He stopped, looking to see it had come from one of the crewmembers beside Parker at the barricade ahead. He saw her backhand the perpetrator. Bodies lay atop one another, and he had to tread in an ungainly fashion from one to another. He reached Parker. Her cheek was bleeding where a few pieces of shrapnel had cut into her flesh, but she was still standing, and that was all he needed to know. The defenders split apart and allowed him to pass where he found Huber sitting beside his operations table, with his rifle next to him. He did not have the look of a man who had successfully held onto his ship. "We have secured all system control points. We're just carrying out final sweeps of any stragglers. This is over," Taylor stated. Huber nodded and sighed as if there was no relief in the news at all. "You didn't get to them in time," he muttered. Taylor took offence to the comment. "Yes we did, Sir!" The Admiral turned in surprise but could not get a word out as Taylor carried on. "We stopped the weapon systems as fast as was humanly possible.
