“Registered as Roger Donovan,” Alice told her.
“That look like Roger Donovan to anyone else in here?” Dawn called out to the room, which shook with another ram from the scrappers. Her crew held on for life, lips frozen in shock. “Hello? I asked you all a question! Anyone think that was actually Roger Donovan?”
Heads shook, and “No,” resounded around the room in various forms. It was just what they needed to snap awake.
“Then we can assume this ship’s crew is not who they say they are, and there’s a fight coming our way. Belt yourselves in. Alice, guns up!” Dawn called out. She flung herself firm into the throne. The bridge quaked again. Through the viewing screen, the crew watched in horror as the Arcadia veered into the rim of the SkyLine. Blue mist frilled around them as the scrappers pushed. The scrape rattled every bolt and girder.
“I can’t!” Alice cried out, “The shaking jostled my navigation core! I can’t… tell where we are, or where they are.”
“You mean you can’t fly?” The yellow tinge of fear through the walls answered the question for her. “Howard, did you hear that?” Dawn said into the speaker on the inside of her collar.
“Loud and clear. I’m on it. In the meantime, she’s blind, Dawn,” Howard came back.
“That’s okay,” Dawn mumbled. With groping fingers, she found a switch on each arm of her throne, just where Miller had shown her. In case of an extremely unlikely emergency, he’d said. “I can see just fine.” Dawn threw the switches. Two posts snapped up from the floor, each with half of a spoked helm. They snapped together in Dawn’s hands.
“What are you doing?” said Alice.
“It’s time for you to learn something from me. Trust,” said Dawn. She steadied the pulsating wheel, face out to the mortified crew. She could tell by look alone this was the first time many of them had to actually operate the machinery around them. “Reese, take the starboard turrets. Start firing and don’t stop until I say! Kara, keep a hold on the port cannon. Don’t fire until I say. Reese, now!” Dawn barked, when he froze like a sculpture. That sculpture’s hands crackled around the handles of the turret controls, and jammed down the triggers. Four colossal, spinning barrels spat an endless stream of high-powered Chrysum shells at the scrappers. On the deck, a distant tink of the occasional bullet rang out. Most of them slowed on piercing the scrappers’ shields. “Be ready, Kara. And Alice… trust me, alright?”
It was a long, yellow-lit second before the voice rumbled, “Alright.”
Dawn jerked the wheel to one side. The Arcadia rattled hard from the press of the scrappers’ shields on one side and the SkyLine on the other. It chafed upwards. The fire of Reese’s cannons was relentless. Dawn’s muscles bulged against the will of the wheel to snap back. She yanked the spokes over until finally, the shields slipped past one another. Like a marble in a pipe, the Arcadia arced up the side of the Skyline. The wheel loosened in Dawn’s grasp, enough to turn it in a rapid tornado. The ship climbed higher, twisted more, all while the turrets pelted their assailant, until it was completely upside down.
“Alice, reverse directional gravity!” Dawn screamed.
“Done!” Everyone’s loose shoes, which were about to lift from the floor, re-anchored to it. The Arcadia spiraled around the scrappers, a hail of Chrysum bullets between them. Dawn cranked the wheel more. The Arcadia circled down the opposite side of the SkyLine. Their adversaries tore across the bottom of it, beneath them, to their starboard side. Just as Dawn thought they would.
“Kara, now!” Dawn cried out. Mortified as she was, Kara managed to find the scrappers’ ship with her controls before she yanked back the levers for the Arcadia’s Chrysum artillery. Their shields hardly mattered to a weapon that large. The Arcadia bounced back a few feet with the recoil. The massive orb of solid, shining fusion mineral plunged through the scrappers’ deck. Their ship skidded back.
“Navigation systems back online,” Howard burst into the bridge to announce. Suddenly the wheel felt a bit different in Dawn’s hands, trembling with the will to move on its own any second. Those lifeless wooden spokes became fingers with someone she’d known a while, but never met. Dawn interlocked hers with Alice’s.
“Hang on, Alice. Let me do this,” said Dawn.
“I… trust you,” a mauve glow came through the grain of the helm.
Meanwhile, Howard made his way near the viewing screen in the center of it all. On the deck of the scrappers’ ship was a tiny shape. Something about its half-hunched stature seemed almost familiar before it scrambled back down into the belly of the ship. The air in the bridge froze instantly, when Dawn said:
“Lower the shields.” It was clear, crisp, deliberate. However much she sounded sure, everyone in earshot wanted to scream no - they just never got the chance. Alice relinquished all protection for those up on the deck. They fell. They clutched their throats in quiet anguish. The crew needed only endure the vacuum for the longest five seconds of their lives. That was the time it took for the scrappers to ram at the Arcadia again. Dawn snapped back the altitude lever. The Arcadia jerked straight upwards. The scrappers’ hull hit the SkyLine a few feet below them. “Shields up!”
The Arcadia’s satin globe of protection burst out with such force, it pushed the scrappers down through the bottom of the nanomachine tunnel. The crew out on the deck sucked down precious air, restored. They clawed their way to the railings to watch, bewildered, as the nanomachines reformed the barrier of the SkyLine. The scrappers were sealed outside, damaged, in the dark. A cheer exploded across the bridge.
“Captain Dawn!” Reese, Kara, and the rest cheered.
“Captain Dawn!” Wagner wheezed, up on the bridge.
“Captain Dawn…” Miller mused, hazy, in the infirmary.
“Captain Dawn,” Alice said through the violet light glowing in her hands.
Dawn lingered by the helm for a while. She and Alice tracked the scrappers until they were sure pursuit was out of the question. Whoever their shadowy Captain really was, she’d decided better of tangling with the Arcadia again. The helm sank back into the floor of the bridge. With it went the feeling of Alice’s hands. Dawn hadn’t known what to do with hers since. With the heat of adrenaline coursing through her, she hadn’t had a chance to feel it, not completely. Afterward, she thought it almost felt like… no, Dawn tried to shake it, but she couldn’t think of anything else. She hung her head back over the arm of the chair in her room. She knew Alice could sense what was happening in her chemical makeup, probably better than she did. Dawn wanted to write it off as the residual thrill of battle. But she’d been deep breathing in that seat for fifteen minutes, without a change.
“Hey… Alice?” Dawn chanced at last, half wincing.
“Yes?” her violet light glowed through the room.
“Thanks for trusting me earlier,” Dawn probed the situation. “That was… something, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” Alice answered. If Dawn didn’t know better, she might have guessed the tinge in Alice’s voice was almost as nervous as she was.