Hangman answered.
The violence softened, not because the ship became safer, but because Elias finally spoke its language.
"You bastard!" a voice snapped over comms.
"Command, mute."
The comms died.
A soft confirmation tone chimed through the cockpit anyway, bright and wrong in all that pandemonium.
Elias frowned.
It sounded… happy.
He slipped between two drifting rocks with inches to spare and didn't feel lucky. He felt… correct. Like the interceptor had been designed for this exact corridor of chaos, and the pilot was the only missing component.
A warning flickered on the HUD and then steadied, as if satisfied.
[LETHAL ENVELOPE: ENTERED]
[PILOT LOSS PROBABILITY: INCREASING]
[ARES-9 DOSE: ADVISED]
And that was the strange part.
He should have hated it. It was wrong. It was reckless. A wartime cockpit built around a chemical.
But as the interceptor carved past another close asteroid, something in his chest loosened.
This… this was what a ship should be.
Not a barge you hauled around the stars.
Not a box you survived in.
A blade you lived through.
A thing that moved with you.
A thing that obeyed thought.
He'd flown his whole life. He'd killed in vacuum and fire. He'd pulled maneuvers that should have snapped wings off and broken bones inside him.
And still… he hadn't realized there was a piece missing until Hangman handed it back.
Elias adjusted his grip. Breathed once.
He rolled again, cleaner. Faster. The belt became lanes and angles instead of threats.
PDC flak tracers stitched space above the cruiser's ventral arcs, but down here the geometry felt different. Late. Wrong for them.
Hangman turned on a dime.
Elias didn't.
He turned on intent.
Getting a closer look at the heavy cruiser he'd escaped from, he saw it broken-backed at midships, fractured at an unnatural angle where the hangar spine used to be. Green ice formations packed the cracks and the void where the warhead had gone off; emergency sealant foamed and flash-froze in the vacuum.
A tourniquet. Not a cure.
Still, he could tell it was a mortal wound. Turrets and indicator lights struggled to stay awake as he flew circles around the hull. No chance of warping in its current state.
A slow death of cold and starvation didn't sit right with him.
It was time to finish what he came here for.
[WEAPONS: ONLINE]
[MAIN: NOT FITTED]
[SECONDARY: 20MM ROTARY DRIVER]
[EXT PAYLOAD: SPIKE TORPS | 2]
[CM: BURNERS | 2]
Hangman's IFF still wore pirate colors. The cruiser's outline glowed green on his HUD as if it were friendly.
He picked his first mark anyway.
A cluster of functioning turrets, still spitting flak into the belt.
[SECONDARY: ACTIVE]
The rotary driver sent a deep, rhythmic thud through the cockpit. Sabot darts walked across the turret cluster, ripping metal open. Sparks bloomed. A torch-like lick of flame flashed and vanished into the vacuum.
[IFF IDENTIFIERS: RECLASSIFIED: HOSTILE]
The cruiser's outline bled from green to red as Hangman finally took the hint.
Elias rolled around the starboard side and hit the next turret cluster. Flak slowed to a trickle as he cut them down in order. The larger cannons opened up next, firing through their own superstructure just to get rounds into space. Antenna masts vanished in bursts of debris. Plates peeled back like tin.
They couldn't keep up with an interceptor, and they knew it.
They were desperate now.
Elias walked the rotary driver across a massive mount. One turret went slack. Another cooked off, blooming into a brief, ugly flare before the vacuum stole the flame.
He lined the bridge in the forward reticle, finger resting on the trigger.
[WARNING: HOSTILE LOCK]
He peeled away into the belt.
Where is it?
He spared a glance at the radar.
Beside him. Behind him. Above him.
Three interceptors were closing fast, snapping through the rock field like wild dogs circling a wounded thing.
Elias dropped hard, then reversed thrust.
His body lurched forward in the straps. Pressure squeezed his eyes like they wanted out.
The maneuver paid off.
Three blurs screamed past his canopy. One failed to turn in time and went straight into an asteroid ridge, blooming red for a heartbeat before fading into fragments.
He rolled onto the second as it weaved at full speed, cutting violent angles one after another. The pilot pushed too hard, too long.
The other ship wobbled. Drifted. Then spiraled.
The pilot blacked out.
It punched into a boulder and vanished in dust and shards.
Elias snapped to a new vector and found the third coming head-on.
Fast.
Close.
Committed.
[CM: DEPLOYED]
A burst of white-hot flares spat from Hangman's right side as Elias peeled left. The oncoming interceptor flew straight through the heat. For a heartbeat, its canopy became a white sun, optics saturated, pilot blind on a closing line.
It jerked upward on instinct, hunting for space where there might be none.
Elias didn't hesitate.
He bent into the climb after it, tightening into an upward curve as the servos wailed under load. The Rift Field hissed against dust, turning pebbles into glitter.
One controlled squeeze.
Hangman's 20mm driver spoke, a single heavy thud through the cockpit.
Sabot punched into the enemy canopy. Glass flashed. The interceptor went slack, still traveling too fast to understand it was already dead.
It held its line for a few hundred meters, then began to tumble, drifting out into the debris field like the others.
Gently, Elias brought his throttle down and realigned himself with the now distant cruiser.
Hangman kicked forward, heading straight for the starboard beam.
Straight for the ice-green crack in the giant's armor, not far off from where the initial warhead went off.
[EXT PAYLOAD: SPIKE TORPS | 2]
[DUMB-FIRE ONLY]
[ARMED]
The distance closed in two blinks of an eye.
He pulled the trigger once, ripping Hangman upward as the first torpedo drilled into the seam, disappearing entirely. A second passed before the delayed fuse went off.
Punching an exit wound of shrapnel and chunks of ship debris out the port side.
The vessel began to buckle as a strip of structural ribs and hull held its halves together.
Knowing what 'spike' meant now, he circled back, lining his reticle to the stern of the ship, into the cooling booster cluster.
The cruiser didn't retaliate anymore.
The last hit did too much.
Her defenses were crushed.
Her interceptors were gone.
More than half her crew was dead or dying.
A second torpedo wasn't a necessity.
It was a mercy.
The spike disappeared into the clusters of boosters.
The second stretched.
Then the cruiser burst at the seams, shrapnel and panels ripped off the ship, spilling out white and gold bands of energy as the generator died.
Elias didn't smile.
He didn't watch.
He didn't pity them.
His verdict was already made when he left port.
This was him carrying out that verdict.
A cruiser dying in the fringes of a system wasn't something worth grieving.
It would be like lamenting the weather.
[FASTER THAN LIGHT DRIVE: ENABLED]
[SET VECTOR— ]
[Gamma Sector: 0369: CONFIRMED ]
[SEQUENCE START— ]
The cabin warmed as Hangman adjusted her bearings.
Elias was forced deep into the seat as the craft jumped forward, stars and nebulae bled into streaks of light and color as they passed the edges of his vision. His harness slacked as the ship's speed climbed even higher.
[ETA— 3:46:59]
He was alone now.
His hands were shaking.
He was due again.
He cracked his visor.
Warm recycled air slid in, and the cockpit answered with a scent that didn't belong to plastic or metal. Sweet. Chemical. Familiar in the way a bad habit feels like home.
ARES-9.
Not fresh. Not his. Old. Layered. Baked into foam padding and strap webbing. Worked into the tiny seams where sweat and breath had lived for decades. Fifty years of Redliners, one after another, leaving the same perfume behind like a signature.
A widow ship.
Scented with the ghosts of the men who'd held her before him.
Elias took the chem stick from his pocket and rolled it between two fingers.
A pull, held long enough to quiet the ache under his ribs, then an exhale, slow.
The vapor didn't clear.
It joined the rest, like it had been waiting for him.
For a moment, he could almost understand why they kept coming back. Why pilots climbed into her and strapped themselves down like they were climbing into arms they trusted.
Hangman held steady on the lane. Calm. Loyal. Dangerous.
He settled back and felt the harness take him. Not gentle. Certain.
Comfortable.
Like he belonged there.
And that was the problem.
He knew damn well what she was. A craft built with no regard for her pilot's safety.
To reward the dosed and punish the clean. A ship that loved you hardest when you were least human.
He rested his gloved hand on the stick anyway.
Not affection.
Recognition.
"Yeah," he murmured, low enough the cockpit wouldn't have to answer. "You'll kill me."