Spaced Out

Wherever You Go There Is War, Ruin, And Death

Lily stared open mouthed at the fade blasts hurtling at them. And the space between them. There was a gap between the blasts. Mind stuttered. She thought-sent and hollered at the same time.

"Me, shift vertical!"

Luckily, the image that flashed into the fledgling's fog matched her shouted command. The ship flipped sideways. Fade blasts skimmed and obliterated their scanty ie-ampoule. Warnings and feedouts scrolled over her face shield.

Me, can we—

The scraper let loose a barrage of continuous fire in the middle of Lily's inquiry. Yelping, she dropped them down. The scraper followed and its pilot could fly and shoot at the same time. She needed Me's expansive senses to get them through this. Taking a breath, she immersed herself fully in the fledgling's awareness fog. Heightened vision and sensation dazed her for a cezin then she stabilized and wore the ship's senses like a second barriersuit.

The Utori ship gained on their sprint end. In flight, the pilot's rate of fire slowed. Lily urged the fledgling into the clear zones separating the fade blasts.

Left. Right. Right. Right. Playing fade blast hopscotch didn't get them any further from harm's way. Her dad's words came to her again.

When you're reacting, Lil, you've already lost the battle.

"Yeah, dad, great, but this isn't an asteroid field." This enemy responded to her tactics. If she didn't change them again and soon she'd lose. The rest of her dad's lecture came back to her.

If you want to take back ground you've already lost, dad said, finger raised, you have to do something unexpected.

Unexpected, unexpected. What wouldn't a pursuing enemy pilot expect? She couldn't think with all this dodging and flying and freaking out.

So, stop freaking out, Lily, and think.

If figuring out what an enemy pilot wouldn't expect a ship to do was too hard what would they expect from another ship?

Escape. Evasion.

That was exactly what she did now. What was the opposite of running away?

Fighting.

At that thought, the fledgling banked, mimicking the image Lily fed it. The scraper was no more than a handful of coasts from her ship's nose and it closed on them. The pump of her heart, the tic-tic of blood and pain at her temples, the acid burn weakening her muscles, overwhelmed her, but she wasn't burning out. Not yet.

Exporate sprint-end, Me. Give it all you've got.

Jets of MSac fluid sprayed from the fledgling's back side. They blasted towards the oncoming scraper. Stars around them became white streaks. The scraper fired on them faster and faster. Lily's eyes flicked back and forth, up and down, tracking the spaces between fade blasts and hopping the fledgling into them. They closed on the Utori vessel. The navigation window between fade blasts narrowed more and more. Scalp prickled. She clenched her teeth. No room for mistakes now. Not this close.

Me, fire the zoguns!

Bright violet phozone bursts erupted from the underside of the fledgling's nose. They hit the Utori's ship which spiraled almost clear of the fledgling's vector. Lily angled Me away from their enemy, but they couldn't escape damage to the fledgling's underside. This deep within the juvenile manta's consciousness, she shared its pain. The glancing collision felt like the sharp tip of a shovel scraped along her torso. That didn't stop her from shouting her triumph and punching her fist upward. They did it. They frickin' did it.

And they had to do it again.

And again.

The two other scrapers that had flanked the ship now spinning wildly out of control must have spotted their comrade's predicament. They swooped to the fledgling. Lily lined up Me's nose with the closest one and charged it. Her chicken run tactic didn't hold up against multiple ships. A quarter of a coast length towards the targeted ship, the second unchallenged scraper took a shot. Lily avoided the blast, but the evasive maneuver brought them out of their charge. The first ship fired before she got her bearings. Fade blasts struck their right side and part of the right flank flap.

Lily wheezed like someone slammed a sledgehammer into her middle. Orange and red blinking warnings obliterated all feedouts on her face shield. Red emergency lights turned the fledgling's insides infernal. She screamed. The fingers of her right hand clenched as her arm seized and spasmed. Muscles on the right side of her torso writhed. The fade blasts were so cold they burned. The freezing spheres knocked the wind from her then contracted, collapsing smaller and smaller and taking all the surrounding matter with them when they winked out of existence.

Lily spotted the right flank flap. A large chunk of it was gone like an animal took a bite out of it. Icy particles of lymph floated away from the frozen over wound. Fuck coast evasives. They had to sprint. Now.

With what failing strength Lily mustered, she raised her arm and brought her fist down on the sprint trigger.

Zospace didn't open for them. They continued to drift. Lily pounded the sprint trigger over and over. The phozone gage supplanted the warnings on her face shield. They didn't have enough power for her stored escape vector. She gasped at their depleted levels. This couldn't be. They should have had enough for a few more phozone bursts plus the plotted sprints.

The scraper pair flanked them. Four fade cannons locked on them charged. An incoherent prayer tumbled from Lily's babbling lips. She'd made the last mistake of her life.