Ezra's First

Part 12

Space is big and so their manoeuvre to change course, slow down, fake an engine malfunction and dive into the rings of a gas giant in the hopes the Preshk ship could catch up lasted seven and a half hours. It's a long time to be anxious and bury yourself in busy work and breathing exercises Ezra decided and wondered if it ever got better.

Daniel executed a convincing engine malfunction that should show up on the Preshk sensors as a convincing reason why they where now trying to hide amongst the dust and the rocks of the gas giants outer most ring.

"They took they bait and have accelerated towards our position." Daniel announced.

"Accelerated? They had extra thrust they didn't use?"

Daniel shrugged.

Ezra found a pathway through the rings that he was comfortable with and lowered their acceleration to a comfortable pace and began weaving through the space in an obvious effort to be trying to lose a would be tailer.

"They are keeping their distance, above the rings."

"Oh they are wanting to swoop down on us then, that complicates things."

"This whole thing is complicated, lets see if we can get them to take the bait."

The original plan had been to lure the Preshk into the belt with them, then when the time was right they could use their definitely not broken engine to quickly break line of sight, get behind their assailant and shoot them down using their forward machine guns.

Unfortunately that plan doesn't work if the ship stalking them keeps a safe distance.

Ezra ran through a series of scenarios in his head and landed on one that would almost certainly get them killed if it didn't work, but time was running out and they needed this Preshk gone before they faced the next.

Ezra turned the ship towards the gas giant and started to move inwards, this time with a bit more speed and purpose.

"Change of plan?" Daniel asked.

"Yup trying to see if I can get them to take the bait and be right where I need them to be."

"Okay, need me to do anything?"

"Prepare the magdrive and feed it these parameters."

Daniel shot Ezra a very confused and concerned look.

"Sure..." he said nervously.

The increase in speed and change of direction had the intended effect and their Preshk stalker was now descending into the ring and gaining on them.

"About three thousand kilometres and closing."

They needed the Preshk to be a lot closer, Ezra eased up on the acceleration and went back to making it look like they were trying to avoid being seen.

After about ten minutes of this kind of flying, Daniel said the words he had been waiting to hear.

"About a thousand kilometres behind us, they will be in weapons range very shortly."

Ezras heart jumped both with anxiousness and excitement, what he was about to do was something a flight instructor had scolded him for even asking about and he was pretty certain that should he survive this ordeal his flight instructor would hunt him down, if Daniel didn't kill him first.

"Spooling magdrive, updating parameters, Daniel hold onto something."

"Ez nooo..." Daniel said at the exact moment Ezra executed a backwards magdrive jump.

The range of a magdrive jumps all comes down to how much interference other objects with a dense magnetic pull have on the ship making the jump. In the most effective scenario the ship enters magspace and latches onto the magnetic pull of a star ten light years away and rides that thread all the way to the destination. However this requires that no nearby star, gas giant, superdense planet, or blackhole has a stronger magnetic pull on you, otherwise you won't be able to escape their magnetic drag and you'll be lucky to travel a light year before you drop back into normal space having burned a heap of fuel and put the ship under a decent amount of stress.

On this particular occasion Ezra was doing this on purpose. He executed a magjump whilst next to a gas giant with an enormously dense magnetic field and whilst his coordinates where for the next star system thirty light years away, Ezra had calculated that the ship would move just under two thousand kilometres and be spat out of magspace behind their Preshk friend.

The ships windows went a dark black with blue tint as they entered magspace and not even a second later they where returned to normal space.

Ezra jerked the controls to avoid a near miss with a large rock but as he brought the ship back under control he could see the enemy ship directly in front of him and Ezra activated the ships dual machine guns.

The guns belched thousands of large calibre rounds, the initial wave hitting the rocks near the Preshk ship showering it in debris but Ezra shifted the nose of the ship and managed to fire directly into the enemy ships engines. Ezra didn't know how hardy these smaller preshk ships would be and so he was initially aiming to cripple its engines and leave it at that, but mere moments after Ezra had scored a direct hit on the Preshk ships engines it exploded in a ball of blue flame.

At this point in time, Daniel was still coughing and wheezing from the intensity of the jump Ezra had launched only moments ago. Ezra being the pilot had the privilege of having adrenaline injected straight into his system just before the jump so he could stay in control. Non pilots where't administered any drugs for the journey, primarily because a normal jump doesn't leave them incapacitated, only slightly nauseas normally.

"Fuck me." Daniel finally managed to say.

"Yeah sorry about that"

"Next time, let me step outside before you do that, that was horrible, I feel like my lungs are paste."

"One down, one to go." Ezra said to no one in particular and set the ship back on their original course.