Change of Plan [https://i.imgur.com/yyrLhbF.png]

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Melissa stared at him, dumbfounded. “Did you just set it to self-destruct?”

“Yeah? That was the plan! Rescue the doctor and light the rest up,” Dirk said.

“Blow it up remotely!” She jumped backwards as one of the consoles burst into sparks and glowing bits of shrapnel. “We’re still on the fucking ship!”

Danger. Detonation in six minutes. Evacuate.

Dirk tried to smile reassuringly, like he knew what he was doing, like this particular monumental failing was a sudden, passing quirk of chance and not something more fundamental to his character. He might concede that she had a point, but then he’d never live it down—assuming they lived this down. Overhead, the warm ceiling lights flickered off and were replaced with an ominous emergency glow the colour of blood.

Fitting. Grim, but fitting.

On the bridge, the controls that had once been used to steer the vessel now blared and declared in red and orange sequence that the nuclear bolt was unlocked and that they were all going to die. Melissa keyed a number into her communicator and stared at its glass for a moment, tapping it over and over so it might get the message and stop loading so slowly.

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The image of an extremely annoyed man flickered into being. “Ah, Melissa. Let me guess, Dirk got a bit carried away and—”

“Yes! Yes! Spin the drives up—we need to go!”

“Sure! Just give me fifteen minutes, or we’ll disintegrate the moment we start moving! They have to prime, Melissa! It doesn’t do cold starts!”

“Make it, Dante. We’re coming to you!”

Something rocked them both on either end of the connection. “Wha—what do you mean? Of course you’re coming to me! I can’t carry my ship to you—”

Melissa dismissed the call and turned back to Dirk, who was attending to the unconscious doctor as best he could for an idiot. A pirate had slammed her against the floor before Melissa had managed to shoot the foul man, and now the frail woman was out like a light. Some consolation, she supposed, that the doctor wouldn’t be conscious for their inevitable reducing to pieces once the Concord ripped itself apart.

Danger. Detonation in five minutes. Evacuate.

“Get her on your shoulder,” Melissa said. “We’re leaving!”

“I don’t know how stable she is.” Dirk tried to check her breathing.

Melissa sucked on an imaginary lemon. “In five minutes, that’s going to be the least of her problems!”

While the old doctor wasn’t heavy by any means, she was limp, and built like a garden rake. Dirk shouldered her as best he could, a rag doll of chicken bones and leathery disposition. “Wait! The data! Her research!”

A grand klaxon split the air with its shriek and echoed down the hallway as more emergency lights flickered on and off strongly enough to alert even the partially sighted while inducing seizures in everyone else.

“Bit late for that now, isn’t it!” Melissa collected her rifle and jogged to the bridge’s door. No pirates in sight, which was nice. No doubt they were all zipping away with some urgency on stolen wings. “Unless you want to go down to engineering and get it yourself!”

He adjusted the doctor, almost clonking her head against the door frame. “How much time do we have—”

“Move, Dirk!”