## **Personal Log – Commodore Phoenix Lalor-Richardson**
Posted on Sat Nov 15th, 2025 @ 7:54am by Commodore Phoenix Lalor-Richardson
Mission:
Season 6: Episode 6: Conglomerate
Timeline: MD3 - Time unknown
434 words - 0.9 OF Standard Post Measure
## **Personal Log – Commodore Phoenix Lalor-Richardson**
> **Begin Log.**
Nearly two days since the Galtonians.
The ship still feels different — too quiet in some corridors, too loud in others. The hum of repair teams has replaced the sound of battle, but the silence between their voices carries the same weight.
We lost thirty. Sixty wounded. This on top of what we have already lost...
It’s one thing to write the reports, another to *feel* them. I can read their names a dozen times and still hear the screams that went with them.
Kara DeSoto came in again tonight. She always does when I’ve been sitting here too long. No one else would dare tell me to rest. She doesn’t ask permission; she simply… steadies the air in the room.
She’s one of the few who reminds me that this ship isn’t just a machine held together by metal and willpower — it’s people.
And she’s right, of course. *Elysium* needs a captain who remembers that.
I went down to Deck sixteen earlier, after she left. Just for a moment. Mattias was still awake — working late, as usual. He looked as exhausted as I feel, but he smiled anyway. He always does.
William and Elizabeth were asleep, curled up together like mirror images. Tristi was sitting beside them, she had been pretending to read but clearly just keeping watch, before she fell asleep, the book, the old style, lay on the floor. She’s sixteen going on sixty some days — carrying more than any teenager should. She didn’t hear me come in, and I didn’t wake her. I just watched them breathe.
For a moment, it was easy to forget the holes in the hull, the ghosts in the corridors, the rumours whispering through the decks about another attack. For a moment, they were just… mine. My family. My reason.
I came back up here because command doesn’t sleep. But the ache in my chest hasn’t left since I walked out of that cabin.
Sometimes I wonder if the crew understands how much they mean to me — not just the senior staff, but the ones who hold this ship together at three in the morning. The engineers, the medics, the janitors, the yeomen. People like Kara.
They think I’m unshakable. I let them think that. Someone has to.
But if they saw me tonight — watching my children sleep, wondering if I’ll still be here when they wake — they’d know the truth.
Courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s leading anyway.
> **End Log.**
