“We’re in position.” Karter made a fist in an attempt to get a handle on her anxiety. It wouldn’t do to snap at people who had nothing to do with the source of her apprehension.
Look at you, acting like a grown-up.
She muttered, “Aggie, don’t you fucking leave us hanging.”
Aggie never had. And of course she would never mean to. But there’s always that first time.
Strapped into the pilot’s couch to her left, Ibis leaned over as far as they could—which wasn’t much, given that the harness was designed to prevent it. They whispered, “You got the TC yet?”
Without a terminus code, they couldn’t go anywhere. Mirabilis would be responsible for holding up the line during an evacuation, and no one would be happy about that.
I should’ve had a second option prepped just in case. Fuck, you’re getting sloppy. There’s trusting someone, and then there’s not doing your damned job.
Ibis mouthed one word: Well?
Pressing her lips together, Karter shook her head. She did some quick research on nearby marker terminals, found one, and made the application. It could take anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five minutes. “Stall them.”
“You want me to tell them we’ve got a problem on the other end?” Ibis whispered.
“Not that. They’ll want to know which fucking terminal fucked up.” It occurred to Karter that she was asking Ibis to lie, and Ibis was a terrible liar. “Tell them we’re having a mechanical problem.”
Ibis nodded. “What kind?”
“You can’t think of one?”
The controller unmuted their end of the channel. They sounded extremely annoyed. “Hold on, Mirabilis. We’ve got a problem.” There was a shouting match going on in the background.
“Oh yeah?” Ibis was a little too cheerful. “What’s up?”
The second terminal indicated that approvals were being finalized.
Looks like the gods are smiling on us today, thought Karter. Just thirty more seconds—
“A safety issue needs resolving,” the controller hissed. “Nothing to worry about.”
That’s not something you want to hear just before a jump, Karter thought.
Ibis winked. “Is it… a mechanical problem?”
Karter muted the comms and glared at Ibis. “What the fuck are you doing?” Her heart pounded against her breastbone.
Slapping the volume back on, Ibis stuck out their tongue.
The controller suddenly seemed to understand that certain implications might reflect badly on management. “Er… more like a logistical situation.”
“Oh? Did someone forget to file their paperwork?” Ibis asked.
“Some fucking asshole in a personal shuttle drifted too close,” the controller said. “Just keep your fucking pants on, like I told you.”
“You bet.” Ibis muted the comm channel. “Someone’s in a mood.”
“Everyone is, I suppose.” The backup TC came through. Karter let out a shuddering breath.
Lissa, Ezi, and Martina were safely tucked away in Medical, hacking at the GX-3714 problem. Unfortunately, Ezi was becoming anxious. Lissa said it was the deadline. Apparently, Ezi didn’t deal well with time constraints. Karter was glad that Martina was there to help.
A second message bearing Aggie’s verification signature appeared on Karter’s screen. The origin signifier indicated an anonymous vehicle off their starboard bow. She slapped a hand over her mouth to trap a nervous cackle from escaping her lips. Thank you, Aggie.
Left-handed, she tossed the terminus code to Ibis’s screen and sent an acknowledgment ping to their mysterious benefactor.
The controller reactivated the channel. In a muffled voice, they said, “For fuck’s sake, someone pull that shithead’s license. Will you?”
“What?” Ibis asked.
“Not you,” the controller said. “I want you to enter your fucking TC. Now.”
“Gotcha.” Ibis typed it in and punched Send. “There you are.”
“You’re a go,” the controller said. “Now, get the fuck out of my terminal.”
Ibis didn’t waste time and engaged the jump engine. The terminal powered up. In response, Mirabilis’s Hopper-Johnson drive discharged an energy burst that could be felt throughout the ship. Mirabilis shuddered. Karter listened to the deep groan as several thousand tons of tungsten and chromium steel reacted to the stress of a subspace transfer. Her stomach dropped somewhere near her ankles, and a coppery taste deposited itself in the back of her throat. She felt a bone-deep cold sink into her marrow. For an instant, a bubble of bright blue appeared around the ship on the projection. Then the terminal’s signal lights vanished along with Chimera Station. Everything outside of Mirabilis went black as ship and crew dropped into subspace. The automatic navigation system took over. She felt no sensation of movement or speed. Time as she understood it ceased to be. She lost herself. And then, just as suddenly as they’d entered subspace, they exited.
“Fuck.” Karter shivered. “I’ll never get used to that.” It didn’t matter how warmly she dressed; she always came out of a jump half frozen.
The new projection just above the pilot’s console depicted a terminal still under construction. Crews of human laborers swarmed over scaffolding in power-assist loaders and welding harnesses. Half of the site’s skeletal structure hadn’t even been anchored in place. This became apparent when a large section came unmoored and began to drift with a worker still tethered to it.
“That’s not good,” Ibis said.
“No shit.”
Several corporate gunships with Kontis Galatic Energy logos emblazoned across their bows were parked nearby. She imagined their crews were scrambling to emergency stations about now. The corporate navy vessels began reorienting themselves.
A comm-channel alert began its urgent beeping. Karter saw it was the marker terminal’s controller demanding an open channel.
“You getting that or am I?” Ibis asked.
“This one’s mine.” Karter hit the comm switch.
A cacophony of warning alarms and screams immediately burst from the ship’s speakers. She winced and adjusted the volume with fingers still numb from the jump.
“Unknown starship, you have entered restricted space. This is a private terminal—”
Wait. Unknown? They can read our hull. Our Transponder is functional and transmitting our identification information. How the fuck—
The marker terminal powered up as if it’d been given a terminus code. The still-open comm channel projectile vomited curses in several different languages. Two gunships maneuvered to face them. Mirabilis’s narrow AI issued a target-lock alert.
“What the fuck?” Karter asked. “Ibis! Keep us here! Don’t you dare—”
Mirabilis didn’t have an artificial person installed to pilot the ship—its Hopper-Johnson drive was manually activated. Which meant a jump could be initiated by only her or Ibis.
This can’t be happening.
“I didn’t fucking touch it!” Ibis shouted. Their eyes were wide, and their hands were in the air. “I swear, I didn’t!”
Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. We don’t have a terminus code, Karter thought. Those poor bastards out there. We’re jumping—
Mirabilis’s sudden, violent convulsion was stronger than Karter had ever experienced. The ship protested in a creaking screech. Briefly, she wondered if the hull would come apart. Then the bubble of blue light appeared, and everything vanished.
Back-to-back jumps weren’t recommended. They were bad for a ship’s structural components. Under normal circumstances, there was a requisite fifteen-minute rest period. It gave the crew time to adjust. Every ship owner with jump-capable drives was warned about this. Now, she understood the reasons why firsthand.
The experience was twice as intense—the cold sensation, the bad taste in her mouth, the mental confusion. When she came to herself, she heard what sounded like every alarm in the ship shrieking warnings. Sparks exploded from her copilot console. She slapped the release on her couch harness and fumbled for the fire extinguisher under the dashboard. She was moving too slowly. Her movements were graceless and numb, but she forced herself onward anyway. Finally, the extinguisher hissed a cloud of gray powder.
It took a moment to register that Ibis was screaming.
“Calm the fuck down!” It then occurred to Karter that shouting this at someone in a panic wasn’t going to produce the desired result.
“What the fucking fuck?” Ibis was huddled into a tight ball.
Karter hosed down the source of the electrical fire while trembling with a chill that was no longer present. The contents of her skull felt like they’d been flipped inside out and back again. “It’s okay. We made it. And in one piece.” She glanced at the gray mess coating the console. It would dissolve. Eventually. “Well, mostly.”
“Made it where?” Ibis asked. Their teeth were chattering.
Slotting the fire extinguisher back into its mount to recharge, Karter collapsed into the flight couch. She activated the projection. The interface took an extra second or two to respond. Finally, an image flickered into being. She spied a large, lumpy asteroid slowly rotating off their port bow. To starboard, a bare-bones relay marker terminal had been constructed. It was the flimsiest excuse for a marker she’d ever seen in her life.
The comm channel gave another impatient beep. She slapped at the screen, barely able to control postadrenaline shakes. At least she was starting to warm up, even if her brain hadn’t recovered.
“Hello? Is everyone okay in there?” The voice on the other end was familiar, but Karter couldn’t place it. “Sorry for the rough ride. There wasn’t time to test everything properly. It may not have been a drifting cargo box in the middle of a war, but I assume it was close enough.”
Karter blinked. “Dr. Garcia?”
“Karter? Thank God! You’re all right?”
“Maybe. I haven’t asked the passengers yet.” Karter signaled to Ibis to start a medical check. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, I’m not really there. I’m beaming this in from the border zone.”
“Ah.” Karter was relieved.
“What the fuck did you just do to us?” Ibis shouted.
“I thought M. Neumeyer told you about the modifications.” Dr. Garcia sounded hesitant and unsure. “Didn’t she?”
Ibis let out a long string of curses, which Karter muted as quickly as possible.
No use traumatizing the poor woman, she thought. “She may have left out a few details.”
“Like, all of them!” Ibis shouted, unmuted again.
“Oh… I’m so sorry,” Dr. Garcia said. “You should’ve been warned about the possible need for a back-to-back subspace traversal.”
“Yeah!” Again, Ibis was shouting. “Someone should’ve!”
“How’s that nonhangover now?” Karter asked.
Ibis made a rude gesture.
Karter returned it. “Never mind them, doc,” she said. “What the hell happened?”
“Please don’t blame Sal. They’re a sweetheart. This wasn’t their idea—it was all mine.” Dr. Garcia paused. “Where are my notes? Oh, thank you. Let’s see. For a start, I—”
What followed was five minutes of technical descriptions of theoretical physics regarding subspace structures. Karter waited for the doctor to catch her breath before interrupting.
“That’s er… nice. Now, could you please give me the version you tell your friends who don’t have multiple advanced degrees in physics? Starting with how you managed to install an artificial navigator without Sal catching on. Because if Sal knew, they would’ve told us. And then we wouldn’t have been so surprised when we jumped out of an incomplete relay terminal with multiple corporate gunships locked on—”
“Oh, that.” Dr. Garcia let out a nervous laugh. “I used a multiphase micro-install. It takes a little longer, but the components are significantly less sizable. And it’s not a full artificial person. It’s a multilayer narrow AI—”
Someone said something in the background, and the comm channel was briefly muted. After a few moments, the doctor returned.
“Sorry. I’ve just been told I should wrap this up.”
“Seriously. I need to know what you did to Mirabilis,” Ibis said. “I can’t operate—”
“You should be receiving the specifications now,” Dr. Garcia interrupted. “After studying your engines, I made a few other minor adjustments. Or rather, I had Sal make them.”
Ibis said, “I wondered where that bastard came up with half the shit they mentioned.”
“Both engine systems should be more efficient. And the maneuvering will be more responsive with the pilot and navigation assist,” Dr. Garcia said. “You’ll need a structural refit, eventually. Your ship isn’t designed for the full mechanical shock load that the AI and the engines can employ.”
“Don’t push the engines into the red,” Ibis said. “Gotcha.”
“The AI has a limitation parameter setting that will prevent you from pushing the ship too far.” Dr. Garcia sounded almost proud.
Ibis frowned. “You did not put a fucking child lock on my ship—”
Cutting in before Ibis could further insult the doctor, Karter said, “Thank you, Dr. Garcia. We appreciate all your hard work.”
“Yours is the first nonexperimental vehicle to receive those updates. If you don’t mind, I’d like to review the performance data.” Dr. Garcia hesitated. “Ah, after you return to Terran Republic space, of course.”
“Of course,” Karter said.
“Seriously. How do I fucking disengage the fucking child lock on—”
Once again, Karter muted Ibis. “Say, is Aggie around?”
“I’m afraid not,” Dr. Garcia answered. “She said she had other projects that required her attention, and she’s entrusted me with the situation.”
Of course she has, Karter thought.
“Should I tell her you wish to speak to her?” Dr. Garcia asked.
“Fucking yes,” Ibis growled. “Absolutely. Immediately. With a laser at fifteen paces.”
Karter glared at Ibis again. “Please do.”
“Oh,” Dr. Garcia said. “I hope you like the new shuttle.”
“What?” Karter blinked.
“Didn’t you notice?”
“Never mind.” Karter shot a raised eyebrow at Ibis that said, I thought you inventoried the new deliveries. “We’ll take a look. Have a nice trip home.” Karter added her sincere thanks.
“You’re very welcome,” Dr. Garcia replied. “Thank you for the rescue.”
“Goodbye, doc,” Ibis said.
“We’ll talk to you later.” With that, Karter signed off. “We’ve got twenty minutes before dust-off. Transfer what needs transferring to the new shuttle—especially the birthday present.”
Ibis blinked. “Birthday present?”
Karter sighed. “Is everyone in Medical all right?”
“They’re fine,” Ibis said. “Whose birthday present?”
“Not yours, obviously. Ezi’s. After that, we’re gone.”
“Ha! First one to the shuttle gets to fly it.” Ibis dashed for the exit.
“Son of a bitch.”
They raced each other to the shuttle bay, but Lissa and Martina were already there with Ezi. Martina looked a little worse for wear.
“Is everyone all right?” Gasping, Karter bent over and grabbed her own knees.
Lissa glanced across the bay where Ezi was floating around the cargo area with Martina chasing after her. “It wasn’t easy to keep Ezi from losing her mind. Medical is a bit of a mess.”
“That doesn’t sound like it was fun to deal with,” Karter said.
“The back-to-back jumps frightened her. I’m glad Martina was here. At least Ezi has calmed down again.” Lissa leaned against the tarp-covered shuttle.
Finally feeling less winded, Karter straightened. “Good.”
“Now that we’ve discussed that. Can someone explain where the very expensive racing dreadnought came from?” Lissa patted the hidden shuttle-sized lump.
Ibis flipped the tarp back, revealing a sleek new racing yacht with a void-black hull infused with silver glitter. The name Lush had been printed on its side in reflective gray letters. It was the most ridiculously ostentatious excuse for a ship of any size that Karter had ever seen.
“Ooooh, glitter!” Ibis threw themself at the racer and attempted to embrace it. “Dibs.” They pressed both arms and their entire upper body against its shiny black hull. “It’s mine, all mine!” They cackled with glee.
“A dreadnought? Who names a class of racing vessel after an old warship?” Karter asked Lissa.
Lissa shrugged with one shoulder.
“Oh. I love you, my pretty, pretty thing.” Ibis stroked its hull admiringly.
Karter couldn’t help but mess with Ibis a little. “Lissa won the race. She was here first.”
“No way,” Ibis pouted. “I licked it already.”
“You did not.”
Ibis proceeded to do exactly that. The hull’s nano coating fluctuated briefly before resuming its previous glittery splendor.
Lissa wrinkled her nose. “You don’t know where that’s been.”
“Space is hygienic! Germs can’t survive in a vacuum, right?” Ibis asked. “Can we look at the inside now? Please?”
“I’m almost afraid to, with how garish it is on the outside.” Karter sighed and motioned to Ibis to go ahead. “Let’s get everything sorted. We’re on a deadline.”
Lissa and Martina coaxed Ezi inside.
For a racing vehicle, the interior was fairly roomy. Someone had ripped all the unnecessary bits out, though Karter couldn’t imagine there was much packed inside to begin with. Now, it had seating for eight and a small biocontainment area. The new additions were incongruent with the expensive upholstery and silver trim.
“Looks like they removed the bar.” Lissa pointed to rear of the vehicle.
Ibis gave Lissa an incredulous look. “How do you know there was a bar?”
“I wonder who this belonged to.” Karter asked no one in particular.
Lissa answered, “It doesn’t look familiar.”
“Would it?” Karter asked.
Shrugging, Lissa said, “My wife and second husband are big fans of dreadnought racing.”
Ibis parked themself in the pilot couch and refused to budge. “I can’t wait to fly.”
Setting down the last of the baggage—mostly medical supplies, Karter went to the airlock and began readying the drone. “Have you given it a name and gender?”
“For now, I’ll respect its privacy,” Ibis said. “But let’s see what you have on under all that shiny.” They powered up the control systems.
“We’re so changing the hull markings,” Karter teased.
Ibis was indignant. “We are not!”
“Wasn’t being unobtrusive the plan?” Lissa finished strapping Ezi into the charging station.
“The hull is black and sparkly; space is black and sparkly.” Ibis cackled again like a maniacal anime villain. “The perfect camouflage.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Karter shook her head.
A proximity alarm shrieked a warning mere seconds before the ship violently reacted to an impact.
“So much for unobtrusive.” Karter jumped into the copilot couch and began rushing through the safety checklist.
Ibis pulled up a projection of the area and fired up the engine. “Someone out there isn’t very happy to see us.”
“Hang on!” None of them knew anything about this ship model, let alone its quirks. Karter scrambled to get her harness secure while simultaneously reviewing the locations of vital cockpit instruments. When everything seemed in order, she checked that all the doors were locked and sealed. “Everyone strapped in?”
Mirabilis shuddered on a second impact. The shuttle bounced up, then smacked down on the deck with enough force that Karter worried the landing gear was damaged. Something in the cargo hold crashed. The aft of the dreadnought traced an arc across the bay floor with the landing treads. Pain exploded in Karter’s shoulder. She barely held back a scream.
“No-no-no-no!” Ibis powered up the impulse thrusters. The dreadnought inched off the deck just as another violent jolt hit Mirabilis, sending a cargo crate bouncing off the deck in front of them right into a wall. “And fuck that! We’re a dot or we’re a cinder.”
Karter searched the landing gear for damage before she hammered the glasstop screen with the side of her fist. “Go! Go! Go!”
Ibis shoved the throttle forward as fast as they could. Karter slammed against the back of her cushioned seat, snapping her teeth together. Pain flooded her mouth with the taste of blood-salt. The little dreadnought shot out of the shuttle bay, and by some miracle, they weren’t incinerated by the explosion that engulfed them as they went. Every proximity alarm howled. The forward screen dimmed. Heat monitors in the hull jolted into the red, and the cockpit became uncomfortably hot just before they hit vacuum. Ibis immediately threw Lush into a hard, banking turn. Karter got a disorienting view of the missiles slamming into Mirabilis above her head.
Please let there be enough of Mirabilis to get us back to the border zone, she thought without much hope. There was no way Lush would have enough power to get them home, and it wasn’t jump capable.
The racing shuttle executed a series of graceful turns and rolls to avoid ship and terminal bits along with chunks of exploded asteroid. This close, the debris field was dense. But in Ibis’s hands, Lush’s every motion was smooth and powerful, like a sword with added g-force.
Karter tensed up her lower body and took several breaths. When she was sure she wasn’t going to pass out, she searched space for the source of the missiles. Upon spying what was waiting for them, she gasped.
“Holy shit,” Ibis said.
Three gunboats and a cruiser were parked just beyond what had once been the temporary marker terminal. Mirabilis was the proverbial sitting duck. Ibis immediately guided Lush into another sequence of quick, compact evasion maneuvers.
“We’ve got no weapons or shields.” Karter struggled to maintain focus on the screen in front of her. “You’re on your own, Ibis. Sorry.” That also meant Karter would have to ride this out without something constructive to do. Fuck.
“Don’t worry. I know something those assholes don’t,” Ibis said.
“I don’t feel very well,” Ezi called from the passenger compartment. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“You can’t be sick,” Martina said. “You’re not equipped for that.”
“What do you know, Ibis?” asked Karter.
“This is a dreadnaught, the newest model.” Ibis answered. “That’s a twenty-five-year-old gunboat.”
Karter ground her teeth together. “And?”
“Their missile targeting systems are outdated. They aren’t designed for locking onto anything that moves as fast as this beast.” Ibis grinned and patted the console.
“Oh.” Karter blinked.
Martina said, “Ezi, we have to finish sequencing the—”
“Crap, crap, crap!” Ibis made several quick swerves to the left and right.
The ship rocked back and forth, gliding around yet another cluster of missiles. All six shot past, missing not only Lush, but Mirabilis, too.
“Nice try, asshole!” Ibis yelled gleefully.
Ezi’s voice carried from the back of the ship. “No. No. No. Don’t do it like that. It’ll rewrite the logic string over there.”
“Huh,” Martina said. “You’re right.”
“Of course I am.”
Yet another alarm sounded. Karter silenced it with a slap and did a double take. Ibis was steering the racer at the cruiser as if playing chicken.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Karter asked.
“Trying to shake some heat.” Ibis’s lips and brows were now pressed into thin lines of concentration. “There’s too many of them.”
Lush danced, weaved, and bobbed at Ibis’s slightest suggestion. “Damn, this thing can move!” A wide grin was plastered on their mouth.
They flattened out the ship’s trajectory, and Lush was now racing along the length of the corporate cruiser. They jogged the dreadnought to starboard, and now they were close enough for Karter to read the name Black Francis on the view screen without altering magnification. Each emerald-green letter was as tall as a person.
Another missile raced past, crashing into Black Francis’s hull. A cloud of debris and escaping gas expanded behind them as Lush sped past.
“Ibis, we’re going the wrong direction,” Karter said.
“Yep.”
“We don’t have fuel to waste.”
“Yep.”
“Then where the fuck are we going?”
“Come on, boss. I know where the Ring is.”
Ibis squeezed Lush even closer to Black Francis’s hull. Karter tensed, anticipating a loud bang as they grazed the other ship. One of the gunboats attempted the same move, misjudged the distance, and clipped a comm tower, which sent it spinning off into space.
Karter did simple subtraction. Only one gunboat and the cruiser left. “Remember to slow down on the approach to the mining site. We don’t want to set off the Ring’s defenses.”
“Find something to do besides worry, boss,” Ibis snapped.
Once again, Ezi let out a loud, enthusiastic noise. This time, it was something about copies of files that she needed. Karter decided to ignore everything going on in the back until further notice. She shifted her attention to the drone’s interface, pulled up a projection, and placed it where both of them could reach it. “Let me know when you’re ready to make your first pass over the site.”
“Starting the approach now,” Ibis said.
Tapping the projection, Karter typed out Mother’s code. “Ready.” Here’s hoping this works.
They needed to get in and out to avoid being caught by the second gunboat, but the velocity limit this close to the Ring made things tricky. Fly too fast, and they’d be blasted to microscopic particles.
Ibis steered Lush into another rapid, looping turn, this time away from Black Francis’s hull. The gunship seemed to have a hard time keeping up with Lush. Ibis used all the speed and agility the little dreadnaught had to gain a small pocket of time for a pass over the mining site.
The enormous near side of the Ring grew closer until it blanked out the stars in the view screen. Most of what Karter could see now was a void lit by flashes of neon green. As planned, Ibis slowed Lush. Karter caught a glimpse of the abandoned platform. It appeared empty—a skeletal ghost town of printed polycarbonate steel. But the lights were on—the power was still running, though nothing living moved.
She released the first drone. Once it was away, she vacillated her attention between the drone’s cameras and the current location of the gunship closing in. As she’d hoped, the corporate vessel didn’t seem to notice the drone, which successfully reached the platform and released a cloud of microbots. The tiny machines began the demolition as Lush sped on. Free of its payload, the drone would proceed to all contaminated areas and collect samples. The microbots began their work elsewhere. If Tau, Chu & Lane wanted to stop them, it was too late now—there was no way to destroy so many microparticles without taking out the site itself. Structural components would be broken down to the molecular level and dissipate into space. The process was terrifying to watch. A small section of the platform appeared to melt. In twelve hours, it would be as if the entire platform had never been.
While Karter entered the coordinates for their next destination, Ibis focused on dodging the gunship. Karter released a breath she’d been holding when she heard Ibis curse.
“Two more cruisers?” Ibis let up on the throttle. “That’s not fucking fair.”
“TCL reinforcements?” In a panic, Karter returned her attention to the projection of nearby space. “Where?”
“They must have followed Black Francis and the others through the jump station not long after they jumped here? I count six: a frigate, destroyer, and four gunships. We’ve got three minutes to get the fuck out of Dodge,” Ibis said.
“We’re done.” Karter slumped. She knew they’d been damned lucky to survive this long, but it was time to face reality.
Something inside her wanted to keep trying, but it wasn’t just her life at risk. That’s the kind of urge that gets your friends killed.
Ibis frowned. “Wait. That’s odd—”
“You did your best, but that’s it.” Karter reached for the screen to request an open comm channel.
“Tau, Chu & Lane cruiser Black Francis. This is Kontis Galactic Energy’s frigate Velvet Negroni.” The voice on the other end of the comms sounded smug. “Cease and desist all hostilities at once, or we will blow you into the next world.”
Karter’s mouth dropped open. “What the fuck?” Then she recalled the relay marker that Aggie had hacked.
Lush sped around behind Black Francis, once again using the slower, larger starship as a shield. Ibis executed an arching turn. “Sounds like a personal problem. Heading for the Ring now.”
Velvet Negroni said, “You have thirty seconds to comply.”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” It was Black Francis’s captain.
“This is Kontis Galactic territory,” declared Velvet Negroni. “You are in violation of—”
“Fuck you! We were here first!”
A missile slammed into Black Francis. Bright light briefly blanked the projection image. Karter shut her eyes against a hard white flash. When she opened them again, she saw the explosion had torn through the cruiser’s portside hull, exposing several decks to hard vacuum. Chunks of warship and a cloud of atmosphere appeared. While Ibis managed to outpace most of the debris field in a long turn that looped over the corporate cruiser, the gunship pilot wasn’t quick enough. Lush’s pursuer plunged headlong into the remains of Black Francis’s hull.
Karter flinched.
Ibis sent them into yet another fast roll. “That’s the signal to get the fuck out. Is our drone ready for pickup?”
Glancing back at the drone camera, Karter said, “Yes.”
Yet another massive flurry of missiles arrowed past, hitting Black Francis on its already damaged side. The comm channel erupted on the other end with screams and curses before it cut out.
Ibis flattened their flight path, making it easier for Karter to launch the second drone. The four Kontis Galatic gunships opened up on the remaining TCL vessels. As Karter looked on, seven more sped into the fray. She spotted at least three different corporate emblems.
“No fucking way.” Karter couldn’t believe it.
“Mother always told me not to look a gift fleet in the missile port,” Ibis said.
Karter found herself muttering something Gita would say. “I don’t think that’s how it goes.” It felt like a good omen.
From the back, Lissa asked, “What’s going on?”
Behind them, the corporate cruisers and gunboats tore one another apart.