Ovie threw herself into shotgun and immediately booted the impact compensater. The scrawling information on my holoscreen was too fast for me to take my eyes away, but I could see in my peripherals that my copilot was in pain, I had essentially called her out of surgery while Quatro’s android parts were still being grafted into her skin. Ovie grunted while allocating several windows of information to the main screen. 

“Jo!” I shouted. “Jo! How’re we doing? what’s our ERT?” 

“That flaming Croatian virus has the Zep locked down.” The voice of my mechanic carried from up the engine room tube and also on our ships coms. I received several notification that Pont fired packets of junk mail and chaotic beams of amu-flare across the cruisers hull, (he’s buying us time against they’re guns). “Pont, automate those packets and assist Jomorko!” My weapons engineer didn’t respond over the receiver but I saw a noty for the automation and frantic footsteps from upstairs in the gunner bay to downstairs. No engine control or computing meant that the SP was adrift. 

“Try them again!” Ovie said and I pulled up on a switch. 

>ALL CALL<

>ALL CALL< 

Nothing. No ship in the fleet was responding to my hails.  “Goddamnit!” Ovie furiously cycled through the Zeppole’s dire systems. I could already tell that Quatro’s implementation was working, no organic could keep up with her workload for long. The wide vizer of the cockpit was a mess of space debris, cruisers with Croatian insignia, and notifications from the ships computer telling of our impending doom. Then, in the sea of blaring windows one message from Iicho’s com:

 >TMR Bay VIRUS-FREE<

“Flood it!” Iicho cried over the com and I obliged. The automated weapons on Croatian ships would prioritize attacking a Total-Mass Retentention system over engines. I flared the TMR and the enemy took the bait, firing a trojan. Hopefully Jomorko would have enough time to unshackle our engines before the next volley. The ship lurged and an invigorating pulse snapped my attention to the com. 

“She’s free!” My mechanic boomed in a victorious chuckle. “All engines are green, drive ‘er like you stole ‘er Best!” I slammed down the thrust and the Zeppole blasted forward like a bullet from a gun. The entire cabin purred as I banked hard through a slit in the Croatian blockade, the purr surged into a snarl as I activated G-assist and hurled Zeppole into a swirling dive. I received a notification that Pont had reentered the weapons bay, all system began to heat up. 

“Iicho, start defragging the TMR,” Quatro instructed using Ovie’s com. 

“Pont, splash that main cruisers hull with the Artemis, we’ll teach them not to fuck with the crew of the 117,”  I shouted and Jomorko made a remark about people in the Barenstein system seeing ‘shooting stars’ tonight.