The Phantom Fleet

Surfing void

Saku woke me up with one awful screeching sound in my ears. "We got shot, mate."

"No shit, Sherlock." The suit's status was all-green. "Good job on the ejection."

"No big deal, mate. You were already suited up."

I looked around and it was a laserfest. Intermittent beams of light in all directions illuminating the pitch black darkness. I had a much better view now that the ship wasn't around me anymore. "Where we headed?"

"I'm not too sure. Since we had a pretty close velocity match with the phantom fleet before we ejected, we should be hurling towards Earth, more or less. Unless the Moon's in the way, we should flyby in a couple kilosecs."

A bright light that wasn't the sun forced me to squint.

"Shit. I'm gonna get hungry. I still haven't had my sandwich."

"You just like complaining."

"Even one kilosecond is too much with just you as company. Let's hear some music, shall we?."

The roar of the rockdrums coincided pretty closely with a nuke blast close enough I had to spin to avoid presenting the same side to it and risk having it melt. I'd probably need to get checked for radiation damage back home. Just what I needed.

Sometimes I'd see a laser beam that didn't extend into infinity. That meant a hit. If the light was deep purple, that meant a ship got vaporised. No way of knowing whether it was ours or theirs. But I could tell a lot of people were getting blown up right now. I figuratively crossed fingers that the phantom fleet wouldn't take too much collateral damage. Who knew what awesome stuff they had in their vaults.

I kept falling like that in the middle of laser lights, nuke fire and a very appropriate soundtrack of heavy harpboards, when the spookiest thing happened to me. Something physically touched my leg.

My heart jumped in my chest so hard it almost cracked a rib. I spun as fast as my jetpack would allow, and there it was, a ship of unknown design right within arm's reach. They'd come to pick me up! I was going to walk into one of their ships after all.

It was a tiny thing, probably with only one pilot, or maybe just an AI in it. But then again, I was a tiny thing as well. There wasn't much to grab a hold of. But I didn't have to do anything. The ship slid under me, I put my foot on the front hull and it started a gentle thrust that made me feel like I was on the Moon. I refrained from pacing about, the hull might not be solid enough in all places. Looking around, I tried to spot the bigger ship it was surely taking me to, but I only saw it when it was right on top to us. The acceleration suddenly stopped and I was sent flying slowly towards the massive dark shape. I took over from there with the jetpack. I tried to aim at something that looked like a docking bay, but I couldn't identify one. So I slammed gently into a portion of the hull that had a huge handle embedded, and grabbed it. Maybe they didn't use docking bays. Maybe someone was going to spacewalk to me.

I waited there for just a bit less than a kilosec in a backdrop of intensified lasering/nuking when I saw a ship very near us being cut in half by a gigawatt laser. My hand tightened reflexively around the handle just in time as the ship banked violently to dodge the debris. I was shaken like a toad in a blender for a few seconds but held fast. Eventually the ship stopped gesticulating under me. It didn't feel like we'd taken damage. But we weren't pointing in the same direction as before.

"Saku? What's going on?"

"It's not like I have much to compute from, mate. I suppose we're not going to Earth after all."

"That means the Moon..." I suddenly got it. "That ship that blew up next to us, that was one of theirs!"

"What's with going to the Moon?"

"They don't have weapons, dummy. They want to get to a surface as fast as possible."

"Nah. No way a beast like that is going to touch down in one piece on the Moon."

"Of course not, you thick circuit-based dreamfuck. They're going to crashland us."

"Uh oh..."

We had to get inside that ship. Our space-rated jetpack wouldn't even be able to lift us from the Moon's gravity. I started banging SOS morse-code on the hull. After a couple of tries, it occurred to me that I should maybe listen for an answer. I touched my helmet to the hull. Sure enough, someone was banging back.

"Saku, you speak morse?"

"Hell no, mate. I left most of my memory on our exploding ship, you know."

"Fuck. I can't even say that I don't speak morse in morse."

I couldn't let go of the handle. We were decelerating much harder now. More than a gee. If I lost my grip, I'd be swallowed up into space and would carve a new child-size crater on the Moon surface a few kilosecs before they crashlanded.

"We're decelerating much faster now." Saku trying to think... "That probably means we're closer to the moon than I thought." Oh... "With that kind of deceleration, they won't be coming for us." Shit. "You know Lexi, you've got your temper, but I always enjoyed flying with you."

"Shut up."

A chuckle. "This is it my friend. This ship is crashlanding in a few seconds and we're outside it."

"You know what, Saku? I always enjoyed flying with you too. But your lack of imagination is really irritating." I crouched on my feet, peeking over the ship-horizon. Sure enough, there was the moon filling up a quarter of the sky. "So I'd appreciate if you'd just stabilize me with the jetpack while I surf this whale down to the beach."

I felt two tiny bursts of exhaust in my back. "It would be my pleasure."