Part of me was curious if the pirates behind me had twigged on what I was up to. It didn’t look like it, making me wonder just what they thought I was planning. I had slightly altered our vector while speeding up, but not enough to allow us to escape. The new vector carried us near a small asteroid but any idea one might have from popular fiction that hiding behind an asteroid was possible, would have to think again. Well, it was possible but it wouldn’t help in this scenario, it wasn’t like the pirates hunting us would simply forget that we existed, just because they couldn’t see us for a moment or even a few minutes.

Luckily, my plan had nothing to do with their sensors and everything with their speed.

Flying higher than the rated speed was always an hair-raising experience, the chances to hit something were astronomically small but that didn’t make the chance zero. Every mental fibre responsible for controlling the Tyton was stretched taut, ready to snap without so much as a moments notice, knowing that every microsecond of reaction-time might be the difference between getting away scot-free, wrecking the Tyton and instantly dying in a cloud of expanding debris.

I hated it, even as a small part of me loved the feeling, the adrenaline thick in my veins, the thrill burning in my mind. It was that disposition that allowed me to thrive as a Starfighter-pilot, to accept that I might die but know that it was up to me to prevent that.

Finally, after a few minutes that felt like they had taken an eternity, we reached the waypoint I had set, a mere five-thousand kilometers away from asteroid that was slowly tumbling through space. I had designated it as a target beforehand, allowing me to fire the torpedoes without a target the computer recognised as such. Right at the set moment, I flipped the Tyton around, aiming the torpedo-launcher towards the clump of rock. It was Airah’s job to trigger the launchers, my own attention was focused on the proximity-sensors, knowing that every moment might be the one a rock appeared to end our life.

There was a light, almost imperceptible shudder, maybe just a figment of my imagination, running through the Tyton as the torpedo-launcher spat out the two orbs of anti-matter, nigh invisible to the naked eye, held together by a magnetic marvel of science. Their journey took less than a second, a time-frame in which I had began to flip the Tyton back around, moving away from the asteroid on our original vector.

It felt anti-climatic, almost like something one might see in a movie, the moment a massive flare of energy erupted from the small asteroid, when the anti-matter got into contact with the normal matter, eliminating each other particle by particle, releasing an ungodly amount of energy in a lethal mix of radiation, particles and weird physics that went well over my head. The practical result, in this case, was that the poor asteroid absorbed a massive dose of energy and shattered into millions of smaller rocks in a quickly spreading cloud.

By now, our pursuers had obviously realised what I had been up to and they were decelerating quite hard but my timing had been good. The asteroid had been moving on a vector roughly opposite of our own and just because I had kicked it from behind, that hadn’t changed too much. Sure, there were new elements to the vector and the asteroid was now a cloud of rocks, but its original vector was still there. Only that dodging one small rock was easy, dodging a million rocks, spreading out like cosmic buckshot, was a lot harder.

Too hard, as the violent collision of one Starfighter showed. It was still mostly intact, the rock hitting it must have been small or the Starfighter reasonably lucky, but it would never accelerate under its own power again.

I focused back on flying, decelerating us down to our rated speed and even a little lower, allowing me to relax just a little, to the point that I was able to talk. Our pursuers had decelerated hard enough that they’d never catch up to us, not until we jumped out. We were, for all intents and purposes, safe, even if they were still out there.

“Congratulations, was that your first fighter-kill?” I asked Airah, the adrenaline making me feel exhilarated and even a little floaty. Not to the point that I couldn’t pilot, but knowing that we had played a game with our lives on the line and had won was a feeling I would never get fully accustomed to. I could see the flush creep onto Airah’s face and realised that she had been pale, the discoloration on her hands hinting at the fact that she had gripped her knuckles tightly.

“What?” she asked, looking at me with dilated pupils.

I reached over, gently taking hold of her shoulder and noticed that she started to shake, the adrenaline apparently getting to her. I considered ways to help her for a moment, before locking the manual controls, transferring every process to my headgear. That way, I was able to pull her over onto my lap as her shakes started to get more violent, while she started to giggle in a slightly deranged manner. I had no real idea how to handle her in that moment, my own body still vibrating with excitement, so I simply help her, gently stroking her back, while waiting for the Tyton to carry us to the jump-point.

There was a small chance that one of the pirates would attempt a hail-mary jump, trying to jump to our position but such micro-jumps were complicated, highly unreliable and quite likely to burn out your jump-coils. Unless they had some serious motivation for chasing us, I doubted that they would risk it.

Finally, without any further incident, we reached the jump-point and vanished in a flash of light, leaving the system behind us. We were about as safe as one could be amongst the stars, in a dimension where physics were just wonky.

The safety allowed me to relax and focus on Airah, who was now a lot calmer but still clinging to me.

“Airah, we are out of the system, everything’s fine.” I assured her, trying to project calmness.

She pulled away from me, just a bit, still sitting on my lap, a position made a little awkward by our height-difference. Now that she had straightened herself out, her chest was on the same level as my face, the skin-tight ship-suit showing me almost as many details as I had seen when she was changing in our room. In this case, as many details as I had seen when it had been cold. I forced myself to ignore those pointed details, focusing on her face,. Her eyes were still a little dilated and her cheeks flush with colour, making her look simply erotic. More details to ignore.

“Thank you, Twitch.” she said, after a shaking herself for a moment, before looking down, trying to figure how we could disentangle us. When I had pulled her onto my lap, I had pulled half of her body over the center-console, making her position a little precarious. There was simply no way to get any leverage, for either of us. I could have pushed her back over but that would most likely ended up with her, sprawling on the floor.

“Here, that should help.” I said, seeing her problem and using the headgear to lower the artificial gravity to a fraction of the normal strength. That way, I could simply stand, taking her with me. In normal gravity, without some sort of leverage, I wouldn’t have been able to do so, not from the comfortable, slightly reclined, position of the pilot-couch.

Somehow, holding her with one arm behind her back, the other under her knees made me feel good, especially when she let out a small shriek at the sudden movement and wrapped her arms around my neck.

“There you go.” I added, after stepping away from the pilot-seat, still carrying her. I let go of her legs, letting them gently float downwards, until she had dem securely under her.

“Thank you, again. I’m not sure if I could have escaped those guys. The Tyton is a great frigate but it’s only a frigate.” she admitted, looking a bit embarrassed. She held onto my neck for a moment, before giving me a short, hugging squeeze and stepping back.

“We are in this together, remember? I accepted to become your partner, so you can rely on me.” I assured her, now feeling both pleased and embarrassed myself.

“Do you want to switch to your rest-cycle? I think the adrenaline hit you a little hard.” I asked, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to sleep for quite some time, so I could keep watch while we were in hyperspace.

Airah hesitated for a moment before nodding and padding off, towards the head we shared. Maybe she wanted to take a shower before resting.

Shaking my head, I carefully stored the feeling of having Airah’s body pressed against me for later. It had felt wonderful. Maybe I’d need a shower myself, but later.