Eventually, our flight met with the other pirate factions one by one. Peg welcomed each in turn, and I sensed relief in her voice. She’d been worried they wouldn’t show. She had us linger after the fourth faction joined, giving one final chance for the Cannonaders to appear. They didn’t.
“All right, people,” Peg said over the comm to us all. “We will absolutely win this. We’ve spent years in combat preparing, while they’ve been hiding, hoping the Superiority would send them more strength.
“They haven’t. The Superiority doesn’t care about them, or about any of us. They only care about their acclivity stone—so we’re going to hit them hard and take it away. Maybe they have other mining stations far across the empty boundaries, but I know they rely on this one more than any other. So we’ll lock the portal up tight, and they’ll have to play by our terms.”
The gathered eighty or so ships gave cheers and raucous calls in a variety of different types of vocalization. Chet and I joined in, hooting and shouting.
“My Jolly Rogers are ready to move to lethal destructors,” Gremm announced after the noise died down.
“Not unless the enemy does first,” Peg said. “Remember, these ones we’re fighting—they’re not really our enemy. They’re merely a bunch of frightened sods trapped between two forces. We’re going to come in not as raiders, but as liberators. So keep your rounds nonlethal. Call me or one of the tugs if you see a locked-up ship—even an enemy—about to collide with terrain. Stay focused on the fight, and if you face a pilot who’s too good, call for help.”
She got a round of agreement, and I was impressed. She and her sons had done an excellent job laying the groundwork for this battle.
“Okay!” M-Bot said in our cockpit. “I feel trembly, but somehow still eager to go forward.”
“Fear and eagerness?” Chet said. “That sounds like enthusiasm.”
“No, I think there would be more happy-eagerness,” M-Bot said. “This is nauseous-eagerness.”
“Perhaps exhilaration?” Chet said.
“I could go with that,” M-Bot replied. “Exhilaration. Yup, I’m exhilarated!”
“What are you two on about?” I asked.
“The AI and I have been bonding,” Chet said with a proud tone to his voice. “He’s been wanting help defining his specific emotions. I agreed to assist him.”
“Now?” I demanded.
“What better time?” Chet asked. “He is likely to be feeling a lot of strong emotions, after all.”
“We’ll do it quietly,” M-Bot promised.
Great. I didn’t believe that for a moment. Still, we continued on, entering Superiority territory. It didn’t look much different to me, though there were more fragments and they hung closer together. We flew straight toward the center, that enormous glowing white light. It felt as vast and intimidating as it ever had.
“Heads up, Broadsiders,” Peg said. “They’re incoming. Prepare for engagement.”
Her ship had a better scanner than mine; it took another two minutes for my sensors to see the oncoming ships. M-Bot counted them as they arrived, eventually settling on ninety-three ships. Slightly more than our numbers, and I didn’t see any retrofitted civilian ships among them. Hopefully Peg was right, and we had the better pilots.
Regardless, my excitement built. And the excitement was pure—no tension, no worry. A chance to fly and fight. A huge battle. I was ready.
“That’s odd,” Shiver said over the comm. “Captain, you see that?”
“Yeah,” Peg said. “Everyone, zoom your displays out.”
My proximity display expanded, revealing a larger view of the nearby fragments. Two just ahead of us were unnaturally close. They were going to bump…no, collide.
“Captain?” RayZed said. “Didn’t you…say that collisions between fragments were incredibly rare?”
“I did,” Peg replied.
“Now we’re encountering a second one, only a day after the last. Is…something wrong?”
“Can’t say,” Peg told us. “But…words. I’m pulling up IDs on some of those enemies. It appears the Cannonade Faction has come to join the party after all.”
I frowned until M-Bot’s scans indicated a group of new ships flying in to enter the fight. It was the Cannonade Faction. But they didn’t join us—instead they swooped around and fell in with the Superiority.