They raced to the bridge. Before Eli could object, one of Tarl’s bodies climbed into the pilot’s seat.

  “Wait, you can fly two ships at once?” Eli demanded.

  “Yes, I’ve flown four at once, many times before. Sorry, but I’m the best pilot here,” this st decration was said as a statement of fact, no hint of a boast present.

  Satisfied, Eli didn’t say anything else. He took a seat and watched as Tarl lifted off, moving the craft upward till they were nearly touching the door. Gami took another seat, her emotions concealed by her helmet.

  “Just a few more seconds,” the fuzzy pilot said through clinched teeth.

  The hangar door opened. Tarl continued to keep the ship in pce, hovering near the edge.

  “Now!” the pilot shouted. He moved the ship out of the hangar and hit the accelerator.

  Rust Goddess was very close to the big warship that sat at the center of the debris field. Now they could see that it wasn’t as badly damaged as it had appeared to be. It had certainly taken a beating at some point. But they could tell that it was still functional. The mismatched assortment of parts that had been used to repair the ship cshed heavily with the original components, like it had been subjected to crude grafts. In several pces, the yout of the decks could be seen where the outer hull had been torn away.

  The tractor beam was fnked by a pair of heavy, triple barreled turrets. The thing was like a spike, only, it had been bsted in half at some point. The other half had been recovered, repaired, and reattached via a band of riveted metal.

  Tarl gave his old freighter one st burst of speed. Fmes shot out of the engines as he went full throttle. They shut off the tractor beam, before switching into reverse, but it was too te. Rust Goddess ran into the gravity maniputor, impaling itself on the spike.

  The device was completely destroyed. The freighter smmed into the warship’s hull, piercing the metal skin and causing internal damage. Explosions rocked the big ship. They tried to fire up their engines, but they sputtered out and died before they could reach full burn.

  “Three fast movers just unched!” Gami reported. Eli looked at the scanner readout, saw that she was correct. A trio of small ships were closing in on Cavalier. They were ugly, just as ramshackle as their mothership. He was able to pick out several different design styles present on each of them.

  “We can’t outrun them in this,” Gami stated.

  “I got my start piloting cargo ships for the military,” the fuzzy alien said, “Enemy raiders chased me all the time. I can lose these guys.”

  Tarl raced away from the big warship, darting directly into a thick patch of junk. Eli knew from the time that he had spent studying his ship’s design drawings and technical details that it wouldn’t survive an impact with one of the objects, not at the speed which they were traveling.

  Tarl weaved his way through the debris.

  Eli watched a feed from the rear camera, “Tarl, the touch screen with the red decals on the sides, it can be moved out of the way.”

  “Got it,” the fuzzy being confirmed, “I can work with this.”

  He dove toward a mangled and torn piece of metal, what had once been some major substructure of a spaceship. At the st moment, he veered away, threading the needle between it and a cargo container. One of their pursuers failed to make the turn. It clipped the hunk of warped metal. The fming craft spun away, exploding into a ball of fire.

  Another sharp turn. They began to spiral around and around what was left of a small orbital weapons ptform. As soon as they reached the end and leveled out their pursuers began to take shots. A hit took away a shield charge.

  Then Tarl more or less straightened the craft out, only jinking around a little, but keeping to the same general course. A wrecked troop ship started to get bigger and bigger as they closed in on it.

  “I’m gonna head for that transport," Tarl expined, “Make them think that I’m blindly fleeing for cover. Lure them into a false sense of security.”

  “That sounds risky,” Gami warned, “This ship only has a few shield charges.

  “It’ll be enough,” Tarl assured her, even as another charge disappeared.

  Another hit, another charge. Even with Tarl’s wild maneuvers, they were still getting hits in. Eli wondered how much damage the ship could take before the hull gave out. He could practically see Tarl’s finger resting on the button that deployed a mine, waiting for the perfect moment.

  Eli was shocked to see that Tarl unched every mine in rapid succession, emptying the magazine. The incoming fire came to an abrupt halt as the two fighters scrambled to dodge the flurry of explosives. A fsh of light in the rear camera feed. This was followed by sparks and spinning fmes. One of the fighters burst out of the maelstrom of burning fragments.

  “Damn, one left,” Gami excimed.

  “I’ve got it!” Tarl shouted.

  He shut off the engines and kicked on the reverse thrusters. The st fighter zoomed past them. Tarl lined the nose up with the glow of their engines. He fired Cavalier’s guns. The enemy ship didn’t have a shield installed. The bolts of energy melted through its Jerry-rigged armor, tore into its salvaged machinery. The fighter died under the barrage of well-pced shots.

  Eli let out a sigh, “That’s over. Get us out of here, Tarl. We need to report this to the system authorities so that they can take care of these bastards.”

  The transtor interpreted Tarl’s response as the military phrase “Roger.”