Apologies

The tingle in the small of his back sharpened into a hot insistent pull, and Leo threw the corvette straight into the debris field without a single glance at the nav charts.

He tore the Wanderer-7 through knife-edge drifts between tumbling boulders, so close that the resin-patched canopy nearly kissed their basalt faces, while the Kite's gunports flashed behind him. 

Every rock seemed to whisper where it was about to roll, and every gap seemed to open a heartbeat before he reached it, as if the belt itself had been arranged for him.

BOOM! BOOM!

The raider's heavy slugs tore past the cockpit and missed the glass by a few centimeters, and Leo didn't even blink his burning golden eyes.

…He killed the forward attitude thrusters, threw the ship into a violent sideways drift and swung the dorsal turret into a hard firing lock.

CLANK-WHIRRR! THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!