CHAPTER 31 - THE ENDGAME

The engines began roaring in full force, and the crewmembers had to talk very loudly to be heard.

"I'm not an engineer," Elektra said, "the most complicated thing I had to fix was a washing machine so I know nothing. But won't the drives just… explode? We pushed them so much for this whole trip."

"What do you think Patch is trying to prevent, down in the bay?" Jamaad said. "We'll be fine."

Rachel leaned back from her console. "What's our plan here?"

"Our plan? Survive until we get to the next system. Then do that again," Jamaad said.

"And then?"

"And then we'll be fucking done! We'll be in range to just toss the info to the nearest ilsh military station," Jamaad gestured.

"And if they catch up to us?" Rachel asked.

"Then we fucked up. Don't fuck up."

Kuw emitted something resembling nervous laughter, but more sounded like a stuttering and amplified recording of a vulpine scream. She paced over to her seat and sat down, embracing Rachel's side. The fur on her head was disheveled, and her somersaulting nerves were signaled by the constant streams of azure vapor fuming from her pointy ears. This was the absolute most distressed that anyone had ever seen her since the mission started.

"We're gonna die we'regonnadiewe'regonnadiiiiieeeeeeeee…"

"With that attitude, yes," Rachel said as she wrapped an arm around her torso.

Meanwhile, deep in her mind, she contemplated how she was the only one on board who deserved to die.

Elektra nearly stood up to join in on the sentimentalities, but Jamaad's alert of 'IMMINENT OVERDRIVE!' and the subsequent impact of the increased acceleration worked to abort that motion.

Artur snorted. "If we didn't take that stupid snail job, we'd have not gotten into this mess. Oh well. We still have three missiles and mos– fully… functioning particle beams. We'll go out in a blaze of glory if they do catch up."

"Mostly?" Jamaad asked. "What do you–"

"Two torch missiles launched, one from either barge!" Rachel shouted, just in time to distract Jamaad. She knew it was, frankly, her own fault. But she could not bring herself to care anymore.

It was the opposite of giving up. Rather than letting her losses take control of her and drag her down, Rachel was unable to process these events of weeks ago. Nothing else filled her brain except getting out of there.

The layout of the situation was fairly clear. The whole action was concentrated in one small section of one side of the system. The Pheidippides was on a straight path calculated to be exactly as long as the drive's twelve-hour recovery period, and had just started going down that track. On the top-down map of the system, it cut like a small chord across the circle of the warp boundary. A few degrees away from the start of that chord were the three pursuers. The Greenish Pearl was between the other two ships, which were transponderless and thus unnamed, but much more heavily armed. The two torch missiles, on the other hand, were steadily approaching the scout ship on gently-curved fast-acceleration trajectories.

Rachel wondered how these people managed to get their hands on those munitions. Torch missiles were extremely expensive, costing almost as much as a small ship themselves. They had to be state-backed, and not mere brigands. Only a hostile nation would possibly benefit from employing such force against this mission, in any case: there was little for pirates to gain from a Hegemony conquest.

From all appearances, it seemed that the two barges-turned-warships were actually somewhat slower than the Pheidippides, just like the yacht. This means that this chase, while dangerous, would not be so risky as long as the missiles could be avoided.

And the pursuers seemingly knew that. The Greenish Pearl suddenly changed its trajectory to one that led it on a gentle hyperbola to the side, allowing it to exit the system even before its Ugolnikov drive properly recharged.

"Energy bursts from the barges' weapons," Rachel said. "There seem to be shrouds obscuring the guns, so I can't tell what they really are, but the range is too high for particle beams or lasers. I think either high-velocity macron clouds or railguns."

"Artur, keep PD at ready," Jamaad said. "...Rachel, how fast are the macrons we're looking at here? And what's their spread? Give me the full info, actually."

Rachel rattled off a few complicated ranges of numbers, terms for projectile spread shapes, and so on.

"...this is bleak if it's really macrons," Jamaad said. "At this range, it's gonna be low-density enough for our Whipple shield to hold up, but anything vulnerable will likely get heavily damaged. It's like a sandblast."

"The sensor dish!" Rachel said. "We can't have that get busted again. Should we adjust our facing?"

"Sure," Jamaad barked a few orders to Patch, and everyone could feel the command room rotate with the hull along its central axis. Then, the whole vessel turned slightly.

Now, the bulk of the rest of the ship protected the sensors from the upcoming shower.

There was tension for around thirty minutes, until the high-pitched zaps of the point-defense system began resounding, alongside extremely sporadic bursts of metallic-sounding pops akin to hail on a house's roof. The latter seemed to come from the hull. It was all accompanied by frequent swings and swerves as the evasion protocols engaged, but everyone already got used to that.

"Both macrons and railguns?" Kuw said.

"Apparently," Artur grunted.

"No damage to systems yet!" Rachel said. "...but there are so many macrons that by the time we're ready to jump again… we might not be able to fly. We can't outrun them."

Artur shook his head and just grinned. This seemed to discharge the atmosphere of doom. Perhaps he had a plan? Nevertheless, there was only silence after Rachel's comment.

Time passed, and the missiles drew closer. One of them was right at the edge of the sensors' cone of sight, and was close enough to be inspected properly. Rachel set the proper filters, in order to avoid the thermonuclear plume from blinding the sensitive chohjozra-made dish, and began tracking the projectile as it approached head-on.

It was too blocky and unrefined to be any kind of recent make, yet its metallic surface was near-pristine, except for what appeared to be… black spray paint. An irregular blotch of black seemed to blot out some kind of emblem or writing.

And yet, a tiny smudge of maroon poked out from the upper right corner of the blotch, as if the tip of an obscured tail, alongside a small, filled-in circle in the bottom left. It could not be.

"Sir!" Rachel shouted. "The missile… I think it has a dal-ghar Red Comet symbol on it. Spray painted half to shit, but barely visible."

"Wait, what?"

Kuw facepalmed. "Thaaat explains everything. So that guy in the cloak… and Fofnia… they were dal-ghar plants?"

"Probably," Rachel leaned into her and smelled her tail. But somehow, the usual sweetness of the relationship was dulled now. She wasn't sure if it was her actions of two days ago, or the current stress, however.

"This could be a false flag," Elektra said. "Like an anti-Alliance neutral trying to pin the blame on the usual adversaries."

"Then why paint on the emblem only to blot it out?" Jamaad said.

"If the goal was to hide it, why not erase it altogether? They wanted it to be noticed, with an extra veneer to make it not an obvious trap. They know who Rachel is, remember?" Elektra closed her eyes.

"Alright, makes sense."

After a pause, Artur turned around. "Sir, should we actually turn around and blast them once we deal with the torch missiles somehow? We have three missiles left. The vapor-lance, the magsail slug, and the neutron bomb. These can all beat PD, theoretically, but we need to get right in their face so they don't end up using their guns as makeshift long-range PD."

"Why couldn't you suggest that earlier, when we just started running?" Elektra asked.

"Because then we weren't aware of how the macrons would stop us. And because of the missiles, of course," Jamaad said, looking down at his seat's display. "If we slow down, the missiles do a pincer maneuver and we get clapped from both sides. Anyways, Artur, sure! Judging by how old–"

A particularly rough evasive maneuver interrupted the captain as everything and everyone swung to the side. The solitaire on Artur's deck remained firmly planted as ever.

"Ahem. By how old these things look, they shouldn't be that hard to deal with. Likely very outdated."

Rachel, meanwhile, finished an in-depth scan of the warheads. "Directed nukes. Essentially lower-intensity vapor-lances. The range may or may not be higher than our PD's range, but do we really want to flip a coin here?"

Artur grunted. "I don't think that if we keep running, things'll be any better. Do you want us to get sandblasted into shit?"

Kuw suddenly brightened up. "I have an idea! An ideeea! These missiles likely have security as old as their make, which is likely laaast century. We have good electronic combat measures thaat have mostly been working passively on the defense so far. What if we suddenly turn around, then use them actively, to try to confuse the missiles into shooting at the wrong time? They weigh so much that they won't change course so easily."

Jamaad realized that Kuw was right, but in the stress of combat he simply could not come to that line of thought by himself. Modern-day Hegemony counter-countermeasures were good enough to foil any kind of attempts to fuzz their targeting through hacking. But old systems were likely highly vulnerable to a concentrated attack.

"Patch! 180 degrees turn as fast as is safe– remember the damaged central pillar! Everyone else, brace!"

The roar grew even stronger as the ship made a quick spin that seemed to temporarily invert the gravity in the command room. Everyone held their hardest onto their seats out of instinct, though the belts would have of course prevented any upwards falls in either case.

And even though Rachel was used to similar daring maneuvers, and of course still numb from recent events, she deeply dreaded this tactic. Something about it felt very, very off. End Elektra, too, covered her face with her hands.

There was a palpable tension as the ship finally settled into a retrograde thrust vector and began canceling out its momentum. Due to this, the pursuing projectiles seemed to accelerate faster and faster. This tension lasted for quite a while.

As soon as they entered ECM range, the ship's dish quickly swiveled towards one of the missiles. At this distance, it had no immediate, noticeable effect…

The hapless missiles immediately began swerving to intercept the ship, as their onboard computers failed to realize that they were being tricked. And as they drew closer, the trajectory of one missile, the one being targeted, became fuzzier and fuzzier as its plume began to stutter.

Meanwhile, Rachel and Kuw both leaned closely into the display.

"What do all these shifting bars and console logs mean?" The relmai said, pointing to a small black window with rapidly-scrolling gray text.

"No idea. All they taught me is to select a target and type in the command," she sighed and winced as she recalled the similarities of the auto-hacking module with the particle beams' controls, minus the levers.

It really was this detached these days. Point and kill, or type and destroy, what was the difference?

And indeed, it destroyed. The scrolling logs stopped, ending with the single word 'SUCCESS!', and soon after, Rachel quickly moved to turn a knob on the control panel.

"Why?" Kuw asked.

Rachel pointed at the readout itself, which showed a brief flash and nothing else. "It was gonna blow. I know it because they always self-destruct rather than allow a takeover. At this distance it might blind our ship."

The process repeated even more quickly with the other missile.

"This feels like magic," Kuw shook her head.

Rachel chuckled. "Would it feel like magic if a chainmail-clad warrior was blown away by an assault rifle? Same principle," she said as she idly scrolled through the logs. "The missiles… have UN-era military-grade security packages from 2176?! I guess that explains why they crumpled so easily, but what the fuck?"

Jamaad coughed. "I suppose we won't find that out."

As the ship continued onwards to the three attackers, dodging, intercepting, and enduring clouds and shells, the engineering bay turned into a pandemonium.

The entirety of the engi-team was there, surrounded by plumes of vile fumes that leaked from bursting pipes, and the occasional spout of sparks. Patch struggled to issue orders to everyone for full optimization, so Temo tried his best to help coordinate the other engineers in between working to fight fires as they sprang up– sometimes literally.

"I think we're reaping what we sowed," Radd said as he hastily replaced a burst capacitor in a grinding and hissing bit of machinery without even turning it off.

BZZT!

The thick yellow gloves, thankfully, insulated him well… at their own expense. Drops of insulating nanopolymer immediately streamed from the fingertips. The engineer simply glanced at the damage, shook his head, and continued his work.

"Do not worry, human: we will make it," Patch intoned. "According to my predictions, the propulsion systems have not yet lost an appreciable fraction of their power."

Radd wanted to say something snarky, but ended up just grunting and shaking his head.

***

The hostiles adjusted for this sudden change of situation. The Greenish Pearl changed its trajectory yet again, joining the two makeshift warships as they clumped together.

"I wonder why they're not saying anythiiing," Kuw said. "Everyone else who attacked us at least… I dunno… taunted us. These guys are more silent thaaan the Silent Empire. Are they even manned?"

"Thank fuck. I'd rather not listen to them yammering about how we deserve to die on bullshit logic or lack thereof. And yes, they're almost certainly manned. No reason for a drone ship, or even an AI-crew-only ship, to keep its rooms at a human-livable temperature. You'd want it cold," Rachel said.

"Would it even have rooms as we know them in the first place?" Elektra said.

"It wouldn't if it was a purpose-built drone ship of the kind we don't have a lot of because well, you see, they aren't trustworthy," Jamaad responded in Rachel's place. "But these, even if they are drones, are regular ships. Unlikely that they are, in any case."

This kind of talk was essentially a distraction from the extreme psychological stress of combat. This was their greatest battle yet, and they simply could not help but fear for the mission and the data.

But Artur knew what he was doing. Jamaad knew what he was doing.

Off in the detective's room, Akshaya smirked as the chess engine he was playing against made a beautiful blunder: his knight could fork three pieces at once, then immediately fork the two surviving ones again.

"Direct engagement range in thirty-two minutes fifteen seconds," Rachel said.

The tension built up and up until the time was up. Jamaad, as usual, signaled to Patch to intensify the evasives as the impacts of macrons began to intensify. The Pheidippides' point defenses were strained to their full capacity then, but the invisible shield of the beams held up well.

Artur grinned as he tightened his grip on the firing levers.

"Not now! Approach, approach, approach!" Jamaad ordered. "Wait 'till we see the whites of their eyes!"

The ship roared towards the cluster of aggressors, masterfully dodging deadly railgun shells and clouds at the same time. At this range, clouds were as deadly as shells, and impossible to shoot down.

"FIRE AT WILL!" Jamaad yelled right as the ship began its flyby of the cluster.

The enemies were visible. Yes, visible, through the visuals on Rachel's monitor, almost unheard of in space combat. But not as shapes. They were like triplet comets, all pointing in different directions yet flying in only one. She suddenly remembered the old analogy for the dynamics of spaceflight: a spaceship is like a fully-loaded truck on a sheet of black ice, rather than an airplane or a seaship. To properly change course, one needed to thrust in a wholly different direction constantly.

Artur thought for a few moments. The warships were much more heavily armed than the Greenish Pearl, and he was confident that the Pheidippides could easily wreck the yacht with only its particle beams and a bit of luck.

The vapor-lance was definitely of a shorter effective range than the enemy's point-defense envelope. Thus, the only realistic way to use it without risking its neutralization was to have their defenses be already occupied with other tasks, or more likely as a last resort. The neutron bomb and the mag-sail cannon, on the other hand, could ignore point defense.

He only had to hit.

The wolf-man looked at the readings and saw that there was no more time to think, or he would miss the attack window.

He fired off the mag-sail at one of the warships, the closest and somewhat larger one. The gigantic slug was orders of magnitude heavier than a railgun shell, and a good bit faster.

A hissing sound could be heard through the command room, and the missile swiftly exited the tube. Its powerful gyroscope immediately pointed it at the target, and it began clearing a safe distance from its launcher.

Artur watched the autoloader's progress bar fill in an excruciating manner. The few mere seconds between reloads, previously unnoticed, seemed to stretch into minutes and hours.

Meanwhile, there was a bright flash of light as the mag-sail missile's warhead…

…

Was scattered into uranium dust by a freak railgun shell impact. The slug harmlessly drifted out. The missile's position was not within enemy PD coverage; the shell was likely aimed at the Pheidippides itself. This was a mere stroke of unluck, compounded by the unusually close range and thus saturation of projectiles. Or was it? Jamaad suspected that the enemies were defocusing their anti-ship fire to try and assist their point defenses at a much higher range than normal.

Rachel slammed her face into the desk as Kuw began whimpering into her back.

"Jebat!" Artur yelled and immediately launched the neutron missile at the same ship. Due to its lighter construction, it exited the tube much faster.

"Detonate it prematurely!" Jamaad yelled. "As soon as the physical explosion itself wouldn't damage us."

Elektra put her hands to her mouth. "Sir, do you want us all to get leukemia or worse?!"

"WE'LL HAVE IT TREATED! AND THE BLAST IS FOCUSED! DON'T BE A–"

Rachel scrambled to muffle the sensors, right before an automatic high-radiation alert blared through the entire ship. Nevertheless, nobody felt anything except for a brief wave of heat washing over their bodies. The blast was indeed focused. Rachel simply stared at the screen blankly while Kuw utterly lost it, screaming in panic.

Elektra hastily checked the medical records, which were auto-updated by the sensors in everyone's uniforms.

"Just over one fucking sievert for us all. Ugh. It ain't gonna be fatal but it won't be fun in four hours! Was that worth it, Captain Nuke?"

"There was a high chance of losing that missile if we let it fly for any longer," Jamaad explained. He couldn't bring himself to chew out Elektra for her snide remark at this point.

Elektra's response was prevented from manifesting by Artur's triumphant war-howl. "DEAD! THEY'RE ALL FUCKING DEAD!"

The unnamed warship-barge was apparently making a turn when it was irradiated, and continued executing that maneuver without pause or change. Artur immediately imagined the scene.

…the entire command, engineering, medical, and service staff of the hostile vessel felt a burning sensation spread through their flesh and bones. They collapsed from pain and shock, and twitched on the floor as the flood of neutrons overloaded their nervous systems and fried their implants. They were likely still alive now, but unconscious, choking on their own vomit, or both. These crewmembers only had minutes to live, at most…

Cheers and claps echoed through the command room, and Jamaad mumbled an order to Patch.

Though the Greenish Pearl was between the Pheidippides and the other, surviving warship, it had seemingly turned tail, and approached its comrade in arms. By the time the scout ship would catch up, it would already be behind the warship. And they had to get up close and personal in order to use the vapor-lance.

…one missile. Limited. Short range. Three particle beams. Unlimited. Very short range…

…many railguns and macron blasters. De-facto unlimited. Medium range…

...chance of damage: high. Chance of destruction: moderate…

…chance of escape: NONE!

"It's us or them," Artur muttered. The noises of the ship seemingly washed away as his mind focused on the task at hand. He used to be part of the Berserkers, the BFR's famously elite army. And like a historical berserker, he could no longer think of anything except the fury of battle.

Except instead of hallucinogenic mushrooms, the stimulation for this was an adrenaline autoinjector implanted into the base of his neck.

Jamaad's orders were a blur to him. He recognized and acted on them, yet they were only concepts that resonated through the wolf-man's mind as the ship drew closer and closer to the barge. Rachel yelled something, and Artur could feel the Pheidippides suddenly rotate and swivel so that the missile launcher directly faced the target, while the thrust vector of the ship matched up with that of the enemy.

There was an impact. Artur heard something about a girder being torn. Another impact; something about the third engine being heavily damaged, reducing its output by a quarter.

One missile.

CLANG! FWOOOSH! click…

Zero missiles. That was all. All the supply from that Koumanlan station. Five missiles spent in the span of three systems. For a warship, that may not have been much, but a scout ship was not really meant to play one-vessel fleet.

And they were paying the price now.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

But so were the enemies.

…

Artur could squint and see the warship's shape right then… And after a brief, sensor-blinding flash, he couldn't. Then, the static of his screen faded away to reveal several chunks of warship flying in one direction, an expanding cloud of metal vapor and vented propellant marking its void-grave.

Right behind it was the yacht, its exhaust directly facing the Pheidippides, bright as a star. Yet, it seemed to be currently slower than even the damaged Pheidippides, due to starting its acceleration much later. Artur grinned and began mashing the particle-beam buttons. With every shot, the three beams focused into one point. This same focus let the yacht dodge the shots, in the same way an ant could evade the searing cone of a looking glass. It was too small. The cannons were not designed for such targets.

And he noticed how fuzzy the targeting reticle was now. Most likely, their sensors were being jammed by the Greenish Pearl. That was its purpose in this little task group. An ECM specialist.

Kuw collapsed in fear on top of Rachel, breathing into her neck. Rachel's eyes were widened from fear and anxiety, and her heart pounded with the speed and force of a jackhammer.

"DODGE THE PLUME! DODGE IT!" Jamaad screamed at Patch through his datapad.

Artur was hunched over the screen, snarling incoherent gibberish as the ship turned extremely quickly. Seeing that the yacht was starting to turn around and accelerate towards the Pheidippides, and was thus far able to easily dodge the concentrated shots thanks to a combination of jamming and a small size, he considered the weapons system inadequate in its current state.

He leaned down and opened the maintenance panel of the weapons console. A bundle of wires. Each cable labeled, thankfully. Each label abbreviated, unthankfully.

'PWR', 'BEM-FOC', 'SWVL', 'SECUR', 'CONC', 'OVHT-SFTY'

"CONC… concentration… OVHT… overheat safety, I'll show you what concentration looks like, fucker. I'lll show you what heat looks like," Artur mumbled as he grabbed the cable and used his bulging muscles and metallic claws to rip it clean in half. Then he did the same to the other. Stares focused on him as the bisected bundle of copper and insulation showered sparks.

"Weapons Officer Artur, what the fuck are you doing?!" Jamaad yelled.

"I'M DOING WHAT HAS TO BE FUCKING DONE!"

He began firing.

He reminded Rachel of herself and her previous escapade.

But her previous escapade did not involve three separate beams of death spouting from the cannons like water from firehoses.

"WE'RE BEING SHOT AT!" Rachel shouted. "GIRDER D–"

KABOOOM!

"Their particle beam hit our second fuel tank! Huge hole, propellant venting like shit!" she whimpered as she stared on the screen. "And it also grazed the MOTHERFUCKING reactor casing! Technical fluids are leaking from it… fuck fuck fuck…"

Meanwhile, their own beams, invisible in reality but projected on the screen as three red streaks going into the distance, finally crossed intersected the yacht's head-on silhouette.

There were now two silhouettes.

Jamaad cheered in triumph and so did Artur. "We did it! THEY'RE GONE! GONE!" The captain shouted, turning on the intercom at the same time to make sure the rest of the crew would hear it too.

Elektra stopped quietly praying and instead rose to her feet, yelling in the happiest voice anyone had heard in days. It was over. The enemy was defeated. One ship versus three, and where the three fell, the one still stood fast.

Rachel began celebrating too. She jumped from her seat several times, nearly knocking her fear-paralyzed partner backwards. Kuw grinned and did a little dance, as best as she could in the high gravity.

And Achariya's game, interrupted several times of course, ended in a checkmate. He won. The crew won.

…yet there was a nagging feeling that the struggle was not over. In the span of perhaps five seconds, it grew from a mote into a mountain…

There was a hissing sound. And another. And another.

Rachel's elation was soured immediately. "Our guns are gone," she said in the most deadpan voice possible. "And our radiators are yellow-hot. Both of them. We're way over the safe level of heat."

Jamaad sighed and said. "And what of the leaks, in the rads and the reactor? Do we have enough time to let the rads cool off, without a burn or on a weak burn?"

Rachel crunched some numbers on her datapad. "No. Not anywhere close. If we dawdle, we'll get stranded in a pirate-infested system, because if the tank drains we will not have enough delta-v to cancel out our trajectory that leads far from the system's boundary. We need to get to the edge. And fast. As for the reactor, it's only a grazing hit. It could keep working for far more time than is left in the mission. I think. However, its capacity for burst power output is rapidly falling. Within a few hours… I dunno how many… we'll be unable to fire up the Ugolnikov Drive and will be stranded."

"...and what does that…" Elektra tilted her head.

Rachel explained as best as she could.

Ugolnikov fields always needed a massive pulse of power to start the bubble, but after the bubble was up, the ship did not technically need any power beyond what could be provided by the backup batteries: most of the power pumped into the crystal was to prevent its rapid degradation. That did not matter now.

Jamaad sighed again, more deeply. Elektra, meanwhile, went to distribute radiation sickness mitigation medicine to the crew.

***

Temo and Radd did not know how they were still alive. Perhaps this is how Hell is supposed to look like, Radd thought. At least the mess was over now, as Jamaad's announcement stated.

Temo brought gas masks from the emergency supply room, thankfully. Those, as well as the IR goggles, allowed every organic in the engineering bay to breathe and see properly.

Radd sweated bullets as he struggled to adjust the valves and gauges of the pipework that formed the walls of the engineering bay in order to squeeze out just a bit of extra percent of cooling at the cost of engine performance, fuel efficiency, and everything else. It had to be done, in order to stop the three remaining radiators from simply exploding. It worked, and would work as long as the ship stayed in the lower levels of throttle.

But then came an order from Jamaad. "We will be marooned here if we don't reach the edge of the system as fast as possible. Our propellant is venting like champagne from an opened bottle. Our reactor is gonna no longer be able to support our FTL. One last overdrive," his tired voice echoed from the intercom. "As soon as you are prepared."

"...are you serious?" Radd said.

Mo approached him, pulling Temo by the hand. "I do not think that we have a solution here," the materials engineer said. "Sit and wait: we are marooned in this system, and easy pickings for the peyrhyll extortionists. Go further: catastrophic failure of radiators. Go further slowly: subtle failure of FTL."

Radd Grant frowned– under his gas mask– and lowered his head.

There was silence. A relative silence, of course; the noise of the overloaded engineering room did not stop. Patch was somewhere on the other end, working.

Radd suddenly jolted into a visible state of realization. "Poke a hole."

"What?" Sabauri asked.

"Poke a hole. In the remaining radiators."

"...why do we want to destroy them further?"

"The cooling liquid will vent. This'll cool them faster than if it keeps circulating. Yes, the liquid in ours ain't made for open-cycle, so it'll run out very fast, but do we care when our destination is… one jump away?" Radd explained.

Mo nodded along, but then gestured. "This is a very dangerous course of action."

Radd rolled his eyes. Unlike his frown, this was visible through the goggle-like eye-holes. "What's more dangerous is being left at the mercy of some transparent frogs."

"Do you think you will survive puncturing a pipe full of superheated fluid?" Mo said.

Radd puffed his chest. "I'll readily sacrifice myself for the mission's survival if–"

Patch scurried over. "Meat-human, do not waste your own life. Weapons Officer Artur Greenpaw has a gun. Bullets, as you know, easily puncture thin alloys optimized for thermoconductivity instead of resilience."

"Oh. Sorry. But I can't go into the command room, dawg," he scratched his head.

The robot pinged. "I 'tossed' him a message, as you like to say."

Radd clambered up towards the entrance into the CIC. Artur waited for him in the doorway, nonchalantly holding the pistol like one would hold a banana.

It was an extremely bulky handgun by human standards. Its blocky form more resembled a muffler from an antique car in size and general shape, except cuboid instead of cylindrical. Contrasting with its matte black casing was a shiny drum glimmering with rounds twice the width of Radd's thumb. The words 'EXECUTIONER' were engraved in red on its grip.

"My wrist hurts like shit just thinking about firing this thing," the engineer said as he took the gun. "But thanks."

Artur snorted and gave him a holster too. To Radd, or indeed anyone who didn't know the wolf-man very well, he just sounded like a pig with a case of the flu. "Imagine not having self-locking joints."

Radd did not go alone. Accompanying him was Tuosyie Kwonju-su, the only other relmai on board besides the comms officer. The magenta fur on his whole body was braided into thin, interlocking cords, and he was extremely thin– even thinner than Kuw was. Tuo's uniform, unlike her garish, fluorescent mess, was the usual yellowish engineering uniform, and he was extremely quiet by his species' standards, while his gaze was usually turned downward.

"Ready to go?" Radd said as they both donned their hardsuits.

Tuo just nodded as he held the helmet in his hands and pressed some buttons. The plating that covered the chin and cheeks of the helm telescoped out with a click, transforming into a shape more accommodating for a muzzle.

"I take that as a yes. Let's go."

They both headed to the airlock, climbing and rappelling as if on a cliff. The gravity hadn't turned off, of course, as the burn had to continue if the ship was to make it. Armed with grappling hooks, the human and the relmai navigated the outside of the hull. Its Whipple coating, once shiny and smooth, now resembled a sieve or the surface of Luna. The impacts of the macrons had caused immense wear and tear to it– and Radd shivered as he thought about the structural damage to the girders wrapped in this ruptured shield.

Suddenly, his foot slipped into a particularly large hole in the shield. If not for Tuo reacting quickly and pulling him out, he would have fallen behind the shield's casing, and the cord, meant to protect against simple falls into the void rather than tumbling into a girder-filled crevasse, could have seriously injured him.

"Phew… thank you dawg," Radd said.

Tuo simply hugged him, but the impact of the gesture was somewhat lost due to the plate armor of the hardsuits.

They now faced one of the radiators: the aft one. A thought glimmered in Radd's mind as he unholstered the Canid pistol: was this really a good idea?

Nevertheless, the gun was easy to hold thanks to the servos in the hardsuit's joints.

He didn't really see any other option.

BANNG! BANNG! BANNG!

The gunshots, despite the lack of atmosphere, resonated through the metal and air of his suit. Thus, they sounded tinny, more like cymbals than bullets. Immediately, geysers of glowing red liquid streamed out of the ruptured sections of pipes. Gradually, the foam contracted them into tiny, but present, streams. As planned. Grant, using a brief voice command, turned on the thermovisor of his helmet.

The radiator was slowly cooling to reach a relative equilibrium.

Feeling like a space cowboy, and stepping more confidently, Radd followed Tuo to the other intact radiators, the starboard and fore ones, and shot them in the same manner. The port one did not need shooting, because it was already gone.

Everyone the pair passed by on his way back cheered on him as a hero. Kuw stood outside the command room alongside Elektra, and waved him over. Artur was there too, and grinned as he took back and holstered his gun.

"Thaaank ya, Radd," Kuw said. "Ya need rest now."

The engineer chuckled nervously. "Shift ain't over. I need to keep the ship running. We're entering overdrive again soon, remember?"

Kuw and Elektra nodded sadly and returned to the command room.

Jamaad was standing and looking over Rachel's shoulder. "Do we have enough cooling capacity to support a maximum-overdrive burn now?"

"Aye aye, sir."

"How long will the cooling liquid last?"

"Five hours. Then the radiators will start not doing their job."

Jamaad rubbed his forehead. "Well, that's less than we thought, but enough to get to the next system. I think. If we go as fast as possible. No time to waste!"

And so the ship began blazing onwards again, its engines blasting full force, the trails of their exhausts joined by the trails of the three intentionally-ruptured radiators.

Five hours… It was utter, unadulterated Hell. The engines were pushed to their true limits by Patch. Even the hardened engineers struggled to walk in the immense acceleration. Yet, the systems held up better than they did during the battle, thanks to the improved cooling. The smoke cleared.

Four hours… The smoke began returning as the pipes and machines began groaning again under the immense stress. According to Patch's calculations, many essential parts were beginning to hit the end of their operational lifetimes, and thus would begin failing before the ship would reach the boundary.

Three hours… An explosion of fumes and loose bolts rocked the engineering room, sending Radd off his feet. It was the thrust swivel assist subsystem. The ship could no longer change course with any degree of efficiency. Luckily, the course was already planned.

Two hours… A constant hissing, grinding sound filled the room. Not even Patch could explain it. Every human and genemod in the room began sweating bullets as the cooling subsystem failed too– Patch said this was due to the cooling fluid finally running low.

One hour… The heat grew to resemble that of an oven. At that point, it was just monotony. Endless, infernal monotony. Surrounded by failing technology and wallowing in toxic fumes of all colors.

Meanwhile, in the command room there was silence. Nobody cheered, yet nobody yelled in fear.

Thirty minutes… The structural components of the reactor began failing further. Perhaps it was from the strain of upholding the overdrive, or perhaps an unforeseen problem that Rachel or Patch's analysis did not discover.

"We should turn off the fucking engines!" Temo shouted. "They'll explode if we don't."

"I was going to," Patch beeped, adjusting several levers with all their strength. "Only now have we reached the edge of the system with enough leeway in our coolant supply to prevent overheating during warp."

"Just in time, huh?" the human said as the roar… ceased. Only then, amid the ringing in his ears, did the crew realize how loud it really got. Everything floated up into the air.

There was, almost, a feeling of serenity in the air. And then the lights went out, even if the rest of the systems were doing fine. The whole ship plunged into darkness.

Rachel cowered. Elektra cowered. Kuw struggled to not instinctively hide under the desk. Artur steeled himself. And Jamaad cranked up the lights of his seat.

Five minutes…

"The reactor is worse than we thought," Rachel said. "We'll be able to jump, but… I don't know. We have to try. The window is very small and we won't be able to even start it if we wait fifteen more minutes. There will be consequences, though. I feel that with my core."

Jamaad nodded.

And then the warp boundary was crossed.

Though there already was no gravity, Radd braced. Temp braced. Mo braced. Tuo braced. The first and the last were next to each other, Tuo shivering in fear.

During every jump, the characteristic clangs and jolts were from various heavy machinery both in the drive chamber and in the engineering bay adjusting itself, utilizing immensely complex manipulations to ensure that the jump is as quick and as safe as possible.

But by then, the ship went through so much, and the wear and tear on these clangs, from both nonstandard use of the drive, from combat, and now from the uneven power supply from the damaged reactor, took its toll.

Space everted itself with a series of whirs, culminating in a loud pop.

What followed was an even louder pop and a shower of fragments shotgunning itself from a bundle of pipes on the far wall, a flash of light briefly illuminating the darkness like lightning in a thunderstorm.

A metal rod was embedded in Radd Grant's skull. It went right through the side of his head, skewering Tuo's at the same time like a grotesque rivet. In the zero-gravity, droplets of differently-colored blood and brain matter floated through the air as Temo yelled in terror.

Elektra braved the insanely loud warp-voices as she navigated towards the engineering bay, swinging her datapad's flashlight from side to side. She choked on the remaining haze of smoke, but ignored it. Then she found Radd and Tuo, cradled in Temo's hands as they floated. The engineers' eyes were beginning to glaze over. Temo's tears pooled in his eyes, unable to flow out.

"Christ Almighty," The CMO gritted her teeth as she unfolded a zero-g stretcher-bed and carried both to the medbay, in darkness only lit up by a small flashlight. Still stapled together.

The outlook was grim. The rod was perhaps the length of a human forearm, and covered in black grime. Soaked in red human blood on one end, and soaked in black oily relmai blood on the other.

Both of the subordinate doctors were there, alongside an emotionally crushed Temo.

But it was pointless to do anything now. Even if the two engineers weren't instantly killed by the rod, they were both dead by now. There was no pulse, and according to a tricorder scan by Denisov, there seemed to be brain damage incompatible with any kind of repairs, even by the most skilled brain-menders and cyberneticists of the whole Oval.

And especially not in a tiny scout vessel, well-equipped as it was.

Radd Grant and Tuosyie Kwonju-su, the men who saved the ship in its metaphorical darkest hour, have died in its literal darkest hour.

Elektra went back to verify that there were no further injuries. Mo lost a finger. Temo had serious burns on his calf.

Of course, she treated them. But it was monotonous, mechanical, without her trademark personal care and affection.

This was a mere mask.

Deep down, Elektra was as broken as Rachel was now.

And of her, she kept staring at nothing in particular in the darkened CIC as the voices manifested as hallucinations, replaying her massacre of the peyrhyll over, and over, and over. The rest of the officers weren't particularly talkative either.

Only seven hours. It was a rather short trip. And it passed without any of the usual chatter. Jamaad and the others went to the medbay to pay respects to the dead, as much as the circumstances allowed.

"They served us well," Jamaad said. "I don't think we would have made it without them. Rest in peace," he said as he solemnly watched Elektra place the corpses in body bags.

***

5 May 2231

Rachel was too deep in her grief to return to the cabins, both for her own crimes and for what happened to Grant and Tuo, thus she drifted off to an extremely uneasy and disturbed sleep right in the CIC. She only noticed that the jump was over when Jamaad's voice, the most cheerful he had ever been since the battle's end, shattered her nightmares.

"WAKE UP! WE'RE IN ILSH SPACE! THERE'S THEIR SHIP NEARBY! YOU TOO, KUW!"

Kuw rubbed her eyes. "I… I caaan't believe we made it. I assume we…"

There was light in the command room again. It flickered every once in a while, but it was present. Patch and Temo's work, she assumed.

"No, Kuw, we're gonna go to the next system in a completely busted ship," Jamaad chuckled. "I'll bend the rules here. Call them up and tell them to dock, then we hand over the chip and tell them to get us back home. And you, Rachel, give us a readout, will you?"

Rachel sighed and sleepily interpreted the sensor readings.

A white dwarf, much like the one at the start of their journey. An extremely dense asteroid belt, kept in check by two gas giants, both yellow. Around the innermost gas giant rotated a massive moon that resembled a tiny Earth, with blue seas and green forests. Lots of ships, especially by white-dwarf-system standards, went between this world and the asteroid belt.

Something about this system was rather homely in an odd way. Despite the haphazard placement of city lights on the inhabited moon, like a web woven by an inebriated spider. Despite the random and seemingly unplanned trajectories of the ships.

At least this was a proper civilization and not Hell in space.

The ship Jamaad was talking about, the Qshyixv-qwaywu, broadly resembled a Terran vessel: essentially a central pillar with a crew habitat on one end and engines and radiators on the other. But unlike Terran ships, its modules were welded together from what looked to be different manufacturers. It did not look like a repair job or a makeshift ship. It was made to look like this.

"...why," Kuw said.

Jamaad cleared his throat. "The thing with the ilsh is that they agree just enough to agree to go to space and adhere well enough to survive there… but not much more than that. Design by committee, not within companies but between all involved companies, with a local noble or two chipping in. It's barely a functional system, and a new emperor gets elected every two-and-a-half years, usually accompanied by secessions of frontier systems that end up getting returned into the fold by force."

"What makes them an emperoooor, if they get elected?"

"The crown on their head," Jamaad chuckled.

The ship was much larger than the Pheidippides, and comparatively lightly armed, but with massive fuel tanks and engines to match. Too bulky to be a scout. It must have been some sort of long-distance expeditionary vessel. Perfect.

Kuw's call finally connected.

The ilsh on the other end of the screen was rather humanoid by alien standards. A body curved like that of a seahorse, though not aquatic, with the belly protruding forwards and the torso hunched backwards, with an extremely long neck holding up a head that was little more than a long, blocky muzzle tipped with a gleaming silvery horn that would make any rhino jealous. A coating of fur thicker and shaggier than that of Artur, colored the blackest of blacks, was partially shaved clean in intricate spiral patterns, and waxed to prevent regrowth, revealing pink veined skin. Two long and thick arms, like that of a gorilla, rested on the alien's chest as he slumped back in his seat, the silver hooves of his feet touching as his legs crossed in the air. Aside from the muzzle, his face had three eyes and four ears resembling that of a deer. He wore what appeared to be some kind of metallic-cloth skirt colored with garish splotches, as well as a cape that gleamed with the same. Various bands of the same colorful, glimmering material circled his limbs and torso, and on his head was a small silver crown, adorned with blue gems.

The room behind him was crammed full of others of his species, and the atmosphere seemed decidedly non-regal but rather chaotic as seats in front of control consoles were taken and vacated with frequency and irregularity.

"This is Qshyixv-qwaywu speaking, captain of his namesake ship, coordinator of his namesake realm, and co-patriarch of his namesake clan. Who are you, battered travelers from a distant land?" A synthesized, gruff voice echoed, dubbed over a cacophony of whinnies, clicks, and whistles.

Kuw took a moment to prepare herself. Nevertheless, she was weary. "This is Comms Officer Kuwkuobue Liukwelbea-bu of… the TFSMV Pheidippides of the Terran StarNavy speaking…! We are on an important mission… or rather, we were on an important mission. Do you know of the dal-ghar threat to your nation?"

Qsh squinted with all three eyes. "Yes?"

"And also how your nation lacks the resources to produce the weapons required to defend against a potential invasion?" she continued, contemplating the finery the noble was draped in and resisting the urge to slip in an 'apparently'.

"...yes?"

"We have the blueprints for an easy-to-produce IKPM," she said. "Dock and we will hand you the data card with the info."

Qsh squinted even harder. "I have two questions: why are you telling this to a random captain on patrol, and how do we know you're not brigands trying to get our guard down?"

Jamaad facepalmed in the background, and Kuw rapidly shifted in her chair to conceal said gesture. "You have two questions, but we have one answer. Look at our ship!"

Artur couldn't help but chip in from one of the seats behind. "Yeah, what kind of shit-for-brains pirates would try mugging an enemy three fucking times larger than them and with like five times the crew? WE DON'T EVEN HAVE WORKING GUNS! OR WORKING RADIATORS! If we thrust, our ship will melt like butter."

"Fine, fine!" Qsh recoiled. "Why don't you just beam us the info?"

Rachel was watching this conversation, and deep down she wanted to begin strangling Qsh. But she realized that this civilization had something of a siege mentality due to their situation, and the feeling subsided.

"Look at our ship, sir," Kuw calmly repeated. "We kindly request a rescue. We are out of coolant due to radiator leaks, there is serious structural fatigue to all parts of the vessel, our reactor is mostly nonfunctional, two crewmembers are dead. Please save us. We rescued your nation, you should rescue us in turn. Please get us to Flamerider, in the Terran Federation, or to someone who can get us there."

Qsh pressed a few buttons on the seat and neighed a few orders, or perhaps questions, to another ilsh sitting beside him just offscreen. Then he turned the translator back on.

"Please prepare your vessel for docking, then," the ilsh captain nodded.

"Thank you!" Rachel cried. "Thank you, thank you so much!"

"If I seem brief, it is because I prefer to discuss in person," Qsh said. "My patron god dislikes screens."

Jamaad sat up, easy enough in the microgravity as opposed to under acceleration. "I would like to second the thanks."

Goodbyes were exchanged, and Qsh hung up.

An empty-looking Elektra stumbled into the room. "Are we being rescued?"

"Yes," Jamaad said as he rose from his seat, then spoke through the intercom via his datapad. "This is your captain speaking. I hereby proclaim our mission… over! I believe this is the fastest crossing of the Oval in recorded history, and understandably so, given the cost of it, both sapient and material. We cannot continue to Ilsh-Vusbaw, the ilsh capital, so we will be handing over the data to this ship that agreed to rescue us. Consider yourselves dismissed."

Elektra smiled and hugged the captain. Rachel, Kuw, and Artur also joined in. And everyone except Kuw cried, and she only didn't for a lack of tear ducts. Yes, including Jamaad.

And even Artur wept. A single tear rolled down his furred cheek.

Meanwhile in the engineers' bunk room, Temo was woken up by the broadcast. He looked to his side, expecting to see his friend to his side, and sighed deeply. The slight hope of yesterday's events being a dream simply evaporated in an instant. He wondered what would be done to the corpses. It wasn't not like the body bags would be left on the ship, right?

With work canceled, he decided to take a look at the ship one last time. Temo had already started considering these utilitarian halls as something like a home. He thought, would the ship be scrapped or would the ilsh end up repairing it?

***

There were three hours left until the rescuers arrived. There were no games and no parties, as everyone simply recovered from the extreme stress of the journey. The rocky, uphill road out of Hell had ended, and the light of the mundane world, normally unnoticed, gleamed like a beam of sunlight through parting thunderclouds.

By the time the docking ports clanged together, the entire crew, all twenty-three souls, had gathered in front of the airlock.

Qsh walked, not floated, out. Apparently, his hooves were magnetized, allowing the alien to locomote normally even without gravity. He towered even over Artur, being two heads taller than the Canid and several heads taller than everyone else. Two guards, clad from head to toe in shiny metallic jumpsuits that concealed everything and contrasted with the lord's light attire, stepped beside, their gloved hands gripping laser rifles with bayonets.

The ilsh clearly had some difficulties breathing in the ship's atmosphere, but held himself well. "What happened?" his translator's voice boomed.

"We took the most direct path," Jamaad said. "We went through the most hostile empires and most barbaric systems to get here. If not for our snazzed-out FTL, optimized for getting out of systems faster after getting in, we wouldn't have made it. And yet, like the guy our ship was named for, we collapsed right after we delivered our message… Also, if you're gonna try and benefit from this, I recommend sending the data to the ilsh headquarters ASAP," he then handed Qsh the data card.

The ilsh inspected it closely, and the crew of the Pheidippides could swear that they saw all three of the pseudo-equid alien's eyes telescope out slightly as he inspected its minuscule grooves and golden contacts. He then tucked it into a pocket of his cape.

"My servant will be encrypting and sending the message to the throneworld in Ilsh-Vusbaw. You have three hours to remove all valuables and items of sentimentality from your vessel," Qsh neighed.

"What will happen to the ship itself?" Temo asked. "Will you turn it to scrap?"

Qsh's lips pulled into a grin, revealing decidedly un-equine teeth. "You have saved my people. Why would we destroy your vehicle? It will be left here, then we will tow it to the Imperial Museum. It deserves a spot right next to Koyr Ryyh, a former small moon of the peyrhyll homeworld. No, you do not have a say in this. It is a great honor."

Jamaad sighed, but saw no use in arguing with the man who would bring him and his crew home.

Rachel tilted her head. "How does that… make sense? The museum…"

"It is not a physical museum… more of an artificial asteroid belt of various large objects the current liege finds interesting. It was instituted by Vvahyk-gquykiy ten years ago, and the eleven rulers following that found the concept interesting enough to keep, with many alterations and additions of course."

"But you have elections only once in 2.5 years?" Kuw asked.

Qsh exploded in 'laughter' that sounded like a broken accordion, and so did the guards. "The guns of nobles are worth more than the electors' votes. If an emperor cannot protect himself from a good old-fashioned coup, that means he is incompetent. Do you know how I got my title?" He placed a hand on one of the guards' shoulders.

"We can guess, but I don't think we want to know," Elektra said.

Artur snorted, while Kuw just silently pulled Rachel into a hug.

"Alright," Jamaad said. "Let's get this sorted out."

The captain pulled out his datapad and activated the 'megaphone' app.

"CONSIDER THE MISSION A SUCCESS!" he blared. "NOW SCOUR YOUR BUNK ROOMS AND WORKPLACES FOR ANYTHING YOU DON'T WANT TO LEAVE CHILLING BESIDE A REAPPROPRIATED ASTEROID A HUNDRED LIGHT YEARS FROM HOME!"