A gauss round skipped off the dropship, sending cerulean sparks crackling over the hull as the electron barriers caught it. Pinned between the two capital ships Nate put everything he had into dodging the incoming fire. With a click of a button, he passed all weapon control over to Rowan. Dodging wildly the ship spat a laser every time it lined up with the wounded ship, slowly boiling away more of its armour. A siren blared, there were more missiles incoming. Izzy tapped furiously at the engineering console, highlighting the incoming missiles on the main display and doing her best to jam their targeting. The screen was a mess of glowing white trails of heat. Nate aimed the gunship straight for the wounded vessel and nudged the throttle, smiling as the G forces pressed him back into his seat.

The dropship sped towards the wounded vessel, weaving back and forth. Nate was sweating, heart hammering with the effort of keeping the ship alive. Despite its bulk the dropship flew with a nimble grace, rolling and spinning away from lasers and gauss rounds. The missiles were closing fast, Nate leveled out and grit his teeth, watching a burst of gauss rounds bounce off the hull. Rowan opened up with the weapons, carving blackened furrows through armour with the laser, and hammering the weakened plating with the railgun. Another section of stealth plating tore free.

The dropship’s barrier field gave out with a pop. The hull rang with the sound of repeated impacts. The alarm picked up to a fever pitch as the missiles flew dangerously close. A new alarm screamed, warning them of an imminent collision. Nate dove, breaking away from the capital ship. Weaving wildly through a storm of laser fire he passed under the ship, lasers striking down at him like bolts of crimson lightning. The missiles couldn’t keep up and dozens of missiles plowed into the enemy ship. The wounded vessel rolled, listing hard as its hull was peeled apart by the explosions. A line of detonations ran down the ship, exploding outwards. The missiles must have hit the ammunition storage. As the chain reaction blew the capital ship apart Nate sped back towards the Dauntless, weaving away from the last strings of PDC fire as they flew out of the effective range of the cannons.

An officer from the Dauntless spoke over the radio. “Dropship, we are at our heat limits. Deactivating stealth systems. Confirm all targets destroyed.”

“Negative!” said Izzy. “We are taking fire from one more ship.”

“God damn it!” The officer swore as the Dauntless revealed itself, a huge white blob of heat appearing on the main display. Hundreds of missiles leapt out of empty space, screaming towards the Dauntless. Nate wheeled the gunship around as Rowan fired everything into the space the missiles came from. The last of the railgun ammunition bounced off an electron barrier, careening off into space. Nate checked the rear camera, watching as the missiles tore the Dauntless apart. Shreds of armour exploded outwards, and huge chunks of the internal structure spun off into space.

A voice laced with static came over the radio. “Dropship, this is the Dauntless. We’re done. We’re powering down all weapons, and broadcasting a surrender. The hangar is destroyed, pull alongside and match our speed.”

Nate slowed the dropship, turned and cruised towards the Dauntless at a leisurely pace. The surrender was sent and the enemy ship seemed to be accepting it. He pulled the gunship alongside the Dauntless and slowed down, matching the damaged ship’s speed. The Dauntless was a wreck. All the armour plating had blown away, leaving the inner hull naked in the void, sparks arced out from damaged wires and several gaping holes spewed long vapor trails as the ship’s atmosphere blew out into space.

The enemy ship revealed itself, deactivating its stealth systems with a rush of vented heat. The ship was massive, easily twice the size of the Dauntless, bigger than anything humanity was capable of building. The dropship trilled a soft warning, the massive enemy ship was panning an infrared beam across the hull, looking for a communications dish. It eventually found the communications array on the Dauntless. Nate waited for a long moment, nervously wondering what kind of demands were being issued to the captain and crew.

He was surprised to see a communications request from the captain. “Nathan?” he said. “They want to speak with you.”

“Shit,” said Nate, heart pounding. “Okay patch them through.”

The communications system crackled with static for a moment before an alien voice spoke in a thick accent. “Battle-Lord Nathan Levin, this one is known as High Priest of War T’sung.” Nate frowned at the strange titles, suspecting that the alien was having difficulty translating. “You have delivered a death blow to Lords well above your strength and stature, this one is equally enraged and impressed. You and your crew have desecrated this system with your filthy feet for too many night-cycles. This is your sole chance to vacate this solar system.”

Nate understood the threat well enough. He was sure this would end in violence if they couldn’t escape the system soon. He opened a channel to the captain of the Dauntless.

“Sir,” he said. “Is the Dauntless able to make FTL under its own power?”

“I do not think so,” said the captain. “The ship is dead.”

Nate sighed. “Okay” he said, switching back to the channel with the alien priest. “High Priest, sir? We are unable to comply at this time. The Dauntless can no longer move under its own power.”

The alien growled. “Nathan Levin, I gave you a command. Not a request. Move. Your. Ships. Tow the hulk to Lightspeed using your functional space vessel.”

“That is not possible. The dropship can’t travel at FTL speeds.”

“Imbecilic fool ape!” the alien shouted. “You will burn to unliving ash by my hand!”

Nate killed the link before the alien could say any more. “What the fuck does that mean?!” he said.

“I think it means he’s going to laser us to death,” said Rowan.

“Fuck!” shouted Nate, “Okay, we need a plan, thoughts?” he turned to Izzy, finding her in a heated debate with someone on the Dauntless. She was shouting a series of numbers and acronyms with the odd real word mixed in, it was technobabble that sailed clear over Nate’s head. Rowan made a strange muffled squeal and pointed towards the main display, shaking. Nate looked up, seeing a gigantic sphere of heat bloom across the screen. He flicked the camera through all the available feeds, pausing on the visual feed. A sphere of shining metal had just appeared out of nowhere, big enough to be seen with the naked eye even at a distance of several hundred thousand kilometers. The station was easily the size of a small moon. Building something that size should have been impossible, moving it even more so, let alone giving it stealth systems. There was no way something that huge could hide, even with stealth plating and heat sinking technologies. It was simply too big to be invisible to radar and there was no way something the size of a moon could swallow all its heat for so long.

Nate watched in horror as the station spat gauss round the size of his dropship. The dropship’s computer threw an error trying to calculate the shell’s velocity. It appeared to be traveling close to lightspeed. The gargantuan shell missed the Dauntless by inches. The ruined carrier replied by firing the last of its missiles, sending eighty rockets hurtling through space. Nate’s jaw dropped as the station dodged. One second it was motionless, the next it was weaving through space at thousands of kilometers per second, then it was still again. The missiles missed by kilometers, exploding harmlessly as their fuel ran out. Nate didn’t know what was inside that station but clearly it could ignore things like inertia, thrust, and mass. Not even the biggest fusion reactors humans could build would have enough power to move that station that fast.

“Nate,” said Izzy, quietly. “I need you to clamp the gunship to the nose of the Dauntless.”

“What?! Why?” said Nate.

“Just fucking do it!” Izzy swore, “or we all die!”

The station jumped. Disappearing completely as it flew faster than light. Nate sped up and flew the dropship to the bow of the Dauntless, Extending the landing gear and locking the front struts to the hull. The station reappeared a thousand kilometers away from the ruined ship, sending a wave of radiation rolling over them. Izzy overrode the throttle control, forcibly slaving the dropship’s engines to the engineering console. The station slowly adjusted its aim, long arcs of blue lighting rolled out of a massive gun barrel as the station charged its gauss cannon for another shot.

“Oh shit,” Nate swore, certain that they were all dead. Izzy slammed the throttle forward. The familiar nauseated feeling of an FTL jump came over him as the Dauntless’ gravity generator bent the laws of physics ever so slightly, wrapping the ships in a mass altering field. The dropship struggled, burning the last of its fuel in a plume of white flame. The railgun fired, sending tons of metal hurtling towards them near lightspeed. All the displays went black.