Tyral NaRaxos had the gate in his sights. One more jump and he’d be landing on Jaaxis to see his family one last time. He’d hoped that this would be a celebratory trip. There were rumors of unmated Detyen women living in a system that few Detyens ever traversed. But the rumors hadn’t been true, not as far as Ty could tell. He’d spent more than a month scouring the nearly barren rocks in search of the lost women.

They remained stubbornly unfound.

With one week left until his thirtieth birthday, he planned to use the time to say goodbye. His ship wasn’t much, but someone else in the family could use it. And while he knew that pain and endless darkness was all that he would have by week’s end, he hoped that his family could find some joy in memories of him.

The proximity alarm blared to life and Ty snapped to attention, adrenaline surging through his veins and sending his heart pumping. This gate normally saw little traffic and Jaaxis was a backwater. Nothing should have flown within a thousand kilometers of him.

He flipped up his view screen and saw nothing. The blackness of space stretched out as far as his sensors could see. But Ty kept his machine in battle-ready shape. He knew that the sensor couldn’t be malfunctioning. Not a week after he’d done his final maintenance check.

He switched the view from visual light to a different spectrum. Just because his eyes didn’t pick anything up didn’t mean that something wasn’t there. And just on the edge of the view screen he saw the blip.

Shit.

Ty bit back the curse. The tell-tale ultraviolet blast showed at least one ship disengaging faster than light travel. And no FTL capable ship bothered with the gates. They were expensive and time consuming to use. Which meant this ship wasn’t here for the gate.

It was here for him.

Pirates.

The parasites of empty space haunted certain shipping lanes to pick off unsuspecting ships. And while Ty’s ship was nimble enough to evade them under ideal circumstances, he had no countermeasures to defend himself. His only choice was to run.

Ty sent up the distress signal and pulled up the manual controls. He’d notified the Gate Station in the Jaaxis system when he came within contact range, but like with all gates he’d been placed into the queue and forced to wait his turn. With the distress beacon lit he had priority access.

The engines engaged and his ship hummed with energy.

For a moment Ty thought he was going to make it. The gate grew closer and closer, a rip in front of him that looked blacker than the vacuum around him. But then he jerked forward and his progress stopped dead.

A tractor beam. First they would hold him in place and then they’d pull him in.

Ty wasn’t fooling himself. He had nothing of value on the ship and the ship itself wasn’t valuable enough to make him a target, not compared to some of the merchant freighters that he’d worked on.

Which meant these weren’t just pirates. They were slavers.

Ty unhooked his safety harness and whipped around to open the small compartment behind his seat. There he found his blaster stored right where it belonged, in the travel safe he used whenever he sailed alone for days on end. There was no use in carrying the weapon when he was the only life form around.

He clicked the safety off and held the blaster up. They weren’t lethal weapons unless they hit you just right. But at point blank range, Ty knew that he could get the job done. One pull of the trigger and he’d foil the pirates.

For a moment Ty considered sending a message home. His family hadn’t known to expect him. He’d planned his visit as a bittersweet surprise. And it was for that reason alone that he decided not to try and contact them. Twenty-nine year old Detyens often went missing. For many families it was so much easier to deal with the hope that they still lived than to face the certainty that they’d perished.

Ty held up the blaster.

It was only the difference of a week. There had never been any hope for survival anyway. He knew every eligible person on Jaaxis and not a single one of them was his denya, his mate. Not a single woman there could save him from his fate.

And yet he hesitated. With that hesitation he realized that he hadn’t truly accepted what was about to happen. He didn’t want to die. His need to live burned a hole in his gut. He needed to live so badly that he couldn’t end his life in this moment and save himself from the week of torment that a roving band of slavers would no doubt commit.

With a growl, Ty stashed the gun back in its safe and closed the compartment.

He wasn’t going to die today. And if he had to die in a week, he was taking as many of these assholes down with him as he could.

To hell with going quietly.