Feels like a mini chapter, but I wanted to write it out before returning to my usual work schedule. Down to once a week, again. Thanks for reading and reviewing, guys! ;)

25

Interplanetary space, between Earth and Mars-

Scott Tracy didn't fly like a regular pilot. Never had. He flew as if he was the spacecraft; practically sinking himself into its systems. It was a strange design, though, and took some getting used to; a hybrid of pod craft and drone, having all the power of a jet fighter, without the noise and bulk. Not Thunderbird 1, but not bad.

This close to that massive alien ship, gravity seemed to shift and ripple in waves, making them first weightless, then crushingly heavy. A thousand feet below, the giant vessel continued to change; budding four sleek engines, as huge bolts of white energy swept over the hull. There were no 'landmarks'. Nothing recognizable as parts of a normal spaceship. Just hundreds of square miles of tortured and buckling neutronium.

Scott's target was the one thing in all of that frantic motion that wasn't changing; a great plateau split by an opening, like a battered rectangular launch bay or cannon muzzle. The pilot's mouth was dry as they hurtled for the cavern-like slash. Pulse and breathing were a little quick, too… but his hands were steady. Scott throttled back and dropped altitude, essentially preparing to fly underground. Felt insane, but they were bang out of options.

Beside him in the copilot's seat, John was busy with calculations, programming a force shield strong enough to defend them from radiation bursts, gravity shifts, hard vacuum and hitchhiking nanites. See, it wasn't good enough to simply destroy that monster. Not one self-replicating nanite particle could be allowed to escape. Otherwise, they'd only have shifted the problem, not ended it.

Their tiny ship cut past a sudden, lashing outgrowth and into that titanic maw, trading the boiling hull for a vast cavern of straining and thudding dark metal. Inside, the vessel seemed to be formed of enormous pillars or blocks. They thundered like pistons in every direction, sometimes nearly smashing their fragile pod, sometimes opening out to form a gigantic, lightning-filled dome. A thin, bluish atmosphere swirled and poured like fog from thousands of hidden vents.

"We've got air?" Scott wondered aloud.

"It's nitrogen," John told him, looking up from the flashing data screen. "Combined with some kind of kick-ass fumigant. Scans like a neurotoxin, but I can't be sure without taking samples."

"Guess they don't like social calls," said Virgil, peering over the back of John's seat. The Mechanic had come forward, as well, leaving Beech with their altered generator.

"It exists to destroy organic life, Tracy. Not just the big and intelligent kind. Its designers were smart enough to anticipate smaller 'infections' on the hull and inside."

"So, let's give it something they didn't include in their projections," said John tapping his wrist comm and whispering, "Los!" (Go!)

Released, Jaeger flashed like red cannon-fire from the comm, to John's golden sash, and then out of their ship. Scott kept on flying.

"What are we looking for, exactly?" he asked, staying focused on those massive, plunging and rearing components; on bursts of nova-bright energy and sudden shockwaves.

"The centre of the ship," John replied, "Or as near as you can put us." Then, turning to face the cyborg, "Kane, Jaeger's uploading a vessel schematic and circuit map. I'd look it over, myself, but…"

"Stay on the force shielding," said Kane, over the pod's nearly-constant alarm klaxon. Leaning forward, the bulky cyborg gestured at their comm panel, causing it to extrude a long, silvery cable. This, he snagged and drew outward, plugging it into one of his armour's many sockets. For a few moments, the Mechanic was perfectly still, receiving a tidal-wave of data.

Scott barely noticed.

"Need a plan," he grunted, hauling left on the steering yoke, hard. "We're running out of space, here." Like a 3-D game of Tetris, he thought; only, the blocks didn't just fall, they appeared, birthed out of eye-searing energy flares, right in his d*mn path.

"Down there," Kane ordered, pointing across Scott's muscular shoulder. "Where that big component block just moved. Through the opening."

"Uh…" Virgil hedged, craning to see past his brothers. "Is there room?"

Because the long, vertical gap, already narrow, was closing like a set of mighty neutronium jaws. Cody Beech had been silent, concentrating. Now, he said,

"It's going to jam. Bad code, after all this time… Part's the wrong size. Now! Go, now."

Scott throttled forward, pushing their boosted engines to redline. Had to flip sideways to get through the narrowing gap, drawing an arc of fiery sparks as his tail fin scraped super-dense alien metal. A long, grating shriek filled the cockpit, followed by the awful noise of crumpling metal. The little pod ship pitched and convulsed, but they made it through in most of one piece. Tail was gone, filling the air with jagged slivers.

"Sh*t," Kane snapped. Then, "Keep flying, Tracy. I'll make repairs."

Yeah, right. Keep flying… with no tail assembly and a ruptured hull, trapped in a rumbling mechanical landslide.

"No problem," he grunted, running through his few scraps of memorized prayer. Meanwhile, John worked on their force-shield; keeping the atmosphere in and the nerve gas out, as Beech took their damage, and twisted it outward. Felt like facing a hail of machine-gun bullets with skillfully wielded fly-swatters.

Entropy flared outward in magnified waves, taking little things and then snowballing them into catastrophe. All this time, Jaeger flashed like an electronic firestorm, blasting through one system after another; corrupting code and misdirecting data streams, attempting to halt the death-ship's metamorphosis.

Everyone was feverishly busy; sweating and muttering oaths. Scott, most of all. Kane had worked miracles; shaping the hull from inside to create a new tail, but now their balance was all wrong. Scott struggled to keep their crippled spaceship in the poisoned air. Got an assist from Jaeger, who lined their hull in red fire, restoring their aerodynamics and providing a stolen 'friend' recognition code.

Bright side: they'd made it through the worst of that clashing and shifting maze. Not so good: what lay ahead. Clouds of fast-moving mecha darted in streams across a space that seemed endless. Long, heavy cables lashed and coiled like serpents; each as wide as an eight-lane highway. In their midst hung some kind of reactor, just now coming to life. It was shaped like a smoky crystal, with too many sides and differently rotating surfaces. The eye and the brain couldn't grasp it all.

"A tesseract," said John, leaning forward to watch as the enormous crystal turned on more axes than seemed natural. Those cables were drawing closer, making ready to hook up for power. One brushed them with a dull, booming THUNK, knocking their ship violently sideways.

"If you tell me we've got to land there…" Scott groused, fighting the crystal's pull.

"Wouldn't recommend it," said John, shaking his head. "That's a four-dimensional object. We'd be swept inside, and might not find our way out, again."

Nice. Virgil had been staring at something else, entirely; brown eyes wide and concerned. Rapping at the top of John's head, he said, urgently,

"Let's find someplace to land and unload the package, people. We've got trouble."