“Us. We plotted its course and it’s going to intercept us in about fourteen hours. When we first saw it and saw its course, I made the assumption it was also running to the shoal and just wasn’t paying attention to our position. I boosted our velocity by half a percent, to get us clear of each other. They didn’t respond immediately, but over the last couple of hours they’ve boosted their own velocity to match ours. We’re definitely the targets.”

“So, pirates.”

“Yes.”

“Stupid pirates.” The best time to nab a ship was when it was exiting the Flow, not trying to get to it; inertia would send a target ship into the Flow shoal regardless. Pirate ships were usually relatively small, relatively fast, and almost always local—which is to say, with no equipment to shape a time-space bubble around their ships. If they entered the Flow, they’d die. A pirate attacking an outgoing ship would likely have only a very small window of time to attack successfully, board, unload cargo, and disengage.

“Stupid or they have a plan we don’t understand.”

“We can handle them, right?” The Yes, Sir came with a full complement of defensive weapons, and a small contingent of offensive weapons as well. The offensive weapons were technically illegal for a trade ship to have, but fuck that, when you’re in space, sometimes you have to shoot first and lie about it to a guild inquiry later.

“The ship is too far away to get a good look at its true capabilities, but if the thrust signature is correct, it’s a Winston-class freighter. It’s probably modified all to hell but no matter what they’re still small, which limits their offensive capabilities. We can probably handle them. If their intention is to pirate the ship.”

“What other intention would they have? They want to invite us to tea?”

“We don’t know. Right now our posture is to watch and monitor.”

“You can outrun them to the shoal. Power up now.”

Blinnikka shook his head. “The second we boost velocity more than trivially we give away that we know we’re being tracked. They’ll boost as well, probably to intercept earlier. If we plan to outrun them, we do it as late as possible, and when they’re close enough for us to target with those missiles we’re not supposed to have. But again, that’s if they are attempting the usual piracy.”

Kiva found herself getting irritated. “What the fuck would unusual piracy be in this case?”