Of Course not!

“You know, it strikes me that I’m not actually getting paid for this,” you tell the holographic Carston. Victory dances through his eyes and he shines a smug grin.

“Glad you could see sense,” he told you.

“Which is why I won’t be taking your offer,” you say, completely poleaxing Carston. “Double nothing is still nothing,” you explain with a commiserating nod. “At least this way I get to keep Tanna and a cargo hold full of grateful dancers who just might . . . ‘dance’ for me,” you add.

“I can give you slaves, money and much more besides!” Carston all but growls.

“And probably a lot of fun too,” you add for him. “But in the end, I gave my word and you know how it is,” you say. “I took a job, stupidly I took it pro-bono mostly cause I wanted a piece of Tanna’s arse, but I still took a job so it gets completed,” you explain.

“You will regret this,” Carston tells you in a deceptively calm voice.

“Nah, you’re only going to make life fun for me,” you reply, flashing the man a grin. He looks off camera and his hologram winks off, leaving you on the bridge with Tanna and Saito.

“You actually considered it?!” Tanna exclaims.

“Nah, I was just remembering that I wasn’t getting paid for this,” you reply. “Saito, math me some firing lines on those turbolasers,” you order. “Tanna, go make sure the girls are as strapped in as possible and remind me later to get crash webbing . . . everywhere,” you order. Tanna blinked while Saito hopped right to work.

“What?” Tanna asked, not moving. “But there’s gotta be something I can do!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, go make sure our passengers aren’t going to paste themselves against the walls when I start pulling high-G manoeuvres,” I order a little more snappishly. “Someone has to!” I snap at her, “They are already going to be sick from my earlier aerial acrobatics so Go. Help. Them.” I tell her and finally it sinks in that they may not be alright. And ‘oh shit’ look dawns upon her face and she all but runs off the bridge to check on the dancers.

“Whatcha got for me, Saito?” You ask as you slip back into the pilot’s seat and begin programming a flight path towards the cruiser. “Any weaknesses we can exploit?” You ask.

“The ship has no anti-fighter weapons,” Saito reports as he brings up a holographic display of the ship on the console between you. “The engineer working on it is also Carston’s man and very adept with . . . talking . . . not so adept with engineering,” he added.

“What are we talking, exactly?” You ask, turning to face the hologram.

“The main power trunk is feeding directly into the shield systems, if it is stressed too much, the make-shift connections will overload and the entire ship will lose power,” Saito explains. You blink at this as you analyse the cruiser. Saito highlighted several positions around the ship as you watched. “These points in particular are more stressed,” Saito tells you and you grin.

“Remind me to fuck your brains out later, Saito,” you tell the catboi who blushes and sputters out something you don’t catch. You turn back to your console and take manual control of the engines so you can dodge the turbolasers.

“They are firing,” Saito reported, still blushing.

“From this distance?” You ask rhetorically as you watch the incoming rounds. None of them are in danger of actually hitting you. “Must be going for field saturation rather than accuracy,” you comment.

You watch the incoming bolts of high energy doom and look for a pattern to exploit. You sigh as you find one, the gunners of the cruiser firing a basic circular pattern but so slowly that you can slip between the bolts easily enough.

“Attention, all hands, I am disabling the artificial gravity so ‘down’ is going to be pointing in different directions,” you say into the ship's intercom. With that, you turn off the grav-plating and gunning the engines. You experience a brief sensation of weightlessness before the g-forces of the engines kick you back into your chair enough to anchor you to it.

“Must remember to check the dampeners,” Saito muttered to himself. Considering you are accelerating at twelve Gs, you’d say the inertial dampeners are doing a great job.

The light of the turbolaser bolts turn into streaks as you rocket forwards at literal break-neck speeds. At such speeds, it only takes a few minutes before you are slipping between the streaks of turbolaser fire on your pre-planned flight path. Once you realise they aren’t going to change their firing pattern to counter your manoeuvre, you click your engines off and let your ship coast along at the ridiculous velocity you managed to get it up to.

Weightlessness returns for a moment before you punch a few commands into your console and your ship flips itself on the axis and you throttle up once again.

You match speeds with Carston’s cruiser and end up sitting neatly above the Dreadnought’s engine block and neatly out of the firing arcs of its guns.

“They need a gun turret or five on the ventral and dorsal sections of the hull,” you comment as you try to wedge yourself back into your seat. “And we definitely need crash webbing or some bloody seatbelts!” you exclaimed annoyedly.

“You aren’t supposed to turn gravity off,” Saito replies, helpful as always, using his tail to help keep himself stabilised in zero-g.

“Oh well, I like doing things the smart way,” you snark back. “Now let’s get this over with,” you add as you punch in commands. The ship shudders and streaks of light rush passed the ship’s view ports as your laser cannons fire. Off in the distance, you see the flashes as they impact upon the cruiser’s shields.

Whoever is captaining the ship makes an evasive manoeuvre, turning the ship to port in an attempt to get the guns facing you but it is too little too late. A few more moments of shooting, long before the first turbolaser has a firing solution, your laser bolts begin impacting the hull and the ship’s engines cut out.

“And that is that,” you comment with a sigh and a stretch that would have had you float away from your chair if not for your legs being wedged under the console.

Idly, you consider leaving gravity off but that would only cause problems with the girls and Tanna. You reach down, punch in a few commands and plop back into your seat as gravity reasserts itself. You contemplate doing more damage to the cruiser but decide against it. You aren’t going to blow that ship up and pissing off Carston even more doesn’t sound fun enough. With that, you program in a flight path to the hyperspace exit and let the ship do the flying.