Chapter 4: Math with Extreme Consequences

“Come on, dead girl,” Bradley yelled, sprinting down the hall towards the control room. I spun and tripped over the over-sized Revaulo boots of the space suit. Flailing about on the ground for a moment, I pulled the broken piece of life-saving junk off me. It crashed to the ground of the airlock just as alarms came blaring to life.

“Alert. Hull damage detected. Anticipated asteroid impact,” the AI said over the speaker system.

“I’s not an asteroid, you idiot. It’s a bunch of frozen dead aliens,” I yelled back. The AI must have heard and understood me because the blue flashing light of an asteroid attack went out and the red danger alert replaced it. I scrambled back to my feet and, grabbing my staff, raced off down the hall after Bradley.

The control room was in the center of the ship. As I ran through the open door, he was just finishing up firing the engines. “We can’t go anywhere with those things clinging to the sides of the ship. We’ll get quarantined the second we jump.”

“I’ll shoot’em if you shake’em.”

He smirked at me. Bradley was really enjoying himself sitting at the edge of death, a million marks from the nearest safe haven. “I like your style dead girl,” he said, and kicked the final lever over to release the gears keeping the ship parked. He sprinted off towards the cockpit and I turned and went for the arsenal room.

The computer was already up and tracking a half-dozen red squares across the outside of the hull. I didn’t waste any time. Putting my staff down against the wall, I jumped into the chair with its ripped and taped-over fabric. It wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t meant to be. It was meant to kill things. Well, not the chair specifically, but the twin-sticked hair trigger arsenal rig in front of it.

The AI came back on over the speakers. “Alert. Hull damage significant. Repair immediately.”

“I’m working on it, ol’ girl,” I replied, more to myself than the AI. Gripping the sticks in both of my hands, I pulled them towards me, engaging the system to load rounds into the external guns, and disengaging the safeties. At the same moment, I felt the soft vibration of the engines shifting to push us out away from the Revaulo ship and, more importantly, away from the debris field filled with stupid liver-eating dead people.

The console screen exploded out towards me in an immersive holographic projection. I could spin around in the chair in any direction I wanted and aim those twin sticks of flaming metal at the targets. I was a necromancer by trade and an unfortunate twist of fate. Magic was this nebulous concept a person had to feel out with their emotions. For that reason, I didn’t get a chance to sit down with cold, hard science much. It was oddly cathartic to take the triggers into my hands and send a needle-thin spike of pressurized metal through the lizard-zombie’s chest. That’s all you really had to do to make guns work in space. Put a little pressure behind them and launch just a little bit of mass really fast. After all the vague nonsense required for me to work my magic, guns were just math with extreme consequences.

I pulled on those twin sticks of metaphorical dynamite and watched more of the red alert squares disappear off the hull. I was making progress, but not fast enough. The whole damn horde of zombies had heard the dinner bell now, and they were latching onto anything they could find and digging in. That was when Bradley did a spinning maneuver that had my stomach hitting my head from centripetal force. We spun faster and faster, always picking up more and more acceleration. The gravity drives gave out under the strain, causing me suddenly to shift sideways in the chair. My staff flipped end-over-end to clang into the hull on the outside wall of the arsenal room.

This is why I always strap in. Never trust a pilot to fly steadily.

“Alert. Hull damage critical. Seal puncture imminent. Seek shelter immediately.”

“Shut up, you stupid computer. Can’t you see I’m working on it?”

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“Progress noted, but insufficient. Seek shelter immediately.”

“It was rhetorical. By the stars, we need to get you upgraded if we ever make it out of here.”

The guns clicked empty, and it really was the worst time to need a reload. There, on the edge of the display, I spotted one of the Revaulos standing with her back to a ripped up piece of our hull. She was using it as a backstop to keep her from flying off into space while she continued to tear at our exterior. Finally, with the guns back up and going, I aimed as well as I could with the nausea and tunnel vision closing in. Firing, I watched in what felt like slow motion as the tiny piece of metal missed the zombie. Instead, it hit the-backstopping hull and cracked it loose. Without its defense against the accelerating spin of the ship, the confused Revaulo flitted off into the inky blackness.

I breathed a sigh of relief, having seen no other red moving squares along the hull. I really shouldn’t have gotten ahead of myself. Never just assume it’s over because you’ll be really upset when you’re wrong. Remember that piece of the hull I shot off? Yeah, it took a sizable chunk of the interior seal with it too. Our red alarms changed to green life support alerts.

I jumped out of the firing chair, not even bothering to power down the console, and really hoping nothing bumps the controls as Bradley slowed down our spin.

It would be just my luck to get shot with my own gun from outside the ship.

I found the leak. It wasn’t that far away, and the thought that if that stupid zombie had only been clever enough to tear through a little further up the hull, we would have been able to both shoot off into the black. I had left my staff back in the arsenal, but I didn’t need it when I wanted to work on myself. Sealing the interior hull door on both sides of the leaking section, I drew on my necromantic power, stopping my need for oxygen. I’d still freeze myself stiff if I didn’t get it patched quickly, and then I’d be too slow to do much of anything else before I ran out of energy and died for real. Luckily, Bradley was a stickler for patch kits.

He goes out of his way for patches but used disposable spacesuits?

Yanking the cover off it, I ripped open the gel packaging on one side. I’d have ten seconds before that gel, mixing with the leftover air in the room, became a solid resin. Slathering that heavy canvas with the gel from the tube, I then pressed it to the breach and prayed to the stars I had a good seal. The alarms stopped, and I relaxed, breathing in again in a gasp.

By some stroke of luck, we made it off the Revaulo zombie ship with all our organs intact and even got the fuel tanks to boot. I couldn’t help but laugh until Bradley’s voice came over the speaker system. “Karla,” he said, using my name for the first time since the insanity began. “You might want to strap into something. There’s a comet inbound. We’ve got to move.”

It’s just never easy, is it?

I leaped up from the ground and almost fell flat on my face again as Bradley finished slowing the spin and instead fired the engines hard. The ship practically went straight to jump speed. Under all those other warnings, the damn blue lights came back on. I guess the stupid AI had been right in the first place. There was a big, angry space rock coming to ruin our day after all.

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