Fourteen armed vessels swarmed through the void, racing towards the Enkidu. The Gormans harassed the starliner for a megasecond. The ship hadn't run, hadn't needed to, protected by armor plating that was impossible to penetrate. But the Enkidu's crew felt the stress. The weapon systems, external and exposed, sustained damage, and a substantial quantity of luck and skill kept the primary propulsion systems operational.

The Gorman government threw fighters at the generation ship, knowing their assets would be destroyed, not caring about the lives of the mercenaries. Some of the small craft were fortunate enough to surrender; the remainder were destroyed by advanced defensive systems. Still, the Gorman strategy was attrition, and they were unconcerned about the loss of non-Gorman life and materiel.

Constant harrying tested the endurance of the Enkidu's crew and exhaustion limited the risks they were willing to take to repair the ruined systems on the ship's exterior. They sent technicians out to clamber around, rigging things for operational use. Quorum maintenance typically relied on full recycling and replacement of damaged systems, and so the technicians were unfamiliar with the sorts of ad-hoc repairs required to survive during wartime. After all, the ship's leadership hadn't expected a fight.

Rolf didn't understand why the liner lacked a substantial escort, or why they hadn't jumped back into Quorum space after the sustained assault. The generation ship hadn't even tried to move out of Gorman space under conventional power. The long-range EMDIS scanner systems showed no sign of potential reinforcements. Pathik had plotted the liner's course and found it on track to intercept - or dock with - a Gorman station. A thirty-ship fleet had dwindled to fourteen under the orders of a Gorman commander who claimed that the Enkidu was carrying a massive military force to take the station. Rolf thought the idea implausible. He began to believe the Enkidu's transmissions, explaining that the ship was on a humanitarian mission to evacuate non-zealots from Gorman space.

Small spots of energy began to glow from circular apertures in the Enkidu's hull as the liner recognized the incoming wave of warships and brought weapons on the line. This was sloppy, giving the aggressors targets and an option to disable the Enkidu's emitters. The Quorum ship was technically superior, but these sloppy mistakes would be costly.

Two battle cruisers, the largest ships supporting the engagement, floated towards the left side of the Osiris. They were joined by two fighter escorts. Ross kept the Osiris' weapons cold as Pathik maintained a perfect radial trajectory to keep the engines pointed aft and out of view of the Enkidu's conventional WaBIT sensor array. The other corvettes were uncomfortably close, forcing Pathik's use of thrusters to maintain attitude more than he would have liked. The energy expenditure, bright flashes of fire against the cold vacuum, could be detected by the liner's automated targeting systems.

Rolf's attention was drawn over his shoulder as a small display flashed and chirped. As expected, the Osiris' long-range passive sensor system had been jammed, hiding allies and enemies alike, unless they wished to use active sensors and expose their location. He acknowledged the error, set the system to ignore future warnings, then pulled a map onto the display. The map displayed seven transponders reporting location.

The Gorman fighter wing approached at a much higher velocity. The heat generated by their main engines couldn't be disguised, so they were approaching haphazardly on a separate vector. One of the fighters was equipped with a complete countermeasures package, jamming the Enkidu's short-range sensors as well as either of the battle cruisers could. That package replaced the fighter's weapons and life support systems, leaving the pilot with little more oxygen than what her combat flight suit could recycle. Her ship had been damaged in the last sortie and Rolf did not expect her to survive this one. A cycle before, His crew helped her offload her co-pilot's corpse, killed by friendly fire in a prior rush. The crew patched leaks in the tiny fighter after the Gorman cruisers refused to let her dock. Rolf gave her whisky and the meal that was her last.

There was no indication that the fighter had armed and activated the countermeasure package, despite multiple calls for jamming from the Gorman officers controlling the engagement. Rolf wondered if the pilot intended to surrender. Well, once this was over, the Gormans were unlikely to let a traitor live.

Three fighters launched from a bay in the Enkidu. None of them had Quorum registrations. The fighters turned, burning hard toward the mercenary fleet. The second battle cruiser, the only ship with Gorman officers onboard, ordered the assault to continue and veered off.

Rolf swore, certain the small fleet had become fodder for a more focused effort by another group. If he tried to run, the signature he would leave would likely leave his ship open to the Enkidu's targeting systems, even if he stayed close to the other battle cruiser.

He clicked a button on his console. "Colin, get the missile ready. We're going all the way. Pathik, engines to maximum output. Ross, weapons cold until we take fire unless you're sure you can take out those cannons or otherwise get a hard kill."

The crew set to work.

Two of the Enkidu's salvaged fighters erupted in a bloom of wet debris, the life-support capsules bursting and turning to vapor. The Quorum ship retaliated and destroyed the unarmed fighter with the electronics package. A cycle before, Rolf had promised her that the Gorman fleet was going to win.

The weapons control staff on the Enkidu wasted no time, small orange points of light burned hotly, and the rest of the mercenary fighters became molten globs of hydrocarbons and wet protein. The small fighters weren't difficult to kill and the pilots might have survived if their payloads hadn't detonated under the continued barrage. Rolf trembled, and he chastised himself. The role of the fighters and corvettes was to close enough to light off something nasty, some lethal weapon that couldn't be jammed or hacked, that didn't rely on sophisticated sensors for targeting.

"We just lost most of our jamming capacity and half our fleet. Shit, Ross, get on the radio and ask the others to cover us."

The remaining Quorum fighter changed course and sped towards the Osiris, opening fire from a distance. The projectiles were fired in a dispersed pattern, threatening, but intended to herd, not kill.

Pathik pulsed the thrusters, pulling the ship safely down, out of the path of the inert projectiles, but the attack had the desired effect. The Quorum projectiles slammed into the hull of one of the larger battle cruisers. The armor absorbed the hits without damage, but the projectiles burned, giving the most unskilled gunner on the Enkidu a positive fix. Pathik had given the Quorum a fix, too, using the thrusters, but this error could be corrected.

"Rolf, course?", Pathik questioned.

"Make sure we control the line of fire. Burn hard, radially inbound. Just like before," Rolf said. "Colin, missile ready?"

"Yes, boss. It's in the forward jettison hatch. The motor will light off three seconds after vacuum, so let's not take any damage, right?"

Rolf nodded and watched the Enkidu launch another triad of fighters. Too few. He wondered whether they lacked crew or equipment. A ship of that size would have the manufacturing capable to build out several dozen fighters over the course of the last megasecond. That it wasn't seemed interesting, but also indicated the impetus for maintaining offensive pressure. Still, Rolf refused to die for the larger Gorman plan.

The Hand of Osiris spun in space, turning towards the approaching fighter while the inertia of the ship carried it sideways. The attitude change had been expensive, but the fighter had closed too effectively to ignore. Pathik tweaked the maneuvering thrusters until Ross had a firing solution with the main gun. The Osiris recoiled, gaining momentum away from the Enkidu.

Alerts blared inside the fighter and the pilot ejected in a life pod even before the Osiris' guns roared. Colin sat at the communications terminal and relayed orders to Rolf from the escaping fleet commander, orders that were ignored. The other cruiser was taking heavy damage, as fire concentrated from the Enkidu's flaring energy emitters. Rolf was reluctant to interfere, since he would likely draw attention.

"Pathik, how hot are we?"

Cracks erupted on the underside of the Osiris' hull as alarms screamed. Pathik pushed the engines past maximum rated power, spun, sweeping up, over, and behind unrecognizable debris. Rolf hoped the ship's armor would survive as another closing fighter sought revenge on the corvette. The dilaton mesh lagged behind the acceleration. Nausea swept through the crew as Pathik re-oriented the Osiris, hoping for a quick firing solution on the approaching fighters.

"Pathik? I've lost the lower guns."

The ship lurched again. Ross fired until the fighters broke off.

Pathik found a moment to answer. "We'd been lit up for the last forty-five seconds. We're fine. Not enough energy on target so the chillers are compensating, thank the Gods."

Pathik gained momentum, and then reversed course. An unidentified corvette was following the Osiris. Colin sent a transmission, and the small warship broke off. The fleet commander transmitted an obvious statement that the Enkidu was gaining velocity; she was trying to jump. Rolf needed to end this now.

Rolf shouted orders to Pathik and Ross. The Osiris' engines flared at full rated power and more. Pathik watched the ceramic manifold gauges indicate an over-temperature condition and vented molten salt to compensate. The Osiris charged towards the Enkidu, the massive generation ship pulling away with engines burning hard. The light warship could out-accelerate the liner, though that didn't matter if the Enkidu could manage to initiate an inchworm jump. Ross lobbed autocannon fire into both emitters targeting the Osiris as Rolf jettisoned a cargo bay hatch underneath the ship. Armor plating closed back into place, and the missile's rocket ignited. The missile seared across space with blue-hot light, furiously burning twenty-five kilograms of the most energetic solid fuel that credits could buy.

The weapon sped toward the Enkidu steadily gaining velocity. The motor burned out and the missile fragmented into a series of warheads and decoys. Two seconds passed before the warheads slammed into the ship and detonated. Nuclear explosions washed out the video from the sensor systems. When the view was restored, the Enkidu was drifting akimbo with hundred-meter-diameter cankers in her armor. Specks floated in space and Rolf recognized several as incinerated human bodies ejected from the ruptured exterior decks facing the Osiris. The captain of the Osiris sent a clear transmission to the Enkidu, demanding an immediate and unconditional surrender, alongside a threat of launching another nuke. That they had no others didn't matter - Rolf's crew would likely not survive another assault on the Enkidu.

The Enkidu surrendered, the Gormans accepted, and the remaining cruiser and corvettes surrounded the Enkidu. The fleeing Gorman cruiser returned and transferred personnel. The Quorum crew was relieved and replaced by Gorman officers and the mercenaries were ordered to stand down and depart the area while more Gorman cruisers moved in.

The Gormans wouldn't know how to pilot the ship, but the Quorum had ordered the artificial consciousness to cooperate with their captors. The core had tried, and carefully reconfigured the liner's systems to run on manual control where possible, even as the Gormans used laser-saws to cut through the cables tying the computer core to the ship's nervous system. The Gormans decried the computer as blasphemy and ejected the black box out a cargo bay airlock before blasting it into a mist, inky blue-black.

***

Rolf contacted the Gorman financial officer in charge of the contract. He insisted that they pay by remote credit transfer, but the Gormans required a four hundred kilosecond detour to visit a decrepit outpost to meet with the man. Upon arriving, the station wanted to charge nearly double what Pathik had expected to pay for resupply. Rolf and Colin were ignored by the financier and eventually camped out in front of his office.

Once Rolf finally met with the agent, three cycles after arrival, he received only half of what was still owed. The crew had been paid a third of their contract fee at hire and the remainder was to be paid on the successful completion of their term. The financier had argued that the mission wasn't fully successful due to high losses. Rolf was inspired to threaten even higher losses. The two reached an agreement, by which the crew would be allowed to leave the station without a confrontation with station security, and in return they would forfeit the remainder of their fee.

Rolf wished they had saved the nuke so that they could leave it behind now. Ross used his time scouring the network for new work, and found a brief reference to the Enkidu. The Gormans had lost the whole ship and all lives aboard, leaving yet another derelict graveyard. The network videos were unclear whether the deaths had been through malevolent murder of the Quorum personnel or simple incompetence. Rolf suggested a likely combination of both.

The crew agreed that working for the Gormans was a bad decision. Judging by their ships and stations, Pathik explained that he was certain the Gormans didn't have the finances to pay for the mercenaries they were hiring. Instead, they had let attrition reduce the bill, searching for an affordable solution to the war.