39

She felt grateful that Zapasnoy's air conditioning worked as she ran on to the somewhat smaller, more technological bridge. All the wires and circuit boards had become returned to their proper places within the consoles, the ship performing repairs from the last time Friss had ripped everything out. Again. Demi paused as a small repair drone wheeled out before her, squeaked and trundled away.

"Zapasnoy. Status of ship's systems." Demi watched as Briyun skipped to the side to avoid the repair drone. On the way, she had managed to, at least, wear her beach shorts.

"All systems operating within nominal parameters." The faintly sexy, for some reason breathy, female voice came from the ship's hidden speakers. "Except the medical bay. Examination bed one is still somewhat flat."

"It was like that when I found it?" Briyun dropped into the captain's chair and spun it around and around. "I swear?"

Demi didn't bother answering, or accusing, Briyun. She knew Bognrd's sheer size had buckled that examination bed. What she needed now was the ship's navigation systems to work. A quick download from Gal-Net, working perfectly now, and she soon had a good idea how to work the ship. Technically. She knew where all the buttons and switches and dials were, and what they were for, but that was no replacement for experience.

Her hands moved as though someone else controlled them, following the instruction video she had found on some obscure Gal-Net location, and she prepared for departure from Lodka. She felt a twinge of remorse that she was leaving Friss, Lap and Bognrd to the ravages of the combined fleets surrounding Lodka, but she pushed that aside. They had made their decisions and Demi still felt she had a lot to live for. Well, perhaps not a lot, but some. A few things to live for. Staying alive, for one.

"Zapasnoy. Clear all moorings. Prepare for departure." Demi considered using her implant to run the systems, but, sometimes, the hands moved faster and more intuitively. A mind tended to wander in tense situations. "All engines to maximum. Set course for ..."

She paused. She had literally no idea where she could run to. Her eyes fell upon the safe deposit box that she had placed on top of the console. Perhaps, one day, after she had cleared her name, she could return home. To her brother and sister, if not as a sibling they would remember, then perhaps as a friend. A friend who cared deeply for them. She shook her head. That was why she didn't use her implant. Too many distractions.

Zapasnoy shuddered as the docking clamps retracted and Lodka's manipulator arms attached, carrying the smaller corvette to the hangar bay doors. The shuddering wasn't only due to that, though. With a flick of her implant, she connected to Lodka's external cameras and saw a blazing battle occurring outside. Every ship appeared to be firing at every other ship. If nothing else, the white hot projectiles, plasma cannon fire and missiles certainly looked pretty. Pity about the inevitable loss of life.

"You know, I've led an exciting life? Hunting rodents? Going places? Sewers?" Briyun still spun the captain's chair around and around. She looked a little dizzy, but at least she had added the beach shirt to the clothing she now wore. "But I've never been shot at after stealing something from a bank in a black hole? You guys? You make this fun?"

There was no possible answer to that. Demi couldn't possibly call any of it 'fun'. Well, not all of it. Some things, she supposed, could be classed as 'fun'. If she squinted and tilted her head to look at it all from an odd angle. It certainly hadn't been boring. Again, her mind had wandered and she brought herself back to the situation at hand. Escaping the brutal battle.

She switched on Zapasnoy's view screen, watching as Lodka extended her manipulator arms outside of her hull, and then Zapasnoy became released. Lodka wasn't looking very well at all. The skin of the organic ship looked flushed and sickly, parts of her hull had fresh pockmarks from the strikes of missiles and projectiles. She listed to the side, as though the pair of legs and perfectly shaped derriere were reclining on a sofa. Meanwhile, the battle around her continued.

"Gal-Navy corvette!" Someone had opened communications and Demi couldn't reach the controls to shut it off. "That ship is reported as stolen. Heave to and prepare for boarding. All systems will now come under Gal-Navy control."

They weren't lying, either. Every display beneath Demi's fingers blacked out, the controls no longer answering to her orders. The very reason why Friss had torn out so many systems was to stop this very situation happening. Other displays still worked, but she had no control over them. One of those displays showed something a little disturbing. If she allowed herself to panic, just a little, she would consider it gravely disturbing. She allowed herself to panic.

Leaving Lodka had given Zapasnoy a modicum of momentum. Momentum that, along with Lodka's drifting, had brought the ship perilously close to the very edge of the black hole's gravity well. Any further and they would begin to fall in, toward the black hole, with no chance of escape. Zapasnoy did not have the technology to compensate for the black hole's terrifyingly violent natural forces. Demi had to think of something. And fast.

"Briyun! You're good at breaking things, right?" Demi turned to the stoat-like woman, stopping the captain's chair spinning and stepping back to avoid any vomit that might fly her way. "I need you to start pulling out all the wires in the navigation console. Everything that looks important."

"Right-o?" Briyun stepped down from the captain's chair, stumbled wildly to the side, reached for something to support her, found nothing to support her and fell to the floor, face first. "In a second?"

The Gal-Navy had left communications open and, while Briyun crawled toward the navigation console, Demi reached out with her implant, piggy-backing off the signal to reach working systems upon the Gal-Navy ship. It strained her. She hadn't used the implant at such distances, but she had no other options. She connected to the other ship's communications and opened a wide reception channel.

"People of the Coalition of Lovingly Inspired Totalitarians' rag-tag fleet of Demizens! It is I, your glorious leader!" It sounded a little overdramatic, but it always seemed to work for Friss. "I urge you now to protect that organic ship, it is vital, vital, for the revulsion! To War Garbler Tonbush, Bognrd is on that ship. If you don't help to protect it, you'll never taste his cooking again! Brenda, it was a trading card! Show some perspective!"

"Do you think that'll work?" Flat on her back, beneath the navigation console, Briyun tugged at a bunch of wires. "I mean, I liked it? Statesmanlike? Stateswomanlike?"

"I don't know." She reached out with her implant, checking to see whether Briyun had pulled out the right wires to give her back control. She hadn't. "I hope so."

On Zapasnoy's far less flesh-like view screen, Demi could see a change within the course of the battle. The rag-tag Demizens' fleet now surrounded Lodka, but they were still heavily outgunned by the Gal-Navy fleet. Even with the addition of Tonbush's drone fleet, Demi didn't see how any of them could win. The Gal-Navy were too professional, too well-equipped. Ships were becoming nothing but glowing wrecks, foundering and adrift.

"You will owe me for this, Demi, dearest." The faintly mechanical, perfectly modulated sensuous voice of Brenda came over the speakers. "We should never have annulled the marriage. I do so enjoy our little arguments."

"You were married to a moon?" Briyun popped her head out from beneath the console. "Nice?"

"We were young. Reckless." Demi shrugged. "It was Hyper-Vegas. It would never have worked out. I mean, she's an enormous AI moon and I'm not."

Regardless of that history, Brenda's AI asteroids turned on the Gal-Navy fleet. Demi wasn't certain it could turn the tide, but it may save the lives of Friss, Lap, Bognrd and Lodka. Except ... one Gal-Navy ship had slid behind Lodka. A quick scan of the entire battlefield showed that that ship didn't come within sightline of any of the other ships and they had locked weapons on Lodka. Demi heard a satisfied 'aha' from Briyun and she felt some control of Zapasnoy return to her implant. Weapons systems and wormhole drive.

It felt odd to control such a machine, it almost felt as though she were a part of Zapasnoy. So unlike connecting to anything else, as though the designers had anticipated someone with an implant one day connecting to it. Regardless, if they survived, she could test that thought later. For now, she targeted the Gal-Navy ship with Zapasnoy's railguns and opened fire.

Brilliant, dotted lines of white hot metal flew from Zapasnoy, lancing outward, scarring the blackness of space as the projectiles raced out toward the Gal-Navy ship. From here, Demi saw the projectiles ripping the surface of the ship apart, atmosphere escaping from the holes that she had punched into the structure. The Gal-Navy ship began to list, weapons lock flickering off. But using the railguns without engines to compensate had pushed Zapasnoy faster toward the black hole's gravity well.

Still without control of the main engines, Demi could do nothing to arrest their momentum and, as soon as they passed the threshold of the gravity well, Zapasnoy became ripped away from normal space, the battle not even a speck on the view screen.

"What do we do now, Demo?" Briyun lifted herself from the floor, knowing it was pointless to rip anything else from the console. "I know a few good drinking songs? If we had beer? Maybe it'll transport us back to better times?"

"Transport." Something clicked in Demi's mind. "Like the Flesh-Routes. The Meeps. Wormholes! The wormhole drive is working, right? What if we fire it up? An Emergency Wormhole Jump?"

"Inside a black hole? Which, I have to grudgingly admit actually exist, but still don't understand why they're called 'black holes'?" Briyun scratched her temple, doing a remarkable impression of someone thinking. "Risky? Deadly? Let's just sing the beer songs? I'm sure everything will be fine?"

"Yeah. No. Zapasnoy. Prepare Emergency Wormhole Jump on my mark. Three. Two." She could hear the ship straining and creaking as the stresses within the black hole tried to rip Zapasnoy apart. "One. Mark! Via la revulsion!"