Fleeing dangerous space-criminals is a lot like eating spaghetti. It’s fast, messy, you look a bit stupid doing it and by the end at least one person’s shirt will be stained red. It always starts the same. A mad dash from the port to secure an early lead and then its just a case of who’s got the bigger engine. You can have the fanciest, deadliest weapon in the galaxy but that won’t matter a jot if your target is a speck in the distance. This is precisely why Colton’s ship had no weapons on it at all, it was unnecessary baggage and often caused more trouble than it’s worth. You are far more likely to be accepted through security checkpoints when you declare yourself a pacifist. Coward is the correct term, but Colton always had a way of shifting the meaning. At this point, he considered himself a ‘Tactical Retreat Genius’, while Tonic thought he looked more like a headless chicken. Running between the three panels, he would stand by one, tap away something or press a few buttons before jogging to the next, often pausing to cough or catch his breath.
“You need any help, or...?” Tonic asked as he jogged over to her, frantically inputting some data into the terminal she leant on.
“It would take longer to explain than the time we have left. I need to de-calibrate the particle fuser, allowing for-”
“Allowing for external plasmatic restructure of the rear shields, letting the engines burn full-on without re-routing any power.” Tonic finished. Colton cleared his throat, stepping away from the console with arms outstretched and head bowed.
“You seem to know what you are doing. I’ll let you manage the shields then.” Returning to the middle panel, he flicked down two switches simultaneously and a panel flipped over. Pressing his hand onto it, there was a hum and a brief flash of light.
“Manual controls engaged,” said Fifi, resuming her monotonous announcement voice. Colton looked over to Tonic, a grin smearing his unshaven face.
“I don’t often get to do this.”
“Perhaps then it is best you don’t,” said Tonic as she raised her mechanical arm. With a whir, her hand retracted into the metal shaft, immediately being replaced with three cables that snaked out of her metal stump. Like they had a will of their own, they extended and weaved towards the console, before settling into three separate positions and plugging themselves in with a light sucking noise and a click.
“Um, excuse me, madam,” Fifi’s unimpressed tone was back. “What do you think you are doing?”
“I’m plugging myself into the mainframe, allows me to have direct input at a faster rate and less likely to have human error.”
“Oh I know that. And when did you get permission to do such a thing, hm?”
“I don’t think your ship likes me.” Tonic leant her head towards Colton.
“I don’t. And it is Fifi to you.”
“See?”
Colton squeezed the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Please, just for now as we try and escape with our lives, can you let her do what she needs to do?”
“Consent is very important, especially in the current state of the universe. I feel an apology is in order.”
“Fifi, we don’t have time for this.”
“I will shut off the engines.”
“This is why I travel alone...” Colton muttered under his breath before turning to Tonic, “Hey, so if you could, um, apologise to Fifi that would be fantastic. Mostly because it would save our lives!” Colton could feel the sweat forming on his brow. Usually he was a lot further away from the disaster origin point by now, the fact he could see the flashing red dot of immediate death on his sensors was quite a new sight to him.
“You know, you are the one who kidnapped me? You have no idea what kind of person I am. You think I want to be blasted into spacedust because some ship has some sass with me?”
“Kidnap? I never...” Colton struggled to find the words. Instead, he found the one thing he knew he could rely on; his trusty hipflask. Taking a long draught, he felt the usual empty numbness fill his body, the blaring lights and booming sirens suppressed. Blinking slowly, he addressed the room, a new confidence within.
“Now ladies...” he began, holding out his arms with the intent of diffusing the tension. He soon stopped as he felt the intense glare of Tonic, her cybernetic eye red and laser focused, while simultaneously a blast of cold air from the vents signified Fifi’s equally intense gaze upon him. He waited a few seconds, weighing his options. “I’ll leave you to it.” With surprising deftness, he turned and bolted for the door, only to find his feet not quite where he wanted them to be and slipped after approximately twelve steps. He tumbled face first onto the shining white floor and promptly passed out. Tonic stared at the useless body, mouth half agape.
“Great.” She turned back to the console. “So... Fifi... Since our captain is indisposed, will you now let me in?”
“Normally he falls asleep like this after the big chase, not during.” There was almost a wavering quiver to the monotonous tone. “Colton?”
“Fifi, c’mon girl he’s fine, look he’s barely bleeding-”
“Bleeding!?”
“It was a joke. Look we have to-”
The ship suddenly lurched to the side, a cacophonous boom followed by the flickering of the interior lights. Tonic braced herself on the console. “Oh fantastic, they’re in range now. Hand over the controls or everyone, including Colton, dies!”
“The controls were never locked, I just didn’t want you touching them. In fact, that last hit has disabled some of my own override functions, so I’m pretty much now just a helping voice in your ear. You bitch.”
Tonic held back the numerous insults bubbling away and decided to instead be the better person and help them all live. Several extending wires flicked from her arm and attached themselves to various surfaces.
“Dammit, this is more complicated than I thought,” she muttered.
“Not so easy is it,” said Fifi. Tonic ignored her.
“I will only be able to focus on maybe three things at a time, so shields are probably a must...” There was a whir as a panel lit up. A 2D image of the ship flickered green, around the back a blue semicircle appearing. Lists of numbers and percentages sprung up around it, levels, graphs and pie-charts all displaying important information. There was a small red dot flashing underneath the image of the ship. “What the? These levels are far too low.”
“It seems they hit us with a Nano-Toxin Missile, intent on draining systems. Very illegal. I have reported it to the nearby sector police. They responded with ‘Who is this?’.”
“So, what you are saying is we are running at approximately 30% power and falling fast?”
“Exactly 28.7652% power and falling at a rate of 0.007% per second. Wait. No, exactly 27.5% power remaining now. I used up some to make that long-distance call to the sector police. And also by talking to you.”
“Then stop doing both of those things!” Tonic yelled, frantically rerouting power to the engines and shields. Colton had ‘improved’ the ship by removing all shield generators from the front and moving them all to the back. He had mastered the art of running away, or at least mastered the art of telling himself ‘Pff, there is no way they will ever be in front us.'. Unfortunately, Tonic did not know this, and was trying to reroute power to the non-existent front shields.
“Ok, I know you said I should stop talking, which by the way, um, rude, but I also re-contacted the sector police explaining who we are and what the issue is. They said they will send someone over when they get the chance.”
“Do you think Colton would want the police involved, being a wanted fugitive himself?”
A silence followed.
“I re-re-contacted the police. I explained that we no longer need their services as we are illegal fugitives. They said we should stay where we are, and that they are sending even more to pick us up. I explained it would be easy as we are low on power so can be captured without trouble. Also, we are now on 15.83% power. My bad.”
“Are you programmed to be this unhelpful?”
“My initial programming was as a construction droid on Swompe VII-”
“Please stop!” Tonic interrupted, “Wait a construction droid? You’re not even a ships AI?”
Another blast rocked the ship, sparks exploding from one of the terminals Tonic was plugged into. She yelped in pain and retracted one of her wires.
“That’s the sub-engines gone. Right, I think I have the shield finally working.”
“Opening rear airlock.”
“Apparently not. Um, maybe belay that?” She twisted a few levers, hoping to reverse what she had just done.
“Jettisoning spare fuel cannisters.”
“That’s not good.”
"Great job.”
“I don’t need your sarcasm.”
“Oh I wasn’t being sarcastic, the damage has affected my audio-tones so I am stuck in this voice currently. It’s suuuper great. But actually, the spare cannisters hit the bounty hunter ship and inflicted some damage. They were very close so did not expect such an attack, in fact they were almost in range to plant their Boarding Drone.”
“These all seem like very important details that I should have been told.”
“I wanted to see how you would deal with it.”
A light flashed from a panel, and the words LOW FUEL displayed aggressively.
“We are going to have to make an emergency landing, what’s the nearest inhabitable planet?”
“Scanning. Planet found. Popojo, Class-L planetoid. Two moons, Jum and Yum. Natural Biome Level Seven-”
“Sounds lovely, but how far?”
“Approximately one minute and fifty seconds before impact.”
“Wait, what?” Tonic looked up at the screen that covered the front wall. Instead of space, there was instead a huge round, green orb directly in front of them, approaching fast. “Were you not even driving!?”
“You looked like you were doing such a good job.”
Tonic withdrew all but two cables back into her.
“Prepare for emergency landing... uh... me. Bloody Hell,” she groaned, turning back to the unconscious Colton. “We are going to have a serious talk if we survive this.”