"Sir, we're coming on quadrant 32…" said Dahlia. "It's going to get a little rougher…"
"Good…"
They had travelled for nearly an hour, the other ship still on their tail. It hadn't hailed, attacked, or moved closer. Now the Saint Nazaire was approaching a massive cloud bank. It was difficult to see from this distance but inside there were many blocs of varied sizes. If you didn't know what you were doing, it'd be very easy to damage your ship. This was what Cortes was counting on.
"Take us in as fast as you can handle," Cortes said. "Just don't let us get caught in any tight places." That's what we want them to do.
The Saint Nazaire disappeared into the cloud bank, and everything dimmed. The bridge's automatic lighting came on.
"Could somebody turn those off?" Cortes growled. "And shut down the ship's visibility lights too."
The lights dimmed again. Visibility was now low, but it was still possible to see.
"The other ship is still following us…" said Cheng, looking out the rear windows. Dim lights could be seen through the clouds. "He's leaving his lights on."
"Doesn't seem bothered if we know where he is, hmm?" muttered Cortes. He peered ahead through the gloom.
"There's a large bloc off to port!" Wayan warned, seconds before Cortes saw it.
The Saint Nazaire banked, moving around the bloc. The other ship's lights could be seen following.
"Not too fast…" Cortes warned.
"It might be gaining…" said Cheng.
"Come on…" Cortes muttered, looking ahead. He had to find the right setup of blocs to loose the other ship on. She was moving faster than the Saint Nazaire now, which was what he wanted. But let her do that for too long and she'd catch up.
A large bloc loomed ahead.
"Woah!" said Dahlia. They were so close upon it they had barely seconds to react.
"Take us down!" Cortes ordered. "As hard as you can!"
The Saint Nazaire banked downwards. The large bloc loomed so close that Cortes felt his heart catch in his throat. Then it swept up and above them as the ship dropped.
"Is that ship following!?" Cortes demanded.
"I'm not sure," said Cheng. "I can't see any lights anymore."
"Alright, evasive manoeuvrers. I don't want him able to guess where we went."
----
Tristan slowed down his ship the Force Majeure, frowning as the bloc loomed before him. He'd come to a full stop to avoid a collision, and now he'd have to back up to get around it. He couldn't see the Saint Nazaire anymore.
Still, Tristan did not appear worried in the least. He simply threw the ship in reverse, and performed the manoeuvre, and then continued on. He seemed very sure of his course, despite no ship showing on any of his sensors.
----
For the next half hour, the Saint Nazaire darted around in quadrant 32. They didn't see the other ship for any of this time, nor pick it up again on their sensors.
Eventually, Cortes seemed to calm down. They had to have lost it. Even with superior systems, it should be unable to track them through the thick clouds and high density blocs. Even a Sphere ship with the latest sensors would have certainly lost them after only ten to fifteen minutes.
"Alright, set a course for Puerto Angel. But not a direct route. And stay alert."
"Aye, sir," Dahlia and Wayan both replied.
Cortes sighed, and stepped down from the wheelhouse. He looked towards the back of the ship. Christophe seemed half asleep, and the Vector seemed to be between keeping an eye on him and watching something going on on Cheng's screen.
"Is he doing alright?"
"I think so," the Vector smiled. "He'll be fine once we get back to Puerto Angel."
"Good…" Cortes lowered his voice. "I just… I can't believe he took that bullet for me. And the Callisto… I'd just been blaming him and acting like a jerk the whole time he was here…"
"Too right…"
Cortes nearly jumped at the sound of his brother's voice. "Damn it Christophe… I thought you were asleep."
"Yeah, I'm having a little trouble sleeping," Christophe sighed. He pushed himself to a sitting position, and shuddered.
Cortes sighed, and bounded back up the back of the ship. "You should lie back down."
"Like I said, I can't sleep. Besides, since when do you care so much?"
"Since you went and got yourself shot," Cortes retorted.
"Ah… so that's all it takes. You should've told me sooner, and we could've avoided all this unnecessary bickering."
Cortes sighed. "Bickering?! You betrayed… never mind, forget it."
Christophe sighed, and shook his head. "If you haven't figured it out yet, that wasn't my intention."
Cortes stared down at the floor. He still felt a twinge of anger, but nothing like he'd felt for his brother over the years. He didn't want to be angry at him anymore, even just a little. Christophe couldn't have really meant to betray the rebels, not after what he'd done for Cortes since. That didn't stop it hurting that he'd left at Ronston, but should he really still be angry at him for that? "Christophe, I'm sorry, alright? I'm not mad at you anymore. Maybe I shouldn't have been in the first place… maybe I should have just trusted you. I know you weren't trying to hurt the rebellion."
Christophe seemed startled for a brief moment. "I… well, I did know what I was doing…"
"Well if you did, you could've told me. And I couldn't figure it out, and you never told me! I didn't know what was going on, Christophe!" He lowered his voice. Cheng and the Vector looked like they were trying to keep busy with their work, but they could probably still hear. "I was in charge of that fleet when you left, do you have any idea how that looked!?"
"I couldn't tell you, Aran. Okay, so I made you look bad in front of all those pirates, fine. I'm sorry! But do you know how much trouble you would've been in if you'd known?"
"Aye, actually, yes. I was interrogated for hours over whether I knew or not! And when I'd finally convinced them I still had to put up with the insinuation I couldn't control a fleet… I mean, I couldn't even control my own brother! Why should I be put in charge of a whole fleet again?"
"That wasn't… my fault…"
"Yeah, guess you never thought about it, huh?" Cortes snapped. Now he was angry again. Why had he apologised?
"Cortes…" the Vector said. He'd walked back to the two brothers.
"What?" Cortes snapped.
"Maybe you should let Christophe rest."
Cortes glanced over at Christophe. He seemed paler, and was visibly shaking.
"I'm fine, really…"
Cortes sighed. He'd gotten so angry he hadn't noticed. "At least lie down and keep quiet." He stood and stomped back to the front of the bridge. At the moment, Christophe didn't need him around fighting with him, and that was all he felt like saying to him right now.
"He's right, Christophe," said the Vector. "Lie back down."
Cortes took the Saint Nazaire's steering wheel in his hands and gripped it tightly. Dahlia and Wayan had full control of the ship, so he didn't need to do anything. But at least it gave his hands something to do.
"Cortes?" said Cheng.
"Yeah?" Cortes replied, only half looking over his shoulder in an attempt to avoid looking at Christophe.
"I'm not sure if it's important or not… but I've been getting this weird signal. Like the Saint Nazaire's sending it… only it's not. It's faint and intermittent…"
The Vector glanced over the boy's shoulder. "Are you sure it's not just background noise from the Saint Nazaire's systems?"
"Could be, I suppose… that's what I thought at first…"
Cortes huffed, turned back to face forward and shook his head. Nothing. Just fluctuating energy signatures of no interest to anyone but little boys and washed up geographical engineers with nothing better to do with their time.
"Captain…" said Wayan, interrupting his thoughts.
"Yes, Wayan?"
"There's a ship on our sensors. I think it's the Force Majeure."
"What?! I thought we lost them!" Cortes snarled.
"We did!" said Dahlia. "He's coming up fast, so we must have…"
"He's paused, Sir," said Wayan. "Some distance away, and probably just on the edge of our sensor range. I think he may be doing what he did before… following at a distance only this time further away…"
"I've had it with this guy!" Cortes snarled. "Open a channel to his ship!" He pounded a fist into the screen next to his Captain's chair. "This is Cortes of the Saint Nazaire. I want you to take your over-endowed ship, turn it around, and stop following us! Either that, or you can quit hiding back there and answer for what you did to my brother!"
"Cortes… we probably shouldn't fight him if we don't have to…" warned the Vector.
"Oh, he doesn't have to fight if he doesn't want to. I'd just like him to give me the decency of saying what gripe he has with me to my face," Cortes snapped, fully intentionally leaving the channel open.
There was a brief burst of static, and then Tristan appeared on the screen.
"Ah, so you can see me back here. I honestly thought the sensors on that piece of junk couldn't reach this far. I'm impressed. So… you wanted to talk then?"
"I want you to leave, that's what I want. But I'll settle for talking for now. You shot my brother, and now you're making a very great effort to follow my ship…"
"I wasn't aiming for your brother, if that's any consolation. In fact, I'm rather grateful to him, I couldn't have found you without him."
"Which brings me to my next question. Just why were you trying to shoot me?"
Tristan smiled, and then chuckled briefly. "You don't remember me, do you?"
"Should I?!"
"Maybe not. I was younger then, and it was a few years back. Perhaps you remember my bloc. Its name was Andorra. Ring any bells?"
Cortes paused. "Andorra was destroyed years ago. The Sphere launched a raid because they were supplying weapons to the rebellion; they burnt it to the ground."
"The Sphere, huh? Yeah, okay, the Sphere were the ones who burnt everything, but who was suppose to protect it? Huh, Cortes? Whose ship was closest when they launched the attack?"
Cortes bristled. "We were on an important mission. The Behemoth came to your aid…"
"They didn't come in time! Not for my family! And you have the mordacity to hound me for shooting your brother by accident! Oh no, Cortes. You're not going to get off that easily!" Tristan slammed a palm on his console, and the line went dead.
"You're kidding me!" Cortes snarled, slamming a hand into the railing. He hit it again. "Damn it!"
"He has no right to blame you for what happened on Andorra, Cortes," said the Vector.
"I know that!" Cortes snapped. "You know that! He doesn't!"
"So he wants to kill you?" said Cheng sounding nervous. "Then why hasn't he attacked the Saint Nazaire? He's got the firepower…"
Cortes shook his head. "I don't think he wants to kill me… not right away anyway…"
"Capture you then?" Dahlia asked.
"He would have probably still attacked already. No…"
"He wants what you took from him, Aran," said Christophe. "He's following you… I think he intends on following you all the way back to Puerto Angel. In that warship."
Cortes squeezed his eyes shut briefly. "Aye. But I'm not going to lead him there. He's a fool to think I will."
"We must be careful, Cortes," said the Vector. "Thinking you'd just lead him back is foolish, yes. But it's very foolish… I don't think we can count on Tristan being that naive."
"But how could he find us after we lost him like that… he must have just been lucky! We'll lose him, again, but this time we'll make sure there's no way he can find us again… even if his sensors are better than the Sphere's!"
"If that's our approach, may I suggest we take him on a trip through the Badlands," said Wayan. "It's a maze in there, even more so than sector 32, but with the Vector's maps we'll be alright. There's no way Tristan will be able to find us again if we loose him."
"So… how long is that going to take?" Christophe asked tentatively.
Cortes glanced back up the back. "You need to get some sleep, Christophe. We'll get back to Puerto Angel as soon as we can."
"Yeah, I know," he smiled. "Don't rush on my account… I mean that seriously."
Cortes nodded. "Go to sleep." He turned back to the front of the ship. "Dahlia, Wayan, take us to the Badlands."
