► A whole new set of alarms wailed into existence across the flight deck of the shuttle. Neither Milla nor Steph noticed. They were both jerked hard in their seats as Eagle One jolted in position, decelerating sharply for an instant before the reactors whined. Then the shuttle broke loose and continued the upward track.

“What the hell was that?” Steph cried, eyes quickly scanning his instruments.

Milla too was focused intently now, trying to find the cause of the disruption, but there were certain scanners that she was used to that the shuttle simply did not have.

“I . . . I believe it was a . . .” She scowled, thinking hard to remember the word. “A quantum lock.”

“A what?” Steph glanced over briefly before refocusing on his flying.

“A quantum lock, yes?” she said. “They tried to lock the shuttle into place by linking us to the local subatomic field of space.”

Steph wanted nothing more than to cross his eyes, but he thought he got the gist of it.

“Are you telling me they have a bloody tractor beam?”

Milla frowned. “What is a tractor? Never mind. No, it’s not a beam. It’s a way to cause the shuttle to link to the part of local space that is below atoms, yes? It’s used to capture targets. Priminae use it often for asteroid mining.”

“Yes? Are you asking me?” Steph shot her a confused look. “I’m actually pretty well educated, Milla, but I think you just left me drowning in the deep end. Okay, forget that, they have a tractor beam. Great. Okay, I can work with this . . .”

He wrenched the stick in his hand, sending the shuttle into a spiral out and around the parasite frigate and cleaving through a cloud bank that briefly cut visuals down to effectively zero. He wasn’t basing his flying on what he could see, so for the moment that was the least of his concerns.

“How strong is this lock? Can we break it?” he asked as he put the shuttle through a tight corkscrew, half taking evasive action and half looking for a clean slot between the two closest parasite frigates from which to make his move.

“One?” Milla looked uncertain. “Most likely, yes. Two, however, would be very unlikely. Against three, there is no chance.”

“Well, I guess we’d better not get caught, then,” Steph quipped. “Give me military power on the CM field in three.”

“Military power in three, aye.”