They would have been able to leave the spaceport the same day, but Jack decided to stay a little longer. The conversation with Maya had been more exhausting than he had ever thought, but it was not a negative experience for him.
At some point, he rose from his chair and dragged himself over to his cabin, which was located directly behind the cockpit. He dropped onto the bed and closed his eyes to sleep, recharge his energy and give his brain time to process what he had experienced.
After sleeping for a little over twelve hours, which was almost double his normal time, he finally felt ready to continue the journey. As everything had been ready since yesterday, they could start immediately.
Despite the station control protesting again, Jack manually manoeuvred the ship outside the hangar and away from the station. The man rambled something about AI being way more precise and not not as prone to error as humans, but Jack only laughed at him. Piloting a spaceship was the best thing he had ever done in both his lives.
After flying manually for a few hours, he finally plotted the course and let the AI take over the controls. It would take them about a week to reach the next warp point.
He sincerely hoped that warp points still worked exactly as they did in the game. Else they would need to find a navigator in this system willing to guide them, which could leave them stranded here for at least a few months till the next caravan showed up.
The warp-portal was a swirling mass of light, darkness and strange colours, that hug in space, seemingly unconnected to the rest of the galaxy. Nobody knew how or why these portals worked, but if you entered them at the right place and time, they would bring you to a corresponding portal in another solar system.
Knowing when and how to enter them was a difficult task and navigators had to study for many years, to be able to predict where a portal would lead.
Jack looked at the portal and a sense of relief flooded his body. The portals were the same as before. That meant he would not need a navigator and they could just proceed with the journey.
It didn't take him long to find the right place, where he confidently steered the ship into the portal. They flew through, what seemed like a tunnel of light before they safely left the portal on the other side.
Jack routinely checked the ship's systems, but everything seemed to have survived the transition quite well. He started plotting the new course when suddenly red lights began to flash all over the cockpit.
His piloting instincts kicked in and he brought the ship into a dive, while simultaneously bringing the engines to full power.
Two Objects, the ship's computer identified as void torpedos, harmlessly flew over them. Jack shouted at the AI to scan the surrounding space, before rolling the ship from side to side, trying to get a visual clue on the attacker.
More torpedos flew by to intercept the course he would likely have taken. That at least told him, the attackers must be further out, else they would have changed the angle of attack.
The Allistar Liner was no combat shit, so it was only fitted with two anti Missle turrets on top and a small front-facing rocket batterie. Both systems were civilian grade weapons and nowhere near enough to deal with ship destroying weapons like Void torpedos.
As the fighting was not an option, Jack decided running before the attackers got close was their best option.
"Attention all crew, we are under attack, please leave the cargo bay and all non-essential areas of the ship as I will take whatever energy I can to bring us safely out of here."
After making sure there were no more torpedos incoming, he plotted the course to the Vallian home system. Not trusting the AI to react in time, Jack stayed on the controls all the time, while switching directions in seemingly random intervals, to make them harder to hit.
At first, it seemed as if they had escaped the ambush, but after a few hours, the AI detected two unknown ships slowly catching up to them.
The engines were already running on the emergency burn, but after a few more hours there was no doubt that they could not outrun their enemies.
"Attention Crew, it is very likely we can not outrun them. prepare for being boarded, block the entrances to the core systems and create chokepoints. I will direct the energy back to all systems and try to hold them off as long as possible."
There were a few seconds of radio silence until Mordred connected to the call.
"Captain, you want us to prepare a 'special' delivery for them? I should have just enough material for one shot."
The special delivery was an exploit from the game, Jack liked to use. Non-military ships were prohibited from having military-grade weapons, meaning they could not destroy other ships. But with the right crew, one could stuff an escape pod full of explosives and fuel and set it to explode on impact.
"In that case, I would like to send them the lady Voids regards!"
Without the extra energy from the other systems, the enemies ships managed to close the distance in record time.
The Computer struggled to make heads and tails of the ships, but Jack easily identified them as pirates.
One was a destroyer type vessel with six to ten crew and the other one was a small frigate with fifteen to twenty crew. Both of them had no torpedo launchers installed, so jack guessed that there had to be at least one other pirate ship out there.
The destroyer was the faster of the two and seeing that Jack had slowed down, it dashed ahead of its friend.
As soon as they were in range, the crew of the destroyer opened fire. The vessel was fitted with high calibre machinegun ports on either side of the cockpit and two more on top.
At first, they tried to hit the engines, but Jack's steering made them hard to hit, and the bulky armour of the old vessel deflected most of the shots that hit without so much as a dent.
After trying and failing a few more times, the destroyer's captain seemingly got frustrated and started overtaking Jack while still firing at them. Jack just ignored the gunfire, all the destroyer could hope for was a luck penetration and even then the rounds would not be able to reach any important part of the ship.
In an effort to stop them, the destroyer positioned itself right in front of Jack's ship.
Jack just scoffed at the other captain and pressed a button to close the entry shutters of the cockpit. Thick metal plates moved to cover, while he activated the emergency burn for a few moments to get a speed boost.
The impact shook the whole ship, but Jack was confident in the sturdy build of the Allistar liner. Seconds later the AI presented him with a damage report, that confirmed his guess. All they had suffered was minor damage to the frontal Armour plates, as well as a significant loss of speed.
The destroyer on the other hand had suffered a far worse fate. The smaller ship had broken in into two, and surface scans suggested, at least one half was completely without energy and oxygen.
But Jack had no time to worry about the fate of the destroyer's crew as the frigate was about to catch up to them. He tried to build up some speed again but to no avail. The frigates Laser batterie was much better at dealing with the vessel's armour, so it took only a few volleys until the AI detected a hull breach.
He could not see it, but nevertheless, he knew the pirates would launch a boarding shuttle. In an effort to prevent the boarding, he started to rotate the ship, but the frigate's captain was no fool, he followed the movement and stayed on top of his prey.
Soon enough another impact shook the hull of the Allistar liner, as the boarding shuttle rammed its nose into the breach to seal it shut and allow its crew to enter the other ship.
Jack's brain was racing as he thought of ways, to get rid of the pirates. But whatever they would do, first they had to beat the boarding party. So he switched on the auto-pilot, grabbed his gun and left the cockpit.
As soon as he stepped into the hallway he could smell smoke and hear shouts coming from somewhere deeper into the ship. He had a certain idea as to where the boarding party had struck, so he went in that direction.
The closer he got, the more he could make out. There was the sound of guns being fired, people shouting and rounds and bolts hitting steel and flesh.
The latter made him stop and he had to fight his stomach for a bit to not throw up in the middle of the hall. He took a deep breath before he rounded the next corner.
There was something on the ground and Jack tripped and almost fell. He caught the wall with one hand and somehow managed to not drop his gun. When he turned around all his efforts from before were vain, as he instantly vomited.
Laying there was one of the recruits, dead with half of his head missing, and the rest deep-fried by a plasma bolt. Jack had hit the dead man's arm, which was now lying at an unnatural angle when he tripped, seeing that Jack vomited again.
Suddenly there were shouts in the corridor next to him. He tried to get up but had lost all the strength in his limbs.
"Cover for each other!"
"Retreat and keep firing!"
The sound of gunfire, this time close by reached his ears. People were running in his direction. Somehow Jack was on the ground on all fours. He panicked as he realised he had lost his gun.
"There, around the corner and regroup!"
"What the..."
Someone grabbed him and pulled him up.
"Is everything alright, what are you doing here?"
It took him a moment to realise, that Maya had picked him up and now frantically checked his body for injuries.
"He seems ok, hold them back!"
She held Jack by the shoulders and shook him.
"What are you doing here?"
His mind swam.
"I,... I wanted to help."
For a moment she just looked at him in disbelief.
"You are the captain and our only pilot."
"But we were boarded, I just wanted to."
She shook him again, then turned to the waiting crew.
"You, take him back to the cockpit and turn this on."
Maya handed one of the men a small data carrier. He took it with a nod, then grabbed Jack by the arm and led him away towards the cockpit.
Once there, he activated the data carrier. Music began to play.
Jack could feel the sound freeing him from the stasis in which his body and mind had been. He didn't know how Maya had gotten hold of the playlist he had created in the other world, but that wasn't important at that moment.
Jack settled down in the pilot's seat and reached for the controls. The familiar feeling together with the music made the last disturbing thoughts disappear. Here he was fully in his element. The crew would take care of the intruders and his job was solely to prevent more pirates from entering the ship.
He resolutely turned the wheel and brought the ship away from the frigate with a single roll. The captain of the other ship took a second to react, but then followed without any problems.
Jack flew several complicated manoeuvres in succession, but could never quite shake off the other ship. Instead, he managed to catch glimpses of the pursuers again and again. That was all he needed to form a plan. The only thing he had to do now was waiting for the attackers to make their next move.