Ezra's First

Part 11

After they had both had the time to shower, eat some food snack and pack things away it came time to fall back into normal rhythm.

"Ill take first rest for a few hours and then you'll swap out." Ezra announced, the snack and the shower had definitely helped the fatigue but he needed some real rest.

"Get the ship running diagnostics and return pathways and I'll pick up from you when I wake up."

"Sure thing." Daniel responded with a smile and turned towards the bridge.

Ezra threw himself into Daniels bed, as his bed sheets where being washed, and was asleep within moments.

---

Nineteen hours later, the ships camouflage had been put away, the crew rested and in their seats on the bridge, back in their combat suits preparing to leave.

"Ship set status to Red Alert." Ezra announced.

"Ready?" Ezra asked Daniel.

"Yup."

They were about to turn all systems back on leave the planet, at that point they would be visible to any Preshk ships waiting for them and it was Daniels job to find them asap.

Ezra switched the ship's system back on and began the launch sequence while Daniel took advantage of the ships full sensory systems and scoured for their remaining two pursuers.

As the ship passed through the atmosphere and towards it's jump location, Ezra asked the question.

"Still nothing?"

"Nope, either they are hiding very well or have moved on?"

"Do you think they think we died, or kept moving?"

"Unsure, but that's going to bug me until we are home safe."

"Same."

---

The two travelled for three and a half days across nine systems without encountering the Preshk.

Unfortunately the theory that the Preshk had given up and returned to the fleet was immediately debunked as a missile hit them out of nowhere as they passed close to the systems inner Asteroid belt, at least one Preshk presumably laying in wait.

"Damage?" Ezra ordered as he fought hard to bring the ship back under his control.

"Direct hit on the starboard side of the ship, most vital systems seem to be working properly, with some reporting they had fallen back on redundant pathways."

Daniel continued to speak.

"We are loosing atmosphere from somewhere, we need to depressurise."

"Understood, suit up, you first."

Ezra continued to fly the ship away from where the missile had come from, frantically scanning the radar for any sign of the attacking ship. It seems the Preshk ship had taken a gamble that had not paid off. To ambush them like that, meant to be sitting still and so that missile really needed to have disabled them. Instead they had maintained their velocity and it would take the Preshk ship some time to catch up.

Ezra was mad at himself for being so careless as to fly right past an obvious ambush spot. He had been so focussed on the fastest path home he hadn't thought about one of them potentially lying in wait.

Once he was suited up, Daniel took the ships controls at his station and Ezra went about suiting up.

"Do you think the other one is ahead of us?" Ezra asked.

"Probably, it seems like they guessed our most likely path home and ran ahead of us, it wouldn't have been hard."

"So the question becomes, would we survive dealing with two of them at once?"

"Probably not."

"So then we need to get rid of this one before we leave this system then. Have they shown themselves yet?" Ezra and Daniel both peered at the radar screen to see a faint trace of the Preshk ship at the edge of their active sensor range.

"They have a lot of catching up to do, we'd easily beat them to the next system."

"Then we need to face them in this system."

"We can make it look like we suffered a malfunction, they did hit us with a missile." Daniel suggested.

"Yes that could work, it's just what we do next that's the hard part."

Ezra leaned over the navigational panel and had a second look at the system they where flying to and saw the only thing that would work.

"We need to head towards that gas giant, make out engines look like they cut out around that point there and try and convince the Preshk we are seeking refuge in the rings."

Daniel screwed his face up as he thought through it.

"I hate it, but I also can't think of anything else, I'll get working on a realistic engine malfunction if you want to get us heading in that direction?"

"Sure." Ezra responded and went about chasing course.