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Thick slabs of reinforced metal; each one was big enough to crush the ship whole. She’d been in and out of freight bays her entire life, from shiny corporate docks to places held together with rust and optimistic welding, so she knew that doors like those were built to stay open. Stations needed traffic moving, or they lost money. Simple as that. And on a station this busy, she’d be surprised if those doors shut more than once every couple of years, and probably then only for maintenance.

The gap narrowed.

“Rann,” Stevie said, sharp now. “Slow down.”

“Trall,” Rann growled, his voice low and rough. “Jex, they’re trying to lock me in, and this draanthing thing has no weapons. Gonna need to help me out here, bud.”

Blythe’s eyes widened, and her grip closed around the armrest, fingers digging into cracked fake leather. “What do you mean, no weapons?”

He didn’t answer.

Instead, the engines roared louder and the old ship surged forward. Her stomach dropped straight through the deck.

“Rann!” Stevie snapped.

The bay doors kept closing, metal grinding against metal as the gap shrank down to something that might have fit a shuttle. Maybe. As long as it was a skinny one.

And their ship was not skinny. It was an old cargo trader turned colony transport, broad through the cargo section and ugly as sin, with wing-mounted thrusters that already scraped docking braces if you came in a fraction off line.

There was no way. No fucking way.

Then the warning lights flipped green and the massive doors jolted, then ground to a stop.

“Got it,” Rann said, and shoved the throttle farther forward.

Her breath caught.

The doors started to reverse, but too slowly. Far too bloody slowly. The gap was still barely wider than the ship’s nose, and the cargo hull behind them was much wider.

She winced and closed her eyes.

They were going to hit it.

And they were all going to die.

“Rann,” B gasped.

Rann cast a glance over his shoulder and winked at her. Stevie had gone pale beside her, fingers white around the harness straps.

“Might wanna hold on to something, ladies,” he said. “This is gonna be a rough ride.”

Stevie hit the comm switch. “All hands, brace, brace, brace.”

Grinning, Rann sped up.

The antique trader groaned around them, old hull plates protesting as he pushed it far beyond anything its builders had intended. Alarms shrieked across the cockpit.

He ignored them, his entire focus on the screens in front of him.

The bay doors crawled apart, thick slabs of steel moving with the kind of stubborn, grinding slowness that made him want to put a weapon through the control system. The opening was still too narrow. The ship’s nose could clear, but the rest of her? Her wide cargo body and those ridiculous wing-mounted thrusters?

Not unless he made her fit.

He’d been piloting practically since he could walk. Barely out of his cradle when the clan’s assessment systems had identified him as pilot-capable. After that, every path had pointed toward it. Flight training. Combat flight. High-speed maneuvering through asteroid fields, atmospheric dives under enemy fire, threading a military cutter through wreckage while people shot at him from both sides.

Now his enemy was two slabs of steel.

Fine.