Pirate Week 2026 - Most Wanted Contest

Ten years ago, Echo had been the one running from Hurston, now she was back to help somebody else run. The abandoned settlement outside Zephyr sagged beneath rust and humidity. Broken habs leaned into one another while sheets of metal scraped in the wind. The air smelled of oxidized steel and industrial runoff. Echo looked across the wreckage. The Hurston family's lasting contribution to the planet.

Her Clipper, Lucky Break, sat powered down a mile away. Echo had walked in to avoid attention. Her UWH contact had promised a family of three would be waiting here, instead, the settlement was empty. Too empty.

Echo slowed near a ruined hab, hand resting on her custom S-38.

Click.

That wasn't loose metal. She dropped as gunfire tore through the space where her head had been. Rounds sparked off the wall as she rolled beneath a collapsed awning and drew her pistol. Through the ruins she caught a flash of gold and black.

Hurston Dynamics Security.

“Crap.”

For a moment she was twelve again. Her parents were dead, but their debt wasn’t. Hurston had expected her to inherit their contract.

She had run instead. A ship engine whined nearby, Echo crept through the wreckage and found a Drake Cutlass, ramp down, surrounded by four guards.

The family was there.

Two adults and a child being marched aboard at gunpoint.

Then Echo saw four more prisoners inside, this wasn’t a pickup. It was a sweep.

Echo grabbed a chunk of scrap and hurled it behind the Cutlass. It struck a weakened roof with a clang. A moment later the structure collapsed in a screaming avalanche of metal. Three guards ran toward the noise, the fourth stayed at the ramp.

“Of course you do.” Echo rolled her eyes, exasperated at Murphy and his law. she sprinted towards the ship.

The guard raised his rifle. She was faster. One round sparked off his armor, the other struck his shoulder. Before he recovered, one of the prisoners tackled him, Echo hit the ramp. “Inside! Unless anyone’s emotionally attached to Hurston!”

They moved.

She slapped the ramp control as rifle fire snapped toward them. Rounds pinged off the hull before the door slammed shut.

“What the hell is happening back there?” someone shouted from the cockpit. Echo rushed forward.

He turned. Confusion crossed his face, then realization. Then panic.

He reached for the sidearm mounted beside the seat. Echo crossed the distance before he got there. The grip of the S-38 cracked against his temple and the pilot folded sideways out of the seat. Echo caught him halfway down. “Sorry.” She lowered him onto the deck.

“Mostly.” She dragged him clear, pulled a utility restraint from his belt, and secured his wrists.

She took the pilot seat, and hauled the Cutlass off the ground under a hail of small-arms fire as two contacts appeared on radar.

Hornets.

“Naturally.”

Echo shoved the Cutlass low over the ruined industrial landscape. The fighters were faster, so outrunning them was pointless.

Instead, she made their speed a problem. She dove between refinery towers, skimmed beneath collapsed conveyors, and threaded through rusted gantries barely wide enough for the ship. Gunfire streaked past, one Hornet overshot. The other broke away rather than follow her beneath a shattered cargo crane. Echo climbed into the clouds.

The targeting warnings stopped. Hurston fell away beneath them.

Behind her, the pilot groaned awake, he looked at his restraints, then at Echo.

“You stole my ship.”

“Borrowed.”

“You hit me.”

“Also borrowed.”

He stared at her.

“Relax. I’ll drop you somewhere civilized.”

Echo glanced at Hurston disappearing below.

“So, anywhere else.”

Laughter came from the cargo bay. Echo opened the nav map. Seven refugees. One stolen Cutlass. A restrained pilot and two annoyed Hornets far behind her. Lucky Break abandoned planetside.

Ten years ago, Echo had escaped Hurston alone.

Today, seven people were leaving with her.

The price on her head was worth seven lives.