The Honour's Blade shuddered as a plasma blast slammed into the hull. Leonardo guided the ship into a vertical pitch to dodge the hail of torpedoes coming their way. His fingers tingled as adrenaline rushed through his body. How had this happened? This system was supposed to be neutral. There should not have been a Kraang squadron waiting for them. One more jump, one more short jump and they would have been back at the rebel base.
The cramped, tiny bridge seemed to close in around him. He struggled to keep his breathing steady as he pulled the ship out of her dive to avoid a burst of plasma fire. The internal commlink on his headset crackled. "Do you think you could throw us around a bit more?" Raphael shouted. "Because it's not hard enough to hit them already!"
"Barrel roll! Barrel roll!" Mikey whooped, his exuberant shout slightly muffled by the comms.
The juddering boom of the side-mounted ion cannon drowned out Raphael's reply. One of the blips on Leonardo's screen became a haze. No time to stop and admire Mikey's marksmanship. Leo banked the ship into a ventral dive, turning the broad side to their enemy, the side with the heaviest armour and also Raphael with the other ion cannon. Another thunderous rumble echoed through the hull, but the five blips on his screen didn't change.
"You forgot the time delay, Raph! You got to-"
"Shut the fuck up, Mikey!"
Leo wished both his brothers would shut up so he could focus. Two of the remaining five Kraang ships were moving to flank them. He swallowed, his mouth dry. "Donnie, how's that jump going?" To his left, Donnie tapped frantically at his console, keying in the calculations for a hyperspace jump that would, hopefully, take them out of the reach of the Kraang.
"I'm working on it." Donnie snapped. His fingers flew across the keypad as he scrambled to enter the coordinates for the jump.
Leo flung the Honour's Blade into a low-radius turn, tight as she would go, hoping to get out of the Kraang trap before it closed around them. Too late. He saw the bright heat signature incoming on his screen and pulled out of the turn, but out here with no gravity well to push against it was slow, too slow. "Brace!" he shouted into his headset.
The Honour's Blade shuddered as the barrage hit, lights flickering, klaxons screaming a warning. "Donnie, can you kill those?"
"Sure, Leo. They're not important," Donnie said, his face tense.
Leo ignored his sarcastic tone. "Any imminent failures?"
"Only the reactor." Donnie flung up his hands. "Way to go, Leo. Turn the ship so the area with the engine takes the hit."
Leo gritted his teeth. "It was that or the ventral hull, and last time I looked we needed air."
"Well we fucking need the engine too, you dumbass." Donatello leaped out of his chair and bolted for the hatch.
"Donnie, wait! What about the jump calculations?" Leo's heart hammered in his chest. "We need to get out of here."
"It only needs the acceleration value." Donnie hauled the hatch open and disappeared up the ladder.
"Don't go, Donnie, I need you to-"
Donnie's voice came over the headset. "Work it out, Leo."
Leo wanted to shout at him to get back and finish the jump calculations, but Donnie had stopped listening to him months ago and he knew it would be a fruitless exercise. He rubbed the sweat off his face and glanced at Donnie's console. He could do the calculations, but not while he was also trying to avoid being vapourised. "Raph, I need you in here!"
There didn't seem to be enough air on the bridge. He forced himself to breathe slowly and focused on his screen. Another blast rocked the ship. They were surrounded, but there was a small hole in the Kraang's formation where the ship Mikey had destroyed would have been. That would have to do. He threw the ship into a steep dive, cutting through the z-plane. "Mikey! I'm giving you a target!"
Leo felt himself lifting off the seat, held down only by his harness. "Gravity system offline," flashed on to his screen. Raphael crawled through the hatch, cursing as he floated. He pushed off the wall toward his chair.
"Donnie where's our gravity?" Leo said into his headset.
Donnie didn't answer. Raphael strapped himself into his seat.
"Keep on this heading," Leo said to Raphael. "Mikey's going to clear a path for us." He transferred helm control to Raph's console and pulled up the navigation screen. The Honour's Blade trembled as Mikey fired at the Kraang ship in front of them, but their armour absorbed the blast.
"We're not going to get through." said Raphael.
"Make us get through," Leo said, trying to estimate mass and propulsion and gravitational influence, nearly impossible when they were dodging fire. Jumps were meant to happen under controlled circumstances, not in the middle of a battle. But they needed to get out of here before the Kraang got lucky and punched a hole in their hull.
The ship lurched. The overhead lights went out.
"Donnie what are you doing?" said Leo. No answer. "Donnie?"
Donnie's voice snarled in his ear. "I need to divert power to the propulsion system or we won't be going anywhere."
Leo focused on the calculations. He had to trust his brothers to do what they needed to do. He entered the acceleration value, hoping desperately he was close enough. An alarm blared, a red warning flashing on his screen. Oxygen tanks offline. Leo's screen flickered off and back on.
"Are you kidding me, Donnie?" Raphael shouted over comms. "I have no helm control!"
On his screen, a mass of lights advanced on their ship. Kraang torpedoes. They were out of time. Leo took a deep breath and activated the hyperjump.