He launched himself off her lap and twelve pounds of ginger fury hit the console like a furry fucking cannonball. His back paws landed on the dark section to the right of her station, the part that wasn't her button, and something underneath it made an odd sound.
A whine, high and sharp, climbing fast before it cut out completely.
Every light on the console went red.
Not amber but red. Flashing, angry we-are-all-going-to-die red.
"What the—" She grabbed for Barnaby. He'd already jumped to the deck and was walking away with his tail lashing side to side. "What did he do? What was that?"
Thyaar's hands had stopped moving.
That scared her more than the red lights. Since the pirates had started chasing them he hadn't stopped moving but now his hands were still on the console, and he was staring at a display she couldn't read.
"Thyaar?"
"The lateral drive array," he said. His voice was very even. Too even. "Your cat just stepped on the lateral drive array."
"And that's...?"
"That's the thing that lets us outrun them."
Oh… shit.
"Can you fix it?" she asked, crossing her fingers. He had to be able to fix it.
His jaw worked as he pulled up schematics. She watched him scroll through screens of alien text and diagrams. With each scroll, his expression hardened.
"Not while we're running." Killing the schematics, he pulled the navigation overlay back up. His gaze tracked across it, calculating something she couldn't see. "I need to put us somewhere they can't follow. Somewhere small enough that their ships won't fit."
"And will the Vett'an fit?"
"She'd better or we’re all dead."
Grabbing the flight controls, he banked them hard and it felt like the ship dropped out of the sky. Or space… or whatever. Her stomach went sideways again and she clutched the edge of the console. On the console display, she saw the three pirates change course behind them, adjusting to match.
But the Vett'an was moving differently now. Not the wide, sweeping evasions from before. These were tighter, more controlled. She leaned over, still clutching the arm of her chair, until she could see what he was looking at. He was heading for a cluster of shapes on the display, a tangle of overlapping signatures that looked like rocks or debris or?—
"An asteroid field?" She'd seen enough holodramas to recognize it. "You're flying us into an asteroid field?"
"Debris belt."
“Rocks in space! Same difference!” She gasped as they made another hard cant to the side.
“It makes all the difference.” He didn't look up. "This is listed as an old mining operation. Which means the shafts go deep enough to hide in and the gaps are too narrow for anything bigger than us." He spared her half a glance. "It'll be tight."
"Define tight."
"Do you want me to answer that honestly?"
Biting her lip, she didn't answer.
The debris field swallowed them. Rocks the size of buildings tumbled past the viewport, close enough that she could see the mining scars gouged into their surfaces. Thyaar flew through them like he'd been born in the pilot’s seat, threading gaps that she would swear were too small, but he made them fit somehow.
The pirates fell back. She watched them on the screen… the three signatures slowed and started to circle, holding position at the edge of the debris field. Shit, he’d been right. They were too big to follow.
"They're waiting," she said.
"They are."
