The third and final of her rights, Hitomi sold was her right to discharge. Now, instead of being able to declare any type of bankruptcy, any debt would hang around her neck. Something she was painfully aware of approaching the Pact towers, her own personal Scylla and Charybdis. They had to be the size of twelve-story skyscrapers, cylinders of white metal hangars with running lights.

  "Cargo 3, this is Bankshot. Ahead full. Don't stop for anything. It's what you're good at, isn't it?"

  "It's just you, me, and my dumbass cousin co-pilot now. You can call me Gunnar." The reply was strained, not frantic, but tense.

  "You probably got my entire squadron killed," Tomi spat. "I'm calling you dipshit. What's the rating on your mag plates?"

  "They're rated for thirty thousand newtons, but running past cruising speed, they'll only hit half capacity."

  Of course.

  "Do those Atlases still have the dorsal and ventral vents?"

  "Still do. Until the next series comes out."

  Tomi exhaled, suddenly alerted to the ECG that had been sounding constantly in her ear this whole time. The damn thing had to be getting exhausted.

  "Okay. At random intervals, I want you to blow out half a second of atmosphere from either one or the other. That'll move you up and down without having to rotate your engines. It'll make it more difficult for them to shoot your sorry ass but keep you at speed. Got it?"

  "Yeah."

  "I'm going to be making sweeps around you, trying to disrupt any missile locks. And I'm gonna be flying backwards. You’re gonna have to call directions in reverse. Got it?"

  "Backwards?"

  Just sound confident, like you do this all the time.

  "There's a computerized death machine coming after us from aft, I need to keep on it, but that means I won't be able to use my main engine. We're gonna soft lock our mag plates, and you're gonna drag me."

  Ahead, still puffing atmosphere, was the Zeta the Atlass had ventilated, desperately limping back to its tower. There was no fight left in it, and that wasn't what she was worried about. The massive cannons mounted on the upper pylons of the stations were turning toward them.

  "Dorsal! Dorsal!" Tomi shouted.

  The bolt sailed through the void just below the ascending Atlas. A second shot followed a mere moment later from the opposite side.

  Red lights lining the towers flashed,

  "Kinda hoped you'd be late to the dance," Tomi grumbled.

  She pulled the Seeker above the Atlas as six contacts broke from the port tower in her display. As quickly as the G-forces would allow, she flipped the ship around, facing the rear of the cargo ship. The cockpit hummed as power dumped from the engine capacitors into the coil guns. Enough to punch a hole in even the strongest fighter-class armour.

  "Where are you, you son-of-a-bitch?"

  The drone had been stalking on her sensors the entire time, slowly closing the gap between them. Another ten seconds, it would be on top of them, and she still couldn't see it.

  Ventral ports shot plumes of atmosphere into space in front of her, and the Atlas descended, pulling the Starseeker with it by the magnetic plates. The tower cannons reoriented.

  A single star point shifted over the aft end. As she watched, it split into a trio of white lights. There it was! Stealthy as a thief in the night and coming in fast, the drone roared towards them. Her display painted it a bloody red for a moment, and then it was lost.

  The Seeker’s locking systems complained with a dismal beep.

  "Okay," she breathed heavily. "Okay. Just gotta be fast. You're twenty years old, you got fast nerves, strong circulatory system. Graceful legs. Winning personality."

  She squeezed the triggers. A stream of white-hot pellets shot towards the growing speck. It was a long shot, but her aim was good. Maybe...

  At the exact last moment, the speck tumbled quickly to the side, still coming strong. It was an impossible manoeuvre, one that would kill any human pilot in their seat.

  "Shit, shit, shit. Give me tone. Gimme a goddamn lock."

  There should have been one already.

  The thing eased out of the darkness like it was coming home from a tough day at the office. Looking to unwind with a little casual dogfight before skulking off to tuck in its robot children and make sweet love to its robot wife. Weapon mounts jutted from either side of it, each bearing a single projectile. Three sensor arrays glared out of its broad front, each one a horrible eye fixated on her. Like the Zeta, it was nearly all engines and weapons and...

  Crawling skin?

  As she watched, the machine's hull shifted, bristling with what looked like dozens of fins. Some were held out straight, while others folded back against its hull.

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  It's changing its fucking sensor profile. So, no missile lock. Sorry, kids.

  Tomi sneered and started a slow orbit around the freighter's longitudinal axis, hoping to get between it and the incoming fighters from port. She kept the Seeker's nose pointed squarely at the tumbling horror coming straight at her.

  "Cargo, I need your port flak cannon on those ships. They'll be coming in high."

  "I'm trying! Your ugly ass is in the way."

  "My ass is beautiful, and it's right where it needs to be."

  A fresh barrage from the tower cannons slipped barely overhead.

  She fired off another volley at the drone, watching helplessly as it skipped almost merrily to the side. It wasn't even trying to shoot back.

  I'm coming to get you! it hummed happily.

  "Fuck! Incoming to port. My port!"

  Tomi snapped to her right in time to see a pair of dull blue rocket engines barrelling towards them. She clenched her teeth and flipped the Seeker towards them. Pressure built in her chest as the flight suit squeezed for all it was worth, forcing blood into her head. Her vision tunnelled into black. Sweat poured down her face. The fading crosshairs swept across the blue blobs. Her hands felt cold, numb, but she squeezed.

  Pop!

  Tomi gasped. One.

  A spray of metallic flotsam burst from the side of the freighter, impacting the remaining projectile. A red fireball burst directly under the Seeker, throwing it upward toward the incoming Pact Zetas. Hitomi growled as she was pushed down into her seat. Her neck muscles bulged, fighting to keep her head upright.

  A proximity alarm sounded. One of the Pact ships nearly grazed her cockpit. And then, they were gone, slipping into the darkness where they could turn around for another pass.

  The Atlas started pulling ahead of her. She had to get back down into mag-lock range!

  Tomi sucked air. How long had it been? Forty seconds? Thirty?

  Five.

  Tink-t-tink-tink-tink.

  Sounds of powerful hail overcame her. Pellets impacting the Seeker's hull.

  She whipped the ship around to see a horrific trio of lights bearing down on her. Managing to slide the ship back down towards the Atlas, she let off another stream of white-hot pellets. The Seeker was sluggish. That explosion had likely damaged a power conduit, and after the hail of gunfire, the ship was venting its atmosphere.

  An alarm about it had been sounding for a few seconds but was lost in the din.

  A laugh escaped her lips as she looked over her shoulder at the giant bluish ball behind her.

  You're about to have more atmosphere than you can handle, girl.

  She tried juking out of the way, but the drone's guns followed her, peppering both the Seeker and the Atlas.

  "We're taking fire down here!"

  "Shut up, dipshit!" she yelled as the drone tumbled away from another one of her volleys.

  The white lights, searching eyes of a god, shone down on her. A pair of shots impacted the cockpit shielding, making fang-like dents in the metal right in front of her face.

  Her visor flickered as the imaging array took a hit.

  A machine can't make something personal, she tried to tell herself. It can't try to poke your eyes out. But it damn sure felt personal.

  The anemic sensors showed the fighters reaching their turn-around point as blue began to seep into her field of vision. Red streaks of friction formed on the hull. They had hit the ionosphere. Another twenty-five seconds or so, and they'd be in range of the anti-aircraft artillery in West Africa.

  Better let them know you're bringing company.

  "UAR Africa command, this is-"

  A new pair of dents stared at her, nearly in the same place as the previous pair. The accuracy of the monstrosity was scary.

  "This is Red Flight... or what's left of it. Coming in at..."

  Ti-ti-tink-ti-tink

  Shit, where the hell am I?

  The disorientation surprised her. It was getting hard to breathe. Sweat matted her hair to her forehead as heat poured into the cockpit.

  The drone had closed to within two dozen meters, and it was nearly on top of her. Her visor turned red, and a rapidly decreasing number bubbled to the top of the flight info—oxygen concentrations.

  Getting a little stuffy in here. Eh, Dublin? The plushie bobbed its head.

  "Car... cargo. I need-" she gasped through the comm. "I need you to call it in."

  "What the hell are you thinking, lady? I don't have access to military channels."

  Tomi managed to tap the communications panel to her left.

  "Comms... comms bridged. You... talk."

  "What- Fuck! Incoming Starboard!"

  Tomi jerked the sticks to her right, realizing too late that she was still facing backward. The flak cannon fired, spraying shrapnel a second too late. One missile slammed into the freighter's side. The second tore into the Atlas's manoeuvring engine, forcing it downward. The opposite shoulder surged upward, knocking the Seeker's right wing.

  The motion probably saved Hitomi's life.

  An ore container the size of her bunk back on the Leading Edge flew out of Atlas's exposed cargo hold, narrowly missing the Seeker's depressed left wing.

  The drone wheeled out of the way as the container slipped away into the darkness of space.

  Dipshit was screaming in her ear.

  Tomi clenched her teeth and looked over her shoulder. The world flickered as the circuits to her visor began to fail. Was what she was thinking the product of sheer brilliance, or the oxygen deprivation?

  Ehn, either way.

  She bore down, forcing what little remained of her synapses to keep working, no matter how much they begged for air. Her hands gripped the triggers as sparks flew from the display.

  A second ore container knocked back and forth in the open hull.

  Come on.

  The crosshairs drifted away from the drone and the twin dents before her eyes deepened. Her lungs sucked painfully thin atmosphere. If this didn’t work out she was rightfully and royally screwed.

  "Down!"

  The bellowed word broke through her ears as the ore container broke loose, skipping along the Atlas's hull. Instinctively, she forced the Seeker down, scratching the paint off the freighter. At the same time, her fingers squeezed the triggers.

  It'll move down, closer...

  The drone spun up and away from the freighter, and her shot hit empty space, sailing out into the void and disappearing. The drone...

  The drone's port weapon's platform exploded where it spun. Tomi could swear in the second before it was tossed away by the force that there was a look of surprise in its three beady eyes.

  "Wha..." The air was thin, fighting against her lungs.

  "Courtesy of Africa."

  "That..." she breathed the last of the oxygen in the cabin. The world was getting dark. A pretty, dark blue. "That's great, dipshit."

  The world dissolved into heat red streaks as the darkness claimed her.