Homestar Saga

Chapter 73: The Fall of the Random Encounter

Yvian tumbled through the void. She activated her jetpack, but it took a few precious seconds to stabilize herself. In that time, she saw that Mims and Lissa had exited the Random Encounter. The ship was heavily damaged. Its wings were bent. Its hull was dented and riddled with holes. Yvian stared for a moment, heart aching, but reality reasserted itself.

"Keep moving," Mims ordered. His voice carried the cold professional calm that meant they were all in deep shit. He typed furiously into his wrist console as he spoke. "Activate Stealth and get to the Gate." His jetpack activated, strafing him sideways. "Don't let them anticipate your flight path."

Yvian fired her jetpack, sending her away from the Encounter as the Captain's words sank in. The Random Encounter accelerated much faster than the Symphony of Destruction could. They'd been moving away from the pirate fleet at over forty kilometers a second by the time they abandoned ship. Too fast for MAC drivers to reach them, but not too fast for the more powerful MAC cannons the YEETs and battlecruisers used. A lucky or well aimed shot would turn Yvian into a cloud of blood. She'd be dead before she knew it was happening.

"We need shields," Lissa protested. "The Gate effect-"

"The armor can take it," Mims cut her off. "Activate you're god-damned-." He let out a strangled cry. Yvian turned to see. The human was twenty meters away now, but the cloud where his leg used to be was visible in the blue light of the approaching Gate.

"Mims!"

"Shut up!" the Captain snapped. "Radio silence! Use your fucking Stealth!"

Yvian obeyed orders, activating her Stealth function and shifting her jetpack to change directions. She was breathing too fast. Cold terror seized her legs. She hurtled towards the Gate at speeds that would liquify her if she bumped into anything. The Gate towered around her, two thousand kilometers of blue light surrounded by a thick ring of alien metal. No one knew who had made them, or how. No one knew what exactly happened when you went through one. It was known that entering a Gate without a ship was a bad idea. Yvian knew she had no choice, but the prospect added an extra dimension to the fear ravaging her insides.

The Gate loomed. Yvian's instincts told her she would splatter against its surface. Yvian couldn't help herself. She screamed, raising her arms to cover her face in a futile gesture of protection. She struck the blue expanse of light and... nothing.

Yvian felt nothing. No impact. She opened her eyes to the Gate Effect. Light swirled around her, giving the impression of motion. Her HUD activated, showing a series of alarms. Radiation. Excessive heat. She didn't feel it, at first. She floated in the light for twenty seconds before she felt her body heating up. Would she burn? Be cooked alive in her voidarmor?

No. The armor was hot, and she was sweating, but the next ten seconds found her only mildly uncomfortable. The Gate Effect resolved, ejecting Yvian into a different sector at a much more reasonable speed than she had entered with. The cancelling of inertia was one of the other mysteries of the Gates. No matter how fast or slow you entered, you would come out the other side moving at ten meters per second. Yvian had felt no change in inertia, no motion at all. She listened to herself hyperventilating for a moment, then forced her breathing to slow. She'd made it.

Yvian spun in a circle, trying to take stock of the situation. Lissa was two hundred meters away. Mims was fifty meters behind her. The Random Encounter exited the Gate as she watched. It looked like a derelict drifting away from a war that had been lost. A sadness tinged the fear that was slowly receding. Yvian concentrated on her breathing again. It would be alright. The ship could be repaired.

Yvian didn't see anything else. Just them, their damaged home, and the void. Relief washed through her. She'd been half expecting a fleet of pirates to be waiting on the other side of the Gate. She debated comming Mims to see how they were going to get out of here, but rejected the idea. He'd said to maintain radio silence. She didn't need comms to talk anyway, if she could get close enough to the man.