“Let me go.”

Luka met Tusca’s eyes with steely resolve. For someone barely eighteen years old, the kid had a backbone to put most war veterans to shame.

“Absolutely not,” Tusca replied, feeling much older than he was. He looked at the viewscreen, and the pirate ship that was waiting on a reply. The same pirates that Roja had gotten them away from just a few months earlier. That ship outgunned his in every way. There was no chance to fight, and less chance to run without the Red Baron to get them clear. “Luka, pirates don’t keep their word.”

“But they have Carlito and Roja,” Luka said, and Tusca saw a crack in his almost-perfect mask. He understood, and everything in him was screaming to find some way out. Some way to steal a win when so much was against them. ”Tusca, one life is worth two. You know that.”

“And if I thought for one damn minute that they would honor that deal,” Tusca said, lying through his teeth, “I would consider it. But Luka, you’re not a space rat, you’re a prince, and you can’t be risked.”

“I’m ordering you to risk me,” Luka was ready to fight for what he wanted. Unfortunately, what he wanted wouldn’t get him what he wanted. “I’m telling you that my life isn’t worth theirs!”

“And I’m telling you that it doesn’t matter, kid,” Tusca said, and stood to pull the distraught teenager into a tight hug. “Luka, pirates don’t trade hostages. If we try to negotiate, if we get them back, they’ll kill us all. Roja and Carlito, they know that.”

“But I can kill their ship!” Luka offered. He was grasping at straws, and Tusca didn’t have the heart to shut him down cold like he ought to. “If I get onto their ship, one touch and the whole thing goes dead.”

“If you go on that ship, they’ll kill Roja and Carlito. Kid, they don’t want just you, they want our cargo too,” Tusca sighed, and closed his eyes, hurting already for the loss that was to come. He flew with Roja in the war and for many years after. “The moment we go to unload it, they’ll level us all, blow the Wavedancer, and, if you’re very, very, lucky, they’ll keep you alive for ransom. If not, you’ll die with the rest of us.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” Tusca said, and sank into his chair. “Luka, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen situations like this. It’s not even the first time I’ve been in one, and I learned the same lesson you’re about to.”

“I can call for help,” Luka offered, but they both knew no help could get to them before time ran out.

“Can any of them get here fast enough?” Tusca asked anyway, because, if anyone could get them back up in time, it would be the Crown Prince of the Human Galactic Empire. “Anything, from a courier ship, to a Carrier. Absolutely anything?”

Luka flinched like he’d been slapped, and Tusca’s heart was breaking. Soon, they would have to tell the crew why Carlito and Roja weren’t back from a supply run. Soon he would have to tell his crew that two of their number, two of their family wouldn’t be coming back at all.

“No,” the young prince whispered ashamedly. “No, the nearest is fast, and she’s close enough to get here in minutes, but-“

“’But she’s not close enough, and she’s not fast enough to get here in time, even if I stall,” Tusca said. He pulled a bottle down from the cabinet he usually kept locked. “The pirates will hear any call for help. I just hope we can get out of here before they blow us.”

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Something deadly came over Luka’s gaze. Something that reminded Tusca that this wasn’t an ordinary teenager in front of him.

­“How do we handle this?” he asked, forcing down all the heartbreak that Tusca knew was swamping him. “How do we- how do we tell the others?”

“They all grew up in the black,” Tusca said, and picked up the shimmering green glass bottle on his desk. The one he only ever broke out when he lost one of his crew. It was the best money could buy, and his heart broke a little more every time he poured out a round. “They already know what happens when pirates take hostages. It was only a matter of time before you found out too. Come on.”

The whole crew was waiting on the bridge when Tusca walked in with Luka on his heels.

Do’s face went ashy grey when she saw the bottle in Tusca’s hand. She and her husband had been with Tusca as long as Roja, and they lost crew more than once in that time.

The life of a small-time smuggling ship was dangerous. Sometimes they paid for it in lives.

“Pirates,” he said without preamble, and looked around at his small, loyal crew. “You all know what happens when pirates take hostages, but if anyone has ideas, now’s the time.”

Silence answered him, broken only by Do’s quiet tears, muffled by her husband’s shirt. Carlito was her nephew.

“Okay,” he said, and took his chair, the bottle in a place of pride, fully visible. “Do’, put me through.”

The pirate captain didn’t look like the sort to take a kid and a doctor hostage and offer a ransom he didn’t intend to pay. He looked like the type to fly a desk and argue about political red tape for hours.

Tusca met Roja’s eyes and saw the moment his old friend noticed the bottle at Tusca’s side.

“Ready to play ball?” the pirate asked in a deceptively cheerful voice. “I see you still have the kid, and you haven’t unloaded your cargo for us to collect.”

“No, I haven’t,” Tusca said, but he wasn’t paying very much attention to the captain anyway. “And I’m not going to.”

Roja could slip any cuffs ever invented by man or Other. If it wasn’t magic, it wouldn’t hold him.

But that particular party trick was a secret. Arguably, the one Roja played closest to his chest. It had saved them a dozen times, not that most of the crew knew it.

Now it would save their little crew one last time.

“Activate emergency self-destruct on Doctor’s Authorization,” Roja yelled into the ship’s computer as he slipped his cuffs and lunged for the control console. He yanked off his ever-present necklace of prayer beads, and the little crystal that hung from it. Three more pirates ran to stop him, and Carlito threw himself bodily in their way. All four men went down in a pile even as half a dozen more rushed in as their captain shouted orders. None of them were fast enough to keep Roja from scanning his medical ID into the main computer. “Scan for Thraxxis-modified Spanish Influenza!”

With that, he smashed the crystal underfoot, and gave the captain a terrible, dark smile. Sickly yellow gas coiled up around his boot and started to fill the room far faster than it ought to. Tusca knew Roja had the capsule, his last resort in this very sort of situation, and pretended he didn’t know. Every spacer was due their precautions, and if Roja needed to kill a ship, Thraxxis-modified flu would do it.

“Modified Spanish Influenza detected,” the computer blared, and the whole pirate bridge lit red. “Emergency quarantine and self-destruct activated.

“Activate distress beacon and transmit everything!” the captain hollered, and Tusca swore. Without a pilot, the Wavedancer was limited to his crappy flight skills, and that wouldn’t be enough to get away from a pilot fleet. “Captain’s auth-“

The explosion was soundless in the vacuum of space, but it felt like it should have been loud.

Tusca dropped his head into his hands and gave himself a precious two minutes to grieve for his crew. His family, who had died to save them.

“We’re gonna drink for them,” he said when those two minutes passed, and there was no choice but to rally. He sat himself in the pilot’s chair and began warming up the console. “And we’re not gonna let their deaths go in vain. Graat, make us a course. I don’t care where to as long as it’s not here. Luka, shields. Left, Right, weapons. Alejandro, I need full power from the engines. Go.”

They went, and he was proud of them.

“Captain?” the dread in Do’s voice was bad. The way it cracked with tears was worse. “We have company.”

Ships cracked into being all around them, portalling through Jumps in answer to a distress call of one of their own, and the tantalizing prize that was the Crown Prince.

Outgunned, out-manned, out-piloted.

“Move,” Luka said, voice absolutely steady despite the pain of his friend and his mentor dying before his eyes moments earlier. “Let me fly.”