The raiders followed us into the field. Bold. Stupid.
One of them misjudged the clearance. Its shields caught the edge of a rotating asteroid, and the ricochet sent it spinning into a second rock. The explosion was brief, a flash of white light, then debris.
Three raiders left.
"Gap closing early," Zor'go warned. "Asteroid seventeen's rotation is accelerating."
I saw it, the massive rock was tumbling faster than the scan had predicted, its irregular shape catching solar wind and changing its spin. The window I'd calculated was shrinking.
"Increase speed by twelve percent," I said. "We can still make it."
"That's too fast for the turn radius?—"
"Trust me!"
Kret'nor pushed the engines. We shot forward, the asteroid looming larger on the viewscreen. The gap was closing, closing?—
We burst through with less than a meter of clearance. The shields sparked where they'd grazed the rock face, but held.
"Shields at sixty-eight percent," Vaxon reported. "Raiders are falling back. Two remaining."
"They're not stupid," I muttered, already plotting our next move. The asteroid field was getting denser. The gaps were smaller, the timing more critical. "But we're committed now."
For the next seven minutes, I called out corrections while Zor'go ran the calculations to confirm my instincts weren't about to kill us all. It was like our work on the expansion project, but compressed and intensified, that same creative synchronicity we'd developed over weeks of collaboration, now deployed at velocities that made every second critical.
"Port ten degrees. Now. Now!"
"Calculating... confirmed. Execute."
"That cluster ahead, see how the three asteroids are rotating around a common center? We can use their gravitational interaction. Slingshot effect."
"Risky. The centrifugal forces could tear us apart."
"Not if we hit it at exactly the right angle and speed."
"How right?"
"Very right."
Zor'go's markings flickered in what might have been amusement or terror. Possibly both. "Transmit the angle."
We threaded through spaces that shouldn't have been navigable. Slipped between rocks with clearances measured in meters while moving at speeds that made those meters feel like millimeters. The ship groaned and shuddered. Shields dropped to forty percent, then thirty-five.
But we were alive.
And the two remaining raiders had stopped following.
"Clear space ahead," Kret'nor announced, her voice shaking with relief. "We're through the densest sector."
I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. My hands were shaking. The datapad slipped from my fingers, clattering to the deck.
Zor'go caught it before it could slide away, his much larger hand steady where mine trembled. "Excellent work, Architect Chauncy."
"We're not clear yet," Vaxon said, studying his tactical displays. "Those raiders didn't follow us through the field, but they're not leaving either. They're holding position at the field's edge."
"Waiting for us to come out," I said.
"Or waiting for their friends to arrive. I'm reading additional energy signatures. Could be more ships incoming." Vaxon pulled up long-range scans. "We need to move. The exit vector on the far side of the field is clear, but we'll need to transit another dense sector to reach it."
