I awoke to the sound of my alarm softly chiming in my ear. This wasn't the first time I'd had to sleep in my mining craft, and it took a second for me to remember my current situation. Returning my seat to the upright position, I shook my head. I was a minute away from transitioning back to standard drive, and I had a ship to find.

The countdown wound down, and the automatic systems brought the craft out of cruise. What had been empty space a moment ago was now full of a dense cluster of asteroids. Many were unsettled the first time they experienced the transition out of cruise. The realization that you were one malfunction or miscalculation away from slamming into the field of rocks in front of you and becoming nothing more than your constituent atoms spread across the local region of space. That was a terrifying concept to understand.

The terror for me had just begun though. I had to navigate that field of spinning rocks that would see me crushed between them with just one mistake. The chime of another alert on my dash interrupted my survey of the rocks in front of me.

"A gravity wake? Who- Oh Ti'Zok, you bastard!" I slammed the throttle to the firewall, heading towards the asteroid field, as behind me, a massive Itzli cruiser appeared. The cruisers of the merchant houses were as close as you could get to a military-grade ship in civilian hands. Powerful particle shields, heavy armor, and enough weapons to take on an entire pirate armada.

"I've been waiting for you Rama. You know, implants are amazing things, they don't just replace inferior organic parts. They let you do things like magnify and zoom in. I can even record everything I've ever seen with these eyes. So imagine my surprise when I play back the recording of that compad of yours, to see that poor Rama has found a ship. Come now, do you really think that you'd get to keep it anyway?" I cut off the transmission, I didn't need to listen to him gloat. I had more important things to focus on, like the stream of bent-wing fighters leaving his cruiser and turning to pursue me.

Rolling under an asteroid, I barely avoided a stream of weapons fire. No longer the fizzy white of an electromagnetic stunner cannon, these were the angry red of a plasma cannon that stitched into the side of the tumbling rock beside me, leaving a series of molten craters.

"I don't care if you die anymore at this point, to be honest. You've proven yourself such a pain in my tail that nothing would make me happier than your death. Obviously, I would much prefer to personally make it slow and painful, but if I have to settle for quick and painful, well, one out of two's not so bad. Why I might even-" Changing to the priority frequency, huh? I'll fix that. I turned the volume down as low as it would go, leaving Ti'Zok's voice an unintelligible droning in my ears.

Adjusting my course, I set out toward my original goal and dive into the shadowy cluster of asteroids. My helmet HUD displayed my plotted course out ahead of me and highlighted rocks and hazards in the near darkness. The fighters chased me like a swarm of angry Kab. The asteroid field itself was also not going to make this easy. Threading between a pair of rolling rocks, I barely dodged them as they collided, leaving a cloud of dust behind me. I watched on my scanner as several of the fighters' signatures disappeared, colliding with the asteroids.

Flying further into the storm of rocks, I winced as several small pieces bounced off my craft, I was starting to wish I still had those hull panels attached. Too many hits like that, and something important was going to break. Sliding through a narrow gap in the rocks, I saw more plasma fire bracket my craft. My ship jolted as something exploded, and the annoying buzz of the voice of my would-be tormentor cut out.

Just the comm array, then. The comm array that had been mounted right above my head. I dove into a ring-shaped asteroid as my heart beat loudly in my ears. Rocketing out of the other side of the asteroid, I slammed the emergency release for the ore pod, sending it tumbling away behind me. I watched as my scanner lit up, and I could see the light of the explosions reflected off the rocks around me. The scanner cleared, and I saw that all the fighters had disappeared, save for three.

With the weight of the ore pod gone, I could now maneuver and accelerate faster, but this was still a mining craft. Weaving between the rocks slowed me enough that the more nimble lead fighter drew parallel to me. Unlike the usual ruby red color, this fighter was pitch black, a hole in space. We were coming up on another pair of large rocks blocking the way with only a small gap between them. I glanced out the side window again at the fighter there.

"This is a terrible, stupid, absolutely slag-brained idea Rama," I told myself.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"Yea, well I'm doing it anyway!" I stomped on the control pedals and yawed hard into the fighter.

I managed to avoid the wing and put the right pod of my craft into the fighter's fuselage. Something important didn't like me doing that, and exploded on the fighter sending it careening off, away out of sight. I had hoped it would collide with the asteroid, but I'll take what I can get.

My engine in that pod didn't appreciate my actions much either, and it began sputtering, and output was dropping. I winced as I scraped the right pod along the rock as I passed through the gap. With a choking whine, the engine on that pod died completely.

"No! Slag it all!" I desperately worked the controls for the engine trying to get it to restart. I'd made it halfway, but the hardest part was still to come, and there were still two fighters on my tail. I looked ahead as the perpetual shadow of the rocks lessened, leaving me in twilight.

I'd entered an empty area of space in the cluster between the outer sphere of rocks and the smaller core of the cluster. The rocks in the core moved much faster than the outer layer, and this whole cluster was feeling more and more strange the deeper I went. Rocks didn't naturally move like this.

"No time to think about it Rama, do or die." I shook my head. It didn't matter either way. I was long past having the option of turning back.

I juked and rolled for all I was worth. This empty gap was worse for me than the unpredictability of the roving asteroids. Plasma fire surrounded me like a halo, glancing shots singed and melted parts of my craft. The cockpit dash was covered in amber and red lights now, showing just how much of my craft was damaged.

I slammed forward in my seat, my harness and my helmet the only things protecting me from a nasty head injury, as something exploded. I looked at the dash again and found that an entire section of lights had gone dark. Looking out the window, I found that the entire right pod was gone.

"Well, at least it was the one that wasn't working," I muttered as another harsh jolt shook the craft. I was really wishing I still had that plating right about now.

The lights for life support went dark, I was now running on what was left in the tanks now. The CO2 filter built into my suit ensured I wouldn't die from poisoning, at least. Now I only had hours at most, as long as the oxygen tank wasn't hit.

Finally, I reached the inner core of spinning rocks and dove into them. My two pursuers were right behind me and followed me in. The plasma fire chasing me abated some. We were all more focused on not becoming smeared on the side of a rapidly moving space rock.

I weaved between the rocks, death never more than a few seconds away. Asteroids of all sizes flew by me on all sides as I desperately dodged between them. I flew through gravel piles, the clouds of rocks hammering my craft and leaving my cockpit glass cracked and cratered. Explosive gas clouds exploded around me, set off by the plasma of my pursuers or simply from flying too close. The further I went, the more difficult things became. A rock spun by above me, scraping along the top of my craft.

A burst of plasma fire streaking by me let me know my pursuers were still right behind me. My rear sensors had been destroyed, a casualty of either plasma or rocks, and my craft was now blind to anyone chasing me.

A massive rock loomed ahead of me, the only way through was a crevice in the middle of it. Before it was a cluster of rocks made of an unstable mineral that was so sensitive that even sunlight was enough to set it off. The only areas it was found, were in places like this that never saw direct light.

There was no time to go around or try to find another path. I flipped the switch for the ICS again and killed my one remaining engine. Flipping my craft around, I pointed the nose back the way I came and prayed I didn't scrape one of the rocks on my way by.

I think the two fighters following me thought I was trying to shoot them with my mining laser, as they started weaving back and forth. The joke's on them, mining lasers have a targeting lockout on any ship with a functioning transponder. I couldn't shoot them even if I tried.

The rocks, on the other hand, were a different matter. Activating my remaining mining laser, I deployed it as I drifted backward away from the rocks. They likely trusted their baffled exhausts to keep them from setting off the rocks as they passed by, or perhaps they didn't even have the proper sensors to tell what they were. The result was the same either way as I swept the red beam of my mining laser over the rocks. The rocks underwent an almost complete transformation to energy. They, of course, did this in a very explosive manner that vaporized the two fighter craft pursuing me and then slammed into my craft, sending me tumbling.

I desperately pressed the engine start button to no response. The RCS thrusters finally stabilized my flight, and I brought the nose back around, just in time to enter the crevice head-on. I bounced off one wall and then scraped along the other, leaving a trail of debris behind me. Sparks flying, I watched helplessly, as I approached a large outcropping in the left wall of the crevice. With a stomach-turning wrench, the left pod caught on the outcropping and then tore free, sending the fuselage of my craft tumbling.

I bounced, slid, and rolled further into the crevice, finally coming to rest on its side. I took a moment to come to my senses before I realized the situation I was in. Limited oxygen, no hope of rescue. I pushed down the despair and panic that threatened to engulf me. I wasn't going to give up now. At the end of this crevice was the heart of this strange cluster of rocks. The ship that would take me to freedom was there, and I wasn't going to stop until I was on board that ship, or I was dead.