“The Rancor?” he said incredulously when the name popped up. “What’s the Rancor doing here?”

“Who’s that?” Dorsey called from under the seat. “Can they help us?”

“Probably not,” Rogers said. “They’re all supposed to be dead. They flew into an asteroid when I was on duty.”

“Oh god,” Dorsey said, “now we have pirates and ghosts!”

Rogers wasn’t entirely sure he disagreed with Dorsey’s assessment. If he hadn’t been covered in a panicked sweat, he might have gotten a chill up his spine.

“Rancor,” he called, not knowing what else to do. “Abandon your course and jump back to the fleet! You’re blocking my exit!” Rogers paused. “Please?”

The Rancor didn’t do anything at all. He expected at least for it to call for more ships, but nothing else came out of Un-Space. It simply floated in the middle of a torrent of gunfire, its shields flaring to life every time it took a glancing blow from one of the pirates’ cannons, like a brain-dead animal that didn’t know where its dinner was. The crew on board the Rancor should have recognized his name at least—Rogers had beaten the Rancor’s captain at several rounds of underhanded card games. But the captain was also supposed to be dead, so maybe that put a damper on conversation.

It was all falling apart in front of him, the space quickly filling with the debris of destroyed ships as the battle raged on. Behind the Rancor, ships started flying out of Un-Space as the two groups called for reinforcements. Even though the Meridan ship was blocking the exit, that didn’t mean that a horde of pirates couldn’t jump in, take a quick evasive maneuver, and then move to engage the other pirates. And that’s exactly what they were doing.

Where were they all coming from? It seemed as if both pirate groups were summoning every ship in their respective fleets to come to their aid. This wasn’t a cargo transfer anymore; it was a space battle. And Rogers needed to get out of here fast.

“Aren’t you going to pilot this ship?” Rogers screamed at Dorsey.

Dorsey shook his head and mumbled.

“Ugh! You’re fired!” Rogers shouted, and grabbed the controls.

Equipment crashed around behind him as his frantic yanking of the controls put a couple gee’s worth of force into the ship. Dorsey tumbled sideways out of the chair from the force, and Rogers lost sight of him as he focused on getting the Awesome out of harm’s way. In the background, the comm chatter from the pirates grew even more frantic as each issued orders to its fighters.

“Punch those cannons out of the frigate! They’re tearing our fighters apart!”

“Grab that damn cargo and get back to the fleet so we can get out of here!”

But the tugboat, still dutifully dragging the crate of medical supplies, fell to pieces as it was hit by a barrage of blue cannon fire. The space battle seemed to halt for a moment as Rogers stared at the cracking hull of the tugboat and started counting the seconds until both pirate groups turned on him. He also learned what several hundred pounds of baking flour looked like expanding into open space. In a weird way, he found it kind of pretty.