It's cold.

When she woke up again, Maggie only had this level of feeling.

Although it has not yet dropped to the point where people will lose their body temperature quickly, after losing the constant temperature system of the battleship itself, the temperature in the cabin is dropping rapidly, and perhaps in ten minutes, the temperature in the cabin will reach the freezing point.

Is it because of the impact just now?

Maggie thought that there might not be any other possibility.

Before she could fall unconscious, the Leipzig, which was on the flank of the fleet, was suddenly attacked by the Federation - Maggie knew nothing more than whom, and how damaged the battleship was, the only thing she knew was that the bridge had reported the enemy situation once, and before she could react, she was thrown out by the sudden onslaught, and she had just woken up.

"Can anyone hear me?" Maggie clutched her still-dizzy head, and then dialed the Leipzig's internal wiring: "This is the A-2 cabin, what's going on。。。。。。 ”

She stopped abruptly, the communicator's indicator light did not turn on the green light, nor did it turn on the red light that could not be connected, and the small plastic bulb did not respond.

Maggie realized that the officer's cabin, which was quite large, was shrouded in a blinding red, the color of the emergency lights, which was not an easy situation to see, and in a warship with a high-powered Mie fusion furnace as the core reactor, the warning light of the independent power supply was always on only one thing.

The battleship suffered irreparable damage, and the energy supply to the main reactor was stopped.

That is, the battleship was silent.

I see, that's why the internal wiring will be interrupted, and the temperature will drop so much?

Maggie thought, and at this moment she only felt a chill coming from under her skin, and she couldn't help but hold down her upper arm, where goosebumps were playing because of the cold.

It may have come from some kind of premonition, something—the deepest fear of some creature.

However, Maggie was not given time to fear, so she acted immediately.

The ship's portholes were now locked, the upper partitions were shattered, and a metal barrier replaced the tempered glass, which was the emergency containment installed to deal with the situation, and it was thanks to this system that Maggie was not thrown into a vacuum by the air current.

But at the same time, this window is both a protection and a limitation.

Normally, the containment device would have a program to unlock the victim to save herself, but now the system is unresponsive, and Maggie is unable to even observe the outside situation.

The steel hatch has also been sealed, but it is not due to the effect of the emergency sealing mechanism of the cabin, but it has been deformed by the impact of external forces, and if you want to get out of it, you can only use engineering tools to cut it from the outside.

Maggie wants to escape on her own, and if she wants to be rescued, she can only hope for outside rescue.

However, this is not possible.

It's not that Maggie doesn't have the means to communicate with the outside world, on the contrary, the A-2 cabin is Lear's cabin, as the commander of the special force, his cabin naturally has a special line for the outside world, even if there is no special line, the Mse-class - no, all the spaceships of the universe century have learned the lessons of blood and tears in the early space exploration, and each crew compartment has a spare distress line, once activated, it can automatically transmit a distress signal to the surroundings.

But the premise is that this signal can be transmitted.

Leipzig is located deep in the Lunar Fan fog zone, and with extremely high concentrations of Minovsky particles, it is impossible to send a distress signal.

In other words, at this point, the chamber had become a veritable iron coffin, the only way to be rescued, to pray, to pray that someone would be able to organize a rescue.

However, most prayers will not be fulfilled, and even if they do, they will be long overdue.

Maggie, who came to this conclusion, couldn't help but sink her heart, and her hands couldn't help but start clenching.

Let's sort out the situation again, what kind of situation are you in now?

The Leipzig was attacked and the damage was 。。。。。。 I don't know, but it will never be a minor injury, but a heavy blow to the entire battleship to stop.

In this case, the worst-case scenario is that no one survives except himself, and even if the condition is slightly better, and there are survivors, the first reaction is to abandon the ship as soon as possible, after all, although the main reactor of the battleship has stopped, there is no guarantee that there will be no collateral accidents.

Either way, you can't expect someone to come back to save you, of course, the Zeon Army will search and rescue the wrecked battleship, but that must be after the battle, in the tense battle - even if this place is already in the rear, no one will organize a rescue, this is not that the Zeon Army has no warmth, but a simple matter of priority.

What time is it? How long have you been unconscious? Is the battle over?

Maggie found the clock in the blinding red light, and she looked at the time, about, thirty or forty minutes.

Of course, Maggie couldn't remember the specific time before she fell unconscious, but she could still tell the approximate time period, obviously, this was by no means the time when a large-scale battle could end, and she would have to wait for more than ten hours, or even days.

Worst-case scenario –

Maggie couldn't help biting her lower lip.

She couldn't help but think of a word that made the criminals shudder.

Cosmic Drift Punishment.

As the name suggests, this is a punishment unique to the cosmic century, where the prisoner will be locked up in a non-powered rescue pod that cannot be opened from the inside, with only water and food for a few days, and then thrown into space like that.

If the prisoner is lucky enough to be rescued, then he will be pardoned, which sounds great, but considering how vast the universe is, and how low the chance of encountering a human being and getting rescued is one, it is too optimistic to think that he can be saved, and the vast majority of prisoners will die in this small rescue pod because of thirst, hunger, and lack of oxygen, and to be honest, it is more humane to be shot or hanged.

This punishment, which sounds a bit like the ancient 'banishment law', is not an official form of punishment by the federal government, but rather a 'feature' that has developed among people who are far away from the control of the federal government in the process of expanding the universe.

In colonies like SIDE5, cosmic torture was banned by the federal government in the name of being inhumane, but the farther away from Earth, the core of human civilization, the more people liked it, and in SIDE3, the turbulent years after Zeon Dyken's death gave countless political prisoners and dissidents the opportunity to experience cosmic torture.

In the farther open fields of Jupiter and Mars, cosmic drifting is almost the only punishment, because of the harsh environment and the shortage of resources, neither pirates nor the administrators of the frontier will lock people up and raise them, and all the prisoners will be thrown into the universe.

If, only if, the chamber where Maggie was was not connected to the Leipzig, but was blown away in an explosion, then this was a ready-made cosmic drift execution site.

Even if there is a distress signal, no one will necessarily be able to receive it, and in the worst case, if it moves in the direction of the Earth, the chamber is likely to be captured by the Earth's gravity, and it is clear that this chamber has no ability to break through the atmosphere.

The situation can be described as hopeless.

However, even so, Maggie still didn't cry, she would cry to stop Lear's rampage, but she only showed a serious expression about her crisis, and her eyes were not even red.

If you ask the reason, of course, it's because she's a character who is more dedicated to love than self-love, so she cares more about Lear's danger than her own danger, and if she falls in love with a bad man, she must be the type where he spends all his time drinking outside, and he still silently supports the family.

However, considering that it is precisely following Lear that she is facing this desperate situation, perhaps it would be a better choice to meet other bad men, at least for her life.

From the beginning, she wouldn't have cried because of this situation.

In the final analysis, human beings shed tears, mostly because as long as they cry, they will get the sympathy of others, as long as they cry, they will arouse the compassion of others, and as long as they cry, someone will come to save them.

It's like a child.

Therefore, the more gentle the society, the more adults will grow up.

And those who understood from the beginning that no one could be relied on, and who did not intend to rely on anyone from the beginning, for Maggie, who was already ready to die of an unfatal consciousness, she would not waste time and energy crying.

If you have time to do that kind of thing, why not think about how to deal with the situation?

With no way to save herself, and expecting outside help is unreliable, Maggie begins to think about what else she can do.

First of all, of course, consider self-help, Maggie is not a suicide volunteer, on the contrary, her will to survive is very strong, she does not want to die, she still wants to live, she wants to be by his side, for decades to come, or even longer, she wants to be together.

I want his child, I want to know what kind of child the two will be, and I want to raise him/her as an adult and let her/him live a happy life.

This is the desire to be too extravagant and too greedy in the war years.

However, it is also her only wish, unlike Lear, she does not participate in the cause of killing heads because of a common ideal, but simply because it is Lear's ideal, so she participates.

Unlike Lear, who has too many ideas and always wants to take care of everything, but always has to compromise, she is a more sincere and passionate girl.

So, definitely don't want to die.

She took out the spacesuit and oxygen tank that must be there in each cabin, compared to hunger and thirst, suffocation is the number one threat in space, although Lear's cabin is quite large, but with human activity, the oxygen content in the air will only get lower and lower, Maggie is difficult to estimate the rate of oxygen consumption, but I'm afraid it can only last a few hours at most, after all, it is not a special rescue capsule, and Lear's cabin does not have an independent oxygen generator.

However, even if you add an oxygen tank, how long can it last?

Maggie wasn't sure.

And then there is another thing she needs to do, she can't be sure whether she was awake when she was rescued, or even whether she could be rescued, whether she was dead when she was found, so she had to dispose of those critical information when she was sober.

In this room, there are a lot of documents and information that would be very bad if they go out, of course, not referring to Zeon's military intelligence, Maggie doesn't care what happens to Zeon, but her identity as a Zeon soldier is only secondary, she is in fact the agent of Lear, the only heir of Alkstein, dealing with things that Lear is obsessed with ideals, but has to deal with, if this information related to Alxstein is known or even used by outsiders, It will inevitably cause serious harm to the foundation of the Alxstein family.

Not only that, Lear himself has a lot of information about the philosophical society here, and he certainly wouldn't do anything stupid like keeping a complete list of the members of the philosophical society, but the traces left behind are enough for someone to perceive a lot of things.

She piles the high-stakes documents and materials, even Lear's personal computer, on the floor and lights a fire, which ignites the chips of the paper and plastic casings, and a subtle smell of burning paper and the stench of burning plastic rises.

Frankly, this is not a good idea from a survival point of view, combustion consumes oxygen violently, and not only that, but the exhaust fumes from the burning of plastic make the air unbreathable, which is equivalent to saying that Maggie actively forfeits enough oxygen for several hours, greatly reducing her chances of survival.

But this is not a mistake made by Maggie because she does not know, on the contrary, she makes a decision with a full understanding of the meaning of her actions.

The reason, as mentioned before, is that she is a character who is more devoted to love than self-love, so she cares more about not putting Lear in danger than her own survival.

No matter how much she doesn't want to die, this is always the highest policy of her actions.

This decisiveness and cruelty even make people fearful.

Soon, she had to put on her helmet and start using the spare oxygen, and the flames, after engulfing all the secrets, did not form a fire that spread throughout the chamber, but slowly began to shrink after a certain point, and kept going.

Apparently, the oxygen in the chamber was slowly running out.

For some reason, Maggie, who is not a pessimist, suddenly empathized with this stubborn struggle and refused to extinguish it, and she suddenly felt that the flame was just like herself.

The time to say goodbye has come.

Maggie couldn't help but feel a little melancholy, not because she was not ready to part, but because she was mentally prepared, but when the time of parting came, the sadness and reluctance still made her feel tormented.

She unconsciously took Lear's position, and then began to fiddle with the things on the table, she was not looking for anything, the things that needed to be disposed of had been searched just now, and then she suddenly found something that she hadn't looked at closely.

It was a small box that was familiar to her.

She subconsciously opened the box, and a pair of rings appeared inside that she was very familiar with.

How can you not be familiar? This was originally something she had personally ordered.

On the inner ring of the ring, two names are engraved: Lear and Serra.

This is Lear and Serra's engagement ring, and after getting the rings, Lear didn't get a chance to meet Serra, so he couldn't give it away.

Maggie couldn't help but clench the rings, and even though she was in the thick spacesuit, she felt that the rings had become so hot that she couldn't help but want to throw them out.

I want you to be my only wife.

Lear confessed to her.

His eyes were very determined, his tone was very sincere, there was nothing false about it, and he did hope that she was the only girl by his side.

Although Maggie endured the pain of breaking her intestines and refused, how could she not be happy?

It's better to say that I'm going crazy with joy.

Although she proposed to Lear to marry Aina and Harman together, and although she personally ordered the wedding ring for Serra, it was only for Lear's good, because marrying these three girls was good for Lear's future, but it was not that she really wanted to push Lear away, and if possible, of course she would prefer that the person who would give Lear happiness was herself.

So in the end, she couldn't say no again, but waverically said that she wanted to think about it again.

In retrospect, it seems like a century has passed since what happened just a few hours ago.

If only his answer hadn't misunderstood Lear, there was no doubt that Serra, or even Aina or Haman, would be more appropriate than herself.

But.......

Maggie felt the looming threat of death as she stared at the ring and thought about something.

The flames slowly grew fainter and weaker.

She stood up suddenly, and came to the pile of flames.

Holding the ring in his hand.

"Sorry, Lear, 。。。。。。 last Just let me be willful for once. ”

She endured her fear, but with a distressed smile on her face, she threw Lear and Serra's engagement rings into the fire.

The words she once rebuked Lear suddenly appeared-

I'm not even a commoner, and although my lord sees me as his own, I'm Alkstein's descendant after all.

I can't be your wife, don't you understand it to this day?

I never felt inferior, and no matter who I was, I felt that I was at least equal in personality to them.

But that's the rule, it's Zeon's rule, and as long as you're a member of Zeon, Lear, you can't disobey it.

At the last moment, she made small, insignificant resistance, which perhaps no one would even notice.

Maybe the last madness before death?

Or maybe it's something else.

Anyway, she didn't pay attention to the ring, and she didn't think about the troublesome things.

Instead, he reminisced about the good memories with Lear while facing the ending calmly.

Whether it's life or death.

She fell asleep.