The same message piped through the commlink over and over, in every known language. 'Stop at once or you will be fired upon.' It was a lie, of course. They'd never risk damaging their own property.



"Persistent, aren't they?" Benji's fingers flew across the keyboard in front of him, making minute adjustments to the ship's operating and navigational systems in real time.



Seb grinned. "They don't know when to quit." His heart pounded, large ears flipping about. The ship's cockpit was a veritable chorus of alerts and warnings. "Hold on." He didn't wait for Benji's reply. The bunny cranked the yoke hard and buzzed within feet of small, peanut shaped asteroid with a giant antenna array jutting from one side. The G-force pressed him hard into the suspension seat. Their pursuers were only slowed for a few moments, but at this speed the outcome was dramatic.



Inside that dull, grey rock was probably the home of some eccentric, questionable scientist, who no doubt had just been given the fright of his life. The Belt attracted those types. Misfits, weirdos, fugitives, anyone who wanted to escape the control of the planetary governments.



Technically under Martian jurisdiction, there were far too many bodies in the Belt to monitor them all. Instead, they centralized their authority on the largest asteroids, each overseeing thousands of others. Those local governments were easy enough for even a child to avoid, or bribe if you knew how to play your cards right.



"Where would the fun be in that?" said Benji.



Seb laughed and whipped them around a cluster of small boulders, most no larger than their ship. High on adrenaline, his eyes were wide as saucers and his hands taut on the yoke. He lived for this.



"Good one, that dropped them back to almost five miles," said Benji.



"Excellent." The bunny grinned from ear to ear. At this distance, the dense asteroid cluster provided the perfect cover. "Launching..." He slammed the red button on the yoke. "Now!"



With a thwunk, the drone rocketed off to their starboard, transmitting an SOS through a spoof of the ship's commlink.



"Engaging killswitch." Benji flicked a toggle under the instrument panel.



The cockpit went pitch black then dull red as emergency backup power kicked in, and a somber whine sang from the main reactor.



Seb and Benji waited in restless silence. The backfire caused by killing the reactor under load would resemble the radioactive discharge from a broken down vessel. On the monitor, the green arrowhead of their ship continued on its momentum around the cluster, while the blue arrowhead of the drone raced away with twenty angry red arrowheads in tow.



The bunnies cheered and fist bumped. Seb's heart jackhammered against his ribcage. "That'll keep them busy for a while."



"Switching to backup link." Benji tapped a few keys then hit Enter. "Sixty seconds."



Seb's eyes were pinned out the front glass and he wrung his hands on the yoke. Peace of cake, he thought. From the stern, a low whine sang out as the reactor powered up to full capacity. Like money to his ears.



Upon restart, the system would default to a different commlink frequency than the one the Martians had been tracking, and continued to track away from their position. To the Martian's sensors, the drone appeared the size of an average escape pod, when in actuality it was no larger than a small refrigerator.



The diversion wouldn't hold them long though. They'd be calling in a recovery team right about now to retrieve the 'abandoned' ship. At full burn, the drone would run out of fuel in five minutes. But it was long enough.



"Thirty seconds," said Benji.



"Rodger that." Seb sucked in a deep breath and blew it out slowly.



Despite being a pain in the ass to work with, the Enceladans' plan was quite genius. Resupply shipments were sent monthly from Mars to the Belt colonies, accompanied by armed escort, of course. Natural resources, food, water, medicine. Once a year though, part of a shipment never arrived at its intended destination.



Deimos, the planet's outermost moon, served as repair station for cargo ships too large to dock planetside. But disloyalty to the tyrannical Martian government was in no short supply. The Enceladans paid off one of the captains to dump a portion of their haul on Deimos under the guise of routine maintenance. For the repair crews stationed on Deimos, disrupting the system was incentive enough.



The cargo? Don't ask, don't tell. The catch? To cover their own asses, the Martian captains always reported the theft. Flyboys were notorious for betting on literally anything, and the Enceladus Run was like the Kentucky Derby. Their window this year: 236 seconds from drop to arrival of the Martian armada. Still more than the 142 from their first run.



Benji tightened his belts. "Full power in three, two, one, ignition!"



The ship's reactor bellowed to life and the cockpit lit up like Christmas once again. A grin spread across Seb's face. "Full burn in three, two, one." He shoved the trottle lever forward and the instantaneous G-force pinned him to the seat. Asteroids zipped past his periphery like snowfall. Home stretch, here we come!