“Move,” Luka elbowed Tusca out of the way, a fierce, furious expression on his face. Before Tusca could say anything, the prince settled himself in Carlito’s empty seat. Electricity crackled across the console, and he wrenched open a cerebral socket that Tusca didn’t know he had.

“When-“ he started, and made for his chair, because he knew that look and he wanted to be strapped in for whatever came next. “You-“

“You gave Roja permission to teach me,” Luka said with a coldness to him that he must have learned before he ran away from home. “He taught me. Can’t do our kind of flying without one.”

The ship groaned and the crew called their worries or curses as suited their natures. Luka ignored them as wires snapped free all over the bridge and wired themselves into his console. Soon it was a spiderweb of glittering wires, and Luka fitted a small plug onto the nearest coil and plugged himself straight into the ship’s control center.

Then he flipped on the comms.

“I am Lucas Rayhan Goliat, Crown Prince of the Human Galactic Empire,” he snapped, Imperial accent crisp as he bit the words off with a viciousness no one could miss. The pirates on the other end stared at him, and Tusca smoothed his face of any expression. If Luka thought he had a winning play, well, it wasn’t like Tusca had anything better to offer. “You are currently in violation of eighteen Galactic laws including murder, and guilty by your own admission of more than that. If you do not vacate this area immediately I will personally and with great pleasure, blast you out of the goddamn sky.”

He flipped the comms again, and Tusca could only stare at him as electricity crackled around them again and the web around Luka pulsed. The ship rumbled, and Luka smiled coldly.

The pirates, apparently, weren’t smart enough to take the hint. Weapons began to power up, and their own shields flickered on in time to block the first few salvos in a bright splash of silent light.

Then they were moving.

“Captain?” Do’ was white-knuckled in her chair as a coil of wires jacked into her console on their own.

“Luka’s in charge,” Tusca decided as his ship shot forward, dodging between blasts like Luka had grown up a fighter pilot. “He says to do something, you do it.”

“Yes captain,” Left replied for Do’, his hand tight on his twin’s shoulder. Right was focused on his console, but they all knew there was nothing he, or anyone else, could do.

Luka flipped the comms back on as the pirates began to circle around them.

“Galactic control,” he said shortly after keying in a short code from memory. “Alpha-Delta-Eta-eight-four-two, by the sign and Order of the Imperial Throne. I want an open channel to every Galactic ship in range.”

There was loud silence over the comms, and for a moment Tusca wondered what was going on.

Then; “Yes, your Imperial Highness,”

The comm tech sounded rattled. That was telling in and of itself. Comm techs were known for their unreasonable control during transmissions. To shake one of them was a feat in and of itself.

Luka dropped the shields suddenly as one of the other ships got just a little too close.

Lightning blazed along their hull and leapt to the enemy ship in a long bolt that left an ionized trail behind it.

The other ship shuddered violently, and Luka’s hands danced across the controls.

Tusca wondered how he could split his attention in so many directions at once. Flying, controlling the Power no one knew he had, and broadcasting all at once.

Speaking of that broadcast…

“This is Luka Rayhan Goliat, Crown Prince of the Human Galactic Empire,” Luka said crisply with the air of a perfectly groomed orator. “My ship is under attack by self-declared pirates. With this broadcast I am including my exact location, and the identifying information of the attacking ships. Anyone who brings me proof of destruction will have my personal thanks, and all that goes with it.”

He flipped the comms off again. Tusca stared at him.

“Did you just put a bounty on them?” he asked incredulously. The ship Luka had zapped trembled furiously and tried to dart back into the pack that was after them. The moment it got close, lightning leapt from hull to hull, and those ships began to tremble too.

Moments later, the first ship went dark, completely dead in the water. The others followed quickly, infected by the small ship.

“Yes, I did,” Luka said darkly, and yanked hard on the helm controls. They pitched planetward in such a steep corkscrew that the hull began to warm. “Let’s see how many of them stick around to find out what happens in the next fifteen minutes.”

“Boy, if you don’t stop the spinning, I’m gonna puke on you,” Do’ yelled from her station. She was clinging to her chair and her dusky skin was decidedly green.

“If you gotta, you gotta,” Luka replied, and didn’t stop their tight dive even as they hit atmo and the heat picked up. “I’ll deal with it if you do. Graat, you alive?”

“Yes,” Graat somehow rallied enough to speak. Tusca was proud of him. “What do you need?’

“The exact density of the air layer directly over those mountains.”

Why-“ Graat cut himself off and scrabbled for the nearest screen to pull up the information. Cannon blasts rained down around them, and if Tusca didn’t know better, he would think it was sheer luck that kept those blasts from touching their hull. “Scanning now.”

He might have thought that anyway, except that every time one got a little too close, more of that lightning crackled around them, and somehow, they managed to be anywhere but in the line of fire.

Information glittered down a cable from Graat’s station to Luka’s, and up the wire to his brain. “Got it. Left, throw our altitude up on the screen. Graat, I want a countdown to that thicker air layer. I can’t afford to calculate it myself right now.”

Numbers flashed up on the screen, bright and counting down fast. Six minutes.

“Do’, how close on our asses are those guys?”

“Less than a thousand meters and closing!” she might be green, but neither Heaven nor Hell would keep Do’ from fighting for her family. “Hope you have a plan!”

“I’ve got better than a plan,” Luka said. Tusca caught a glimpse of his eyes and swore mentally while checking the straps on his chair. He knew that look, but the last time he saw it was in Roja’s eyes right before the Red Baron slingshotted a whole fleet around the outer edge of a black hole, nearly killed them all, and won a war. “I have science. Right, prime our inertial dampeners and fire up the anti-gravity field we use for cargo transport.”

“You had better be sure about this,” Right muttered, and hurried to do as their prince asked. “Priming.”

“How long?”

“Three minutes to full power.”

“Good. I got it from there.”

The mountains, and the invisible layer of air that surrounded them, plunged into view, black and ice-capped and looking like nothing so much as teeth. Luka wove them in and out of the icy peaks directly above that thicker layer of air that he somehow knew would be there.

It was all a ploy. A play for time, and a reply to the message sent out under royal authorization.

Of course, time was ticking down, and they couldn’t run forever.

What happened next was pretty spectacular from any angle, but honestly, the pirates got the best view.

The wires around Luka lit up like a thunderstorm and channeled across his hands as suddenly their engines twisted all the way around and emptied the full force of their fury against that heavy-air layer. So quickly after that, that it might as well have been the same moment, Luka threw on their inertial dampeners and the anti-gravity field through the whole ship.

The effect was a shocking sense of weightlessness as all the force of their speed emptied into the dampeners, and the anti-gravity kept the crew from turning into chunky salsa on the view-screens.

The speed boost was, frankly, impossible. Tusca fought to keep his monkey brain from losing its’ shit as all the Gs that came with that kind of inertial change translated directly into more force for the engines to push against.

Without a technopath holding the ship together by sheer will, they would have ripped apart. They might have anyway, except, well…

Probability got a little weird with a Red Baron at the helm.

“Luka, we got a lot of company,” Do’ yelled even as they blasted straight through the swarm of pirates on their asses and into open space. Jump-Holes ripped themselves through the fabric of space in every direction and ships roared out. Tusca swore when one of the Galactic Empire’s feared space stations appeared with a smoothness that spoke of a whole lot of money in one place at one time. “Boy, that is an Imperial Carrier. What in the hell-“

“It’s not an Imperial Carrier, it’s the Imperial Carrier. Specifically, it’s the Pacifica.” Luka said wolfishly and reached for the comms one last time, slow like he hadn’t just defied four or five laws of physics at once. The viewport flickered and revealed the face of a regal man with thick, greying hair. “Hello Father.”

The Emperor of the Human Galactic Empire looked at his son and heir, and then at the stunned crew who nonetheless rallied behind their youngest crew member.

He sighed and ran a hand over his face, amused, fond, incredulous, annoyance apparent on his face.

“Do I want to know?” he said at last, and Luka grinned as explosions lit up around them, the result of a great many pirate ships losing the impossible fight against physics and an angry technopath.

“Probably not,” Luka told him, and looked over his shoulder at Tusca. “Captain, you mind if we dock? I’ve… kind of made a mess of the ship.”

“That’s fine,” Tusca said dryly, and wondered how in the hell this had become his life. “Might as well have them paint it red while we’re at it, huh?”

Luka laughed, and the rest of the crew began to relax by inches. “And here I thought I would be banned from the helm like Roja was.”

“You are” Do’ said before Tusca could reply. “You come near that goddamn helm ever again and I swear all hell will rain down on you!”

The Emperor didn’t seem to know whether to laugh or go beat his head against a wall somewhere. Tusca could sympathize.

“Your mother’s hanger is open to you,” the Emperor said at last, and nodded to someone they couldn’t see. “And Lukas, the mechanics will stand by with cans of red pain.”