"One new transmission," the computer said.
"Jason!" Gwen said. The bridge was filling with smoke, making it harder to see. But Gwen had heard a thump from somewhere behind her. Guy's console was a burnt mess, full of exposed wires. They weren't going to be firing weapons soon. Behind the chrome command chair dais, Gwen could just make out Jason's hunched figure. He wasn't moving. As the vibrations from the latest series of hits died down, Gwen leaped up, leaving her chair spinning. Guy was still screaming.
"He's not moving!"
"Tommy, get us out of here!" Alexander commanded.

Guy's screams drowned out everything.

"Shut up, Guy!" Tommy shouted. He didn't stop.

Gwen felt for a pulse. His arm was warm, thank God. And there was a pulse, too. Knocked out, not dead. She should... she didn't know what to do. Gently, Gwen layed Jason on the floor.

"Tommy, leave, now!" Alexander shouted again. Their current course and speed was taking them closer to the V-wings than was necessary.

Gwen got knocked to the floor by another explosion. She sat down by Jason, still not sure what else she could be doing.

"Guy!" Alexander said. "Oh, for the love of-." Alexander walked over to Guy and slapped him. Guy stopped screaming. "There. Now, Tommy, get us out of here!"
"What the hell do you think I'm doing, man?" Tommy retorted.
"Well, do it faster!"

Tommy twisted the throttle all the way open.

The [i]Protector II[/i] turned away from the Venators and smoothly accelerated. Tommy's console smoothly kept track of their speed in the completely useless unit of "Marks". Mark 1... mark 2... mark 3.... The V-wings were starting to lose pace. Mark 4... mark 5.... The viewscreen flickered as the computer compensated for visual distortions due to travelling at light speed. The Protector [i]II[/i] smoothly accelerated to light speed, and then just kept going. Mark 6... mark 7... mark 8. His console beeped, and the display changed from a radar screen of some sort to a map of known local space. A straight line was marked through it. In the upper corner, it said "Computer assisted navigation". At mark 10, the console beeped again, and changed to "Computer-controlled navigation."

The Venators were long gone, and the V-wings, of course, were incapable of travelling faster than light. A luminal boom lagged behind the ship - fleeting distorted afterimages of the [i]Protector II[/i] as it traveled through real space at speeds faster than light.

"I think we lost them!" Tommy said. He twisted the throttle to zero. The ship decelerated, smoothly dropping below light speed without so much as a bump. 

Years ago, when the Thermians were first building the [i]Protector II[/i], they'd been faced with a conundrum. Though the original [i]Protector[/i] had a boost, it was also obviously capable of breaking the light barrier without it. After all, the historical documents had the ship travelling from system to system in days and hours, not the years and months it would take otherwise. Yet the ship never accelerated visibly or audibly except for the extremely quick one-minute boosts. As a matter of fact, the viewscreen didn't even distort. It had been one of Mathesar's team's greatest triumphs in the recreation of the [i]Protector[/i] - to not only implement a faster-than-light in realspace solution, but also do it without any visible or audible change. Humanity was one very advanced species.

So, while the heroes of the [i]Protector[/i] were sighing with relief, Mathesar was smiling, briefly. It had occured to him that, despite the great triumph that the [i]Protector II[/i] was, it was obviously flawed. He had seen the crew escape far worse situations without even getting damaged, but the ship was severely damaged. What did he do wrong? Perhaps they had missed something. Many sections of the ship had had to be extrapolated, like the bathrooms. Many parts still puzzled him, like the crushing hallways, or the pipes that went nowhere and emitted steam, or the pipes that went nowhere and contained glowing plasma, or the two rec rooms, both nearly identical, but mirror images of each other. Surely these systems all had a purpose, but without the knowledge of precisely where the pipes terminated or the purpose of the crushers, they'd had no choice but to include them and assume they were integral to the functioning of the ship somehow. Indeed, they'd utilized the crushers to syphon off some of the excessively generated power.

"Finally," Alexander said. They were alone. Save for the other ships that were arriving.
"Mathesar, Jas-Commander Taggart's hurt," Gwen said. Mathesar leaned down and picked up Taggart effortlessly. He carried him to medbay.
"One new transmission," the computer said.
"Computer, play transmission," Gwen said.
"Transmission translated from morse code. Transmission reads: Hello. Do you need help?"
"Yes!" Tommy and Alexander said simultaneously.
"Computer, please reply that we would like help. Invite them to our conference room," Gwen said.
"Transmission sent."

~o~0~o~
OOC: Anyone who can read morse code can get that message, by the way.