We were coasting along at a measly five c, almost a light-day out from the edge of the graveyard. Occasionally, a tiny particle would ping into the Bucket’s heat shield.

  The big ship had stopped some three light-days back, at the edge of the particle cloud. There was no sign of its partner with the ripstone, or the small, well-armed latecomer.

  Out of our sensor range. Still coming, most likely.

  We needed a plan.

  So far, we’d been running. That wasn’t working. We could hide, now that we were inside the particle cloud, but that would only delay the inevitable. There was nothing here, no port, no presence, no help. We didn’t have the engines to run. Any ship with a half-intelligent sensor tech would simply stay in the middle of the graveyard and wait until it picked up the echoes of our warpstones. And if we threw them away, they’d search for our life signs. It would take longer, but the results would be the same.

  We could try fighting them, but the two plasma cannons I had stashed beneath the floorboards would hardly dent a warship. And if they could, our pursuers would blow us out of the sky. The hatchling was money, but no money is worth your life.

  We needed a way to change the rules of engagement.

  “Hao,” I said, “how do you feel about another gunfight?”

  We were still in our pilot’s couches in the cockpit, our face plates open so we could talk, and so we could breathe the wonderful scorched-polymer smell of the Bucket. As soon as we got out of this mess, I’d have to repair the ventilation system.

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  Hao raised an eyebrow.

  “You want to take on a space ship with a pistol?” she said.

  “No,” I said. “This time I’m bringing a rifle.”

  She laughed, a deep, belly laugh.

  “I’m serious,” I said. “I’ve got a mirror ward stashed in the gun locker. We find the biggest structure we can reach, launch the mirror to cloak the ship and hide. With ten thousand potential ships to search, they might give up. And if they do come for us, we hunt them down one by one. At least in a large hull we’ll be able to set traps and even out the odd—”

  Hao interrupted me. “Wait – you’ve got a mirror ward?”

  “Yes. Then, they’ll either hurt enough to withdraw, or they decide to starve us out, and we can last a fair time on—”

  “You’ve got a mirror ward powerful enough to cloak a crudmucking space ship?”

  “It’s only got four splinters,” I said, suddenly feeling defensive. “And it’s fairly short-range, too.”

  “How in the cold void did you get a mirror ward?” Hao said. “Oh, wait, don’t tell me. You imbued it yourself.”

  She was staring at me, her expression somewhere between incredulous and hostile. I couldn’t tell whether that was a good thing or not.

  “Well, yes,” I said. “But it’s only—”

  “Limited range, very bad, shoddy work, yadda-yadda,” Hao filled in. “How is it that you’re flying around in a rust-bucket ship in the middle of nowhere, instead of working for the Feds or some big planetary corp and raking in kilograms of helion?”

  I sighed.

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “And how come you’re not flying as head mechanic on a Fed cruiser somewhere?”

  Hao stopped, then grinned, showing me lots of teeth.

  “Point taken,” she said. “But one day I’ll get you voidmunching drunk and drag the story out of you.”

  “Likewise,” I said, “Except that I don’t drink.”

  I was about to say more, but then the sensor readout sparkled into fireworks.