Byung-Ho was busy with the ship’s controls after that. “At least they’re shooting to disable, not destroy,” he muttered. Before I could breathe a sigh of relief, he added, “Don’t get too comfortable. They’ll zap us both if they board.”
My stomach clenched and my palms felt clammy. Four ships against one were bad odds if they caught us unable to Gate. Even I knew that. And the Red Azalea wasn’t exactly a battle cruiser. The fact that the enemy fought as a quartet was a bad omen as well. Four was an unlucky number—it signified death. Mercenaries went around in groups of four to strike terror into their victims.
“Can we signal for help?” I asked.
“Already done,” Byung-Ho said. “There ought to be a battle cruiser on patrol near this Gate. I just hope they’re not busy elsewhere.”
After scanning the onboard computer’s help guide, I located the cockpit controls for the Red Azalea’s defense systems. They had to be better than nothing. As far as I could tell, I would just need to flip some levers, tell the system which target to prioritize, and let the computer do the calculations.
“This isn’t so bad,” I said to Byung-Ho when our defenses took out an incoming missile in a bright flash. Even though I knew better than to expect to hear anything in space, it was mildly disappointing when the explosion was silent. The scan system only emitted a sad little blip to mark the occasion.
“Check our ammunition level,” Byung-Ho said tersely. “The Red Azalea has upgraded defenses, but mercs are faster and meaner. They can afford to wait for us to exhaust our antimissiles. At least they’re not likely to destroy us—a bucket like this is worth more to them intact.”
So we were sitting ducks. My hands clenched and unclenched as I searched the dash for a display that would tell me how much ammo we had left. Found it! To my dismay, the bar was draining toward empty at a frightening rate.
“Don’t we have any shields?” I asked.
Byung-Ho hesitated. “We do, and they’re on, but they’ve tended to glitch ever since— Yikes!” He shoved a lever to one side. Dizziness overcame me as the Red Azalea veered away from the latest burst of fire. The ship’s maneuvers got worse before they got better. I wondered if I’d ever get used to the sudden accelerations.
“Oh no!” I cried as a burst of violet fire hit us in the side. Several alarms went off, deafening me. Five different emergency status screens came up on my control panels. I inspected the reddest one, which claimed that our life support had been hit.
Byung-Ho swore when he saw that. “We’ll have to do some quick repairs. Go back to the engine room and get the computer to help you put it into Emergency Mode. The automated diagnostics will take it from there. I’ll tell the system to give you access.”
At least the name “Emergency Mode” would be easy to remember.
“And use the handholds, or you might get knocked about. Good luck!” After that he had no more attention to spare for me.
I gulped as I unharnessed myself from the safety restraints. I didn’t know what scared me more: the Red Azalea getting blown up, or our being boarded. If only I could will the ship to fly faster, away from the mercenaries’ clutches.
My head swam. Our artificial gravity was fluctuating. And I’d magicked up regular boots, not magnetic ones, out of habit. While I could have fixed that, I didn’t have time to get used to walking in magnetic boots.
I caught one of the handhold straps just before the ship moved again, but still got bruised when I was abruptly flung into a wall. I concentrated on gripping the handholds and placing my toes in the footholds so I didn’t get knocked around some more. My clothes were drenched in sweat by the time I made it through the ship’s midsection to the engine room at the back.
A hatch separated the room from the rest of the ship. Behind it I could hear an almost musical thrumming. I pressed my palm against the keypad, worrying that it wouldn’t accept me. It would be ironic if I couldn’t do my job because I couldn’t get in. Byung-Ho had been as good as his word, however. After a hair-raising shriek of metal on metal, the door slid open.
The engine room was the loudest part of the ship, although not in an unpleasant way. I almost released a handhold because I was gawking at the fantastic arrays of crystals and the rows of glowing display screens like the ones in the cockpit, only more elaborate. The crystals gave the ship the ability to open Gates and protect itself while in Gate space. The more mundane fusion reactor powered the maneuver drive and everything else on the ship, including life support.
“Computer,” I said, “how do I put the engine in Emergency Mode?” I clung like a burr to the side of the room as the ship rolled. I was starting to get used to the sudden maneuvers, though that wasn’t exactly a good thing.
One of the panels lit up. “Damage has occurred to the life-support, shield, and navigation subsystems,” the computer said in a friendly voice. “Which subsystem would you like to prioritize?”
“Life support, please,” I said.
Another alarm joined the ones that were already going off. I could barely hear myself think. “Uh—could you make those less loud?”
“I’m sorry,” the computer said, still in that friendly voice, “alarm volume parameters are fixed according to Thousand Worlds starship standards by the Fifth Accord of—”
I was sorry I’d asked. “Never mind,” I said. “Just tell me how to deal with life support.”
The computer jabbered a list of procedures to follow. I had to tell it to slow down and give me an overview of what went where. I hated the delay, but randomly pressing buttons wouldn’t be useful, either.
Captain Hye, or Byung-Ho, or whoever normally dealt with the engine, had stowed a toolkit in a side compartment. I opened the kit eagerly and hooked it to my belt loops so the tools wouldn’t drift away or, worse, rain down on my head during maneuvers. Most of the gadgets looked familiar. For the first time, I was grateful for all the things around home that had always needed fixing.
I narrowed down the problem to one regulator that had been damaged by the mercs’ fire. The details were a little murky, but the more I tinkered with the regulator, the more I realized the basics weren’t so different from those of the ecofilter system we used in our dome back on Jinju. Given how often it had broken down, I’d had a lot of experience with it. Maybe I wasn’t a qualified technician, but I knew a few tricks.
I wondered if we’d ever escape the mercenaries. My work settled into a nerve-racking routine. Every time something broke, I’d follow the computer’s instructions, tunneling down through menus, rerouting damaged functions to backups, and so on, all the while hanging on so I wouldn’t get smashed when the ship jerked. My fingers ached. Still, I couldn’t afford to relax.
The comm system crackled to life. “Good work,” Byung-Ho said over the speaker.
I appreciated the compliment, but I wasn’t under any illusions that I’d fixed everything wrong with the Red Azalea. I’d just bought us a little more time. Whether it would be enough for help to reach us was another question.
“What would have happened if I hadn’t?” I asked Byung-Ho.
He didn’t answer, and I gulped. Had something gone wrong in the cockpit? Were we now drifting aimlessly, easy pickings for the mercs?
It didn’t take me long to make my way back to the front of the ship now that I’d gotten used to moving around in flickering gravity.
Byung-Ho waved a hand when he heard my approach and sat up straighter. He kept his attention fixed on the screens. I retook the copilot’s seat.
“I managed to turn on the shields again after they glitched,” Byung-Ho said. “That’ll keep the mercs at bay for a while.” He turned to look at me. “Seriously, good job back there. You sure you’ve never been on a ship before?”
I glowed at his praise, but we didn’t have time for chitchat. With my fox’s nose I couldn’t escape the rank stench of his nervous sweat. He was trying to mask his fear—for my sake.
“Has anyone responded to our call for help?” I asked. Communications frequencies were much slower than travel via Gate and only reliable for reaching people in the immediate vicinity, which was why long-distance messages were conveyed by courier. The local space station should have heard us and relayed the distress signal, but it was an open question as to whether anyone in a position to help had detected it.
“No luck yet,” Byung-Ho said.
That “no luck” sealed our fate.
Another blast took the Red Azalea from behind, according to the displays. The shield strength indicators flickered red, then plummeted almost all the way down to zero. Through the viewport I glimpsed sparks flowering out ahead of us. If our situation hadn’t been so desperate, it would have looked beautiful.