Chapter 8: Chapter 8

Sev made sure to flip the tank upside down before they boarded the weird ‘spaceship’ and shot off into the skies. It was breathtaking, even Nat simply let her jaw drop open as they soared past the clouds and everyone had a look at the starry night sky.

Sev kept the ship still in the air to allow them some time to take their time appreciating the sight.

“It’s so pretty...” Nat eventually said, pressing her face against the glass bubble. Piper agreed heartily, basking in the beauty of untainted space.

Sev remained silent, only speaking after several minutes. He might’ve gone into his blank stare, Piper thought. “Okay then, now we’ll be going higher up. There’s something I need to find out. You girls go back down and get ready to brace yourselves when I tell you to.”

Despite its shape, the spacecraft’s interior was very tight, basically just a narrow and short fuselage connecting the craft’s ventral door to the slightly more spacious cockpit. Piper and Nat sat and leaned against the walls, peering at the cockpit to get an idea of where Sev was going.

*****

I was right! Far above the heavily irradiated world, there were two massive Zetan ships lazily maintaining orbit. Far out of reach from even the Institute’s prying eyes, with ultimate access to airspace that’s virtually devoid of traffic, I found the perfect lair to set up shop in. It was lousy with aliens, but it also had way better tech for use. Maybe I could adapt the alien ray guns for the tank?

I piloted the craft over to the motherships, and since there wasn’t any shooting going on, I toggled the landing autopilot once I was able to do so. The ship corrected its course and made a beeline towards one of the ships.

I looked back to address the girls. “Right, we’ll be headed to a place with lots of baddies. Worse than raiders bad. I know we’re all tough, but you can’t breathe out here.” They nodded quietly, Piper’s face looking grimmer. “So as usual listen to what I say ok? Piper? You might finally get to shoot something more than just birds. Be careful and look after your sister, ok? I might have to go rushing ahead to make sure things are clear.”

Rushing ahead? Hm. There’s an idea. I took a closer look at the motherships and checked the ship’s scans on the status of both of them. How nice, the bridges on both ships were not in line of sight of each other. And will you look at their complacency… Righto, this might work.

I disabled the autopilot and changed course.

*****

The Zetan captain was annoyed. First a scout ship malfunctioned and disappeared from planetary scans, with the internal status reading as destroyed, then it blipped back into existence, all alright. Now it and its bridge crew had to file a report on the whole incident, then thoroughly inspect the ship and interrogate its pilot when it landed, and hope the fault lay with the craft itself and not the pilot’s error.

It would be a bloody hassle if the inspectors recalled the fleet to audit everything. The backlog of work would accumulate and worse, their replacements could suddenly hog all the glory and its associated bonuses.

Then the comms officer noted that the ship turned off its autopilot and veered away from the landing bay. Great, it was going to be pilot error, wasn’t it?

There was confusion when the ship was noted to fly around the mothership, about to make a pass past the...bridge? The captain looked out the bridge’s viewing windows. Sure enough, seconds later the underside of the errant craft shot into view, but instead of flying past it swerved to fly away from the bridge before turning and leveling to face the bridge.

The captain squinted, then horror hit it in the guts when it realised the pilot was a human and the ship accelerated towards the bridge. The captain started to call to bring up shields to full power and brace for impact, but the smaller ship was too fast. As it zoomed in to cover its entire view, the captain could quickly make out the features of the human pilot, gleefully screaming-

*****

“SPACESHIIIP!”

With one hand on the ship’s hull to make sure its durability held up, I cackled as we slammed into the bridge. The girls yelped, but thankfully sounded more annoyed than anything. I watched the results of my Among Us speedrun as the entire alien bridge crew, living, dying or dead, were vented out into space.

Have to admit, it was satisfying seeing their surprised and horrified faces.

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Our little spacecraft groaned and creaked in protest as I rotated it to face outwards using my TK, even as I constantly kept its durability up against the bridge scraping and denting it. So far, so good. I got up from the cockpit and joined the girls at the craft’s only door.

“Right girls, like we practiced. Hold onto me and get ready to hold your breaths ok? Take deep breaths. Ready?”

They were nervous, but even Nat held up a brave face as they followed my instructions. I took a deep breath and hit the door control, and immediately we felt the air rush out into the exposed vacuum.

I led the girls out onto the bridge, then TK’d our trusty little spaceship off out of the bridge’s space. It went with a loud creak, splitting apart even as it dragged some of the mothership’s hull with it.

I needed to work quickly. Getting into the console, I had a look at the bridge, relieved to find that the hull and viewing windows could be grouped into a single selection. Select, find the reset aaand…

With a dying shriek due to the air escaping into space, the ship shuddered and we watched metal and glass and whatever alien materials unfurl and unravel to return to its original undamaged state. Missing bits popped into existence, and in no time at all the bridge was whole and airtight again. The lights went out for a few seconds, then came back on. I’m not sure if it only affected the bridge or the whole ship, that one. I could even hear the ventilation humming loudly to refill the room with breathable air.

From crashing to being the only three people standing on an alien bridge? Sixteen seconds. Cool, eh? Me and the sisters took in deep, filtered breaths, so much cleaner than the air back on Earth.

Speakers hidden in the room blared to life with a cacophony of unknown and un-understandable voices. They were probably the crew and the other mothership asking what just happened.

So here comes the hard bit. A quick fiddling with the console later and the bridge’s controls were back online. I played it safe and accessed the console again. Nice, I could pick up the controls of the mothership. Would need a full crew to make it run properly, but we don’t need that right now.

I moved from one ship control to the next, pressing the buttons I needed and tweaking toggles. “Piper, stand here. See these three buttons? Get ready to press whichever I tell you too. For now, press the rightmost button. Nat? Here, this big button? When I tell you to, smash it like a like button.”

I headed to the navigation controls as the girls took up their positions. Actually driving this thing was easy enough, especially if all I wanted was to turn around to face the other mothership. The viewing windows showed us rotating ponderously to the right, until the sliver glinting in the distance was dead center.

Moving on to the weapons console, I did a quick check and locked on the main gun - a ‘death ray’ in the game - onto the other vessel. Simplified targeting information returned the status of our target, its shields were low, but slowly being raised.

With lock-on confirmed, I made sure it wouldn’t reach full strength.

“Nat, press the button.”

As Nat did so, a fat energy beam shot out from below the bridge window to strike at the target. Direct hits, both of them. Both girls were suitably awed at the lightshow. The status of the other mothership quickly went to no shields and critical damage.

“Piper, middle button please.”

Now we had to wait for the weapons to recharge. Our target’s engines flared to life, trying to flee. I checked the comms, relieved to see no outgoing traffic from it. Maybe we took out their ability to communicate?

I adjusted the ship to ensure it remained in our sights. Several painfully slow seconds later and the death rays were back online again. Piper hit the rightmost button to divert all power to weapons, and then Nat fired them. With barely any shields left, the beam punctured the other mothership, which then exploded in a very satisfying fashion.

We cheered for a bit, basking in the one-sided victory. Then the bridge door behind us opened and angry-sounding Zetans started shooting at us.

Right, the hard part’s over, but now the tedious part begins.

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