"Damage report!" I yelled. After the impact I naturally thought that our room would be in chaos. That was how they always showed it in the movies. Continuous tremors and turbulence. Panels breaking loose to expose wires above our heads. But we had none of that.
We were not on a plane going through air. Our ship was in the vacuum of space. After the impact everything returned to normal. There was no need to raise my voice to be heard. Still, the situation encouraged panic. Everyone's voices were elevated in the ensuing conversation.
"Nothing significant," Honey told me. "It must have been an energy blast that dissipated across our hull."
"Everyone brace yourselves," Cinnamon said. I thought, no shit. Then I realized that she was communicating to the other occupants of the ship through the open channel speaker. That was after all her new job.
"Plotting a course for the far side of the next moon," Strawberry yelled.
"Another shot fired!" Honey screamed. Then in a softer, begging voice, "Please don't hit the engines."
I had manual control until my Nav-Berry sent me a point for the auto-pilot. I overrode the safety measure for side thruster use quickly and slid the control bar to the max. Everyone's bodies jerked to the right for a second, then we were back to normal.
"They missed!" Honey announced excitedly.
I didn't have camera feed up, since it wasn't very useful for space travel. So, I didn't see the energy blast go by us. However, a little square appeared in the upper right corner of my screen like a pop-up ad to show the course of the enemy's weapon pulse as it continued past the ship.
"I have it!" Strawberry informed us. Then a new text box with a button materialized in the lower left corner. I tapped it quickly to give control of the ship over to the computer.
"They are pursuing," Honey said in aggravation. She didn’t keep the most professional tone on deck, but her fluctuations added flavor to the excitement. It was a weird thing to value, but I did. "And they are faster than us!"
I found an options menu in the auto-pilot section that allowed me to increase to maximum speed. Then I watched the screen as we flew in a straight line toward the second closest moon.
"They're firing again!" Honey alerted us.
I removed the auto-control and performed the same evasive maneuver manually. This time to the right, sending our bodies leftward briefly. Another miss.
"Fuck!" Honey yelled.
"What? They missed us," I responded.
"No, a second ship is coming around the moon where we are headed," she explained.
I heard the patter of tiny feet on tile. Then Teddy appeared beside me, one hand on the edge of my console expecting another jolt any second. "Is there anything that I can do, Captain?" he asked.
"Make sure that everyone is okay," I told him. His flexibility and resiliency made him the perfect candidate for moving through the ship during a battle. "If someone is injured, tell the doctor."
Teddy disappeared as Strawberry told me she was going to find another escape route.
"Don't bother," I told her as I began freestyling the thruster controls. We started swaying back and forth gently like we were meandering through a water slide. "I'm keeping control. Work on ripping a hole to get us out of here!"
"No!" Cinnamon and Honeysuckle screamed together. Strawberry just stared at me slack-jawed.
"I'm sorry, Kash," my spice girl recovered from her panic. "Are we sure that we want to take that risk?"
"Honey," I said. "Can the computer give us a percentage chance of escaping these two fuckers without rip-jumping?"
"Working on it," she replied. Cinnamon said that she would run some numbers, too. I told Strawberry to get started on plans for that hole as I continued to fly erratically at maximum safe speed. Our pursuers were closing the gap, but not as quickly as they were earlier.
"Three," Honeysuckle said quietly. It sounded more like a peep than a word.
"Three what?" I asked.
"Three percent chance of avoiding the enemy ship's weapon fire indefinitely," she said more quietly than anyone had spoken since the attacking ships appeared. "There is zero chance of outrunning them."
"Then we need to rip the fuck out of here before we take damage to the engines," I told them. "Strawberry, get that hole lined up for the tea party."
"Teegarden?"
"Yes, Teegarden. Let the computer plot it and don't bother double-checking the data. We are doing this."
"Oh, my stars," Cinnamon mumbled. "I have to pee so bad. My nerves are pushing on my bladder."
"The second ship is gaining on us," Honey informed me, returning to her more frantic voice. "I think they are going to overtake and block our course."
"How long until that happens?" I asked.
"Based on current numbers, less than three minutes."
"How much longer do I have to wait for your hole?" I asked Strawberry. It was a rare occasion when I didn’t mean to make a sexual reference despite the words chosen.
She barely gave me a sideways glance before replying, "Two minutes. But you will have to switch back to auto to hit the enter rip-jump button."
"Give me a nav-point," I told her. "I'll switch at the last second. The only thing keeping these bastards from shooting at us is my unpredictable flight path."
A few seconds later a prompt came up on my screen to switch to auto-pilot. At the bottom of the text box was an option to see the nav-point in relation to our ship. I chose that and began turning toward it.
"They are shooting!" Honey alerted me.
I pulled one more maneuver to
