“Everyone on board!” Fredrak announced, although Gaylen was watching the proceedings on one of the cockpit screens. He switched his attention to the pirate ships, which were coming in fast and nearing effective weapon range, and activated the intercom.

“Herdis, get up here on the gun! Everyone else, strap in!”

Fredrak had already activated the ramp, and the moment it was closed enough for no one to go flying out Gaylen hit the thrusters. Next to him Kiris undid her seat straps with one hand while keeping the other on the cannon. The screens showed Herdis’s hurried progress through the ship.

Gaylen didn’t wonder how this entire situation had come about or why in the void Saketa was back on board. They had to reach the Other before the pirates reached them.

The Addax climbed, but their enemies climbed as well, and had the advantage of already being at full speed. Herdis reached the cockpit, using handholds to combat the incline and the G-forces. She brought with her a smell of burnt armour.

“You’re hit?” Kiris asked as she slid out of the copilot’s seat.

“The suit held,” the woman replied, and climbed in to replace the Chanei on the weapon. “Strap me in?” She gripped the controls the moment she was seated and aimed it towards the pirates. Kiris braced her leg against the back wall and fitted the straps over Herdis’s torso.

“Go help Jaquan,” Gaylen said distractedly, focused on his readings and the pirates.

The golden woman opened the floor hatch and went down without a word.

“I’ll cut left in four seconds,” Gaylen said to Herdis, estimating effective weapon range. Then he did it. As expected, a shot came their way from the lead pirate, going wide up into the sky. Herdis fired back and hit home, but the ship kept flying. They fired again, and were joined by their comrade, but Gaylen wove about, evading both shots.

It cost them a bit of momentum, but the Addax was nevertheless hitting its stride. The distance between them was growing as the pirates lost their early lead, a testament to Jaquan’s stewardship of the engine. A few more shots were exchanged, but they hit nothing. Gaylen was almost starting to relax when he noticed a third ship coming in fast. It fired a shot from one of its guns, very nearly hitting the Addax. Then another gun fired and Gaylen cut a swerve to dodge it, then a third one from a third weapon.

“Hellooo spacer boy!” Evesa Karn shouted into the channel he had for some reason left open. “You sure cause a-”

Gaylen cut her off. No damn banter.

Herdis fired back, landing a hit on the ship’s top. But it would take more than one. Karn’s ship launched a missile of some kind and it locked on, streaking in an arc toward the Addax’s back thrusters.

He had to dip the ship a bit to give Herdis a shot. The woman took a moment to line up the cannon, then fired. The missile burst in the planet’s upper atmosphere, but the pirates had been able to close the distance a little. The two smaller ships took experimental shots while Karn’s ship sought to force the Addax groundwards,

Gaylen could dodge fire from one ship reliably enough. Two was where skill truly came in. Three was really pushing it. And it seemed that one of the smaller ships could match the Addax’s speed.

Saketa entered the cockpit.

“No time for chat!” Gaylen shouted.

“Are they going to get us?” the woman asked, looking at the instruments.

“If I can shake that closest one, we can make it!” Gaylen replied. “Now let us work!”

The woman was silent for a couple of heart-pounding moments of dodging and gunfire.

“I am going to try something,” she then said.

“What?”

“I cannot guarantee anything. Don’t worry about me; just keep on going,” the woman added and drew her sword.

Gaylen looked at a screen that faced the woman, looking for her reflection. But it wasn’t there. He glanced back. Saketa was gone.

“What?” he said again.

Something happened to the pirate ship. It shifted direction, then again, and again, moving wildly as if the pilot was having a seizure. Or as if some manner of chaos was erupting in the cockpit.

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“What??” Herdis said.

“Nevermind,” he said. “This is our chance.”

The ship was no longer firing nor following, and the others would not catch up at this point. Gaylen left the planet’s gravity well.

“Going into leap!” he announced to everyone, and with that they were off into the Other.

The glowing strands leading off into eternity had their usual soothing effect on him, no doubt helped by coming down from a crisis.

He allowed himself a calming exhale.

“Is everyone alright?” he asked his gunner.

“Ye... yes,” Herdis replied. “Look, who is this man you’ve got on board?”

“I suppose he’s our buyer,” Gaylen said, and made a minute adjustment to their course.

“You suppose?” she said. “Look... Saketa?” she then shouted experimentally, swivelling her chair around.

“She’s gone,” Gaylen said. “She’s nowhere on the screens. And she didn’t walk out of the cockpit, and you know it. You’re just having a hard time accepting it. I know the feeling.”

She turned the chair his way and opened her mouth, but apparently found her words sticking.

“She did say not to worry about her,” Gaylen said. “And I don’t. I think I know what this is. But we all have bigger issues.”

“Bigger?” the woman asked. “Bigger than a pirate ring targeting us for death?”

“Interrogation and death,” Gaylen corrected. “But... yes.”

He had himself another big breath. The days-long journey back here had been one long corridor of tension. Now the moment of calm and relief was giving way for it again. The hard part was ahead. He activated the intercom again

“I need everyone here, in or by the cockpit. Everyone.”

Jaquan and Kiris came up from the hatch in the living room, and Fredrak, Ayna and Bers walked up the stairs, one by one. The Dwyyk gave Herdis a bit of a hug and muttered “You got us through.”

The fresh arrivals looked dirty, wired and exhausted, but there would be time for stories later. Gaylen kept on flying; this was no time for course errors, however minor. But he watched them through reflections in his screens, and they watched back.

“I meant to give you the opportunity to just sit things out on Wembella,” he said. “But clearly that wasn’t an option.”

“Where are we heading?” Ayna asked.

“Straight back to Uktena,” Gaylen said. “For the record keeper.”

“The keeper?” Herdis said. She glanced at Kiris and Jaquan. “But... word reached us. The station is under siege. By those Authority bastards.”

“It certainly is,” Gaylen said. “But that damned keeper is a bigger deal than any of us imagined.”

He could see the Wembella team look at Fredrak, who stayed impassive.

“It’s the internment camps within the Hegemony,” Gaylen went on. “It’s all part of a plan to liberate them.”

“Them?” Ayna said. “Plural?”

“Yes.”

“This is quite a bit above us,” Herdis said.

“It certainly is,” Gaylen replied. “But it fell into our laps all the same.”

He sighed. He disliked revealing this to more people than was needed. This was dangerous knowledge to be known to carry in one’s head. But he also needed everyone on board, and Kiris actually leaned strongly towards trusting Fredrak to keep quiet about their involvement in all this.

“No one knows how many people the Heg have made disappear,” Gaylen went on. “Anyone they find inconvenient, or whom the leaders scapegoat for society’s problems. And we certainly don’t know how many are still alive in those places, but it has to run in the tens of thousands at the very least. And for any of them to have a chance to live we need to get that record keeper to the right people.”

He fell silent, and let the people he’d known for a few months absorb this. Bers set his face and nodded once, slowly and firmly. Herdis seemed to be looking for a counter but found none, and settled on resignation.

“They really are as bad as their rhetoric?” Ayna asked.

“They are,” Fredrak said to her. “And if you lived within Heg space you probably would have been snatched up already. Same as with your golden friend. No genetic pollution, as they put it, allowed.”

“Yeah...” the Dwyyk said softly. She took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. “So... we’re going to sneak through the blockade somehow?”

“I’m afraid it’s worse than that,” Gaylen said. “We’ll have to go in fast, go through one of the lesser airlocks, then some of you will have to guard the ship while I go for that safe. Then we get away.”

“How?” Herdis asked.

He looked at Fredrak.

“There is a plan in motion,” Gaylen said. “We will... see how it works out.”

He tapped his fingers on the controls.

“If it makes you feel any better, we are still getting paid. Now... you three look like you could use a rest. And Herdis, you should probably repair your suit. Jaquan; the engine. We will need everything running perfectly.”

“Well... just... wake me when all of this is over,” Ayna said as she headed for the women’s quarters. “Wait, where’s Saketa?” she suddenly asked and stopped. “She came on board, right?”

“We can get into that later,” Gaylen said. “But I suspect she’s fine.”

The Dwyyk hesitated, clearly not satisfied with the answer.

“Later, Ayna,” he told her.

Bers nudged the girl’s shoulder and muttered something in an unusually quiet voice. The two of them went to their separate sleeping quarters. Jaquan went down to the engine room, Kiris enjoyed a few moments of sitting still before following Ayna, and Fredrak gave Gaylen one last acknowledging look before walking back downstairs.

Kiris still stood in the doorway. Their eyes met in one of the screens.

“So. We’re almost through this,” she commented.

“We are,” he said. “Nothing left but the worst part.”

She showed a bitter little smile.

“Do you want a copilot?” she asked.

“Yes. I’d like that.”

She walked over and sat down.