Six standard gravities worth of pressure plastered the dropship's crew into their seats. The cockpit was filled with an uneasy silence, no one had spoken a word for hours. Nate struggled to reach up and wipe a bead of sweat from his forehead, groaning loudly as the servo in his prosthetic suddenly went slack, leaving the heavy arm to slap him across the face. He sat there, miserable, arm pasted to his face by the thrust gravity until an alarm chirped and the ship fired its forward thrusters, gradually slowing from a 6G burn to a more bearable 2G's.

The ship screamed a crackling wail as a laser carved into its barriers. Nate kicked the thrusters, slowing the ship and pitching the crew forward against their restraints. A volley of rockets slewed through the space ahead of the ship.

"Damn it," shouted Nate. "Where is that coming from?!"

"Sensors up," said Izzy. "Doing a full scan now."

"Weapons hot," shouted Rowan. "You find 'em I'll blast 'em"

Nate jerked the controls wildly sending the ship rolling through an erratic corkscrew pattern.

"Radar contact," said Izzy. "It's a small ship bigger than us smaller than a normal frigate, twelve-thousand kilometers off our left side."

"Can we get ahold of the Dauntless?" asked Nate, wincing as another laser blast carved a slice out of their barrier fields.

"No," said Izzy. "All I'm getting from them is a looping message saying their comm receiver is damaged. We're on our own."

"Great," said Nate. They were outgunned, without backup, had no stealth systems, and had a huge crate stuck to the underside of the hull. "We need to ditch the supplies."

"The crate has a nav beacon. Activating it remotely." said Izzy.

Rowan marked the crate with a yellow square on the main display. "Tracking the beacon," he said. "And disengaging the clamps." The crate tumbled away from the ship, drifting lazily through space.

"Give me all the thrust you can get, Iz." said Nate. He angled straight towards the enemy ship, shoved the throttle forward, and jerked the stick back and forth, slewing wildly through space in a 6G zig zag pattern. Laser fire split the void on either side of the ship, missing the hull by barely a meter.

"Rowan, hold fire until we're close, like really close. We'll need to give this thing hell to bring it down and I don't want to miss."

He rolled the gunship around a swarm of rockets, watching the distance to the ship tick down on the main display. Weaving between laser blasts, he stopped accelerating and re-engaged the reverse thrusters gradually slowing down. The enemy ship vomited another cloud of rockets. Heart racing Nate, wrenched the stick back, angling up and over the cloud. A laser lashed out. He rammed the stick forward, diving below it and rolled hard to the left, dancing away from a second beam, then kicked the ship sideways, narrowly avoiding a third.

"Izzy," he said. "Can the ship computer give me the time between rocket volleys?"

He fired the keel and starboard thrusters, moving the ship up diagonally, and pulling it into a barrel roll, dodging another stream of rockets. Clenching the controls in a white knuckled death grip, he waited for the next round of lasers. Nothing happened for a long tense moment. The dropship hurtled towards the frigate unchallenged. He smiled and let out a sharp bark of rueful laughter. "They've overheated," he said gleefully, lining up the dropship's weapons, and slowing for the perfect shot. "Laser only Rowan, give 'em hell."

The laser fired three bursts or six beam pulses, filling the cockpit with a low muted hum as it bit into the enemy's hull. Nate watched the ship on the thermal display, its hull glowing with the heat from the laser strikes. He was surprised to see the lasers hit the hull instead of a barrier field, the enemy ship was unshielded.

Another wave of rockets streaked across the void, Nate's heart threatened to leap out of his chest as he worked furiously to avoid them. He'd slowed too much to return fire. The rockets detonated along the right side of the dropship, shredding the last of their barriers with a hissing pop and rattling the dropship's frame as they bit off chunks of armour.

"About a minute and a half between salvos," said Izzy. "Putting the reload time on the main screen." A small red timer appeared in the lower left hand corner of the display, followed by a green wireframe image of the enemy ship in the top right. "Sensors have done their best to map the ship. Looks like four laser cannons, mounted on the top, and on both sides, rocket tubes in the nose."

Nate rammed the throttle forward, closing as quickly as he could before the rocket launcher fired again. He pulled the dropship to the left, swinging wide, then angled back in towards the hostile craft. "Rowan?" he asked, blinking a drop of sweat from his eyes. "Think you can hit that side mounted cannon? It's only a four thousand meter shot, very doable with the gauss cannon and targeting computer."

He slid the dropship sideways, while Rowan fired a long burst from the gauss cannon. The high velocity shells shredded the hull and tore the laser cannon apart. Lifting the dropship while keeping the nose angled towards the enemy, Nate lined up an angle on the top mounted cannon, taking control of the laser cannon and leaving Rowan the gauss cannon. Another string of shells pounded into the frigate, cleaving long rents through its hull and severing the turret. The bigger ship twisted slowly, bringing its rockets to bear. Nate glanced down at the timer in the corner, the rockets would finish loading in seconds. He froze, staring out across the void at the ship that was about to kill him. The timer hit zero. He fired the upwards thrusters as hard as possible. His controls chirped as Rowan stole firing control of the laser and launched a searing beam into the ship's nose.

Nate held his breath, waiting for the swarm of rockets to come. Instead, a popcorn string of explosions ripped their way across the hostile ship, ripping and tearing through armour, buckling internal structure and sending pieces spinning off into space. The explosion rippled down the ship's throat, tearing through its belly with short lived flashes of white fire. With one final shudder, the explosion blew out the back of the ship, tearing off its main drive cone and leaving it drifting lifeless, slowly leaking long trails of vapor.

Rowan's mouth hung open in shock. "Holy hell." he said. "What just happened?"

Izzy floated free of her harness, drifting forward to pat him on the shoulder. "You just saved our lives," she said. "And got to see firsthand why our ships use armoured ammunition bins and don't keep the missile racks next to the drive cone."

"So I may have just killed a bunch of people? I think I need to go lie down." said Rowan, his voice barely rising above a whisper. Rowan unbuckled his harness and drifted into the crew compartment.

Nate rolled the ship back towards the nav beacon on the supply crate, gently accelerating towards it. "What's the plan for catching this crate Izzy?" he asked.

Izzy stayed silent for a long moment. "You don't think we should go check on Rowan?" she asked.

"I don't really see why, once his 'mimic sadness' function is finished running he'll be fine."

Izzy drifted towards the door, heading out of the cockpit. "Sometimes I wonder who the real machine is." she said over her shoulder. "Him, or you." The door slid closed behind her, leaving Nate alone in the cockpit. He guided the ship through the dark heavy silence with nothing to keep him company except the soft glow of the controls. He slouched in his chair with a heavy sigh. No matter what he said to Rowan he always seemed to end up pissing off the entire crew. Maybe he would just keep his mouth shut next time.

He was annoyed that Izzy had left, he could use an extra set of hands at the engineering console. Flying the ship was no problem, but he was at a loss when it came to getting the computer systems and sensors to work. There was no way that talking to Rowan was more useful than chasing down the crate right now. Besides, it wasn't like the machine had real feelings, and he shouldn't be that upset in any case. There was a good chance the crew area on that ship was properly armoured, and there were other ships in the system, it was probably shouting for help right now. Although, if it wasn't advanced enough to have proper electron barriers what were the odds that it had protected the crew? Nate's mouth went dry. He'd never stopped to consider how many people might die when he returned fire. They'd had no other choice though, it was them or us. He pulled a flask out of a pocket on his thigh and took a long drink, savouring the strong spiced taste of the Caldanian rum he'd brought from home.

It was a long lonely flight to the supply crate. He brought the gunship in next to the crate and matched its speed. They were still moving at several hundred kilometers per hour, but with nothing around for reference, the ship and the crate might as well have been standing still. He pulled on a headset and flicked on the ship's intercom.

"Hey, Izzy" he said. "I've got us in close to the crate, we can hook it back up whenever you're ready."