“Cap!”

“What,” Kamak called back.

“Get in here,” Tooley demanded.

“I’m busy,” Kamak shouted. Busy trying to teach Corey a card game, but still busy.

“Get in here anyway, or I’ll crash this flying garbage pile into a moon,” Tooley yelled. Kamak mumbled some curses under his breath and relented. Corey was proving a quick study anyway, which meant it wouldn’t be any fun to thrash him in an actual game.

“What the fuck do you want, Toobertas?”

“Close the door.”

“Oh, what, you got an insult for me you’re afraid Corey might hear?” Kamak asked. “How many slurs are in it?”

“Close the fucking door, captain,” Tooley said, hissing the last word with as much venom as she could muster. Kamak glared at her for a few seconds and then slammed his fist on the button that sealed off the cockpit. He sat down in the copilot’s seat as Tooley let out a dissatisfied huff.

“We’re being followed,” she said silently. The cockpit door would seal off most sound, but she wanted to be sure. Kamak froze in his seat.

“What kind of ship?”

“Hasn’t come close enough for that kind of ID yet,” Tooley said. “Long range FTL notifications only.”

Every ship came standard with a system that notified pilots of nearby FTL jumps, for safety purposes, but the Hard Luck Hermit’s was especially advanced. It also tracked the location, heading, and serial number of vessels -useful features for tracking a bounty trying to flee into hyperspace, and coincidentally also useful for knowing when one was being followed.

“Same serial, same heading, same distance, for the past twenty jumps,” Tooley said.

“We’re on a path to Centerpoint, it’s a pretty damn common destination,” Kamak said.

“The timing is too precise,” Tooley said. “And we’ve been idling here for a drop, now. They would’ve overtaken us.”

“Some pissed off yokel from back on Killikiss?”

“Not likely. Their approach was from the wrong vector, anyone from Killikiss would’ve had to go swaps out of their way to come from that angle.”

Kamak put a hand on his chin and let out a low grumble of frustration. According to the instruments, they were in dead space -no habitable planets or space stations nearby, just a safe patch of cosmic void to reorient and redirect before making another FTL leap. No casual traveler would have a reason to idle here. Only those being followed or doing the following would ever hesitate.

“Give it a drop,” Kamak said with a wave of his hand. “See what happens.”

A drop turned out to be a generous estimate -only a few ticks passed before the proximity sensors started picking something up. Tooley took a quick glance at the monitor.

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“No identifiable build,” she mumbled. There were simply too many ships in the universe to identify every possible variety, but ruling out some of the most common vessels was at least a start. Pirates could rarely afford exotic rides.

“How big?”

“Big enough to have us outgunned,” Tooley said. “Not big enough to be a cargo ship.”

“Still moving?”

“Fast enough that we’ll have visual in about two drops,” Tooley said. Kamak slammed a fist on the rarely-used comms system.

“Everyone get to the cockpit and buckle in,” Kamak said. “Things might be getting ugly very soon.”

As he finished up that order, Tooley went fishing for another one.

“Weapons free?”

“On Farsus’ console,” Kamak said, much to Tooley’s disappointment. She’d only ever gotten to use the Hermit’s guns once before. If worst came to worst, though, she wouldn’t want to have to split her focus between flying and fighting. Better to divide and conquer when it was life or death.

As Doprel finally clambered into the cockpit and finished latching the prodigious buckles of his custom seat, the pursuing ship came into view. It was more than triple the size of the Hard Luck Hermit, and far more elegant in its form. It had a polished, almost sparkling purple exterior, and a body shaped like a spacefaring dolphin -mostly cylindrical, but with a bottle-shaped nose and broad, flat fins on either side. The smooth, graceful appearance was significantly undercut by the large, visible cannons tucked beneath either fin.

Farsus kept a finger close to the triggers as Kamak slowly flicked a finger across the long-range communications.

“This is Kamak D-V-Y-B, Captain of the Hard Luck Hermit,” he said. “You got business with us or are you just going to drift there menacingly?”

The ship continued to drift menacingly. Professor Drrok clearly wasn’t handling the pressure well. His entire body trembling created the only sound in the breathless cockpit as the crew waited on a response. The purple vessel had no external viewpoints, but Corey still got the distinct feeling they were being watched.

“Unidentified vessel, we are bounty hunters on an active contract, state a reason for your pursuit within thirty ticks or I’ll consider this obstruction of a duly appointed GC Bounty Hunter,” Kamak said. He knew the parts of the rulebook that suited him, and it being illegal to purposefully obstruct a hunter completing his contract suited him just fine. Helped him cut in line at a lot of places, and would hopefully come in handy here too.

Thirty ticks passed, and the vessel offered no response.

“What do we do with these guys, just turn and leave?”

“Fuck ‘em, do it,” Kamak commanded. “If they’re just going to float there they can kiss my ass.”

Tooley flicked a switch and took the engines off of idle, setting the engines alight. She’d barely flipped the switch when the guns on the purple vessel started to adjust, and take aim. Tooley said every curse word she knew in about two seconds, an impressive feat considering the sheer volume of alien swears in the universe.

While she cursed every known curse, Professor Drrok unbuckled himself and dove for the comms switch.

“This is Professor Drrok, researcher alpha at the Centerpoint Institute of Kentath research,” he shrieked. “This vessel bears unique Kentath relics, the theft or destruction of which is a Class One Felony in all Galactic Council systems! Please reconsider your course of action!”

To the surprise of absolutely everyone, the desperate plea actually worked. The guns of the purple vessel deactivated, and it began to drift backwards. Tooley didn’t sit around waiting to see what else it did before hauling the Hard Luck Hermit in the other direction and busting their ass into FTL as fast as she could.

“Good thinking, professor,” Kamak said. “Don’t ever touch my ship’s controls again.”

“My apologies,” Drrok whispered hoarsely. “Even at my advanced age, I fear undertaking the Great Drift into the next life, yes?”

“Messing with my ship is a good way to get Great Drifted too,” Kamak said. “Tooley, make some junk jumps, scatter our trail, then get us into synched orbit around a gas giant with a ring and a bunch of moons. Make us hard to track.”

“Got it, cap.”

“What the fuck was that?”

“That, Corvash,” Kamak said. “Was the reason we’re drinking tonight.”