The afterglow of the detonation was still imprinted in my retinas. Quantum singularity torpedoes were something terrifying. Where the pirate base had been, there was nothing left. My shields were climbing back from zero, the disruption effect finally fading. The Quillon drive hummed toward full power. For three glorious seconds, I'd thought we'd won.

  Then the aces dropped back into the halo.

  They came down like furies.

  The sphere-ship led, that insane multi-vector motion even more aggressive than before. The other one followed at a measured distance, its railgun at the ready, waiting for the kill shot.

  Damn, they're angry. Gotta up your game, Nico.

  The Mosquito latched onto my six like a tick. I rolled, pulled vertical, tried to shake him with a corkscrew climb. He matched every move, those independent thrusters giving him angles that should have been impossible. We fell into scissors, trading altitude for position, each reversal tighter than the last. My vision greyed at the edges. My arms ached from fighting the controls.

  I dove behind an obsidian chunk, using it as cover. The Hammer didn't hesitate. The railgun fired, and the rock simply ceased to exist. Fragments peppered my shields.

  He's not even trying to avoid collateral damage. He wants me dead that badly.

  "Break left."

  Rosalia's voice was clipped. Economical. She was barely holding on, but still functional. Her warnings came shorter now, more essential.

  "Railgun spooling."

  I slammed into another evasive turn, the G-forces crushing my chest. The slug tore through the space I'd just vacated.

  "Rock at four o'clock."

  I jinked around it, then snapped back to track the Mosquito. Had him. Clean lock, perfect lead.

  The sphere-ship rotated. Not turned. Rotated, the entire hull spinning on an axis I hadn't anticipated. My laser carved a thruster attachment off his hull instead of punching through his core.

  Damaged. But not dead.

  Damn.

  My mouth tasted like copper. Blood. Maybe I'd bitten my tongue during a hard turn, maybe something worse. My legs were cramping from sustained straining, the constant flexing needed to keep blood in my brain during high-G maneuvers.

  How long have we been doing this? Minutes? Hours?

  Time had lost meaning. There was only the next maneuver, the next shot, nothing else existed.

  Those guys are good. Trained. Not simple pirates. This is military training. And not just any military.

  There. Ahead. Three obsidian mountains drifting toward a shared point. The gaps between them were maybe thirty meters wide. At least twenty-five. Barely enough for the Mahkkra's twenty meters height. Not enough for its 30 meters width. Piezo-electric charge was visible now, their blue-white tendrils crawling across their surfaces, the space between them ionizing.

  Lightning imminent. Collision seconds away.

  A pilot would have to be insane to fly into that. His ship would fit, sure. But with his partial shields and no armor, it would be suicide. The lightning and small debris would shred him.

  Perfect.

  "Nicolas! The gap... that is not! You cannot..."

  "Trust me."

  "NICOLAS!"

  I went through, did a half roll to port.

  The gap swallowed us. Rock walls on either side, close enough that I could see mineral veins in the obsidian. The neural port screamed collision warnings. I dismissed them. I knew exactly where I was.

  Behind me, the Mosquito followed. Committed to the kill.

  Ahead of me, the gap ended in a wall of black glass.

  Now.

  I fired the riftlance. Not in front, but up. Or sideways, from my pursuer's point of view.

  The trans-dimensional rift beam wasn't like other weapons. It didn't burn or explode or penetrate. It unmade. I had kept it hidden up until now. One last ace up my sleeve. An unknown they could not have prepared for.

  A line of absolute darkness carved through the rock to my port side. Not cutting, simply erasing. Reality parted around the jagged beam, matter simply ceasing to exist along its path. The rock split in two, and suddenly there was a gap where there hadn't been one.

  The anchorfield thrusters created a hard point in space and latched onto it. The Mahkkra slammed upward, through the new gap, riding the edge of what the inertial dampeners could handle. The maneuver was a classic of pirate movies. Like setting the anchor mid sail and force the ship to bank and turn on it. I had always wanted to try it. Now was the time. My vision went grey. Then red. Blood forced into my brain from the lateral G-forces. Redout, the dangerous one.

  Don't black out! Don't black out! Don't black out!

  I emerged from the rock formation at ninety degrees to my entry vector. It had worked. It was exhilarating. And, god, my body was hurting all over from it.

  I checked my aft sensors, expecting an explosion behind me.

  The sphere-ship burst out of the original gap, threading through the closing rocks with millimeters to spare. The original gap!? What? How? Damn he's too good. Lightning cascaded around it, arcs dancing off its partial shield, but it made it through. Unscathed.

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  He hadn't tried to follow my impossible turn. He'd committed to his own path and trusted his skills to see him through.

  Respect. Genuine respect. That pilot is something else.

  But he'd emerged on the wrong side of the formation. Out of position. And I had a golden opportunity.

  The Hammer filled my viewport. Twenty meters. Maybe less. Close enough to see the rivets on its hull. My exit vector had put me directly below him, his belly exposed.

  The railgun was charging, but it couldn't depress far enough to hit me at this angle. He had maybe two seconds before he could maneuver.

  I didn't have that issue. He was in front of me, ready for the taking.

  The riftlance was still cycling, heat warnings screaming. One more shot. Just one more.

  Please.

  I fired.

  The beam carved through the Hammer from belly to spine. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the ship came apart. No explosion. Just a cut so clean that both halves began to drift apart in silence. Almost anticlimactic. Until the atmosphere vented and the reactors went critical.

  A sound from the co-pilot's seat. Not a scream. Labored breathing. Then a small whine and the sound of something hitting the console.

  "Rosalia?"

  Her vitals flashed across my neural interface. Elevated heart rate. Blood pressure dropping. Pain indicators maxed. Unconscious.

  Broken ribs. Has to be. Maybe punctured lung. The G-forces. I went too hard. She wasn't ready...

  "Hold on. Hold on, it's almost over."

  Rosalia needs help. But she won't get any if that sphere-ship puts a laser through our reactor.

  I have to finish this. Quickly.

  The sphere-ship came around the rock formation, slower now. More cautious. Its pilot had watched his partner die. Had watched me cut a ship in half. The riftlance was an experimental weapon, we had probably never encountered it before. He did not know its range or rate of fire. And yet he was still coming at me.

  Brave. Or overconfident. Or just determined to avenge his friend.

  He came at me with that same impossible agility, but something had changed. The aggression was tempered now. He was fighting to survive, not to kill.

  I watched his shield. Tracked its rotation. Every time I fired, it swung to intercept. But there was always that fractional delay. That half-second window when he changed vectors.

  There.

  I feinted port, then cut hard starboard. The move cost me another grey-out, another moment of tunnel vision. Health warning flashed. Rosalia. But it forced him to rotate his shield left while I came from the right.

  For half a second, his unprotected flank faced my guns.

  I didn't hesitate.

  My lasers punched through bare hull. No shield flare. No ripple of color. Just metal vaporizing under focused energy, atmosphere venting, systems failing.

  The sphere-ship tumbled. Sparks cascaded from ruptured conduits. For a moment, I thought he might recover. That those independent thrusters would stabilize him. But the damage was too severe. He spiraled into an obsidian chunk. The collision was silent. Followed by an explosion, triggering a cascade of lightning arcs, spreading like a multi-colored spiderweb in the nearby asteroid field.

  It's almost pretty.

  I only felt exhausted.

  I gently climbed out of the halo, putting distance between us and the oscillating rocks. Hands shaking. Every nerve screaming for rest.

  A groan from the co-pilot's seat. Rosalia, coming to.

  "Don't move. Broken ribs." I was already scanning for the third Beta ship. The halo's interference scattered everything beyond a few hundred kilometers into ghosts.

  "Long-range sensors," she managed through clenched teeth. "Filter for... ion trails."

  She was right. The contact appeared a moment later. He was burning hard for the system edge, already past intercept range.

  Her eyes closed. Her breathing steadied.

  "Let him go," I said. "We can't chase him. Not with you like this."

  Or he'll bring reinforcements.

  "You should be resting," I said.

  "I can... help."

  Her eyes closed. Her breathing steadied. Still labored, but less ragged.

  I ran through my post-combat assessment. Nine of ten pirates eliminated. One survivor fleeing. One base destroyed. Rosalia injured but stable. The Mahkkra damaged but functional. Shields almost back to full.

  Our FTL still had not recovered from the interdiction field. It would be another thirty minutes remaining before it cycled down. We were stuck here until then, but with the pirates dead or fleeing, that shouldn't matter.

  We made it. Now I just need to get Rosalia proper medical attention.

  The warning flared without preamble.

  Twenty-three contacts. Cheatlight signatures materializing across the system, spreading to surround my position like wolves circling wounded prey.

  No. No no no.

  I stared at the tactical display, watching the signatures resolve. Mix of small and medium ships. Not as varied as the first wave. More uniform, more organized. All with a bounty.

  Shit. Reinforcements. Or their main force back from a raid.

  "Nicolas..." Rosalia's voice was a thread, wet with pain. She'd seen the sensors. "The sensors..."

  "I see them."

  "We cannot fight... that many..."

  "I know." My mind was racing, going through every known tactic, every maneuver that could get us out of this.

  "It's going to be ok," I said, trying to project a confidence I did not have. "I'm going to try to reach the halo. But it's going to be a rough ride."

  I heard her shuffling. Something hard falling on the floor. I took a precious moment to look in her direction. An emergency kit, opened, was at her feet, she had the nanite injector in her hand, trying to steady her grip.

  "It's ok." She coughed. Something wet. "I can be... endure. Nanites will... help. You need... operator."

  My heart sank a little. "This is going to hurt."

  "I know." Her eyes met mine. Pale, strained, but unafraid. "You can do it."

  I pushed the Mahkkra toward the halo, keeping the acceleration as gentle as I could manage while performing evasive maneuvers. The pirate fleet was moving to intercept, spreading out to cut off every escape route. They were faster than us. Fresher.

  It was going to be close. Too close.

  Six more contacts.

  My heart dropped. More of them. Of course there's more of them...

  But these signatures were different. Huge. More than a kilometer long. Capital ships. I started to despair. Then the signatures stabilised. Military profiles, not the cobbled-together chaos of pirate construction. They emerged from hyperspace in perfect formation, with the kind of precision that spoke of training and discipline.

  The comm crackled. A voice cut through. Female, carrying the absolute authority of someone used to command and being obeyed.

  "This is Captain Ventari of the Imperial Navy vessel Aphelion Crown. To all vessels in this system: stand down immediately. Reduce your velocity to zero. Power down your weapons. Lower your shields."

  A pause. Then the voice went on.

  "Failure to comply will result in your immediate destruction. This is not a negotiation."

  I heard Rosalia gasp.