But reminding Jimmy of that serves no purpose. So I just nod my head and say, “Let’s go.”
Inside the ship Jimmy points me to an envirosuit, then starts putting his on.
The boys all look around for their suits, but it’s clear. We don’t have enough. Jimmy and Xyla travel alone. The fact that he has an extra suit for me is just dumb luck.
“What about us?” Asshole Boy says.
Jimmy just glares at him. Then growls.
The asshole backs off and stumbles into Ladybug, who says, “If those ships fire on us, these suits won’t matter. Now sit your ass down and shut up. Then think about how lucky you are to be rescued by Harem Station.”
This mostly has the desired effect. They do sit down, but then immediately start whispering things like, “Harem Station,” and “ALCOR,” and little one even says, “Fuck, yeah.”
He’s gonna be a handful.
If we survive.
And then things start happening too fast. Dicker’s door begins to close, Ladybug stabs at a screen and the airlock slams closed, and the second that happens, Dicker’s engines spin up and we rise, turning to see Lady Luck hovering in front of us.
She fires on the side of the station and two seconds later there’s a massive breach in the docking bay.
“Hold on!” Xyla yells back from the cockpit.
Ladybug pushes me to the wall, I grab a handhold, and she grabs me, holding on to another handhold.
It occurs to me that I should probably be sitting down and strapped in for this, but there’s nowhere to sit with all these kids.
And then there’s no time to think. We follow Lady Luck out the hole in the station and enter the deep dark of space.
I’m thrown back into the wall, lose my grip, and start to tumble backward, when Ladybug’s strong sexbot hand reaches out and grabs my arm. Holding me in place.
Jimmy and Xyla are talking to Luck and Cha-Cha on the comms. Something about cannons coming online and target locks having found us already.
We’ve been outside the station for less than ten seconds and we’re already fucked.
I look at Ladybug and she just shrugs. Like this is just another day in her life. Flicka is clinging to my shoulder, buzzing like crazy as Dicker maneuvers us around until—
“Holy mother of fuck,” I whisper.
Because I can see the screen in the cockpit and a Cygnian warship is so close to us, it fills up the entire area.
There’s a second one too. Just above.
“You take that one,” Luck says through comms. “I got this one.”
“Firing!” Xyla says. And then there is a great burst beneath my feet and above my head as cannons fire on the warships.
“Get out of there!” Cha-Cha yells from the comms. “Just get out of there!”
I glance over at the boys and now every single one them is silent. Their eyes wide, their mouths open as understanding sinks in.
We are fucked.
Dicker’s hull shudders—again, and again, and again.
“We’re hit,” Jimmy says.
“Us too,” Luck says back, over comms. “Just keep going. If we can get to the gate—”
But his sentence is cut off.
“Comms are blown,” Xyla says, just as she releases another barrage of defensive fire.
“Sorry, kids,” Jimmy yells.
We don’t have time to wonder what he’s sorry for, because every single one of us is thrown to the floor with sudden acceleration. Including Ladybug.
We become a heap of bodes, sliding towards the rear of the ship, as Xyla yells, “Sending them everything we’ve got! SEAR cannon activated!” Just as we crash into consoles, and equipment, and one kid even disappears down a stairwell, screaming.
That’s gonna hurt later.
If we survive.
“One down!” Jimmy yells. “One down.”
I crane my neck, desperate to see the screen in the cockpit so I can see what that means.
It’s a split screen now. One view in front of us, where the gate shimmers off in the distance. The other view behind us, where one warship is tipping sideways, a huge hole in the center of the hull.
But right behind it is the other one. On fire in spots from Luck’s attack, but still very much intact.
And then, like a fucking ghost rising out of the left-behind ether of colorful gasses, a third Cygnian warship appears.
“Fuck!” everyone yells at the same time.
“I have one more shot with the SEAR,” Xyla yells.
“Take it!” Jimmy yells back.
But we all know, one will not be enough. That third ship is still there and if this is all we’ve got, it’s over.
After all this, it’s gonna be over.
We’re all gonna die.
“Firing!” Xyla yells.
But in that same instant, Jimmy yells, “We’re hit!”
And it’s very clear to anyone watching that screen that our last chance just went very wide and missed that second ship entirely.
“Shit!” Xyla yells.
But then I’m distracted by the front-facing view in the split-screen. Because off in the distance, the gate is lit up like a fucking sun. Shimmering as yet another warship appears.