But soon enough, his fear took hold and Ryann heaved his ship aside, all thought of his pursuer momentarily forgotten. He veered away from the giant craft, but still kept a course towards the wrecks, heading even deeper towards their heart. He spied the trail of the little Patroller’s jets as it did the same, and for a moment the two craft were racing side-by-side, both fleeing for the perceived safety of the wreck-field.
They were travelling through the outskirts now, quickly covering the distance towards the main field, but Ryann could almost feel the latent power rising inside the heart of the Luminal ship behind him, the destructive power of its guns that could scorch entire planets.
But, to Ryann’s surprise, even by the time he began to weave in and out of the denser parts of the field, still no shot had arrived. He risked a glance in his rear display as he swooped around a derelict shuttle, and almost cried out loud to see the giant vessel filling the screen as it came on in silent pursuit.
He willed the Raven on deeper into the wreck-field, careering between two burned-out hulks and a tangled accretion of debris the size of a space-station. Small pieces of debris crashed upon the hull with an alarming sound now that his protective shields were depleted, but he sped on, flying in a madness towards the heart of the field.
Ryann had lost sight of the Patroller now, but he was banking everything upon his erstwhile attacker saving his life. He knew that he far out-matched the skills of that pilot: if it had been the other way around, and Ryann had been in pursuit, he would have destroyed his enemy ten times over by now, he thought grimly to himself. His only hope was that he could get far enough ahead of the Patroller that the Luminal ship might concentrate on him, allowing Ryann to escape.
So he sped on, desperate to lose them in the jumble of debris.
And then, he saw his chance out of the corner of his eye: one of the star-liners at the very heart of the field that they had explored upon their previous journey.
In an instant he swooped over a tangle of floating girders, spinning as he went to slip through a gap between two small shuttles. With a final blast of engines, he powered the Raven straight into the side of the star-liner’s hull, slotting neatly through a blast hole barely large enough to accommodate them. There was a scream of protest from the afterburners as he tore the ship around and it shuddered to a halt, hidden within the liner’s wrecked innards.
They had barely come to a halt before Ryann had cut power to all non-essential systems, and the ship fell deathly silent. The only illumination came from the dull glow of the emergency display, and he peered out through the rent and into the darkness of the wreck-field.
At first, Ryann caught sight of the Patroller’s jets. The ship was some way off across the field now, struggling to navigate the tangle of debris. Ryann had indeed managed to put a considerable distance between them with his reckless flight.
But that was little consolation.
For behind them, he could see the great mass of the Luminal ship following inexorably onwards.
The vessel swept through the wreck-field as though it weren’t there. A bow-wave of hulks and debris smashed against its shields, then were pushed aside before they could impact upon its dark hull.
As the tiny Patroller darted and swerved around the obstacles, the Luminal ship came on, closer and closer, the jumble of wreckage piling up before it.
Even though the Patroller had only minutes earlier come close to destroying Ryann, he still willed the little ship on, silently urging it to evade the monster in its wake.
Ryann jumped as he heard a low moan behind him, and glanced around in a guilty realisation. For a second he had been so consumed with fear he had forgotten all about Angelique behind him. To his relief he saw her shakily pulling herself up into her chair at the navigation console.
“Jeez Ryann, how the hell are we still alive?” she mumbled, staring around the cabin in disbelief. Ryann grinned to see her awake once more, but quickly looked to viewport, mesmerised by the scene unfolding out in the wreck-field.
The Luminal ship was almost upon the Patroller now as the little ship careered madly between the debris, at full-throttle.
“Ryann, what’s going on? Where the hell are —” Angelique’s shaky voice stopped abruptly as she made sense of the image on the main display screen. “Oh my god.” A broken whisper was all that she could manage.
“Have you ever seen a Luminal ship as big as that before?” breathed Ryann in a trance.
“What the hell have you got us into Ryann?” croaked Angelique, getting painfully to her feet and limping out on to the flight-seat pylons, steadying herself on the back of Ryann’s chair. She peered at the grainy display screen in horror.
“Is it the Patroller?” she asked quietly, but Ryann didn’t reply, he was transfixed.
The bow wave of debris and burned-out vessels had almost reached the fleeing ship now, as the wreck-field was being compacted all around it. Ryann winced as the desperate craft misjudged the gap between two large hulks and in the pilot’s panic he careered straight into one of them. Even at this distance, they could see the flash of an explosion, and the little ship span off at an angle, crashing into another lump of debris.
The light from its drives faded to black and the ship slowed, spinning uncontrollably amongst the other wrecks.
And then, a beam of light shone out from the monstrous Luminal ship as a slit in its hull opened up like the mouth of some great beast.
“What’s it doing?” breathed Angelique at Ryann’s side, her injuries temporarily forgotten, consumed with the scene playing out
