Chapter 11

That was definitely the hottest sex I’ve ever had, thought Tinsley, her hair still a mess and the taste of him still on her lips. She sat in the pilot’s seat, feeling utterly satisfied.

The Thunder Bolt was about to arrive into the area where their tracker said the pirates were located. Dante switched on the cloaking device while she brought the small craft out of hyperdrive. Now she was going to test what this little beast could do.

“Let’s take those fuckers down,” said Tinsley a vengeful smile on her face.

She felt fiercely passionate about Dante’s quest. She’d originally offered to help because she’d felt so impotent when her own sister was killed. Since she had become more emotionally invested in Dante, she found herself even more committed to their mission.

He looked over at her, a determined expression on his handsome face. He looked almost feral sometimes when he bared his teeth in a smile.

“Yeah, I’m going to tear them limb from limb when I catch them.” He snarled.

His pure primalness sent shivers down her spine, and she felt her own energy rising to meet his. She felt wild. The chase was on.

A dot representing the pirate ship flashed on their monitor. “Shit,” she said. “They’re right in the middle of that asteroid belt.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. This whole area is littered with them. It’s why the pirates use this place. The Galactic Authority can’t get in here safely to remove them. They think the debris was caused by a war sometime in the distant past. A planet-wrecking war.”

“Is this what they call The Barren Lands?” she asked.

“Yes, it stretches for almost a light year across. It must have been a devastating war. They reckon it shifted the whole universe fractionally off course, but it would be billions of years in the future before the effects were felt.”

“That’s incredible. I always knew to avoid this area at all costs, but I didn’t know its history.”

They were approaching the outer edges of the asteroid field. The rocks here were small, but a direct hit from one of them could still do serious damage to the small ship.

Tinsley neatly avoided it all with pinpoint precision. She’d been flying since she was a child, and her father had always favored small, fast vessels. The pirate ship was a deep-bellied frigate, and therefore slower and less maneuverable. She was already closing the distance.

“A thick belt of them is coming up,” Dante called out as he watched the monitor. “It looks like there could be a path through if we take her twenty by eighteen turnwise.”

She followed his directions trustingly and found a path opening up before her.

“Nice,” she said.

“We need to avoid a big disturbance in quadrant three, if possible,” Dante told her. “It looks like a massive planetoid-sized rock is crashing through the middle of the field and sending debris in all directions.”

“Okay, I’ll go wide, but it’s going to add on time. Can you take me as close as possible without getting in its way?”

Dante was an excellent copilot. Maybe the best she’d worked with in her life. His directions were clear and precise. She trusted everything he said without question. We clearly make a good team, she thought.

“We’ve got one coming hard and fast,” he warned.

She could see it. It looked like they were on a collision course. Her automatic reaction was to accelerate—and to dismiss the joke she wanted to make about “coming hard and fast.”

“No, we won’t make it!” Dante was right next to her. “We’ve gotta pull back.”

“I’ve got this,” replied Tinsley with grim determination written all over her face.

“Pull back! It’s not worth it,” Dante demanded.

“Who’s the captain here?” she hissed back at him, her jaw set.

It was close, as she knew it would be. At the last moment, she flicked the rudder sideways and rolled the ship, sending them into a spin.

“Shiiiitttt!” Dante’s knuckles were white as he tried to bury his fingers into the dashboard for purchase.

Their small transport vehicle was buffeted by the proximity of the large asteroid. Tinsley righted the Thunder Bolt and brought it out of the spin with one well-timed flick of her wrist on the controls.

She could hear Dante panting beside her. She turned to him and winked.

He let out a loud bellow of a laugh. “Damn, that was close!”

Tinsley just smiled. It had been a bit too close, but her maneuver had closed the distance between them and the pirates. “We have a visual,” she said, pointing out of the front viewport with satisfaction.

Another huge asteroid hurtled toward them, barely missing them. They were in the thick of the field now. The space debris ricocheted unpredictably around them, and Tinsley had to frustratingly lower her speed.

“We’ve got a massive one coming up behind us at high velocity,” Dante informed her, his eyes on the monitor. “You need to take evasive action fast.”

She swung the controls to the left, almost colliding with a smaller chunk of rock that sped past way too close for comfort.

The large projectile that had nearly rear-ended them hurtled past and hit another huge chunk head-on. The result of the impact was devastating. The huge chunks of rock exploded into millions of tiny fragments directly in front of them.

Tinsley did her best to take evasive action, but it was impossible to avoid all of the shrapnel as she flew straight through the center of the collision. Most were absorbed by the ship’s shields, but as they flew out of the other side, various emergency lights flashed on the dashboard.

On inspection, most of them were relatively unimportant. As with most spacecraft, this one could auto-repair light damage.

Tinsley felt reassured by this and relaxed back into flying. She’d slowed down a little after such a close call, but they were still visibly closing the gap.