It’s a game of cosmic skittles. One minute, the fleet of many thousand vessels is forging its deadstraight inexorable pursuit. The next, they are scattered and chaotic, as shock waves turn the space around them into a whirlpool.
Then the shock waves continue outwards. They are attenuating now, but still each has terrific power, enough to shatter an old and worse-for-wear ship like ours if the impact hit us full-on.
But instead the shock waves hit our vast sails, which buckle and ripple, but absorb the huge power of the spatial vibration. And as the shock hits the sail, so the sail is forced forwards at terrific speed, dragging our vessel with it.
The surviving warships are regrouping. Within minutes they are back on course, weaving and tacking to mitigate the damage of the remaining shock waves, but still firmly on our tail. Their engines surge, they resume their previous astonishing speeds. They fly after us like birds in a thunderstorm.
But they can’t catch us. We have the power of our engines, coupled with the power of the shock waves on our sail. Each hammer blow shoves our ship forward faster and faster, until we are scarily close to light speed. When the shock waves ebb, the sails hang loose but our speed doesn’t slow.
We are experiencing relativity effects now. The interior of the ship is like a carnival for habitual drug users. Our perceptions are fogging, our sense of time becoming erratic. But Alliea keeps us firmly on course, riding the wave of energy that had slapped us through the galaxy.
Every bone in my body has been shaken and ground. I am having difficulty remembering who I am. But still onwards we sail, faster and faster. We veer past asteroids and planets like a flashlight blinking. At these speeds, a collision with a large enough rock would destroy us totally, but we pull in our sails, keep up our speed, and shoot through space.
Lena
I watch the battle unfold on the vidscreen in my cabin. I marvel.
Bloody hell, I think to myself. Indeed.
Flanagan
“We did it Cap’n,” Alliea says.
I close my eyes, exhausted.
“Wake me up in time for the next battle,” I murmur.
And I fall asleep, in my Captain’s chair.
And I dream. Awful, terrible, stomach-churning dreams. I always do. Each of my dreams ends with my own rape and torture. I yearn to wake myself up, to escape the horror. But I know that my body needs the rest. I need to recharge, keep my strength up.
So I remain asleep, dreaming horrors, knowing that when I finally awake, things will be, by and large, much worse than ever I dreamed.
Brandon
I’m bored, Cap’n doesn’t need me. And so I access my secret hoard of illicit materials.
Cigarettes.
Acid tabs.
Es.
Hardcore and softcore “nudie” magazines.
Crystal meth.
I stroke the crinkled pages of the ancient centrefold mags, and caress an E and an acid tab on my tongue. But I dare not swallow. My system is too efficient, the drugs will be swept out and purged. This is the downside of body refits, you’re obliged to take the drug-control microchip.
There’s always the easy way. At a blink of an eye, I can use my cortical microchip to access hardcore porn images of any given woman having sex with any given man, or other woman, or indeed, any other anything. A simple subvocal instruction will send endorphins or adrenalin surging through my system. I can be drunk simply by saying the word “hic”, I can inhale tobacco and feel a buzz in my veins by saying “smoke’. But it’s not the same. I love to lick the cigarette, I love to hold it in my fingers, I love to touch the acid tabs and pills with my tongue and palate. It gives me an extra buzz.
But I never consume. I know my system won’t allow it. Virtual intoxication is easy; physical addiction is impossible. This, I find a drag.
So I read books. This is something my system can’t purge. I read, and read. And in this manner, I pass the long long months.
The Corporation Fleet, meanwhile, continue their pursuit of us. We have a lead on them, but they have more powerful engines. Each hour, each day, their acceleration pushes their velocity higher. And every day, the boost we received from the antimatter bomb blast fades. We slowly ebb, they slowly flow. Sooner or later they will catch us up.
It is a high-speed chase, which goes on for ages and ages. It will take six months before they are in missile range. And at that point, the battle will start up all over again.
Ah! What a life!
I suck a tab.
I hold a cigarette.
I scratch my fingertips on the staple in the middle of a naked centrefold’s stomach.
I dream of victory.
The Captain always tells me – Brandon, you spend too long alone. You should socialise more. But I do socialise!
With myself. With my books. With my fingertips. With my tongue. With my secret stash of porn. These are my companions.
The buzzer rings. “Brandon, to the bridge,” the Captain calmly says.
The enemy flight has caught up with us. We are about to be attacked.
I rub my crotch, I sniff my cigarette, I suck my acid tab, I let my eyes linger on the centrefold’s gorgeous pudendum.
Then I pull myself back into the present moment. I press a button and my door slides open. I hurry into the corridor.
It’s time for war.
Flanagan
Brandon appears on the bridge, pale and sweaty. “Hello,” I say to him, quietly and gently.
“Hello,” he smiles back, timidly. It’s almost four months since he has spoken to any of us. In that time, the rest of us have partied, trained together, discussed literature and art and life and gossiped about long ago lost loves. But Brandon has kept away from us, locked in his cabin cell. But we don’t mind. It’s his way.
Now I need him, and his navigational and cosmological skills. “Have we reached our destination?” he asks. I nod. He looks relieved. “And are we doing that thing we, um, do?” he mutters. I nod again. He looks even more relieved.
He sits, and takes the controls. “Steady as she goes,” I say. Brandon jerks the ship sharply to port, then sharply to starboard. We veer and lurch from side to side and eventually resume our forward direction. His little joke. It never palls.
