Ford didn't wait for the Princess to argue. He grabbed her arm—gently, but with the grip of a man who moved heavy machinery for a living—and hauled her toward the cockpit.

  "Unhand me!" she shrieked. "My guards will flay you alive!"

  "Your guards aren't here," Ford growled, shoving her into the co-pilot’s seat. It was dusty and covered in old navigational charts. "But the Red Corsairs are, and they don't do flaying. They just vaporize you and sell your teeth."

  He jumped into the pilot seat. The console was lighting up like a Christmas tree.

  "Missile lock detected," Mother announced calmly. "Impact in thirty seconds."

  "Deploy countermeasures," Ford ordered, flipping three switches at once. "Chaff and flare. And kill the running lights."

  "I am terrified!" Sheila announced, gripping the armrests until her knuckles turned white. "We are going to die in a garbage truck!"

  "Not yet," Ford muttered. He grabbed the flight stick.

  He looked at the tactical display. The Pirate Corvette was faster, better armed, and shielded. In open space, Ford was dead meat. He couldn't outrun a missile.

  But he saw something on the long-range sweep.

  Sector 7-Beta. The "Oort Mist". It was a dense, volatile nebula of ionized gas and ice crystals. Most pilots avoided it because it scrambled sensors and shredded shields.

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  To Ford, it looked like an atmosphere.

  He slammed the throttle forward. The Seagull groaned, engines screaming as he banked hard to the left, ignoring the standard flight vectors.

  "Where are you going?" Sheila yelled. "The station is that way!"

  "We're not going to the station," Ford said. He turned to face her. The cockpit lights cast deep shadows on his tired face.

  "Princess," Ford said, his voice dropping an octave. "If you value your life, literally, stop talking for the next fifteen minutes."

  She opened her mouth to retort.

  "Fifteen minutes," Ford repeated. "If we survive, you can scream and yell then. You can fire me. You can execute me. But right now, I am heading for that gas cloud, and it's going to get very bumpy."

  He pointed to the swirling wall of purple and orange fog looming in the viewport.

  "Start praying," Ford added, turning back to the controls. "Silently."

  Sheila clamped her mouth shut. Her eyes were wide, fixed on the nebula.

  "Mother," Ford said, a small, grim smile touching his lips as he felt the stick vibrate in his hand. "Drop the shields. Divert all power to the atmospheric stabilizers and the main thruster."

  "Warning," Mother chirped. "Entering the nebula without shields will expose the hull to severe abrasion. Also, that is insane."

  "Just do it," Ford said.

  The Corvette behind them fired. A plasma bolt seared past their starboard wing, scorching the paint.

  "Hold on," Ford whispered.

  He pushed the stick forward. The Millennium Seagull punched into the gas cloud.

  The silence of space vanished. Suddenly, there was a roar—the sound of gas rushing over the hull at Mach 10. The ship juddered violently. turbulence grabbed them, tossing the heavy freighter like a leaf.

  Sheila let out a whimper, but she didn't speak.

  Ford didn't flinch. His hands moved over the controls with a fluidity that he hadn't shown in twenty years. He felt the drag. He felt the resistance. He felt the wind.

  "Okay," Ford breathed, pulling the stick back into a tight loop that would have stalled a lesser pilot. "Now we're flying."