The void exploded with a technicolour bouquet of smoke, electricity bouncing between the dust trapper clouds in zig zag patterns. I looked around through the ship's sensors, but everything was static. My real eyes saw nothing but the pastel hues of my deployed smoke cover, the enemy beyond its expanding borders.

My vessel exploded out of its gentle saunter, the engines roaring into life and making the Outrider rattle like hell. The engineers hadn’t built it to go so fast, but they’d hardly recognise it after all the years it’d seen me through. A laser wracked the newly vacated lot of space behind me, before dissipating against the multicoloured dust trappers right next to my cockpit. I saw the red light spark against the edges of the smoky canopy, fizzling on its shifting surface. My Outrider swam through the clouds, beams piercing through all around me, the incoming fusillade missing by milliseconds. A fish swimming through bullet fire.

Despite my current speed, I wouldn’t be able to take a direct shot. The burnt hunk of metal the other schmuck had rode in on could attest to that. We’d only been trading introductions for 10 minutes when the radio cut out. Damn shame to go out like that, in what was meant to be a milk run, just a simple escort for a modest paycheck at the end. We hadn’t even made it within radio distance of the tiny colony we were due at, still a marble on the horizon.

I started to dial deeper into my clasp, drawing more and more computational power from the ship while making my brain feel more and more like mush. I took control of the boosters and began to reorient myself towards the fire, my shielding ahead of me and a prayer in my throat. I exited my little sanctuary, flowing out of safety back into the deep darkness. My own laser wouldn’t pierce the clouds, so it was time for a gamble.

I finally saw the two fighters in a loose formation, the red glow of their cannons setting them apart from their background, firing into the dust trappers in coordinated strikes. In the same moment they saw me too, and began to veer out of their run parallel to the dust field, but it was already too late. I fired off my shot while accelerating heavily against my previous angle, sliding across like I was driving on ice. My outrider began to push forward.

They were both fighters, shaped like jagged spikes and with plates welded together along their flank like old patched up blankets. The one I’d tried to fry had shielded the shot, but it had to completely change its trajectory. It gave me a clean angle to get off a shot. My sentience clasp felt hot in my head, the piping connecting me to my ship feeding me data through it at a feverish pace.

My angle was finally correct, putting me directly along the path of the first ship leading the duo, and I hit every booster I had, bursting forward faster than the ship was vetted to go, faster than they could ever have expected. With a thought my ace in the hole sprang from its thermal shielding. With a snap, the charged up lance tooks its place mounted directly beneath my cockpit, the barrel bigger than my cockpit. It was so hot it felt like it was burning up the soles of my boots. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining that or not, I could barely feel my legs right now. I’d get one shot off, anything more would leave me with nothing left in the tank, a sitting duck.

The sensors showed energy building in a direct angle towards my cockpit. Attached to my Outrider on a rotating ring, the spindly arm carrying it’s flickershield raced into position. The satellite dish dome flared with power. A millisecond later, and the laser dissipated along the edge of the energy bubble, just in time to keep me from being cooked alive. Another shot came a second after the last.

My sensors told me it would happen too, and where it would hit, but I was too dialed in, and my clasp was already overheating in my head. The flickershield had only begun to turn into the second shot before it had sliced a side booster off, sending the expensive piece of gear tumbling away. I was only vaguely aware of that as I fired off the lance. It split my target clean in two, the motley plating on its side burning into so much slag. Almost the entire fighter became molten metal instantly. From my firing distance of maybe 50 metres it would take a ship the size of a carrier to tank that.

I burst through the newly created opening straight past the second ship into the twilight, my flickershield ready behind me and my sensors straining to keep vision of the remaining raider, but no retaliation came. The ship was turning tail and running, boosters in full swing. It disappeared beyond my natural vision as I pushed fast in the opposite direction, carried by inertia. My sliced off booster was barely visible on the backdrop of the dissipating dust clouds, breaking down under their own chemical reactions.That booster had cost me 3 months of pay as a convoy guard. Here’s hoping the colony would cover my expenses.

I turned down the clasp, and came back to reality, the thermal readings and probability reports fading away to reveal the darkness of space once more, and me in my cockpit covered head to toe in sweat. It felt like I was swimming in my uniform, and the glass panel of my helmet had begun to fog up. I let that last raider go back into the night, and tore the clasp plugs connected to my spine, content to let my ship drift forward to a warm meal at my clients expense.