The Life Engineered by J. F. Dubeau

comm channels, still struggling to keep up with the swarm of floating jellyfish.
    “Your exit maybe, but mine is this way and a lot less bad,” he answered as a seventh and eighth shard, including the one that still held the mass driver’s memory core, joined the group flying down the corridor in loose formation.
    We took a turn to the left as a timer manifested in my vision counting down the last minute before impact. We were not going to make it.
    Koalemos got to the end of the corridor—a hatch made up the entire outer wall, flanked by doors on both sides. The hatch was covered in warning signs in several languages, some of which I recognized, along with pictographs. The message was clear—do not open, beware, explosive decompression.
    The countdown at the edge of my sight hit zero before I reached the door. The Spear of Athena was rocked by the impact of a dozen warheads exploding on the other side of the ship. Looking back, I could see the opposite end of the corridor being torn apart by the force of the blasts. An immense wall of fire ignited briefly as the conflagration quickly consumed all the available oxygen as it was being sucked into space.
    My own body was thrown backward by the suddenly rushing air, my thrusters straining to compensate to no avail. Three of Koalemos’s shards, which had little problem fighting the pull, flew to me and grasped my limbs to drag me back to the hatch. Between my own power and the three smaller robots, I managed to make my way to the door as it blew off into space.
    “If you’re still intact, my little friend, try to hurry. Anhur just unleashed another volley,” Skinfaxi warned.
    Nine Capeks flew out into space from the port side of the Spear of Athena. We floated, significantly too close to the dying ship, waiting for my companion to come pick us up. Six minutes later the second volley struck the mass driver, which finally collapsed to the assault. Its structure crumbled as large portions of the massive vessel were torn from the whole.
    As chunks of the murdered ship flew past us, Skinfaxi’s gleaming form emerged from the cluster of expanding debris, dodging the ruins as they flew apart. Seeing the hatch already open, Koalemos and I quickly climbed in as my friend navigated the dangerous asteroid field and vestiges of the Spear of Athena’s carcass.
    “Welcome aboard, friends!” Skinfaxi announced as the little networked Capek and I floated to the bridge. “Enjoy the relative safety while we have it.”
    “This is a lot less unsafe. All my thanks for the ride,” said the little Capek.
    “Don’t get too comfortable. We’re not out of the fire quite yet.”
    Skinfaxi activated the back half of the bridge monitor, essentially turning the spherical room into a fully immersive representation of the space around him. Thousands of pieces from the destroyed mass driver flew past us, while hundreds of asteroids floated in the distance, obscuring the very stars. Behind us, however, Anhur was bullying his way through the remains of his disintegrating victim, in hot pursuit of our own smaller and unarmed ship.
    “I thought you said Capeks didn’t have weapons,” I said, overwhelmed by the situation.
    “Anhur is less usual than usual Capeks,” explained Koalemos, less clearly than I would have liked. “Behind us, that’s a Lucretiusclass Capek.”
    “Okay, what is an explorer doing with an entire arsenal down its throat?”
    “Lucretiuses are always not very small. There are very few things they do not have equipped,” the Von Neumann continued.
    “Because they travel to other galaxies, Capeks like Anhur are built with a significantly larger variety of capabilities,” Skinfaxi clarified. “Weapons are just a precaution against . . . well, whatever might be out there. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to concentrate.”
    On the screen behind us a flash of light off Anhur’s starboard signaled the launch of another torpedo. Calculating its predicted trajectory, it