Free Out Through the Attic by Quincy J. Allen Page A

spiral towards Korami. His eyes flicked to a side-screen showing what was aft, and The Baboushka lurched as several blasts from one of the fighters on his tail hit the rear deflector. A stream of blaster fire dotted past him in the front view-screen, sailing away into space as he maneuvered out of its path with another violent turn.
    “Port shield stabilized,” Rudy said, his high-pitched, artificial voice sounding very much like a small, overly happy boy. “Getting to work on the aft shield, chief.”
    17 reversed the spiraling decent towards Korami as two more streams of blaster-fire traced past his view screens. “Gotta trim these assholes, Rudy. Dump juice to the gravplates and switch all ergs to the forward array on my mark!”
    “Wilco, chief … on your mark.”
    “NOW!” 17’s fingers hit a maneuvering macro and the star field spun wildly, shifting 180 degrees in the blink of an eye. Simma Prime—the cosmop world he’d just left—and also one of his solemn charges—flashed in the view screen, then there was nothing but stars as his HUD acquired rapidly shifting target locks on the inbound fighters coming straight towards his cockpit.
    17’s senses blurred for a few seconds as his mass, caught by its own inertia, struggled to rip itself free from the ship’s gravity field and fling him around inside the cockpit. The HUD locked onto three small planetary corsairs whose rate of gain doubled then tripled as The Baboushka’s drive took a bite out of the space behind the ship and started a rapid deceleration.
    17 hit two more macros, popping open the missile-bays dotting the nose of the ship and spewing a hailstorm of guided missiles while turrets above the command deck erupted in a blaze of intense red and green pulsar fire.
    All three fighters opened up on The Baboushka ’s inbound missiles, but it was too little too late. 17 watched with a satisfied grin as their blaster-fire caught only a handful of the missiles locked onto them. The dimmers on his screen dulled the flowering explosions, and the remainder of his volley, along with his pulsar fire, hit home. All three corsairs blossomed simultaneously in magnificent explosions. His drive-system had finally stopped his momentum, and the ship began accelerating towards the expanding field of debris. He made a quick course correction, veering off to starboard and heading out towards deeper space beyond the gravity well of Simma Prime.
    Rudy spat out the coordinates for home and 17 hit the shift generator.
    O O O
    “Prime, I’m not sure I approve of 17’s behavior …” 2 said sourly as he powered down the replication console and stepped out of the holoterm. “… or his appearance .”
    The faint blue cylinder displaying bio-readings, cranial pressure, inputs, outputs, theta waves, REM sequences and other miscellaneous data pertaining to 22 flickered out of existence. Prime could now clearly see 22 suspended in the support-tank that held it.
    ‘It’ would soon be a ‘him,’ Prime thought.
    Prime and 2 were identical in appearance, save for a “2” tattooed on 2’s neck. Bulging, red environment suits—minus helmets and gloves—encased their considerable girth. In the event of an emergency depressurization, temporary force fields would enshroud their heads and hands, allowing them to get to a pressurized chamber within the station or a storage locker where standard equipment could be found.
    Both men had thick, white flowing hair and long white beards.
    The thickening, pasty body of 22, suspended in the tank before them, twitched once within the synthiotic fluid. The shroud of filaments feeding its tissues from head to toe undulated in smooth waves. The filaments sustained its life and connected countless data-feeds, making it look like a giant, translucent cocoon waiting to be split open by the new life within. There were still a few days until its birth, so no hair had yet formed across a ruddy, bulging epidermis.
    “You’re just jealous,