"Proximity Alert," the computer warned in both audio and video as the ship took another hit.
"I know!" Tala shouted as she brought the ship around one of the docking arms of the station she'd tried to dock in peacefully, only to end up chased out. She barely made it back to the Iconoclast-Class Evolutionary Ship Vector Free thanks mostly to her pilot levels being far higher than what was normal for a woman only one week in the "nest" as they called it in this universe. "Would be nice to have more than one dinky little gun!" she added.
"Upgrade Options Will Be Accessible During Ship Leveling," the computer gave its usual canned response in a canned, feminine voice. "Would You Like To Know The Required Parameters To Reach Your Next Level?"
"No!" Tala said, switching from the single, low-diameter laser cannon she had to the same tractor beam that had plucked her off the ground and placed her in the cramped little nest where she was fighting for her life. The action took a flick of thought, and she thanked the stars she still had shields.
Unlike the cannon, the tractor beam was omnidirectional. Sure, it would open a hole by lensing off her shield, but it was way more effective for dealing with her current situation, and the only way she was turning around was if she had a sure kill without a sure death.
It was three against one. Doing that was tantamount to suicide and she was not about to die here. Not after the week she'd had.
It all started when-
BOOM
There was no time for flashbacks.
Tala swore as her pursuers fired on her, apparently no longer concerned about hitting the station as she swung through what looked like a dockyard for much larger ships.
She spied her target, a shipping container - at least that's what she thought the big sphere was - that was being remotely brought in by a crew safely within the station shields.
The little impulse units glowed on the bottom of the sphere as she "hooked" the object with her tractor beam.
Flying in space, as she learned, was nothing like flying through the air. Not with the tech at her disposal. In a maneuver that would have turned an earthbound pilot into tomato paste, she wrenched her starship into a turn, pulling the sphere onto the same plane as herself before momentum took it past her in a stomach-turning tethered orbit.
At just the right moment, Tala switched off the tractor beam, watching in satisfaction as two of her pursuers were smashed into pieces, exploding against the container and ripping it open to spill what looked like identical ingots of some material she had no time to identify.
The last starfighter took a pot-shot at her before overflying her.
Knowing that in space, she had moments before the ship was completely turned around to shoot at her, she slammed the accelerator forward, arcing away perpendicular to the station as green disruptor fire passed behind her.
"Vicky!" Tala called out.
"I'm here," a distinctly more human-sounding voice answered, far more feminine than the ship's computer.
"Oh good. Can you think of a way to refuel that doesn't involve alien space stations?" Tala asked.
"I'll look for a solution in the primary memory files. Please buy me some time," the woman responded.
"How much?!" Tala asked.
There was no answer.
The ship's computer was proving almost as frustrating as her enemies. Half its information functions would lock out whenever it determined Tala was in a combat situation.
The tactical functions were a godsend, but Tala sometimes needed non-combat information to inform her decisions. Vicky, who seemed to be a ghost or a glitch or something, had access to the computer files but wasn't nearly as fast with information gathering. It didn't help that sometimes Vicky sensed the computer trying to get rid of her and had to go into hiding, but she was as close to a copilot as she could hope for in her situation.
"Foe Identified," the computer said. "Shirex Class Fighter, Level 9. Pilot Level Blocked From Scanning - Level 10."
"Oh great," Tala said.
Level 9 meant she was outclassed materially. She had no idea how high a level the pilot was, but if she had one thing going for her, it was the feeling in her gut that she was a far better pilot, and the knowledge that level-wise, she was.
"Caution: Ion Storm Approaching Proximity Alert." the computer said, a new warning symbol flashing in Tala's vision.
"Effects?" Tala asked the computer, hoping to god - if she could hear her across universes - that the ship's computer considered that to be tactical-fucking-information.
"Total Shield Disruption. Electronics Disruption If Vessel Is Not Electromagnetically Hardened."
Tala had stopped listening after the second iteration of "Disruption."
Her shields were at a measly 15% after taking that last shot. They weren't going to protect her if she took even a glancing hit, but hopefully, it would be just enough to pull her next maneuver.
As the ion storm came into view, Tala skirted the edge of it, taking a long arc as the enemy fighter closed in with its superior engines.
"Warning: Enemy In Weapons Range."
The pulses of green fire told Tala even before it, so Tala ignored the computer. She needed all her concentration to target the tractor beam just right.
Over the open comm, she heard the other pilot spit out a stream of boar-ish-sounding insults which were automatically translated for her.
"Dishonorable human! I'm going to mount your head on your ship when I sell it to the-"
Whoever the pilot intended to sell her ship to, Tala never found out.
"You talk too much," she quipped as she dodged through the green fire to tractor her enemy by the shields.
As soon as they began to over-fly each other, Tala pulled up in a high-degree arc, switching her beam from pull to push right as she tugged her enemy into its path.
She watched in satisfaction as lightning began to spark all over the fighter craft, its internal lights shutting off as its systems died.
Throwing her engines in reverse as she brought the nose of her little scout ship toward her enemy, it was with a smirk that she switched from her tractor beam to her cannon.
One shot was all it took.
She put it right through the cockpit.
Once her enemy was done exploding, she practically slammed herself back in her seat, letting out the tension that had built up during the fight.
"Fuck I need a fucking shower..." she whined to the star-filled void. For the hour she'd managed to stay on the station, she'd been so close... why did admitting to being human have to ruin it?
"Warning: Long Range Sensors Indicate Several Small Craft Deploying In This Direction." The computer proceeded to list out the groups by level. "31 Single-Digit Scouts And Fighters, 11 Double-Digit Fighters And Stellar Frames."
Stellar frames were bad. Very versatile and hard to tell what the fuck they could do since they were biologically shaped to seem like animals or people or whatever. The one saving point for her in this situation was that they were fragile as fuck.
"4 Triple-Digit Corvettes And Patrol Ships." Those were self-explanatory for Tala, since she avoided those the most often in her early piloting days, even back on Earth. "One Four-Digit D'ka'D'ka'Maaek Class Anti-Fighter Destroyer."
As the external schematic for the last ship came up, Tala winced. There were so many anti-fighter penta-cannons along its spade-shaped hull that the thing bristled like a reverse porcupine. And it still counted as a "small craft."
"Okay we're getting the fuck out of here," she said more for herself than the Computer.
She tapped the menu for the drive core.
She'd had to spend a few advancement points on getting the human language here down, but it was worth it, even if the only thing the readout told her was "Drive Inoperable: Low Fuel.
"Vicki, how's that search coming?" Tala called out.
"I think I got it!" she replied after a second. "This system had mining colonies on the largest asteroids orbiting the second planet. We might be able to find the right sort of crystals there to power the drive."
"That would have been nice to know when we first got here," Tala grumbled a little. "What's the catch?"
"Most of them are inoperable. But one of them appears to be a Shadowport."
"Shadowport?" Tala asked.
"A place for outlaws, lowlifes, and-"
"Humans?" she asked, her excitement growing a little.
"Bounty hunters," Vicki replied.
"Ugh..." Bounty hunters were the worst.
But with a fleet of mostly-unknowns approaching, she'd rather try someplace where no one knew her... again
"Computer," Tala said, "Plot us a course for the second planet. Uh... the most abandoned-looking moon."
"Working... Course Plotted."
The navigational sphere indicated a line, and the destination tracker, a bit lacking in detail due to distance, showed a potato-like object riddled with holes and blocky industrial-looking structures jutting both inside and out.
Vicki spoke up after the computer went silent. "How are we supposed to get there undetected?"
Tala smiled as the shields finished coming back to full. "I think I've got an idea," she said. "I just need to give those assholes something to shoot at..."