White lines like lightning bolts shot out from the topside left corner of the readout, outside our effective sensor range, all of them traveling toward the topside right.

  The ship with the ripstone was firing on the newcomer. I could imagine the crackle of the void piercing reality, the smell of ozone. I checked the range scale on the readout, blinked, checked it again.

  “Hao,” I said, “did you mess with the sensor settings?”

  I didn’t get an answer, but that was answer enough. Hao was staring at the readout. I didn’t blame her. The ripstone ship was firing at a range of six light-hours. That was like firing right across an entire star system.

  “Voidmunching crud,” Hao said. “What’s happening?”

  “No idea,” I said. “But we’d better get out of here.”

  I fed some power into our single working engine, increasing our speed from five to ten to fifteen c, enough to build up a small bow wave, before realizing that we no longer had any impact wards left. I cursed, and cut back to five c again.

  Nothing hit us.

  I checked the time. Two minutes had passed since the ripstone started firing, and it was continuing. It made my skin crawl.

  You don’t fire a ripstone. You conjure threads of force, and feed them into the stone. This reflects into the void, creating a ripple effect that shears anything it hits. The amount of force you need to feed into it is directly proportional to the stone’s mass, and cubically inversely proportional to the distance you’re standing from the stone. The mage who operated the ripstone was insanely strong. Either that, or he was standing inside an active ripstone, which was impossible.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Suddenly, the sensors flashed white, then went dark.

  Warpstone implosion. The newcomer had been hit by a ripstone flash and vaporized. My hand twitched on the power gauge. I wanted to force everything I could into the engine, wanted to run – but there was nothing to run to, and the problems we were running from were faster than us.

  “Explanation, please,” Hao said, her voice thin and trembling.

  “We can’t hide,” I said. “There’s a burner aboard that ship.”

  “A what?” Hao said.

  I remembered that she didn’t have my background, hadn’t attended the Academy.

  “Burner. Mage on the edge of his sanity,” I said. “Using his own mind to fuel a stone. Either suicidal or completely unaware of magical theory.”

  It happened, sometimes. You’d get kids experimenting with conjuring, managing to bring more than a spark to life. Sometimes they couldn’t afford formal training, or didn’t want to study. In the inner systems, they usually ended up forcibly conscripted, or lobotomized and in jail. Out here, they might get enough practice to become dirt mages, until they slipped up and burned out their minds.

  “So let’s hurry up and hide,” Hao said.

  “Won’t do us any good,” I said. “A mage that powerful can boost a sensor net to insane levels. They’ll be able to dowse our heartbeats, maybe even sense the hatchling.”

  Hao didn’t even curse. Her hands trembled.

  “So we’re doomed?” she said.

  “We need to change the rules of engagement,” I said. “Take down that mage.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning we find the largest structure we can, abandon the Bucket, and draw them inside. With any luck, they’ll bring the mage with them and we can get rid of him. Or her.”

  “And if that doesn’t work?” Hao said.

  I pasted a thin smile on my lips, then slapped down the face shield of my helmet.

  “Then we really are doomed,” I said.