“Now!”

Angel Eight spun on its axis like a top, its twin reactors flaring as the plane suddenly shot away in apparent violation of Newton’s Laws, and Samuels tightened her finger on the trigger.

“Archangel Thirteen, Fox Three.”

The Havoc dropped from its internal pylon, hesitating that brief instant while it massed a full normal amount, then flickered away in an unreal sort of pseudo-motion. It crossed the gap between human and alien and, in a flash, slammed into its target.

The first thing destroyed was the CM generator, and then the fully massed weapon bored right though the enemy fighter at 0.6c, turning it into an expanding fireball.

“Nice shooting, Cardsharp,” Archangel Eight called. “Thanks.”

“No problem, Paladin,” Samuels said. “But you owe me another hand.”

Paladin chuckled as they brought their fighters back together while looking around the mess of the battleground around them.

“Looks like we’re doing cleanup,” Paladin said, tallying up the wrecks around them.

“Yeah,” Samuels replied, glancing over her shoulder. “But the Odyssey seems to have stepped in it.”

The two fighter pilots checked their HUDs and noted that the Odyssey and the alien cruisers seemed to be getting more than a little too close for comfort.

“Archangels,” Stephanos broke in to the chatter, “form up on me. We’re going to give the Odyssey a little support.”

“Kick it loose!” Kreuse ordered, slamming his foot down on the smoldering desk still jammed in the breach.

The other men found themselves a handgrip and followed suit, finally kicking the mass out of the breach and into the void beyond. For a moment, they all watched as it floated out, away from them. Then the Odyssey shifted its course and the desk vanished from sight.

“All right, let’s spec this out,” Brian growled. “And for God’s sake, people, check your lines!”

The team did just that before anything else, making sure that all the safety lines were in place, and they began the delicate and dangerous work of crawling out through the thick mesh of armor and insulating materials that made up the outer hull of the NACS Odyssey.

“How bad is it, Brian?” Chief Corrin called from where she was checking the rest of the lab.

“Nasty rupture here,” came the answer. “The laser strike was pretty small. Most of this was caused by explosive decompression.”

“Great,” Corrin muttered.

“The laser must have weakened the structure,” Brian Kreuse said. “This isn’t supposed to happen in real life. Looks like some goddamned movie set.”

“Just fix it, Kreuse.”

“I’m on it, Chief.”

Corrin let the man get to his work as she came to a sealed door. The electronics on it were busted all to hell, and it didn’t register whether there was atmosphere or not on the other side.

“Great,” she muttered, pulling a wrench from her belt.

“What’s that, Chief?”

“Nothing,” she said, then laid her helmet against the door in question and rapped hard with the wrench three times.