Okay. No problem. Think of it as racing. You like racing, like, Redana? All this is, it’s just a nine-hundred meter dash with extra obstacles. You can do this in your sleep.

She steps deeper into the corridor, does her warm-up stretches. (Body of a champion! You sharpen your sword before a battle, should you not prepare your body before you unleash your potential?) One, two. One, two. Stretch that hamstring.

Then she [i]sprints[/i]—

The world doesn’t move in slow motion. She’s not [i]that[/i] fast. But it’s obvious that she’s one of the finest classically trained sprinters on Tellus: her limbs move like pistons, her core is rock steady, her breath cycles through her in a great wave only to be expelled once more a moment later. She is lean, pared down, and focused. Too late, one of the skirmishers manages to get a bead on her, and tosses a bola at her legs.

Watch as she does a perfect mid-sprint [i]jeté[/i] that Bella would be proud of[1], letting the bolas strike uselessly at the ground beyond her.

And then, as the Phalanx finally starts a useless maneuver to bank and follow her, she’s already flung herself up into one of the many openings open around floor level.[2] She pulls herself up gantries to the rudimentary bridge in the Boar’s center, and then slams down the emergency switch that reignites the engines.

Then it’s just a matter of using the mag harness to hold her steady while, with a terrible screech and rattle like the battle at the end of the universe, the Boar careens across the hangar. All she can do from here, without turret access, is engage the thermal cutters in bursts (so that she doesn’t cut through the floor and collapse into a lower level). They’re firing when she hits the opposite wall with a surprisingly wet crunch and crumple, and once her mags have stopped chirping frantically at her, she deactivates the harness and works her way out.

The hangar will, uh. Well, where there’s a will, there’s a way! Nothing some elbow grease can’t fix! (Molten slag drips down into the pipes below.) Besides, this is a lot more important than something like “having a place to park smaller ships inside of a larger ship.” The smaller ships can just go on the outside! With the determination of someone who’s done exactly as much thinking as she plans to do, and a quest from a god pressing upon her brow, Redana lifts the hatch of her Plover.

She flips a cover open and slams on the Cable Release. Parts of the hatch flash warning as the battery power kicks in, as Redana straps herself down and lets her limbs nestle into the controls. But there’s no cable whipping dangerously behind her as it coils; it’s still sitting, waiting, in the fertility idol hips of the Hurricane.

For a second time, Redana charges across the hangar, the jet set directly behind her roaring to furious life as her Plover’s feet lift off the ground and she flings herself into the storm-in-waiting, the void of Poseidon; her auxiliary boosters kick in as she slams her output to maximum and is shoved back in the pilot frame by the reacting force, potent even through the dampeners.

The first warning she’ll have of the ELF barrage will be when the roar of the jets cuts out completely, and then her hatch’s viewscreen will begin to flash red in reaction. (It’s not electric in nature, but rather thrice-tempered smart glass, you see.) Then she’ll just have to trust in momentum; that Poseidon won’t drive her off course with an errant wave; that she’ll crash onto the deck of the decrepit man-of-war that slowly grows in the viewscreen, rather than being fished out by the Armada.

“This is the will of my father,” she whispers to herself, and clenches her fingers tighter around the controls.

***

[1]: everyone knows that overwhelming pride makes one’s heart beat hard and fast; that it makes one stare, awe-struck, at the ripple of well-defined muscles underneath skin, before suddenly blushing and looking down at one’s feet; and that it makes one grab at one’s apron and start kneading it with one’s claws. Just ask Bella! She knows [i]all[/i] about pride.

[2]: there is no THIS SIDE UP label on a Boar.

***

[[b]12[/b] to Get Away.]