Jeridan yelped as two Orbital Patrol vessels, sleek metal lozenges that packed an impressive amount of speed and firepower into their small bodies, hurtled into the fight.

  The burst of fire they ran across the Antikythera’s hull and one of the Dragonflies stopped after only a few rounds. The salvo had only been meant to intimidate.

  It sure worked. Jeridan moved to cut engines, only to have Nova slap his hand away.

  “Return fire!” Nova ordered.

  “Hell no!” Negasi replied over the comm. “Are you crazy?”

  “I said—”

  Whatever Nova planned to say got cut off as Jeridan spun the Antikythera and took it on a series of maneuvers the inertial dampeners couldn’t quite handle. He and everyone else got flung back into their seats, then against their webbing, then back into their seats again. The Antikythera twisted, looped, then sped away in an erratic zigzag.

  Jeridan didn’t decide to run because he wanted to. Quite the opposite. It could be construed as resisting arrest, with the best outcome being a doubling of whatever sentence the court handed down. No, he ran because the Mantids decided to be, well, Mantids.

  Both remaining Dragonflies had fired on the Orbital Patrol.

  They concentrated on only one of them, hammering away with a hailstorm of flechettes before stopping it dead with a pulse cannon.

  That got the other cop a bit riled up.

  He opened up with an autocannon at the Dragonfly Negasi had partially disabled. Small explosions ran the length of the little fighter, which tried to dodge but couldn’t thanks to being down one thruster.

  The other Mantid came to the rescue by diving at the Orbital Patrol. That ended up in a nasty dogfight that Jeridan would have loved to see but didn’t have time for.

  He was too busy having a panic attack about the Sagittan Navy cruiser that had just lifted itself from low orbit and was heading their direction.

  It was already getting into long range, and Jeridan could practically feel the gunners homing in on them.

  “Hold on!” he shouted.

  Jeridan spun out, shot past a freighter that really should have been paying more attention to its flight plan, then corkscrewed for several kilometers before making a hard turn just in time to dodge an incoming missile.

  “I guess it’s too late to surrender,” Jeridan said.

  At least that’s what he tried to say. All that came out was a sulfurous belch.

  “Damn. I thought I was done digesting that kebab,” he muttered.

  “Eeew,” Aurora said, crinkling her nose.

  “Sorry,” Jeridan said. “Case of nerves.”

  He had forgotten she was sitting behind him. She really shouldn’t be seeing all this.

  “That stinks,” the teenager complained. “Could you open a window?”

  “We’re in space,” Jeridan said, belching again as he took evasive action from another missile.

  “Gross! I was joking, dummy.”

  “You seem more concerned about me losing my lunch than you losing your life.”

  “You obviously haven’t hung out with my mom much.”

  “Long enough!”

  Jeridan had to dodge again as the unscathed Dragonfly came after them, guns blazing.

  What happened to the Orbital Patrol and the other Dragonfly? Jeridan didn’t have time to check.

  Negasi came to the rescue, filling the sky with fire. The Dragonfly used its lightning quick maneuvering capability to avoid any serious harm.

  Another missile, courtesy of the Sagittan Navy, passed between the two ships.

  The voice of the S’ouzz came over the comm link. “May I suggest that I take over the controls?”

  “You can’t go to light speed from orbit!” Jeridan said.

  “You can’t. And I will not go at light speed, only a fraction of light speed.”

  “Still, even a fraction … ”

  Jeridan turned to Nova, who looked as panicked as he felt, glanced at the pursuing Dragonfly, then checked out the cruiser that would almost certainly not accept their surrender.

  “Isn’t it risky?” Jeridan asked.

  “Quite,” the S’ouzz replied.

  “We have two kids on board!”

  “As a locally extinct species, I hold the lives of younglings to great value.”

  “Great. Take over.”

  “What?” Nova replied.

  “You got us into this mess, lady, and our alien astronavigator is our only way out of it.”

  I hope this thing can live up to its reputation.

  It did.

  With an acceleration that was definitely beyond the factory specs of a Vega Class All-Purpose, the S’ouzz shot out of orbit, weaving with fantastic speed between satellites, other ships, a high-orbit space station, and several near-planet meteors. Only once did the warning panel flare yellow when a micrometeor slammed into the hull with enough force to buckle but not break it. It had probably only measured a few millimeters in diameter. Anything bigger and the Antikythera would have been vaporized along with the meteor.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  And then they were away, past the detritus that accumulated around any large planet’s gravity, and into the relatively free space between planets. The S’ouzz took them perpendicular to the solar system’s orbital plane, out into the relatively open area away from the planets, meteors, and various man-made craft.

  They left the fight around Sagitta Prime far behind. No one would dare try to go even a tenth of light speed inside a solar system.

  Because no one else had a S’ouzz for a navigator.

  Jeridan let out a long, slow breath of relief, replaced quickly by a yelp as the S’ouzz made a quick dodge around a tiny personal craft hanging out in the middle of nowhere.

  We’re not the only ones up to no good.

  Once Jeridan realized he wouldn’t die in the next few minutes, he turned to Nova.

  “You got some explaining to do!” Jeridan shouted.

  Nova held up a finger, turned to her daughter, and said, “Check on him.”

  “All right.”

  Aurora was gone in a flash.

  “Good,” Jeridan said. “Now that there are no children present, I have a few things to get off my chest.”

  And he proceeded to use every foul, insulting, and potentially illegal word he knew in the English language, and some Germano-Baltic too. Then he threw in a few words of Sino-Amharic Negasi had taught him. Those were really bad. If Nova had turned on her translator, she might have shot him.

  Instead, she just folded her arms and patiently waited for the shower of abuse to slack off.

  Finally it did, and Jeridan sat in his seat, trying to catch his breath.

  “Feel better?” Nova asked.

  “Not really.”

  “I suppose you want an explanation.”

  “I do too,” Negasi chimed in. He’d been listening on the comm link. “Nice pronunciation of Sino-Amharic, Jeridan.”

  “Thanks,” Jeridan replied.

  “If you really want to defile her ancestry back five generations, you should say—”

  “Do you two want an explanation or not?” Nova snapped.

  “Yes,” Jeridan said.

  “Yes,” Negasi said.

  “Yes,” the S’ouzz said.

  Jeridan stared at the comm link. That was the first time he had joined any of their conversations when it wasn’t a life-or-death situation.

  He must be soiling his drawers too, Jeridan thought. Or whatever it is the S’ouzz do.

  “OK,” Jeridan said. “Tell us what’s going on, and you better make it good.”

  Nova paused, looking out at the stars and the rapidly receding planet of Sagitta Prime, which was now just a bright dot far behind them. Sensors showed no ships nearby and their acceleration rapidly picking up pace. The S’ouzz had done his job as well as all the old history books said it could.

  “My husband Derren was a tech scavenger like us. He and I were partners and bought this ship together. We were two of the best. Made some rare finds and made some good money.”

  Jeridan nodded. The Antikythera and all its modifications must have cost a small fortune.

  Nova went on. “We did fine for a few years and started a family, but then we got a bit too lucky.”

  “How can you get too lucky?” Negasi asked.

  “We found information about a station in an uninhabited system, a pre-war station.”

  “Which war?” Jeridan asked. There had been so many.

  “Civil War.”

  Jeridan did a double take. “You mean the Galactic Civil War?”

  “That’s right.”

  Jeridan nearly had another heart attack, which wasn’t good since his poor heart had barely recovered from leaving Sagitta Prime.

  Then doubt rose its ugly head.

  “Wait a minute. You saying there’s a pre-Civil War station out there with Galactic Imperium technology and all the fixings? Come on. You might as well be saying we’re headed toward a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.”

  “It’s real. At least we have good evidence that it’s there and no record of it having been scavenged.”

  Jeridan’s mind raced. Until three hundred years ago, the entire Orion Arm had been ruled by the Galactic Empire. Hundreds of habitable planets, trillions of people, and dozens of alien species all lived together in a peaceful civilization way more technologically advanced than even an advanced planet like Sagitta Prime.

  Until they didn’t. Discontent rose up in the empire. Jeridan couldn’t remember the details. He had never been much for book learning. What he did know was that various systems broke out in rebellion. Old rivalries between races flared up. Soon the Galactic Empire had a dozen different armed conflicts on its hands. It grew oppressive, then brutal, and that just made more systems try to break away.

  Then real disaster struck. Someone destroyed the system of jump gates.

  The jump gates had been the product of an ultra-secret government project from the early days of the empire. Massive metal rings set near various star systems and nodes of trade allowed ships to enter and, within seconds, jump to another system. This network of gates, spaced about thirty light years apart, was what bound the empire together. No system was more than a month from any other system, and all major systems were only seconds away from each other, even if they were on opposite ends of the empire.

  It was what made it possible to extend rule over the entire Orion Arm.

  No one knew who vandalized them. Some say it was one of the rebel groups. Others say a hostile alien race. Some even claimed it was the Imperium itself.

  If so, it was an act of suicide, because when the jump gates went down, the Galactic Imperium disintegrated overnight. Systems that had built up close trade networks over centuries suddenly found themselves isolated. Entire planets faced famine, or shortages of basic materials. Many systems reverted to savagery, or became depopulated as the few surviving refugees took ships on months-long journeys to more habitable worlds. The ensuing dark ages led to countless wars, revolutions, and a plummeting of technology.

  For some lucky systems, like Sagitta Prime, there had been a slow crawling back to a stable, technologically advanced society, but even the most advanced system was primitive compared to what the Imperium once enjoyed.

  Jeridan and Negasi had spent most of their careers scavenging for old tech, at least when they weren’t smuggling. Even a well-picked-over asteroid base or derelict old ship could bring up useful materials or bits of technology that, if sold to the right firm specializing in reverse engineering, could pay high bounties.

  But no one had ever found an untouched base dating to before the Galactic Civil War. The wealth in such a base would be unimaginable.

  What was even more unimaginable was that it existed in the first place.

  But maybe …

  “So what kind of base are we talking about here?” Jeridan asked.

  Jeridan studied Nova’s face as she answered and saw her eyes get cagey.

  “It’s unclear. The data was corrupted. We only know the location, and we know that it hasn’t been scavenged.”

  “How do you know that?” Negasi asked over the comm system. “It’s not like tech scavengers keep public records.”

  Jeridan chuckled. Tech scavenging was illegal. Well, technically illegal. “Illegal” because various systems had posted claims on all of known space. “Technically illegal” because out in the vastness of uninhabited vacuum, there was no one to enforce those claims.

  Nova didn’t answer Negasi’s question, so he asked a couple more. He could be persistent that way.

  “So what happened to your husband? And why are you being chased by Mantids?”

  Nova made a face. “When we were on a planet buying gear for the scavenge, one of our old crew got drunk and blabbed. The wrong person overheard. That person sold the information to the Antari Syndicate.”

  Jeridan groaned. Negasi groaned. The S’ouzz probably groaned too, assuming his species could groan through all those facial cilia. The Antari Syndicate was the nastiest branch of organized crime in the sector. Rich, powerful, and brutal. Brutal enough to employ Mantids as hitmen.

  “So they ambushed us,” Nova continued. “Derren and most of the crew went down in the fight. If I hadn’t been on the ship with the kids, we would have died too. We barely made it off planet.”

  “And now the Antari Syndicate is chasing you, trying to find out where this station is.”

  Nova nodded.

  Negasi cut in. “Wait. You said most of your crew went down in the fight. What happened to the rest of them?”

  “Captured,” Nova said, bowing her head.

  Jeridan shuddered. They wouldn’t be having a good time right now. What would the Antari Syndicate do to them? Allow the Mantids to eat them from the toes up? Allow Denebrian maggots to burrow into their flesh? Make them listen to Sagittan customs regulations played on an endless loop? The possibilities were as infinite as they were horrible.

  Nova quickly added, “None of them know where the station is.”

  Jeridan studied her for a minute and decided she was telling the truth.

  Or at least what she hoped was the truth.

  “But these crewmen must have known a bit about the mission and have a general idea of the station’s location,” Jeridan pointed out.

  “Yes.”

  “And so the Antari Syndicate can make an educated guess as to its location and try to track you there.”

  “Yeah,” Nova said, rubbing her temples. “Yeah, they can.”

  “Great,” Negasi said. “That’s just great. Maybe we should take our chances with the Orbital Patrol.”

  “At least they wouldn’t eat us,” Jeridan grumbled.