[Avia]
As we anxiously awaited the charging frigate to fire upon us, an unexpected message came into the long dormant com site created with my childhood companions, Damon and Lael. Hunted as Aberrants like me, I had feared them captured or dead.
Damon: Avia, what have you done?
At least Damon still lived. But why had he contacted me now after so long silent? And what did his message mean? No time to ponder that now.
Gripping Zach's hand, I mentally hailed the frigate one last time in vain effort to defer our destruction. But still came no response.
Zach... My hunter, then my rescuer, now my partner. He truly cared for me.
My watery eyes blurred his face. "And I'm glad I met you, too," I professed in a shaky voice.
"At least we ended Project Asclepius," Zach said while squeezing my hand. I didn't have the heart to tell him that project implementation had already begun, or that I kept a copy of the research data in my head.
As the frigate passed by, the pulse cannons fired, like a broadside from an ancient sailing warship. Zach tried to evade, veering upward, but several plasma bolts struck true.
With thunderous booms, the shuttle lurched sideways, pitching down. I grunted as the seat restraints tightened across my chest, keeping me from flailing across the deck, and a sickening dizziness overtook me.
Under its own momentum, the frigate zipped past. Red lights flashed and alarms buzzed across the flickering control panel before us. The holographic tactical display disappeared, and for a moment, the bridge lights went out. Sparks danced across a blown-out panel.
My dulled mind spun — it took some time for my shaken cybernetic implants to realign. A stiff wind ruffled my hair. But fortunately, the automatic hull repair system filled the bridge hull breach with hardening foam.
"The number one fusion reactor is down," Zach yelled over the noise as his fingers raced across the control panel. "Emergency reactor vent initiated." With a button push, he silenced the annoying alarms, then turned to me. "Avia, are you hurt?"
Clamping shut my eyes, I put a hand to a pounding head. "I'll be okay. Just a few moments." This wasn't the first time my cybernetics suffered a concussion equivalent.
"The frigate is coming around for another pass." Zach fired the number two fusion thruster and adjusted course directly toward the frigate. "No use making it easy for them."
But we both knew it wouldn't make any difference.
The moments ticked down as the frigate approached. Reaching across, I took up Zach's hand again. He gave me a smile and a slight nod in return. Heart pounding, I held a breath as the frigate passed.
But nothing happened.
The frigate did not fire on us, rather, it just flew on into the abyss, leaving us behind.
"I don't understand," I said, shaking my head. "Why didn't it finish us off?"
"That's a question for later," Zach replied as he scrolled through the control screens. "For now, let's not question our luck and get the hell out of here. The stardrive is still intact and we're almost clear of the gravity well."
Zach set a course back to the Taurus Space Station where we had left the Freebird. After a warmup period, he engaged the stardrive, and the shuttle jerked and rumbled. The warp speed transition should have been smoother.
Technically, we did not exceed the universal light speed limit, rather the drive warped space-time so that from external perspective, we did. Sort of a relativistic loop-hole. From inside the ship, it appeared like we flew through a long tunnel made of blurry starlight.
Safely away, Zach grinned. "Not bad, huh?"
Now that my cybernetic implants had returned to full function, I accessed the ship's diagnostics. "Umm, don't celebrate yet. The fusion fuel tank pressure is falling. We must have a leak."
"Killjoy." Zach mumbled, letting out a long breath. "Okay, any clue where the leak is?"
"The pressure is okay downstream of the regulator, so it must be on the tank side."
Zach pulled up the shuttle schematics on a view-screen and scrolled through them. "Good. I should be able to access the tank without going outside."
The ship power room was behind and below the cargo bays, accessed through a hatch. On one side, a tubular fusion reactor hummed in generator mode, powering the stardrive that resembled a large black cube in the room center. The other fusion reactor sat idle, and red lights blinked on its control panel. On the nearby wall, globs of hardened gray foam filled two hull breaches. I sure hoped they would hold.
"The tanks should be down here," Zach said, pointing.
He removed two plas-steel clips, then with a grunt and bulging arm muscles, lifted away a section of the metal-grated floor, revealing a long cylindrical tank within a maze of metal tubing. It still amazed me how a small tank provided enough fuel to power a starship.
Zach shimmied down the hole to his knees and shined a flashlight along the tank. "There's the leak." The light illuminated a cracked tube fitting near the tank. He looked up and said, "See if you can find a portable weld kit. Should be in the tool chests."
After opening a few chest lids, I found the welder, which looked like an elongated handgun with a plas-steel rod feed. I snapped in a power cell, then lowered it down to Zach while lying on the floor grate. "You'll need this, too," I said while lowering a face shield.
"Right. Thanks."
I turned my eyes away from the bright blue-white weld flashes.
"On the plus side," he explained while working, "the tank is inside, so we don't need a spacesuit. But on the minus side, a big enough leak would displace cabin oxygen and we die of hypoxia."
"That's a big minus side."
"Yeah." More flashes painted the compartment in dazzling light. "There, that should do it. How is the pressure holding now?"
Accessing the ship data, I watched the tank pressure for a few moments. "It's steady. I think you got it, Zach. Where did you learn to fix starships?"
"I didn't," he said while poking his upper torso above the floor deck. "But I used to race hover-sleds. We built them ourselves."
On my knees, I leaned toward Zach and placed a kiss on his cheek. My lips tingled as I pulled away. "You are useful to have around."
A signature dimpled bad-boy grin erupted on his face, causing my heart to skip a beat. "I have my moments."
Once settled back on the bridge, I used my cybernetics to do complex navigation calculations. The results were not encouraging. "I hate to be a killjoy again, but we don't have enough fuel to reach Taurus Station. And before you suggest it, the long-range com transmitter is fried, so we can't call for a ride."
Zach tightened his lips. "Where can we go?"
I accessed the star-map in my head, then projected it using the shuttle holographic display. A green triangle represented our ship in the middle of a translucent sphere showing our maximum calculated range. "This sector of space has few habitable places. The only option is a partially terraformed planet named Eden." A red circle blinked around a particular star near our range limit and a telemetry text box formed next to it. "And we'll have to reduce relative velocity to make it.'
"Eden, huh? Some kind of paradise?"
"There's not much information in the Federation database, only that the terraform project was abandoned as uneconomical. But supposedly, it is habitable."
With Zach's agreement, I mentally adjusted course and relative speed. "At reduced velocity, the journey would take over eight days." Another concern crossed my mind. We had left Zach's star-cat on the Freebird. "Umm, will Bubba be okay?"
"Don't worry," he answered. "Bubba knows how to operate the auto-feeders, and there's plenty of food and water."
"Good." Pausing for a moment and biting my lip, I formulated my next words. "There's something else I need to tell you, Zach."
"Hmm?"
"About Project Asclepius... The mind-altering nano-bot trials are already underway."
Zach ran a hand through bushy hair and completed the thought. "Would that mean they could reverse engineer the bots control code and recover part of the research?"
"Right, and--" As I paused again, Zach lifted an eyebrow. "I copied all the research data into my cyber implants."
Zach's mouth dropped, and a tightness formed in my chest as he stared. "Avia, what have you done? Now, Omni-Corp will spare no expense tracking you down, and me, too. Didn't I tell you not to do that?"
Unable to hold his gaze, I dipped my eyes. "They would come after us, regardless," I reasoned in a weak voice, wrapping arms around myself.
"How could you be so stupid?" Zach fumed. He poked my forehead, making me flinch with a gasp. "Omni-Corp is driven by profit. They would have eventually written off our pursuit as uneconomical, but now, they will be truly relentless. You may have doomed us, Avia."
Casting my eyes down, I said, "I'm sorry, but I had to. Maybe I can find a way to counteract the nano-bots. I have to try." I knew this was the right thing to do, and I didn't need Zach's approval, but even so, his angry disappointment cut deep.
"What's done is done." Zach sighed, shaking his head in resignation. "But if this planet, Eden, turns out to be literally a dead end, it won't matter, anyway."