The gunship drifted silently through space. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since they had received the rendezvous coordinates from the Dauntless and it would likely take another full day to reach the debris field. Izzy pulled herself up from the floor hatch and floated into her seat. Her hair was pulled back into a loose bun and her exo-suit was mottled with black stains and smears of grease.

"Remind me to never push the engines that hard again, that was a hell of a mess to fix." she said.

Nate cocked an eyebrow. "We didn't melt the heat sinks did we?" he asked.

"Not quite, rerouting the waste heat into the gun's sinks helped but we burned out a few of the subsystems, electron barrier fields and water recycling were nearly trashed but they're patched up now. How have things been up here?"

"We haven't had to outrun any more supernovas so that's been nice. Honestly, I just woke up, Rowan has been doing most of the flying. Not needing to take a break to sleep or eat is a big help when you need to fly forty-eight hours straight without autopilot."

Rowan shook his head with a small smile. "The ship might as well be on autopilot. We just need to fly straight until we hit the RV point."

"Did the sensors return anything useful about the field?" asked Izzy.

"Maybe," said Rowan. "The pieces are too close together to be a natural asteroid field, the bits on the edge of the cloud are mostly ice then there's rock and metals towards the center. The weird thing is how it's sitting, it looks like there's some kind of mass or gravitational field at the center of the debris. It's keeping it all on a loose spherical pattern like all the chunks are orbiting something. We'll know more when we get closer. I can keep things handled up here if you two need a break."

Izzy blew out a short sigh. "A break sounds nice," she said. "You sure you can handle things up here?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine. I'll shout if anything goes wrong."

Izzy drifted out of her seat and placed a hand on Rowan's shoulder. "Thanks, I really appreciate it" she said with a warm smile.

Izzy and Nate floated through the door at the rear of the cockpit and into the crew compartment. Vance, Damon and the two technicians sat in a loose circle, struggling to play a game of cards. Cards were notoriously hard to deal and set down without gravity. They almost always drifted away from the table and got lost. Onyx stood in the far corner locked to the deck on magnetic pads that folded out from his heels. His massive frame and blank features were deeply unnerving, intimidating even, it made the hairs on the back of Nate's neck stand on end.

Izzy peeled off her exo-suit and nudged it towards the back of the crew compartment. "I think we have some tools in the cargo bay, can you give me a hand patching up our rigs?"

Nate shook his head. "God damn Izzy, don't you ever relax?"

"All the exo-suits got torched by an electromagnetic pulse. We need them running, and compared to working on the ship rewiring suits is relaxing for me." she waved the other two technicians over. They set their cards down with a grumble and floated over to Izzy. They were both unusually tall and thin, they looked almost sickly to Nate. The older of the two techs was a man named Reginald with thick glasses and thinning brown hair. His counterpart was a striking young woman named Olivia, with dark skin and hair as black as the void outside the ship. Nate didn't know too much about the technicians other than their names. Most of the technical crew were from worlds in Second Wave Space and he kept his distance from them, preferring to spend his time with the bridge crew who were mostly ex Void Corps officers from the Alliance.

Izzy paused on her way out of the crew compartment, turning to speak to the warmachine in the corner. "Hey Onyx, you didn't get hurt by the EMP did you? I can help if you need any work done."

Onyx bowed his armoured head. "I truly appreciate the offer, Isabelle. However, I assure you that all my systems are properly hardened against EMP. It will take more than an exploding drive core to put me out of commission."

Nate followed the techs into the cargo bay and spent the next few hours floating back and forth between crates and lockers, fetching tools and pieces of circuitry. The door slid open and Damon stomped into the room, his cybernetic feet sticking to the deck with magnetic plates.

"Need any help in here?" he said.

"No we're pretty much done," said Nate.

"Okay, anything else I can work to kill time?"

"I don't think so."

Damon smiled, the warmth in the expression was stolen by the cold dead stare of his silver mechanical eyes. "Listen, I've been thinking about your augmentations. They don't seem to be putting out much performance beyond the original flesh and blood pieces. We have a pretty sweet tech team here, and I know my way around cybernetics, I was thinking we could give you a bit of a tune up if you want."

Nate shook his head. "No, everything is working the way it should." he said.

Damon frowned. "You could have a lot more though. I bet we could even draw you up a nice custom piece, one that would work way better than what you're wearing now."

"No thank you," said Nate tersely.

"Okay," said Damon, holding his hands up in surrender, silver palms reflecting the lights overhead. "I didn't know it was a touchy subject."

***

Nate drifted through the cargo area, playing a simple game on his data tablet, desperately wishing for something else to do to pass the time. Bored, he opened the door to the six wheeled rover strapped to the deck and crawled inside. The truck was similar to an old Alliance armoured personnel carrier. His cousin had a decommissioned APC that he'd converted into a log truck. It was a lot less fun with the machine guns removed but it was the best truck in the county for logging in the swamp.

A shrill tone called him back to the cockpit. He floated down into the pilot's seat, the cockpit was dark, the main display was off and the only light was the ghostly teal glow from the instrument panel. He looked over to Rowan, the construct was sitting with his eyes closed. A series of cables snaked out of his skull and into the control console.

"What's up?" asked Nate.

Rowan's eyes snapped open and the main display flickered to life. A swarm of ice and particles surrounded the ship. Red lines extended out from the larger pieces as the computer predicted their trajectory. Rowan nudged the ship's controls, sending it deftly away from a speeding piece of stone. "We've hit the RV" said Rowan.

Nate blinked at the display, his head swam trying to track the spiderweb of trajectory lines drawn across the main screen. "Holy shit." he said. "This is crazy. We'll be smashed to dust in this shitstom!"

"You might be. I've got my processors linked into the dropship's computer, together we're tracking all the dangerous debris and plotting courses around it. The Dauntless should be making contact soon."

The radio crackled to life and the familiar voice of the Dauntless' communications officer echoed through the cockpit. "Dropship. We have been engaged by a squadron of hostile craft. Damage is minimal so far we need you back aboard now." he paused for a moment, speaking in quick irritated tones to someone in the background. "Shit, scratch that last order" he continued. "Another contact just appeared on our scopes. We're going back under stealth, stay hidden in the ice field until it's safe."

Izzy cleared her throat, she was floating at the back of the cockpit. Nate hadn't heard her come in and nearly jumped out of his skin when she spoke. "We can't stay in the ice." she said. "This ship wasn't designed for long flights, we need fresh air scrubbers, clean water and more food if we're going to be stuck here any longer."

The communications officer breathed a frustrated sigh. "Okay, plan B then. We're dropping a supply crate on the edge of the debris field. Pick it up and burn hard for the third planet. The hostile ships seem to be small frigates, not much threat to us but they'll eat you alive. They're not much more than bricks with guns so there's no way in hell they'll fly in atmosphere. You can hide on the planet below until we're ready to pick you up"

The comm channel closed with a soft click. Nate turned to Izzy. "What's the fastest we can go without straining the ship and ourselves too hard."

Izzy tilted her head back slightly, brows furrowing as she did the math. "We should be able to pull a 6G burn until we've got some distance from those frigates, then slow to 2G's until we hit the planet."

Nate groaned. The dropship lacked an artificial gravity generator and simply wasn't designed to fly under thrust gravity for long periods of time. Under thrust, the ship would move forward but the acceleration would make everyone on board feel like they were flying straight up, the ship's engines would become "down" the wall between the passenger compartment and the cargo bay would become a floor and they'd need to use a ladder to go between the ship's compartments.

"Well," said Nate. "It's better than sitting and waiting to get shot. Let's find that supply crate and reel it in."