Blood had soaked through his flight suit, and had begun to pool around his feet. In the swift, swirling flash of alert lighting, his blood looked like engineers DP lube, but then everything was starting to look gray and black. Was it getting darker? It was so hard to tell; maybe the environmentals had taken a hit? That would explain why his breathing was so rapid.

He looked at his weapon panels, there was blood spray over the entire console, like the time Master Gunny had come up from behind and slapped him hard on the back just as he was taking a drink from his coffee mug. He had to clean it up quickly and he felt lucky none of it had seeped into the console. It could have ruined the tracking board. He absently wiped the blood that ran into his eye. He looked for a place to wipe it, but had to settle for his already soaked hip.

The ship thrummed like a giant metal drum. Another heavy missile he thought. The defender missiles must have missed that one. He tried to concentrate but the blood kept pooling into his eye. He tried looking with other eye as he wiped away the blood, but it must have swollen up because he couldn’t see anything and that side of his head seemed to throb the most.

The emergency floods suddenly snapped on, a brilliant, piercing white, adding to the alternating red and yellow alert lights. His head swam and for a moment, just a brief couple of breaths, Gunners Mate 2nd class Abe “the Noose” Noseum, thought he was going to pass out. He fought it, but couldn’t stop the bile from burning its way up and out his mouth in a sloppy gush. He could taste the blood off his sleeve as he wiped dead brown vomit from his lips.

Abe tried again to concentrate on his console. The blue light flashed on his board. For a moment he couldn’t remember what it meant. Red meant fire, green meant lock down, yellow meant battle ready. It came to him suddenly; the blue light meant the targeting system was changing targets. The long barrel of 650mm artillery cannon was tracking a new enemy. He had to be ready to fire as soon as the light turned red.

It was so cold, and he was tired. The pain in his head was beginning to burn its way into his brain. Then the blue light turned red. He reached for the fire control switch. The console was beginning to smolder as blood seeped beneath the panel. He ran his right palm over the touch buttons, trying to wipe a clean spot, he left behind streaks and smears, but he could read the panel now. Blood pooled into his eye again as he fired the ships main guns. The Rupture class heavy cruiser rocked gently as three long barreled cannons flashed and spat their projectile death.

It took the ground crew hull technicians a better part of an hour to breach the warped fire control room hatch. Inside they found the cramped control room nearly ravaged. Wires and plating had burst and there was debris of all discriptions strewn about the interior. The room reeked of ammonia and the musty iron taint of half-dried blood. A thin wash of blood mixed with some unidentified fluid, sloshed against base of the hatchway. Even in a station, a ship would roll casually in its berth at the constant flow of docking, and departing larger space craft.

The thin, crimson tide washed back across the slick titanium floor. In the combat chair they saw him. One of the medics tried to brush past the hull technician, but the burley man stuck out his arm and blocked the way.

“What are you doing?” cried the medic. “Can’t you see that guys hurt?”

“Nothing you can do for him Doc.” The tech took off his dull yellow hard hat, his dread locked hair uncoiled past the mans shoulders.

The other technicians followed suit with their fellow and held their helms similarly against their chests. The medic, although slim and boyish compared to the Brutor born workers, he was finally able to slip past and reach the man in the chair.

The medic had seen hellish wounds before, and yet this was among the horrors he would take to his grave. Gunners Mate 2nd class Noseum was dead. An overhead thin, meter square armor plate had broken loose during the action, and fell straight edge on him. The plate had sheered through nearly half his skull, dislodging the mans left eye, and stopped halfway down his cheek.

The medic surmised that the Gunny must have died instantly. It wouldn’t show until the captain later reviewed the logs. The “Noose” did not die instantly, in fact he had been able to continue at his station long enough for his guns to assist and account for two Bestower class slaver ships. The man held his station, and truly fought to the last.

And now you know the story, the legend, why all Minmatar Gunners strive to earn the blood mark.