One never quite knew what to expect from pirate gunners. Most people either fled or dumped cargo rather than fight them, so gunnery was often little more than a matter of intimidation. But this one came close with their first blast, and the plasma, even hotter than the star’s corona, passed by worryingly close.

Gaylen continued the helixing for those last remaining seconds, and another shot went by the side. Then he activated the laser. It struck the pirate ship directly, guided by their own plasma output, and with just a bit of luck it blinded them at least a little.

“Now!” he said to the engine room.

Jaquan had been ready for the exact moment, as expected. The engine went beyond capacity for two seconds, giving the Addax a sharp speed-boost as Gaylen steered it in a sharper curve than his piloting so far had indicated. Herdis, ready for it, adjusted her aim accordingly and fired off her first shot.

More plasma came in from the pirates, but missed by a wider margin. Herdis fired a second shot, and Gaylen thought his frazzled, fussy sensors detected a hit. The pirates corkscrewed, bringing another battery to bear, but Gaylen continued going in an arc, buying more split-seconds before they could fire, going just a bit further into the blinding stellar radiation, and the shot missed.

Herdis fired back, and the return shot grazed the Addax’s belly. Gaylen spent a single instant on assuring himself that no systems were damaged, then shifted his direction by a fraction. Herdis fired again, and a final shot came back from the pirates, and then they were back out of effective range.

“Thirty seconds,” Gaylen said. “Before they can fully turn and start chasing us. Thirty seconds, minimum.”

“I think I hit two of their guns,” she said.

“I know you hit at least one, or they would have gotten off one more shot. I’m glad you’re back.”

“Yeah, you better be.”

She took in the readouts and highly limited visibility.

“And now we… burn up?” she asked.

“No. Now we drift.”

He made one final adjustment, one last little blast of power through the thrusters to affect their course, then simply let the Addax continue on through power of momentum.

Now the pirates were the ones with the light in their eyes.

“Update, everyone,” Gaylen said through the intercom. “We are drifting more-or-less along the corona, getting closer to it, but only very gradually. It’ll give us cover, hopefully. I’ve shut down everything non-essential. Nobody do anything that involves heat or electricity. That means you, Bers.”

An annoyed grumble made its way into the cockpit.

“Jaquan, how are we?” Gaylen asked.

“Replacing some wiring right now,” Jaquan said back. “That all took a toll on the engine, and all this heat isn’t helping, but we’re good for now.”

“So we can leap?”

“We can leap.”

Gaylen’s instruments told him as much, but there could be subtle little complications that only an engineer’s direct eye could spot.

“Those thirty seconds are up,” Herdis said.

“Yes. Keep the gun aimed behind us, but don’t fire it unless I tell you to.”

His sensors could only faintly detect the pirates, but that meant the pirates would have an even worse view of them, unless they had the kind of top-notch equipment that Scorchspacers only saw if they robbed a top-notch corewards ship… and could figure out how to maintain it.

The pirates opened up with the laser again, sweeping it about in a wild pattern, confirming that they’d lost sight of the Addax. The beam cut through nothing, then more nothing, vanishing into the corona radiation.

“Steady,” Gaylen said.

“I am steady,” she said back, cold and focused. “The safety’s on.”

The sweep went on and on, longer than Gaylen would have expected. The thing cost energy and built up heat, after all. Contact would give the bastards a direction to fire in, but there was a lot of space, and the Addax was small.

This was a waiting game, a nerve game, and Gaylen played it the way it was supposed to be played: By telling his fight-or-flight instincts to sit down and shut up, while he did nothing. It was funny how challenging literally nothing could be, but natural selection weeded out Fringe spacers that couldn’t control themselves at the helm.

Even when the laser cut close, even as the pirates actually shortened the distance between them, driven on by surprisingly powerful thrusters, Gaylen did nothing. The Addax was silent of voices or action, with only humming and droning in one’s ears. There was even less to see. The pirates vanished from the sensors on occasion, hidden by particularly hot spots, but their laser inevitably fired off, giving their position away like a searchlight on some backwards world.

It became clear that they were sticking to a straight line themselves; close to parallel with the Addax, but not quite.

The corona may have been a sphere, but the arc of it was too enormous for it to make a difference; both ships would suffer a failure of their magnetic shields long before drifting either further in or out of the hazard area. They were going to have to move further away eventually, but whoever moved first risked leaving themselves vulnerable to a shot in the back.

Gaylen started to feel the strain on the magnetic shield on his own skin. The cockpit air was heating up, and limiting the systems to necessary functions meant there was only so much air conditioning. It would be the same inside that pirate ship, surely. That growing feeling of inevitability, the start of a warmup that would move from uncomfortable to painful to agonising to fatal.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

But the patience paid off. The uneven parallel sent the pirates drifting further away from the Addax, down towards the star’s south, and just as Gaylen was starting to wipe sweat from his brow he decided the moment had come.

Another extra hot spot provided the needed opportunity, and he aligned the thruster very carefully before activating them. The extra radiation provided extra cover, and the Addax flew up northwards, and a bit away from the star. Still he held off on anything drastic or daring. He just let the ship travel until a minor course correction was needed. The heat died down, and the rather unnerving hum of strained systems faded down to a more bearable level.

The lane entrances were all too far away for an easy escape, if the pirates caught sight of them and had worst-case-scenario machinery. But there was that one that simply cut through the system on its way elsewhere.

Entering a lane anywhere other than at the ends was always fraught. The leap reactor didn’t care for it, nor did a ship’s actual physical structure. It was a fight with the controls, and the strange forces of the lanes. Like trying to stay upright on badly shaking ground, or sailing a small water vessel in a storm. Gaylen had to react to utterly unpredictable shifts of battering kinetic energy, keeping the Addax aimed correctly but also not fight too hard against any of the shifts.

It was a skill taught in most piloting courses, but only through simulation, which could never fully prepare one for the real thing. One did get better at it through experience, but that required enough luck to have made it through that first time one was forced to enter mid-lane. Gaylen had won that coin toss many years ago, and so the Addax slid into the lane as he activated leap.

And they were off. Again.

Nex to him Herdis let out a relieved exhale. He envied her, but his own job was far from done. It wasn’t a long lane, but there was still a risk of being ejected if he didn’t make those little adjustments. Still, there were the strands to enjoy, and he felt his nerves unclench as they neared the exit, and he eventually took them back into realspace.

Gaylen allowed himself a strong thrust that sent them speeding away from the lane, then a small one to correct their course towards the next lane, then left it at that.

Now, finally, he could allow himself to pay attention to the small details. The Addax’s entire system was indeed very hot and strained after all that; a thorough checkup in a planetside dock was probably in order. But everything was in order. The ship was not losing air or anything else, and the hull analysis made it clear that the hit to the underside had only caused surface damage. Extending an outside camera for a quick peek for himself then put his mind fully, finally, at ease.

He melted backwards into his chair and tilted it back a bit.

“Alright folks, we made it,” he said into the intercom mic. “Out of danger, and we’re in perfect flying condition. As soon as everything cools down. Herdis crippled some of their guns, Jaquan and Kiris, you kept this boat going, and Bers… well, I’m sure you were shaking your fist at them really well.”

“Hur, hur…” echoed into the cockpit.

“Anyway, I’ll need to re-plan our lane route. We have several to choose from here, and I see a way to bring us back on course in just two leaps. It’ll take us eight hours to reach the entrance. Jaquan, will everything be fine by then?”

“Yeah, we’ll be fine to finish the run. But I’m declaring a proper maintenance inspection once we’re there.”

“No argument. We’ll be doing that.”

He ended the call.

“And drinks,” Herdis said.

“What?”

She did her own melting.

“We’ll be doing drinks too,” she clarified. “Well, you do whatever you want, but I know I’ll be able to get Kiris to go with me.”

“Sure,” Gaylen said. “Drinks once the run is done. But no sooner.”

“Not in space, I know.”

“Well, enough sitting.”

He set all the usual alerts, then got up. Bers was sitting on a booking bench, in a theatrically relaxed pose.

“Have fun, dagi?” the Outer Fringer asked in that bark he had for a voice.

“It was great. Now make that celebration thing you did that one time. We deserve it.”

“Hah! Will!”

The man sprang into action, Gaylen had himself a needed sip of flavoured water, and then climbed down the floor hatch to talk to Jaquan and Kiris. What followed was the sort of tedium that got one between solar systems alive. Various small parts of the engine, and the wider electrical system, had been greatly strained by the preceding events. Nothing that didn’t have backups had actually burned out, but backups weren’t for relying on.

So he and Herdis heeded Jaquan, and Kiris to a lesser degree, as they helped in opening panels, fetching parts, rolling out electrical cables, and for the thousandth time in his life Gaylen wondered how Jaquan could find fulfilment and joy in all of this.

Still, it was vital work, and so Gaylen did his part with focus and dedication, and Bers brought that weird mess of proteins, bread and algae, cooked in a weird powder, that he somehow managed to make incredibly appealing, and they all snacked on those in between tasks.

That all lasted a little over an hour, before an alarm went off.

Each separate one was designed to have a distinctive and immediately recognisable sound. This one was dark and droning, immediately drawing everyone’s attention.

“A ship,” Gaylen said, in case anyone was confused, as he hurried through the engine room. “A ship just registered to the sensors.”

He reached the storage room, and its ladder, and he speed-climbed up into the cockpit. Herdis was a few seconds behind him, and by the time her head poked up through the hatch he had information to give her.

“They followed us,” he said.

She got back into the gunner seat.

“The pirates followed us, along the lane.”

With minimal radiation in the way, he got a better view of the other ship. It was, indeed, a typically hideous Scorchspace monster, but with a powerful set of thrusters that had almost certainly been manufactured somewhere else. One of the gun batteries had indeed been destroyed, and a second one was damaged, but the ship was still a dangerous beast, larger than most pirate vessels.

He stared at the picture painted by his sensors for a few silent seconds. From what he understood of Scorchspacers, this was the sort of vessel that marked a chief of some standing.

“What was that he called his outfit?” Herdis asked. “War… clan…”

“War Clan Birok,” Gaylen told her. “I’ve heard the name before.”

“Isn’t this unusual? Following us this far, I mean?”

“Yes. Pirates are usually about ambushes. They make strikes with fresh engines, then dart away. They don’t chase a small, random ship across a lane. Especially not after something like that whole stellar corona business. It’s just not worth the effort.”

He gave the ship another hard look.

“No. This wasn’t a random ambush. This is something specific. And that means they’re not going to give up so easily.”

He activated the intercom.

“They’re still on us,” he told everyone. “And they actually have a chance of catching up. It depends on what kind of hardware they have in there. Me, I’m not going to gamble on that. There’s another lane we can reach in just three hours. It will take us off-course, but it’s also a quick route to an inhabited world.”

He made a course adjustment, and the engine had recovered just enough for him to do so without cringing.

“Its name is Fernand, and it is highly populated and… well… somewhat civilised, from what I understand. We can set down there and…”

His eyes travelled back to that pursuing ship.

“And see about figuring out what this all is.”