"His mind conjured images of every kind of failure the next day could bring" seems a bit clunky; you might try making the failure the "subject" of the sentence instead of starting off with "his mind". Stylistic suggestion. The following sentences are a bit oddly structured as well, in terms of flow. A restructuring might be in order.


Agree that "highspace" is too overused.


Another stylistic suggestion:
"Wehrcan awoke to the sound of the bunkroom alarm, alerting him to the imminent translation. He braced against the wall as the shipwide address system echoed his own alarm. The room spun as the translation drive rotated the ship in unsettling ways. His stomach churned, vertigo-induced nausea threatening to overwhelm him. He glared at the bag attached to the frame of the bunk defiantly, willing himself to resist its attraction. "

Sentences start with "Wehrcan, He, His, He, Wehrcan" - two thirds of the sentences in that paragraph start with putting Wehrcan right at the front. Breaking that up a bit could improve the flow. "The sound of the bunkroom alarm awoke Wehrcan suddenly, alerting him to the imminent translation. "Even startled from sleep, he found himself going through the familiar routine: bracing against the wall as..." etc. "Vertigo-induced nausea made his stomach churn" and so on. Just a stylistic suggestion.


"The defense fleet looked like a scrapyard given life" Clunky, needlessly wordy. Try "living scrapyard". You lose a word but it flows better with the same meaning. In fact, I would condense most of this: it's not hard to give a few subtle cues. I'd rewrite it as such:

"The battlescarred defense fleet looked like a living scrapyard, their gashed armor accentuated by extended radiators and the conspicuous lack of energy shielding."


"He trained on a target: an aging hulk of a frigate, battlescarred but largely intact. His focus set, he waited for the vessel to meet it."

Word cruft is a bit heavy here. Cut out the bits people don't need. We already mentioned everything was battle-scarred, so we don't need to do it again. It's still in peoples' minds. "He trained on a target - an aging hulk of a frigate - and waited as it approached." Shorter, crisper.


The paragraph about firing the laser is good. I like it. No suggestions there. :)


The whole thing with the nuking (or glassing, or whatever it is) of the enemy planet leaves me a bit uneasy. Be absolutely sure that this is only a prelude or a small event in the story, and not the climax. As a climax, it is incredibly anticlimactic and lacks much in the way of "power".

If this intended to be a full short story you may want to focus on something philosophical in nature - something thought-spurring - in order to have a satisfying close.