pilot.