The warning light keep blinked red.

  As five more ships follow behind us.

  Five pirate ships.

  They were right behind us.

  “Why is it always pirates…” I breathed, gripping the control stick tighter.

  Our scout ship wasn’t built for heavy fights. She was fast. Light. Meant to see trouble first — not become it.

  The cockpit shook as a beam grazed our rear shield. Blue light rippled across like a water ripple.

  “Captain! They’re locking on!” Nyx’s voice cracked over comms.

  I could see him on the lower side screen. Small body strapped into the navigation chair. Black hair with soft feline ears flattened against his head. Pale skin. Sharp gold eyes wide with stress. A long dark tail flicked wildly behind him, hitting the back seat. Nyx is a Catfolk

  He always pretended to be calm.

  But his tail always shows his true feelings, and his tail is definitely not calm at all.

  “I’m sending distress signals!” he rushed out.

  Another blast shook us hard.

  Nyx yelped. “Shields dropped to seventy-eight percent!”

  “I’m working on it,” I said.

  I am Kaito Hayamizu, main pilot of this scout ship under Duke Veralion’s banner. I come from a frontier-world where speed is life. I'm a Horsefolk, and speed runs strong in my race — tall ears, sharp eyes, legs made for motion. People say our kind are born to run.

  In space, I run with engines.

  Another blast hit our rear shield. The whole ship trembled.

  “Garruk!” I shouted.

  “Already shooting!” the ogre roared back.

  The ogre’s deep laugh thundered through the ship. “Already firing!”

  Through the side monitor I saw him in the main turret chamber. Typical to big race the Ogre, Garruk has a big hands on bigger controls. Muscles like stone. Green skin shining under red battle lights. He laughed as the heavy cannon fired.

  The main turret boomed. The recoil echoed through the hull. On the side display, I saw one pirate ship flicker as its shield sparked.

  “That’s it?!” Nyx squeaked. “You only chipped it!”

  “I chipped it with love!” Garruk barked back.

  Another pirate beam sliced past us, close enough to light the cockpit blue.

  Nyx’s claws tapped rapidly across the navigation panel. With his tail straight like a stick.

  “Captain, they’re spreading out! Two above, two below, one directly behind! They’re trying to herd us!”

  “I see it.”

  My ears twitched as I calculated angles and drift.

  “Engine output at ninety-five percent,” Nyx continued, voice shaking. “If we push more, we overheat. If we don’t push more, we die. I do not like either option!”

  “Relax,” I said automatically.

  “I am not relaxed!”

  The ship lurched again as another shot clipped our shield. Warning tones stacked on top of each other.

  Nyx swallowed audibly. “Shields at sixty-nine percent… that’s a bad number. I don’t like that number.”

  Garruk fired again. Another pirate shield sparked — barely scratched.

  “They’re too thick,” Garruk growled. “We cannot punch through like this.”

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  “We’re not trying to punch,” I said. “We’re trying to live.”

  Ahead, space was open — too open. No cover. No debris. Just empty black.

  Bad.

  Very bad.

  Nyx’s tail wrapped around his own leg tightly.

  “Captain… missile signatures forming… I think— I think they’re arming them—”

  A shrill lock-on alarm screamed.

  Nyx flinched so hard his ears flattened completely. “MISSILES! MISSILES! Countermeasure priming— priming— why is it loading so slow?!”

  “Because you modified it last week,” I said.

  “For efficiency!” nyx try to clarify.

  “For chaos!” while Garruk shouted as he laughed.

  Another violent shake. A near miss.

  Sweat ran down my neck, but my hands stayed steady.

  This is what my kind does.

  We run.

  We endure.

  We complain later.

  “Nyx,” I said, voice firm now. “Give me vectors. Sharp ones.”

  He forced himself to breathe. I could see him trying to steady his shaking hands.

  “O-okay… marking drift points… adjusting micro-thruster guidance… recalculating… recalculating…”

  His voice was still trembling.

  “Done! Hard right in three seconds or we explode!”

  “Good,” I said.

  Behind us, five pirate ships well fitted ship, contrary to ordinary pirate ships. And their pilot is surprisingly good too.

  Missile lock screamed louder.

  Garruk’s voice came low now. No laughing. “Captain.”

  “I know.”

  I pushed the engines.

  “Hold tight!” I shouted.

  An alert sounded as missile lock screamed in my ears.

  “Hard right! Now!” Nyx yelled.

  I didn’t hesitate.

  The ship snapped sideways so hard my vision blurred. I killed forward thrust, rolled under, then kicked the ventral thrusters. The hull screamed in protest. Warning lights flashed amber across my panel.

  A missile cut past our canopy, so close I saw its tracking fins adjust mid-flight.

  These pirates weren’t amateurs.

  One of them anticipated my roll and fired ahead of my path. The explosion forced me to dive instead of climb.

  “Captain, they’re predicting you!” Nyx shouted, claws flying over the console.

  “I noticed.”

  Behind us, five pirate ships moved like a pack of wolf chasing their prey. Tight spacing. Clean thrust control. And precise movement.

  This clearly indicates how experienced Hunters they're.

  I shifted patterns — broke my rhythm, added delay, then sudden acceleration. A fake drift left, snap thrust right, spiral climb—

  No matter how I move my ship, two of them tail on us perfectly.

  While the other moves around us trying to shoot our Thrusters.

  From above, one dropped lower, while shooting beams and releasing missiles.

  They weren’t just random shooting too.

  They were herding.

  While thinking of this, my instincts screamed.

  Something ahead.

  Not on radar.

  Not on thermal.

  Not even visible outside the cockpit

  Just—

  Wrong.

  “Down,” I muttered.

  I forced the nose forward and dove hard.

  The four closest pirates followed instantly, engines flaring bright as they committed to the drop.

  The fifth ship was a little higher in formation. He adjusted late, trying to angle down and close distance—

  The fifth ship held slightly above the others in formation.

  He reacted a fraction too late.

  Dipping his nose, he tried to angle down and cut the distance—

  Then it happened.

  A violent jolt.

  The pirate’s thruster seems to have struck something that wasn’t there a moment before.

  An impact cracked through the hull, and the side engine detonated in a burst of white flame. The ship lurched sideways, as the momentum hurled it off-course while metal sheared away in a spray of glowing fragments. A jagged hole tore open along its flank.

  And in the original empty space, a ripple spread outward like disturbed water—

  And a line materialized from the distortion.

  A cable.

  Thick. Industrial. Taut.

  A tow line stretched impossibly across an open vacuum.

  He had grazed it.

  The pirate vessel bucked violently as sparks cascaded along the damaged engine housing. One of the rear thruster assemblies tore free completely, spinning away in a shower of molten debris.

  For a split second, it looked like the ship would break apart.

  But it didn’t.

  The pilot fought it.

  Stabilizers flared. Attitude jets fired in frantic bursts. The vessel spun once—hard—before the remaining engines caught and forced it into a rough, uneven equilibrium.

  Barely. It slows down and wouldn't be able to chase us, but the fast reaction and being able steadied itself that fast just shows how good this pirate is.

  Despite me giving aome focus on that ship, I'm still running away from the other 4.

  Luckily it seems like they're also shocked at what happened as it delayed their momentum and I managed to gain a bit more distance from them.

  But it didn't last long as they seemed to regain themselves as they once again continued chasing us.

  “Captain— that pirate clipped something!” Nyx shouted.

  That’s when space rippled on the cable from both end.

  A distortion.

  Like heat waves across glass — but wide. Massive.

  As the cable vibrated from the impact from the pirate.

  Something began to appear.

  A shape pushed through the ripple. At first it was just darkness.

  Then more darkness.

  Then structures.

  At the right end of the cable, a massive black hull slowly revealed itself as its cloak peeled away in strips. Long. Straight. No visible command tower. No bridge. Just a solid, jet-like form stretching across space.

  Four enormous engine pods sat at its side rear, cold but dominant. With an array of main engine Thursters at the back.

  It was easily over a kilometer long.

  Behind it — connected by those same cables — were three other ships. One roughly the half a kilometre in length and two smaller ones, half of the big one. All dark. All silent, clearly powered down.

  The damaged pirate stabilized and limped aside, but the other four—

  They slowed for half a second and it seems after confirming that the massive ship that materialized wasn't a threat, they choose to continue chasing us.

  Disciplined.

  Focused.

  "Fuck " I cursed under my breath as one of them even used the massive hull as partial cover while adjusting the pursuit angle.

  “Captain, they’re still coming!” Nyx said, disbelief in his voice.

  “Of course they are,” I replied.

  They finish the hunt first.

  But their formation wasn’t as tight now. The sudden appearance of that black giant forced them to widen spacing. Caution slowed them just enough and with the loss of a ship, it wasn't as heard as before.

  That was my window.

  “Fuck this!!!,” I said. “let bail.”

  I angled us away from the distortion field, cutting across the pirate’s expected intercept line instead of away from it.

  Unexpected movement.

  Break prediction.

  Force recalculation.

  One pirate overshot slightly and had to roll to re-align. Another throttled back to avoid drifting too close to the massive hull.

  We gained distance.

  Behind us—

  A low vibration rolled through space.

  At first I thought it was an engine echo.

  Then my console flickered.

  Nyx froze.

  “…Captain?”

  The massive black ship hummed.

  Sound couldn't have travelled across space, but somehow, i heard that low hummed.

  A tone you felt more than heard.

  The giant ship that was offline a while ago glowed faintly — not ignition. Something else.

  Then—

  A pulse.

  It wasn’t light.

  It wasn’t fire.

  It was a wave.

  Space itself rippled outward from the giant hull in a wide expanding ring.

  “Unknown Energy spike!” Nyx shouted.

  The shockwave hit us.

  Eve

  ry system on my board flickered at once.

  Engines died.

  Thrust dropped to zero.

  Reactor output collapsed.

  Energy shield down

  The hum inside our ship vanished into silence.

  The pirate ships around us sputtered the same way. Engine trails cut off mid-burn. Their pursuit lines vanished.

  Total power loss.

  Not destroyed.

  Not overloaded.

  Forced shutdown.

  “The reactor just entered the emergency

  cooldown!” Nyx yelled. “It won’t restart! It’s in standby mode!”

  Chill runs down my back as I look at the monitor towards the giant ship that is still slowly emerging.

  Dead drift.

  All of us.

  Pirates.

  Us.

  Even Garruk cheerful laughter stopped.

  Everything.

  In front of a waking giant.

  We're so dead..

  What kind of monster did we wake up...