"Vektor 4, this is Hammerhead 1," Ren says into his headset, watching the large Echo-Class space freighter, nearly five times the size of his own craft, as they glide through space in between Vale and Vanuo's orbits.
"This is Vektor 4," says the pilot of the freighter. "Go ahead, Hammerhead 1."
"Your cargo load seems to be off balance. Recommend course readjustment to your left, twenty degrees."
"Roger, Hammerhead 1. Thanks for the heads up. Oh, and, uh...you mind getting your wingman back? She's got her radio off and buzzing us like hell for the last fifteen minutes or so.
"Roger, Vektor 4, I'll get her. Out," Ren switches to the frequency that he knows Nora is on. "Hammerhead 2, this is Hammerhead 1."
"Oh, hi Ren!" Nora greets cheerily. Suddenly, a T-shaped ship identical to Ren's zooms out from under Ren, pulls up, and flies behind him upside down.
"I think you've done enough scouting for one day, Nora," Ren says. Nora loops around Vektor 4 and buzzes an Ursa-class escort, hired by the company that owns the freighter, same as Ren and Nora.
"Are you sure?" Nora asks. "I think I'm gonna see if the new RCS system can readjust in time before colliding-"
"You can try that with some space junk when we reach Vacuo," Ren says, and moves away from Vektor 4 and the other escorts, making room for Nora to dock. He can hear her sigh.
"Alright," she pouts. "Moving into docking position." Nora turns around and slowly approaches Ren. She rotates her ship she is angled properly with Ren, and uses RCS to nudge her docking port closer and closer to Ren's. The magnets in both ports automatically activate after a certain distance, the gap is closed, and the two ships are locked together as one. A few seconds later, a large red light on the dashboard turns green, and before Ren knows it, Nora is hugging him from behind.
"I missed you!" she says. Ren timidly pats her arm, and she lets go.
"You were just here an hour ago," he says, adjusting his controls to compensate for the new weight and thrust of Nora's ship. His is the "primary" ship, meaning he has full control of Nora's Hammerhead while it's docked, and can remotely control its instruments from his own.
"Yeah, but that was so long ago!" Nora says, plopping down in the chair next to Ren. She swivels around and looks out the window. The three Ursa and two Beowolf escorts are in their own tight formations. If the radio were on, they'd hear them constantly communicating to adjusting their spread along with the freighter. Ren and Nora always took pride in their unique Hammerhead; the design native to Mistral, only a few hundred came off the assembly line decades ago, and the pair was able to snag an old model for a very cheap price. They're virtually the only operational military Hammerhead in the System, the others being civilian models, flying museums, or collector pieces that never leave the shipyard.
"I still can't believe we're actually doing it!" Nora says with excitement after a minute. "It's just like how we always talked about it! We're heavily equipped mercenaries living on the fringe of the system, running dangerous jobs, taking names, the works."
"We're not exactly mercenaries," Ren says without looking up from the controls. "More like private contractors, professional escorts to be specific. We've only been doing this for six months now, we haven't exactly taken a lot of 'names'."
"Oh come on, of course we have!" What about that job last week with the RSS Loyalty?"
"You blew up an asteroid with a torpedo and almost destroyed the luxury liner we were protecting."
"Hey, not my fault pirates ditch their transmitters when the Hunters track them."
"There was an investigation."
"They definitely overreacted." Ren sighs.
"When are you gonna learn to be cautious, Nora?" he asks. Nora giggles.
"When are you gonna get a sense of adventure?" she counters. Ren glares at her. Nora leans forward and touches her finger to his nose.
"Boop!" she says. Ren cracks a smile.
They sit in silence for another half hour, watching the never-changing view of the ships moving through the endless black void.
"I really wish you'd stop taking these escort contracts," Nora groans, stretching her legs. "They're way too boring for the pay."
"They also have guaranteed pay," Ren says. "Unlike those search, destroy, and scavenge missions you keep taking up."
"You just gotta be faster!"
"This is an old ship, Nora. The other mercenaries are usually one seaters and have better maneuverability."
"I thought we weren't mercenaries," Nora says. Ren rolls his eyes, and Nora laughs.
"Hammerhead 1, this is Ursa 2," the radio barks. Ren puts his headset on.
"This is Hammerhead 1," Ren replies. "Want us to switch to the port side again?"
"Negative, Hammerhead. We just have a close contact and want Hammerhead 2 separated to increase our visual numbers."
"See ya!" Nora says, and runs down the small hallway, through the docking port, and into her own ship. A section of Ren's dashboard powers down when Nora assumes control of her ship again.
"Already on it, Ursa 2," Ren says as Nora undocks and peels away, heading to the front of the freighter, where the other escorts move to, shielding the freighter. "Anything else?"
"Not for right now, Hammerhead. We're gonna wait for - hold on." There's a pause. "Well, speak of the devil. One of the ships is hailing, and it has a marked tag."
"They must be packing some serious heat if they're marked."
"Well, no one in our group seems to care." As Ren joins the other escorts, he can see the other ships, including Nora's, tapping on the thrusters, daring the approaching fleet, which seems to be made up of thirteen civilian Grizzly-class vessels modified with weapon systems, to attack. Any marked ships are worth fighting over, especially if they're for capture.
"Patching the lead vessel's frequency to all ships," Ursa 2 announces. There's a flash of static, then a new voice.
"Attention fleet of the Echo freighter," it says. The two packs of ships halt their movement, lined up and ready for battle. "This is the HX-Junior. We have no business with you. The crew of the freighter will jettison, the escorts will scatter, and you will leave us your cargo. No one has to get hurt."
"I got dibs on the far right one!" Nora calls out, and rams her thrusters to full strength, charging forward. Two Beowolfs follow close behind her.
"Alright guys, remember," Ursa 2 says. "Our job is to protect the freighter, not get ourselves killed on some thugs. Ursa 1 and 3, stay behind and-" he stops when he notices everyone but him, the freighter, and Ren have stayed behind while everyone else charges each other, missiles already being released. Ren can spot glimpses of the rocket tracers in between rocket engines and the surrounding twinkling stars. "Ah, fuck it. The computer says they're kill or capture, boys, let 'em have it!" Ursa 2 joins the battle, but Ren decides to stay behind; the freighter's few light auto cannons can't hold off small, fast fighters for very long.
Meanwhile, Nora has already deployed flairs and shot straight up, evading the initial blow of the dogfight, in which two of Junior's ships and a Beowolf are destroyed. The other ships quickly shift their course out of the trajectory of the scattering debris, then rotate to the enemy and open fire with their gatling guns, sending yellow streaks of light in every direction.
One of the Grizzlies disables Ursa 2, who jettisoned into space with his escape pod immediately, and spots Nora above him, floating lifelessly above the carnage. He approaches her and fires his guns in short bursts. Suddenly, Hammerhead 2 roars to life, aims directly at the Grizzly, and fires its heavy railgun, knocking the gatling gun clean off. The distraught Grizzly attempts to fire a barrage of javelin missiles, but Nora is already on the move, and every missile misses completely. When Nora approaches within meters of the enemy ship, she opens fire with her twin pulse repeaters, frying a hole clean through the cockpit and out the other side. She flips back around and joins the carnage below.
"We need back up over here!" one of the two remaining Ursa ships screams. Another Beowolf has lost a large section of his ship, and is trying to limp back to the freighter, two Grizzlies hot on his tail.
"To hell with that," the other Ursa pilot says, striking a clean blow on the tail section of one of the Grizzlies, igniting a fire that quickly burns and engulfs the entire ship. "That's my third kill, I'm gonna have hell of a payday when I-" his radio goes out as his ship explodes in a blazing inferno, the zero gravity carrying his ship's flaming carcass forward like a meteor. Junior's UV gun starts to recharge as he selects his next target: Nora, as she circles around another Grizzly and kills it with ease.
"Lead them back to the freighter!" Ren orders, and guns the engines for the wounded Beowolf. The Grizzlies are toying with it, purposefully clipping the edge of the spacecraft without striking any critical components. "We need the extra firepower!"
"Roger that, falling back," the third Beowolf pilot says, and abandons his chase of a Grizzly and heads back to the Echo ship, which starts to slowly crawl forward, auto cannons at the ready.
Ren swoops down in between the Beowolf and the Grizzlies and launches two torpedoes. The first hits its target perfectly, piercing the weak armor of the ship and blowing the insides out, but the second Grizzly is able to evade in time, the torpedo drifting into deep space. The Grizzly instantly counters with a torrent of gatling fire, dozens of shots hitting Hammerhead 1. The ship shakes violently as Ren attempts to regain control, and the Grizzly fires a missile. Ren is barely able to deploy flares in time, and the missile abruptly changes course, flying away from the battle.
Taking a quick glance at the background, Ren can see that, besides the Grizzly in front of him, there are four more Grizzles, one Ursa and Beowolf, and Nora-
"Nora!" Ren screams internally as Junior's UV gun goes off. From this distance, it looks like the bright white ray went straight through Nora's ship, but Nora was able to turn sharply at the last moment, and it only clipped her tail. Unfortunately, it took out her primary weapons, and now she only has her flares and one pulse cannon at her disposal. She whips around and does a flyby on Junior, who opens fire with four gatling guns.
Ren looks back to the Grizzly, only to have it torn apart by a torpedo from behind, launched by the retreating Ursa, as it and the Beowolf regroup next to the steadily approaching freighter. A pursuing Grizzly is shot to pieces with the combined firepower of the freighter, Ursa, Beowolf, and Ren. Ren immediately makes a mad dash for Nora and Junior as the rest of the fleet takes care of the last two Grizzlies, which are trying to surround them.
Nora is expertly circling Junior while keeping her pulse cannon fire at the same time, keeping out of effective range of Junior's short-ranged gatling guns. She deploys flares whenever Junior tries to launch missiles, and does a aileron roll when the UV gun goes off again, slicing the empty space in between her wings. Ren fires a blind missile without attempting to lock on, getting the attention of Junior, who engages with Ren. Nora takes the initiative and moves in and aims for the engines with her pulse cannon. She does a quick flyby, but doesn't do much damage; it's evident that Junior spent quite a lot more money on his ship than his henchmen.
Junior fires his UV gun again, and Ren is barely able to rotate his ship back in time, the bright light flooding the window, momentarily blinding him.
"Shit, that's bright!" he exclaims, rubbing his eyes with one hand and swerving out of the way with the other. Unfortunately, Junior is able to line up his shot perfectly, and fires a javelin missile directly at Ren. All the lights in his ship abruptly go out as the ship feels like it's ripping itself out, Ren practically thrown out of shit seat, then quickly returning along with the sound of an alarm.
"I lost thrusters!" he shouts on the radio, sitting back up and activating RCS. He attempts to use the tiny thrusters to move out of the way, possibly behind a nearby clot of destroyed ship debris, but it's too slow. He brings his ship to a halt, faces Junior, and haphazardly burns through the RCS, keeping his ship on the move so he doesn't have to build momentum to dodge Junior's next UV ray.
Suddenly, Nora loops back around, charges Junior head on, and breaks hard, pressing her damaged chassis directly to the UV gun. She turns on her radio as she stares down the bewildered pilot in front of her.
"I go, you go," she says. "Power down." Junior slowly raises his hands. "Power down!" Nora repeats. She opens fire with plasma, the molten hot blasts melting Junior's thick armor. Junior scrambles to his controls and quickly shuts down all his ship's systems.
"Alright! Alright! Just stop!" he screams. Nora ceases fire, smiles, and flies to Ren.
"Are you trying to get us all killed?" Ren asks Nora over the radio as she docks with him, but she gets out of her chair before she could reply. As he assumes control of Nora's ship, he finds out that the UV ray only took out his engine fuel reserves, and not the actual engines themselves, so they'll be able to fly together with minimal problem.
"That. Was. Amazing!" Nora says as she enters Ren's ship, hugging him from behind again.
"You almost got us all killed," Ren says.
"Ah, it's fine. Just gonna cost a few hundred thousand Lien to repair and rearm," Nora says.
"This job only pays fifty."
"Not including all that," Nora says, pointing out the window. Outside, the Ursa and Beowolf train their guns on Junior as the freighter's EVA crew attaches a towing line to his ship. "Kills are worth twenty, and live is worth thirty to sixty, depending on his record." Ren sighs.
"Yeah, well, I still like peaceful escort missions." Nora giggles.
"Alright, folks, we're moving out," the freighter pilot orders, and they resume their original journey again.
"That was some kickass flying out there, Hammerhead," the pilot of the Beowolf compliments as the fleet passes through the floating graveyard of ship parts and destroyed hulls that slowly scatter farther and farther apart.
"Thank you," Ren replies. Nora snatches the headset off of Ren's head on puts it on her own.
"Well, we're not, 'together, together'," Nora corrects. Ren smiles and shakes his head.