Cyber Witch

Chapter 6.4 - What Have You Done?

[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.