Chapter 29: Outrun

Acid bit his lip, looking at his feet, and the other rabbits in the cockpit stared at him expectantly as he flicked the comm switch off. “Well, um…”
“Um what?” Headcheese suddenly shouted. “Are they coming back or not?”
“I… don’t know, really…” Acid replied quietly, the worry evident in his voice. He was silent for a few moments, and then looked up again. “Electrik?”
“Yee-uh?”
“Time check?”
“Not great, cap’n,” Electrik responded worriedly, turning around to glance at a monitor behind him. “Probably not much more than sixty seconds, and that’s being generous.”
Acid sighed, and laid his hand on the throttle lever, his gaze returning guiltily to the floor.
“We can’t just leave them here!” Headcheese protested, shifting her glare from Acid to Electrik for a moment, then back to Acid again. “They’ve gotta be on their way back! They have to be!”
“Headcheese, we have to go, now,” Acid responded. “They’ve taken too long. If we don’t get out of here—”
“Fire in the hooooooole!”
A glance through the still-open cockpit airlock door showed Jack, with Firefox riding on his back, closing the distance to the Corsair at an alarmingly rapid pace. Headcheese jumped out of her chair so quickly in excitement that she fell over, but even her being sprawled on the floor couldn’t hide her ecstatic smile. “I told you they’d make it!”
The heavy airlock closed as soon as Jack and Firefox were inside the ship, and Acid maxed out the throttle even before the Captain had the chance to call out, “Punch it, Acid!”
The engines roared, vibrating the entire ship, and there was a piercing grinding sound as the destroyer peeled away from the dying satellite. Acid spun the Corsair around, and with a lurch he put it into top gear, piloting it directly away from the Eschaton to put as much distance between them as possible, as quickly as possible.
Electrik glanced at the duo as they slowed to a halt on the opposite side of the cockpit from the door through which they had careened. “Well, I don’t think you could have cut it any what the smeg happened to you, Jack?”
The entire end of the white rabbit’s muzzle was now smeared with his blood, as well as some of his neck and chest, and it was dripping in copious amounts to the cockpit floor. He stood for a moment, wavering slightly, before he collapsed onto all fours, and he only had enough strength left in him to look up at Electrik despairingly, before simply keeling over sideways, without a sound.
“Jack!” Headcheese shrieked, dashing to her brother’s side. She had to brace herself for the sight of Jack’s face, and despite her fear for his safety she couldn’t help but look away in disgust as she saw the mangled mass of flesh and blood at the end of the white rabbit’s muzzle. Closing her eyes, she grabbed Jack’s forearms, and pulled as hard as she could, letting out a strained groan as she hauled desperately.
Acid glanced back at Headcheese for a moment as he heard her groan, but the glance was fleeting, as he quickly turned back to the viewport and the assorted screens before him. Without turning around again, he addressed the Captain. “Firefox, help her out. Get Jack to the infirmary. Phish will show you where it is.”
Firefox nodded, and moved to where Headcheese was, wrapping his hands around Jack’s forearms and lifting him into a standing position. He then ducked slightly as the limp body slumped onto him, and picked him up by the waist, laying him over his shoulder like a rolled carpet. He strode carefully, with as little movement as possible, to the door at which Phish was now waiting, with Headcheese close in tow. They were gone in short order, to the infirmary deep in the bowels of the ship.
“Twenty seconds, Acid,” Electrik stated quietly. “Are we out far enough?”
“I sure hope so,” Acid replied. “Failing that, this is going to be one heck of an escape—”
“Holy carp!” Lori suddenly exclaimed. “It’s gone! The satellite! It blew up!”
It was true. The only indication that the Eschaton had ever occupied an orbit around Carrotus was an enormous ball of flames expanding outward into space, searing orange where the majority of the satellite had once been, and a bright, electric blue nearest to the planet, where the apocalyptic weapon was last.
“…uh-oh,” Lori continued. “Shockwave, heading our way, fast!”
Acid muttered quietly to himself, one hand wrapped so tightly around the controls that his knuckles were white even through his green fur, the other forcing the throttle as far forward as it would go, threatening to snap it in half with the pressure.
“It’s gaining on us, Acid,” Electrik warned. “We’re going as fast as we can, right?”
“Of course we are,” Acid answered, too preoccupied with escaping the blast to be irritated with Electrik’s ignorance. “This thing has a top speed, and right now we’re at it.”
“Thirty seconds until it catches up to us,” Electrik intoned. “It doesn’t look like it’s going to be very forgiving.”
“Phish?”
Electrik raised an eyebrow. “Uh, he left with Firefox and Headcheese a few minutes ago, like you told him to.”
“Oh yeah. Darnit.”
“Twenty seconds, by the way.”
“What’s the status on the shields?”
“What shields?”
Acid winced at Electrik’s comment. “Urgh. That bad, huh?”
“They’ve been dead since Phish had to hold the fort against those fighters from the satellite. There’s also some serious hull damage that I’m sure you don’t want to hear about right now. Ten seconds.”
Acid took a deep breath. “Well, if ever there was a moment of truth, this is it. If you ain’t holding onto your seat, cross your fingers, because we’re going to need as much luck as we can get.”
“Four… three…”
A deep rumbling suddenly drowned out Electrik’s voice, rattling the entire ship as the shockwave struck. Acid closed his eyes tightly, praying silently that his Corsair would hold together for just a few moments longer, as the rumbling continued to intensify by the second. The controls quaked fiercely in Acid’s hands, and he held them steady as best he could as a loud crunch was heard from the rear of the ship.
Then, as gradually as it had started, the thunderous noise began to taper off. Acid could see the edges of the fiery ring on either side of the wide viewport, a blistering white-blue, leaving licks of bright orange flame trailing along behind it. He slowly, numbly, released his hold on the controls, weakly leaning back in his seat, as the rumbling finally gave way to an obtuse silence.
There was no cheering, no celebration, no victorious laughter, and hardly a sound at all. The crew of the Hybrid Corsair knew that, though they had succeeded in their mission, it was only barely so, and they were far from unscathed; indeed, they could only breathe a mass sigh of unmitigated relief as they realized that they were lucky to have escaped with their lives.
Acid tentatively broke the silence. “Well… good job, everyone… we did it, we saved Carrotus…”
Jazz looked up at the pilot, both voice and expression lacking their natural collected calmness. “So… that’s it? We won?”
“We won,” Acid confirmed quietly, slowly sitting up to take the controls in his hands again.
“Let’s go home.”

As the rumbling diminished, Jack, laying on an examining table in the infirmary, opened his eyes slowly. He felt weak, numb in some places. He paid no attention to, or could not feel, the numerous splints holding his nose together, nor the restraint-like pillows Phish had put underneath his head to keep him from rolling over onto his damaged snout. He saw Firefox and Headcheese hovering over him, worry stamped on their faces, and Phish on the other side of the room out of the corner of his eye.
“Jack?” Firefox started. “…How’re you feeling?”
Jack looked up at his scarlet-furred companion, his blue eyes clouded slightly by whatever drug Phish had given him to dull the pain of his wrecked muzzle. There was silence for a few seconds, and then the white rabbit spoke.
“…He’s not coming back this time, is he.”
Firefox bit his lip, and lowered his head sadly, without a word. Jack sighed, knowing what the answer to his question was, and laid back again, staring at the metal ceiling for only a moment before his eyes closed again.