The First Nova I See Tonight by Jason Kilgore (the false prince .txt) 📕

"Still? It was a bad plan then, too! Don't you remember the whole pirates-nearly-blowing-us-to-pieces thing as we tried to board her the first time?"

"Sure, but you may have noticed the UW feds arresting them and escorting them out of the ship. The other feds are distracted with Juarez and rounding up the remaining pirates. Now's our chance!"

Dirken ducked under thick vines at the edge of the plaza, wincing at the pain in his badly cut shoulder. Blood from the wound had long since soaked through his sleeves and down his side. Parting the undergrowth, he saw they were behind the corvette as she sat there on her broad landing gears, looking like the starship had time-traveled thousands of years into the past with the pyramids and other ancient stone structures around her. The Speartip was about the same size as 'TakTrak's Jen'torian clipper.

And no one was guarding her.

"I don't know, Dirk. I think your brain is more scrambled than mine."

"I need your help. And running in the jungle isn't a good option. Besides, we'll have a cover story to get away."

Without further explaining, Dirken ran across the plaza to a rear landing gear with Yiorgos at his heels. They hid there for a moment, looking out to see if anyone had seen them. No one raised an alarm. The closest feds were nowhere near the lowered gangplank.

"And what's this cover story?" Yiorgos asked.

Dirken grimaced in pain and gingerly pressed against his sliced arm. "Do you still have the United Worlds ship code we used for the heist at the Mars Colony 1 shipyard?"

"Yeah. That's what I am to you, eh? A memory bank?"

"Only the best memory bank!"

"It worked to get us in and out of the shipyard, and netted us a couple thousand gravwell mass expanders, but I don't know if the code is still good. That was two Earth years ago!"

"There's only one way to find out."

Yiorgos muttered some sort of curse in Greek, but he followed Dirken as they ran to the gangplank and up to the entrance.

They met no resistance. Not at the door, which they closed after raising the gangplank. Not in the corridors. And not on the bridge, which they found after a few confused minutes of trying to read signs printed in Aquarian and Rigellian glyphs and winding up in a map room. For once, Dirken had been right: the entire ship had apparently been emptied and, remarkably, left completely unguarded inside, at least as far as they could tell.

"Dirk," Yiorgos said, and pointed to a first aid kit hanging on the wall.

"Right," Dirken said, and opened it up. Digging through the box, he found a hyposprayer of wound-healing nanites and pressed it again the open wound. Instantly a green mist sprayed out and quickly foamed up, covering the entire wound.

The pain diminished to tolerable levels. He knew in minutes the microscopic bots would work with the cellular matrix in the foam to repair blood vessels and form new skin. He let it do its work, trying not to move it much, and turned his attention back to the bridge.

He sighed with relief as they entered the command center and secured the door behind him and Yiorgos. The windows had been closed with blast shields, so they didn't have to worry about guards seeing them in there.

The bridge was spacious and outfitted with the latest technology. The command chair was in the middle of the circular room and could rotate around. Holographic interfaces surrounded it. Around it were other semicircular consoles, each marked for navigation/communication, weapons, engineering, or environmental/damage control.

"I don't know if the two of us are enough to pilot this thing," Yiorgos said.

Dirken deactivated the plasma scimitar. "We'll manage. We won't need weapons… I hope. And since we're not going into space, we won't need most of engineering or environmental support. You navigate, and I'll take care of the rest."

"Not going into space?" Yiorgos raised his one eyebrow. "Just where are we going, then?"

"Trust me," Dirken replied, trying not to rub the shoulder wound as it healed. "I've got a place. Just need to find it on the charts."

Yiorgos sighed and looked over the navigation as Dirken turned his attention to automated systems and sensors. Since pirates ran without transponders and had a number of methods of scrambling detectors, they weren't likely to be tracked — unless the UW had already installed their own tracking devices when they boarded. They'd just have to take that chance.

Dirken leaned over the damage control panel. Fire suppression systems had put out a number of fires across the ship, though smoke still filled some holds. As Dirken suspected, the Speartip was not space-worthy, with blasted holes all over, as evidenced by big red splotches on the ship's holographic display. And the Jacobian gravwell generator was non-functional, so no gravjumping. Most weapons were offline, though if his plan worked, he wouldn't need to fire a shot. At least the atmospheric propulsion systems and control surfaces were all working — well enough. That's all he'd need.

Yiorgos pulled up a blinking chart. "The Bloodhawk tracked his fighter here. He followed Eow to find us!"

"I figured. And she probably followed 'TakTrak." Dirken sat in the broad captain's couch, built for an Aquarian centaur, and laid the scimitar on the far end. "And when 'TakTrak battled the orbital patrol ship, the Excellentia was already in the area for repairs. When the Bloodhawk showed up, her big guns were ready for payback."

"Okay, now for our getaway," Dirken continued. "You ready?"

"No," the cyborg said, sitting in the navigation section and plugging his right forearm port into the console. "But we've come this far."

"Okay. Hail the Excellentia, and be sure to scramble the visual from us as if our comms array is damaged."

"It is, by the way, but I'll make sure of it." Yiorgos took a deep breath and pressed a couple of holographic buttons. A line opened.

"Excellentia, Team One, aboard the corvette Speartip," Dirken said, covering his mouth with his hand to muffle