The pirates didn’t risk opening fire anywhere near the law enforcement vessels that orbited the planet. Coupled with the head start, and the Addax simply needing less time to reach high speed, started the space chase off outside of weapons range. Gaylen actually kept a little bit below maximum velocity, testing the capabilities of the pirate vessel, until he found just the right speed that kept the distance unchanging.
“I’m normally happy to run away from fights, if it’s an option,” Gaylen said to his crew over the intercom. “But these idiots are convinced we’re sitting on a great treasure. If this whole thing ends with us outrunning them, there’s no telling how many clan mates they’d be able to seek out to coordinate a search. To say nothing of avenging a chief. AND they might have inquired about our destination on Black Brayer. The lanes are dangerous enough without being specifically targeted by an entire clan. So we are ending this.”
“Sounds good,” Herdis said from her gunnery station, quiet and focused on the other ship. A good gunner spent the time outside of shooting range on studying an enemy; their ship design, weapons, armour, thruster layout, blind spot and weak spots. But she’d had the entire chase from Jenna 12-X to Fernand for that. Now, she was just waiting.
Once again, Gaylen felt lucky that she wasn’t the type to let her nerves run amok.
With no major bodies in the way, the chase to his lane of choice was just an unbroken stretch of silence and nothing. The exertion and wounds of the chase across the city battled with the medication Kiris had given him to combat those, and he overall estimated his own functioning as circa average.
As the lane entrance neared, Gaylen once again found himself wishing for space mines, to greet the pirates as they gave chase out the other end. But any halfway civilised government took issue with those, and there was no telling when the law might demand to board for an inspection.
So rather than tell Jaquan to prepare something clever, he just aligned the Addax and started preparing leap. The computer did its part in preparing the course, the leap reactor warmed up, and the pirates got closer. And then they were in the Other.
It was another stretch of almost nothing, although there were the little adjustments to their course that kept a pilot busy during leaps. That was something, at least. Something other than just waiting for that moment of violence, with nothing to do that hadn’t already been done.
After forty minutes of all that, their destination became visible on his instruments, and Gaylen put his hand on the stopper.
“Exiting in three… two… one.”
The place was worthless enough to not even have a name; just a serial number. Three lane entrances met in a system that was a single white dwarf, surrounded by a cloud of asteroids and space dust; the ghost of an apocalypse that probably predated humanity.
“Ready?” Gaylen asked.
“Ready,” Herdis replied, cool and focused.
He turned the Addax into the thick of the asteroids and slowed down just a little bit. They were headed in the general direction of one of the other lanes, so it was reasonable to assume their plan was to continue running. When the pirates emerged, they headed straight for the Addax with no hesitation or guile.
Gaylen entertained the direct line of sight for a short while, as the pirates pushed their engines on at full strength, then he swerved and put an asteroid between them. And with that the finale of all this began.
The asteroids generally weren’t that big; most weren’t any larger than an apartment block. But they were packed tightly together, engaged in an endless, brutal dance of smashing into each other as the white dwarf’s gravity pulled them in circles. This was where having the smaller ship became an advantage rather than a liability. The Addax could cut closer corners and risk narrower gaps between drifting rocks. The difference was lesser than if they’d had a full-sized warship on their tail, but Gaylen still felt it, as well as a fair amount of smugness. Like when he bounced around a goon who was big enough that it became a hindrance.
“That one,” he said, indicating a larger asteroid; this one about the size of a modest mountain, and vaguely oval-shaped.
“Got it.”
Gaylen swooped in close, drifting a few dozen metres above the surface of it and going along the length. The pirates fired the first shot with their nose gun, targeting the thrusters, but missed thanks to evasive flying.
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They came upon the top of the oval, and Gaylen slowed just enough to make a safe turn.
“Now!”
She fired the cannon straight down as they made the turn, blowing chunks out of the asteroid. A cloud of rocks and dust flew up, and the pirates had to make an awkward upwards turn to escape it. Gaylen, meanwhile, sent the Addax into a sharp circle around the asteroid and came upon the pirates' rear.
Herdis fired again, damaging a thruster before the enemy pilot could react. Their gunners needed a moment too, and Gaylen shot up and away before they could turn their weapons and return fire at the same range. Herdis got off another shot and damaged their side armour, and only then did the pirates fire back. One of the outside batteries spewed plasma, but missed. As the Addax went out of the firing line the pirate ship twisted enough to let another battery get off a shot, but by then they were out of effective range.
Gaylen ducked back into the plentiful cover offered by the asteroids, and the pirates were forced to follow.
There could be advantages to being a target rather than an aggressor, and as the chase continued through a chaotic sea of drifting houses, blocks and mountains, Gaylen took full advantage of the fact that the pirates wanted to capture an intact ship. Intact enough to search through, anyway. Their shots mostly targeted the Addax’s thrusters, cockpit and cannon, or tried to recreate the asteroid shot trick. But the Addax was nimbler, and as the chase went further and further into the field, the pirates paid ever more dearly for it.
Gaylen didn’t see the impact; his view was blocked by another drifting mountain. But he noticed the sudden violent shift in course as the pirates came back into view. They had struck one of the small ones. He took the sharpest turn he knew the Addax could take, brutalising everyone on board in the process, and gave Herdis the chance she needed.
Her first shot hit one of the batteries, taking it out again, and her second as they passed took another chunk out of the armour. Gaylen flew evasive, leery of another battery that had a chance, but a return shot never came. Maybe they’d never managed to get that one working again, or maybe they just didn’t have enough crew left to man all the weapons.
Well, now there was one less weapon to be manned, and the two other batteries and the nose gun sure were working. As the pirate pilot regained control, they hit the thrusters hard. Maybe it was desperation, maybe it was rage, or maybe it was simply ravenous greed for the prize, but the boxy vessel came after the Addax with a speed boost Gaylen honestly wouldn’t have expected.
The nose gun fired as fast as it could, and the two batteries opened up every chance they had. Gaylen continued evading, and doing everything he could to limit exposure to the batteries. But there were two of them; one on the side and one on top, and safe spots were hard to come by.
Herdis scored some more hits, but the pirates could take it, at least for a little while. The pirates were finally doing their own weaving, making their weapons hard to target. The Addax took a glancing hit on the side, and a more significant one to the roof seconds later. There wasn’t a breach; the instruments assured him of that. But another hit in the same general area would do the trick.
“Jaquan,” Gaylen said as he steered the Addax into an obstacle course of asteroids. “Those special repairs?”
“Should be any second now,” his friend said back from the engine room.
“More chaff,” Gaylen said to Herdis, and the woman shot an asteroid as they passed beneath it, then another as they went over it. Rocks blew out, slowing the pirates down by seconds as they twisted around the obstructions.
Another mountain loomed up ahead, and Gaylen opted to dive under it, giving cover to the damaged roof. The pirates followed, of course, and the shooting stopped for a few more seconds as the asteroid’s curvature provided cover.
Gaylen kept things tight; as tight as he dared, and the view through the window was a speeding blur of dark rock, upon which a ship like the Addax would smash like an egg at these velocities.
Herdis shot more chaff out of the asteroid, which bought yet more precious seconds, but the asteroid’s other side was more even and the pirates managed to open fire again. Gaylen kept weaving, with the roof still tight against the surface, and Herdis fired back. He completed a circle around the asteroid, and had to dodge their own chaff as he entered another one. The pirates did their own upwards shooting, creating more clouds of loose, dangerous rocks. Gaylen took note of the little blips of heat on his sensors, and factored them in as he entered a third circle. The pirates were actually closing the distance, no doubt punishing their engines savagely, risking it all for the great prize.
The floating mountain became its own obstacle course, forcing both ships to weave wildly, shrinking each other's options as they continued to blast clouds loose. The pirates got closer, and closer, and the corridors got ever narrower, and the turns sharper.
During the fifth circle, at the height of it all, Gaylen did a sudden sharp turn to the right. It was another push against the Addax’s outer limits, that felt like it sloshed his brain around inside its bone cage. It was the sort of turn the pirate ship couldn’t duplicate, but with the Addax moving in position to have a shot at their thrusters, they did try.
And that was when it happened.