They'd left the Symphony of Destruction in Tortuga. A third of the ship had been scattered into debris, but the bridge had been mostly intact. All the pirates needed was an external power source and a halfway decent computer tech, and they would know every place the ship had traveled to.

Mims' secret hideout wasn't secret anymore.

"Four hours, you said?" Yvian tried to calm the tension flaring in her body. Four hours wasn't that much time to travel. If the other human ships were like the Symphony, they wouldn't reach the Hideout for another five. Yvian had plenty of time to figure out what to do.

"Four hours, eighteen minutes," Lissa confirmed.

"Ok." Yvian nodded to herself. "Ok. They're coming, but we've got some time." She squinted at the picture on Lissa's screen. "I counted twenty six Stealth cruisers, but there could be more."

"Yeah," Lissa pursed her lips, thinking.

"Ok," Yvian realized she was saying ok too much. She needed to calm down. "Ok." Crunch take it. She took a breath. "So how are we going to kill them?"

Lissa gave an amused grunt, then realized Yvian was serious. "Kill them?"

"Yeah. You know," Yvian shrugged. "How do we make them dead?"

Lissa stared in shock for a moment, then asked, "Are you fucking stupid?"

"What?" Yvian huffed. "There's less than thirty of them, and we've got a whole big fleet." She scratched her head. "We've beaten worse odds."

"One," Lissa raised a finger. "They're Stealth ships. We can't target them. Two," she raised another finger. "They've got fucking MAC Cannons, and can kill us and most of our fleet in a few seconds at close quarters. Three," she gestured with a third finger raised, "even if we manage to kill them all before they get off a shot, it won't help." She dropped her hand and sat back in her chair. "The Freedom Republic knows where we are. We have to run."

"Run where?" Yvian asked. "The Xill haven't given us the planet, yet, and they already told us not to lead enemies back to their space. The pirates can track us anywhere we go in the Confed, and no one there has the power to protect us from bloodthirsty humans."

"We can find another unclaimed sector," Lissa suggested. "We can jump this station and the whole fleet, maybe jump to another one if the pirates show up."

"Can we keep that up for a whole month?" Yvian shook her head. "The Freedom Republic's got jumpdrives, too. They'd find us in hours."

"Maybe the Oluken?" Lissa perked up. The Elders had been pretty sympathetic towards the pixens by the time they left, and they already had a treaty with the Federation. They might be powerful enough to offer protection, and there was at least a small chance they'd be willing to do so.

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"Worth a try," Yvian agreed. Lissa pulled up a comm station.

Yvian had hoped they could talk to Elder Quaan, but they ended up with Elder Nilga instead. He turned out to be more reasonable than she'd feared, bordering on nice. He still said no. The Oluken were not willing to anger the humans by harboring Mims, nor were they comfortable with the idea of a shipyard and a large fleet appearing in their space. He wished them good luck and told them to stay away.

"Well," Lissa slumped a little. "It was worth a shot."

"Maybe the Vrrl?" Yvian knew it was a stretch. "Scathach likes Mims."

"Scathach wants to hunt Mims," Lissa pointed out. "Then eat him."

"Fair point." Yvian checked the time one her wrist console. Four hours left. "How long before we can wake up the Captain?"

"Too long," said Lissa. "If the pod was just regrowing his leg we could interrupt, but shutting it down while it's working on his organs will kill him."

"Crunch." Yvian let out a breath. "He's probably got some other hidden station somewhere we could go."

"Probably."

"We need to buy some time." Yvian glared at the dots on the screen. "Maybe we should fight. If we kill the Stealth ships, we could wake up the Captain before the next wave shows up."

"Not an option," Lissa told her. "If we go out there, they'll stay far enough away we can't see them, and they'll kill us. If we wait for them here, we'll be too close to dodge the MAC rounds, and they'll kill us. We don't have the firepower to get them all before they can shoot."

"Well, we've got to do something," Yvian noticed their was still a case of beer next to her. Maybe beer would help her think. "We've got nowhere to hide, and it's not like we can just run forever."

Lissa took the beer away before Yvian could drink. Yvian glowered in protest, then got another out of the case. Lissa drank with a thoughtful expression. Her eyes went wide. "Maybe we can."

"What?" Yvian was confused.

"We can run." Lissa pulled up a different screen and started typing into her console. "Not forever. But it'll buy us some time."

"What are you talking about?" Yvian asked. She'd gone from confused to annoyed.

"Alright, check it out." Lissa finished her typing, then pulled up a Nav console. "We jump to an unclaimed sector, right?"

"Where the pirates will find us," reminded Yvian.

"Yes," said her sister. "But we won't stay put. We'll put the whole fleet at max acceleration out into deep space. If we go now, we'll have a four hour head start. Longer, if the motherless sons don't figure out where we went right away." She took a triumphant swig. "With that kind of head start, it'll take them a full day to catch up to our slowest ships, and they'll never catch our fighters at all."

Yvian considered it. If the pirates started to catch up too soon, they could always jump to a different sector and start over again. Only... "We'd lose the shipyard if we did that."

"Fuck the shipyard," said Lissa. "I've got another shipyard on order for when we get the planet."

"Fair enough." Yvian thought a moment. "I like it. Let's do it."

"You'll be dead in eight minutes," a voice came out of Yvian's wrist console.

"Exodus?" Yvian almost dropped her bottle. "What are you-?"

"Honestly ladies," the smooth, menacing baritone of the Genocide continued. "Have you really not figured it out, yet? I told you before I'm not the only one who's listening."

The Recompense hummed. Yvian looked around in alarm, then grabbed a console and pulled up a status screen. The ship was still docked. The humming of a jumpdrive was coming from the station itself.

"I can't believe I'm expending actual effort to keep you idiots alive," the Xill continued. His voice dripped with condescension. "I expected better from you."

"Wha... How..." Yvian decided it didn't matter. If Exodus had control of the station, the only question that mattered was: "Where are you taking us?"

"The Hub," Exodus told her. "We need to talk."