The journey in this current was a lot smoother, but time still stretched on. I was also trying to figure out if I could make my machines, especially the printers, work in this type of gravity.

  The simulations we have run have not been promising, and honestly, I’m just happy that they seem to be built so sturdily that they can survive a lot of acceleration, even if they couldn't work during the current one.

  Fortunately, I was going to get a small break to this routine, as we were about to exit FTL. On the screens, I watched the correct movements I needed to do and when I needed to start decelerating.

  It was still weird that in space, even if this was the side dimension, I didn’t have to do anything else to decelerate except lower the thrust.

  The ship started to shake as our speed went under 7.7%, and soon—exactly when Lola had calculated—the bubble that the FTL device makes disappeared, and we were back in normal space.

  Immediately, jump-out protocols activated. All the cameras and every other way this ship could gather information from the outside activated and started scanning our surroundings.

  We identified the station almost immediately, but it took a bit longer than normal, and because of that, the orange alert started beeping. Immediately, I focused, and I saw Lola ramping up her processing to figure out why we were getting an orange alert.

  It was also weird because I was now connected to the ship’s AI, and it informed me, even before the screen started displaying anything, that the space station might be further away than the landing zone we were supposed to land on.

  It was hard to get distance from just a singular point-of-view image of the station, barely visible because there wasn’t much light out here. We were also seeing the past image of the space station as even light took time to travel. As time continued to pass, active sensors started to return signals, and Lola quickly ran the numbers.

  We were a lot further away than we were supposed to be. A bit too much sideways and even up a bit, which would make getting a correct path to the station a bit more difficult. But I was a bit worried. Was this our mistake? Because Lola had jumped us into the correct position two times before, so I didn’t think so. Or has something happened to the station?

  “I have triangulated our location. It seems that it is us who are off. I will investigate why my calculations were off.”

  “Understood. It happens—see if you can find what the problem was.”

  “And remind me, if we were to exit FTL inside a ship or even a planet, we are just not able to exit, right?”

  “Yes, I am almost positive that that’s the case. Although the situation inside the side dimension would get rougher and rougher, and if you don't get out quick enough, the ship would be torn into pieces. But that could just be something said to try to scare anyone who read that post. But I have found it in multiple locations on the quantum net.”

  Yeah, that was the problem. On the quantum net there were a lot of trolls there making up bullshit.

  We were also now getting the quantum transponder signals. Unfortunately, it took a bit to get it started after exiting FTL, but now that it was working, we were able to confirm the station’s proper ID, and there were even 7 ships around the station, either decelerating or accelerating.

  As we gathered more information, the display in front of me filled out more.

  We still didn't have their orbital paths, as it would take a bit to calculate—we needed time for our sensors to do their work. Because we were almost 24.4 million kilometres away from the station, everything took more time, including the handshake protocols the communication computer was doing with the station’s.

  So, we had to give it more time. We needed to explain our current location, because it was so outside the norm that the station was wary. Fortunately, we had an account with them. So, they were willing to listen us out.

  They were asking us to stop such intensive active scans, and we complied, as other stations did that as well.

  Other than our position, everything seemed normal—but I was still a bit wary.

  It took nearly 10 minutes for communications to finally reach a point that we got a docking pathway. We needed to burn quite a bit to get into the correct orbit to intersect with the station at the proper time and speed.

  They were also trying to get me to extend the maximum 10G burn time. That I, of course, could easily extend.

  The question was, was it really that common for a station to ask you to do something like that, that was obviously against the parameters set by me?

  I just didn’t know enough, but everything else seemed normal. All the ships didn't seem to have any problem, and Lola even displayed the latest reports on this station. One of them was only a day old, and it seemed to be operating as expected, like every other station I visited.

  We started the burn. Experiencing 10G was not the nicest, but it also wasn't bad. It took us nearly an hour of corrective burns every so often to get to our main deceleration location. It would be a 5G burn for a bit over four hours to take us under the 7.5% lightspeed the space station was moving at.

  Once again, it was annoying that we had to do this so early. It would mean it would take quite a long while for the station to catch up to us and we could make our last deceleration burn. But I could also understand the station, as our exit was quite unusual.

  Lola finally got back to me, and she sounded a bit happy and unhappy at the same time.

  “I found out what I did wrong. Turns out almost everyone exits FTL after a current change to triangulate their correct position because the interactions between currents are so unpredictable and change all the time that calculating a correct path through it like we did is unfeasible. So, we have a solution—and the reason why our target location was so off.”

  “I mean, it would have been nice if that was mentioned even on the main home page on FTL travel?”

  “Agreed. Sometimes the lack of information is frustrating.” Lola answered.

  As we got closer, we were able to get a better visual on the station. Then all of a sudden, the station turned orange.

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  “I am detecting irregularities in the station.”

  “What kind of irregularities?”

  “I am running simulations now.”

  “Okay, this is getting ridiculous. I don’t like this at all.”

  I looked, and we were currently about 16,000,000 kilometres from the station, and I contemplated just turning around and burning to enter FTL.

  “Let’s go through all the programs. Let’s see if anything else seems unusual. Display even the smallest irregularities.”

  To my surprise, the first answer I got was from the ship AI as the display on the orbits of the other ships went from the neutral white to orange as well. It quickly explained to me that while right now the orbits seemed normal, their locations indicated something else—like they were drifting before. Which would be normal, but not for all of them.

  “It’s a fucking trap.”

  “I concur. Look at this,” Lola said as the display in front of me changed to the simulation she had run.

  The space station had some weird lines, and some of those were hidden, made to look like normal armour plating. But slowly the space station came apart into two ships—and most likely it would actually be made out of four ships, and they were all big ships definitely near the medium D category.

  I felt my hands starting to shake a bit as adrenaline started to pump through me.

  “If this was a fake station, where would the real one be?”

  “Most likely it’s behind the station, semi-destroyed. The reason why I suspect that is that they have the correct quantum transponder signal, which means that they didn’t destroy the station.”

  “Well, it would make sense. Why would you destroy something that’s so valuable? Go through the radar and lidar recordings. See if you can catch any hint of something behind the station and look for irregularities on anything with the other ships as well. We should have captured a lot of footage by now.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  I myself entered our current speed and location and let the computer analyse the shortest time we could get into FTL. At 30G, it was 51 minutes. That was a long time, but not too long. We should be safe, and we should be able to burn harder than that, just in case.

  Then everything was colored in red and alarms started to go off.

  “I found evidence of missile launches from the closest ship to the correct landing zone—and to us.”

  “They launched missiles almost immediately after we dropped out of FTL. If we were to have landed in the correct location, I do not think we would have been able to escape them, especially because they’re drifting right now, and I do not know their exact location.”

  “Go through the footage later on to figure out what we could do better in detecting such things.”

  I had already turned the side engines from their standby mode into fully active. We would need every bit of acceleration we could get to get out of here as soon as possible.

  “Lola, plot the course for the fastest FTL jump solution we can find.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  I strapped myself in and already activated the high-G manoeuvre protocols. My legs and hands were secured, and so was my neck. Only a moment later, large needles pierced my neck, which would help me survive what was about to come.

  “Ramp up the power core and bring engines to max. Do the corrective burns a moment later, and then increase acceleration as much as the engines can produce. If it’s past 30G, it will be past 30G. Then cut the quantum transponder.”

  “That would be too dangerous. The ship would also start to take damage if we go over 30G.”

  “We don’t have time to discuss it. Do it now.”

  I could see the power production jump. The engine started to make an even more annoying but a lot more powerful noise, and then there was the corrective orientation burn from the RCS thrusters. Turning like this so fast also generated quite a lot of G, especially because I wasn’t at the centre of the ship.

  Then the main burn started.

  We were close to 30G of acceleration, and almost a minute had passed. We continued to burn as hard as possible when there was a spike of radiation that hit us.

  “Detecting enemy laser fire. Displaying information,” Lola informed me, but it was starting to get hard to concentrate. At least I was managing it a lot better than the last time I was under such acceleration.

  We were also increasing in speed slower now, as it took time for the engines to properly get the fuel up to speed with the amount of it we were pumping into them.

  At the station, that was composed of what looked like four ships, they were firing at us with a large laser. Fortunately, we were so far away that the laser itself had diffused so much that it was a few hundred kilometres across and wasn't doing any physical damage.

  We would need to be a lot closer for that—most likely in the range of one million kilometres—but what it was doing would have still killed us in a few minutes if I didn’t have the radiation shield.

  A moment later, our sensors were hit with electronic warfare that was trying to shut them down or overwhelm them.

  They were even trying to gain access to our computers—most likely to try to seize control of the ship. Those attempts were quite unsuccessful, but I was surprised at how far they were able to accomplish this.

  I guess this would only work on ships not prepared for this type of attack, but it was taking a bit of processing power, so I guess it’s all about heat management.

  I saw our heat starting to tick up slowly. That would make sense—they were trying to cook us into surrendering, and they were even demanding our surrender in exchange for quite the ludicrous sum.

  They wanted 200 million mana credits to be dropped from our airlock, and then they would let us go.

  It was also confirmed that they were pirates, as they proudly displayed their symbol in our communications and even their name: the Crivordid Pirates, with a symbol of half a moon being pierced by four spears. I guess the symbol made sense.

  “I’ve detected the missiles coming towards us. Showing on the screen now.”

  Why did Lola sound sad?

  Then I saw it. They were still quite far away then, but they were accelerating hard. A moment later, figures started to appear—the acceleration was 150G, and they would catch up to us before we entered FTL, even though we were now accelerating at nearly 40G.

  Everything started to hurt, and it was hard to stay conscious, but I needed to, so I pushed through the pain.

  “I am sorry, master. I should have gone through the footage immediately instead of starting to look for my mistake. If we did that, we would be long gone from here.”

  “I made the mistake.”

  I didn’t speak that out loud because I couldn’t speak it out loud, but how did I say that to her. Wait—the connection.

  “You can hear me normally, can't you?”

  “Yes, but how? Oh, the connection... I am so sorry, master.”

  “Don’t call me that. And continue to accelerate harder.”

  “That would cause even more damage to you.”

  “That was an order, Lola.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  My brain was having trouble keeping up, but it would still be about 8 minutes before the missiles caught up to us. It was so close just a matter of few minutes after the missiles hit for us to get to the correct FTL speed.

  We were now also being hit by four lasers, but the heat buildup wouldn’t matter in such a short time. If we had dropped into the correct location, we would already be dead or captured by now.

  Lola was also able to confirm that it was indeed four ships, and the almost entirely intact space station was indeed behind the fake station composed of those ships. It seems that these pirates did this on the regular, because those ships were designed to mimic the look of a refuelling station.

  Our point-defense turrets were already primed and ready. At the speed the missiles were already moving, they would only have a maximum of one second to fire before the missiles hit. And there were ten of them, so the small amount of point defense we had was going to be useless.

  We did have another weapon, and that was the main engine. The exhaust bloom of it would chew through those missiles in moments, but I was certain that those would be smart enough to try to avoid that when they were on their final approach.

  “Lola, prepare to angle down the side engines when the missiles get close enough. Also, use RCS to try to keep us stable and flying in the correct relative heading, even if you're moving upwards and are tilted a bit. This should make us at least have a chance.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  On the medical readout, I saw that I was barely surviving, as we had seemingly achieved max acceleration of 42.6 G. My nose and ears were already bleeding, and what was about to follow was not going to be any better. I was about to experience G-forces in a different direction than the current one—not by much, but the change was going to be a bitch.

  All I could do now was watch the missiles getting closer and closer, while a lot of the ship’s structure was well into the yellow warnings, some getting quite close to red.

  She was never meant to be under so much acceleration, and soon it was going to have to tolerate a different direction of acceleration. We might not even survive the attempt to survive.

  The minutes passed in utter agony. Then it was time. The missiles were only a minute from hitting, but the exhaust bloom should already be effective, and they were indeed trying to avoid it by coming underneath it—which was lucky. If they chose to go above it, we would have been screwed.

  “Lola, activate it now!”

  Pain I couldn’t imagine hit me. It felt like I was being crushed in a different direction than before, and this was somehow a lot worse. It seems that I lost some time, because the missiles were already 30 seconds from hitting, but the first one exploded.

  They were all trying to evade by going further downwards, but we were constantly following them. One by one, they exploded, but they must have been more armored than I expected.

  There were still four of them when the point defense started firing. One of the missiles that chose to go through the exhaust bloom—for some reason that bastard survived—was now hit and exploded. The entire ship shook violently.

  Another one was destroyed by the exhaust, then the bottom point defense fired, killing another, but it was so close that the entire ship shook a lot more violently, and there was damage to the airlock, although it seemed to be holding.

  Then the left-side engine went into red as the containment failed in a particular location. We lost almost all thrust there immediately, and it pushed the ship into a spin, even while the RCS tried to counter.

  Because of this, the point defense missed, and the missile exploded underneath the ship.

  I regained consciousness. All the screens seemed to be screaming in red.

  We were still flying, but I was seeing radiation jump inside the ship, and that would kill me and Lola and every other AI.

  “Lola, immediately cut the main engine’s acceleration to 5G in 56 seconds when we reach the correct FTL speed.”

  “We need to decelerate slower. You won’t survive if we do it so fast.”

  Radiation shield must have been damaged—so the lasers were fucking us.

  “That was an order,” and you would survive.

  “Acknowledged, master,” she said in the saddest tone I have heard.

  She didn’t do exactly what I said, but I couldn’t even talk through our connection. I was so out of it.

  She started to slow down without slamming the brakes so to say. She probably ran the calculations of the most probable likelihood of us surviving, the amount of radiation hitting us, and the amount of reduced acceleration I could take in a short while.

  Unfortunately, it looked like I wouldn’t be conscious to even see that, as everything started to go black.

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