Starship Repo Draft 0.5 Ch 13-14

Thanks to Don Alejo for sponsoring this revival!

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Starship Repo is NOT an erotica story. If it ever gets completed, it will be a Science Fiction novel intended to be suitable for mainstream publication. This is also only Draft 0.5 since it is incomplete, so while it is fairly clean with spelling and grammar, it will likely see major changes before a ‘final draft’ ever comes about. I hope you enjoy it!

Chapter 13

“Really, Old Man?” Mindial scoffed. She was alone with her father finally, not that he seemed to mind being a complete asshole in front of the other Captains. If anything, she thought he might even enjoy taking shots at her for no damn reason other than for the sheer pleasure of reminding the other Captains in the fleet that she owed her start, and her name, to him.

“Really, what?” Idris growled back as he rifled through the fridge-unit looking for whatever booze he was feeling like at that particular moment. He stood up, narrowing his eyes as he glanced across the lounge at his daughter suspiciously. She’d grown up always thinking of the cavernous, empty moon base as her father’s private castle - it hadn’t been until she’d gotten a look at the galaxy herself that she’d realised how sad and small the place was. It was a sprawling, ancient complex, but half of it was uninhabitable, and most of the rest was in disrepair. For over a quarter of a century Idris Mirax, Merciless Mirax - Mirax Money, for sun’s sake - had operated out of it and he’d never so much as bothered to hire someone to rewire the damn lights, let alone clean.

“Was that necessary?” Mindial asked, gesturing to the entertainment centre.

“The game was on,” Idris grunted. 

“The game was recorded!”

“The game was on,” Idris grunted again, pulling his big hand back out of the fridge unit clasping a bottle of Bermeckian Blue. He twisted the top off and flicked the metal cap off into a dark corner of the room with a clink on the steel bulkhead. It would probably sit there for another hundred years.

“What is your problem?” Mindial growled, stalking around the heavy table where she’d been waiting for the last hour, forced to just hover in the background as Idris, Captain Flagg of the Serrated Edge and Razor Yarreck, the flight captain for Dagger Squadron, finished watching the game and bullshiting about it for half of the time. That game would have happened weeks ago, on a planet deep in the cluster.

“What is your problem?!” Idris shouted, his anger spiking as he levelled a big white finger at her. The metal bottle in his other hand groaned from his grip. “Do you think you’re in charge here all of a sudden, Mindial? Do you think my fleet would follow you, of all the bloodthirsty bastards out here on the fringe? You think you have the pull to keep them together, let alone from tearing you to shreds?”

“When did I say anything like that?” Mindial shouted right back, undeterred by his booming snarls. Raised voices had long been the norm between the two of them.

“When you brought outsiders to my system against my direct orders,” Idris roared. He’d stalked towards her and was looking down at her now, his nose an inch from hers as their black eyes glared at each other. The few people who had known the woman always told Mindial she took after her mother, and the most obvious part of that was that she hadn’t gotten her father’s bulk. He loomed tall but also wide, his arms like thick mechanical pistons, his neck corded with his contained frustration, and his broad lips pulled into a sneer. “You sail in here, days after we shoot down a UEN vessel, with a fucking crew of repomen who work for the void-damned banks?” 

“Wait, what?” Mindial asked, taking a step back from her father in confusion. “You did what?”

“You would know if you’d been here!” he growled, following her and not letting her get space. “But you were off getting my ship damaged.”

“The Void Scream is my ship,” Minidal snarled, stepping right back up to him until her forehead was pressed to her father’s as they snarled at each other. “And I was out doing my job, you lazy gravwell-sucking anchor. My crew has more scores in the past year than almost the entire rest of the entire fleet combined.”

“Your crew is sloppy if you had to be tugged back here,” Idirs bellowed. “Maybe I should send them off for proper training with some of the other Captains, make sure they’re even worth the refresher air they’re sucking in.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Mindial hissed.

“I’ll do whatever I want, little Mindi. You should have learned that a long time ago,” he growled.

Mindial wanted to spit in his face, or claw his eyes out, so something. But if she did, he’d probably kill her. Possibly with his bare hands. She backed off from him just a touch, separating their foreheads but still glaring from inches away. “What happened,” she grunted. “With the UEN?”

“A science vessel,” he sneered. “Barely armed, but fast. We almost lost it because you weren’t here like you were supposed to be.”

Mindial ignored the jab again - she paid his fleet tax, doing more to fund his war chest than any other Captain and ship including his own behemoth. If he couldn’t admit that now, he never would. “I didn’t see it out there,” she nodded with her chin towards the ceiling and open space.

“We shot out three of its engines, took down its bridge with a torpedo once the shields were down,” Idris rumbled. “If the kaligula cannon was here it would have finished things faster. Cleaner. We’d have another damn ship for the fleet. Instead, it wrecked down on the damn planet in the green zone.”

Mindial clenched her jaw. Anything that landed on the planet near the green zone might as well be out in the void between systems. It was gone. “Did it get off a distress signal?”

“We don’t know,” he sneered. “We don’t know what was on that ship. I’m going to feed the bridge crew survivor to Krilld, see what we can get.”

“I thought you said you torpedoed the bridge?”

“We picked her up from vacuum,” Idris said. “New UEN command suits apparently have a temp vacuum bubble. Ten-minute lifespan.”

“That would be nice to get our hands on,” Mindial said.

“You think I didn’t think of that?” Idris spat. “Krilld will syphon whatever knowledge he can out of her. We’ve just been waiting for her to heal up a bit - no point in feeding her to him if she dies in the first half hour.”

Krilld, the Devoin Monomind that Idris kept around for questioning prisoners, was definitely more effective than traditional torture - the only problem was that he literally ate the victim’s brain, lobe to stem. Mindial had always found the Monomind a disgusting thing, but it had been part of her father’s crew since before she was born. She preferred more carrot-and-stick negotiations when organizing her raids; bribery, lies, and deception. The fewer shots fired the better, in her book, so when she did commit violence it meant something. It saved on ammunition costs, repairs, and replacing valuable crew. She certainly hadn’t picked that up from her father, though.

“So what, then?” Mindial asked. “Are we expecting a UEN strike force? Are we preparing to move, if we need to?”

“We aren’t going anywhere,” Idris said. “This is my system. If the UEN wants it, they can take it from my cold, dead hands. And we’ll take a hell of a lot more of them than they’ll get from us.”

It was probably true, but it would also be a waste. “What about your plans?” Mindial asked, her voice dropping low.

“It wouldn’t change anything,” he grunted, finally turning away as he set the bottle on the nearby table. It was a slab of solid wood bolted onto steel legs, and Mindial had ordered it bolted to the floor as well after her father had physically thrown it at people three times. Twice had been at her. Watching him try and pick it up that last time had been worth the black eye he’d given her.

“Then what’s the issue with the tug crew?” Mindial asked. “Let me pay them, and they can be on their way.”

“No,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because they’ve seen too much.”

“They haven’t seen more than the UEN ship did,” she said. “They haven’t even scanned any of the ships - they’re smart enough to keep their eyes and ears to themselves.”

“They know about this place now,” Idris said darkly. “That’s already too much.”

Mindial grit her teeth and took a breath. Why did she even care? She’d seen her father take out colony ships. She’d shot the engines out of cruise liners, leaving them drifting in space. She’d pillaged UEN stockpiles, wealthy independent colonies and even an OmnBank corporate retreat moon. She’d killed people, and her orders had killed many more, when it was needed.

Why did she care about Rake Solar and his crew?

“What’s the point of killing them?”

Her father shot her an incredulous, scathing look. “Keeping the secret.”

“Seven thousand pirates in the fleet, including your crew on the Mandible,” she said. “You think the secret isn’t out there yet?”

“Are you saying you think there’s a leak?” he rumbled again, turning and glaring at her.

“I’m saying that seven thousand pirates can’t all keep their mouths shut. Especially the ones your age - you gossip like Oglian den fathers. Not to mention the sheer resources you have to move just to feed this fleet. Someone, somewhere, is already looking for us - maybe they’ve already found us. Every time we empty the food stores of a megacorp shipping barge it tells UEN intelligence that we’re out here eating the damn food.”

“Kill them,” Idris said, planting the knuckles of his fist on the heavy table. It made a dull thunk as if his body was made of the same heavy wood that seemed impervious to the ravages of time or wear. “If you don’t, little Mindi, I’ll do it myself. Slowly.”

Mindial clenched her jaw, her mind trying to find something to argue but coming up empty. It didn’t matter anyway - Idris Mirax didn’t make idle threats. Especially to his daughter. She’d suffered more than enough, testing his limits as a child, to know the truth. “Fine,” she grunted, consciously looking down and away, mimicking the actions of one predator beast submitting to another - a trick she’d picked up watching nature documentaries. She hated it, but it seemed to work. “I’ll have them blown out of the sky.”

“Good,” he grunted. “How long until the Void Scream will be operational again? I’ll need the cannon if we have to defend what’s mine.”

“Six weeks,” Minidal grunted.

She saw the flare of anger, the same reaction she’d had when she first heard. Six weeks was almost an eternity.

“We need her faster than that,” he ended up growling. “That or I take the cannon and mount her on the Edge.”

“How am I supposed to do it faster?” Mindial asked. “The right parts aren’t just floating out there in some spacedock - it’s getting ordered from the mid-cluster ring. You want me to take another ship and go get it myself, leaving you another down in a fight?”

He sneered, turning away. Sometimes logic did pierce through her aggressive fog. “Figure it out,” he grunted.

Mindial scoffed and turned on her heel, stalking out of the entertainment lounge, her boots echoing along the metal bulkhead corridor. She had to figure out how she was going to ‘destroy’ the SolaRepo. 

Fast.

Without killing the crew.

That kid was too good at coming up with lines to throw away a little feral brain like that.

And that probably meant needing to rescue Rake Solar from her father’s brig, too. For all that he was a little too… innocent, or whatever, he didn’t deserve the cutthroat treatment.

“Suns,” Mindial muttered to herself. “I guess that’s the last star then. A damn repo crew. Who woulda thunk it?”

- - - - -

“What are you doing over there?” Ruby asked from the dark of her cell.

Rake grunted again and then hissed as his nail slipped and almost tugged off against the metal bolts. “Trying to get out of here,” he grimaced.

“By… loosening the bolts by hand?” she asked, coming forward. It was almost eerie how much she looked like her sister. Rake still had a hard time believing that he’d stumbled into finding her like this, but even more so how much she reminded him of Emerald. Even the way she stood had similarities - slightly favouring the right leg, making their left hip quirck just a little. It had to be from their mother or something, there was no way the UE Navy had taught them to do that.

“Well, we gotta try something,” Rake said, sitting up and slicking his hair back with both hands. “Have you tried everything you can over there?”

Ruby gave him a scathing look. “What, you think I spent the last four days just sitting here?”

“So why are you giving me crap?” Rake asked, bending back down to keep testing the bolts that pinned the bars to the bulkhead floor. To be fair, it was an unlikely escape method - the bolts would have been installed using a power drill with way more torque than he could manage with his fingers. There was always a chance, though.

“What kind of ship do you have?” Ruby asked, not answering him.

“It’s an Irrimidian-class tug,” Rake said, shuffling to get a better look at the next bar.

“You operate a tow ship? Or salvage?”

Rake pressed his lips together. She’d just been flying on a state-of-the-art UEN Science starship. Anything would sound worse than that. “Repo,” he said. “Family company.”

“Oh,” Ruby said. Then snorted. Then coughed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by that.”

“I know the reputation I have,” Rake grumbled. “‘Stealing’ ships for the banks from good spacers who just need a bit more time. All that kind of crap.”

“I really didn’t mean anything by it,” Ruby said. “You’re… making a living.”

Rake sat back up, gripping the bars as he looked across at her. “Every once in a while, yeah, the situation that we’re repoing a starship out of sucks. It’s someone’s home. It’s their only way off of some rock they don’t want to be stuck on. They just got a job that might help them catch up on their payments. Most of the time, though? We find it in a used starship lot, sold and resold and stolen so many times the name on the original financing doesn’t mean a whole lot. Or we find it in pieces in an asteroid belt, or a comet tail, or on some barren moon where they ran out of fuel. Or we find it sitting in some hangar, abandoned for a decade because a colony failed, or thieves moved it and stopped caring, or pirates killed the owners.”

Ruby was grimacing as Rake listed off what made up most of his life. Seeing the dark, lonely corners of the galaxy where people stashed their starships and their dreams. She looked like she wanted to say something, but wasn’t exactly sure what to say.

“You didn’t mean to laugh at my job,” Rake finally said. “But you were thinking it’s ironic that Emerald was lowered to piloting a Repo tug.”

The look on her face told the truth, even if she said, “No.”

“We can’t all join the UEN,” Rake said. “And we don’t all get some glorious career even if we do.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Ruby said, slapping a hand against the bars of her cell. “You don’t know anything about her.”

“I know as soon as she saw your distress beacon she went into overdrive to try and get to you,” Rake said. “I know she loves you.”

Ruby snorted derisively. “You really don’t know her,” she said. She’d back away from the flickering light in the hall between the cells, her face shaded again.

“Maybe you don’t know her,” Rake said, shaking his head. Then sighed. “Did you try taking apart the toilet yet?”

There was a long moment of silence between them. “No,” she finally said and headed towards the one in her cell.

Rake made his way down each bar that made up the barrier to the corridor, but there wasn’t a single loose bolt. He’d stood up and was considering if her could reasonably reach the ones fastened to the ceiling when Ruby spoke up.

“She left. When I was ten years old and the only person in the world I looked up to was her,” Ruby said. “She flew off and left me, and I didn’t hear from her once. Not one letter, not one vid. She’d say hello to me in passing on the one that she would send every year to our parents. ‘Say hi to Rubes,’ she would say every time. She left our whole family behind her, and then she disappeared altogether. So no, Solar. I don’t know her, not anymore. That’s the problem I have with her. That’s why I’d rather take a vacuum swim than get saved by her.”

Rake grunted wordlessly and then sighed. “I-”

The door to the brig started clanking as the outer lock turned.

“Does this happen regularly?” Rake asked, backing from the cell bars.

“Should be a few more hours until chow time,” Ruby said, also nervously standing.

Rake looked around the cell again, wishing he had something he could work with. A loose pipe, a handful of sand, something. Might as well wish for a fully charged blaster, he grimaced.

The heavy door clanked as its seal opened and a moment after it cracked open Captain Mirax came through, her lips pressed firmly together and a slight furrow to her brow that Rake hadn’t seen before. He’d spent three days as her prisoner, so he didn’t exactly consider himself a ‘Mindial expert’ by any means, especially with her species’ solid black eyes, but he had played tiles with her. Something was going on - something she didn’t like.

She didn’t say anything, even when Rake stepped closer to the bars of his cell and into the light. Instead, she turned and heaved the door closed behind her until it re-engaged with the same clank of the lock.

“So… are you paying with bank cred or hard currency?” Rake asked with an uneasy smirk.

Mindial turned back around, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. Rake did his best not to flinch when she reached down to her hip, and thankfully her hand bypassed the grip on her blaster and unclipped the comm on her belt. She held it loosely in one hand and hesitated a moment, taking a deep breath before letting it out. “I’ve been ordered to kill you and your crew,” she said.

The pit that had been forming in Rake’s guts, slowly getting wider and deeper as he tried to ignore it, suddenly felt like it was right under him. “Tough negotiating tactic,” he said.

“As dirty as they come,” she acknowledged. Then she thrust the comm unit through the bars towards him - his comm unit. “You need to tell them to run. Now. They can’t make it out of the grav-well of the system before they get blasted so they’ll need to head down to the planet. It’s - if they aim for the big green continent and get close enough, the fleet won’t follow them.”

“Why?” Rake asked.

“Because that continent is… occupied. Your crew will need to be careful, the savages on the planet have taken out entire fighter squadrons and ground companies who try to establish a beachhead. If they land up in the mountains they should be safe for a while.”

Rake blinked. “I- So they’re walking right into another dangerous trap?” Then he shook his head. “I meant why are you helping us?”

Mindial’s frown deepened and her brow furrowed harder. “Because killing you is a pointless waste, and my father and I haven’t agreed on this sort of thing for a while.”

“She likes you,” Ruby called from her cell.

Mindial spun, peering into Ruby’s cell. “You’re the UEN survivor?”

“If everyone who hits that continent dies, then I’m the only one,” Ruby said darkly.

“Not for long,” Mindial sneered. “Your brains are about to be liquified by a Devoin Monomind. Enjoy sentience while you can.”

There was a long moment of quiet before Mindial turned back to Rake. “Call them, the longer you wait the harder it will be for that pilot of yours to get them out.”

Rake was clutching the comm unit that was usually clipped to his shoulder. His jaw felt like it was going to crack, he was clenching it so tightly. He glanced at Mindial again, but couldn’t read the look in her black eyes. He looked back to the comm and then triggered it. “Rake to crew,” he said.

“Everything alright, Captain?” Emerald asked quickly. Rake could hear Ruby suck in a breath across the corridor at the sound of her sister’s voice.

“No,” Rake said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Emerald, I need you to prep for the hottest exit you’ve ever made. They’re planning to blow up the ship - you need to make a break for the planet, land in the mountains somewhere on the green continent. They’ll be gunning for you, and there’s some sort of hostile species on the ground too. Find somewhere to hide.”

“Got it,” Emerald said. “How are you getting to us? Spacewalk? I can try to edge closer to that base.”

Rake swallowed, glancing at Mindial again, who shook her head.

“You need to go without me, Emmie,” Rake said. “Right now. I can’t get to you in time.”

“There’s no way-”

“No,” Widget cried over the comm. “Rake, you get your butt back here now.”

“Stop,” Rake growled. “Just stop. You have to, Emerald. I can’t get out of this. I can’t get to you in time. You need to go now.”

“We can’t leave him,” he heard Widget screaming in the background over the comm channel, not into her mic. “Are you sure?” Emerald asked, her voice strained. “We’ve gotten out of some tight spots.”

“You’re the best pilot I know,” Rake said. “Get her safe. And- And you’re all she’s got now, OK? Please.”

“I will, Rake,” Emerald promised. “I will. Wendy- Wendy’s my family now, OK? I’ll take care of her.”

Rake’s throat felt like it was closing up and he was fighting back tears, so he double-clicked the comm to acknowledge. Then cleared his throat and keyed it again. “Widget.” He got a wordless sob in return that broke his heart. “Widg, I love you. Always have, always will. You’re the best little sister I could have asked for. I need you to keep the ship flying, and listen to Emerald, OK? You guys are going to be alright. You’re going to get out of this. Don’t let Dad take you away from Emmie. Stick with her, she’s got you. If I can get out of this, I’ll come find you, but I might not. I just- I love you, Wendy.”

The sobs that came through were heart-wrenching, but Widget managed to pant out “I. Love. You. Too,” through them.

“Good luck, Cap,” Brick said from his own comm, though Widget was in the background nearby. Likely in his arms.

“Keep ‘em safe, Brick. Both of them,” Rake said.

He got a double click in return.

“Go, Emerald,” Rake sent. “Go.”

He lowered his hand, still clutching the comm, but flicked it off of receiving. He couldn’t handle anything more. Rake stood stock still, trying not to break down, and blew out a long breath.

“Let’s go,” Mindial said, and she took out a digital keycard and swiped it through the lock, the mags releasing and the cell opening with a squeal.

“To my execution, or what?” Rake asked, wiping under his eyes with a forearm quickly.

“What?” Mindial grunted. “No, you- Humans. Sometimes. I’m getting us out of here.”

“Both of us?” Rake asked as he stepped out of the cell. “What’s the plan?”

“On a bit of a time crunch here,” Mindial said. “We’re flying by the seat of my pants.”

“OK, um, get Ruby out and we can go,” Rake gestured to the other cell.

“What?” Mindial asked, not even glancing towards the other cell. “The UEN flunky?”

“Didn’t you just say your father was going to melt her brain or something?”

“Yeah, for all the info he can get,” Mindial said. “So let’s go.”

“Why is it OK for her to die and not me?”

Mindial growled in frustration. “I don’t know her. You don’t know her. She’s UEN. Forget about her.”

Rake grimaced. “Ah, um, so… here’s the thing…” Mindial gave him a look that could have peeled paint off of a starship hull. “I kind of do know her.”

“No he doesn’t,” Ruby said.

“What- I am literally trying to save your life right now,” Rake said, glaring over at Ruby.

“We need to go,” Mindial said. “What is going on here?”

“That’s Emerald’s sister. My pilot, remember?” 

Mindial blinked once, slowly, and then turned on her heel and marched the few steps to the other cell, peering in. “Suns,” she growled. “You’ve got to be- What are the-” she turned back on Rake. “Are you UEN Intelligence?”

“No,” Rake said, holding up his hands innocently. “Definitely not. This is just wild happenstance.”

“I’ve never met him before,” Ruby said, coming into the light.

Mindial stepped away from the cell before Ruby could get closer, backing up to the door out of the brig as she glanced back and forth between Rake and Ruby. She raised a hand to her head and ran it through her white and purple mohawk. “This is what I get for trying to do a good deed,” she groaned.”

Chapter 14

Emerald pounded a fist into the button back and to her left, closing the door between the cockpit and the living space of the SolaRepo. Widget was having a breakdown, and rightly so. Her heart was breaking for the little girl and for Rake. She wanted to be back there, comforting her and trying to find some comfort for herself. She wanted to have a way to get to her Captain. Her friend.

But there was a job to do, and it needed to get done.

She sniffed hard and wiped at her eyes quickly, then started checking the positions of all the ships in the area on passive scans again. They were floating between the Void Scream that they’d towed in and a big Flakthian-class gunship called the Serrated Edge. It might not have been armed with a Kaligula cannon, but it had about a dozen turrets around its disk-like hull that could be brought to bear in moments. Not to mention the torpedo tubes.

The realistic issue was that she needed to plot a course that would cut off as many enemy vessels as possible from getting shots by using their own bulk and numbers against them - she was going to need to thread the needle between ship after ship. The old tug wasn’t exactly a starfighter, but it could zip around close enough to the hulls of the larger ships that anything other than a direct hit would mean shooting at their own allies. Hopefully, the gunners would have second thoughts about that.

Of course, that could only last until she made it to the edge of their fleet. Then there wouldn’t be any more tricks and it would be pure piloting to dodge the sweeping lasers and other gunfire. Their best bet was surprise - if she could make it out towards the nearby planet before most of the pirate fleet was active, they had a chance.

“Strap in,” Emerald said, thumbing the intercom to the back room briefly so that she didn’t need to get a response. Brick and Widget actually strapping in wouldn’t really be that useful unless the gravity generator in the ship busted, and for that to happen it would either need to burn out or get damaged from incoming fire.

If they got hit by one of those capital ship-class laser emplacements or torpedoes, the gravity generator wouldn’t be the core problem.

Emerald did strap herself in though, and dialled the gravity down to 0.7 Real - she’d explained it to Rake before why she did it but hadn’t given him the story as to why. Piloting a starship, or a starfighter, with perfect gravity fixing meant that the pilot didn’t have any sort of sense of movement. On a massive capital ship, like a UEN Cruiser or a Star Liner, that didn’t matter all the much. In a starfighter or small transport it could mean the difference between drifting one or five meters and running into a wall. Most pilots, if they went to the UEN academy like she had, started at 0.3 Real gravity to get used to feeling the tug of movement that happened during manoeuvres even in deep space. Emerald had witnessed more than one fellow cadet make fatal mistakes because they decided to ignore instructors' directions about gravity generator settings - the lucky ones made them in simulations and either smartened up or washed out.

The explosion when Ka’trel, the Ungorian near-human cadet that she’d had a crush on, drifted too close to the Cruiser shield array still haunted her memories. She’d been on his wing, on comm with him as she called him back into line when it had happened ten metres to her starboard.

Emerald blinked hard, tapping on the sensor screen as she plotted her route. Best laid plans and all that, but having one was better than not. She just needed to stay loose and adaptable.

“Can’t spend too long on it though,” she murmured, then punched the armrest of her seat hard as she had a spike of hot, furious grief that she needed to bury.

Their deaths were imminent.

She used the attitude thrusters to get them moving first - they used bursts of air rather than fuel, running off of the secondary engine power grid. Every ship had them, used for smaller adjustments in space and to help slow descents in atmo, especially for fixed-engine craft trying to land. They couldn’t propel a ship very fast, but using them also wouldn’t raise any warnings for the pirate vessels around her.

It took five seconds for them to get up to speed with the thrusters and Emerald had one eye on the ships hovering in view and the other on her sensor panel, desperately watching for any change. As soon as they hit max speed she hammered the primary engine power and slammed the thrust lever to the right of her control stick all the way up.

The SolaRepo IV didn’t exactly burst forward; she wasn’t some racer or starfighter. But she did rattle with the eagre thrum of two big, oversized engines as the ship accelerated.

Emerald rolled the ship as it picked up speed, skimming as close as she was comfortable and a little past that to the Serrated Edge, running the length of its saucer build and spitting out the far end headed directly towards a Falling Star-class light cruiser that was painted a deep navy blue. 

“SolaRepo, what the hell are you doing?” the call came over the primary comms. It was that low, rumbly voice of the pilot she’d been coordinating with over on the Void Scream in between each superlight jump.

Emerald keyed the comm with her pinky on the control stick. “Don’t feel like being murdered, Scream, no offence.” She shot under the tubular main hull of the blue light cruiser and made a hard port turn, using it to break the sightline between her, the Void Scream and the Serrated Edge, along with two of the other pirate ships.

There was a long beat of silence on the comm. “No, stop,” the other pilot said, his voice bland and deadpan. “You’re not supposed to do that. Let us kill you.” The Void Scream didn’t start moving.

“Well, that’s one that I don’t need to care about… yet,” she mumbled to herself. “Just another seven to go.”

Chapter To Be Continued.