Yuki

The cold, metallic air of the enemy craft bit at Lieutenant Yuki's exposed skin, a stark contrast to the familiar warmth of her starship, the Kitsune. Her gold and cobalt uniform, usually crisp and immaculate, was now rumpled and torn near the right shoulder, its intricate piping mocking her current state. Yuki, a woman whose beauty was matched only by her reputation as one of the Fleet's most formidable pilots, struggled against the energy cuffs that bound her wrists and ankles to the wall of the alien interrogation room . The bindings hummed with a low, oppressive frequency, suppressing any chance of invoking her emergency escape sequence. Through the single, narrow viewport of the cell, the shimmering, emerald dust clouds of the contested Kaelin Nebula swirled—a visual reminder of the failed mission that had landed her here, deep within the hostile territory of the enigmatic Kryll Hegemony. Her dark eyes, sharp and defiant despite the fear coiling in her gut, scanned the brutalist architecture of her prison. The Kryll, vaguely insectoid beings with chitinous exoskeletons, had yet to make their presence known in the cell, but the air was thick with the scent of ozone and something acrid, like burnt sulfur. Every nerve ending screamed for action, for the familiar joy of a high-G maneuver, but for now, she was utterly, frustratingly immobile—a prized captive and a symbol of the United Earth Federation's vulnerability.