"Brace." A simple order from the imaginary voice. Morgan grabbed the chair back, over his shoulders, and Tracy needed no prompting to follow suit.
"two, one, ..."
Then she felt herself swallowed up by the chair as the roar from the engines became an explosion and the ship lurched forwards. Her vision turned to red mist before she lost consciousness from the brutal acceleration.
'So this is death,' her thoughts began, 'this is how it feels to be blasted by station security. It's quite relaxing actually, my friends would never believe it.'
She was jolted awake again as the Cobra thumped hard against the inside roof of the airlock with a deafening crunch. Shaking the mist from her eyes she could make out the laser light show all around them, but not quite hitting their target.
"Shields down," the sarcastic voice once more, they'd bounced off the airlock at an astonishing speed, it was a wonder it hadn't done more damage.
"Slow down Commander," an automated warning from flight control played out over the speakers. "Dangerous flying is punishable by death." Tracy heard herself giggle at the situation; escaping station security, only to be killed for speeding.
Another thrust of unbridled power threw her back into the chair again as those wild engines boosted them out of the giant structure, the blackness of space surrounded them.
"Now comes the hard part," Morgan turned to her with a wink. "The station's external weapons are far more powerful than those puny beams on the inside, plus there are Vipers."
She felt her jaw fall open, about to ask how they'd survived this far. She was cut short as beams sliced through the darkness from a point in front of them.
"Viper inbound," Minerva announced.
"Make that five," Morgan retorted.
"I was trying to sound positive."
Tracy looked at the ship's scanner and then wished she hadn't. She had no experience of such things, but even she realised that half a dozen flashing red contacts closing on the centre can't be a good thing.
Suddenly the ship bucked as a powerful burst of energy smashed into it from behind. The console in front of her reported a sudden drop in hull integrity. Sweat dripped down her back, but she felt cold, terrifyingly cold.
Beams of energy kept hitting the ship, she felt them rather than heard their impacts. The scraping screech made by the Viper's pulse lasers hitting the hull made her skin crawl. Far worse was the gut wrenching thud from the station's main weapon knocking the ship off course and causing her heart to jump out of her mouth every time. She tried not to watch the console, but her eyes wouldn't move.
For all their grimace inducing screeches, hits scored by the Vipers reduced hull integrity by only the odd percent, she noticed. She couldn't say the same about the big station guns though. Another thump slammed into the hull and her restraints held her painfully in the co-pilot's chair. Battered and bruised, but still alive. Integrity took another plunge. A couple more hits from that and they'd be dead.
"Four kilometres," the voice reported.
"Nearly there," Morgan told her in a soothing voice. He looked calm, she thought. "Once we're 7km from the station we'll be out of range and able to jump."
She heard his words, but the console was telling her otherwise. 'Just one more hit and we're ...'
Thud! She was thrown against the straps again and heard a pained groan escape her lips.
"Hull integrity critical," came another sarcastic announcement from the voice she was starting to hate. She looked down and saw just a single digit. Squeezing her eyes to clear the fogginess, she decided not to open them again. She didn't want to read what that single digit percentage of hull integrity said.
"Frameshift drive charging," the voice again.
She opened her eyes in surprise. Were they actually going to make it? Distracted by the thought, she let them focus on the number in front of her: 4%.
"Oh God no."
The Vipers came in for another pass. She saw their beams flicking out at her.
"Five, four, ..." the voice counted down the jump into witch space.
Beams criss-crossed the canopy. The Vipers were too distant for any kind of accuracy, but they knew the Cobra's frameshift drive was spooling, in desperation they fired anyway.
"three, two, ..."
A flash of blinding light flooded the cockpit. Tracy screwed up her eyes to protect them from the brightness. She heard the crack. It wasn't sudden, it was like the crunch when stepping into icy snow. Her eyes opened to a spider's web of lines spreading across the canopy. Slowly new cracks appeared, as though the grim reaper was teasing her with death.
She heard the gut wrenching creaks as glass molecules hung to each other in desperation, knowing the end was near, but refusing to let go of their fellow molecules until the very last instant. One section gave up first. Tracy watched as a piece of canopy flew off into the void. Behind it was a deafening whoosh of gasses leaving the cockpit. The air she so wanted to breathe escaped into the vacuum.
The cabin pressure dropped immediately and with it disappeared most of the sounds she hadn't realised were there before. In the silence, the vibrations of the spooling frame shift drive reverberated through her body.
A muffled voice could just be heard: "... one, engage." And with that the Vipers were gone and the stars streaked passed her as the Cobra escaped into a new dimension full of ghosts and their creepy howls.
Was this death, she wondered as she was flung towards the bright light ahead of her.
It was reassuring to hear her deep, laboured breathing. 'So, not dead,' she realised, 'not yet at least.'
There was a flashing blue alert on the console with a countdown timer. "Oxygen depleted in 19:51" it said. Less than twenty minutes to find an atmosphere.
"Oh God no," she said again.