A sudden burst of static from the com unit clenched in her fist caused the captain to frown.
“Davie, is someone trying to call us or do I have a concussion?”
“No, I’m reading it too. The signal is weak, wait... holy shit, Eniella?”
“Yeah, it’s the lifeboat! Hang on I’m filtering the frequency.”
Maria and Eva climbed one after another through the hatch into the cockpit.
“Hey Skipper, we can’t get past the drop-pod ready room, everything-”
“Sledge, shush.” Eniella said as she worked.
Taken aback, the blonde stood next to Donnie, any animosity between them forgotten in the midst of the crisis.
“What’s up?” She murmured.
“Don’t know yet.”
Eniella nodded suddenly.
“I have it, boosting the signal now. We should hear-”
The coms crackled to life, filled with static but the voice was still recognizable.
“Um, P-Pixie Hazard! Help! Can anybody hear me?!”
It was Bryan.
“Bryan? Where are you?!” Maria snatched the coms unit from Donnie and replied before anyone else had a chance.
“Escape pod... thing, bunch of us. Spinning really fast.” His strained words came back; “I think something’s broken.”
Donnie whirled around the seat block to face Eniella whose fingers were frantically going over the sensors.
“Jesus fuck Skip! That thing is rotating like a top, no wonder the Andromeda gave up on them! Its current trajectory has it impacting Lewanna’s atmosphere in less than two minutes.”
“Options?”
The fire control officer’s modded eyes flicked up to the captain for a second as silent understanding passed between them.
“Best we can do is follow it down and sort through the debris.” She said quietly.
With the way the escape vessel was spinning it was obviously severely damaged: entering the planet’s atmosphere was almost certainly a death sentence.
Seeing the look of anguish on Maria’s face, Donnie shook her head.
“Not good enough, what else you got?” She snapped.
“Skipper, if we try to nudge that thing off its trajectory it’ll be like sticking the Pixie’s dick in a blender!”
“Pixie don’t got a dick. Now come on Eniella, work the problem. This kind of stupid is where you live! Give me something, I don’t care how crazy. We been through too much to just watch that kid burn up now.”
It was a tense couple of seconds as the FCO tried to do as the captain asked.
Finally she turned and spoke over her shoulder towards her girlfriend.
“Davie! You think that boat has carapace?”
The pilot thought about it for a half second.
“Yeah, should be standard for a liner that size, but it won’t be very thick.”
Her robotic-armed lover was already nodding her head.
“Then I need you to get as close as you can.”
“What have you got?” Donnie demanded.
Eniella’s hands were a blur of motion as she primed one of the railguns.
“A hail-Mary at best: we get close, I clip her with one of the Javelins to try to slow her spin, then Davie can match her trajectory and keep her from splatting into Lewanna.”
Barely maintaining her cool until now, Maria had heard enough.
“That’s your plan?!” She shouted; “That’s fucking insane!”
“Stow it!” The captain shouted right back and snatched the communicator from her before giving Eniella a nod; “Do it. Reeves, match up the trajectories like she said. Maria, you wanna help? Go stuff Other Reeves into her armour. Who knows, we might need someone outside before this is over.”
The blonde looked ready to argue, but she quickly realized that there was simply no better option than the one that Eniella had proposed.
“You just threw this fish into the ocean, now you wanna scuttle the ship to get him back?” Eva remarked drily, then shrugged as if she had nothing better to do; “Come help me get dressed. But for the record: if anyone is ‘Other Reeves’, it’s Davie.”
No matter how callous she acted, she considered Maria to be her best friend, and after the conversation in the infirmary she knew how much she had grown to care for Bryan.
Meanwhile Donnie brought the coms unit back to her mouth and did her best to sound professional.
“Andromeda Promise, we’re about to do something really stupid to try and save that lifeboat, please don’t shoot us.”
There was a pregnant pause before the other commander came back in a solemn tone.
“Good luck Pixie.”
Chapter 38:
Heroics
As the Pixie chased after the doomed lifeboat, one thing became crystal clear: They weren’t going to make it before she entered Lewanna’s atmosphere.
“We’re alongside her now, but we’re going too fast.” Davie warned; “We’ll have to give her a piggy-back down Skip. Which will officially be the stupidest thing we’ve ever attempted.”
“Appreciate the optimism.” Donnie replied flatly.
“Just telling it like it is.”
“Lining up a shot now, keep her steady for me baby.” Eniella broke in.
“I’m trying, like I said, this is very stup-”
“Do your best then, because if my aim is off by even two degrees the round will rip a chunk of their armour off and kill everyone onboard.”
“No pressure then.” Donnie mumbled to herself, not wanting to distract either of them at this point.
Eniella fired, the other two women in the cockpit holding their breath while they waited on the outcome.
“Mierda, just wide. Hold her still Davie!”
But despite her protests the Pixie was beginning to vibrate from the thin gas of Lewanna’s upper atmosphere.
“We’re into the exosphere, it’s only going to get worse. You’re on borrowed time here lady-love.”
Eniella cursed again as she adjusted her aim.
She fired twice more, missing both times, then sucked in a sharp breath when her third shot landed.
“I imagine they felt that.” She paused for a second as she checked her scopes; “Okay, she’s still alive, and it’s working: that slowed her spin a lot! Gunna give her another kiss.”
Both Davie and the skipper were silent now, waiting with bated breath on the outcome of Eniella’s gambit.
She fired again, her eyelids twitching as the steadily worsening vibration of the Pixie’s descent caused her to miss once more.
With a deep breath she lined up for his next shot, the vibration almost too much at this point.
“She just needs one more decent shove...”
She fired.
A moment later she was nodding her head and smiling wide.
“That did it! She’s wobbling like crazy now so I definitely can’t risk another but she won’t shred the Pixie anymore. Probably.”
Donnie patted her on the shoulder.
“Reeves get underneath them, how far to Lewanna?”
“We’re in the thermosphere now, we’ll hit the Karman Line in twenty seconds.”
Not for the first time since they hatched this scheme, Donnie had second thoughts.
“We’re in position, it’s now or never Skip.” The pilot said expectantly.
With time running out, the captain shook off her reservations.
“Do it!”
Davie got her hands in place on the flight controls, then activated the ship’s intercom.
“All hands brace for impact! We’re gunna feel this. Eight seconds.”
“Skipper, get in my lap, those handles aren’t going to cut it!” Eniella called over her shoulder.
Donnie leapt on top of her without complaint.
“Oof, you need to lay off the butter. Fatty.”
“Three seconds!”
Eniella’s robotic arm wrapped around Donnie’s midsection, firmly holding her in plac
e against the harnessed woman.
“We survive this I’m going to feed you a stick of butter you cun-”
A resounding crash made their bones shake as the Pixie lurched under the weight of the lifeboat’s impact. If Eniella hadn’t been holding her in place Donnie would have flown up and hit the ceiling, as it was it felt like someone had hit her in the pelvis with an iron bar.
Eniella had it worse though when the back of the captain’s head smacked into her face with a grizzly crunch.
“Puta madre my nose!”
Her cursing could be heard even over the blaring alarms screaming at them as Davie frantically struggled to get a handle on the Pixie’s descent.
“Tell me a story Reeves!” Donnie called out while gripping Eniella’s arm tight.
The ship was shaking worse than any drop they’d ever performed, but they weren’t dead yet.
“The added weight is an enormous strain, thrusters already at maximum!” Davie said tensely; “I’m holding attitude for the drop, but barely, and if the Pixie flips over we’ll spin in and it won’t just be the lifeboat that bites it!”
“Tell me shit like that once it’s over!” Donnie complained.
“You asked! Now kindly shut up!” The redhead countered before activating the ship’s emergency channel; “Mayday mayday mayday! This is the Pixie Hazard, we caught the lifeboat but we are going in. I repeat: mayday-”
As the pilot continued to repeat her emergency message to the Andromeda Promise in orbit as well as the planet at large, Donnie turned in place to check on Eniella.
“How about you sweetness? You still with us?”
The FCO groaned into her hand as it cupped her face, blood streaming down her chin.
“Billy better hab bore nanites!”
“I’ll take that as a yes. They say a crooked nose adds character.”
“Blow be!”
Donnie laughed as the Pixie continued to shake them around inside her. The absurdity of their latest situation was too much for her not to.
Like Davie had warned, the ride down got pretty rough, but they reached the planet’s surface without any major issues, landing heavily in a clearing in the middle of Lewanna’s wilderness accompanied by the sounds of straining bulkheads and the staccato hiss of heated metal being cooled by a light rain.
Once the ship settled Donnie scrambled out of Eniella’s lap to get to work, ensuring that the white-knuckled pilot was okay before asking the pressing question.
“How’s the lifeboat?”
Davie checked one of her consoles before responding.
“Cracked like an egg.”
“Fuck.”
The redhead slumped into her seat and her cheeks billowed out as she let out a hearty breath.
“Not necessarily, she’s all tore up but I think the mess helped her stay on top of the Pixie. Might look worse than it is.”
“Only one way to tell for sure.” Donnie activated the coms; “Billy, casualty report?”
“Everybody’s fine in tac-ops. Eva was in the airlock, but she was in her armour so she’ll live.”
“Says you, I bit my tongue.” The redhead cut in sullenly.
Ignoring her, Billy continued.
“We’re unstrapping now and heading outside, I’ll need all hands out there for triage.”
“We’re on our way.” The skipper responded as Davie and Eniella unstrapped themselves and prepared to leave the cockpit; “Sorry Eniella, your busted beak is low priority.”
“Blow be.” The pink-haired woman repeated unhappily.
“You keep saying that. Let’s go save some lives.”
It took them a half an hour to get the survivors out of the wrecked lifeboat, by which point help had arrived from the Andromeda Promise in orbit as well as from the nearest settlements on the colony planet.
There was a tense moment when a number of guns were leveled at the armoured Eva, but Billy managed to avoid any unnecessary drama by barking orders at the incoming medics to keep everyone’s priorities straight.
By some miracle the worst injury the survivors had sustained was a badly broken femur, the proud owner of which was whisked away aboard the Andromeda’s dropship with a trio of people working on her.
As it turned out the escape craft held the surviving crew of the doomed Stardust, with one arm in a sling the emotional captain shook the hands of the Pixie’s crew vigorously for twice saving the lives of his people.
Meanwhile the second she and Eva got him out of the lifeboat, Donnie snagged the frazzled but unharmed Bryan and stuffed him into her office aboard the Pixie before coming back out to help with the others.
The survivors were so grateful for still being alive that none of them missed him in the chaos.
As the last of the Stardust’s crew were carted off by Lewanna’s first responders, Donnie handed the weary doctor a bottle of water.
“How did Bryan even end up on that boat anyways?” Billy asked as she downed a good third of the beverage.
The captain had managed a brief conversation with him when she had taken him back aboard and had caught the broad strokes of his latest misadventure so she was able to answer.
“He gave up his seat to another passenger, a woman naturally. Chivalrous little shit must have a horseshoe up his ass to be so lucky.”
Now that the wounded were tended to, a stern looking fellow whose uniform was buttoned right up to his chin approached the wearied pair.
“Which one of you is Captain Donjoon Nelson?”
Evidently it was just as the man from Lewanna Central had said: she had some explaining to do.
Billy finked immediately, pointing at her and throwing her to the bureaucratic wolves.
“Do I have to be?” Donnie sighed.
“I’m afraid so.” The uptight man replied with a stern glare.
She told the truth, mostly, about the two ships trying to rob them after their salvage operation on Kentis, and about Eniella recording their reactor signatures.
As for why the Stardust was targeted... nobody thought to ask the heroes of the hour who had risked everything to save so many lives.
Which was just as well because none of them had a good answer for that particular question.
All told of the Stardust’s twenty-five crew, seven were killed in orbit. Meanwhile thirteen passengers were missing and presumed dead, sucked into vacuum when the hostile ship broke through the passenger liner’s hull.
Twenty dead and twice that severely injured.
Just numbers to most, but Donnie felt the sting of them nonetheless, even knowing there was nothing more she could have done.
Later on the motivation behind the aggressive action was determined to be desperation: hungry pirates, tired of subsisting in orbit of Kentis, decided to seek out a juicy target in a populated sector.
At least that was the most popular theory according to the local holo-feeds.
With both vessels destroyed by the Pixie’s Dobermans, there was little evidence to prove otherwise.
But Donnie had her suspicions.
Epilogue:
Destroyer of Worlds
With the immediate crisis over, Donnie and her crew politely declined the numerous offers of hospitality dirtside in favour of remaining on the Pixie.
Sure she wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry just yet, and she was canted at a funny angle in the mossy clearing, but she was still home.
Once again Bryan found himself in the captain’s office, listening as she outlined what she suspected had just happened and why.
“This whole scheme reeks of black-ops. Outerlight is cleaning up the professor’s mess. That’s why those ships were at Kentis. They weren’t interested in us, or the transport, they were after the Junker frigate. And you.”
“Oh.”
She nodded at his flummoxed response.
“Yeah. That’s the word for it. When you began using your accounts again they knew right where to find you. And given what they just did, I think it’s safe to say
they have no interest in retrieving their project alive, if that was ever their intent. Lucky for you, if not us, we stumbled into the middle of their op and ruined everything. I very strongly suspect that Jonathan Demarco was part of it actually. He’s much more likely to work with a ‘civilized’ corp than a Junker clan.”
“I don’t understand.” Bryan said breathlessly.
Donnie clicked her tongue as she continued to lay it out for him.
“Never mind their investment in the research the turned you into... whatever: to Outerlight you are breathing proof of their attempts at facilitating corporate espionage, however unintentionally. Billy wasn’t kidding about the stakes there. They would kill us all to keep this shit quiet. As it is, they lost the team they sent for cleanup, so if you don’t want them to send another...”
She trailed off, waiting on him to make the tiny leap of logic.
His eyes closed and his head bowed when he made the connection.
“I need to be dead.”
“That’s the short of it.” Donnie said with some sympathy: “At least you already have a leg up on that, because as far as anyone knows you didn’t make it off of the Stardust, which by the way is a terrible name for a spaceship.”
Despite the trouble he had brought into her lap, she didn’t fault him for it: he was as much a victim of circumstance as they were.
He drew in a deep breath to steady his nerve, surprising her somewhat with his direct gaze.
“Okay, I’m dead. But what do I do now?”
She pursed her lips and held his gaze for a few seconds.
“You disappear. For real. Safest play for you.”
“My family-”
“Safer for them too kid. Regardless of the survivor list from the Stardust, Outerlight isn’t going to just wipe their hands and call it done. You need to keep away for now.”
He closed his eyes as a single tear escaped to trickle down his cheek.
“It will break my mother’s heart to think I died.”
Despite the complicated feelings he had regarding her complicity in Professor Calvin’s experiments, she was still his mom.
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