Bait and Switch

Hours went by as the Flagrant Vandals contracted their defenses and turtled up. Conventionally, starships tried to maintain a distance of at least five kilometers from each other. This rule of thumb varied from state to state and from star sector to star sector, but generally speaking it was unthinkable for ships to stray closer than a kilometer to each other.

There was no reason to do so. If ships needed to transfer passengers or goods to each other, they only needed to let their shuttles or transports do the work. These smaller spacecraft flew fast enough that a distance of one kilometer or ten kilometers didn't matter very much. The launch and docking maneuvers alone took up a lot more time than the brief trips.

Machines always posed a risk to their environment. If anything went wrong, their immediate surroundings came under threat. This didn't matter too much if it concerned an aircar. At best, it would crash against something and kill a couple of people.