"Thistle, give me those missiles," Captain Gerlach's tinny voice demanded in the engineer's ear.

"Two minutes, we’re doing this manually," Thistle replied, up to his shoulders in a warhead.

"We have seconds," Gerlach snapped. "It’s fire or death."

"Then you've got fourteen missiles programmed for thirty second detonation," Thistle acknowledged.

"That'll do. Clear the loader."

"Understood, Thistle out." Extracting himself, he waved to Tekel, working on the next missile on the conveyor. "Time to skedaddle, the captain's ready to relive his glory days."

Tekel shimmered oddly and bent bonelessly as he slid free. "May his impatience not cost him."

"I'm surprised you're happy to let him commandeer your ship like this," Thistle commented as the pair headed for the ladder down to the lower level.

Tekel wiggled his hands by his side before sliding down the poles. "I forfeited him when I failed my captain's trust. Now through trust I atone." At the bottom, he smacked a button on the wall and rune-encrusted breaches swivelled open. Pistons shunted two missiles in and immediately the ammunition lift whirred to life past where Thistle was still struggling with the ladder. Tekel had already moved to a nearby console. "Conduct for me."

"Tekel says we're ready. I think," Thistle said into his comms.

Gerlach's reply was as urgent as it was uncharacteristically singular. "Now!"

Thistle echoed the command and twin thumps echoed from the breaches. A second later they opened, and the cycle repeated six more times.

"Hull temperature two hundred and climbing!" Graukralle reported.

"If I die because of a system update, I'll haunt you, Thistle!" Meckler griped, hauling on the wheel.

"Graukralle, status," Raspberry demanded.

The engineer shook her head, feathers frazzled. "The system's booted, but I've got error lights all over the board! Switch to auxiliaries, Hermann."

"Don't you think I've tried that?" He snapped.

Graukralle shrugged desperately. "If in doubt, off and on again."

"Boreas be with me..." He clicked the switch once, twice.

The deck plates rumbled, acceleration padding was tested, and through the window, yellow darkened to starry black.

"Close blast shield, main viewer on," Raspberry instructed. "Helm, take us to low orbit."

Just then, a pair of flashes illuminated the cloud’s depths. Two more along the edges, and the form seemed to recoil, flecks of darkness fraying away into the void. Then she caught sight of the wounded bird's graceful flight as it soared past the explosion-wracked cloud.

Meckler cheered at the sight. "Maybe between us, we'll kill that thing!"

"Not today," Raspberry replied, leaning forward. "We've got a window, let's use it. Plot an intercept course with the cargo modules, best speed sublight. Keep us down solar wind of the cloud. Engineer, let the batteries run dry and shut off all draw. Passive sensors only."

"It's on us, great!" Captain Gerlach announced over the comms. "...I think it's great. Give me best speed, chief!"

Closing the forgotten channel himself, Thistle craned around Tekel to see the targeting scanner, on which the cloud was closing fast. Despite that, he was immensely relieved to see the Westtry moving off. "Let's get to work on more missiles."

"Fourteen warheads, and it is merely angered..." Tekel moaned in contrast, slumping down with his back to the console. "Save your energy and pray for salvation."

"But we made that thing flinch!" Thistle countered. "It's just a problem of scale. Do you have anything bigger?"

Tekel shook his head. "The secondary explosion risk is too great aboard a bird so small."

"Then we need to jury-rig something..." Thistle mused. "What does your ship run on? Fusion?"

The translator struggled with the reply. "Anathema to the prime corporeal."

"Anathema... Hates, opposed to, the opposite of," Thistle muttered, then stomped a hoof. "Do you mean anti-matter?"

"Wow, that ship's fast!" Meckler observed as the Ishtar's ion trail blazed away on the projected map.

"Too fast, maybe," Raspberry qualified, watching the external camera feeds on her station's monitor. "The cloud's veering off."

Tense minutes passed as she watched, praying it wasn't an intercept course.

Captain Gerlach thumped his console as Thistle and Tekel arrived at engineering. "Like a dog with a bone. I'm taking her in again."

"I cannot keep zese plates spinning much longer, captain!" Elytra called back. Changelings didn't sweat, but if they did, this one would have been stood in a puddle.

"We... Might have a solution to that..." Thistle panted.

"Take ze controls, I'll go into ze core and shut off zat coolant leak," Elytra instructed urgently.

Thistle held up a hoof. "Hold on. This ship runs on anti-matter. If that gets loose, it'll be the biggest explosion since the Elysium bombing!"

"Shockwaves..." Gerlach mused, turning to Tekel. "You said 'its song' ate your captain, correct?"

The En-Kelad sucked in a breath and shuddered.

Gerlach strode over, reared and planted a talon on his shoulder. "Tekel! Pull yourself together!"

Tekel screwed up his face and shook his head. "It sung to us as it killed us."

"It's a living cloud, emphasis on 'living'. By definition, it has to have some sort of control," Gerlach reasoned.

A certain desperate excitement entered Tekel's voice. "A loud enough bang will disrupt any orchestra!"

"Precisely!" Gerlach let go of the alien and turned to Elytra. "Chief, can you rig the reactor to explode remotely?"

"Ze way it is? It's harder to stop it blowing up." He paused thoughtfully. "If Thistle is right, we can easily shut down ze containment units. But we don't have a transmitter."

"Just use the transmitter aboard one of the escape pods." Gerlach turned to Tekel. "Tell me this ship has escape pods."

The En-Kelad nodded. "Even unclothed, one cannot survive long in the void."

"Zere is no time," Elytra insisted, not taking his eyes off the console. "Even if we had ze shuttle, we vould need to install command protocols to access ze computer."

Tekel straightened. "Then here I shall remain, and deliver justice for the fallen."

"Captain, he won't be able to both fly ze ship and keep ze reactor stable," Elytra warned.

"Then I'll stay too," Gerlach volunteered without hesitation.

Elytra shook his head. "You don't have ze slightest idea how zese controls work."

"I've been around the block a few ti–"

Elytra spun, drew his lance pistol and fired in one smooth motion. Gerlach fell to the ground shuddering. "You are not an engineer!"

Thistle looked between them, mouth agape.

"Zere is no time. Take him to ze escape pod," Elytra ordered, dropping his gun and turning back to the console. "Goodbye, captain. Mr. Patch. Congratulate Otto on his promotion for me."

"Erm. I'll... We'll all miss you, chief. Goodbye, Tekel." Thistle watched for a beat longer, then lit his horn and dragged the stunned captain away.

"You'll make a fine engineer one day, if you stop forgetting your clothes," Elytra said.

Thistle blinked, scooped up the two helmets propped by the command console in his brown field and gave the captain one last tug.

The doors slid shut on two noble souls.

"Is there anything left in the lance battery?" Meckler asked, watching the cloud on the main screen. Even at full burn, it was gaining on them.

"There's some residual power in the capacitors. One, maybe two shots worth," she replied.

The helmsgriff turned to Raspberry. "The captain's plan failed, ma’am. Requesting permission to die with honour."

"The captain doesn't believe in no-wins, and neither do I," Raspberry denied.

If only finding that third path was so easy. It did look an awful lot like a choice of evils.

"We could abandon ship," Graukralle suggested.

"We'd starve before our distress beacon was even heard," Meckler countered. "I'd rather go quickly."

"You won't go anywhere yet," Raspberry said firmly. "That thing doesn't turn as well as we do. We can give it the run-around until our fuel runs out."

"That's your grand plan?" Meckler snarked.

Raspberry slammed a hoof against her console and stood, leaving a shallow dent behind. "Enough, Mr. Meckler! The longer it has to chase us, the longer it isn't looking for new targets and the more energy it wastes. Playing smart is not dishonourable, but if you want to wait for glorious death locked in the cleaning cupboard, I can for arrange that too!"

"Ma'am..."

Stressed, Raspberry turned on Graukralle. "What?"

She flinched.

Raspberry rubbed her face with a pastern. "Sorry. What is it?"

Graukralle pointed past her. "Your screen."

Raspberry followed the shaky claw. On it, a blueshifted shape had appeared from behind the planet, skimming in a gravity-assisted arc just above the cloudtops.

Happy to grasp any straw, she clambered back onto her couch. "It's the captain! He's... going to ram the cloud? Two minutes to impact."

Worry flooded through Raspberry's guts. It seemed stupid when she was in mortal danger too, but Thistle was on that ship too.

"One minute."

"Forty-five."

"Thirty."

"Twent– Helm, full RCS to port!" She shouted as her eye caught something.

Meckler, to his credit, didn't question orders this time. Over the rattling of the deck, the manoeuvring thrusters were unnoticeable, but the Westtry slid on its course all the same.

Praying the small contact she had spotted was what she hoped it was, Raspberry watched the main screen as the Ishtar plunged into the cloud like a bird of prey and vanished.

The cloud writhed and grew. Within a second it had ballooned to vast proportions, filling the screen. It seemed as though it would engulf the Westtry and hope would wither to despair once more, but then it opened like a blossom. Within lay a star, its radiance illuminating that impenetrable darkness like nothing else had and withering it. The light waxed to its zenith and faded, collapsing back in on itself. A few motes of darkness lingered around the fringes. They drifted, seeming confused, but then as though caught in a wind, they were scattered and frittered away to nothing. The last twinkle of light wended against that current and passed.

The bridge was silent for a moment, until Meckler stood and whooped.

As though a spell were broken, Graukralle slumped down, rubbing her face with the palms of her talons again and again. Raspberry let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. Quietly, she checked her sensors, those which hadn't been fried by the explosion.

"Mr. Meckler, match velocity with the object I've highlighted on your panel," Raspberry ordered once the cheering died down.

The pod was travelling at enormous speed on an escape trajectory from the system, but it had no acceleration. Over the next hour the Westtry closed the distance, locked on her telekinetic tractor and began to slow to EVA-safe speeds.

The next morning, Raspberry met the captain for debriefing, right as he was finishing writing the condolences to Elytra's family.

"I'll be charitable with Mr. Meckler's record. He wasn't exactly 'compus mentis'," Gerlach said from within the quarantine chamber once she had finished. "We'll have to see about training somegriff up on the helm who doesn't already have a critical action station."

"You think he'll snap again, sir?" Raspberry asked.

Gerlach shrugged. "Can't be too safe. We'll need to fill out engineering too. Assign Muck to that, it's about time he moved up from waste reclamation."

She took a note. "I can't believe Elytra's gone."

Gerlach sighed. "I know. Stubborn old bug. I don't know if I should thank him for saving me or be annoyed. Something he said on the wreck makes me wonder if he had something to prove..."

"Sad might work," Raspberry suggested.

The captain chuckled. "You know he wouldn't want that. Eyes forward, the Vraksian way. How are you doing?"

She automatically touched the bandage. "Guv checked me over, we're both fine. Missing Thistle though."

Gerlach tipped his head. "He's just one over, you know."

Raspberry gave him a faux-flat look. "No wonder you ran away to space."

"I never was afraid of a tachyonic relationship," he laughed. "Speaking of which, I need to write to Stella. Dismissed."

Raspberry nodded and stowed her notebook before plodding down the corridor to the next window.

Thistle looked up from his slate when she tapped the glass with a smile. "Hi Razz. Or should I say ma'am?" He greeted with a grin. "I hear you were brilliant."

"How about 'love'?" She replied, resting her forehead on the glass.

"That'll do," he replied, crossing the chamber and reciprocating. "Great to see you again, I thought you'd be on bridge watch until evening."

"In a bit. After breakfast." Raspberry sighed and rolled her eyes. "One night and I'm already pining."

"Just six more to go," he soothed.

Time passed. "I should get food," Raspberry said eventually.

"The sensors won't recalibrate themselves either," Thistle replied.

She felt stuck though, her heart climbing into her throat. She drew a ragged breath and the façade fell away. "I thought we were going to die, Thiz."

"We didn't."

"But what if you'd had to stay? I–" She stepped back, feeling tears run down her coat. "We can't do this again. It was sheer dumb luck we both lived."

Thistle shook his head. "Teamwork got us through."

"My family has a saying: 'Adventure chases some.'" She glanced toward the other quarantine chamber, rubbing her barrel. "This isn't my first scrape. I... think we should set up groundside once we get back home. We’ve got the Idols."

Thistle bit his lip. "We've got time to think. Don't rush into it."

With a sigh, Raspberry nodded and pressed her forehead to the glass again. "I love you."

"I love you too."

Author's Note

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this short tale as much as I did writing it. Do please leave constructive feedback, it helps me improve as an author.
The appendix blog is now available here. Do take a look for more worldbuilding fun!

Given the scope of their efforts, thanks again to Light Shine and Aydan Zamora, a wonderful good cop/bad cop duo of the beta reading world if I ever encountered one.