of private corvettes, flying arrow straight toward him, and spreading out into attack formation. His ship told him they wouldn't catch him - it was too fast for a couple of backwater militia boats - but the ballistics heading his way definitely would. He yelled at Juniper to hold on, and initiated the automated defensive maneuvering protocol. The ship leapt sideways into a randomised pattern of direction changes and vector adjustments, and the defensive beam arrays came online just in time to ward off a barrage of micromissiles, nukes and EMPs. All the same, the ship was rocked by nearby impacts, and Phis felt one nuke make contact against the side of the ship. Warnings and sirens screamed over his views, and damage reports came flooding in right behind. Things looked okay on cursory inspection, he thought as he mentally shook himself. Nothing the nano's couldn't fix, except maybe for the right ballistics silo. He limited automatic repairs to fixing the atmosphere leak that was spewing oxygen and debris into the rapidly thinning atmosphere, routing power back to the thrusters. He told the ship to do its thing, and focused instead on keeping the next wave of missiles off his tail - they wouldn't get another shot, so he just had to kept this round from doing further damage to his ship. He sunk his conciousness wholly into the rear sensor and beam arrays, waiting with the patience of a hunter for the first to enter range. His senses, merged with those of the ship, were whip fast. One by one he picked off the missiles heading his way, faster and faster, working by instinct rather than consciously choosing targets until they started to overwhelm him with sheer numbers. He knew the swerving and dodging would save his ship from many of the blasts, but he would have to work faster if he was going to get out of this alive. He focused on the nukes and EMP's, knowing that the micromissiles would do less critical damage, and would take less energy to repair. As they continued to streak spaceward, he started to feel the heat of nuclear explosions close to the back of his ship, and the prick of micromissiles boring through the skin of the ship. He told the nano's to suicide to destroy the micromissiles, to prevent them exploding. Most of them worked, but several micromissiles exploded dangerously close to the cockpit. He saw Juniper jerk in shock as an impact sounded directly behind her. at this point, he didnt care though. They were nearly out. The corvettes fell away behind them as the superior engines powered them through the outer stratosphere and into the surrounding planetary space. The ship started to look around for planetary defences that may have been alerted by the commotion, but didn't find anything. He started to key in co-ordinates, then realised in all the trouble he never got them from Juniper. He instead directed the ship to an insignificant little asteroid in the system that looked promising to hide in the shadow of, told the remaining nano's to start a proper repair job, and yanked the shunt out of his neck. He slumped back on the couch without a word to Juniper, ordered his