When Beka awoke, she immediately tried to calculate how long she'd slept and how much longer she had to remain in this sterile prison. Well, ideally sterile, but she wouldn't bet on it. The hollowness in her middle promptly informed her that she'd been asleep for several hours, possibly an entire night. She raised the lights and mouthed a silent 'thank you' that Trance was currently elsewhere. Fortunately, Beka was still fully clothed, so all she had to do was avoid a certain pair of innocent-looking eyes, until she entered the cockpit. She followed the Maru's least-used corridors and came as near to sneaking up on Tyr as anyone had in quite a while. She spotted his broad, powerful shoulders, silver chainmail glittering coldly under the cockpit's fluorescent lighting. Beka gave a mental whoop for joy, but as if he had her her silent, joyous cry, Tyr called out to her.
"It seems I will have to study the plans of your ship more carefully, Beka."
In an oddly playful mood, Beka mimicked him behind his back before emerging from her semi-secret corridor. "Don't even think about tattling on me to Trance. The only thing you'll accomplish is giving me even more time to plot you untimely, unexpected, and completely accidental demise. I think you'd be very impressed with my 'lateral thinking' if I told you what I got so far."
"Maybe later." The utter lack of dry humor in his voice alerted to Beka that something wasn't right.
"Uh, and that would be me kidding. I'm no Perseid stand-up comedian, but I thought that one was at least mildly amusing."
Tyr looked up at her. "I would like very much to return you to Medical, Beka, but I fear we may need your exceptional piloting skills in a short while."
Run first, ask questions later. Beka vaulted into the pilot's seat without a word, strapped herself in, and tapped her console to life. She groaned. "Tell me these aren't-"
"The T'dalimar? 'Fraid so, boss." Harper's voice burst into the cockpit. He spared only a brief glance for his Nietzschean crewmate before taking up his post at a console that fed him constant streams of data from both internal and external sensors. "And this time it definitely isn't coincidence." His fingers flew over the keypads. "They had to have opened a slip portal just beyond our farthest sensors and sped here like Wile E. Coyote after the roadrunner on an Acme jetpack."
Beka was becoming accustoming to Harper's bizarre aphorisms and didn't bother asking for an explanation of his latest. "Tyr, any ideas why they're on us like a bad case of Triangulum measles?" She could only think of one possible reason herself, and she dearly hoped it was just paranoia caught from their resident Nietzschean.
"The T'dalimar only reveal themselves to those who have no chance of surviving to tell anyone about their existence. I would guess your amorous Mr. Eron very much dislikes rejection." Despite the very serious circumstances, Beka realized with some amazement that Tyr was half-joking.
Harper scoffed. "Or he just doesn't feel like paying us. But… wouldn't he wait 'til after we finished the job to whack us? That way he looks good to whoever hired him, and he doen't have to worry about something we mudfoots like to call 'contractual obligations'."
Beka couldn't help a tiny smile crossing her face. Horny as hell and hungover when he didn't get any, Harper might be at times, but he was sharp as a tack when need demanded it. And admit it, a lot of the rest is a front, and you know it. She conceded.
"Beka! What are you doing here? You're supposed to be resting right now. I'm still running tests, you know, and-"
"-and I hate to interrupt you, Trance, but if I don't get us out this, the only tests anyone's gonna run will be one those little bits of DNA they find floating around here after the T'dalimar disappear again."
Tyr looked up and met Trance's eyes for a moment. "As soon as we're clear of these mercenaries, I promise I will send her back to you." Beka rather resented Tyr speaking of her as a piece of misdirected mail, but Tyr continued before she could voice her annoyance. "But ill as she is, I believe she is our best hope for surviving this… unique situation."
A string of curses distracted Beka from the conversation referring to her as if she were not obviously in the same room. "Boss, they just charged weapons. Uh, check that, they're firing! I think we'd better strap on our jetpacks and get outta here."
Beka jerked back on the Maru's controls, and the ship leaped wildly, sending Trance and Harper to the floor. "Did I mention that you'd better hld on?" She narrowly avoided the brilliant green burst and turned to zip away when Harper's voice broke in on her planning and calculations.
"Oh crap. They just dumped over three hundred plasma mines on top of our heads. You can try weaving in between 'em, but-"
A violent explosion rocked the ship. "But that." Beka tapped her console, read what it spewed out at her, and pounded it angrily. "We can't even go to slipstream until we get a little space between the mines. If any part of the slip portal touches one of those, it's not gonna matter how much better I navigate slipstream than the T'dalimar." Her only option was to painstakingly maneuver her way out of the mined area. And she might've managed it, if not for…
CRASH!! One of those bursts of emerald struck the Maru along her starboard flank, and sparks flew in tiny reenactments of the latest blast. Unbeknownst to anyone but herself, the shot had sent surges through several of the Maru's systems, all converging on Beka's station and propelling a large piece of her white-hot console into her bicep. The lights had flickered and died for a few moments after the direct hit, and amid the flares of various surging or failing systems, no one noticed the flash of exploding console that injured Beka.
Now conscious and functioning purely on adrenaline, Beka was hardly aware of the bone-deep gash on her upper arm. Admirably focused, she piloted the Maru out of the minefield and thrust the ship into slipstream the moment she was halfway safe to do so. "Destination: hell outta Dodge." The ride felt bumpier than usual, but Beka's crewmates attributed it to damage to navigational systems. Because he was positioned at just the right angle to see Beka's injury, Tyr was the first to notice it.
When they exited slipstream he saw he swaying faintly out of the corner of her eye and looked up worriedly, thinking of her still unaccounted-for fever. His eyes widened as he took in the bright scarlet stain on her pale arm and the chunk of console still lodged in the wound. He raced to her side and caught her before she could hit her head on the back of the chair. He unbuckled her as he fielded the crew's frightened exclamations.
Beka struggled to keep awake, but all she could manage was a drowsy, "you did apologize… maybe I should… chance…" before she passed into unconsciousness once more.