It was old, it shook, it made all sorts of worrying sounds, but Starrider was damn fast.

The ship shot through the atmosphere and burst into space, right in the midst of the raging battlefield.

“I’m assuming you have a plan?” asked Kaine in alarm.

“Simple,” said Val as her fingers ran across the console. “We are invisible. While their sensors could probably spot us if they were looking, they’re all kind of too busy right now to look. As for the ship behind us, with so many others around, they’ll have more trouble picking up our signal. And I suspect they’ll quickly become otherwise occupied.”

“Stray shots could still hit us.”

“Which is what happened last time,” reminded Nim.

“Yes, well, we were caught unprepared. We are no longer that. Plus, we now have a shield.”

“Alright. So we get lost in there...” Kaine pointed at the battling ships. “Then what?”

“We keep going until we’re on the other side, then we jump.”

“You sure your ship can handle that? It’s in a sorry state...”

“It could handle it fine before we got stranded down there. Just hold on to something and stop whining.”

“Hey! I’m not whining. Just voicing some legitimate concerns.”

She snorted but didn’t reply as she maneuvered the ship through the battlefield.

“Those are Qevahri warcrafts,” said Kaine after observing the scene for a moment.

“Why would they attack Rimzana?”

“I don’t think that’s what they’re doing...”

She frowned, though her eyes remained focused on the screen as she slid between the giant vessels.

“Care to elaborate?”

“There are so many of them... if Rimzana was the target, they could easily have sent a few ships down there by now.”

“So you think what? They just want to blow up some Imperial troops?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. But they do seem laser-focused.”

Starrider flew through the battle, never straying from its path. Rays would occasionally hit it, but they’d bounce off the shield, sometimes going back to the originator.

“That’s bound to draw attention,” remarked Kaine.

She shrugged. “We’re moving so fast it wouldn’t matter. We’d no longer be in that spot by the time they looked.”

It took them five minutes to clear out of the mess.

As soon as the stars greeted them, she punched down on a large green button.

“Warp drive engaged,” said Nim.

Kaine gripped the sides of his seat.

Val noticed and chuckled. “Nervous much?”

“I don’t like jumps. Bigger ships than yours have vanished while jumping.”

She grimaced. “That’s hogwash. Legends. It’s perfectly safe.”

He remained quiet as the stars grew in intensity. They became so bright, the screen went white. It was an illusion, of course, the stars didn’t change at all. The warp engine was distorting the view.

The ship shook under them for a few seconds, then everything went stable again and the stars reappeared.

“Done,” said Val as she got out of the chair. “Let’s go get something to eat. I’m famished.”

He followed her quietly to the mess hall.

“So,” she started, “you haven’t told me how you got caught by the Impies?”

He snorted. “I made a joke they didn’t like.”

“Are you serious?”

He glanced at her. “You know they’ll arrest you if you sneeze at the wrong time or look funny at them, don’t you?”

“That’s what parents tell their kids to make them stay clear from the Imperials. You’re not a child, are you?”

“No, but it’s what happened.”

“What was the joke?”

He made a face. “One of them bumped into me in the street. All I saw was the red of his uniform, so I blurted out that he should be careful where he dropped his tomatoes.”

Val grimaced. “You call that a joke?”

“Hey, I was on edge.”

“Well, either way, you shouldn’t have said that to an Impie’s face.”

“I didn’t realize it was an Impie until after I’d put my foot in my mouth.”

They reached the mess as he talked. Val wasn’t sure what to think about this guy, but she felt like he wasn’t being upfront with her. She didn’t trust him, that was for sure.

“What were you doing on Rimzana?”

They sat at a table and she tapped on the in-built console to bring up a list of food options. It floated in the air between them.

“Looking for something,” he said evasively.

“Like what?”

She swiped through the choices and selected one by moving her finger in a circular motion. It glowed for a second, then faded.

“People hire me to find things they’ve lost,” he said. “I can’t say more than that without breaching the terms of my contract.”

He eyed his options as he talked, then selected an item as well.

“How do people lose things?”

“You’d be surprised,” he chuckled. “Folks lose all kinds of things all the time.”

She quirked a brow. “I doubt they’d call for your services to find a pen.”

“No, I imagine they wouldn’t.”

So he didn’t want to share. Fine.

The food they had ordered appeared in front of them. As holograms, at first, but then they materialized.

“I’ll drop you off on the first planet we find,” she said as she started eating. She didn’t want to keep this guy on board any longer than necessary. “I’ll expect full payment by the time we get there.”

He nodded. “Of course. A deal’s a deal.”

They fell silent as they ate.

***

Millions of light-years away from them, a small ship picked up a signal.

They had finally found him.

With a hurried gesture, the pilot engaged the ship’s warp drive.