We shot downward, careening through space away from Mythellion III station before I had time to register what was happening. Emerald flashes splashed above us as bolts splattered against the launch barrier of the station.

The stark silhouette of a fighter screamed by, there one frame and gone the next.

I ignited the side engines, shooting us off course as a second rail of bolts slashed through spaces along our original path, fired from the fighter's rear cannons as it dashed away from the station.

"Shit. Shit. Shit. Mask on."

"Who is that?"

"Don't know. Masks on," I snapped, but I had a guess.

I snapped the mask in front of me over my mouse and nose, the telltale hiss of oxygen coming online as it clicked into place. I glanced at Victoria as she affixed her own, leaving her a second to adjust the straps. It wasn't like the last person in that seat was a Fotuan.

Once I was confident her mask was on, I started moving the power settings on the ship. Combat on smaller vessels was like conducting a symphony. The perpetual engines on the ships weren't big enough to run every system at once, so it was up to the pilots to find balance in the middle ground between surviving the fight and surviving in space.

It was a good thing Valet kept your ship warm for you.

The lights shut, oxygen stopped pumping into the cabin, the heater cooled, and the force dampeners deactivated everywhere but our seats; in their place, combat engines erupted, guns spun up, and critically our outer shield flickered to life.

The combat engines snapped our descent to a halt almost immediately as I fired them against us, stopping us from heading too close to one of the other moons that orbited Mythellion's parent planet. I scanned the station's lights to see if I could spot the enemy fighter, but we should have had time.

Every movement in space was a commitment. You could only pull a hairpin turn if you had the engine power to create the opposite force to your current speed. The faster you went, the longer it would take to 'brake.' Luckily our friend had been flying well above Solar paces, which meant I had a second to prepare for the second run.

"Where are they?" Victoria's voice was smothered by her mask but came over small speakers in my headrest.

"Don't wanna find out."

"Do you think that they're going to come back?"

We could try running from here, but we couldn't just shoot off in a straight line, predictive weapon systems would absolutely lace us the second the ship got back into firing range.

"Kingston?"

My scanners hadn't been able to read what kind of ship it was during its run, so I couldn't pick a fight. For all I knew, I had nothing on the Gunboat Diplomat that could crack its shields. Not for lack of money spent.

"Kingston."

I could put Mythellion behind me, but that wouldn't stop them for long; they'd just wait until they could open fire again.

"Kingston."

Maybe some of the Anteraxi Skitters came out to stop them from disturbing the peace, but that wouldn't matter much if we were scrap metal floating around Mythellion's first satellites.

"Knigston."

"Victoria, I need to think! Fucking-" I slammed the forward engines to a dogfighting pace, streaking away from Mythellion and toward the nearest sister moon. Even with the stabilizers in our seats, we were pinned against headrests as we tore through space. As we took off, I pulled the last power out of the heating systems and pumped it into the scanners, trying to find them before they found us.

The gravity of the moon, Zektah-Tiberon 7, grabbed us, yanking our heading to the surface. Engines flared all over the ship, righting it and setting it to slingshot around the moon once we were close enough to leverage the curvature of the orbit.

The scanner blipped and glowed in front of me, pinging the other civilian ships pulling away from the station, probably confused about what was shooting in semi-civilized space. The gravity of Zektah-Tiberon started to take control of our path.

"There!" Victoria called.

"What?"

"Fotuan Valikyria, on the scanner, it's on the- other side of the moon?"

"That doesn't make-" she was right; a fighter was taking the opposite orbit to us, matching our path to meet us as we locked into the slingshot. What kind of handling did those ships have if they could beat us to the fucking moon.

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"Second one. Back by the station. A Class."

"Of course, there's two," I hissed.

"One on the other side is a D Class."

"What does that mean?"

"A Classes are the standardized fighter of the scout divisions of the Meri-"

"Victoria."

"D Class has big guns."

"Cool." We were either going to meet the one with big guns head-on, or we could try our luck in open space, but-

No, we were pincered; there was no avoiding that many shots; it didn't matter how robust the auto-avoidance systems were.

"Fuck it," I growled, pushing us closer to the moon's surface. Warnings popped up, letting me know that Zektah-Tiberon 7 had an atmosphere and reminding me about the speed limit for guaranteed hull integrity. Luckily I was pretty sure the human military undershot their numbers intentionally.

"Kingston."

"Mhm?"

"We're-"

"Yep."

The ship rocked under the pressure of entering the atmosphere, shaking around us as the outer cameras adjusted to the glow of superheated metal. We were almost 75 kilometres above the surface of the moon still, but dogfighting was not a planetside sport.

The video feed highlighted a dot of the horizon, part of the screen zooming in to show the Fotuan Valikyria adjusting to match our new heading, a glowing vapour cone erupting around as it dipped into the atmosphere and tore through every collective sound barrier.

"That's an Oniversa Therm-"

"Vic."

"Laser weapon."

"Got it."

I cut the power to the engines, watching our speed plummet as physics screamed against our momentum, and we cut lower and lower toward the moon's surface, but the sickly yellow clouds were still way below us. All that power went to the guns.

Just as we were about to come into each other's effective range, the Valikyria snapped off its current path, rolling to the side end over end. I opened fire just before I was supposed to.

There were 18 primary batteries and 84 auxiliary guns hidden within our hull. With full power, all of them that could fire forward turned the space between us into a flashing wall of death, a mix of hyper-accelerated metal shards and concentrated laser bolts.

The Fotuan ship fired a pair of concentrated beams off; I cut the guns and threw power back into the engines.

Sparks and light erupted as the Valikyria maintained its attack run, rushing almost headlong into our covering fire to keep the lasers on target as they cut toward us, scything from either direction to cut off our escape routes.

Our upper engines screamed to life, and I shot us straight down toward the moon's surface, putting precious distance between the Valikyria and us before the lasers ran into our shield. Two warnings flashed on my screen simultaneously: dropping shield integrity and altitude.

The lasers cut off as the Fotuan Valikyria screamed out of range, only adjusting its heading and correcting its spin once it was too far for laser fire to work. My scanners caught it just before it headed out of the range to get the ship's status. As far as the shields, we couldn't tell. Their hull was untouched.

Another ship was approaching the planet, the one that had taken the first shot at us. We couldn't win trading shots like that. They'd just wear me down and buy time for one another to recharge their shields when they kept me from doing the same.

I got the engines to slow our descent just outside of effective orbital exit range; though we were still moving forward at thousands of kilometres an hour, it felt like almost nothing compared to the scale of the moon; we'd had to drop too much speed to fly in-atmosphere.

"Fuck."

Silence reigned, it might have only been a couple of seconds, but it felt like hours.

"What are our chances?"

"Honestly? Not great, but I'm not out of-"

"PHMS Gunboat Diplomat, this is Huntress Pasoné of Valikyria Designation 24639. We believe you are harbouring a fugitive. Comply with a search, or our next shot will not be a warning."

They hadn't connected a video feed with the hail; instead, it was just her voice, speaking like she was reading an essay in the middle of a dog fight.

"PHMS Gunboat Diplomat. Reply."

"I think that's me you're talking about," I answered.

"This is not the time for games, PHMS Gunboat Diplomat."

"I am wanted on a lot of planets."

"PHMS Gunboat Diplomat-"

"Kali Registered Mercenary Kingston Diadona. You can call me Kingston."

"PHMS Gunboat Diplomat. Comply."

I kept the ship in combat power settings but spared a mote of firepower to bring up the internal lights. Vitoria was staring dead ahead, eyes wide, but the lights coming on woke her from her stupor, and she looked at me. I was nodding before she had time to offer a pleading look.

"I'll comply."

"Maintain heading and depower all combat systems. We will be alongside you shortly."

The feed didn't cut until I pulled power away from the weaponry, then there was a brief moment of static before Victoria, and I were alone in the cockpit.

"Kings-"

I cut Victoria off with a finger, then killed the lights. We would be naked for this, which meant I needed all the engine power we could spare. As the shadows set in, I saw my oxygen mask fogging as the cockpit's interior cooled.

The first Valikyria cut through the atmosphere to catch up to us, matching our flight path, pulling only a few hundred feet to the right of us. It was the one that had shot at us in the first place. Based on the guns on the bottom of the ship, the first shots at us as we'd left Mythellion III were warning shots.

I took a deep breath.

My scanner picked up the second ship, cutting through high orbit toward us.

It was time to test Fotuan reaction time.

I maxed out forward and bottom engines at the same time the panels on the exterior of our ship adjusted, guns folding away as it became, for a brief moment, invisible to scanners and systems.

We shot up toward the stars, the ship shaking from the ascent. We were on a straight shot to head out of the system on a path to Ovigaia. We just needed to get to the edge of the gravity well, and we'd be impossible to track over the black.

The A-Class we'd left behind hesitated, unprepared for our gambit. That was enough for us to almost be out of firing range.

Laser slammed into our shieldless hull.

The Gunboat Diplomat groaned and rocked off course as the firepower slammed into us as it cut blindly through the air where we were headed. Victoria screamed.

More shots chased us out of the atmosphere, falling short as we erupted into space, and I forced power into shields to cover the hull damage. The ship complained, and enough warning signs flashed in front of me that I couldn't tell if any were critical.

Free of gravity from anything other than the sun and without atmosphere in the way, the engines kicked up to interstellar settings.

With no idea of how damaged we were, I cracked us through the Veil and into the black.