Dav Enderson, a.k.a "Dead End Dav", was getting closer and closer to his namesake.
His ass, currently clenching for a semblance of control over the current situation in vain, was sat in the pilot seat of a space-to-ground strike bomber. This type of craft combined powerful engines, good armor, a wide array of offensive hardpoints and a main internal bomb-bay to create a powerful space-borne attacker. In combine with the remote rear ballistic turret and the frontal facing hypervelocity slug autocannon, it was a nasty piece of hardware.
It also turned like the average obese moon and was a shit dogfighter, which turned out to be bad things when fleeing a whole wing of cutting edge interceptors who's whole purpose was to hunt your ship down.
The rear turret was operated by the on-board targeting suite up until two minutes ago, when a missile fried by the laser CIWS blisters to the rear of the craft shaved it clear off the roof of the arrowhead-shaped craft, alongside those very splinters.
Rather ironic, considering the vengeful nature of the assholes who launched that missile at him to begin with.
Thankfully, the bomb-bay was shielded well enough to make sure it'd survive even after the damn ship exploded - and considering that this type of bomber was used to carry anti-matter warheads, it had to be that tough.
It'd be a shame if a stray shot would destabilize the experimental micro-singularity reactor on board, vaporising both the vessel and the nearest two planets, after all.
Another set of missiles exploded a few kilometers to his left, deceived by his Electronic Warfare Suite - and while a few kilometers might sound a lot to a planetside mudlicker, any spaceman worth his nutrient bars would feel uneasy without a few thousand kilometers between their vessel and the nearest high-speed explosive object.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The shredded remains of the vessel's rear-facing sensor suite indicated that the persuing interceptors, their oversized add-on propulsion packs and weapon pods gleaming with evil exaust glare, were gaining on him and fast.
Shame the military only decided to do things right when it came to screwing him over - and all little Dav wanted was to make a quick buck and make like a bandit.
----------------------------------------
The actual plan was rather simple - knock the quartermaster unconcious in the secure magazine bunker, load the reactor into the shell of a high-explosive thermobaric bomb of similar size, load it onto a bomber, and after he'd fail to return from his next deployment, hawk the damn thing off to the highest bidder and retire to a low-gravity paradise world - and enjoy what 0.5 gees let one do with a woman's breasts. Which was surprisingly a lot.
And it would've gone well enough if only the damn quartermaster wasn't a veteran who had part of his cranium replaced with titanium - explaining his broken pinky.
What followed a failed attempt at a silent takedown was a mad flurry, a few sacrificial cleaning droids loaded with directional explosives giving their life for the cause, and grand theft spaceship.
And if that wasn't all enough, he was running out of gas, too.
Which was obviously when the damn picket Cruiser decided to quantum-fold right in front of his ship, in all it's one kilometer glory.
The ship's targeting suite, EW suite, weapons and even the shitty music player blasting out shitty rock music decided to wave the french flag, signalling his entrance to the Cruiser's EW envelope, and suddenly he was flying fully manual.
Not for long though - one the captain on board had a chat with the wing leader chasing him, he'd become so much space dust thanks to the capital vessel's anti-fighter batteries within nano-seconds.
And then he saw it.
A green shimmer in space that made the universe go a bit funny. A navigational hazard even the dumbest of the dumb knows to avoid. A source of so many space-horror stories - half of which had to do with tentacles or brain parasites, or both. A tear in space followed by the large quantum displacement caused by a capital vessel warping near a planet's gravity well.
The door to what might as well be a super black hole's event horizon or the heart of a star, and almost certain death.
Key word being almost, unlike his current situation.
And so, faced with a dead end, "Dead End Dav" took a one in a million chance, and dove straight through the Quantum Slip.