I brought the Bucket down to sub-c speed twenty lightminutes from Remba, collapsing our bow wave and sending a smattering of particles into the Bucket's collision wards. The readout flashed orange a few times, then subsided back to green.

  Nothing had penetrated, nothing larger than a few hydrogen atoms had struck us. The particle shower hadn't even shattered a single ward. That was the good news. The bad news, we'd been seeing for hours.

  Remba had a fleet.

  I'd re-infused the Bucket's sensor wards since Rimont, giving us several light-years of vision. Every active warpstone engine would show up. Get close enough, and I'd pick up even the inactive ones. And I was picking up a Syndicate fleet.

  It was parked in a strange orbit, low and close to where the only port signal on Remba emanated, a mere hundred and twenty kilometers above the surface of the world. Which explained why they'd had their engines running without going anywhere. They were fighting gravity. Their position forced them to constantly thrust just to stay in the same, relative, spot above the planet.

  Hopefully, they were there to impress visitors, and nothing worse. Six cruiser-sized ships, only two of which fit the signatures of long-haul traders. The remaining four were combat vessels — gunships or carriers. I'd wager on gunships, Syndicate pirates weren't keen on sharing, and launching a slew of void-enabled fighters piloted by trigger-happy, greedy crudmunchers would likely result in your target flying away in the wrong hands. Or the fighters turning around, blasting a hole in your com center, and declaring themselves the owner of the carrier.

  I'd take the Fed navy over a Syndicate pirate any day. The Feds were a crudmunging pain, but they didn't routinely plan for mutiny. Or for one of your henchmen executing all the prisoners on a whim.

  Voidmunging Syndicates. The cruisers would make running hard. They'd splash us with plasma while the Bucket was still climbing into orbit, toss missiles after us when we ran for the edge of the gravity well. We'd have to disable the cruisers, or avoid them somehow.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Or not run. Maybe we could get the Syndics to discharge our contracts.

  And maybe we could put stars on a necklace and call ourselves grand.

  Other than the cruisers, the system was nice. Eleven medium sized rocky worlds circling a B-class blue dwarf star. Two small gas giants, one with a funky magnetosphere, the other with a small station in a geosynchronous orbit. Helion refinery, sucking in gas and delivering hydrogen-3 to our kind and beneficial Syndicate masters. Likely by a crew of slaves with a set production quota. Miss it, and they got decimated. As in pick a number and hope you're not the one-in-ten who gets shot.

  My hands trembled on the controls.

  "You good?" Hao said. Her head brushed against the cockpit's ceiling, her too-blue eyes looking down on me with concern from beneath her bushy eyebrows. She'd been doing that a lot during the month of our flight, and I was growing to resent it, wishing for the days when she cursed me for a captain and gave me snark. This concerned act she'd picked up from the Kylians was making my nerves worse.

  At least the hatchling wasn't here. And we'd get back before he woke without food. He could take care of himself. My hands shook.

  Was I falling apart that badly?

  I pushed the thought from my mind, focusing on the Bucket's cockpit. Two cream-colored, body-molding pilot couches, Hao's set almost at floor level, mine at maximum elevation. Rows of readouts, all shining a steady green. Ventilation pumping in cool air that smelled faintly of cinnamon. Pair of portable plasma cannons in my hidden gun locker.

  Which would do absolutely nothing against a cruiser. It wouldn't even give them a sunburn. They could have marines standing on their hull and the cruiser's wards would protect them from a direct hit. I licked my dry lips.

  "Yeah," I said. "I'm fine."

  "You don't look fine," Hao said.

  "Since when are my crudmucking looks your concern?" I said, my fear boiling over into hot anger.

  I expected Hao to bite back, or try to smack me. Instead, she merely tilted her head, evaluating me with those planet-sky blue eyes of hers.

  "What?" I said.

  "We beat them," she said. "Destroyed two ships, too."

  "We destroyed an up-gunned Syndicate frigate and a hauler," I said. "By pure luck."

  "And magic," Hao said. "Your magic."

  "No," I said. "The hatchling's magic. And they will have remembered it. Syndicate clans have transmission towers, too."

  The com console beeped, and the eleven rocky worlds flashed on my readout. My hands were shaking so much I'd accidentally triggered the autopilot.

  "Crud," I said.

  "You good?" Hao said, quietly, slowly.

  "No," I admitted, hating the word as it left my mouth.

  A chunk of my ego the size of a small asteroid broke away and fell screaming into the void.