Marinik Avoidance

A peerless silence in the dead of space was always welcome. And it met the collapse of a wormhole toting a vessel like a bird against a steel wall.

Ah. It was her.

Gant was prepared. He usually was. He was ready for her nonsense, and her unending desire to end him. The visual bubble snapped into solid space behind The Florabody and she began shooting, No Questions Asked.

The plasmid projectiles were slammed into particulate against the magnet shield. Ions smacked against the walls, and Gant's skeleton crew starting to shake.

"Don't look sour now, kiddies!" he told them. "Let's play with fire, come on."

His ship turned on its side, eating plasma multiple times a second. The bottom receptors glowed and shot a massive ion load, pushing the ship slightly. As it adjusted its course from the inertia(?), The Florabody was smashing into his ship head-on.

The hull snapped, air roaring outward. The crew screamed and went to their sleep in the stars. Gant gripped with the rage of an assaulted ex, roaring. He clung and crawled against the vacuum to the door seal. He gripped the latch, turned it, and felt fresh air flowing from the gateway. He slid in and locked it, sealing the blasted control front from further oxygen loss.

He could hear her. She was laughing on one of the many frequencies he had locked into. She purred.

"Come out, you fucking murderer."

He ran through the lengths of his piece of crap ship, looking for supplies, looking for the escape vehicle, looking for her.

As he rounded the T-cross, he saw her long at the end of the hallway, suited for zero atmosphere survival.

She shot at him, No Questions Asked.

It burned through his arm and his fancy suit top. He growled and rolled into a supply room, smashing his hand into the slide lock. Two doors chimed from each side of the wall, kissing her weapon's plasma shot as they hissed closed.

Gant ran to the logging portal and overrode everything on that internal logic brain he could. He set the ship to detonate. It made his heart sink, his ship he worked so hard to earn being put to death, but the banging on the tiny supply room door made his skin grow cold and forget the worth of his ship in 2 seconds.

He breathed heavily as he leaned against the door, and as he summonded the two panels back open, he swung his fists as hard as he could at the first object he could see--her head.

Her helmet cracked, and she sunk to the ground. He paused a moment and bit his hat, holding in yelps of pain. Oh yeah, those knuckles were fractured.

He zipped to the bag room, snatching a supply kit. He ran to the terrestrial loading room, snatching a light set. He dashed to the ejection bay, snatching an escape unit. He never looked back. If he did, he'd see her and he didn't want to make an excellently easy target.

He loaded into an escape unit, inputting a hard memelorised planet's coords at record speed and accuracy. Now why couldn't he do that while troubleshooting? The answer was he was never about to die while troubleshooting.

The escape unit shot out without much ado, immediately altering course as it calculated his trajectory and nearby object ping response.

His timing was spot on, as usual. The engine core inverted flow onto its intake and it exploded. It was not a spectacular explosion by any means. But it eradicated his ship and hers into nothing but particulate, scattering into eternity at an excessive speed not worth worrying about.

He gazed at the electro ping readout, unable to truly see the carnage. His crew, her crew, and her, all just dust and radioactivity burning the readout until he was finally far enough.

It was an unexciting end to their mutual hatred, but it was at least over. He took the escape unit to a nearby Supergate, spending weeks in that windowless bubble, just so he could go home.

The gate controllers were kind, let him pass without validation. He wouldn't forget it, as his body and plastic box passed through the gate.

He closed his eyes, shaken, hurting. He felt like a ghost, passing through the stars, with No Questions Asked.