When the memories hit, I realized how screwed we really were. Here are the memories that flowed back into my mindspark.
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I managed to make it passed the three Introvert ships, but my i35 took significant damage to one of the engines, and the ship was shaking. The warning indicators lit up in so many places that I decided to simply turn them off. I took a deep breath. Without a working DEAD, I would be dead. I had been in this situation plenty of times, but that didn't make it any more enjoyable.
I relaxed myself and hit the max speed that was available, a mere 63.4% of my normal speed. That wouldn't be sufficient to outrun them, and I couldn't skip with a damaged engine. That would surely rip it apart faster. But at least I could pick a point, gun it, and see what would happen. There weren't any memories yet that I would mind missing.
I took another deep breath. The three Introvert ships had circled around, and the fourth that had already been on my tail was quickly approaching firing range.
That's when I saw it.
Or at least, that's when a sensor reading popped up that was not a disastrous alarm that my ship was dying. A new ship had popped up on scans, a small one. I redirected my ship toward it.
Another deep breath.
"Come on, shippy. Hold together." The Introverts were closing in.
I made a call then that was stupid at the time, but I don't regret it. Curiosity killed the @kittyboy, and I had noticed something interesting.
The new ship wasn't a fighter ship. I could see that clearly from the scans as I approached. It was a short-range ship. I assumed it was deployed to pick up my remains, the Introverts knowing the inevitability of my explosion just as I did, as soon as I hadn't bubbled out of the area.
That meant the ship took off from somewhere. Those types of ships weren't equipped with DEAD engines for warping. So I redirected my ship once again, to the spot where I first picked up the ship's signature.
The i35 may be for us lowly Wavepilots, but it did have an eject button. I ran the calculations. In a few more seconds, I could eject myself toward that location, with enough accuracy and thruster power in my suit to be able to reach that spot confidently.
I tagged it in my personal optical hud with a white chalk outline of my dead body, instead of the normal yellow marker. Hey, if you can't laugh about dying in this line of work, you're going to be miserable.
I wanted to wait longer, but the fourth ship had just gotten in range and fired, so I hit another big button, the large black one with a screaming person on it.
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Because you try being fired at insane speeds from a ship that's about to explode, in the freezing empty oblivion of space, and not screaming.
I had a wonderful scream that turned into laughter.
I felt the heat from the explosion behind me. A few bits of ship even flew passed me, but I was safe for now. The beautiful brightness of my i35 erupting into flames was brilliant. As much as I hated dying, I loved the mini-suns that our exploding ships became, a little spot of light in the darkness.
The explosion also illuminated my path, and by good fortune, in the light of my burning ship, I spotted an asteroid where the short-range ship had appeared.
"There you are," I said to myself. Now these were memories worth keeping.
I adjusted the thrusters to point me toward the now visible asteroid. As the fire of my ship began dissipating, so too did my view of the asteroid. What was in a moment clearly visible, started to darken and fade out of view, space being so dark that in a matter of seconds it seemed I was floating toward nothing at all.
I took another deep breath and shut down 95% of the power to my suit. I trusted the readings. I trusted the direction I chose. I had to try to go undetected or the ships would find me. The remaining 5% went into masking the heat signature coming off my body, a cooling trick intended to make us undetectable from most longer range scans.
I kept still and floated.
Impact with the asteroid was sudden. I reacted on instinct, allowing myself a power surge to slow down. I landed on all fours, then quickly lowered the power again, hoping they didn't detect me. I gambled to increase the power so that my suit could adjust for gravity. I allowed myself to remain crouched there for a few minutes to take in my surroundings.
My optic implants have some basic tech in them. Nothing as fancy as what advanced sensors could do on ships, but fancy and useful enough that engineers decided to build the tech into our eyes. Perhaps the most useful is that my eyes serve as a display. I can feed it information from the tech embedded in my cybernetically enhanced body, proprietary information within my personal firewall. I can also feed it information from external sources, authenticated and virus-scanned through a personal gateway, meaning I could connect to my ship and get readings directly from it.
The problem normally was all the interference and signal jamming in our modern warfare. So we (members of the starmada who are operating out in the field) get pretty used to being isolated, disconnected from the broader world. I find that it's more peaceful too, without all those signals everywhere. It can be a bit much when you plug in again after some time away from the vast network of information out there.
Don't get too excited about the whole cybernetic thing. I'm a Wavepilot, so beyond cloning my human body, the military only does the basics, like the optic implants and some of the necessary tech to get a few readings from low-light sensors, bounced radio waves, and some of the electromagnetic spectrum. I just call it spacevision.
Sure, I could purchase more tech for myself if I wanted, but given the high death rate, most of us at this level consider it wasted money.
I can also self-destruct, which I've done on more than a few occasions.
I personalized mine so that first it projects my voice screaming one of various phrases I put on my #self_destruct_playlist.
> Thar she blows
> Blammo!
> Hold on, I'm gonna sneeze
> Aughhh, aba laba laba! Ooga balooga! Maserati!
> Phhhhtttttt phtt (fart noises)
> I'm king of the world!
> Bombs away!
> Dyno-mite!
> You want some cereal? Here comes coco puffs!
You get the picture.
I ventured a little more power to my suit to enable quantum sensors, feeding them into my optic nerves, and enabled my spacevision.