I'm not reckless. I prioritize.

  The hatch wasn't closed yet, but I wasn't going to wait around for whoever hopped on board to get comfortable. A horde of zombies was out there, and Oblivion was up here. I had seen what Oblivion could do, and I had tried to run from it before. (I really needed to get to 1941 Wild to look for my memories and see how that ended. But first, let's get off this fucking moon.)

  I blasted us off into space, thrilled to be piloting a proper ship again. We flew through the opening as Oblivion turned to fire. I had managed to get the jump on Oblivion, but we were in missile range, and they didn't need to be staring us down to get a good shot off.

  Four missiles came at us.

  I sped off in the angle that gave us the best leverage, then dipped down and headed straight for Oblivion, trying to close the distance before the missiles could adjust to our position.

  kittyboy: "@dustcaller, target those missiles."

  We were together in the cockpit of the ship, so I could have just yelled. It seemed more authentic to yell, and that would normally be my preference, but I was learning that sometimes trying to be authentic will get you killed. I leaned into the machine side of myself. We couldn't risk screw ups. Ashfield's Law be damned.

  kittyboy: "@zerogstar, find us a way out of here."

  zerogstar: "Already on it."

  @dustcaller still hadn't responded, and that's when I realized I might have already screwed up. @dustcaller was new to all this. I hoped it was just him adjusting to a comms unit, not just my complete lack of diligence in assigning someone to the weapons station who didn't know how to fire weapons.

  kittyboy: "@dustcaller, you know how to do this?"

  "You're asking him now!?!" @auroraloon shouted, her voice echoing through the cabin.

  She was mostly working comms and jamming signals, attacks that didn't rely on traditional weaponry. She could also override shields and power management from her position. The Pharaoh was in AI-assist mode, but sometimes it's better just to have complete control, like we did when we fought the pirate ship, Graviton.

  She wasn't wrong about @dustcaller, but they had been stuck on the ship, and he was supposed to learn all about The Pharaoh so that he could be an asset. I should have asked @auroraloon to take the weapons station, and it made me wonder. If @sundial had been on board, would I have asked her, @auroraloon, or @dustcaller? I didn't have an answer.

  I was still caught up in the legend that was @mickeymouse. I wanted to see what his origin, @dustcaller, could do. This wasn't the right time or place, but I had already taken that risk. Besides, for him, it was life or death, and that should be plenty of motivation to figure it out.

  dustcaller: "I'll get it."

  He didn't seem as confident as he usually did, though, so I was going to need to fly my ass off.

  As quickly as we rose into the sky, I dove us back down toward the spiky triangular roof that protected the colony. I could have taken control of the weapons myself. As pilot and captain, I could override any system I wanted, but multitasking against Oblivion lowered our odds of survival. Every calculation told me I needed to fly. Just fly. So I resisted the temptation.

  I let my mind focus and wander at the same time, letting my futurecasting do its work, pushing back the human side of me, allowing my tech to fully engage.

  The sensation was weird at first.

  I felt like I had blacked out, like someone had thrown lightning in my face.

  There was too much information. My eyes started to water, and I felt like my body was full of fizzy water, little vibrations everywhere, inside and out. I had felt like this many times when waiting to die in deep space, my blood boiling from the lack of pressure. I wondered if I was visibly shaking.

  Fear struck me. I couldn't fly the ship like this. It was too much data to process.

  I managed to spin The Pharaoh to avoid two of the missiles, but I was late. The third missile hit us square on, damaging the shields and shaking the ship. The shields held enough to prevent damage to the hull, but more impacts like that and we would be done for. The fourth missile struck as well, but at an angle that minimized the damage, sparing us.

  I wanted to scream, so I screamed my lungs out as the information flooded my mind and overwhelmed me.

  It's too much information. You're lost.

  No. I can handle it.

  You can't. You're still part human. Your mind will break.

  We were designed this way.

  No. You are broken. You have died too many times. @auroraloon could see it, and now it is happening. You are hallucinating.

  No. We were designed this way, I repeated to myself. My mind can handle it.

  Clarity hit me.

  The world around me came to a near stop.

  I took in the panicked faces of my crew and their furious activity as they tried to adjust to the situation. I could see that they were preparing for the worst. I could see that they were scared.

  That was my fault, and I owned my mistake. We were lucky not to have been blown up in that first wave.

  @auroraloon was shouting something to @dustcaller. He was nodding back, grabbing firmly at the controls. @zerogstar projected a pathway in my HUD, her best scenario for escape.

  It was a good one, but I didn't need it.

  They didn't need to be scared anymore.

  I laughed wildly.

  Each of them turned to look at me. Shock maybe? Horror maybe? Fear definitely. They didn't know what I knew. They should be laughing with me. They should be smiling and rejoicing. We weren't going to die. Couldn't they see it?

  Oblivion moved faster than The Pharaoh. It locked on our path and pounced on us before we had recovered from the first wave of fire.

  I didn't care. I flicked The Pharaoh in a zig-zagging dance before swinging hard left. We were agile enough that, despite their speed, I could make The Pharaoh nearly impossible to hit. And in my enhanced state of being, I could multi-task to my heart's content.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  I messaged Oblivion's chief engineer to throw a distraction at my enemy.

  kittyboy: "@stardvark, if you Obliteration mode me, I will steal all your fancy tea and force you to watch while I dump it into space."

  Let's see what Oblivion does with that information! They would be wondering who I really was, how I knew @stardvark, how I knew about Obliteration mode. It could buy us time. All I needed was an infinitesimal degree of hesitation.

  The rest was on me, sitting in a trance, in Machine mode, with the Universe unfolding in front of me.

  Sometimes I feel like the Universe is a living thing, like it takes care of me. I catch glimpses of coincidence where I feel like I'm being held and loved by unknown forces. Oh sure, there's the opposite sometimes too, that random painful death that came out of nowhere just when I was about to take a sip of coffee.

  At this moment, I felt like the Universe had orchestrated everything that was happening just for me, putting in play events that would save our lives.

  The terrordactyl storm was coming.

  I slung us in that direction, heading into the meteorite shower. It would provide us with cover. Then, as soon as we were out in open space, I'd fire the DEAD drive. Oblivion could survive the storm, but they'd have to be careful not to take too many hits, and they were bigger than us. We had the advantage.

  A powerful sense of dread had set in among my crew, though, and in those moments, their primal instinct set in, and they began yelling aloud.

  "@kittyboy!" @zerogstar shouted.

  "What are you doing?" @auroraloon screamed.

  "His nose is bleeding," @zerogstar said. "@kittyboy?"

  Their concern was lovely, but really, everything was fine. Why couldn't they see that?

  "I'm saving us," I uttered, working the controls to push The Pharaoh to its limits, rolling the ship and sending us spinning in the direction of the largest meteor in the oncoming storm.

  @zerogstar held on to her seat, wincing. "He's taking us into the terrordactyl storm. Can you override him?"

  "My panel is dead," @auroraloon replied.

  Of course it was. I let @dustcaller keep control over the weapons, but everything else was mine now.

  @auroraloon tried to get out of her seat. She was going to come over to my chair and muck with my plans. I zipped us upward, the jolt forcing her back into her seat, while we continued to spin.

  "I think I'm going to puke," @zerogstar mumbled, grabbing the console in front of her and closing her eyes.

  @auroraloon tried again, but I saw it coming and once again caused the ship to lurch so that she had no choice but to remain seated.

  "No," I said. "Trust me."

  Oblivion fired another round of missiles. Eight this time.

  "Incoming!" @auroraloon yelled.

  I knew that already. I wished they would just strap into their seats and enjoy the ride. I only passively noticed that I was still laughing. I couldn't seem to stop myself. Like a stealth mission when it was too damn funny that my enemy couldn't see me, I thought it was hilarious that Oblivion believed it could catch me and blow me up. Those fools!

  @zerogstar managed to keep herself from getting sick, but her face had lost its luster. She held one hand across her stomach and another to her mouth. "Four more ships just entered the system," she called out in a muffled voice.

  Four, twelve, twenty. I didn't care. I would lose them in the terrordactyl storm.

  @dustcaller fired our weapons at the incoming missiles, striking two right away, at quite a distance. I laughed harder. He was figuring it out.

  My turn.

  I swerved at the meteorite, passing meters from the edge, effectively blocking five of the missiles with how I angled The Pharaoh. The meteorite shattered as we passed by, sending debris scattering across the view ahead of us. The last missile passed beyond us and started circling back, but @dustcaller picked it off before it could loop around.

  That was when they finally understood. This was my ideal state of existence.

  "Holy fuck," @auroraloon stated.

  Over a hundred years of being a Wavepilot had taught me more than just how to die. I understood the forces of space, the subtle manipulations of a ship, the tactics and behaviors of pilots. As I embraced the cascade of data running through my brain, I barely had to think. I had no decisions to make. The future was clear, right in front of me, as instinctual as the beating of my heart.

  I zipped to the solar northeast, sliding us between two meteors, while setting up @dustcaller to fire on one of the new ships.

  They were Solar Union ships, a squadron of Clippers with large vertical solar sails, resembling seafaring ships from Old Earth. Those vertical solar sails would not survive the storm. They should have sent Hummingbirds.

  @dustcaller connected with one of the Clippers, damaging it along the starboard side. The others recognized the danger of the storm and moved away from us, scattering beyond the terrordactyl storm, hopeful to catch us on the other side. The ship @dustcaller hit, however, was stuck too far in the center. A meteor struck it in the vertical sail, hindering its power and speed to escape. It slowly turned to make it out, but more meteorites, small but plentiful, pelted it until it was helplessly hovering amidst the storm, waiting for a final blow.

  Oblivion still hovered in the distance behind us. They had hesitated, allowing me to gain space, but now they were committed to following us deeper into the storm. Oblivion fired three thick blue lasers forward, carving a path through meteorites that it couldn't dodge, a truly awesome spaceship.

  While Oblivion carved carefully forward, I danced The Pharaoh between the narrow openings. I knew we couldn't dodge every single meteorite, but I strategically chose the ones I would bash into, letting my mind project me forward while my hands automatically did the rest.

  Side thruster up 30%. Cut the right engine to 55%. Overload the left rear engine. Now spin horizontally and edge down below the meteor. In 1.78 seconds, accelerate to full speed. Nudge the rear of The Pharaoh against the bottom of the meteor. Use the impact to flip the ship, somersaulting The Pharaoh forward through space.

  We were now rotating in a spin while also flipping forward through the meteor shower. In my mind, we looked like a rolling ball, the angles allowing us to fire blasters to spit incoming meteorites in the denser part of the storm.

  Oblivion was still behind us, bobbing left and right, slicing its way through with its more powerful weapons. But they hadn't been able to get a shot on us.

  I stopped the spin and now looped us up and to the right, narrowing passing another meteorite that had collided and caromed off in a different direction from the storm.

  I heard the crew scream as I zipped around it.

  Another large meteor rushed by in front.

  Fire braking thrusters.

  The meteor sped past, centimeters from the viewer, and then I fired the engines again, angled downward, slipping through the storm with grace and precision.

  I wove us through the rest in a radical flow of motions that must have seemed arbitrary, adjusting to the different speeds, directions, and rotations of the meteors around us, maneuvering as close to the larger ones as I could, until at last we rumbled through the final fragments of the storm into more open space.

  As the ship shook, I realized I was holding my breath. I inhaled deeply through my nose, only to catch a pool of blood, causing me to start coughing. Finally, I took a deep breath, but the coughing fit snapped me out of my trance.

  Suddenly, the world around me faded and blurred. I felt myself collapse in my chair. The ship was stable now, speeding forward in a straight line. @auroraloon ran over to me, holding me up, checking my face and eyes.

  Like a DEAD drive expanding and collapsing space, my eyesight expanded and collapsed back to normal. I looked at @auroraloon's concerned face, processing the events that led us here, her pupils dilated, the black consuming the surrounding violet. I smiled as best I could and stared out the window.

  In the distance, I could see Dactyl and Ida. Space around them was littered with a flow of meteors, like dozens and dozens of flocks of birds in the distance, soaring through space, waiting to dive down and land. A flicker of light appeared as the Clipper finally exploded in the storm. It was a beautiful sight.

  I vomited on the floor.

  "What did you do?" @auroraloon said, holding my head. I turned my head toward her but couldn't speak. I tried to laugh.

  @zerogstar rushed over as well now and felt my forehead. "He's burning up."

  I heard more commotion behind me.

  "What's going on?" It was @awesomedog. So, he had indeed made it onto the ship. He was supposed to be flying his own ship, causing a distraction. It was probably buried under the collapsed roof on Dactyl.

  "Get him to the med bay," said @auroraloon.

  "Jump," I finally said. "DEAD jump."

  "They're too close," she replied. "They'll be able to follow us."

  "Trust me," I gasped. "Jump. Virus."

  "I don't understand," @auroraloon said, trying to keep our eyes locked, to coax me back to awareness.

  "Oblivion is coming out of the storm," the loud and sonorous voice of @dustcaller cut through the room. "Need to move."

  I managed to put a hand on @auroraloon's arm. "You fly. Jump. Jump. Jump." I felt the room go dizzy. @awesomedog pulled me out of the chair with help from @zerogstar, and @auroraloon took my place in the pilot seat.

  "Keep jumping," I mumbled. I didn't have the energy to explain. I cursed my weary mind and failing body. Sweat dripped down my face. The last words out of my mouth were "catnip," and then I collapsed, letting them carry me away.