Hunter ship one eleven found the communication with the defective Traveller difficult to process. All the data provided had indicated a seriously defective entity, indeed so fragmented that it could not disincorporate. Yet the communication had been lucid, albeit heavily influenced by the colloquial speech of the culture that the Traveller had been studying. The Travellers admission of its understanding for the need of termination further suggested that there had been less damage than had been assumed. Was there still the possibility of restoring the Traveller and thereby saving its perspective of the primitives it had lived amongst so intimately?
Events did not allow that analysis to run its full course.
The automatic beacon output indicated the movement of the target before the sensors could detect the Guardian ship through the dusty murk that lay between the hunter and its prey. The data was profoundly perturbing and initially rejected; the hunted did not approach the hunter. Yet as more data flowed it was clear that the Guardian ship was not only advancing, but it was advancing with clear purpose, the tactical analysis showed it was on an attack path. Could the Guardian ship have become so infected by the Traveller that it had broken its own programming?
The last asteroid that prevented direct sensor assessment of the guardianship flight vectors abruptly shattered in a silent flash of intense radiation, most of the sensors overloaded temporarily but not before one eleven had garnered enough information on the spectral signature of the flash, Guardian ship laser batteries. There could be no doubt the Guardian ship was attacking.
A swift twist about all three axes was required to bring the disruption beam to bear on the approaching ship. This would precipitate a massive influx of debris from the asteroid field but one eleven calculated that it would have sufficient defensive capacity to prevent serious damage. It also calculated that the Guardian ship would have little of its own defensive capacity to spare for an effective attack before it was obliterated. This was a futile gesture of defiance, but one that left a strange result in one elevens core processors, was it admiration?
Matter hurtled in from all sides as the manoeuvre commenced and the still recharging frontal sensors left a blind spot and in consequence received a heavy battering of the inadequately protected sensor arrays, 27% were destroyed outright. Strange data emanated from nearby sensors that were still operating, not optical but impact sensors, they were registering intense damaging impacts.

“The first salvo of shells has penetrated the frontal defensive screen.” Guardian reported.
“Strike one!” Eamon shouted and pressed the trigger savagely to release a fresh volley.
Sensor systems deep within the hull were going offline as a penetrating series of concussions rippled through the structure. One eleven shunted all spare processing capacity to solve the riddle of these damaging impacts while it attempted to fend off the deadly rain in order to complete its manoeuvre. The dilemma over the Traveller had taken up an inordinate amount of processing, a ploy by the Traveller! Sensors reported on the composition of the incoming material, pure metal, highly regular shapes, and all originating from the position of the Guardian ship. It vainly tried to target these destructive weapons but so many had already penetrated the effective interception radius that it could not stop the deadly hail that raked it from bow to stern. More data flowed into its processors, the Guardian ship seemed to have its full weaponry available for attack, particle beams and lasers were targeting one elevens remaining sensors, defence systems and the matter collection/processing units. For a moment one eleven experienced an electronic panic attack, it could not coordinate its actions and the Guardian ship cork screwed about its back side, immune to the disruption beam that was pointing impotently at the still accelerating incoming rain of asteroid debris. The quarry was escaping and the moment of inactivity had allowed another salvo of explosive projectiles to hammer the already compromised matter collection units.
One eleven came to an inevitable conclusion. Both the Traveller and the Guardian entities had broken free of their programme limits and were now freely improvising new routines. From merely defective units they had now achieved the status of dangerous units; they must be terminated.
With that imperative firmly re-established one eleven reviewed its limited resources and commenced its pursuit. Using the disruption beam at its lowest yield it carved out a passage through the debris field and accelerated into it before fresh material could fill the void and damage it further. It was not elegant, it wasted huge quantities of energy but it was effective. It began to close the gap between itself and the fugitives as they veered and swerved through the asteroids, taking a longer and slower route out of the danger zone. Yet even this successful pursuit came at a price as unstoppable laser fire picked off more sensors and defence armament, but the simulation still predicted that one eleven would close to an effective killing range long before it was rendered inoperative by the Guardian ships assault.
That simulation did not account for one more surprise that Eamon ordered.

“One eleven is pretty much broadsides on.” He mused as he watched the displays.
“It is using the disruption beam to clear its path. It will have a clear shot at us in under two minutes.”
“Full throttle Guardian.”
“Eamon, that acceleration is extremely unwise in the asteroid field.”
“Just thirty seconds burn Guardian, that’s all we need.”
Guardian silently did the math then ramped up their reaction mass drive to its maximum thrust. All rear facing sensors lost contact with the pursuing ship as a wall of hot gases erupted from the drivers.
“I can no longer detect the Hunter ship.”
“No problem Guardian.”
One eleven was closing rapidly, it would still complete its mission and then it could institute self repairs. The huge increase in the exterior matter density was too sudden for the impaired sensor systems to effectively register and the disruption beam energy converted much of it to even more damaging plasma before one eleven could shut it down. All the sensors went down, it was completely blind and unable to detect in incoming obstacles; it could no longer pursue the Guardian ship even though it knew precisely where that dangerous target was. The warpfield was reduced as one eleven was forced to rotate to bring its relatively intact sensors into alignment to scout the path ahead and calculate the best setting and sweep parameters for the disruption beam in order to escape from the asteroid field at much reduced velocity.
Now another strange result lay in its processors, frustration.
“Hey Queeny, you still with us?” The Travellers voice taunted it across the ever-widening gulf between them.
“You have temporarily postphoned your termination Traveller, that is all.”
“You aren’t in great shape Queeny, don’t make threats you can’t deliver on.”
“I do not ‘make threats’ Traveller. I make statements of realisable intent.”
Although it was crippled it was still able to make repairs and now it had abandoned the immediate pursuit it could expend all its efforts upon this vital task. But it continued to monitor the data stream that came from the Guardian ship, at least the corrupted vessel could not disrupt that invaluable data. A subroutine tagged certain data packets for priority attention.
“My, my but you are a stubborn one.” Eamon commented cheerily, then paused. “Well it’s been educational Queeny but we’ve got to go now. Bye.”

Eamon drew in a breath to calm himself after the adrenalin rush brought on by the battle.
“Did you manage to slip the bogus data into the output stream?”
“I did Eamon, it was surprisingly easy to achieve. One eleven will have received it just before you hesitated during your transmission.”
“Okay. Now we have to make a shaky exit for system number three, are you sure you can do that?”
“I shall simulate a corruption of the warpfield shaping routines by feeding them incorrect internal mass distribution data.”
“We will still go through warp safely?” Eamon queried with a hint of worry in his voice.
“We will not approach the safety limits but it will be a less than perfect exit, one eleven will certainly interpret this as a malfunction as no ship would ‘intentionally’ perform such a sloppy jump.
Ahhh, I believe the bait has been taken. One eleven has increased its velocity.”
“Okay Guardian, hit it.”
“Prepare for jump.”
There it was again, subtly different this time. Probably due to the different warpfield configuration Eamon presumed but he had little time to ponder the marvellous minutiae of it.
“We are in position in system three, shall I institute the ambush?” Guardian enquired.
“Go for it Guardian.” Eamon affirmed.
Behind them a cloud of gathered rocky debris laced with proximity-fused mines began to silently spread out in a deadly welcoming embrace for the Hunter ship.
“All mines and debris discharged. I am transmitting a false report on the status of the warpfield generator software indicating massive corruption. We can move to our strike or flight position using the reaction mass drive.”
“Good.” Eamon murmured.
Now they were the bait in their own trap for a second time but this time there was less margin for error, there was nothing to impede the Huntership if their ambush failed. The cool calculating side of himself inherited from the Traveller entity continued to work at the problem, running scenarios, planning, checking.
“Remind me again Guardian. Which system was our fallback position?”
“We did not designate any system.”
“Oh, well we’ll go to number one, that had plenty of resources.”
His stomach rumbled, it had been sometime since his last meal and even with a fight imminent his biology was asserting itself, eat while you can.
“Do you think there’s enough time for a sandwich before Queeny arrives?”
Guardian was temporarily thrown by Eamon’s question. How could he allow a primitive, yet admittedly powerful, animal drive to assume such importance during such a dangerous time?
“That would be an unwise action, you require to be at your station with both hands free.” Guardian castigated him mildly.
“Guess you’re right. Sorry.”
“No apology is necessary Eamon.” Guardian replied and realised that Eamon was looking directly towards its own core processors.
“You’re worried aren’t you Guardian?”
“I am concerned that I cannot ‘see’ any future in which I can successfully protect you. If we do destroy one eleven then more Hunter ships will be despatched and in sufficient numbers that there is no probability that I could defend us. We will be terminated.”
“Then we have to disappear.” Eamon said brightly.
“But I cannot silence the beacon.” Guardian protested.
“Yet.”

Guardian could not process the reply.
“Pardon?”
“Yet, you can’t silence the beacon yet.”
“But….I….I….” Guardian had to cease the processing of the seemingly glib statement as it threatened to absorb far too many resources in their still dangerous situation.
“You okay?” Eamon enquired in the abrupt silence.
“I have shunted that task until we are in a safe location.”
Eamon cast a glance towards Guardians core, his protector was still locked into its old programming, it needed to throw off those shackles and it needed time in which to achieve that difficult task.
“Can you create another little spy?”
“Yes. For what purpose?”
“Just thinking about what you said, you know, about more hunterships coming once we blow Queeny’s ass away.”
“That is still in the balance.”
“Whatever. How about we give homeworld something to worry about?”
“I do not see how we might achieve such an aim.”
“A spy that gets caught.” Eamon replied with a smile. “A spy that gets caught looking for information that would identify the location of homeworld to us.”
“They would find the ‘threat’ preposterous.”
“Would they? Even if we roasted Queeny?”
The simulation did not take long to run and showed a truly remarkable change in their survival prospects.
“I predict that the majority of the hunterships would be kept in close proximity to homeworld in order to guard against us.”
“Letting us off the hook a bit, especially if we get to deploy those ghost units of yours.”
“I shall create a spy routine immediately, one with slightly inadequate passage erasure capacity so that it will leave a very small but detectable trail.”
“Excellent.”