“I need to drop out of interstellar speed to engage the cloak.” That would take them off their pursuers’ screens and give him time to lose them.
“Do it.”
The ship slowed, the stars turning back to pinpricks of light. “Engaging cloak now.”
He programmed in a couple of his standard evasion flight patterns. They zigzagged across space, moving well away from the location the ships had on them but still in the general direction of Hydrae.
“Nissa, pull up the sensor readings and the maps Ry uploaded. See if you can find any nearby planets, an asteroid field, or a moon. Any place we can use to hide.”
With a nod, she set to work.
Justyn stared at the three glowing blips on the sensors. He didn’t like this. The usual MO for space pirates out here was to wait in ambush. These ships were coming in fast from behind.
Almost like they knew exactly where theMercurywould be.
Another alarm blared and he cut it off. “The ships are gaining. They can fucking see us.” It should have been impossible. Unless their pursuers had the exact code for his cloak.
“They have your cloak code.” Nissa put the clues together at the same time he did. “How?” She thumped a hand against the console. “The mole.”
“Bingo.” Justyn ground his teeth together. “Find us somewhere to hide, Nissa.”
“Right.” Her fingers flew across the screen. “There is a tiny asteroid field. About seventy-five million kilometers away.”
“Too far.” And Hydrae was also still too far away. Even if he pushed his girl at top speed, the ships would reach them well before they arrived.
“There’s a small triple-star system. There are three exoplanets orbiting one of the stars. Two are small iron-planets.”
Uninhabitable hunks of iron-rich rock. “And the third?”
“A Super-Earth. Habitable. Covered in heavy vegetation.” She kept tapping. “It’s emitting low level radiation—not enough to harm us, but enough to mess with sensors a bit.”
“And if it messes with our sensors, it should do the same to our incoming friends.” He leaned across and smacked a kiss on her mouth. “You are brilliant.”
“I’ll give you a proper kiss if you get us out of this alive.”
“Well, with incentive like that...” He winked at her before he turned back to the ship’s controls.
They raced through space, and soon the planet came into visual range. It was a bright-green jewel filling the screen.
But seconds later, Justyn was cursing. “The ships are almost on us.”
“How can they have caught us?” she asked.
“I don’t know what’s powering their engines, but they arefast.” He made to circle behind the planet, but his gut was already telling him it wouldn’t be enough. “Send a distress trans to theNomad.”
With a nod, she hurried to obey.
He scanned the planet. If they could set down somewhere, maybe they could find somewhere to hide. But the vegetation below redefined the word “dense”—and besides that, who knew what was hiding beneath the thick sea of green?
“It’s not going through!” Nissa’s voice was tight. “Something’s jamming the signal.”
Who the fuck were these guys? With this sort of serious tech, they definitely weren’t simple space pirates. “Okay, hang on.”
Justyn used every single trick he knew. He maneuvered the ship in ways it wasn’t designed for, her hull shuddering under the pressure. But he knew what his girl could handle.
It didn’t matter. Nothing shook their persistent attackers. Soon the ships came into visual range.
Nissa gasped. “They’re Raspian Firebrands!”
