The Zatermen were scum, thieves, scavengers, criminals, all the same. Their hearts were as hard as their scales. They were so vile the Exon Nebulic Concord—Exnec had banned their entire race from all four Nebulae… all but the Fringe nebula. And now these crazy bastards wanted his ship.
Greg threw the Stellar Runner in a sharp roll, energy blasts tearing past his hall close enough to rattle the shields. His fuel gauge dipped red: 23%. Just great. A few more surges like that and he wouldn't even make it to Galu.
The black and red ship loomed behind, cannons spitting angry fire. Greg banked toward a drifting belt of old mining rock. Chunks of ore the size of towers spun slowly in the dark, faint veins of gas glowing through them. Dangerous cover—but better than open sky.
The Runner skimmed between two boulders. The Zatermen followed without hesitation, their blasts sparking off stone and hurling debris. A fragment clipped the Runner's wing—alarms wailed.
"Hold together, pal." He hissed under his breath in a mixture of anger and sadness.
If the Runner still had an AI, it might've offered options. But Exnec had stripped the system years ago. To them efficiency mattered more than pilot lives. Greg slammed a switch—flares shot from his cannons, red streaks cutting across the void. The enemy missile veered, detonating against rock. The blast shoved both ships sideways.
Greg's vision blurred. Nausea rising from the earlier hyper jump. He forced it down. He couldn't afford weakness now. Not when his life was on the line.
Another stream of energy blasts stitched across his shields. Warning lights flared to life: shield integrity dropping fast. He gritted his teeth. His fingers tight on the controls. He needed a plan. Running straight to Galu was suicide.
He looked at the fuel gauge again: 20%. His options were down to two, both bad, the latter worse.
Camouflage: kill the engines, mask his heat, and pray the rocks swallowed him whole. But if the Zatermen carried a half-decent tracker, they'd carve him out of hiding like a rat in some vent shaft.
Or the other choice: risk a warp lane to Galu. Thin reserves, a damaged drive and a high chance of getting lost in deep space. His ship was already damaged. Well it was either hide and die slow or jump and maybe die faster.
Greg's grip tightened on the throttle. Either way, the odds were stacked against him. He took a look at a star map, magnifying it to see the nearest warp lane. The coordinates pulsed faintly at the corner of the screen, just a narrow thread leading out of the this system into Galu. The nav system screamed warnings: INSUFFICIENT FUEL, DRIVE INTEGRITY LOW, COLLAPSE RISK: HIGH. He swallowed hard. Collapse risk. That meant he might not just die, he might vanish, scattered atom by atom in deep space.
Behind him, the Zatermen ship surged forward, cannons flashing like angry stars. One more hit to the shields and he'd not even make the jump.
"Alright, pal," he whispered to the Runner. "We've cheated worse."
Greg yanked the controls, turning the Runner toward the warp beacon. The lane shimmered ahead, a tear of blue-white light split through space. His console lit up like fireworks as systems rerouted every last drop of energy to the drive.
The Zatermen followed, reckless enough to dive into his wake.
He slammed the ignition.
The universe folded.
The Runner screamed around him, metal groaning, panels flickering, alarms shrieking in a deafening chorus. Greg's stomach lurched as reality stretched thin, stars warping into long rivers of light. Pressure crushed his chest, his vision blurred to darkness.
He forced his eyes open, fighting to remain conscious. The Runner's frame shuddered like it was seconds from tearing apart. A new warning blared: FUEL CRITICAL. DRIVE COILS OVERHEATING. This might be it.
Greg's hands gripped the controls until his knuckles bled white. "Damn it, just hold. Hold—"
Something banged— a panel blew open, sparks flying across the cockpit. The Runner veered sideways, tumbling dangerously close to lane collapse. Greg threw his weight against the stick, dragging her steady. The edge of the warp lane flickered, and the ship shuddered violently. A second longer and they'd have been ripped off course.
The Zatermen's ship flashed briefly behind him in the warped current. Too close. If they held on to the lane, they'd come through right on top of .him
Greg rerouted everything into one desperate surge. The Runner howled. The lane spat him out.
Blackness. Silence.
Then—stars. Real, steady stars.
Greg gasped, air flooding back into his lungs. His vision steadied. Ahead, a soft glow spread across the void—the green and gold swirl of Galu's upper atmosphere. He almost laughed, but the sound came out cracked and tired.
The console blinked a fuel warning: RESERVES: 3%. Just enough to reach orbit, no more.
Greg slumped back in his chair. Relief washed over him, heavy as a blanket. He'd made it. Against odds, against death, against the bastard aliens chasing him—he'd made it.
But his eyes drifted back to the scanner. The lane behind him still pulsed faintly. If the Zatermen's ship had held together through the jump…
Greg exhaled through his teeth. Galu meant safety—sort of. But maybe not for long.
He yanked the yoke forward and the ship swayed steadily through the atmosphere—he had no plans of staying to see if they survived.
The Runner shuddered as Greg flew through the atmosphere and down. Galu looked less like a planet and more like a scar. Even from orbit, its cracked ash-gray plains and jagged black ridges were visible. Crystalline veins of Xilvi— an energy ore for blasters stretched all across its surface. Orbiting stations clung to its atmosphere like leeches, connected by blinking supply lines and shuttle trains. From above the world radiated a vibrant metallic beauty—harsh, cold and equally deadly but extremely valuable without a doubt. It was a kind of place that promised wealth to corporations and ruin to everyone else.
The Runner dived down from the sky, flew over a few ridges and plains before coming to land on the main landing platform of Galu mines.
Greg let his head sink back, a shaky breath rattling out of him. The Runner's hull ticked and groaned, cooling after the burn. He almost let his eyes close. Almost.
A sharp beep dragged his eyes open. The console flared with red: RESERVES: 1%. DRIVE INTEGRITY: FATAL.
Greg's jaw clenched. The Runner was a wreck, held together by stubborn metal and luck. And Greg knew—luck never lasted long.