Alarms came to life around him, loud enough to wake the dead.

“Contact! Contact!” Engines growled and Jack felt a momentary press of gravity before the inertial compensators synced with the acceleration. They needed work too.

“Three ships behind us.” Betty brought them up on the holographic display on the bridge’s forward bulkhead. “Target One is a standard freighter, ten thousand kilometers away.”

“What?” Jack asked in shock. When Betty started measuring distances in kilometers, they were far too close. And ten thousand kilometers was like tanks at ten paces. Nobody had a good day when ships had disagreements at that range.

“Target Two and Three are three lightseconds out, with deflection grids online,” Betty continued to report, ignoring his question. “I have no visual on them.”

Jack shook his head. “What are they doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Betty said with a straight face. “Maybe smuggling?”

Jack sighed as the charge went home. “Touché.”

“Target One is attempting a targeting lock!”

“Get us out of here!” Jack zoomed the display in on the offending ship. Their new enemy looked like one of a dozen tramp freighter classes in use throughout the Terran Sector at first glance, primary ship core surrounded by cargo pods. A large hyperdrive surrounded by standard reaction drives dominated the rear of the ship.

“Engaging electronic warfare and performing evasive maneuvers,” Betty shouted.

Vagabond began to move back and forth around Jack, the inertial compensators not completely able to mask Betty’s evasive maneuvers. He was really glad he didn’t get sick on roller coasters.

“Deflection grid coming online. Hyperdrive charging.”

Jack relaxed back into his seat and waited. Freighter weapons couldn’t break through their grid before they could accelerate out of range. Then the ship jerked, metal and composites screamed in pain, and he felt their engines die as the hammer of a god tore through them.

 

The Gemini Affair is a short story written for An Atlas to Time, Space, and Bonfires.  There’s a kickstarter for it right now in case your interested in seeing some a couple dozen stories by different authors.  And this one, of course.  😉

An Atlas to Time, Space, and Bonfires Kickstarter