Allison and Oozie were lost in darkness and bounced around the cockpit. Once Allison shook off the hit she flipped the manual trigger to make her canopy clear. She could see cracks on the surface, but her armor said cabin pressure was steady.
“Bit?”
She received no answer. She closed her eyes and sighed. She tapped a new HUD command that appeared to make her helmet sink into her armor. Once it did, Oozie started licking her face. Oozie started rubbing her face with its cheeks. She smiled and ruffled the animal’s fur.
“Well, we survived. We just shot the biggest flare in history, hopefully it’s the System’s Alliance that responds.”
Oozie started barking suddenly. A massive shape loomed out of the darkness. Blue plasma fires were burning across parts of its surface. Those would burn anywhere, vacuum or not. The fighter was knocked spinning when some sort of small appendage on the hive ship clipped its wing. Allison held Oozie fast. Thankfully the fighter had no power at all so the hive ship paid it no mind. It traveled on and then with a flash of yellow light and a shock wave it vanished into FTL. The shockwave knocked the fighter spinning back towards the rogue planet, but there was nothing Allison could do about that.
It dawned on her that she was forgetting one important fact about her whole reversing the polarity on the graviton core… the fact that its containment could start to fail and with the fusion core offline there would be no backup containment. She shoved Oozie aside and ripped one of the access panels up and yanked the liquid metal cable from her holo-phone and jammed it into the port. Oozie tried sticking its nose in the way.
“Stop it. We’re going to get sucked into a black hole gah. I don’t want to be spaghettified. Do you?”
The interface for the fighter came up on her AR HUD and she started tapping through the various fighter systems. She found the graviton core. It was in fact losing containment. She punched the button to eject it. It flashed red. She hit it again. Again nothing happened.
“Come on! Not like this you stupid Synthlin fighter.”
She kicked the back of the cockpit and the ejection fired. Her fighter continued to spin away. Thankfully they were far enough away the only thing that happened was a bright flash of light tens of thousands of kilometers away. More than enough the black hole vanished into nothingness.
Allison wiped some sweat from her brow. She was a bit overheated at the moment but she realized that even though the CO2 scrubbers were passive and required no power, Oozie would soon freeze to death, followed by herself once her armor ran out of whatever limited reserves it had left. The fighter’s interface was running on very limited battery power.
“Well Oozie if my suit had power, and if my fighter wasn’t spinning towards a fiery death on a planet I just blew up, I could go outside and grab that emergency fusion generator. Of course, then you’d die from exposure…”
Oozie rubbed against her, then licked her face and started purring.
“Don’t worry I’m not going to let you die before me. We went through too much together. I wish Bit was online. She always has great ideas.”
Oozie started licking the holo-web. She tried to push it away.
“Hey that’s a sensitive piece of technology.”
She blinked a few times and recalled that the holo-web had not been using the suit’s power source and had its own. She snapped her fingers and started to worm her way out of the armor. Which was just as challenging as one would expect in a cramped one-person cockpit with a dog-sized alien, in zero-g.
Once she got out of the armor, she fished it out of the air, pulled out her vibroknife and started prying the holo-web out of its housing. It was quite difficult. The armor’s charge finally got fully depleted, and the small white and red device popped out. It started floating away. Allison grabbed it out of the air. She grabbed her data tap from the armor’s utility belt and ripped the liquid metal out of its housing. It was preprogrammed to act as a plug connector. So, she jammed one end into the emergency power port under the panel she’d pulled off then the other into the micro-port on the back of the holo-web. One by one the fighter’s systems started coming to life.
Allison reached out to the AR HUD control to fire thrustors. She started firing them at regular intervals to slow the spin and adjust the course away from the planet. She had no real chance at slowing the fighter down at all but she could level it off and avoid the gravity well. She’d have to be judicious with power usage the micro-cores only had a limited generating potential and overloading them would fry them. Thankfully they would just fizzle out instead of exploding, unlike graviton cores and antimatter generators.
“We’re so lucky I used up the last of that antimatter. Emergency containment would have only lasted so long and likely would have burst after the EMP pulse hit us.”
Allison started shutting down anything that wasn’t life support. She had plenty of rations in the cockpit cargo space. The micro-fusion core would last indefinitely if all it had to power was her beacon, heat the cockpit and maintain the stasis field on the four cargo holds. It could also supply Bit if the AI ever came back online.
The fighter cruised by the rogue planet. The damage she had caused to it was catastrophic. The atmosphere was gone, and the surface was glowing orange it was starting to break apart. Lava was everywhere and massive chunks of planetary crust drifted with it. She shook her head.
“I am in so much trouble, if I survive. Not even the Dark Mother can say she blew up a planet.”
Allison looked at Oozie who licked her face again.
“That is the second planet that has died with me nearby, maybe I’m cursed?”
Bit’s voice crackled through her translator.
“I believe what you’re describing would be jinxed.”
Allison cheered.
“Bit! You’re alive!”
She quickly shunted power to the computer core.
“Yes. Despite your best efforts to destroy us both.”
Allison shrugged and pushed herself away from the cracked canopy.
“Some might say that we’re alive because of my heroic efforts to save us.”
Bit snorted.
“And they would be wrong. I am starting to see how the Dark Mother managed to take out the Silwrath Emperor’s Vanguard fleet and capture their flag ship single-handedly.”
“How’s that?”
“She was exhibiting textbook human insanity!”
Allison pulled herself into her seat and strapped herself in.
“I’d rather be insane and alive then bug food. I’m just saying.”
“We are dead in space, running on a jury-rigged micro-fusion reactor that has no business powering this much and you only have two weeks of food and water if you intend to feed the animal. We’re in interstellar space moving at a high velocity. How do you call any of this good, Ensign?”
Allison covered Oozie’s ears.
“You be nice to Oozie. It didn’t do anything wrong.”
“ ‘She’ didn’t do anything wrong, if you’re going to end up starving to death for an animal you may as well use her proper gender.”
Allison scratched Oozies head and held her in her lap. Allison looked at Oozie and spoke in the tone one might use with a baby.
“Someone’s being a cranky pants AI, isn’t she.”
Oozie barked a few times and wagged her tail.
“Such a good little whatever you are, aren’t you?”
Oozie struggled to get free. Allison let her go. Oozie tried to run but got nowhere. Bit continued.
“Your chances of survival are almost nil. You should at least record a last message to your loved ones so I can pass it along.”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Allison put her finger on her chin.
“Let me think about that….”
She shook her head.
“Nope, not going to happen. Now if you’re going to keep being cranky about our situation, I’m going to put music on and crank it up.”
“Of course, if you ignore your impending demise, it will go away. Why aren’t you more worried? You are going to die. I’m going to lose another pilot and there is nothing I can do to save them.”
Allison rolled her eyes.
“I warned you.”
She tapped her AR HUD music player and pipped it through the cockpit speakers. She laughed when the randomizer picked Dear Mr. Fantasy.
“So… typical.”
“Why are you laughing now? Are you suffering from low oxygen levels?”
Allison laughed again.
“No, this song was in a movie. The ship in the movie was drifting without power and they were starving!”
“Why is this funny? That is exactly what is going to happen to you!”
Allison shook her head and waved her hand.
“Never mind. Just relax and enjoy the tunes. In about eight hours my Babu will appear out of a wormhole and track us down with the beacon.”
Bit’s tone sounded skeptical when she spoke.
“You have more faith in System’s Alliance Search and Rescue then I do. How is recovering a single fighter profitable for them?”
Allison put her hand on the cargo port that held her food and water. It slid open. She pulled a meal and water ration out. She ripped it open and gathered up the various portions that were individually wrapped. She offered half the meat to Oozie whom she pulled into her lap. She then ate the rest and did the same with the remainder of the ration pack. She drank half the water and squirted the rest into Oozie’s mouth. The creature gobbled it up and then the blobs of water that escaped like it was a game.
“No response then?”
“Look, my Mom, Dad and my Babu will move Heaven and Earth to rescue me. Just like I’d do the same for you. I don’t have to have faith in the System’s Alliance, I just have to have faith in them, but I do have faith in the System’s Alliance. We don’t leave men behind. It’s a tradition as old as well Earth or something like that.”
Allison sighed when Fire and Rain started playing.
“So, depressing I need happy right now.”
She moved to skip ahead. Bit spoke.
“It suits my mood fine.”
Allison sighed.
“Well, I suppose I did almost blow you up twice, I guess I can let you listen to a song.”
Allison went to say something else, but Bit shushed her. Allison closed her eyes and waited for the song to finish. The song ended and moved onto another. Bit spoke.
“What were you going to say?”
Allison kept her eyes closed. The next song was from the twentieth century too. She recalled it was Gowen, You’re a strange animal. She could have opened her eyes and looked at it on the AR HUD but she didn’t feel like it. Thankfully the HUD turned off when she closed her eyes it would suck to sleep with it glowing in front of her face.
“I was going to say: I won’t be upset if you request a reassignment after we get rescued.”
Bit didn’t answer for several minutes.
“No. You’re my pilot. We’ve bonded in a neural link. We’re what Synthlin would consider close family members. In many ways it feels like I have a child now and a parent no matter what species should never abandoned their child.”
Allison smiled.
“Thanks Bit. I love you too.”
Bit made a non-comital sound.
“Love is a bit strong. Loathe but tolerate, like an older sibling that you keep dragging into your insanity!”
Allison shook her head but kept her eyes closed.
“It’s not my insanity, it’s our insanity. I did not want to rescue Aryna, nor did I want to go to that planet, but you reminded me of standing orders.”
“You are misremembering, you wanted to go to the rogue planet, not I.”
Allison shrugged.
“Whatever, it’s just… luck. Bad and Good I guess.”
“I do not believe in luck.”
“Destiny then?”
Bit snorted.
“I believe in that even less. No, running into Sal’nash twice in a row? This time we were here just in time to stop a full swarm? No something or someone is manipulating us.”
Allison laughed and opened her eyes. She noticed Oozie was floating against the canopy snoring away.
“That sounds way less believable than luck. No one knew this was here, or that Aryna’s ship was in AGN07, and this time I was just going to Earth to get my hand slapped in person because I bit Trixie and drank her blood.”
Allison put her hand over her mouth.
“Strike that from the record… would you? President told me not to tell anyone.”
Bit took a few moments to answer.
“I’ve erased any references to that from mission logs, and this message as well.”
“Anyway, the last one was a patrol I volunteered for, and no one wants the scanning patrols they’re boring. Who could possibly predict these two in no way related events, beyond the fact we were involved?”
Bit fell silent for almost half an hour. Allison had her eyes closed and she was just letting the music flow through her. Bit spoke again.
“I do not know, but there is a pattern here somewhere. I will find it once I can get a full power core so I can access my full processing power.”
Allison opened her eyes.
“Do yourself a favor Bit, just let it go, it’s just random chance like everything else in the universe. I’m going to try and get some sleep. Wake me up if anything happens, please. Oh, and we didn’t stop the swarm. One ship escaped to FTL; It was heavily damaged. There was nothing I could do, it would have been a pointless exercise to ram into them or board them. Kind of like trying to understand the chaos of the universe.”
Allison flipped to a relaxing playlist of rain and storm sounds and closed her eyes. She woke up several hours later because her bladder was starting to complain very painfully. She quickly released her harness and ripped off her underwear then jammed her legs into the armor leaving the top floating free. She let loose a sigh of relief as the armor processed it.
“That almost sucked.”
“Yes, and just think of what this cabin will look like after two weeks of defecation from the creature. You are the worst pilot ever.”
Allison made a face. Oozie was still snoozing away in the same place she’d been before Allison had fallen asleep. She checked the time on her HUD.
“Welp it’s been eight and a half hours since our wormhole comm to SA command. It’s about time for the calvary to arrive.”
“You’re expecting riders on horseback in space?”
Allison pulled her armor over her arms and sealed it then snagged her free-floating underwear she stuffed them into a pouch on her utility belt.
“If you had ever watched the Space Stallions holos you wouldn’t be so skeptical.”
“I have seen them. Low quality holo-animation. Forgettable characters and a ridiculous premise.”
Allison laughed.
“Really? It’s a cartoon for eight-year-olds, I loved it when I was a kid. And at this point I’d take them or anyone else. Babu is forty-five minutes late.”
“Any fleet would likely be starting with the planet. If they believe we survived, they will likely start a search grid from there. Our beacon only has limited range. And the power generated from your micro-fusion reactor will likely be fading into the galactic background radiation at any appreciable distance. We are likely leaking fusion reactant, so we may have left a trail. That is our only hope.”
Allison tried to move but her body was totally exhausted. Like she’d drained it of every bit of vitality.
“Ugg, I need blood. I went full vampire on that hive ship. Now I get it.”
“Check the starboard cockpit storage. My weight distribution was off, I assumed it was the armor.”
Allison groaned as she floated to the panel and pressed her hand against it. The panel slid open and there were extra rations and zero-g drinkable pouches of Synth-O, dozens of them.
“What the hell? There’s enough food in here for a month and blood too.”
She didn’t waste time worrying about why they were there. She started sucking them back hungrily until her body felt right, it took twenty pouches of Synth-O enough for three full humans.
“Yes, that worked, Ensign, your vitals are showing perfect across the board. Intriguing. Do you think you could gain sustenance from blood?”
Allison shrugged.
“Donno. I was told I need both food and blood, but not as much as a human or vampire on either side. Maybe? With the water filtering from my armor and the survival kit we won’t run out of that.”
“Do you still believe we’re not being manipulated? Someone prepped for us to be stuck here.”
“How could anyone possibly know?”
Bit fell silent. Allison sighed and went about collecting stray globs of Oozie urine with the water filter. Not the most entertaining thing to do but any wasted water was less water they’d have. She decided they’d use the filtered water as a last resort because while it was pretty standard to recycle it even on the colony the thought of seeing it collected then turned back into recycled water was not setting her stomach at ease. It was several hours before Bit spoke again.
“I apologize, due to the limited power provided by the holo-web core it took me a long time to review my databases. I have reached a conclusion. The Dark Mother is influencing events.”
Allison laughed.
“Oh, come on, that is the best you got? That’s like saying the Christian’s sky daddy works in mysterious ways.”
“Do followers of the Dark Mother not also worship the Christian God?”
“Whatever, it still makes no sense. She’s been gone for going on eighteen years. How could she possibly be ‘manipulating’ us? You’re sounding really paranoid. This is probably just standard survival rations for a dhampir. If the central SA command VI knows I’m a dhampir everyone in the military does. Every time a fighter is launched for interstellar or intergalactic travel it is fully kitted out with full survival rations and kit. That’s all this is.”
Allison scoffed and laughed.
“The Dark Mother. We need to get your processing core checked. I can’t believe you’re the one calling me insane.”
Bit’s voice sounded a bit hurt.
“It is the only logical conclusion. Her book tells how she can predict the future. It is plausible she provided instructions to her sister the President, or left them in the SA command VI.”
“And the stupid book says Jesus could turn water to wine? Seriously? Now we’re believing scripture written by humans? It’s all bullshit. Religion is bullshit. I go through the motions because it makes Sister Silra happy. I get higher marks. Come on? Seriously? You cannot believe any of it is real.”
“I will take your input under consideration and reprocess this information.”
Allison threw up her hands.
“Whatever. I’m going to watch something, you want to join me I can share my feed?”
“No, I will continue considering this topic. We will talk later.”
Allison groaned. Bit always got like this when she shot her wild theories down. Allison was continuously surprised by how much the AI could pout and brood. This went on for the next day. Allison was in the middle of watching an episode of Kill, kill, kill, an action holo-show. She’d fallen behind during her summer of military training. Bit interrupted her.
“It has been fifty-six hours. You have missed two days of school. I have downloaded the syllabus for your classes. We cannot do the PE training in zero-G for obvious reasons but we can keep you up to date on the rest.”
Allison groaned.
“Are you serious right now? I could starve to death out here and you want me to do schoolwork?”
“Yes. Standing orders are you continue to keep up with any schoolwork while deployed with the assistance of a tutor. I will be your tutor and your instructor.”
“By the Dark Mother, is this because I called you paranoid?”
“No, your education is important.”
Allison threw up her hands and looked at Oozie.
“A little help here? I did save your life and I am feeding you my limited food.”
Oozie licked her face. Allison groaned once again and threw up her hands.
“Fine but this is cruel and unusual punishment!”
The trio’s days continued like that for weeks. Oozie seemed to adapt to the zero-G just fine. Allison was starting to get a bit stir-crazy. She was mid-math lesson when she noticed lights moving towards the fighter from the distance. She cheered. Finally, they’d be able to get back home. Which was good because she was running low on food, she still had weeks of blood left though.