She started to roll.
"Oh no." Eleanor tried to stabilize the ship's tumbling. "This was not what I had in mind." She tapped every button and control that even slightly looked like it could help. Nothing seemed to work.
She glanced up at the starfield.
Two Terran Empire ships were coming right at her.
She sighed in relief. They saw her tumbling, and they would catch her. Probably the only benefit she had being an Imperial princess--she got help when she needed it. There wasn't a Terran out there who wouldn't help one of the Imperial Princesses to earn favor with the Emperor.
"Terrans, this is Princess--"
The Terran ships fired on her.
By some miracle, she hit the shields. She managed to salvage enough power to maximize their coverage before the Terran ships fried every system in the pod. Though they tried. The pod buckled. Alarms went off like mad and threatened to blow up her eardrums; they were so loud.
For a second, she swore she heard a communication come in, but she couldn't be positive.
She started slapping the controls, trying to stop the screeching alarms. Once one would stop, another would start. Another shot was fired. That one rattled the pod a lot, and a new sound joined the notices.
Hissing.
A new kind of panic hit her.
Air.
She was losing air.
"Oh no," she whispered. She started looking around, trying to figure out where the leak was. Maybe she could seal it, stuff it with something so that it would stop, but she couldn't find it.
A Rhimodian ship flew over the top of her.
So close she could have hit the wing.
Her ship rocked.
Maybe she did hit the wing. Or he hit her.
Regardless, she was hurling toward the surface of the golden brown planet. The Rhimodian was flying around her like a fly. A really big fly.
She saw that he shot both of the Terran ships that had been shooting at her.
With a good, or maybe a lucky punch, she managed to get the alarms to stop.
Then she heard the computer's warning that she'd been missing before.
Seven minutes of air remaining. Decompressing eminent.
From the displays, she knew she had at least ten minutes to get to the planet.
It was pulled from the shields to pick up speed or, well, hold her breath until she reached the world.
She glanced outside.
"Ambassador," came over her comm.
"Yes?"
"I am Jedriek. Your ship is losing air."
