“Pirates!” Gaylen spat, and melancholic nostalgia made way for an instant adrenaline shot. “Jaquan, go on up! Prepare the package!”

He set off at a run to the exit, clumsily jumping over debris.

“Herdis?”

“We’d have to dip the ship to aim at them.” the woman said.

“They’re hailing!” Kiris said.

“Patch it through to me,” he told her.

“Gooood morning everyone!” a female voice said. “I mean, I know there’s no morning on a rogue planet, but let’s just pretend!”

Gaylen reached the entry area.

“Oh, you do speak Larin, don’t you?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” Gaylen said. “Talk.”

“Oh, goody. Thought I might be making a fool of myself. And since you understand me; I know your ship model. Keep that cannon facing downwards.”

“That’s up to you,” Gaylen said.

“Oh, really?”

He exited the wreck. Up above him was the Addax, and in the lights around the airlock he saw Jaquan get inside. And up above that he saw the outline of a larger ship. It looked very typical for what one could expect in the Fringe.

“Look, if you want the wreck just take it,” he said. “I’m not interested in fighting over it.”

He activated the cable and it pulled him up.

“Yeaaah,” the woman said. “Funny that; I’d be happy with just the record keeper.”

“Funny that,” Gaylen said. “It’s on my person. Before your gunner gets twitchy.”

He reached the airlock and swung himself inside. Jaquan stood ready to immediately close the outer door.

“Everyone out of the cargo hold,” he said into the Addax’s private channel.

“We’re docking, then,” the woman said.

“No, you are not,” Gaylen told her firmly.

“Just hand the damn thing over,” she said, her tone darkening just a bit. “And we’ll let you fly, fly, fly away.”

They opened the inner door and stepped into the entry area.

“I’m not placing my trust in a pirate and you are not setting foot inside my ship.”

Gaylen waved Jaquan towards the cargo bay. Ayna and Dulel looked on edge. Vek looked focused. Saketa looked hard.

“But how about this: I’ll send it your way out my cargo bay tube.”

He started for the cockpit, jogging up the stairs in the damned suit.

“You are not sending over an empty box and then speeding off before I can open it,” the pirate said, slowly getting more serious.

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

“Oh, of course not.”

He ran across the living room, taking his helmet off as he went.

“Kiris, get down into the engine room! Be ready to give me a boost!”

The golden woman burst from her seat and ran out of the cockpit, narrowly slipping past him before he entered in the bulky suit.

“Can you tell how many guns I have?” the pirate asked.

“Three,” Gaylen said as he sat down and hurriedly took in the available information on the displays. The pirate ship was fairly heavily armoured for its size, with two frontal weapons and an underside one on a swivel much like the Addax’s single weapon.

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“So dooo theee maaath...” she sing-songed.

“I’m holding your precious treasure hostage,” Gaylen said. “Figure that into your equation. Or are you going to wager that I’m not enough of a petty bastard to destroy the keeper if you bring down my ship?”

He glanced at the feed from the cargo hold. Jaquan, still in his sealed suit, was at the package and had thrown off the tarp. They needed just a little bit of time.

“Well, I’m not letting you leave, and we’re not just going to stay here chatting forever. Give me that keeper.”

“Look, what’s your outfit?” Gaylen asked. “Maybe we can talk things over. I’m an old hand at this. You don’t sound like you’re from Scorchspace.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “You are talking to Evesa Karn of the Qantil League. Does that mean something to you, spacer boy?”

“It does,” he admitted. “Everybody strap in or tether,” he then said to everyone on the Addax, cutting the outgoing audio for a moment. “Tightly.”

He made eye-contact with Herdis. The woman was focused and calm, as she’d been trained to be. Her finger hovered near the trigger, waiting for that pivotal moment.

“Good, good,” Evesa Karn said. “Now stop testing my patience. Don’t let my good humour fool you; I’ll kill everyone on that ship if I need to.”

“Look...” Gaylen started. Kiris was down in the engine room, almost ready to do her best in Jaquan’s absence. Jaquan, tethered by his suit and with his boot magnets activated, seemed to be done with the package.

“... I’m opening the cargo bay,” he said, a moment before Jaquan activated the door. “Does your ship have a grabbing claw?”

“You wouldn’t be trying to get me to pull a bomb up into my ship, would you?”

“No, no,” Gaylen said. “Tiny pack, with the keeper inside. You’ll let us fly off once you have it?”

“Once I’ve actually checked the data? Sure.”

Jaquan, bent over the package, held three fingers up above his head.

“Kiris, ready,” Gaylen said.

Jaquan held up two fingers.

He glanced at Herdis. She was very much ready.

Jaquan held up one finger.

“I think you-”

Jaquan activated the package. It blasted out of the cargo bay opening with a flash, swerved, and hit the pirate ship. The modified missile detonated just fine against the ship’s side. This was, after all, not their first salvage.

Gaylen hit thrust, and the force of it slammed him back in his seat. He sent the Addax into a partial roll, giving Herdis a shot with the cannon. She took it and the plasma blast hit home. The pirate ship moved unsteadily in the air as the pilot fought to compensate, and small bits of debris came off the vessel. One of their frontal weapons seemed to have been taken out of commission. And that was all Gaylen could make out before swooping down into a valley.

A glance at the feed from the cargo bay showed the door closing and Jaquan clinging to his tether even as his boots kept him firmly on the floor. The strapped-down cargo rattled but remained in place.

The pirate pilot recovered and came after them, in what was either a list or an effort to present the undamaged side to the Addax. Gaylen went along the ground, staying low and erratic as the first two shots came. Black rock exploded, burned and melted. Herdis fired back, but the enemy pilot was being evasive as well.

A tall, narrow spike of a mountain loomed ahead and Gaylen went for it, building speed as he got a feel for that other pilot. Two more shots missed, though by less than before.

Keep calm and survive.

He got the mountain between them and him and had a couple of seconds to build a strategy. The pirates weren’t climbing; it would widen the distance between them and their gunner probably wasn’t first-rate.

“We just need to escape,” he said. “Those cliffs,” he added, pointing at the screen map. “I’ll get you a perfect shot.”

“Understood.”

The pirates came around the mountain and got off a single shot before he made it to the cliffs he’d mentioned. They were in a range that resembled a poorly organised city block, and Gaylen wove between them, heading gradually to the left. Now the pirates did elevate a bit, buzzing just above the cliffs in their pursuit. Gaylen would have to emerge eventually, after all.

He kept on in the same trajectory, going for the end of the range and an open plain. The pirates went in a straight line that cut through his curved one, heading towards the spot he’d emerge. Their gunner would be standing by, every bit as ready as Herdis. Except she was professionally trained, and the other gunner seemingly wasn’t. They’d be flush with adrenaline, twitchy for the kill shot that would end this dangerous dance.

“On three,” he said as only two kilometres remained.

He put his hand on the decelerator.

“One.”

A single kilometre remained before they’d be exposed.

“Two.”

He reduced speed slightly, slowly, just barely enough for what he had in mind.

“Three.”

He sent the Addax up into a ninety degree turn. The ship groaned a bit, but Jaquan had been good to it and everything held.

The twitchy pirate gunner missed at a distance of only two hundred metres. Herdis did not, and plasma burst against one of their stabilisers.

The pirate ship spun in the air once, blasting out over the plain. Gaylen sent the Addax in the opposite direction, skywards. The enemy recovered enough to aim a couple of shots their way, but the Addax picked up speed and soon enough the planet’s small circumference was serving as a shield.

He left the gravity well, gaining distance on the pirates by the second. The moment the nav computer finished calculating their course he sent the Addax into leap.

Gaylen let out a breath.

“Good shooting,” he commented.

“Good flying,” she replied and finally released her grip on the cannon controls.

He opened the pocket on the front of the suit and took out the record keeper.

Now, what is up with you and what in the void have you gotten me into?