A Fool's Chance

by Wrath_Of_Deadguy

April 27, 2944—Elysium

Fresh damage reports blazed red across Penny Clairmont's HUD, reminding her about the Scythe on her tail—as if the impact of its plasma cannon wasn't reminder enough. The little scaly prick had been glued there chewing on her thrusters since he slagged her turret, and she was running out of options fast... the mains were barely functional; she could feel them pulse and whine through her ship's battered hull. There was no way she was going to get the distance she needed to...

"Nel, shake this guy or we're scrap!" Matt Wahl's forceful baritone jolted her out of her headspace. Gotta kill it fast. There was only one thing she could do with her turret gone. She'd tried it a few times, but had never really needed to... Hell with it.

"We're not done yet! Hang on to something!"

Penny flipped her starboard engine and sent the Fool's Chance into a wild death spiral, throwing the Cutlass end for end and giving her—for just long enough—a clean shot at the bastard on her six. Her lips curled into a snarl as she impaled the Scythe on the last of her missiles, and she crowed in satisfaction when it blossomed into a fireball before flashing back out of view. The engines screamed, overheated, and threatened to quit, but she'd bought some breathing room—she hoped.

Penny and swung around wide, away from the worst of the action. There were still a few friendlies out there, but what little organization they'd had was gone now—it was every ship for herself. Some of the escort units had seemed pretty disciplined; maybe they were doing better, but the independent pilots were falling apart. Because of twits like me who think they're better off without authority. Congrats, Nels, you got what you wanted after all. Was it everything you hoped for? Penny sighed and fell in aft of the Grayson, a Constellation which had been running alongside the transports... her smuggler captain had offered to split his score with Penny if she'd throw the customs inspectors off his scent when they arrived. She wondered if he still cared about all that when she saw that the Grayson was just as torn up as her own boat.

"Grayson, Chance. You've got a fuel leak aft starboard. Shut down your number three engine or you'll blow it off, copy?" There was no answer. "Matt, they alive over there?"

"Power and RCS... somebody's still flying her. Get me up front, I'll try to get his attention."

She edged forward to bring the Chance nearly canopy-to-canopy with the bigger ship. Matt pointed his flashlight and signaled, but there was still no answer. The lighting flickered, silhouetting the lone figure still manning Grayson's helm, but he was motionless save for an arm on the flight stick. Poor bastard's gone home, she thought. Might as well be dead.

"Heads up, Nel. Three incoming, ten seconds!"

"Grayson, more scalies coming! We could use some help!"

"Slag his ass! Move this thing!"

She didn't need to be told twice—running was hopeless with her boosters shot out, but she still had guns and she meant to use them. Fool's Chance met the Vanduul head on, shredding one of the fragile alien raiders with her neutron guns as the other two blazed past stitching lines of fire across the lamed Cutlass' unshielded flank. The Chance shuddered and groaned, but held together and answered smartly when Penny swung her back around in pursuit. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Grayson take a missile in her damaged nacelle and blow apart, her forward hull spewing atmosphere and twirling off into space—six million creds and three lives gone in the space of a few heartbeats. Chance paid her dead comrade's blood debt with a storm of particle fire; a second Scythe exploded in a satisfying shower of flaming scrap. "Bleed you scaly assholes!" She'd never seen anything like the Vanduul—not even her father's pirates measured up to the cold brutality of what was happening around her. They hadn't even tried to disable the transports to loot them—they'd demanded no surrender, and they were showing no mercy. They weren't human, and it showed in the way they flew. They must have lost dozens of fighters, but they never stopped coming. They never stopped killing...

"Two more incoming! Check—missile trace!"

"Countermeasures!"—Stars, we can't dodge it!

"Dry! Brace yourself!"

Penny howled at the void and threw the Chance spinning in a desperate bid to shake the incoming ordinance, but her wings were clipped and the missiles were too fast—the ship rocked and angry red lights exploded across her displays. Vanduul warheads gouged out thrusters and cannons, leaving them crippled and defenseless. The lone survivor of the first wave lined up for another pass—she saw the muzzle flash—a moment later she felt the heat, even through her vac suit, as a lance of searing plasma slashed through the cockpit somewhere behind her. All the displays went out; the Chance bucked and heaved—a second and third shot struck home. She wrenched the stick over hard. Nothing happened. The stars kept spinning.

"Matt! I've got no control! Take..." her voice trailed off as she twisted around. The plasma blast that had cut her control lines had blown clean through the Chance, taking Matt off at the shoulders on its way through the cockpit. She squeezed her eyes shut—only for a moment. She was still alive. Still alive. She was still alive, and that was how she was going to stay. There'd be time to mourn later.

Her ship—her home—was as dead as her copilot. A few of the thrusters were still firing, trying futilely to arrest their spin, but both sets of controls were useless and Penny couldn't even call up a status display to find out where the fault was. Her stomach churned—gravity was failing now, too. It was time to go; with a half-muttered curse she yanked on the ejection handle.

Gravity failed and so did the ejector—Penny gave the handle another sharp yank, but to no more useful end. The ship's spin threw her forward against her crash harness; she tugged the release and suddenly found herself face-down against the canopy. It wasn't a violent spin, at least, but the pain in her side told her that she'd cracked a rib and that was going to make getting to the hatch a copper plated bitch.

She took it one hand over the other, trying to block out of her mind the possibility of another volley of enemy fire finishing the Chance off before she could get clear. The climb past Matt's headless body seemed to take an eternity—that, too, she had to shut down fast before it froze her. She tried to tell herself that he would've wanted her to leave him, that he would have left her... but if she'd had a way to get him out, she'd have done it. There wasn't enough time.

The hatch was stuck fast, and it wasn't hard to see why. The latch plate was fused in a solid mass—she just kept climbing right past it towards the cargo bay and thanked whatever lonely star was still shining on her that the bulkhead door still worked. She pulled herself through and into weightlessness—the hold was as torn up as the cockpit. She could see a whirling starscape through some of the larger breaches as she glided past the center of spin and thudded into the tail ramp with a landing only a sack of bricks could have called graceful. Penny didn't even bother to try the ramp controls—she wrapped herself in a loose cargo net and clipped it to the ramp, then shut her eyes tight. Goodbye, baby. I'm sorry. She kicked the explosive bolt release as hard as she could.

A horse fell bodily on her chest, and for a moment Penny saw stars of a different sort... and then she saw the Fool's Chance—and Matt—spinning lazily away, streaming fuel and debris, smaller and smaller. There was no final explosion; the Vanduul bastards who'd slaughtered her friends made one last pass to confirm their kill and moved off to find someone else to murder. The dying Cutlass spiraled away until she was just another gleaming star... Penny shook herself back into the moment. There were more immediate concerns.

Like air. Without the supply built into the ejection seat, she had whatever was left in her suit's reserves and then it was curtains. She wondered if it might not have been better to stay with the Chance, but that was done and past now—she still had an e-beacon, and she flipped it on while she fumbled for the air gauge. An hour's worth, give or take.

Penny stifled the urge to cut herself loose from her tail ramp lifeboat and look around. The telltale flashes of laser and plasma fire winked at her from among the stars, but she couldn't make out any ships. She wasn't sure if she was still in the middle of the furball or whether she'd drifted clear while trying to get off the Chance, not that she'd have been able to do much about it in any case with only a laser pistol and a boot knife. She squinted, trying to pick out the dwindling speck of the Chance's wreckage, but it was too far away to see now. Her only home and her only friend, drifting off together into the endless void... and she'd gotten them into this in the first place. "The best score we've ever had." Yeah, Nels. What a crock of shit—but you knew he'd come along, didn't you? Just like every other time you ever picked a fight bigger than your scrawny ass could handle. Blinking back tears, she checked her suit beacon; she had to make sure it was transmitting. Had to do everything she could to stay alive. The only thing worse than knowing she'd gotten Matt killed would be pissing on his memory by letting herself die too. He'd never forgive her for that...