The last couple of days in FTL were tense. Shoshanna’s anxiety about the ship at our rear continued to grow. Our first search area was coming up, which meant dropping out of FTL and allowing the Navigator to run their scans.

That also meant confronting the ship that had followed us.

Shoshanna convinced me to tell the crew, but I managed to talk her into telling them after it was too late for them to do anything about it. That meant I would already be in space, confronting our pursuer.

The mechanics were the only crew who missed the meeting when the FTL drive spun down, deaccelerated, then stopped us. They had to be in the engine room monitoring the drive. Everyone else gathered in the embarkation bay.

“Everyone,” Shoshanna started. “Everyone please, I have important information to share.”

That got their attention, and she proceeded to clumsily explain our situation.

“So there’s a ship following us. We don’t know who they are, but it’s possibly a delf stealth ship, based on the signature,” she said. They were quiet for a few seconds, than all burst out talking and shouting at once. Shoshanna had her hands full.

I left via BuyMort pod airlock as soon as the ship came to a stop. My armor deployed as I entered space, and I was immediately disoriented. There were no stars in all directions except directly behind us, and those were dim. I quickly tuned up my vision, not only to feel comfortable again by seeing stars, but to find the ship at our rear. The Navigator had given me coordinates, which my anti-magic helmet used to show me a trail. My enhanced sight also helped dramatically.

With a galaxy at its back, the stealth ship hung silent, unmoving. I pushed the suit and approached as rapidly as I could without hitting it. When I stopped, it was directly in front of the ship’s viewscreen. The entire front end of the shaped stealth craft was blacked out. Its shaped panels helped keep it off even advanced ship’s sensors, so once it was finished disrupting our warp bubble, our ships would be helpless to find it. Not that either ship had any means of defending themselves from it if they could see the attack coming.

I summoned my breaker gauntlets and clunked them together in front of the ship’s view screen, to make my point. The ship responded by rocking side to side, in a sort of wiggle. I frowned.

Someone on board opened an airlock, which cast a beam of light from the craft's belly. I shrugged and flew in. The airlock cycled and the inner door opened onto a familiar face.

“Justin Lee?” I asked, dropping my armor and staring openly at the delf. He looked much the same, with only a few telltale signs of aging. Really it was more like maturing, he finally fit his once-skeletal frame and looked healthy.

“Tyson!” the delf man said, spreading his arms wide. He wore a purple silk robe and insisted on hugging me.

“Well look who survived,” I said afterward, looking him up and down.

“Thrived, my friend, not just survived,” he answered. “The House of None has had its problems, but life for delves in BuyMort has improved dramatically nonetheless.”

“You’ve even embraced the slang word for delfs,” I said. “Things really have changed!”

He laughed and swept an arm out. “You must be eager to contact your ships and let them know that the vessel in pursuit is friendly,” Justin said.

I nodded. “Yes, thank you. I’m so glad to see you. To know that you’re alive,” I said, trailing off at the end. “What brings you out here Justin?”

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An alarm sounded once on the ship and Justin’s eyes widened. “A suspicion that has just been confirmed. Please, quickly, to the bridge,” he replied.

The stealth ship was essentially a big hallway, with living quarters, engine, even brig all spread out on either side, tucked into the oddly shaped hull. I followed Justin forward, feeling the slight movement of the deck beneath me. Walking had its advantages, when gravity was available.

A few seconds later, we arrived on the bridge to see a recording playing on part of the view screen. It showed two more stealth ships arriving in a blur of FTL distortion, then firing up their rear-facing drive plumes.

“That is what I came to protect you from, my friend. Or more accurately, protect your unarmed fleet,” Justin explained. “You can deploy from here, we have a pod airlock,” he added, pointing up at the screen. “There are two of them, both Cult of Eternal Darkness ships. Destroy them, I’ll explain when we’re done.”

I nodded, clanked my armor back into place, and hurtled out of the pod airlock. They were convenient, I’d made a habit of using the little tunnels whenever possible. I much preferred their quick cycle rate to the regular airlocks, they let me leave at speed.

Like a torpedo, I hurtled toward the ship on the right. Justin’s craft was already following the one on our left. It dipped low with a burst of its engines, and my friend’s ship followed, deploying its PDCs and opening a small missile tube at its nose.

The ships noticed Justin at their back and spun into evasive maneuvers. He had dropped out of FTL a great distance back, in hopes of catching them exactly as he had. With their rear engines exposed, the ships typically found it extremely difficult to use their stealth advantage.

My ship turned and cut its engines, arcing to cut into Justin’s path. It deployed its own guns, ready to cut the other ship to ribbons with high-caliber fire. I punched into its engine compartment sideways, tearing the caps off their rockets and sending the ship spinning off course.

It attempt to fire its engines to correct, and an explosion crumpled its entire rear end. The craft spiraled down and away from my fleet, so I turned to see how Justin Lee was faring. It took a bit of searching, even with my enhanced vision, but I found them when they opened fire on one another.

His ship had the advantage, peppering the enemy craft with conventional bullets from its rear. I noted that stealth plating hadn’t changed since my time. The addition of armor plating always created a lidar signature, so they were like flying paper mâché.

Justin’s ship raked the enemy craft with a second barrage, causing glittering bits to fly out into empty space as its engines sputtered and died. The ship behind me fired a missile, aimed at the large ice-miner in the distance. I easily caught up to it and destroyed its engine with a lazy slap, then turned back to face the ship I had left stranded.

It spun and gyrated, flipping end over end as it plummeted away from the rest of us. I shook my head and followed. At the front of the craft, I hurriedly crimped closed the single missile tube, then started looking for the airlock as I called Shoshanna on our short range comms.

“Baby!?” she answered. “Are you okay? What’s happening?” Her face was streaked with tears and makeup, and I could see the bridge screen behind her. The cameraman was there, taping the monitors showing our battle, with the rest of the crew watching in fear.

“Everything is fine. It was three ships, one of them was friendly. Both enemy craft are disabled, the fleet is secure,” I told her. “You should tell the crew.”

“Guys, its okay. He got them, whoever they were!” Shoshanna yelled across the bridge. I heard a few sighs, and a lot more shouted questions.

“It was three delf stealth ships. One was my friend, coming to warn us about the attack. The other two were supposedly cultists,” I told her.

“Ohh,” she replied. “I hate to say it, but that’s a little disturbing. Cult?”

“I was warned there’s a delf cult that wants me dead, but I didn’t think they’d move against me so quickly,” I explained. “But I’m about to board one of the ships, see if I can’t get any more info.”

“Okay,” Shoshanna said, distractedly. “Be safe babe.”

“How is everyone?” I asked. “Upset, I’m guessing.”

“Uhh, yeah, they’re pretty pissed. A lot of them are saying they should have been warned. Most of them yelled at me during the meeting, but that got interrupted when stuff started getting shot outside,” she said.

The missile I had sent off course popped then, lighting up the consoles behind her. I winced and nodded. “I’ll be back soon. Are you safe with them?”

“What? Yeah. It’s not that bad, Tyson. And both of your hobbs are in here anyway,” she answered.

“Alright. Thanks Shanna. I’ll try and be quick,” I said, before disconnecting. The delf ship spun in front of me, and I started the laborious process of aligning with it.

I pushed the suit this way and that, raising and lowering my speed until I was spinning perfectly with the ship, directly outside its airlock. It was a skill I’d had to utilize more than once during the Church War, but I never enjoyed it. My efforts ended when I gripped the airlock doorframe.