Phoenix Rising

<snip>
“Now we just have to hope that the defence grid…” Jamie began, but Jay held up his hand and interrupted.
“If you jinx this, I swear I’ll let the midget into your quarters after curry night.” Jay growled.
<end snip>
An alarm sounded, and Jay checked the scanner.
“Smeg…now look what you’ve done!” he scolded.
“What is it?” Jade asked.
“Defence Grid’s active…plasma cannons online, missiles inbound, hold on to your asses!”
Jay threw the Starbug into a spin without warning and narrowly avoided a missile.
He dived sharply, and swung the Starbug around in a wide arc – a second missile pursuing tightly.
He rocketed toward the first missile which had turned around to follow again, and at the last minute, pulled up, the missiles couldn’t change course in time and ploughed into each other at full speed, detonating instantly.
The old, sluggish Starbug however couldn’t move as quickly as Jay could react and the shockwave from the explosion grazed the hull and sent the shuttle into an uncontrollable spin.
“SMEG It’s times like this I wish I still had the Phoenix!” grumbled Jay as he fought to get the ship back under control, his archiver weapon falling off the dash as he did, where it rolled across the deck plating, out of the cockpit door and into a maintenance hatch on the floor.
He got the ship back under control seconds before it collided with the hull of the station and Jay skimmed along the side before pulling away.
“What’s that noise?” Jamie asked as a buzzing noise filled the cabin.
The noise grew louder, and was followed by a greyish goo type substance consuming the bulkheads, floors, ceilings and every other surface of the shuttle.
“What the hell? Is this a weapon?” Jay said, confused as the control stick was also consumed and he snatched his hands away.
The cloud began to subside and reveal what was beneath it.
“No...way” Jay said, he’s mood lightening.
“It’s the nanites” Jamie said “From your cylinder! Phil said they were unstable, they must have fused with the Starbug! What do we do?”
“Nothing…” Jay beamed “This is perfect…”

The starbug was gone, it’s very structure rearranged at the atomic level by the nanites into a sleek black, heavily modified Blue Midget with a bitchin’ hand-painted flame motif.
It’s oversized, Ion Pulse engines glowed blue. It’s hot-rod exhaust belched flame, it’s manipulator arms descended from their cubby within the hull and locked into place, the twin Gatling guns that sat in place of it’ claws winding up.

Jay smiled.

Jay smiled very, very widely.

“I’ve missed you baby!” He said, as he stroked the dashboard.
“This is some ship!” Jamie said, impressed as he ran his fingers along the console.
“You bet she is…” Jay said brushing Jamies hand aside and wiping the surface the engineer had touched with his sleeve.

“You guys might wanna strap in for this…”

Jamie and Jade obliged and buckled themselves in tightly. (Well, Jamie helped Jade buckle herself in before doing so himself.)

Jay flew at throttle (which, was very, very fast) toward the station, weaving in and out between the plasma cannons, which tried, but failed to track the blisteringly fast shuttle – as he flew between each pair of cannons they fired on each other and destroying themselves.

He rolled this way, ducked that way and looped over there dodging and weaving around weapons fire without even breaking a sweat.

The last cannon exploded, and Jay let rip at the missile launchers with the Gatling guns, punching holes in them until they burst apart.

“Well, that was fun…” Jay said, grinning like a mad man.

“Kelly..” he said to the on board computer. “Has Cass’s team opened the doors yet?”
“Negative Jay” replied Kelly “Scanners indicate they are under fire in the cargo bay…”
“Forcefields in place?”
“Confirmed..”
“Good…Looks like we’re blasting our way in after all…”

He flew around to the cargo bay door, and opened fire, blasting them open……

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