Captain Sinko Maydair gazed listlessly out into space from the cockpit of his treasured junker ship, the Emerald Quasar.  Something had been eating away at him for weeks now, as they drew further through the Hawker Nebula and closer to home. Sinko knew that it wasn’t the lones, the feelings of profound meaninglessness that junkers get after many months of deep space travel– though, of course, he felt those too. It was a greater uneasiness, like something major was about to change.

His pilot, Jarine, looked over at him. “Get any sleep, Ko?”

“Not nearly enough,” he replied. “I don’t think I’ll get any proper sleep until we get back to Portossal.”

“We’re only a few shifts away, at this speed. A blink of an eye, after three years out here– six years, both ways.” They were on the verge of completing the long-distance route to Sukrat, on the far side of the Hawker. A perilous and wearying journey, but trading Sukrati weapons was far more lucrative than hauling gas from Krablast– the bread and butter of most junkers.

“It couldn’t come soon enough… But you know, Jarine, what worries me most is what’s waiting for us in Portossal.” Portossal was the trading post of the junkers, a polluted megalopolis on a small planet at the edge of the Hesperides where 800 ships landed and departed each day. “When we left, it felt like sinister elements were creeping into the city. Who knows what’s happened after six years?”

Jarine shuddered, shaking her mane of wooly gray hair. “Things were definitely amiss. Those dusty old mechanics”– the Vena Guild, who own most junker ships and operate the business end of deep space shipping – “were poking their noses where they don’t belong, and the whole place was practically infested with foreign spies.”

She paused for a minute to re-adjust their course away from a white dwarf. She thought, then asked, “Ko, are you still thinking of running for the Junker’s Circle? You’re almost a shoe-in if you choose it.”

Sinko was tremendously popular amongst the junkers, and it had long been anticipated that he would run for a position on the seven-person board of their union, the Junker’s Circle. He had captained his first voyage at a record seventeen years of age, and was known for treating his crews fairly and always helping out junkers in need. Young and charismatic, he was the chosen protegé of Vavelle Donet, the current Circle Center. Not only that, his dance moves were legendary throughout the Portossal dancehouses, and his talents with his tongue were widely known. The only thing he lacked were good looks.

“That’s the thing,” said Sinko. “When we left, Vavelle was the only thing keeping the Circle balanced between radical hawks and corrupt profiteers. She’s too old to run again, and I feel like I’m responsible for replacing her. Someone needs to keep us on the right course, and I just don’t know if I’m capable enough. I wish…”

“You didn’t have to bear the responsibility?” Jarine finished. Sinko nodded. “It does seem like a lot. But Sinko, on the other hand, you have dealt with responsibility before and you know how to manage it.”

“I hope so,” said Sinko, and they fell silent again, scanning their path for errant comets. 

Sinko woke up to Jarine shaking him. She gestured to the lenses – small telescopes used to examine ships’ surroundings. He looked in, squinting his eyes to see. Two dots, bearing in on them, quickly.

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“Check the front portside,” said Jarine. Another dot, moving at the same speed.

“Any more?” asked Sinko.

“Not for now. But there’s a meteor stream a half league to starboard and a few moons obscuring our vision. There could be more.”

“Pirates?”

“I can’t think what else it would be,” said Jarine. For most of the Sukrat route, junkers travel close enough to light-speed to be safe from any attack, and the open sky enables them to see approaches long before any real danger. However, as they come in close to the Hesperides, they have to slow down to avoid the ocean of moons and small stars that litter the approach, which also provide hiding spaces for ships. The geographic attributes and lack of government provide a perfect storm for piracy.

“Scramble the crew, bank topside fifty degrees and starboard fifteen. Let’s shake them,” Sinko barked out.

The dots began shooting out streams of light– at this range, none of it would hit them, but the pirates must be hoping to intimidate them into an easy surrender.

“Two more ships bearing in from the back portside!” Jarine shouted. Sinko cursed. The ships in front of him were closing in much faster than expected, simply waiting for the Quasar to fly into their reach, while the portside ships kept them from slowing down and turning. They needed to bear starboard to slip through the web of ships being drawn over them, but there was a good chance the pirates had a surprise waiting for them. Time to think. 

“Prepare to engage!” he shouted into the speaker system. At the middle of the ship, the four gunners aimed as carefully as they could and let out blasts of white light. Every second the ships were closing in a little more, and the moment when both sides' volleys did real damage was rapidly approaching. He had to think, and quickly.

“Another ship! Directly topside and bearing fast!” Jarine shouted. When had pirate ships gotten so fast? And so many at once!

“What are these ships, Jarine?”

“They look like stolen junkers, and fully outfitted too.”

That explained a lot. Sinko cursed again, and then made up his mind. Time to gamble. “Alright, Jarine, we’re gonna bank portside as hard as we can and hope that our gunners can give them enough heat to slip past.” A crazy idea, to fly straight towards the pirates and into range, but it felt safer than whatever fleet might be waiting on the other side of that asteroid stream. And at the least it would shake the pirates up.

The Quasar turned, blasting light every which way. The pirates came into range and their blasts mingled with the Quasar’s, blinding Sinko temporarily. Jarine, a well experienced pilot, had switched the lenses for darkness in preparation and was doing her best to mix up the ships movements so as not to make them an easy target. A blast nicked the side of the Quasar, heating everything up instantly but not quite ripping through their hull. When his eyes adjusted, Sinko could see that his gunners were putting in work, and the hulls of three pirates were glowing red under the continuous fire. Must be scorching in there, he thought.

After a few moments, they were on the other side of the pirates, still blasting away but with safety in sight. Sinko breathed in for the first time in a minute. The pirates banked towards them, but they had been too busy focusing on the fight to account for the Quasar’s turning arc and were now off to starboard and receding away.

“Five dots!” screeched Jarine. From behind a small moon on their port, almost too small to conceal a heat signature, five new pirates emerged. They had predicted that Sinko would fly portside to avoid the apparent trap off on their starboard, and laid another trap exactly where he would end up, behind a moon just too small to be of note. There was no squeezing their way out of this one.

“Flash the red lights!” shouted Sinko into the speaker. The gunners hesitated. “Flash the red lights!” he repeated. They were surrendering to the pirates.