Chapter 42
"Captain," Melgara pressed urgently, and I turned back to the screen, blinking away what must have been a small lapse of consciousness.
"Whoops," I said.
"Brick, divert as much power to shields as you can," I called out over the comms, seeing our situation and knowing there was little chance we were going to get out of this without getting banged up at least a little.
I stopped my gentle circling ascent and put the thrusters to their max and then some.
"Brick, turn everything off except thrusters and shields.
We need to force our way out of the atmosphere. "
"Captain, we just had this thing repaired!" Brick shouted.
"Yeah, and now we can put it through its paces," I insisted.
I had the feeling Brick didn't entirely agree with me.
But then again, as with most things, it was the person who maintained it who cared about it the most. "Don't worry, Brick, at least you won't be out of a job.
" I chuckled as the whole ship shuddered.
Maintaining a straight heading was needed to punch against the gravity and exit the atmosphere, but it also made us a far easier target.
I had thought about getting over a city to see if that would dissuade them; however, I had a feeling all I'd do was put more lives at risk.
One of these days, I was going to make these fuckers pay.
The thought of getting some revenge caused me to grip the controls more tightly.
As we finally cleared the atmosphere, I dove right back into evasive maneuvers.
"Where to?" I asked, glancing over at Violet.
"I think you have to lose our friend first," she answered.
"Good point," I muttered, diving into the void of space as fast as the ship could manage. What we needed to do was get something between us and the battleship.
I swiped at the star map. We had to see what was closest, and there was an asteroid field one planet over. I needed something to get me out of their line of sight if I was ever going to get away from them.
"Shields at fifty percent," Lily reported.
"Time till that asteroid field?" I asked as I course-corrected. Outside the atmosphere, we were picking up far more speed than we had on the planet and burning through space. Although with a battleship on our tail, that lead was not going to last long.
"Two minutes," the answer came back.
I felt a knot of dread in my stomach.
"Shields down to thirty percent, Captain," Lily said.
I was chewing a hole through my lip as I pushed as hard as I could.
I looked at the rate of our shields depleting versus how much time we had remaining, and it wasn't looking good.
Steadily but surely, the shield was draining, and we weren't moving fast enough. We weren't going to make it.
"What else do we have?" I panicked, asking the bridge.
"Let me try," Violet said, closing her eyes in concentration.
"Try what?" I asked. As her three tails began fidgeting behind her, I watched on the sensors as the battleship fired another salvo from their laser batteries, only for several of them to swerve wide, as if they'd been pushed aside.
"If you could have done that—" I chuckled, turning back to find Violet lying down on the console, panting, with blood running down her nose and lip from a nosebleed.
"Don't push yourself too much," I corrected, worried that much more and she wouldn't just have a nosebleed, especially after whatever she was going through acclimating to her new tails.
"It's fine," she lied.
I was thankful that she wasn't very good at lying, so that I could cross my arms and glare at her.
"Do what you can, but we got into all of this trouble trying to save you. If you die, you're going to waste all of my efforts," I said, knowing that might bother her more than just telling her to take care of herself.
"Of course," she said, turning her nose up at me, yet still barely having the energy to lift her head.
"Deploying mass," Lily said behind me.
I had a question about what that meant before sensors picked up something ejecting itself from the cargo bay, catching in the rear thruster's exhaust for just a moment before expanding between us and the battleship.
“What is that?” I asked, only to see Lily's mass catch a large number of lasers on it without collapsing.
"It's a mass that's largely liquid," Lily said by way of explanation, not that it really explained much at all. "It's also at least marginally reflective. It was the best I could do on short notice."
But it bought us precious time, and perhaps more importantly, it bought us some shielding as we hurtled towards the asteroids.
We caught up to the edge of the asteroid field as her mass failed, or more aptly, it was no longer effective because the battleship had shifted to fire around it.
Most likely because they simply weren't sure what they were dealing with.
And as soon as I saw them on the scanners once again, a dozen small signals appeared. "Salvo of six missiles inbound, and the battleship is launching a fighter group," Violet reported, even though I'd had a good guess of what had just happened.
"Into the asteroid field," I said, trying to put as much pep into the words as I could muster.
I had the engines at full burn as I spotted my target, the first large asteroid in the field.
I flew towards it at full tilt, only at the last second turning hard and diving behind it, even as blasts from the battleship scorched its exterior.
"Violet, Lily, knock those missiles out before they can reach us," I commanded. With our shields low, a few missiles could bring us dangerously low. And if they got low, a few fighters could punch through the last few percentages.
"Targeting," Violet confirmed.
I lurched forward in the chair, barely caught by Melgara, who gave me a stern look as if to say my time was running up.
I coughed and swallowed what I knew instantly was a mix of phlegm and blood.
Honestly, it was mostly blood. My body was not getting better.
It was, in fact, getting steadily worse.
I needed to finish this and get everyone to safety before I croaked.
"Fighters inbound," Lily called. I could barely focus on swerving left and right, avoiding asteroids while going far too fast for the field.
The fighters, on the other hand, weren't having the same issues.
Instead, they doggedly pursued me as I was forced to slow down, cutting it close on more than one occasion, as the shield of the Griffin nudged aside asteroids, straining as I struck them with glancing blows.
"Captain," Lily whined.
I blinked as the shield shuddered again.
My focus had wavered for only a moment, but it was enough to nearly threaten the safety of our ship.
I understood their concern, but I would work through this.
I would get them free if it were the last thing I did.
I held on to that thought like a mantra, pushing myself beyond the limits that any human should put their body through.
"Down." Violet cheered.
"Another," Lily said calmly. "All we have to do is make it to the other side.
" Lily did her best to encourage me. And I was as hopeful as she was as we careened through the asteroids, turning with the belt in an attempt to throw off our pursuer before shuttling out from the asteroid belt at an angle as I pushed the engines back to max and began spinning up the JACK drive.
I was starting to wonder if we might just make it before a giant mass zipped out of a hyperspace jump right in front of us. A battleship sat in front of us. My heart leapt into my throat before plummeting into my stomach with a sense of dread.
"No," I whispered as the sensors on the ship began going absolutely wild. It pinged dozens of objects on the other side of the battleship before it corrected and instead insisted there was something far too large to even be a ship.
It would have to be a capital-class ship. No, that didn't even feel right. A capital class might start at five hundred meters. This thing was easily four times that size and bearing down on the battleship.
"Someone fix the sensors!" I shouted.
Melgara leaned over my shoulder to look at the sensors and then left me for the first time, rushing to her station.
"The battleship is charging weapons," Lily said.
"Wait, they're not targeting us," Violet said.
Melgara had thrown on a headset, saying something quickly into it while her fingers danced across her panel.
I brought up the exterior cameras to get a look at what was happening, because the sensor data was unbelievable.
As the lasers flashed off the battleship, they illuminated the void of space they were firing into. Only under that red light did I get a witness of the ship that the sensors had picked up. I froze as I took in what I was seeing, which was not a ship.
Instead, it was a jet-black, massive beast in space, its maw wide open in a silent roar as it descended on the battleship.
"What the fuck is that?" I said, staring with wide eyes at the diamond-plated windows that were currently projecting a larger-than-belief dragon.
"Minnie, please respond," Melgara repeated, now in the sudden silence of the ship.
I turned to Melgara. "Do we know… that?"
She scowled briefly at me. "That is Minnie. And my friend."
"Minnie, please respond," Melgara said again. Only for a deep guttural noise to come from the speakers and vibrate the bridge.
"Oh good, you can hear us," Melgara said. "We're in the smaller ship. If you could help us with the other one, they seem intent on taking us out of the stars and into the void."
While this particular revelation was going on, the battleship was swerving, trying to avoid the dragon who flew through space, stalking it like a cat would a mouse. Minnie took a few swipes that made their shields light up brightly.