As if to back up Damian’s declaration, the whole ship shuddered. A half dozen lights on the console started blinking. Triskar kept his head bent, hands rushing, pressing buttons like he was trying to swat flies while Nick and the royals stared at Damian’s back.

“What are you talking about?” Asl asked. “Who’s attacking?”

The screen shifted to a rear view, showing, in as nauseating a manner as possible, the half dozen small ships that were following the Stargazer. They were each maybe the size of a motor boat, not more, and looked like self-propelled arrowheads, spiky and gray. The lead ship fired, and the blue-white laser bolt took up half the screen, a blinding light that burned Nick’s eyes while Damian lurched the ship in the other direction.

“What are those?” Prince Et asked.

“Planetary Defense,” Damian said. “They’re Blen’s cops.”

Et frowned and squinted at the screen, apparently not as familiar as Damian with various planets’ police forces. “That’s not possible,” he said finally. “We’re on a diplomatic mission. Open a line. We need to talk to them.”

“I’m trying,” Damian said. “They won’t let me get a word in edgewise.” He pressed a button and a staticky voice filled the bridge.

“-re a fugitive from Blenish justice. Surrender now and you won’t be harmed.”

“Well, just surrender,” Asl said. “We’ll talk to the pilots and get this all straightened out.” She leaned forward and pressed the mic button. “Stop firing, we surrender. We need to talk to your leader.”

Another laser bolt lit the screen, this one making contact. The ship shuddered under the attack, and a half-dozen warning lights starting blinking on the console.

“They’re not really making me want to surrender to them,” Damian said. “If they break my ship, you’re paying for repairs.”

Asl ignored him. She pressed the mic button again, “Hold your fire. I am Princess Asl Trexial of Reita. My brother and I are on a diplomatic mission—” she was thrown away from the controls as Damian put the ship through its paces trying to dodge another volley.

“What’s going on?” Asl asked. “What did you say to them?”

“Nothing!” Damian sounded a bit offended at the suggestion. “They started firing as soon as we left hyperspace.”

“They wouldn’t do that,” Asl insisted. “Blen has laws about that sort of thing. They wouldn’t attack unprovoked.”

“Do you consider this an attack, your highness?” Damian asked, wide eyed.

“Pull around,” Triskar said in a low voice. 

“Hold on!”

Damian spun the ship around. Nick gasped for air as the inertia pulled him into his seat. Asl stumbled into him, further crushing his chest. The ships disappeared from the rear view, and it took a moment for the screen to switch to the front. The Stargazer was now facing down the Blennish fleet head-on.

“What are you doing?” Et asked incredulously. 

“Uh, Damian…” Nick wasn’t sure what he was going to ask. ‘What are you doing?’ ‘How much fire can this ship take?’ ‘Are we going to die?’ His questions died unasked. Damian was past words. Even Princess Asl’s multiple protests that he stop what he was doing and seek a peaceful resolution fell on deaf ears. Damian didn’t even look like he was paying attention. 

The Stargazer was far larger than the ships attacking it. They looked like rats attacking a wolf, tiny, scurrying, hard to catch. Nick wanted to say a half dozen rats couldn’t kill a wolf, but he wasn’t sure how the laser guns affected the calculus.

“How strong are your shields?” Et asked.

“Strong enough.”

The Stargazer plowed forward at full speed. For a moment, the enemy ships didn’t react. They weren’t prepared for the Stargazer to go on the offensive. When they finally did react, they spread out, flanking the Stargazer and sneaking around behind it. 

“What are you doing?” Et asked. “They’ll trap you.”

Damian didn’t respond. “Triskar, ready?”

Triskar pivoted in his seat, turning from the front controls to the panel beside Nick. He reached his hand into a hole in the console and said, “Ready.”

One of their attackers remained still as the rest moved to flank. The ship looked slightly larger, had a few markings on its wings. Nick figured it was the lead ship, maybe more important than the rest. Damian charged directly at that ship, flying with one hand and firing the front guns wildly with the other. Most of the shots missed, but those that hit were dispersed by the lead ship’s shields. 

“What are you doing?” Et asked.

“Damian…” Nick said again, not a question this time. This didn’t seem to be working, and despite their speed, the other ships were landing more and more hits on the Stargazer. 

“Now!” Damian shouted. He spun the ship around. The g-forces pulled Nick into his seat again, but the princess had braced herself better and remained standing. Damian pointed the ship directly at another ship, the one directly to the left of the lead. That ship had just been firing at the Stargazer, and it was nearly stationary. Damian gave them everything he had, landing five or six direct shots at the ship before spinning away, turning the ship nearly a hundred and eighty degrees and flooring it in that direction. It was the rear of the circle that the enemy ships were forming, and there was still a larger gap between those two ships and the others.

Nick focused on Damain’s flying so much that he missed Triskar until he heard the man shout. Operating the rear guns, Triskar fired at the enemy ship as Damian flew away from it. The rear view appeared on the screen, next to the front view, just in time for Nick to see the enemy ship explode in a flash of plasma and twisted metal. 

“Woo,” Damian cried. “One down, six to go.”

“What are you doing?” Asl shouted back. “They’re Blennish ships. We’re on the same side.”

“Sorry, princess, but my side doesn’t have room for ships that shoot at me,” Damian said. “I’ll leave that kind of idealism to you and your brother.”

“You haven’t fixed anything,” Et said as the Stargazer slipped out of the enemy circle. “There are still too many of them, and how much reserve power did you burn going that fast?”

“We’re fine,” Damian said.

“Actually, we’re at half power,” Triskar said. “That stunt took a good twenty five percent of our battery.”

Damian growled.

“What does that mean?” Nick asked.

“Without battery, we’re left with only the amount of power the ship’s core can put out in the moment,” Damian explained. “Which will let us fly, and run the shields, and fire the guns, but…”

“Not well,” Et finished. “Certainly not enough to outlast multiple enemies with energy stores.”

“New plan,” Damian said. “Tris, keep firing behind us. Try to scatter them if you can’t drop ‘em. Highnesses, did you have an exact location in mind on Blen?”

“Extor,” Asl said. “The capital city.”

Damian banked the ship gently, and a large blue and green marble came into view on the forward screen. “It’s a race, then. One we need to win.” He punctuated the declaration by slamming a button on the console, and Nick felt an invisible hand pulling him sideways, toward the back of the ship.

Damian continued to swerve often, changing direction randomly as laser bolts passed to their left and right. Warning lights started to blink. The ship started to vibrate somewhere deep. Nick felt it in his bones. 

“Switch the reserve power to the engines,” Damian said.

“We’re at forty-three percent,” Triskar protested. “We won’t have enough for the shields.”

“If we get away from them, we won’t need shields,” Damian said. 

“How hard is it to lose pursuit in space?” Nick asked.

“Very.” Triskar sighed. 

Damain grit his teeth and stopped responding. 

Asl leaned forward, putting her head near Triskar’s ear. “This doesn’t make sense,” she said. “We’re here for diplomacy. Blen invited us. Why are they shooting at us?”

“Not. The. Time,” Damian said as he yanked the ship into a sideways corkscrew. Nick’s vision blurred. 

“Got another one!” Triskar shouted, pumping a fist in the air. It was the most emotion Nick had ever seen out of him. 

Et and Asl still looked confused, so Nick said, “What’s your mission exactly? Do you think it might have been a trap?”

“A trap to kill us?” Et asked. “No. It couldn’t be.”

“You did have to leave your big cruiser to get here in time,” Nick said. “That might have been a trick to get you defenseless. And their neighbor’s your longtime enemy…”

“No one likes the Iltan Principates,” Et said. “And Reita has no quarrel with Blen.”

Nick white-knuckled his seat as he struggled to keep from pitching forward into Asl. “There has to be something,” he insisted.

Asl shook her head. “We’re bringing a loan for the Blennish government,” she said. Et looked at her sharply. “If we die, they won’t get the money.”

“What?”

“Their government is unstable,” Et said, resigned look on his face. “Not enough money to keep things running without aggravating too many people to stay in power. The loan is supposed to help stabilize the situation. That’s why it had to get here fast, and why we had to leave our ship. It’s not a trap.”

“Oh,” Nick said. His head thudded against the cushion behind him. “Damian, what about you?”

“Not now, kid.”

The planet had grown from a green marble into a wall that filled half the screen, though which half changed about every five seconds. Somehow, having the planet to show their movements made Nick more nauseous than just being thrown around through space.

“What did you do the last time you were on Blen? Why is there an arrest warrant for you?”

“I can’t remember!” Damian was struggling to catch his breath, hands flying, eyes trained on the screen in front of him. “I think I stole something. Maybe got in a fight with somebody. Some lowlife. I think he had it coming.”

“‘He had it coming,’” Et said. “The classic defense of the morally upright.”

Asl ignored her brother. “They wouldn’t shoot us on sight for that,” she insisted. “Blen has rules about these sorts of things.”

“And they don’t usually monitor the jump point,” Damian added.

They were really close to the planet now. Damian tipped the planet downward, now that there was. A down, and the planet filled the forward view screen. The picture blurred, then became a washed out yellow haze as they entered the atmosphere and the ship started to burn.

“We’re coming in too fast!” Triskar said. 

“What’s a few more layers of paint?” Damian asked. “Reroute emergency power to the shields away from the main engines. Keep course correction strong.”

“We’re going to burn battery faster trying to keep ourselves in the air in a gravity well,” Triskar said.

“That’s a five minutes from now problem,” Damian said. “Now, we take advantage of the free acceleration.”

“Oh Great Hand, what did I do to deserve this?”

The screen switched from a visual array, washed out by the corona of reentry, to an array of sensor readings. Damian didn’t know what any of them meant, but one of them, which looked like an altitude reading, started high and plummeted fast.

The bridge grew quiet as they neared the ground. They would have leaned forward in their seats if their momentum wasn’t pulling them backwards so hard. The altitude reading dropped below ten thousand. Then five. Four. Three. Two…