“Shit!” yelled Kyla as she started to speed up. Her face suddenly serious. “System, connect me with Captain Phillipa. Captain, where do you want me to take…Yes ma’am. Will do, ma’am.”

  “What is going on?” I asked, confused as to why the ship was all of a sudden rushing into battle.

  “Any detected swarm triggers the system to alert all ships within range of it. By law, we must report in and assist in one way or another.” She said as she rushed to help me dry before throwing clothes at me, including pants and a shirt instead of a dress. “This swarm also happens to be encroaching on a relatively new Kitsune colony world.”

  “And the weird up arrows next to the number of ships?” The clothes seemed to squirm a little as I put them on. Getting tighter in some areas and looser in others. When the squirming stopped, they fit as if they were tailored perfectly.

  “That indicates how fast the numbers are increasing. It's not a linear increase either. By the time we get to the system, the number of ships will have likely increased by at least another hundred thousand, if not more.” I stumbled after her, trying to put on some shoes as she rushed out of the room and over to another wall.

  “What will I be doing during this fight?”

  “You will be manning one of the cannons on top of the ship.” Kyla pulled a thin rod, the length of my arm, out of the wall and put it into a pocket in her pants. The pocket looked like it was designed to hold it. “The cannon usually is controlled by an automated enchantment, but that enchantment was taken apart yesterday by one of the engineers. Something about testing an upgrade.”

  Her arm grabbed mine as she turned, dragging me along behind her. We flew down a multitude of halls and through rooms until we reached a small room no larger than a small closet.

  “Strap into the chair and take control of the spell diagram.” While I was starting to strap in, I tried to protest that I had yet to be able to do so. She stopped me by practically growling, “I know you haven’t been able to yet. If I had any other option, I would use it. I don’t have time to modify an entire system to accommodate you right now.”

  Seeing I was strapped in, she turned and ran down the hall. Heading to where she was needed. The door shut, and I heard latches slamming down. I looked over the spells in front of me, I noticed that they were connected with a series of lines.

  Jesus, that was a lot of spells packed into a small room. Focusing on the power-gathering spell, I tried to activate it. But, no matter what I tried, the option to go from passive to active was grayed out.

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  Suddenly, the ship started to jerk in all directions. My stomach protested as the twisting grew steadily worse. “Ship channel authorization received. Connecting. Connection established.” Came my AI’s voice.

  “Where is that turret Kyla.” Called a women’s voice that I recognized from the cafeteria. “Without that turret, an entire section of the ship is too vulnerable for my liking. Oh fuck, here comes another cluster. Hold on everyone.”

  The ship twisted as it seemed to fall out from under me. “Well, if Greg hadn’t taken it apart, we wouldn’t have an issue.” Came Kyla’s strained voice. “Right now, our guest is in the control station.”

  “Have they ever fired a gun before?” Another person asked.

  “Yes, remember they were on the human military ship. Watch out for that cluster bomb.” Kyla screamed just before a rapid series of explosions rocked the ship. “The issue is she only started to learn to control spells yesterday.”

  “Welp, I don’t think we will be getting that turret then.” Came the woman’s voice. “I don’t know many people who are able to learn to control a spell in a short period of time. Hell, it took me a couple of weeks.”

  “And yet she has a quest to do so within eleven hours.” Kyla retorted. Multiple people scoffed at that.

  “Do you think she can do it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe?” Kyla didn’t sound at all sure that I could. “Do you want me to go and take over the station?”

  “No,” came the captain's voice, “You need to stay where you are in case someone is hurt. The rest of you, focus on covering your section. And Kyla, just how many quests do you have related to that girl? Are any of them interfering with your ability to do your job?”

  “None of them are relevant.” That was all Kyla said, which meant that she did have some quests directly related to me. Was that why she had been helping me?

  “Turn it off,” I finally said. The AI did so as I started to cry. Their opinions of me were pretty evident. Even if I survived this battle and made it to the core planet, it was likely that they were just going to dump me there. Hell, I was probably just another quest to them.