‘Now is a good time to use Squiggles, Loren,’ Mervyn suggested expecting her to leap to the computer terminal.
Loren stayed put, ‘I can’t, the alarm she set off has locked down the terminals. What good is the highest security clearance in the empire if you can’t get into the terminal?’ She glared accusingly at Aurora.
‘The end of the line I think,’ Tarun said with a sigh.
‘We will try to negotiate our surrender,’ Aurora said. ‘See if we can get better conditions than we had before.’
‘No. We’re not giving up yet,’ Mervyn said frantically searching the room. He refused to believe he would never see his father again. Evil must not triumph over good; De Monsero had to pay for Starlight’s destruction; this couldn’t be the way it all ended. ‘There has to be another way out. Look, the lift is right beside the stairs. A fire at this end of the room would block both exits.’.
‘If we don’t make the first offer we’ll lose the initiative,’ Tarun said. ‘This is no time for a human style gamble, Merv.’
‘You really think Velcats are going to talk before they shoot? Come on, there must be another way out.’
‘Who’re you trying to convince, Merv?’ Loren asked.
‘He has a point,’ Aurora said ‘Velcat’s are not exactly renowned for their negotiating skills.’
‘Stop philosophising and start searching,’ Mervyn yelled, running to open the nearest cupboard. The lift sprang into life again galvanising them to action. Desperately, they ran around the control tower opening and shutting doors searching for Mervyn’s elusive third exit.
The doors at the top of the stairs burst open in the same instant the lift disgorged its frustrated occupants. Both parties sprayed the room with blaster fire as they entered.
Silver flashed before Mervyn’s eyes as he tumbled, then darkness. Above him, he could hear blasters ripping the control tower apart. The sound of battle quickly faded, replaced by a buzzing like the flight of a Skitterbug. Light suddenly glared all around him and something flashed towards his head, ‘Agh.’
‘Get out of the way, Merv!’ Tarun shouted hacking at the inflated escape chute with a shard of glass. ‘We’ve got to deflate this thing so the Velcats can’t follow The girls have gone ahead to start the sleds.’ Mervyn searched for his own shard as he rolled free of the death-slide. Above him, more windows blew out, showering the shuttle bay with fresh glass. ‘Stupid Velcats are fighting each other,’ Tarun said and slashed down again. Mervyn pulled his sleeve over his hand and selected a large splinter of glass. ‘That could have been us up there,’ he said, plunging the glass into the inflatable, which let out a satisfying hiss.
‘Yeah, but thanks to you we’re down here -- does this plan have a good ending?’
‘Not if we stay here. Come on, that should do it. We’re out of here.’ As they dodged for a gap between the stacked containers a howl or rage followed them. Mervyn looked up at a struggling bulge in the limp escape chute, ‘It’ll take ‘em hours to get out of there.’ But even as he spoke a knife appeared through the fabric. ‘Oh, quarks. Run!’ They raced through the narrow alleys and hoped they led to the sleds. As they burst into a clearing they both saw the sleds in front of them with their canopies up. Aurora waved frantically from the nearest sled, ‘Hurry up, guys, the outer doors are about to open.’ Mervyn sprinted across the open space and threw himself breathlessly into the cockpit of the second sled. He scrambled past Loren and strapped himself into the navigator’s seat. Then he felt the familiar presence of the sled’s biolink connecting to his brain -- it felt like home.
Loren sealed the canopy, ‘What do you reckon, Aurora, hot-start or dead-drop?’
‘This is the most dangerous thing I have ever done,’ Aurora said. ‘Whatever we do the front end of the sled will hit space-time before the rear. Will that speed us up or slow us down?’
‘Slow us down, I think. Which means we need to get the back end out as fast as possible.’
‘Hot-start it is then. I am setting a time delay to stabilise and brake my sled.’
‘Send across your settings so I can co-ordinate with you. What if we get separated?’
‘Er...’
Mervyn snapped his harness shut, ‘Make for the nearest M-class planet and leave a message in each others’ mailbox.’
‘Good idea, Mervyn,’ Aurora said as the outer doors ground open, ‘Ready, Loren?’ The engines howled as the girls held them on both full power and full brake. ‘On my mark: three...’
Mervyn caught a movement from the corner of his eye as a couple of Velcats shot out from an alley and skidded to a halt.
‘Two...’
The Velcats stared at the scene before them. Mervyn glanced at the doors grinding open ever so slowly. The Velcats raised their blasters.
‘Go!’ Mervyn yelled
The G-force when the sleds cleared the warship and ripped back into space-time hit Mervyn like a sledgehammer. The speed differential between front and back sent them tumbling uncontrollably -- simultaneously spinning, spiralling and corkscrewing -- driven ever faster by the sled’s howling engines.
It was all Mervyn could do to hang on to consciousness. Even though his body moved in time with the sled everything still spun before his eyes. Then the sled’s positioning jets cut in and the braking manoeuvre wrenched them gently to a stand still. The dizziness slowly cleared, his rasping breath clamed, and he gulped in great lung-fulls of air -- glad to be alive, but where were they?