Relda and her crew had cleared roughly four asteroids. Time sped up from there. From one of the pathways, an orb appeared. Relda's vision shook. She floored the accelerator. Ozla enabled the energy shield.
Relda manipulated the controls, and the transport dipped lower into their gap pathway. The path took a sharp turn, and Relda followed it. As the orb gained on them, Relda dialed up her speed, lowered the transport, and let an asteroid conceal them with its underside. The orb also gained velocity. When Relda took shelter under the asteroid, it collided with the asteroid top side. The hiding place for the transport crumbled under the orb.
"Mama!" Bria screamed. "Look out!"
"The shield is on," Klea explained, adding an eye roll.
Shield or not, Relda accelerated as the orb came inches from her.
"Sorry about the eye roll," Klea said, patting Bria on the back. "We are safe.
"At least, for now." Asia added, gazing through one of the cabin windows.
The orb spiraled through space and toward the nearest home world. Relda paused and cringed as that orb vanished.
"Mama," Ozla said as the energy shield swallowed a red laser beam. "There are more. How many - I can't tell."
"Only one," Noah pointed out. "They each have their own color of lasers."
Relda turned her attention to a touch configurations on the nearest screen.
Rear cannons. Was one.
Front cannons. Another.
All four cannons. Read the third.
"Undo the energy shield," she instructed Ozla.
When the window color changed from transparent green to a bare glass windowpane, Relda made her selection.
She punched the first. Lasers jolted the pod as they ejected into space. Relda powered the ship past the remaining asteroids.
"There are still others," Tayla reminded her.
Relda made a hand motion toward the planet that lay ahead.
"Approaching Jucardi," a cheerful robotic announced from the touch devices.
"Maybe we can make it past before they find us." Relda said, but knew hope would spring eternal.
She sped until her transport could not carry them faster. Risky, for sure, but they couldn't stay in the asteroids much longer. An alert appeared on the nearby device, showing a short red bar.
"Fuel low," it warned.
Relda nodded to the alert.
"We'll take shelter in the battle station," she told the girls.