The appearance of Standarr brought a surge of relief that was nearly entirely vanquished when his display informed him of the man’s level. 27! More than triple his own was far more than he’d been prepared for, and his thoughts turned briefly to how that number had been calculated. Obviously, the man wasn’t Starbound, so he didn’t actually have a level.

  As best as he could figure it, the number he saw for others was more of a way of assigning a threat level to an entity. Whatever background system the Nexus had constructed to allow all of this to function must be able to weigh up the threat of a being based on the available data and aggregate all of it to create a level, which allowed him to make a judgement on the potential dangers.

  Obviously, these levels were not the be all and end all. Malan had, after all, been combating being of a higher level than he since he’d bonded with Tanwen. Strategy and tactics could sway things in his favour to a degree, as could the quality of equipment and weapons. Tanwen was simply too powerful, too agile, for a lot of the poor quality stolen vessels used by the Eclipse pilots he’d so far done battle with so far.

  However, Malan knew there had to be a limit to the amount of wiggle room that gave him to punch up. He’d been able to catch a Lv15 cruiser off guard enough to destroy it—but what percentage of that level score belonged to the danger presented by the cruiser itself, and what was down to the pilot himself?

  Whichever way the levels were calculated for entities outside of the system, he couldn’t imagine there was enough flexibility there for him to have a chance against Standarr in an actual fight.

  Standarr’s voice cut across the Eclipse comms channels suddenly, and Malan listened whilst continuing his desperate dance with the chasing Eclipse pack.

  “Disable the bastard, but no more. If I so much as suspect one of you fuckers is about to make a move on that damn ship, I’ll blow you out of the sky myself, and I’ll do it with pleasure.”

  The man was still some distance away, but was closing far quicker than of the others had been able to. Still, it was with grim satisfaction that Malan wove a path between the stream of Eclipse fire. Standarr had left the station. An opening had been created.

  A handful of stray shots fizzed against his shields on the left side, and Malan hissed as his shields flickered, his display reading 4%. Just a little longer. He just needed a little long—

  Another run of fire sent him spiralling to the right—directly into the path of an Interceptor in a move that had clearly been pre-planned. Pulse fire cannoned into his centre of mess and his shields finally shattered into a blue mist, and several shots crashed against his hull.

  Malan gasped and staggered back, barely registering the blaring alarms, as the shots seemed to pound into his own torso, knocking the breath from him. Tanwen took control of the flight control whilst he recovered, but the surrounding Eclipse smelled blood. Two more carefully controlled bursts crashed against his engines, and Malan felt the blow like a kick to the back of his knees.

  He sunk to all fours, chest heaving for any ounce of oxygen he could find. He coughed and spluttered a breath and tasted copper on his tongue.

  Fuck it. Now or never.

  “Tanwen, cut power to our engines and weapons completely.”

  “Understood, Pilot.”

  He grimaced, as Tanwen’s engines stuttered and choked, before descending into silence. Around him, the Eclipse ships circled like wolves, all of them able to read his system’s lack of power, all of them—hopefully—convinced he’d sustained fatal damage.

  Malan stayed frozen on his knees, only moving to wipe the small trickle of blood away at the corner of his mouth, his eyes locked, unblinking, upon his display. Standarr sped towards them, and Malan suspected it was only his proximity that stopped his men from taking their chances on claiming Tanwen for themselves.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  His comms blazed to life as Standarr drew near, and the man’s gnarled face grinned down at him in ugly triumph. Malan, this time, allowed Tanwen to open his own video feed, so Standarr could see him beaten.

  “Ha! I may have to capture an image of this, boy. A reminder of what happens when you decide to stand against me.”

  Malan allowed him to sink back into a seated position, his back against one of the control arms. “I bet you have a nice little collection of boys on their knees, you sick fuck.”

  Standarr was too full of the taste of triumph for the jibe to do any real damage, merely chuckling and shaking his head. “Good to see you still have some backbone. You would have done well, I suppose. Unfortunately, you crossed the wrong man. As did your little friend. I do hope you know I haven’t forgotten about Elena Vasquez—she will get hers too, in the end.”

  It was Malan’s turn to laugh, and he hoped Standarr believed the tang of bitterness he tried to add to it. “You’re even more of a moron than I thought if you believe you’ll ever get the better of her. You were right about me: green and na?ve. She is neither of those things.”

  Standarr smirked and rolled up a sleeve to reveal a faded UGC military tattoo—three stars beneath a raised fist—that was half covered by a lattice of nasty burn scars.

  “Believe me, boy. I know all about what Vasquez is capable of. Now, I believe it is time for you to hand over control of your little ship now.”

  Just then, a notification slid across his screen, another text communication. Package secure. ETA 30 seconds. Malan sagged in relief, and hauled himself to his feet, beginning a mental countdown.

  25 seconds.

  “Well, that’s just the thing—I don’t actually know how to do that,” he said with a shrug, before opening his shirt to reveal the crystal embedded in his chest. “You can’t exactly transfer this by filling out a form.”

  20 seconds.

  Standarr’s face darkened, mouth twisting into a snarl. “Well then, I’d better board so I can fucking tear it out of you.”

  The connection cut off, and Standarr’s ship closed in.

  15 seconds.

  10 seconds.

  Malan raised his arms, gripping the control arms tightly.

  “Ready, Tanwen?”

  “On your command.”

  5 seconds.

  4…

  3…

  “Do it, Tanwen!”

  Several things happened at once, then. Firstly, Malan allocated his final point into energetics, and his shields blazed back into life, albeit at a low percentage. At the exact same moment, Tanwen flooded his engine systems with power once more, and they lurched forward in a sharp dive.

  Malan, though, only had eyes for what was happening above. Eclipse ships wheeled around to give chase as a half dozen pearlescent rends tore their way through realspace behind them, through which came a dozen, sleek, black fighter craft, already firing.

  Their weaponry carved through the unprepared Eclipse ships like butter, and suddenly space was alight with the fires of the Eclipse crew being cleaved apart.

  Standarr’s own ship barrelled away, faster than the rest, and hesitated only long enough to see the Eclipse space station erupt in a series of cataclysmic explosions in the distance. Malan’s breath caught in his throat at the sheer efficiency of the destruction, even as Standarr himself jumped out of the system himself.

  The black fighters made short work of the stragglers, and Malan was only slightly frustrated to see them appear on his display as:

  Namhai Assault Craft, Lv ???

  The strange craft drew themselves level with his flight path, surrounding him at every angle but for the front, a clear escort formation. That might have had Malan on edge, but he only had eyes for the smouldering ruins of the station, where Bessna’s children had been only moments before. Come on…

  Then he saw it. A shimmering behind the twisted metal debris now slowly spreading out into space. For a moment, he wondered if he was hallucinating, but then space itself seemed to distort, and the shimmering took gargantuan shape.

  Malan’s jaw worked silently as what could only have been a destroyer class ship dissolved into view where previously there had only been empty space. It, too, was jet black and sleek, though it was about the same size of the now-ruined space station. As he looked at it, Malan couldn’t help but think of an enormous dagger. Its engines sat far back like a hilt, and its body narrowed toward the bow like the tip of the blade.

  Even from here, though, Malan could make out a slew of likely lethal weapons dotted across its sleek hull, as well as the telltale domes of shield generators far more capable than his own.

  He glanced at the attached label on his display, and it confirmed for him what he’d known the moment he’d seen the support fighters that had destroyed the Eclipse fleet. At the back of his mind, he caught a distinct unease—perhaps even fear from Tanwen.

  Starbound.

  Designation: Namhai

  Lv. ???

  Patreon currently at: 1.48

  Thank you all so much for reading this far! If you've enjoyed what you've read, please consider checking out one of my other stories below - just click on the pictures to go to their pages!