Jace clamped down on the turret’s trigger. The ammunition disc, a metal ring with plasma shells in it, spun and fed them down into the turret, before spitting them back into the tiny turret compartment.

Bursts of magenta plasma surged out the twin muzzles of the freighter’s turret, searing through the sky back toward the starfighters. He clipped the wingtip of one, but it stayed in the air and stayed on their tail.

The middle scavenger starfighter of the formation, a ship with an upright wing, tried to surge past them, but Jace swung the turret to the side and fired, and three shots blasted through the ship’s viewscreen. It tumbled out of control.

The other two starfighters activated shields, protecting themselves from an initial plasma blast, then, firing back with heavier cannons, strafed the Wrath’s stern before passing it. Jace swung the turret around to face forward, then chased them up into the sky.

The plasma blasts struck their shields, but didn’t penetrate through.

“Our shells won’t break through a snub fighter’s shields,” Kinfild said.

“And that’s our last ammo disc!” Lessa exclaimed. “After that encounter on Hellion, when you used them all up.”

“Yeah, well, I took out the pirates!” Jace shouted back.

“Not efficiently.”

“You’re no better shot than me with this old crusty turret! It’s not a rifle!”

“Anyone’s a better shot than you!”

“You both need practice with the Wrath’s turret,” Kinfild said. “But not today!”

The scavenger starfighters wheeled around, then surged back toward the Wrath, their nose-mounted plasma cannons blazing. Jace fired another salvo at them, but it spattered against their shields. A chime rang out—the ammo disc was half empty.

He reached for the ammo disc and pulled out an unused plasma shell from the side. It was about twice as large as a regular plasma bullet, and it still had a ring of amplification runes around its base, for directing the plasma Aes at a target when the condensed powder combusted.

Those starfighters had regular shields, not torpedo nets. If worse came to worst, Jace could launch the plasma shell with his bare hands, flinging it through hyperspace. That’d have to do it.

“Kinfild?” he asked. “Why don’t regular shields block objects in hyperspace?”

“When an object is travelling through hyperspace, it’s running along a channel of the Split. It’s transcending this plane to a deeper mesh below. Torpedo nets can block an object in hyperspace because they themselves interact with the split. It’s like dipping a mesh half in and out of hyperspace.”

So the Wanderer’s Expulsion would work against them. He swapped in his reset card and activated it, purging his cooldowns, and prepared to launch the shell. It’d blow a hole in the bottom of the hull, but he could shut the hatch, and it sealed airtight.

A last resort.

But, as he gripped the shell tighter, he subconsciously began cycling Aes through his hands. He gripped the runes on the brass casing, and power fled from his hands out into the runes. They lit up with blue, hyperspace Aes, and the entire shell began trembling.

What had he done?

He rammed the shell back into the ammo disc and clamped down on the trigger, and immediately fired the next three shots—the shell with the fuelled runes among them.

The first two shots blasted out the twin barrels normally, but the third shot surged out with a burst of white-blue light and sparks. And, though plasma travelled quickly, the third shot overtook them in a flash. Lightning swirled amongst the plasma Aes, and the shot left a trail of sparks in the upper atmosphere of Braka.

When it hit the starfighter’s shield, it passed straight through, then ripped a searing hole in the vessel’s main hull. Smoke chugged out at an awkward angle. The vessel spun out of control and crashed back toward the surface.

Only one left.

It let out a barrage of blazing plasma, which struck the Wrath high up on the hull and made the entire ship rock. Jace’s back slammed against the roof of the turret slot, but it was a blunt impact, and the entire tube had padding. No sharp edges to break a spine.

Lessa, however, yelped, then soared overhead, caught temporarily in the conflicting gravitational fields of the artificial gravity and the planet.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

When Jace tried to fire again, nothing happened. “Damn power coupling! We need to fix that!”

“Until you find the coin to get us a new one, we’ll have to live without it!” Kinfild replied.

Lessa’s boots rattled on the starship’s deck as she sprinted back toward the power coupling, but Jace said, “Lessa! You take the guns! I’ve got an idea!”

If he understood the power coupling right, it had a few purposes. It carried electricity to the gun, but it also drew Aes from the onboard Aes cells and the jumpstart accumulator. Being a repeating machine gun, the turret needed a technique card to keep it cool and help expel some of the excess power.

But Jace could give it a different type of Aes. It might not work, but if it did…

He jumped up to his feet and scrambled to the front console, trading places with Lessa and reaching for the power coupling. Two halves of a brass coupling lay separated beneath the console, with a set of disconnected wire sockets between them.

He pushed the coupling together halfway so the wires connect, but not enough to join the Aes-conducting channel. Instead, he pressed his finger up against the opening of the conducting channel, careful not to touch any of the wires.

The entire starship shook. He nearly crushed his finger in the coupling, but pulled back in time to spare himself.

“Jace!” Lessa shouted “Connect the coupling! There’s still a starfighter out there!”

He exhaled and pushed Aes into the tube, just like powering a Vault Core. His hyperspace-aspect Aes flowed into the tube, then surged down into the mechanisms of the ship. Blue lightning surged along the outside of the wire.

“What are you two doing?” Kinfild demanded. “You can’t break their shields!”

“I don’t need to break their shields. We’re going around them.”

“Impossible!”

“I already did it once! Just fly the starship!”

Kinfild grumbled, then pulled back on the yoke, setting them into a steeper climb.

“Fire, Lessa!” Jace called.

She clamped her finger down on the trigger and unloaded another quarter of the ammo disc. The first few shots fired out normally, but the next three all flared out like Jace’s earlier hyperspace-enhanced plasma shot. The first shots spattered against the scavenger starfighter’s shields, illuminating them.

The next shots passed through, regardless of the shield, and left a chain of searing holes in the ship’s upper hull.

“Woah!” Lessa exclaimed. “Jace, what did you do?”

“I powered the card with hyperspace Aes!” he said. “It should’ve bled into the bullets and the chamber and enhanced the shot!”

“That it did! By the Split, its shields did nothing!”

“You did what?” Kinfild exclaimed.

Jace dropped the power coupling. “I—”

“Oh, we can talk about this later! Strap in. We’re almost ready to jump to hyperspace!”

Jace jumped back to his feet and scrambled into the co-pilot’s seat, and Lessa clambered back to the radioman’s chair. They both pulled their crash harnesses on.

Outside the viewscreen, the sky darkened, and Braka faded away below them. As soon as the worst of the planet’s gravitational pull faded, Kinfild pushed the silver lever on the central console, and the ship shot off into hyperspace.

“You set our course for Ifskar?” Jace asked.

“Yes.” Kinfild flicked the scanner, then swivelled his chair to the side. “By my estimate, we’ll have ten hours before we arrive.” He unbuckled his crash harness and stood up, then said, “Let’s see what damage you’ve done to my gun.” He turned to Jace and raised a finger, then said, “That was an authentic backseater Karis gun, mind you. From a planetdiver. Replacement parts aren’t easy to find.”

“Would you rather I let them shoot us as we tried to jump to hyperspace?” Jace asked.

“I’d rather you have not caused such a ruckus in the first place, but there’s nothing to be done about it now.” The Wielder marched back through the ship, then climbed down into the gunner’s compartment and pulled open a panel in the wall.

A puff of smoke swirled out, and he waved his hand to disperse it, coughing. “Sure enough, the card wasn’t meant to take hyperspace Aes. And our fuel cells only output at a Foundation One level. You being Foundation Two couldn’t have helped.”

Jace looked away sheepishly, then, once the twinge of embarrassment faded, he knelt down beside Kinfild and looked at the card. Its main plastic sheet had melted, and a couple of the poorly-soldered runes had deformed with it.

A tag lit up above it, reading, [Technique Card: Vent Excess Aes (Common) (Utility) (Compatible Class: All) (Compatible Aspects: Fire, Pure)]

“How’d my Aes even pour through the card?” Jace asked.

“By frying it,” Kinfild said. “You overloaded the runes, and the excess Aes just poured into the mechanism, taking the heat-pipes in reverse and flooding the barrel.”

“Whoops…” Jace muttered. “Now, what if we modified it so I could always feed Aes into the barrel. ‘Cause the gun isn’t broken, right?”

“Shouldn’t be,” Lessa said, leaning over from the other direction. “I only fired…what, seven shots? Shouldn’t overheat any plasmacannon.”

“No, indeed, it seems like we got lucky.”

“Being out in the cold couldn’t have hurt,” Jace muttered. “Still. Kinfild, I’ll fix the card, and we can load up the gun again.”

“You’ll fix it?”

Jace opened his backpack and pulled out his stack of unmarked technique card bases he stole from the vault on Braka. “We have these.”

Kinfild chuckled. “Ah, so you mean you’ll get Lessa to engrave a new one.”

“Well…”

“I’ll teach you to use the engraving needle if you want,” Lessa said. “But only if you promise to cook dinner tonight.”

“Deal,” said Jace. Then, he pulled out the keycard he’d acquired from the vault. “Now…how are we going to use this one?”

Kinfild plucked it from Jace’s grip as he stood up from the gunner’s nook, then said, “I’ll slot it into the wireless transmitter. You go with Lessa and fix the plasmacannon. And make sure she gets the first aid kyborg to look at her arm—otherwise she’ll ignore it ‘til it truly costs her.”

Jace nodded. “Yessir.”