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He’d moved over to the second device. His expression was focused as his fingers worked carefully beneath the casing, pulling loose a strip of something thin and flexible. The easy charm had gone from his face as he held something up between two fingers.

“What is that?” B asked. It didn’t look like anything she recognized.

Pink, it had a strange bubbled surface, little raised pockets running through it in a grid, with a stiff waffle pattern beneath. Like somebody had made packing material out of cheap ice-cream cones.

Stevie frowned. “What? No. We checked them both over. There’s no signal. They’re both dormant.”

“That’s because you’re assuming it was Terran,” Rann said, voice rougher than usual. “Well, that part is, but this…” He waved the waffle thing. “This part definitely is not.”

Blythe stared at it.

Not terran. Which meant it was alien.

Shit. No one was supposed to be dealing with alien tech; there were laws against it. And Joe was a human bastard with human money, human thugs, human ways of making people disappear. He didn’t have access to⁠—

Her gaze snapped to Rann.

So how the hell did a human charter pilot know what alien tracking technology looked like?

She didn’t get chance to ask as the ship’s alarm blared overhead, harsh enough to hurt, and the engineering lights flashed red across Rann’s face.

“Myla to all crew,” came the biologist’s voice over the comm, tight with fear. “Multiple ships incoming. Fast.”

“Cockpit,” Stevie snapped. “Now!”

Blythe hit the corridor at a dead sprint, one hand skimming the bulkhead for balance as red lights pulsed overhead. The alarm kept up its shrill, brain-scraping howl, making her wince.

Rann was ahead of her already, ducking through the low doorway to the bridge without slowing. She crammed into the cockpit seconds after him.

The small cockpit was already cramped, but Layla and Stevie squeezed in after Blythe. She looked at the main screen and her stomach dropped.

Three ships were converging on them from different directions, black shapes against the starfield. They were too far off to make out details, but it didn’t matter. Just the outlines were enough. They were fast and heavily armed, judging by the ugly little sensor returns coming off them.

Which meant that they weren’t here to chat.

“Myla, out of the chair,” Rann said.

Myla twisted around, her dark eyes huge. “But I⁠—”

“Out. Now.”

She scrambled sideways, nearly tangling her foot in the chair base as Rann dropped into the pilot’s seat. The battered console looked even smaller with him folded into it, knees pushed up beneath the controls, and his broad shoulders blocking half the displays.

His hands moved fast across the board, and the ship groaned as he brought the engines around.

B grabbed the back of the copilot’s chair, the stars spinning across the forward screen as the trader turned away from the incoming ships. The engines vibrated in complaint through the deck hard enough to buzz against her feet.

“Starboard’s still damaged,” she said, slipping into the empty copilot’s chair. “You’ve got minimal output.”

“I know.”

“Then what are you doing?” she hissed, staring at the readouts. They were climbing far too slowly to be any use. “There’s no way we can outrun them.”

Rann shook his head, pale hair dancing over his shoulders as the ship shuddered. “Not trying to outrun them. Just get to that before they do.”

He nodded toward the nearest planet.

She followed his gaze.