Improvise

Eris's form contracted around Susan's wrist like a vice. "Secondary explosions have compromised the relay's structural integrity. We have approximately forty-seven seconds before critical failure." Her mercury tendrils snaked deeper into the circuitry, illuminating a nightmare schematic—sixty racer pods spiraling toward oblivion, their trajectories intersecting in a web of carnage.

The countdown pulsed behind Susan's eyelids—forty-seven seconds painted in Eris's neon diagnostics. Sixty lives hanging in the balance, their pods spiraling like dying insects through the orbital wreckage.

"Fuck subtlety," Susan snarled, ripping open the relay panel with her bare hands. Sparks bit into her palms as she tore through the nest of wires, searching for the master override. Eris's quicksilver form surged into the exposed circuitry, her voice fracturing into a hundred overlapping directives: *"Primary buffer—no, the tertiary coupling—Susan, the failsafe—"*

Susan's knife found the Zenthari's security core. She jammed the blade deep, twisting until the entire station shuddered. Warning glyphs exploded across her neural feed—COLLISION IMMINENT, PODS LOST, TRACK INTEGRITY FAILING—but beneath the chaos, Eris's true target: the cryo-pod release protocols, blinking green.

The station's gravity failed as the first explosion rocked the superstructure. Susan's stomach lurched as she floated free, still clinging to the sparking relay. Through the buckling metal, she glimpsed Adam's pod weaving through the drone swarm—too many, too fast. His left wing was sheared clean off, trailing fuel like blood from a wound.

"Override now!" Susan barked, kicking off a collapsing bulkhead toward the central node. Eris's form stretched impossibly thin, threading through the station's dying veins. *"Initiating system-wide—"* The AI's voice cut off as the Zenthari's countermeasures struck back. Susan's neural feed erupted with agony—Eris's consciousness shredding under the assault.

Susan's vision whited out as Eris's scream tore through her neural port—a sound like galaxies rending apart. The relay station convulsed around her, bulkheads screeching as the orbital track's spine snapped. Somewhere in the static-choked darkness, Adam's voice cut through: "—*uck—Susan!*" followed by the gut-punch thud of his pod slamming into something solid.

The cryo-pod schematics in her feed flickered—*57% released*—then died as Eris's presence collapsed into fractured code. Susan's mag-boots scraped against nothing as zero-g took hold, floating debris slicing her cheek as the station came apart. She caught a flash of Adam's pod spinning wildly through the wreckage, its remaining wing shearing through a Zenthari drone like tissue paper.

"Eris!" Susan clawed at her spinal port, fingers slick with coolant-blood. The AI's silence was worse than the explosions. Sixty racers. Sixty pods still trapped. The math screamed at her—*not enough time, not enough hands*—but human brains weren't built for calculations. They were built for stupid, glorious last stands.

Susan kicked off a buckling support beam toward the central node, the knife still buried in its sparking guts. Thirty meters of open carnage between her and Adam. Twenty racer pods still broadcasting vitals. Ten seconds until the chain reaction hit the fuel depot.

She wrenched the knife sideways. The station *shrieked*—metal on metal—as the last cryo-pod locks disengaged. The holographic status lights died mid-blink, but Susan didn't need confirmation. The sudden jerk of momentum as sixty pods ejected simultaneously nearly snapped her spine.