Hard Luck Hermit

“Kamak! We got another tail!”

“Please tell me it’s not that fucking purple thing again,” Kamak said, as he rushed to the cockpit. Tooley pointed to a display screen in front of the passenger seat.

“Good news, it’s not, bad news, it is a fighter,” Tooley said. The vessel had been following them for their last few jumps on the way to Karzahd Station, but hadn’t closed the gap until now.

“What kind? Have you started the scanner?”

“No need, it’s a Shavek K-Class,” Tooley said. “Modern make, lighter, faster, and better armed than us as a stock model, and that looks like a retrofit, so probably even faster and stronger than that.”

Kamak double checked on their ship scanners anyway, and watched as it spat out the exact same thing Tooley had already told him. If Tooley knew anything, it was ships and flying.

“Maybe we’re lucky and it’s just another idiot sent to tail us,” Kamak said.

Tooley’s only response was to swerve hard to the side as the first volley of laser fire sailed past them.

“Had to try,” Kamak sighed. “Farsus! Gun!”

The shout was entirely unnecessary, since Farsus was already in his seat and starting to return fire. The Hermit’s basic defense turret was more of a hypothetical deterrent than an actual weapon, and the inaccurate potshots it took did not scare off their current attacker. The fighter ship swung wide around the volley shot back its way and retaliated. This time at least one of the bolts struck true, and the Hard Luck Hermit veered hard to the side as one of its engines briefly flickered.

“Our attacker is aiming to cripple us, not to kill us,” Farsus noted.

“Fun! We can get executed later instead of dying in space,” Kamak said. “Tooley, do we have a jump coordinate or what?”

“Hard to do that and evasive maneuver this shit at the same time, asshole!”

An FTL jump required a very specifically calculated trajectory, to avoid any impacts with stellar bodies or debris. Even if Tooley had time to make the necessary calculations, she’d never be able to line up the ship at a safe angle to make the jump while under heavy fire.

“Alright, I get it,” Kamak said. “Corey, Doprel, you’re not doing anything quintessential to our survival, help me out here.”

“Oh, uh, I don’t know, can we evade around an asteroid belt or something?” Corey said. He pulled up a readout of the lifeless system they currently inhabited. “Fuck, no asteroids. We’ve got, what is this, two planets, a sun, one of the planets has a moon, can we hide on the dark side of the moon or something?”

“Unhelpful!” Tooley snapped.

“I disagree,” Farsus said. “Quickly, Corey, where is the moon currently positioned?”

“Uh, between the two planets, sort of at an angle.”

“Perfect! Doprel, take the guns, I have mathematics to do.”

Farsus practically hopped out of his gunner’s seat, leaving Doprel to kneel awkwardly next to a chair not designed for him and try to use controls that were also not designed for him. His giant, six-fingered hands could only paw at the gun controls, but they hadn’t been hitting any shots anyway, so no one noticed the difference.

‘Tooley, take us wide and away from the planets,” Farsus commanded. She wasn’t hearing any better ideas, so she complied. “Corey, tell me the mass of the planets and the moon!”

The flurry of numbers Corey started reading off held absolutely no meaning to him, but Farsus apparently found some inspiration in them. He was madly plugging away at an equation on his datapad, using several kinds of mathematical notations Corey had never seen before.

“Excellent! Kamak, now the details of the vessel!”

“Where are you going with this?”

“A place both ludicrous and delightful,” Farsus said. In spite of the circumstances, he seemed to be delighted, barely restraining himself from laughter. “Tell me!”

“Well, at least he’ll die happy,” Kamak mumbled to himself, before giving Farsus the information he had asked for. The data got fed into the larger equation, and whatever the result was, Farsus sent it to Tooley’s data readout in the cockpit.

“Tooley Keeber Obeltas, follow the specified trajectory exactly,” Farsus said. “Doprel, I will retake my position as gunner now.”

“Oh thank god, my joints are starting to hurt.”

After reclaiming his position on the turret, Farsus started firing the gun with an almost fanatical precision. Every single round fired still missed, but an expression of delight spreading on Farsus’ face made it seem like his accuracy was perfect. The fighter pilot chasing them started to swerve in predictable patterns, causing Farsus to finally break into a low, almost malevolent chuckle.

“Classically trained evasive maneuvers,” Farsus said. “Tooley, are we on course?”

“Yeah, on course to die,” Tooley said. He had drawn out a long, arcing path that took them on a shallow curve between the two planets, barely skimming the outer atmosphere of the one with the moon. Tooley could see what he was going for, but she wasn’t sure his plan would work.

“Perfection!”

He fired off another round to the right of the fighter ship, then fired far to its left. None of the shots connected, but they did cause the fighter to swerve in exactly the way Farsus intended. He repeated the process twice more, making the fighter dance to his whims, as Tooley’s route approached a sudden, sharp dive, in a straight line.

“You sure about this?” Tooley said. A straight dive like that would make them a very easy target.

“If all is well, this dive will be our last maneuver,” Farsus assured them. “Now!”

Tooley bit her tongue, wished she was drunk, and then slammed down hard on the ship’s controls. The Hard Luck Hermit barreled into a nose dive, and the fighter followed, veering sharply downwards -and then snapped in half.

“Woah!” Tooley screamed, as she grabbed the controls and swerved hard again to evade the wreckage that was now careening past them. Multiple fragments of the ship had burst into flames as their internal fuel cells broke apart and ignited, turning what had once been a fighter into several burning fireballs.

“How the fuck did that happen?”

“You got some psychic powers you been holding out on us, Fars?” Kamak asked. Farsus merely tapped his temple with one finger, chuckling all the while.

“My mental prowess lies only in my ability to calculate gravitational stress,” Farsus said. “Too many assume that space is zero gravity, and ignore the risks it poses.”

Caught between the dueling gravitational fields of the two planets and the moon, and forced into fast paced maneuvers by Farsus’ gunfire, the smaller, weaker vessel had been unable to endure the physical stress and ultimately snapped in half under the g-forces at work.

“Man am I glad you’re on our side,” Kamak sighed. “Please tell us the plan next time, though.”

“My apologies, but my silence was not without reason. I didn’t have time to calculate the Hermit’s stress resistance, and there was significant risk the plan would kill us as well. I did not wish to cause further stress.”

The cockpit went back to being dead silent.

“What?”