Unity

by tfoudray

The Unity is a novel set in the Serenity Universe. While it features cameos by the original Crew of the Serenity, the story revolves around a new ship - The Unity - a new crew, and a new story set during and after the Miranda revelation.

Unity

by Thaddeus Foudray

Chapter 1: Serenity

"Fighting is bad, Mal". River Tam stood on the sidelines of the bar brawl between the crew of the Serenity and the now famous crew of the Unity.

Mal was grazed by the tall woman's blow as he swore in Chinese. "Luh Suh! Simon, why is your crazy, violent sister not crazy or violent when I have a need for her to be?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, Captain. But she's right. Fighting is bad." Simon replied wryly, sipping some fancy looking beverage - which he promptly spit out. "Gah! what is this garbage?" River unhelpfully listed off the ingredients.

Janye Cobb, mercenary of the Serenity, replied "isn't it absolutely delicious?" His opponent, however, a small, wiry asian, took this moment to drive a fist into his stomach, and sent the larger man stumbling back several paces.

Captain of the Unity, Maxine Sheldon, called Shelly by her crew, watched the fight from the sidelines. Her team was actually pushing back the potent fighters of the Serenity. She saw her first mate Angel, tall, statuesque, and incredibly strong, pushing back Malcolm Reynolds of the Serenity with every blow. Angel and Shelly went back many years, but Angel was always the strong fighter, while Shelly was the delicate flower. Angel had trained for years and was one of the most skilled martial artists in the core when she left.

The Unity's mechanic, Ryan Azuma, was a surprisingly skilled fighter as well, although his particular style was difficult to pin down. Even to his long time companions and crewmates, he was a bit of a mystery. What wasn't a mystery, however, was that he could best any of the crew except Angel in a sparring match - and even then it was a close fight.

While Malcolm and Jayne were losing, at least Zoey was having an easier time against the Unity's pilot, Thomas Alexander King. He was an older man with standard military training that was a match for the browncoat training of his opponent, but his slower reaction times and artificial limbs down his left side prevented him from getting the upper hand.

Nearby, the rest of the crews watched the fight. Simon, River, and Kaylee cheered for their crew to varying degrees, while the Unity's crew that was not involved in the fight seemed almost singularly disinterested in the fight. The Captain had a passing interest in the fight, and watched nonchalantly from sitting perched on a nearby table, but mostly focused on a delicate glass of wine in front of her. The medic, Kaliya, a young woman barely more than a girl, was sitting in the corner of the bar, playing with some gadget that had caught her attention. The cook, a suave, well dressed man who called himself Joshua Hernandez was less interested in the fight than giving flirtatious compliments to Kaylee, who was blushing furiously, in spite of Simon's protests.

"Hey, why are you up there, pretending to be a captain, when your crew is down here doing your dirty work for you?" Mal attempted to taunt his real adversary while he barely dodged another perfectly timed blow from Angel.

"Your style isn't unknown to me, little boy, but it seems a bit reckless. If you were to be knocked off your feet - " Angel, in instantaneous response to her captain's words, lunged in and knocked Mal back where he crashed into Zoey, who stood him up again before returning to her own fight - "Then what is your team going to do? A team without a captain is nothing more than a mob."

Mal scowled "You women and your wiles aren't any substitute for real leadership. You have to inspire!"

Shelly smiled and stood up on the table. She was a very small woman, but she was exceptionally beautiful. She chose her every article of clothing and her every movement with care. She had the elegance of a noble, but the flair and spunk of a spacefarer. Her usual outfit was a bright red skirt that nearly matched her shoulder length, wild, fiery hair and a tight black shirt. Her long black boots ran up to her knees and left a thin strip of skin visible before her skirt covered her - although more was shown now with her standing on the table. She had a thin leather belt that would have held a gun if she hadn't been disarmed coming into the bar, but she was completely unphased by being disarmed of her firearm. She carried herself with absolute confidence. Stylish black glasses that made her look even seductive adorned her face. "Don't you think this is pretty inspiring?" She grinned mischievously and gestured at her body seductively.

Jayne caught a roundhouse kick from Azuma in his hand and turned to admire the show. He let out an appreciative whistle, only to have it cut short as his opponent leapt up, using Jayne's arm as a pivot, and kicked him in back of the head with his other foot before twisting and landing in a low crouch. His simple mechanic's overalls looked like they had been modified and customized time and again to allow him to move freely enough to perform this kind of difficult maneuver. The browns and grays of his outfit seemed to make him blend into the crowd, even as they scattered away from his dangerous kick. His long, scraggly matted black hair settled into place a moment after he did, framing his face so he looked like a bum.

Azuma's voice was nearly a whisper "It worked for me, Captain!" He hadn't even glanced in her direction, even after delivering this devastating blow. He was completely focused on the fight.

Zoey smiled as she landed another jarring blow on the Pilot's metallic left arm, covered in a formal gray and blue suit that covered him from head to foot. His black gloves covered both hands and, combined with his conservative dress, concealed his replacement limbs from casual observers, but the metal plates along the left side of his face nevertheless gave him a fearsome look in spite of his conservative dress and demeanor. He stepped back and brushed his sleeve, unable to feel whether Zoey's attacks were doing any damage and having to check with his good hand after each attack. He sighed as he detected a slight dent, and then stroked his goatee thoughtfully - the only hair on his head - while he resumed a fighting stance. Zoey took the opportunity to call out to the Serenity's public relations expert. "That serves you right for losing focus, Jayne!"

Jayne got up and brushed himself off, making sarcastic mouthing motions in response to Zoey's remarks before turning back to the dangerous mechanic. However, even as he tried to take it seriously, he was being pushed back into a corner.

River watched all this carefully, calling out each muscle used and each location hit. Simon tried to hold her back as she craned her neck to watch all three pairings simultaneously. Angel received most of River's attention; her rapid strikes and constant, perfectly trained movements were plainly visible in Angel's tight fitting combat garb that she wore under any outfit. Her loose fitting plain off-white tunic had been tossed aside earlier in the fight when Malcolm had tried to grab it and spin her around, but had found only a piece of cloth in his hands and a dangerous opponent in a tight black and yellow one-piece suit, more akin to undergarments than appropriate apparel. Her long blonde hair was, as usual, held in a pair of tight utilitarian buns on the back of her head.

Simon's absence did not go unnoticed by the oddly dressed cook of the Unity. His apparel was a strange mix of border planet utilitarian style and the finest materials to be found in the core. He looked like a noble in a foreign land that didn't quite understand the dress of the country he was in - regardless of where he went. His thin black goatee and straight black hair made his thin face look even thinner until he appeared almost serpentine. As Simon was preoccupied trying to reign in his sister, Joshua crept over to Kaylee, the Serenity's pretty mechanic, and whispered something into her ear. She giggled in response as he moved closer. Simon shot a concerned look at the dark skinned cook and Kaylee, but Kaylee just smiled innocently and called out to her Captain. "You can win, right Captain? You're a good fighter; I know you can do it!" Malcolm Reynolds, not to be made a liar finally landed his first hit, a glancing blow to Angel's side. Lacking the elements of surprise and deception against this formally trained opponent, he was struggling to even stay standing, and after landing the hit, Angel again swept him off his feet to land with a crash. A sharp intake of breath sounded from Kaylee, who grimaced on his behalf as he rose back up with fierce determination.

The Unity's medic, Kaliya, was wearing a light dress with a warm floral pattern, but it was covered in stains. Some appeared to be from grease and other garbage, others from plants, and a few from blood. Her fine brown bob cut hair hung down past her chin in her face, but remained shorter in the back; it looked like it had been dutifully brushed and arranged - about a week before. Now it was disheveled and had some stains that looked like the ones on her dress; she probably could have been beautiful if she had tried. At the moment she seemed almost completely oblivious to the brawl; her focus, like that of the rest of the Unity's crew, was impressive; it just happened that her focus was on a small, computerized toy that she had found in a garbage. Her status as medic was due to her uncanny ability to make everything work right again; it wasn't limited to just human bodies. She had pulled the toy apart and was already moving various parts of it and making it work better than new, but her interest wavered every once in a while as she glanced up questioningly at River Tam. Something about the other girl resonated within her. Maybe it was just that they were the same age - travelers through the black only spend a few days planetside each month to meet new folk, so making new friends is rare, especially amongst the younger crowd.

Shelly spoke up as Angel swept Mal off his feet for what seemed to be the twentieth time. "Oh, is it that time already? Are you ready to admit we should have gotten the job?"

Mal stood up and but didn't resume his fighting stance. Angel remained in a defensive, wide legged position, unwilling to let her guard down. She wouldn't admit it, but she had been giving her all in fighting Malcolm; she knew that one mistake would have lead to her defeat. She also knew enough about the kinds of men she had encountered on the rim to expect foul play at every turn.

"Nope. Not going to happen, Captain Maxine Sheldon of the Unity. We won the race fair and square. Also, we're going to have to leave now." He broke formation and ran through the back door and out into the dusty alley behind the run down bar in the bustling Central City docks in Athens. Zoey and the rest of the crew quickly followed suit, except Jayne, who stayed behind for a moment before he realized that his companions had left him high and dry before he too fled.

"That's right! You go ahead and run. Run away like a little doggie with his tail between his legs! You keep your job, you damn coward! And fair and square? What the hell is that supposed to mean! I heard about what you tried to pull, you weakling! Typical male cowardice in the face of overwhelming..." Shelly stopped her tirade as Angel tapped on her shoulder and pointed out that the crew was now essentially surrounded by armed alliance troops who had come to break up the brawl. "Mi Tian Gohn!"

The goal was simple. Get the package from the asteroid and bring it back to Athens before the Serenity and her crew could do the same. It seemed a bit foolish to be competing for this little scrap of work, Shelly thought, since both crews were known basically throughout the 'verse as big damn heroes, but when funds are tight, you do what you gotta do.

Since neither ship was armed, there was little they could do but push their engines as hard as possible and hope to be the faster. In the black, however, there is little more dangerous than foolishly pushing a ship that doesn't want to go to do things it doesn't want to do.

When they had left the port, it had seemed like a fair match. The ships could not have appeared more different, but in terms of speed, they were close, with the Unity having a slight advantage on the straight flights through the black, but the Serenity having significantly more maneuverability. The Serenity, a firefly class mid-bulk transport, had a upturned nose containing the cockpit and a sleek design that kept the bulk of the ship in a line behind the cockpit.

The Unity, on the other hand, was wide and tall, but made up for its larger mass with larger engines. The cockpit was a fish eye protruding from the front of the ship that spanned all three decks. The lower level of the Unity had two main storage areas that were each capable of holding a shuttle similar in size to those found on the Serenity. In between, directly behind and below the cockpit, was the converted medical lab containing some of the most advanced technology in the black. The middle deck of the Unity was occupied almost entirely by the engines. The two sides of the ship were built around the thrusters and the actual engine was in the middle directly behind the cockpit. The massive twin engines went from the core of the ship out to the far end of each wing so that they looked like a pair of long blue bands trailing behind the ship. From the front, the engines were visible through the viewports in the front that went along the entire length of the ship. The various tubes and computer chips and connections and cables made the passageways down each of the wings on the middle level look like the entire ship was a living organism. The ends of each of the halls on the central level ended at the two tiny single person scout vessels that adorned the end of each wing. The upper level contained the bunks for the crew and any guests. With 5 to each wing, they were fairly small areas, but the crew nevertheless customized them and held them sacred as their only escape from one another when everything else around was just the black. The center of the top level, above and directly behind the cockpit, was the commons area, which looked much like any other ship's common area, with a small but functional kitchen, a solid metallic table, and adequate seating for the entire crew. Across all the decks, and even among the engine blocks, the ship was unusually well stocked with plants. These were the handywork of Kaliya, the young medic of the crew, who decided to fix everything, including the various injured or ill plants the crew ran into on their journeys - even if that meant taking them with.

The different decks of the Unity were joined together by the fisheye cockpit, which had direct hatches to each of the levels, and by a pole in the back of the ship. The pole in the back of the ship allowed quick access to all decks due to that section of the ship being outside of the artificial gravity generator's influence - a sort of anti-gravity shaft - but it also had a ladder in the rear wall that allowed less adventurous crewmembers to travel between decks more securely.

The unity's blue bands from its thrusters matched up with the twin external thrusters of the Serenity when they first took off from the docks and made their way towards the designated asteroid. When they reached the asteroid, the two ships paused momentarily and sent their emissaries down to the asteroid; The Serenity's shuttle, and the Unity's one man scout. They appeared to be tied. Angel stepped out of the scout craft alone, and was greeted by a trio of guns in her face, held by Mal, Zoey and Jayne.

"Nothing personal, darlin, but we're going to win this. Cash hasn't been coming in as we would have liked, especially since you pulled your 'save the 'verse' stunt, so why don't you just sit tight for a minute."

Angel watched carefully for her moment as the Serenity crew made their way to the packages and picked up theirs. Jayne smiled crudely at Angel underneath his fancy hat and wondered aloud "Hey, I wonder if I could play with her a little bit."

Angel flashed a wicked grin. "You go ahead and try it."

Jayne, however, kept his distance. He wasn't sure what she was capable of, but her poise under pressure was keeping him at bay.

After Mal and Zoey stepped into the shuttle, Jayne called out "You won't forget to come back and get me, right?"

Mal replied "Of course we will."

Jayne scratched his head, sensing something wasn't quite right with the Captain's reply. "Wait, of course you will come and get me of course you will forget to come and get me?" But by the time he could finish the sentence, the shuttle was lifting off and heading back to the Serenity.

Angel didn't waste the moment of his confusion and leapt forward, instantly closing the nearly twenty feet between them, and kicked his hand, sending the gun flying out of the tiny gravity well of the asteroid and into space.

Jayne took two large steps back. "Whoa there, girly! There ain't enough gravity out here to have us that kind of fighting. You be careful now!"

Angel grinned slyly and advanced towards him with apparent malicious intent. He kept backing up until he found himself against a rock formation jutting out of the asteroid that gave him a little more stability. However, Angel didn't say a word and kept advancing until he was pressed up against it, apparently terrified now that he was disarmed. Angel dashed up to him and moved her face an inch from his, and, inexplicably, started to undo his trousers. He immediately overcame his fear, and assisted in disrobing himself. Angel smiled, still having said nothing, and took his pants, then threw them straight up into the air, where they flew from the asteroid like the gun had done.

Jayne cried out "You Ai Chr Jze Se Duh Fohn Diang Gho!" and charged Angel, who neatly sidestepped his pantless charge, laughed like a tiny bell, and dashed toward her scout ship, snatching the package meant for her crew on the way, and had sealed the hatch before Jayne had recovered. He ran over and jumped up at the space where the small ship had been while Angel waved nonchalantly at him as if she had nothing to do with his misfortune.

Jayne muttered as she left "Why can't any folk leave peacably?"

When Angel arrived back on the Unity, she was met with a scrambling crew. Azuma was working feverishly on the engine block in the hall as she made her way back to the cockpit to deliver the package to her waiting captain. Kaliya was not far away, also tinkering on some part of the engine, though knowing her she was fixing something completely unrelated to whatever current problem Azuma was focusing his attention on. Joshua made his way to and from the work area, bringing various supplies from the lower deck or tools or diagnostic information from the main engine room. Angel strode confidently past their diligent working as if she were royalty amongst ants.

When she reached the cockpit, she saw Thomas and Shelly sifting through endless logs of data and cables strewn everywhere. They didn't even acknowledge her return.

"This Guay Toh Guay Nown! Why can't anything ever work around here?" Shelly complained to no one in particular.

When the ship had turned off one of the two engines to spin around while it waited on Angel to retrieve the package, the engine had decided to skip turning back on. Where the Serenity was an old ship that had been repaired time and time again, the Unity was a cutting edge ship sporting the most advanced technology in the 'verse, although that also meant it was the least tested technology. Even after months of working together and various efforts that had gone into repairing the ship, the Unity's systems were still essentially a mystery to the crew.

Finally, after an interminable delay, the reticent engine finally thrummed back to life. Kaliya ran crying past the cockpit down to the other wing of the ship. Azuma stalked after her and stuck his head in. "It seems that I managed to get it working, although I couldn't tell you exactly why. But I know it wasn't her." He pointed down the hall at Kaliya, who was apparently tending the plants that were growing out of the engine block. Azuma's explanation was, as usual, terse.

The Unity rocketed off back toward the planet and the Athens docks, but the Serenity had enough of a head start that they could not catch up until the race had been lost.

When they did finally catch up, the Serenity was already relaxing in a bar, celebrating their (not entirely honorable) victory over the Unity and their new contract while the ship was being loaded.

The crew of the Serenity was known for warning the 'verse about a disaster, and the crew of the Unity for preventing another, very different disaster, but as far as self styled Salvage King of Athens was concerned, they were both liars and thieves, and he wanted the best liar and the best thief for his job, so he sent out a wave to both Captain Reynolds and Captain Sheldon and asked them to duke it out.

The Salvage King, or, as he preferred to be called, 'His Majesty', was originally a simple salvager working with a small crew, but he happened to find some very expensive or rare or illegal trinkets (the stories change depending on who tells them, and how much they've had to drink). Back then he went by the name Marco McMannis. Whatever it was that he found, United Reclamation, the massive Alliance sponsored salvage corporation, paid him enough for it that he was able to hire dozens of teams. His megalomania turned him from an apparently earnest salvager to corporate mogul to maniacal overlord.

The two captains, Malcolm Reynolds and Maxine Sheldon, met for the first time in the garishly decorated lobby of the Salvage King's mansion.

"Oh, you must be the Captain of the Serenity. Malcolm... Malcolm Reynolds, wasn't it?" Captain Sheldon's contacts in this part of the 'verse were far more informed than his; she already knew what she was up against, while he was more or less in the dark. "I've heard a lot about you. You were the one that uncovered the Miranda tragedy, no?"

"They're calling it a tragedy, are they? That was a peck more than a tragedy, miss. That's what you might call an act of war against your own. Treason, even, if you have any love for the alliance, it ought be gone by now."

"Oh, Mr. Reynolds, I'd hardly say I have any love for them. I don't have the history with them that you and your crew do, but I can say that I'm not particularly keen on going to the core if I can help it. I suppose that's why the two of us are here, after all."

"I don't mean to get all tetchy here, but it seems you might have some more ideas about what I'm doin' here than I do my own self, miss..?"

"Maxine Sheldon. Shelly to my friends. I captain the Unity. This area is a bit like my and mine's stomping ground, so I do get a little wind about what's going on maybe more than most."

"The Unity? You.. you're still flying that thing?" Mal was completely unable to conceal his shock; it was as though someone had just told him that she was flying an earth-that-was seafaring ship through the black.

Shelly let out a sincere laugh that filled the hall, bouncing off gaudy decorations and ugly statues. "Well, Captain, I'm sure I hardly know the truth of your story, so I find it a mite strange that you'd think you know the truth of mine." She adjusted her speech to match his own; she was well trained in the arts of manipulation, and was able to more quickly befriend others by making herself more identifiable to them.

She was about to go on and explain in more detail when a hugely muscled man with tattoos and an eye patch entered the lobby, carrying some archaic bladed weapon. He appeared to be a brute. Shelly sized him up instantly as a complete non-threat; he had clearly been hired on appearance alone. "Oh, the butler has arrived. I suppose we ought to go where he leads us before he growls fiercely at us or something."

With not a word, the menacing butler lead the two captains down a long hall with bright white pillars strung with tiny flashing lights and into what the Salvage King would have called his "study". It was a massive room with charts on every wall of the various salvage operations under his command. Each one was framed in a golden frame and the more profitable ones had mementoes - little pieces of salvage strung up over the charts. It looked more like a badly decorated museum than a work office.

"Welcome, Captains, to the Salvage King's study! I do hope you have not been waiting too long. I was looking forward to seeing you both quite eagerly, but the kingdom must come first, as I'm sure you understand." The Salvage King was a large man - even larger than his tattooed butler - with a balding head, tastelessly combed over, and a bright red silk gown, studded with large pieces of glass and metal salvage. "It is good to see you are still well, Captain Sheldon, and it is nothing short of an absolute pleasure to finally meet the infamous Captain Reynolds!"

"Well, might be bein' a pleasure, and it might not. That's dependin' on why you asked not one but two captains out here. I don't much like bein' mislead here; you said you had a job in your wave, but if you got but one job, then why do you need the both of us?"

"Ahh, your distinct lack of etiquette aside, you have an excellent point, Captain Reynolds. I will put it plainly for you. I want the best. I want the fastest ship with the best crew that will be able to do this job better than anyone else in the 'verse. And I'm willing to pay that Captain 100,000 credits for the job." He paused for a moment for the number to sink in. With that much money, each of the Captains could buy their entire ship twice over. "However, I want to know without a doubt who the right choice is, so I propose a little competition."

Shelly looked indignant. "Hey, now, haven't we done right by you every time we've had the pleasure of working together? Why risk such an important job with these people who owe you no loyalty? Why go to all that trouble when you know we can - and will - deliver on our promises?"

"Ahh, Miss Sheldon, you seem upset about this, no? Well, might I remind you of the last request I gave you? You most certainly did deliver - more than a week behind schedule, as I recall. I think perhaps the reputation carried by Mr. Reynolds holds as much weight as your promises - if not more."

Shelly opened her mouth as if to justify the situation about her crew's last mission for the Salvage King, but quickly snapped her mouth shut, knowing it would do no good. "Then all I have to do is beat this guy in a competition, right?" She looked over at Mal, sizing him up.

"Now hold on, Lao Buhn. There's no simple job in the verse that's worth that kind of chink. What's the catch?" Mal characteristically assumed his own victory and moved on to the spoils.

"Oh, well, as I'm sure you know, there are a number of valuable relics to be found on Athens. Such an item has recently resurfaced somewhere in my domain, but have come across some difficulty in moving it as I please. The item in question will be worth more than 1 million credits once I have it securely positioned, but at the moment it is worth nothing to me. And I need the best to ensure that nothing goes wrong."

This amount was practically unheard of. Even the rarest Earth-that-was artifacts were almost never worth that much even to the most avid collector. Only the largest passenger liner ships and skyplexes could compare to that much money.

The two captains looked at one another, considering the stakes of the competition. Neither was willing to budge, so they just looked to the Salvage King and asked him the only important question left: "What's the competition?"

In the end, the Unity crew was only charged with minor misdemeanor disorderly conduct and sent on their way, but the already flagging funds that the crew had put together were nearly drained by the time they had left the guards behind. They needed the next score so that they could afford their next meal.

Chapter 2: Miranda

Ths ship shuddered as it rose from the launch pad around Rhino's shipyard on the planet of Beylix. The planet itself was little more than a garbage dump, but somehow the advanced technology had found its way to the planet - but not until after being stripped of nearly every good part. Rhino made his living by getting the junk ships he found on the planet running enough to break atmo (usually), and selling them to any that came his way.

While Maxine had hired a mechanic to maintain the ship, she wasn't sure it was ready to be maintained; it might still be very much in need of the most basic repair. It shook and sputtered and made all manner of terrifying noises as it first lifted into the air. The thought briefly crossed her mind that Rhino might very soon be selling this deathtrap to another hapless fool.

Shelly sat in the co-pilot's seat next to the pilot, Thomas Alexander King. According to his file, he was a former alliance navy pilot with various commendations to back up his service. He had been discharged after some classified mission that had gone wrong enough to send him to a hospital recovery ward for the better part of a year. She glanced to her right and saw his modest suit, but imagined the prosthetic limbs underneath. No matter how good he had been before, it had seemed impossible to the alliance that he still had the skills necessary to pilot a ship with artificial limbs underneath. Still, he had Joshua's recommendation, so she tried to put her faith in the middle aged soldier next to her.

It didn't do very much good, though; the ship slowly started to list to the right as it rose into the air, and a strange and certainly not good clanking sound arose from the engine room directly behind the cockpit. She glanced back and saw Ryan Azuma, the most recent addition to the crew, furrowing his brow at a particularly non-cooperative readout.

"Hey, Mechanic! Are we going to have a problem here?" Shelly called out over the increasing din of the engines, as the ship appeared to claw its way kicking and screaming into the sky.

Azuma spoke in a quiet voice, but his words carried so that she could just barely make them out. "Oh, I think.. yes, of course. I mean, no captain, there won't be a problem. I know what the problem is. Maybe. Is anything on this ship normal?" He tapped a few buttons on the panel, took two sliding steps to his right that seemed more fitting for on a battlefield than in an engine room, and popped open a panel. Behind the panel were a mess of wires, and he swore under his breath as he dug through them to find the ones he wanted. When he finally did, he quickly and expertly rerouted them and the shuddering and twitching the ship had been doing abruptly ended. However, the artificial gravity still seemed to be unbalanced as everything was still tilted to one side.

His comment, Shelly knew, was because there wasn't anybody in the verse who could really have made a good mechanic for this ship. She had looked at nearly a dozen different mechanics, but none of them had seemed nearly competent enough. The ship itself was unique. It wasn't some old model firefly that could be repaired by anyone who knew a few little things about engines. The Unity had ident codes that called it an Alliance vessel, but beyond that, nobody seemed to know anything about it. The systems were in places nobody expected; the engines were built after some esoteric design that routed power in every wrong direction; the computer readouts spat out errors for every other command about various parts that had been looted or were never working to begin with; basically, no mechanic she encountered had had any luck fixing up the last bits that Rhino hadn't been able to take care of on his own.

Finally, she had settled on Azuma; he had gotten lucky and found a partial schematic in one of the computers and had managed to get the ship into working - well, limping - condition.

Still, the strange list of the ship left her more than a little concerned. If the problem wasn't fixed by the time they broke atmo, they'd be in for a tough ride until they spun completely out of control and likely crashed right back into the planet.

"Well, that's better, I guess. Can we do something to stop us from becoming a spinning top?"

Azuma may have been stressed by the situation, but if he was, he didn't show it at all. He merely nodded and moved out of her line of sight, towards, she assumed, the artificial gravity controls.

Suddenly the little girl, Kaliya, popped into view. "No, dummy! That's over here!"

Shelly sighed and turned back to the front of the ship where viewport showed her everything in front of, above and below the ship. She could tell that the ship was about to enter the cloud layer and would soon not have anything to see, but the view from here was breathtaking. The garbage dumps of the planet below created a criss-cross of color not unlike images she had seen as a child of the ancient farming methods of the old earth that was, with fields of different colors and patterns dotting the landscape. Here and there she could see scavengers at work, driving across the mounds of trash in search of that valuable find.

"Could you please get your daughter to strap in somewhere safe, Thomas?"

Thomas replied in a gruff voice "If I weren't so busy trying to prevent us all from dying a horrible, flaming death on one of those garbage heaps? No. No, I don't think I could." His lighthearted reply did little to conceal his affection for the girl, even in this perilous situation.

Up above, Angel and Joshua were talking to the passengers. The Unity had been forced to take on a few passengers to get the funds necessary to support her maiden voyage, and they were not taking the lurching, sickening assent well.

"Well, it's all... they seem to have it all under control now. I'm sure everything will be fine." Angel stuttered and stopped as the slight list turned into a nearly sideways twist of gravity, jerking the passengers out of their chairs and across the commons. Vague, muffled cursing arose from below as Shelly let out a tirade that would have made even a hardened spacer blush at the pilot, the mechanic, the ship and the 'verse.

Joshua finally spoke up. "Now now, don't mind all that. Our pilot is a bit of a fancy flyboy. You'll meet him shortly, but he likes to toss a little scare into the passengers just to shake things up a bit." He didn't flinch in the slightest; the lie came out as though he really believed it. His ability to tell the tale with a straight face was made all the more astounding by his position, thrown up against the wall with his head sticking out from between Angel's well-muscled legs like he was an imp hiding in the wall.

The gravity returned to some semblance of normality and the crew and passengers slowly regained their seats. Joshua picked up where Angel had left off to try and reassure the passengers that everything was alright. "So, as our lovely first mate was saying, this is the commons area. It is where we serve meals. We have a fair supply of protein paste here, as well as a few spices. I, in the capacity as the ship's cook, prepare and serve meals twice a day for the crew, though you're free to take all you can stomach in between. But, in all honesty, who wants to eat something so fancy as a protein paste more than twice a day?"

The passengers laughed nervously. They were starting to overcome the shock of the apparent troubles with the ship's systems.

"Beyond that, we do request that you remain on this deck unless you are accompanied by a crew member. Sleeping quarters for passengers are down the hall here to port - " he indicated where they were with a wave of his hand to his left " - except the furthest room, which is mine. I'll leave you all to brawl over what you want, but they're basically all the same. The other direction is home to the rest of the crew, and I'm sure they'd all appreciate it if you didn't try to bust into their bunks and make messes.

"The crew consists of myself in the capacity of cook, this Amazon here, Miss Angel, as first mate... " Angel shot daggers down at him with narrow eyes. Her impressive strength and height made her an imposing figure, but Joshua seemed completely oblivious to her malicious look. "You will also meet our mechanic, Ryan Azuma - he's the little guy - Thomas King, our daredevil pilot, his daughter Kaliya, and, of course, our dear, lovely, sexy, beautiful, seductive captain, Miss Maxine Sheldon."

Shelly had come up to the commons and caught the last of the passenger briefing; enough to notice Joshua's flattery, at any rate. "You wouldn't have even thought of joining this crew if I had been an old lady, would you?"

"Not for an instant, Captain!" Joshua promptly bowed low, backed his way out of the commons and moved down to his room.

Shelly surveyed her passengers. She had checked up on what background she could find for all of her crew, but she didn't like letting these complete strangers onto her new boat. The first was a bookish looking young man who may have been some kind of university student. He wore a plain suit and thick glasses, topped with mangy spiked hair. Next to him stood an elderly man in conservative business attire. She had no idea what business he might be in. The third and forth passengers were apparently a man and wife, dressed in settler's clothes and looking like they had barely enough to afford even the cheap fare she had offered for this jaunt from Beylix to Persephone. Shelly absently thought that they were likely newlyweds, setting out to make a new life somewhere else.

"Well, I'm glad to finally meet all of you. As Joshua indicated, I am the Captain of the Unity, Maxine Sheldon, though everybody just calls me Shelly. I expect we'll get to Persephone in a little under a week, though to be honest, I'm new to this ship, so I'm not exactly sure what she's capable of. Nevertheless, we'll take care of you all until we reach our destination. If you have any questions, feel free to ask any of the crew. "

The passengers were escorted down to the cargo bay to gather their belongings, and were quickly returned to their rooms when Shelly heard a distinct new hum in the ship. After depositing the passengers in their rooms, she quickly made her way to the back of the ship and dropped down to the engine room in the null-gravity shaft.

"Okay, what is it this time?" She addressed the mechanic and the girl as they dashed, or perhaps frolicked, around the engine room, rapidly examining each panel.

"Well, I wish I could tell you, Captain, but I'm really not sure this time. Whatever it is, it doesn't seem like it will cause us to explode, anyway. At least not right away. Probably."

Kaliya hummed a tune that sounded like a complex orchestral piece; it hardly seemed like the sort of thing a teenager would normally know. Then she suddenly smiled and spoke in a rapid pace "Oh! She's sick! Poor Unity. But she's getting better! Here. Look! Hey, you. Right here. This!" She gestured to Azuma, who grudgingly came over to examine the screen.

"Looks exactly like it did two minutes ago when I was looking at it. What are you babbling on about, girl?"

"This. Here. LOOK!"

He stared at it as the logs scrolled past on the screen. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Kaliya sighed, clearly disappointed. "It was generating 643 error messages. Now look! It's only generating 638!"

Azuma raised his eyebrows, and watched the screen for several seconds without blinking, his eyes capturing the messages with intense focus. "Well, she's right." He took her ridiculous observation in stride, the way the great take for granted that there is always someone even better than themselves. "It looks like a couple of the offline systems related to something called the 'N.C.' are now back online. Some pieces must have fallen back into place during the takeoff. Odd, though. Usually pieces are more likely to fall off than to fall in." He was genuinely perplexed and started tapping through menus and logs at breakneck speed. Still, Shelly thought, she had chosen her mechanic wisely if he had the kind of memory that could almost instantly determine which of over six hundred messages (on only one of a dozen different screens) had gone away. She also wondered at the girl who had noticed it even before he had. What kind of superhumans did she have in her engine room?

Azuma must have noticed her admiration, and spoke up "No, don't think I memorized everything in here. Those just stood out because I have no idea what 'N.C.' means."

Shelly wasn't sure if he was being truthful, just trying to be modest, or making a concerted effort to conceal his abilities. She suspected the last, but had no idea what possible motive he could have for that.

Suddenly, the comm speakers turned on throughout the ship, and a message started coming through. Shelly dashed up to the cockpit through the open hatch and looked questioningly at Thomas. He looked back at her, wide eyed, and shrugged. "Seems like they're hacking into our systems through the cortex. I have no idea how such a thing is even possible."

The message appeared to be a recording, playing on a loop. An image appeared on the display screen and showed a woman speaking:

These are just a few of the images we've recorded. And you can see, it wasn't what we thought. There's been no war here and no terraforming event. The environment is stable. It's the Pax. The G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate that we added to the air processors. It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression. Well, it works. The people here stopped fighting. And then they stopped everything else. They stopped going to work, they stopped breeding, talking, eating. There's 30 million people here, and they all just let themselves die. I have to be quick. About a tenth of a percent of the population had the opposite reaction to the Pax. Their aggressor response increased beyond madness. They have become... Well, they've killed most of us. And not just killed... they've done things. I won't live to report this, but people have to know. We meant it for the best... to make people safer. God!

The recording continued, but Shelly had already turned away, sickened. This recording.. She knew she should have expected something, something horrible, but this was more evil than anything even she had anticipated. She glanced back at into the engine room, and up towards the commons, and saw her crew and her passengers watching the recording in a kind of horrified trance as it repeated itself.

The recording eventually stopped looping and spreading its message. Hours passed. No one on board the Unity was able to even speak a word. Each was wrapped in his or her own thoughts and assessments of the announcement of what the alliance had done on Miranda.

Finally, Shelly rounded up the crew and the passengers in the commons area. She let out a long, heavy sigh - the kind that belonged to an old man who lived to see his whole world destroyed at the hands of his children. "Look. This isn't going to be an easy thing to talk about, but we're stuck out here, and will be for a while, so its probably best that we talk a little bit about what we just heard, and what we just saw. I ain't gonna force anything from any of you, but I do want to give you each a chance to speak your piece.

"I'll go first. The way I figure, it wasn't just us that heard that. There's no way it could have been just us. That was meant for everybody, everywhere. Whoever did this, wherever it came from, I'll bet it went everywhere. I'll bet nearly everybody in the verse is sittin' down right about now, just like us, and tryin' to figure out what kind of sense they can make out of that, if any, and where to go from here.

"For my part, I am not as surprised as all that. I grew up in the core, and I've seen some of the kinds of things that the powers that be will do in the name of peace and safety. I didn't expect something quite like that, but I figured there'd be something, sooner or later.

"I guess whatever it was that we saw on there, that's what a Gorram Reaver was. The scourge of deep space, it looks like that was something that the Alliance made, something they inflicted upon everyone in the verse. I don't know where that leaves us. I know that whatever nostalgic love I might have had for my old home was destroyed by this. I'll go anywhere, do anything to be free of the influences of a government so hell bent on peace that they would kill millions of people and make an unstoppable, horrible army to start killing the rest of us."

Shelly sat in silence for a moment. "And if that attitude is something any of you absolutely cannot abide, I'll turn the ship around and get your back to safety, no questions asked. Whatever qualms I have with you, here, with me, it isn't the qualms I have with them, back in the core. The ones that came up with this awful solution to the blight of freedom."

None of the crew or passengers let out even a whisper. Their assent to her thoughts was palpable in the air.

Angel was the first to speak. "Shelly, you know I'm with you, thick and thin. This doesn't change anything here." She tapped herself on the chest, over her heart.

Thomas nodded gravely. Whatever past feelings he had towards the alliance that allowed them to join the crew of the Unity after he had left the service was now fully confirmed. Azuma seemed almost unconcerned, as if the activities of the Alliance had no hold on his life. Kaliya sat quietly, hugging her knees to her chest. She stared off into the distance, either still shocked by the recording, or engaged completely in some imaginative world of her own devising.

Joshua looked almost amused in his usual lighthearted manner. "So, the news of that finally got out, did it?"

Azuma narrowed his eyes. "You knew about this?"

Joshua responded after the briefest fraction of a second. "No, of course not, but it's been a lot of years since Miranda was a hot topic. I just find it interesting that it took so long for the truth to finally make it to the public, that's all." His pause had seemed natural, as if he was taken aback by the suggestion, but to those who knew him well, it was a dead giveaway. He knew, as usual, a lot more than he was willing to admit.

The newlywed couple seemed significantly more distraught than the unflappable crew. The hugged each other. They sat huddled on the floor, where they had been since the message stopped. The woman was crying, her dirty face smudged by her tears and her husband's futile attempts to calm her. It was obvious that he was on the verge of tears himself.

Shelly looked to the old man, who sat sipping tea at the commons table, apparently either completely perplexed or completely unaffected by this turn of events. "What about you, old timer?"

He smiled slowly "Well, fortunately for me, my time to fight is long past. Whatever this holds for the future, it is for you young ones to determine. Besides, my business is unaffected by such things. People still need to eat, do they not?"

Shelly nodded in assent to his assessment of his place in the grand scheme of things. She sighed; apparently there was nothing more to be said. Whatever the Miranda announcement meant for the rich and the powerful that had set in motion this course of events, it seemed to have little real impact other than the immediate shock for normal folk, just trying to get by. They'd recover, and life would go on, just like it always had, regardless of this travesty against humankind. The futility of it made her feel even more ill than the recording itself had.

Suddenly she realized that something was wrong. "Wait. Where's the other one?"

The rest of the crew scanned the room, searching for the fourth passenger, the bookish university student. Angel dashed down the hall to his room and glanced in. "Not here, Captain."

Shelley glanced around helplessly, then started another by now familiar cursing tirade. "Yi Dwei Da Buen Chuo Roh! Lio Coh Jwei Ji Neong Hur Ho Deh Yung Duh Buhn Jah J'wohn! Da Shiong La Se La Ch'wohn Tian! Why can't anyone listen when we say to stay on this deck?"

Suddenly, a loud alarm sounded throughout the ship, accompanied by a red warning light that flashed once and then, rather than flashing again like a normal, well-behaved warning light, exploded, sending glass raining down on the newlyweds, who squealed in horror. Shelly sank her head to her chest, crestfallen. She whispered to no one in particular "Why can't anything just go right on this ship?"

Thomas quickly lead the old man and the young couple to their rooms with no more direction from the captain than a glance. The rest of the crew dropped down to the other decks and quickly found the student fiddling with the device in the center of the room on the bottom deck.

The central room in the lower level had originally been some kind of research laboratory, identifying the ship itself as likely being some kind of alliance research vessel. However, most of the equipment in the lab had been removed. What remained was a rudimentary medical facility on one side, and the large device in the center. The medical equipment had been re-added by Rhino in order to sell the ship, but the device was a mystery. Rhino hadn't been able to say what it was, and neither could Shelly or any of the mechanics she'd interviewed, including Azuma.

The device was built into the ship - perhaps the only reason it hadn't been removed before Shelly bought the ship - from the floor straight up to the ceiling, where it connected directly into the ship's engines. It was a cylinder with an empty glass enclosure occupying the top half and a dense console underneath filled with readouts and various custom computer boards. Since Shelly had bought the ship, she hadn't seen the device active; in fact, in spite of her best efforts, and the best efforts of Kaliya and Azuma, it hadn't done anything. It was, as far as Shelley was concerned, little more than a decoration for the medical bay.

Now, however, it appeared that it was activated. A small cloud of dust was swirling around in the glass enclosure like a miniature tornado.

"Jwei Gai Won Se! What have you done, you Bei Bi Shiou Ren?"

"I.. I just pressed some buttons! I just wanted to see what it was! I didn't think it would.. I didn't know!" He was frantically pressing more buttons, apparently trying to reverse whatever he had done.

"Just step away from it, will you, you Ri shao gou shi bing!" The young man didn't respond, and kept frantically hitting buttons in a panic. The swirling dust inside the glass enclosure built up even more until the dense cloud obscured the entire inside of the device. The lights in the ship dimmed, then switched off entirely as though all of the engine's power was being redirected. The emergency lighting flickered on, leaving the room in shadows as half of the emergency lights were non-functional. "Now, Chwen Joo!"

Angel circled around the device towards him, and reached out to grab his arm and stop him when suddenly the glass enclosure set out a small puff of air, like a seal being released, and slowly lowered down into the console. The swirling dust cloud quickly flew around the room and sent everyone present into coughing fits.

Eventually the dust cloud thinned enough to leave the room with little more than a haze of dust in the air. When it had, the device returned to its former passive state with the glass enclosure again sealing the upper part of the device. The ship's engines made the sound of re-engaging and the normal life support systems and lights turned back on, chasing away the shadows.

"Take him to his room. And lock him in." Angel responded immediately, effortlessly twisting the man's arm behind his back. Rather than take the rear null gravity shaft, she went through the cockpit to take advantage of the stairs and prevent him from squirming free in null gravity during his move to his room turned cell.

The captain turned to the rest of the crew and barked instructions. "Joshua. You go keep watch on the passengers. Don't let them breathe without checking with me first. Thomas. Go fly this thing. Find out if whatever this Buhn Dahn did hasn't thrown us off course. Ryan, Kaliya. Figure out what he did down here and make damn sure it doesn't happen again. I don't want to be left drifting in the black with no power just by letting some careless Sah Gwa press a button, Dohn ma?

When she finished her instructions, she made her way up to the cockpit. She stood behind Thomas as he examined console readouts and indicators. She didn't need to hear his report to know what he had already determined: the Unity was dead in the black.

"Well, Captain, it looks like whatever drained the power down there did a pretty amazing job. We're basically humped until those two geniuses can figure out how to get the engines to talk to me again. I still have life support.. and it looks like sensors and comm are fine. It's just propulsion that's gone."

Shelly sighed and returned to the lower level "Sorry kids. Step back." She addressed Ryan and Kaliya as they fiddled with the device. They gave her a startled look, but hastily obeyed when the realized that she had her laser pistol drawn. With a single blast, she fried the circuit boards and control panel, completely disabling the device.

Azuma frowned. "That seems a bit.. rash."

Shelly smiled "Well, now nobody is going to mess with this thing. Besides, I need you back up in the engine room. We're drifting, and I'd like that little problem fixed before we run into someone that means us harm. Up you go!" She returned to the cockpit as Azuma made his way back to the engine room. Kaliya stayed to examine Shelly's handiwork.

On the upper deck, Angel and Joshua sat in the commons, watching the hall where the passengers were being kept in their quarters.

Joshua was describing the inevitability of human curiosity. "You see, it isn't just a matter of if people are going to seek out the unknown. It's a matter of when. You have to be prepared for people to try something new, something unusual. You might think you're safe in the places you control, but you aren't. Anyone, anywhere. It's just completely inevitable."

Angel looked at him impassively. "I still don't trust you enough to engage in small talk, Joshua. I would much rather you shut up so I can pretend that you're not even here."

Joshua looked hurt in an overly dramatic way "Well, I had no idea you of all people would feel that way. But if that is the first mate's instruction, then of course the cook will obey." And with that, he promptly shut up. He emphasized their respective positions and authority on the ship with unusual weight; it was clear that at least he thought that outside of the ship, their positions and authority in relation to one another was very different.

He pulled out a deck of cards and began shuffling in such a way that indicated his extreme aptitude for cards, and rapidly dealt out the setup for some obscure solitaire type game. Angel paced the room, waiting to hear from the Captain about the status of the ship.

Finally she arrived from the cockpit area with a grim face. She briefly explained the situation with the engines and instructed Angel to bring the meddlesome passenger to the commons so she could deal with him.

When Angel left, Joshua spoke up. "Are you planning to kill him?"

Shelly sighed "No, of course not. I don't kill folk, even if they deserve it, as you well know. But I do intend to get paid back for the trouble he's caused."

Angel shoved the meek student down the hall in front of her, her height serving to terrify him all the more as she stood a full head taller than him. Her complete lack of weaponry did not make her seem any less intimidating when she wanted to be. In fact, the appearance that she could easily break every bone in a man's body was enough to strike fear into most men's hearts, even before they had any proof that her appearance was even less terrifying than her actual abilities.

Shelly looked the youth up and down as he stood awaiting his sentence. He knew he had made a mistake, and, for once, was wise enough to keep quiet.

"What's your name?" Shelly asked bluntly. She didn't feel like any trivialities were necessary.

"Soren Smith, ma'am."

"Well, Soren Smith, here's what you've done. In addition to making a horrible mess out of my medical bay, you have managed to kill the propulsion systems on my ship. We're sitting here, stranded in space, because you couldn't listen to the very simple instruction to stay on this deck, or get an escort from a crew member. How do you think I should handle this?" Shelly absently touched the gun at her belt as she asked the question, driving home the possibilities.

"I.. I don't know, but please! Please don't kill me!"

Shelly smiled. "Well, why not? You've given me a whole heap of trouble. Do you think you can pay back what you owe me for breaking my ship and delaying your fellow passengers?"

Soren shook his head in despair. "I don't.. I don't have that much money. I.. maybe I could find something else? I don't know what a ship captain might need.."

Shelly continued to look pleased; whatever she was planning was apparently going exactly as she wished.

"Well, you're part of a university, right? Free access to all materials reserved for university members, including sealed archives, the minute I ask. You will do anything I say, even if it means risking your position. If I need a place to stay, you will find it, even if it means you will sleep on the floor - or on the street. If I call on you, you will give me exactly whatever it is I need, because I could have justly killed you right now. Dohn ma?"

Soren looked crestfallen. "I.. of course. Whatever you say, Captain Sheldon."

Joshua smiled. He knew that being a Captain out in the black meant more than having enough credits. It meant having enough holes to hide in and enough resources to get the information necessary to complete a job, or stay one step ahead of unfriendly alliance patrols, or pirates, or Reavers. He respected Shelly's demands; for the Unity's maiden voyage, she was already gathering important contacts and resources in order to survive.

Shelly, being no fool, drafted up a document indicating that he would give his full cooperation until she deemed that he had paid back the life that he owed her, and made sure that he signed it in a legally binding fashion with witnesses (she had the older businessman present for this purpose) and then sent the student back to his bunk where he stayed for the remainder of the journey.

Before too long, Azuma had, with Kaliya's help, managed to get the engines back to approximately their previous state of barely limping, and they resumed the flight to Persephone.

On their arrival - only a day late in spite of all the difficulties - the old man pulled Shelly aside before disembarking. "I respect what you did back there. I think you are an excellent captain, and your crew certainly seems to know how to handle itself. I think it could be beneficial to both of us to work together again in the future. Here is my card.

The card read:

Balthazar O'Connor

Blue Sun Corporation

CEO, research division

Before Shelly could express her shock, the old man had already gone. The Blue Sun Corporation was the richest, most powerful corporation in the 'verse. It supplied basic food and building supplies to every world from the core to the rim. A man in his position was likely one of the most powerful men in the 'verse - even more so after the announcement of the alliance genocide on Miranda.

"This may have started out as a bad trip, " she commented to no one in particular, "but it sure seems like we came out ahead this time. I think I might like this captaining stuff after all!

Chapter 3: Contagion

"It won't matter how rich we are once we're dead. I don't care how great this tip was or how much you paid for it. This place gives me the creeps, and I just want to go back to the ship." Joshua's complaints sounded hollow over the suits' transmitters. In the empty hall of the derelict vessel, they should have been echoing and filling the space, but the ship had been hulled and was open to the black, so the crew was in their suits.

Thomas and Kaliya had remained on the Unity, but Joshua, Angel, Azuma and Shelly were making their way through the ship, looking for valuables. The ship had once been a Reaver vessel; the crew was at the ship graveyard near a recent battle between the Alliance fleet and the Reavers. The alliance was too busy with the cleanup of their own ships to worry about a few looters going over the Reaver ships. Besides, the propensity of Reavers to lay booby traps kept all but the most skilled and the most foolish away.

Joshua wasn't sure which they were.

"This is the fourth ship already! Are we really going to find anything so valuable that we need to keep checking these ships? The Reavers don't care about any of the stuff we care about. This is a futile waste of time!" Joshua's arguments were accurate, but that didn't stop Shelly, who was in the lead.

"Look, little coward, they may have been insane, and they may not have given a damn about jewelry or credits, but whoever made these ships did. All it will take is one intact engine room, or medical bay, or armory to make this worth it." Shelly had paid enough credits for this information from a minor criminal who went by the name of Badger on Persephone that she wasn't about to give up now.

This derelict was larger than the others they had initially examined. It was a flagship - or it would have been if the Reavers had had any concept of hierarchical authority. The massive vessel was about ten times the size of the Unity, although the entire front half of the ship had been torn apart by a massive beam weapon, leaving it exposed to the vacuum of space.

Angel called out over the comm. "It looks like the other half of the ship is still sealed past this bulkhead." The crew quickly entered the rear half of the derelict and, discovering that the oxygen levels were still good, removed their helmets for comfort and visibility.

"Alright, you two take that side, and Angel and I will take this." The crew split at her direction, and Shelly and Angel began moving through the ship, and eventually came to the remains of a medical facility. It appeared to still be stocked with whatever supplies it had had before the Reavers took it over. It had been gutted of all the knives, scalpels, bone saws and other dangerous objects, but the simpler things, like the various drugs, remained in the secure medicine cabinet.

On the other half of the ship, Joshua had finally stopped complaining. Azuma wasn't listening, and even if he was, he wasn't about to go against the Captain's orders. It wasn't that he had any extreme loyalty to the Captain; he just had the prudence of a regular spacer; whatever he did, he didn't want to be thrown out an airlock or abandoned in some derelict ship where he would surely die. Joshua knew that complaints to anyone but the captain directly were likely a waste of breath.

The two men appeared to be a match for one another, at first glance. Azuma was short and wiry with muscle. His ancestry was clearly Chinese, lending him his darker skin tone and broad face. Joshua was almost identical to the mechanic in height, but the comparison stopped there. His features were more delicate, his frame less muscled and more rounded, indicating a life more at ease. His features were thin and vaguely Hispanic; his dark skin was tanned as though he saw more sunlight than anyone that actually lives out in the black could.

They made their way through the derelict, finding mostly various crew bunks. A ship this size had once had a vast crew of dozens, if not hundreds of men and women serving. The two occasionally found an item here or there worth picking up - an electronic component, a nutrient bar, a discarded data disk - but not much.

Eventually, the two men found what appeared to have once been an armory. The door was sealed, and no window showed the contents of the room. Azuma pulled out his electronics toolkit, wired it up to the door's keypad, and tapped a few buttons. "Tsk. Child's play." He smiled as the lock disengaged only mere moments after he began hacking the complex electronic lock.

"That's an interesting skill you have there, for a mechanic." Joshua commented idly.

Azuma just shrugged. "I'm sure you have a lot of interesting skills for a cook."

Joshua couldn't agree with that statement more, so he kept his peace regarding the mechanic's unusual larcenous ability.

The armory door slid open.

It was over in a moment. Joshua watched in horror as the Reaver leapt out from its place in hiding. It was a grotesque man with its skin covered in cuts and piercings and black leather. It was swinging some kind of jagged axe as it leapt, but Azuma sidestepped without a moment's thought, but then, perhaps remembering Joshua's presence and the fact that the Reaver, instead of leaping at him, was now shooting past and would momentarily fall onto Joshua, he lifted his right leg and shot it straight out as the Reaver passed, sending it crashing directly into the wall. It got up and turned to face the dangerous mechanic, but never had the time to regain its feet. Azuma jumped up and spun, sending his heel directly into the creature's temple. It dropped to the ground, and did not stir.

Suddenly, over the comm, Joshua heard his captain. "Ryan, Joshua. Do you read me? We have to get out of here. Now. Angel is.. there might be something in the air. Get your helmets on and meet up back at the Unity."

Without a word about the Reaver or Azuma's unexpected martial arts skills, the two hastened back to the ship.

Back at the Unity, Shelly explained everything as Angel lay on the medical bed, undergoing automated analysis.

"We found the medical bay. It was stocked. The drug cabinets looked completely untouched. We were wrong, though. They were booby-trapped. These sick bastards left traps in their own ship. I went searching through the drawers and shelves while Angel went to the drug cabinets. She smashed open the first one, and loaded up one bag without a problem, but the second one.. When she smashed it, a gas grenade exploded. She passed out almost instantly. I ran over to help her, but my suit helmet was on the other side of the room. I blacked out for a moment too. When I finally came to, I called you guys. Angel has been like this the whole time.

"There is one other thing. This."

She placed what appeared to be the remains of the grenade onto the foot of Angel's bed. At first, no one said a word. Thomas finally spoke. "No... G-23... that's.. Paxilon Hydrochlorate. That's what killed everyone on Miranda. And this.. a concentrated form? Did they use this to make more Reavers?" He glanced worriedly at Angel.

Shelly looked unconcerned. "Could be. I have no idea. But I'm going to go lay down now. I'm getting a bit sleepy."

Thomas grabbed her by the shoulder and steered her to the gurney and laid her down. She fell asleep almost instantly.

The crew looked at one another helplessly. Kaliya worked the medical equipment, carefully examining the readouts on Angel. As she did so, she pointed behind her toward Joshua and Azuma. "You're sick too." Kaliya somehow knew more about medicine than anyone else on the ship, but it was almost purely instinctual. She knew which drug was the right one to use almost by scent more than by name. She couldn't give a diagnosis - only a cure.

Thomas assisted in getting blood samples from all four of the crew that had been on the derelict. Joshua paced, agitated, while Ryan sat on the floor nearby, remaining calm. The two women lay on the medical beds, asleep.

"Doesn't it bother you? That your motivation might be being sucked out of you right now? It just makes me want to live, you know? I want to just.. be alive, to run, to jump, to dance... while I still have the chance. While I still have the ability... before I turn into just a lump of flesh.. before I am pacified, like those poor souls on Miranda."

Ryan glanced up at him from his position on the floor. "Or you become a Reaver and kill us all."

Joshua looked alarmed at the possibility. "Well, if you're still up, I don't think we'll have any trouble there" he suggested wryly.

Thomas looked about to question this when Kaliya came back with printouts of the blood work. "This one is very very sick. Maybe two or three hours? Her system just.. I don't think I can fix it. We don't have the medicine here. That one.. she's got maybe twice as long." She gestured at the captain. "These two only a little sick. But still, no medicine. Maybe a few days, but still not long. We need better medicine!" She rummaged through the drawers of the medical bay and found a syringe of pure adrenaline. "This will help a little. Maybe give another hour? For that one!" She ran over to Angel and jabbed the huge needle directly into her chest before anyone could react to the apparently violent stabbing.

Angel awoke almost instantly as the adrenaline got into her system. "Wha... What happened?"

Azuma explained the situation as tersely as possible: "You've been hit by a reaver booby-trap. It was a gas grenade in one of the drug cabinets on the derelict. The grenade contained concentrated G-23 PAX - the stuff that was used on Miranda. The kid gives you about three hours left to live before you end up giving up on life like those folk did... or turning into a Reaver."

"What about Max..." Angel noticed the captain laying on the gurney next to her and closed her eyes in pain, or regret, or both. "Okay. Kali!" The girl was playing with the remains of the gas grenade at the end of the bed. She seemed oblivious to the call. "Kaliya?"

"Oh! me! Who's Kali?" She seemed to coquettishly dismiss the nickname... or perhaps not realize that it could be a nickname for herself.

Angel, realizing that she didn't have much time, ignored that conversation. "What do you need to reverse the effects of the Paxilon?"

Kaliya frowned. "Some.. medicine. It tastes a little sweet." She looked around and then, to the horror of everyone present, grabbed the remains of the bobby-trap that Shelly had brought over and licked it. "Lil sweeter than this, though."

Thomas cringed. "Why did you do that? I.. won't you get sick?"

Kaliya's eyes went wide. "Oh! ohh, you mean because this is what made them sick? Well... I don't think so. I don't feel sick." She looked down at her body and started pressing her hands against herself, checking for any indications. "Nope! looks like I'm okay!"

Thomas insisted on her taking her own blood work and making sure. She squirmed and tried to get away from the needle, but eventually he was able to get the blood and Kaliya grudgingly ran it through the medical computer.

Angel struggled off of the medical table. "Okay. I feel.. " she placed her hand over her chest where the adrenaline had been inserted. "Not so good. But we gotta find this medicine. It's not in any of the stuff we brought back, I take it?"

Kaliya watched the medical computer churning away at the blood. "Nope. None around here. Probably have to go to a BIG hospital."

The medical computer finished its work and printed a readout. Kaliya examined it momentarily, then smiled "See! I told you I'm okay!" She waved the blood work printout above her head. It looked nothing like the other printouts. She let it drop to the floor where it landed next to Azuma. He picked it up and read it over silently while she danced around the medical bay.

Thomas sighed. "Well, I don't think there is any big hospital around here."

Angel closed her eyes for a moment and leaned against the medical bed. "Look, I don't know if we can trust this girl who can't even give us a name of a medicine, but I don't think I have much of a choice, assuming the diagnosis is even close to accurate. Let me think." She paused for a moment. "We could try the facility in the cloud. It was supposed to be some massive space station. I don't know what it has, but if the girl is right, then neither Shelly nor myself is going to last long enough to get to a big enough hospital to get the treatment we need."

Thomas hastened to the cockpit and quickly sent the ship into the nearby ion cloud. The ion cloud wrecked havoc on the Unity's systems. For the few minutes that they were traversing the cloud, Azuma ran around the engine room, putting out literal and figurative fires that burst out of seemingly every panel. His usual assistant, Kaliya, remained below tending to Shelly and Angel, who was suffering the after affects of having adrenaline injected directly into her heart.

Eventually they made it through and came upon the complex hidden inside the cloud. It was a massive complex, easily mistaken for a moon. Kaliya glanced out the front hatch from her position in the medical bay and saw it through the cockpit. "Yeah! That looks promising!" she called up to Thomas in the cockpit as she tended to the captain and first mate.

Thomas quickly initiated docking procedures with an expert hand. The pilot's chair was on a projection out from the platform, and a flight stick was on a pole like a periscope from the ceiling. Behind him, the platform had steep partly spiraling stairs on the left that went down, then cut back to the center and the lower hatch, and on the right a mirror set of stairs that instead went up to the upper deck. The controls were mostly on the pilot's chair, which was covered in buttons and had panels that unfolded out onto his lap as necessary, although the indicators and displays showed up on the bracing dividers of the central fisheye viewport. It was an unusual ship design, but he had taken to it as if he had flown in it all his life. The lack of central console combined with the sleek design made the cockpit a beautiful central hub for the ship.

As soon as the ship docked, Angel made her way to the port cargo bay. Although the ship itself had two cargo bays, only the port cargo bay had a functional airlock. This made the crew more inclined to put the starboard cargo bay to their own use. A large part of it had been converted into something of a dojo long before the ship had first set sail. Angel practiced her martial arts forms or sparred with anyone brave enough to face her there. Weights and other exercise equipment was also present in that cargo bay; it basically functioned as a sort of ship rec room unless the other cargo bay filled up. The broken airlock faced the front of the ship, and while it still opened, doing so in deep space could easily mean depressurization and instant death to the entire crew. As such, Rhino, the mechanic who originally got the ship running again, had installed a cage around the airlock controls, and the captain only unlocked it after the ship had landed and locked it again before takeoff.

The port cargo bay, on the other hand, was usually left free for carrying deliveries or salvage around the 'verse. It had abundant bindings along all of the walls and was currently loaded with what the crew had managed to loot from the Reaver vessels. Angel stalked past the crates and bags and slammed the airlock button in annoyance. As the lock hissed open and the air from the complex rushed in, she was knocked back and fell to one knee.

Kaliya watched and quickly ran over to Angel's side. "Uh-oh. she's sicker than she said." She steadied Angel and helped her to her feet, but restrained her as she tried to continue forward into the complex. "Whoa, whoa whoa. You're going to collapse in three minutes, so you should probably go rest on the bed before you do. It won't do to be sicker from bumping your head when you fall from way up there." Kaliya, in spite of the direness of the situation, was making fun of Angel's height. She was a tall woman, apparently mostly Scandinavian ancestry, with pale skin and a large, tall body. That she was being supported by the childishly small Kaliya indicated that the larger woman was at the end of her strength.

Once Angel was again back in the bed, she quickly went to sleep again. Kaliya looked torn. She wanted to stay, to help Angel, but she knew that she had to go and help find the right medicine, since she didn't know its name. It frustrated her.

"Come along, Kaliya. We need to find the medicine to make her better." Joshua spoke to the girl gently, as though he understood her dilemma. "I'll stay and watch over them. You can go. Hurry!"

Kaliya left the room and entered the cargo bay, accompanied by Thomas and Azuma. They went through the air lock into the complex they found inside the ion cloud. Azuma looked slightly slower than he had been earlier - more methodical and plodding. Even the early stages of the PAX drug were limiting his abilities.

The complex itself was a large communications and media center. The inside was alternatively modern and archaic. The basic structure was a gray, metallic utilitarian base, but the computers and machines that the trio encountered throughout the complex were varied as though they had been added over the course of a century or more.

Thomas lead the way as the three went through doors and passages, checking in at each door, hoping to find an infirmary. The entire facility appeared to be deserted, and none of the rooms seemed to have the medicine they needed. Eventually, they came across what appeared to be a central control room. One wall was filled with dozens of displays. The displays showed different broadcasts from around the 'verse. It was an impressive display. Azuma sat at the central console and started tapping away at the keyboard.

"Hopefully I can find a map of this place in the database here. You keep looking; I'll contact you over the radio when I find something." He stared intently at the screen as files streamed past.

Thomas and Kaliya crept out of the room and made their way deeper into the complex. They had only just left the room when a voice came over the comm. "Hey, guys, tell me you have something. The women aren't doing too good back here."

Kaliya responded over the comm to Joshua's concerns. "Do things to make them wake up. Keep them active!"

Joshua responded "Well, I.. okay, but if they beat me up for it, I'm blaming you."

Azuma cut in "I found it. Head down the hall you're in, take a left at the end, and then your third right. That's the most likely place."

Thomas and Kaliya set off running and quickly made it to the infirmary. Kaliya looked around the room urgently. Thomas ran in and threw open every door he could find and pulled every bottle, every salve, every pill out so that Kaliya could examine them more quickly. Kaliya followed in his wake, examining each item that he set out, sometimes just looking at the item, sometimes touching, sometimes licking and sometimes even taking a pill or drinking some of whatever medical supply was placed in front of her. Thomas noticed this, but kept silent. He hoped that whatever brutal cocktail she was giving herself wouldn't overshadow the good she might do for the rest of the crew.

Finally she stopped. "This one! This, plus that there! and those!" She pointed out two bottles of pills and a liquid. Whatever effect the drugs she had taken was having on her, she was not showing any signs of impairment.

Thomas quickly gathered up the three indicated items, as well as any additional duplicates of them that he could quickly find, and the two ran out of the room as quickly as his mechanical leg would allow them.

The promptly arrived in the central control room only to find Azuma lying on the floor near them, his torso sliced in three places and a trail of blood behind him. His eyes were closed and he made no sound or movement as the two approached. Thomas stepped in front of Kaliya, who quickly knelt down to dress the mechanic's wounds. He looked around for whatever it was that had attacked him, but didn't notice anything until a raving madman leapt from behind a couch carrying a large, sharp looking knife.

Thomas didn't have time to move before the man was on him. The knife buried itself into his left arm, and generated a spark, rather than a spurt of blood. The madman dropped down to all fours and Thomas was able to identify him - a Reaver. The cuts in his skin and the fact that his clothes appeared to be made entirely from human skin convinced him instantly that this was one of the horrible creations of the PAX.

Thomas dropped into a crouch, his invulnerable left side forward as he faced the Reaver. He extracted the knife that had been lodged in his arm out and held it in his good hand. The Reaver took this moment to leap in again, his eyes mad with fury and rage. He toppled into the pilot, who managed to stay standing in part because of his solid stance and in part because of his prosthetic limbs. The Reaver practically bounced off of him instead of pushing him over.

Thomas now had the knife in hand and leapt forward. The Reaver charged in again as well - it was fairly predictable, Thomas thought. A Reaver, a creature with overactive rage impulses would never fight conservatively. It would always charge in and fight head on. Thomas abruptly braced rather than completing his charge and held the knife out in front of him. The Reaver neatly impaled itself on the knife, but it did little to stop it. It tore out with its fingers like claws, ripping at Thomas, lunging with its mouth and trying to bite him.

Thomas reeled his head back slightly, then brought it crashing forward and crushing the steel plates that made up his face directly into the skull of the Reaver, who crumpled under the blow and fell to the ground, blood pouring out of its mouth. Thomas knelt down over the Reaver and neatly slit its throat with no hesitation as it scrambled to get away. It quickly gurgled its last breath and stopped moving.

He and Kaliya gathered up Azuma and carried him with, returning to the Unity as quickly as possible. The rudimentary medical bay in the Unity was not large enough to accommodate all of the injured and ill people on the crew, especially when, on their return, Kaliya and Thomas found Joshua laying on the floor, having apparently been punched in the face by one of the women who was laying on the medical tables.

Thomas commented with a smile "I'm sure you could have thought of something a little less likely to get you hit than whatever you did, kid."

Joshua smiled through the quickly forming bruises on his face. "Oh, yes, I could have, but what fun would that have been?"

They quickly built a makeshift bed on the floor for Azuma and left Joshua to fend for himself while Kaliya set to work applying whatever concoction she had created to the PAX afflicted individuals.

Thomas, in the meantime, headed up to the cockpit to ensure that nothing had happened in his absence. He cursed as he saw that one of the alarm beacons that they had set up before beginning the operation had started to go off. There was another ship inbound.

He didn't know what the Captain would have ordered, but he was the only able bodied adult on the ship, and made the call to leave. The Unity was, after all, an alliance vessel that was being flown by non-alliance personnel. They were all criminals of a sort. His own personal history aside, he knew that an encounter with an alliance ship, especially with the ship containing illegal salvage and most of the crew incapacitated, would be serious trouble for them. He disengaged the dock and set course through the ion cloud away from the incoming warning beacon's signal and away from the incoming ship.

It was several days before the Captain and first mate came around to their usual selves. During the time, Kaliya showed no ill effects from the drugs she had taken, and Joshua made a point of staying away from the medical bay as much as possible. He was rightfully afraid of further reprisal for his ill-advised actions while the women were under the influence of the PAX.

Azuma recovered from his encounter with the Reaver, though remained silent about the details of the fight. The ship itself had managed, barely, to make it out of the ion cloud when Thomas sought to escape the other ship, but it was as badly in need of repairs as the crew was by the time it had reached open space away from the derelict field and the ion cloud.

Chapter 4: Companionship

The contract was fairly simple. A companion currently on one of the rim planets for personal reasons needed to go to the core for her yearly evaluation. Although Shelly had her personal qualms about this, the fact was that it was the only job they had had in more than a month, and funds were running low. She knew she could take out another loan with no issue, but she hated the idea of being any further in debt, so she decided to risk it. Even though the ship was formerly alliance, having a registered companion on board going to the core for a medical exam would hopefully protect her and her ship.

But this companion was the haughty kind, Shelly thought. The contract required not only transport, but sufficient accommodations "as befitting a person of her stature." Shelly sighed. The only place on her ship that would likely prove sufficient for such a person would no doubt be her own quarters.

Her quarters were the largest in the ship - the same size as Joshua's room. At the far starboard end of the ship on the top deck with all of the other bunks, the room was mostly square, and sat directly above one of the one-man scout ships.

The room itself was adorned as befit the captain. She had insisted on that much herself. It upset her when she realized the comparison between herself and this companion was so apt. The room had a full sized bed and full silken curtains, various candles and tea cups, and even a painting of one of the most beautiful vistas of Sihnon, the world of beauty.

She took one last look around the room before she headed out to meet their passenger. This one passenger had a high enough fee that she would, alone, provide ample funds to support the trip, so although Shelly would have liked to have had more of a reason to go to Osiris, few people and fewer goods tended to make their ways from the rim directly into the core.

Angel met her outside of her room. "Are you sure about this? We could put her someplace else. You don't need to give up your own room for some passenger."

Shelly shrugged "Well, better to offer the best we have to ensure we get the job than to hold back. We can't really afford to miss this opportunity."

"What about Joshua's room? Surely you could order him to give it up for this trip."

"Knowing him, he'd charge for it. I'd really much prefer not to be in his debt any more than I can possibly avoid."

Angel nodded. "That's true, no doubt. Well, I guess you had best go to meet her, then."

Joshua was waiting in the commons and watched Shelly slyly. "You and a beautiful companion sharing one room. Oh, to be a fly on the wall!"

Shelly frowned. "I'd swat you in an instant. But no, we aren't sharing a room. I'm letting her use my room, and I'll be sleeping elsewhere. And no, I'm not telling you where. I don't want to risk you deciding to visit me while I'm out cold like last time." She glared at him, reminded of his actions when the PAX drug had nearly incapacitated her.

Joshua made a show of looking hurt. "Madam! I'm offended! I would never treat such a beauty as yourself with anything but the utmost respect, were it not for the explicit instructions of a medical professional."

Shelly sighed "Yes, I'm sure that a young girl told you to grab my ass. Just.. don't piss off our passenger. No, wait, on second thought, don't talk to her at all. And, if possible, don't look at her. Or be in a place that she could look at you."

Joshua silently assented to her demands as she made her way to the cockpit and started heading down. She saw the rest of the crew waiting there for her.

Thomas swung the pilot's seat around to face her as she descended, while Kaliya dangled her thin legs over the platform next to him, gazing out onto the landing area. In her hands was a plant that she had picked up somewhere, presumably from after having landed. She was cradling it in her hands as if that would cure whatever malady she detected within it. Azuma was looking over some readouts as he leaded against the door frame between the cockpit and the engine room.

Shelly acknowledged them as she descended from the upper deck. "Well, it looks like our passenger is ready for us." She gestured in the direction of a car outside the cockpit that was pulling up. "Are we ready for her?"

Azuma spoke up first. "Yes, captain. The ident override should keep us more or less free of suspicion unless someone goes to more than the usual level of looking into things."

Thomas replied, "I don't think that will be an issue; the purpose of our trip is pretty clear, so I don't think we'll have any difficulties - at least not with the port authorities. I'm more concerned about the ship. These indicators suggest that one of the storage batteries is in really bad shape. Is there no way we can get a new one before we start out?"

Kaliya piped up. "Yeah, poor Unity. She's so very sick, but fixing her is so expensive."

Shelly sighed. "Unfortunately, unless you want to skip food for this trip, we're going to have to make do. We'll get it replaced as soon as we get paid."

Thomas sighed and turned back to the front and the controls there. "Opening the cargo bay now. You should go meet our guest."

Shelly quickly made her way to the cargo bay to meet with the companion to give her the grand tour and, if all went well, to get paid to make their way to the core.

As Shelly arrived at the port cargo bay airlock, she bowed low in the formal style of the core, revealing her knowledge of proper etiquette and introduced herself to the guest. "I welcome you aboard, madam. I am Captain Sheldon, and this is my ship, the Unity. I welcome you aboard."

Out of the glare of the sun strode the Companion, an elegant woman wearing a long blue silken dress that complemented her luscious black tresses. She spoke up questioningly. "Maxine? Is that you?"

Shelly looked up at the woman, and recognized a vaguely familiar face. "Inara?"

"It is you! I always wondered what had become of you! I can't believe it! The last I heard of you was... well, shortly after you left the training halls and you were blacklisted."

Shelly smiled slyly "Well, it is fortunate that you are here for my services, rather than the other way around, then. I do hope that the guild's animosity toward me will not spoil my ship's willingness to fulfill your request."

Inara smiled and rushed forward to hug the smaller woman. "Of course not, silly! Oh, how I've missed you! You'll have to tell me all about it! If it's with you, I don't even need to see the ship. Let's set off right away!"

Shelly shot daggers from her eyes at the peeping Joshua, who she caught spying on them from over Inara's shoulder as they hugged, then, breaking free, lead Inara up to her room.

"I'd introduce you to my crew, but they are largely ruffians and the like. Certainly not fit to be sharing company with a high class companion like yourself."

Inara giggled girlishly at this. "Oh, you have no idea where I've been, I take it. I've been shipping out with that same variety of ruffian for a while - that's how I ended up out here in the rim in the first place. But, well, the captain of that ship and I had a bit of a falling out and I decided not to call on him and his for my transport any more. But enough of me! Tell me what you've been up to!"

Shelly shrugged and gracefully sat down on a cushion "Well, after I left the training halls, I went wherever the winds would take me. I started off taking whatever work I could find, flying around from planet to planet, but each ship I joined, I learned something new, from mechanics, to piloting, to fighting. Finally, I obtained a loan and got myself my own ship. I found Angel - you remember her - and invited her to join me, and found a cook, a pilot, a medic, and a mechanic, and I've been flying around, earning my way and keeping my freedom."

Inara listened intently. Following Shelly's explanation, the Unity rose into the air with a shudder. "Well, it seems we're on our way. I wish I knew why you left us, though. It came as such a shock. I remember when we were just children, growing up together in the training halls on Sihnon... " She looked up at the painting of the vista. "That's where we first met, isn't it? On that overlook from the Training hall?"

The evening was cold, and the two girls, each only eight years old, sat huddled close together. Sitting in the chill was a punishment, of sorts, but the girls both loved the view. They had arrived at the same time from their various studies, looking for some solace from the day's labors in the beauty of the world. Looking out, they saw a glow of colors. The civilization that produced the light was lost; the haze of Sihnon's night air turned the individual lights into swathes of color that crossed through the valley below. The girls did not speak. They had each come to escape, and they both had the empathy to understand that the other's purpose was not worth interrupting just for hollow greetings. Eventually, the bell for lights out tolled and the two girls stood, looked each other in the eye, knowingly, and, without a word, ran off to their respective dormitories.

That wasn't the first night they met up like this. Many nights after, they would meet at the overlook. They each thought of it as the most beautiful place in a hall dedicated to beauty. Eventually they talked and learned a little about one another. The darker haired girl was Inara, a young prodigy amongst the initiates at the Companion's Guild Training Hall. The slighter girl had long red braids - in a futile attempt to make her look more presentable and less wild. She was Maxine, and was as much a trouble child as the other was an icon of perfect correctness.

They made an unusual couple. Whatever deviant behavior Inara undertook was blamed on Maxine's disruptive influence, even if Inara had looked up the creative cuss words on her own, and any time Maxine did anything right, it was attributed to Inara having taken Maxine under her wing, even when Maxine had worked alone to create a sculpture that really embodied her own passions. This attitude soured both girls' opinions of their instructors. However, in spite of the instructor's attitudes, they were fast friends.

In the summers, they would run together, exploring the gardens and open areas of the training halls. They would run from rooftop to rooftop to escape the lessons they disliked the most, and found games to play together indoors on the rainier days.

The winters saw them together still, sharing their warmth and beds as innocent children seeking to fight off the cold of the winter chills by sharing their body heat. They even eschewed their bunk assignments to sleep together. They played together in the snow and built elaborate, beautiful castles from the snow instead of following their instructor's directions to create their beauty in a more permanent medium. They felt the whimsy and freedom of youth more in each other's presence than anywhere else.

They became something of a legend among the instructors and the other trainees as the oddest couple in the school, but also the most joyful. Whatever adversity was placed in their path, they worked together to overcome it. Whatever difficulties they found in their schooling, they learned it together. They were inseparable friends at the training hall.

For all the trouble they got into as a pair, their indiscretions were always overlooked, much to the chagrin of the other students. They lived a charmed life. It was, perhaps, not fair to them, but the girls simply radiated joy and happiness. Even the crustiest old curmudgeon amongst the instructors at the children's training hall was touched by their pure love and bliss. Simply spending an afternoon in their presence was enough to revitalize the most jaded adults. In fact, some extremely wealthy patrons made a habit of visiting the training halls just to be around this innocent couple.

It was one of these patrons that introduced Maxine and Inara to the girl that they came to know as Angel. They played together, although Angel was always a little bit of an outsider, being a year younger than the other two girls. Nevertheless, she never felt slighted, as the two companions-in-training were extremely empathetic and made every effort to ensure that the other girl always felt welcome in their company.

They knew that her real name was not Angel, of course. The training grounds were officially off limits to anyone who was not a member of the Companion's guild, so they carefully concealed the patrons' names. Still, the younger girl visited frequently and became a constant companion to the prodigy and problem child. She quickly became attached to Maxine. Inara seemed to unrealistically perfect for her, so she learned what she could from her, but followed the fiery redhead whenever she had to choose.

Angel wasn't the only visitor that took a liking to Maxine. Various adults also paid her special attention. While Inara was the prodigy that mastered every task the instructors put before her, the outsiders seemed to consider Maxine to be even more promising. She was given special treatment and gifts from these outsiders. Her days as a young girl in the training halls were truly blessed.

Inara paused in her recollections. "I remember such happiness during those times, Maxine! I love the joy that I can give to the 'verse, the way that I can really connect to people and really change their lives for the better!"

Shelly smiled at the memory. "Yes, I remember those days well. I wish they could have lasted forever. But, alas, it was not to be. The children's training hall was, you are right, a joy, but later.. later things did not go the way that they should have. You were given the gentlest instructors in all things, because they knew you would do the work without hesitation. On the other hand, I was always less excited about the schoolwork they gave me, so they always passed me along to the harshest instructor in an effort to make sure that I did the work.

"In the children's halls, that wasn't an issue. I could just outrun them or skip my lessons or hide behind my patrons or, when all else failed, just do the work they wanted of me. But all of that changed when we went to the adult training halls."

When the two girls were old enough to begin their adult training, they were moved to the adult training halls, where they were taught advanced philosophy, psychology and, of course, given intimacy training. This was their first instance of being separated since they had first met. Inara went to a private training hall mastered by some of the most skilled instructors that the guild could find. Maxine, on the other hand, was sent to the public adult training school. It was considered a great center of learning, but, like all large institutes, it had some better instructors and some far, far worse.

The two girls kept in contact, writing letters back and forth and spending time together over holidays. Still, as young friendships do, it cooled as the two were together less and less frequently. Their time was spent more and more with new friends and with new studies.

For Inara, the training was compelling and enjoyable. Her discussions in philosophy always revealed her keenest insights. Her studies into psychology were easily translated into practical social skills. The various other scholarly courses were likewise resounding successes. Her physical training was no different. In athletics, while not the star, she excelled. When the school finally began teaching her intimacy courses, she was given personalized, gentle instruction from the most successful instructors and retired companions. She learned and practiced techniques from the most renowned companions the 'verse had to offer.

Maxine, however, had a completely different experience in the public training hall. Based on the reviews of her performance at the children's training hall, she was given the lower grade instructors for the scholarly portion of her training. They found her to be wanting in her studies, though not for her lack of knowledge. She simply considered herself a rebel and behaved accordingly. She rarely attended her classes and when she did, she was as disruptive as possible. It wasn't that she was unhappy or neglected; it was just that she was branded. She behaved as she was excepted to behave, and, in the training halls, she was already known to be the rebellious type. She simply maintained her image.

Without Inara to curtail her activities, she was more and more wild. Her unruly behavior could not be controlled. She was punished at first using enlightened, gentle methodologies. Then, as it proved to have no effect on her actual behavior, they resorted to more physical punishments. She didn't change her behavior, though, regardless of the punishments they selected. It wasn't that she wanted to be punished, but rather that she had been assigned a role by the miniature snowglobe society of the training hall, and she aimed to do her best at everything she did - it was just that she was the best malcontent.

Still, she wouldn't have had any difficulty finishing the school if it was just the scholarly pursuits that she was rebelling against. However, as a Companion Training Hall, she had other things to learn. Her training in intimacy was what threw her over the edge.

Her first encounter was with a man called Gabriel - clearly not his real name, however. He had been one of her patrons at the Children's training hall. It was officially against policy that such a thing happen, but apparently his connections and his money were enough to persuade the Companion's Guild to look the other way while he took the virginity of one of their students.

She was taken to a guest bedroom, where Gabriel waited. He was a middle aged man - old enough to be her father - and he wore his age worse than most. His face was creased, and he was significantly overweight, although not quite obese. The rolls of his naked flesh horrified her. He pulled her close. Although she had learned some theories about sex, his brutal assault was as far from those theories as possible. He held her down and forced himself on her. His every motion brought her pain. He hit her, tore at her soft, pale, childish skin and covered her with bruises and cuts. He raped her six times that night, unceasingly. Her screams were loud and ignored at first, but as the night wore on, her screams fell away to a deadened cry and then, finally, realizing that nothing she could do would save her, to silence.

This was the first encounter of many. Gabriel came to the Companion's Guild time and time again, and they never refused his influence. Even when he was not raping her, she was abused by her intimacy instructors. They had watched her, studied her actions, and determined that her rebellious activities in the other aspects of her life were a call for a more deviant sexual existence as well. This, combined with her extremely silent response to sexual activity following Gabriel's first night with her, convinced them that she was not the kind that could enjoy sensual intimacy the way that someone like Inara could.

Maxine fought the only way she felt she could - she kept acting out - and was rewarded by even more brutalizing instructions. Her body was abused every day, and every night she lay awake, unable to even cry. What the scholarly instruction could not do, the sexual instruction did. Her attitude completely reversed. Instead of being willful and dispassionate about her resistance, she became broken of will, but passionate about her resistance.

A letter arrived from Inara for Maxine. It detailed the exceptionally sensual, beautiful, ecstatic first encounter she had had with one of her instructors. She intended no slight, but this innocent letter sent Maxine into a rage. She knew that what she had was wrong. She didn't reply to Inara's letter. Instead, she fought. She fought to find someone, anyone who would help her escape. She had only patrons like Gabriel, and no family, so she was wholly dependant on the Guild for her survival. Simply running away would not have resulted in anything but being arrested and returned.

It was nearly six months of being continuously abused, battered, molested and raped before she found that person. It was one of the retired companions who was traveling around the various training halls. She said that she could not help, though she was sympathetic. Her retirement was in jeopardy if she acted on behalf of the scared girl. However, she did provide a more innocuous sort of help. She gave Maxine the contact information of a particularly well placed individual who had once been one of her clients. As she was retired, she was ostensibly simply providing a referral, and no one would think twice about it. Everyone presumed, of course, that Maxine's particularly deviant training was the best match for the client, but Maxine knew better.

Rather than reply to Inara, Maxine sent a letter to this client's address. Unfortunately, the man in question had been hospitalized, and the letter reached his son. In a way, this was fortuitous. The man's son was willing to help her escape from the training halls, under a condition to be named later, worth as much as her life.

Maxine accepted the offer instantly. She cared nothing for the consequences of her promise. No life that awaited her outside of the training halls could be as bad as what she experienced. She couldn't hope that it would be as good as the life Inara had suggested, but it had to be better than what she was going through.

The man's offer was that she would be transported out on a trip, and he would find a way to abduct her and move her to an alternative means of living. She went on the trip and quickly found herself on a space liner, away from the school, and away from Gabriel, or so she thought. As she was attempting to flee, he found her. He cornered her and chased her into an empty cabin, where he attempted to do as he had always done, and began to advance towards her.

Maxine was full of fear and rage, and found the nearest object - a flower vase - and swung it down over his head as he approached. He fell as the glass shattered over his head, and collapsed in a heap on the floor. He twitched and looked like he would get up again, when Maxine, filled with the fury of his repeated abuses, took the shattered glass of the vase and drove it down directly into the back of his neck, killing him instantly.

She felt pity. She thought that this death was far, far too quick for such a man. She wasn't violent by nature, but she did believe that some people, when they had shown their true colors, deserved appropriate punishment.

She quickly left the corpse and continued to follow her planned escape route through the space liner. Her savior found her, collapsed in a corner in the hallway, shaking with emotion over what she had done. She didn't breathe a word of her actual activities, but he could tell that something about the plan had not gone smoothly. He later heard about the death in the news, but never said anything to her afterwards.

The man gave her a chance, and she proved that, after she calmed down, she could do whatever was necessary. However, he held his promise in check, and simply found a job as a dancer for the space liner.

"I didn't just leave you. I left behind a worthless gorram life that not only destroyed me, but one that tolerated and encouraged me being destroyed, Inara. I didn't really have anything against you - although your bliss was a complete slap in the face when compared to my own experience. I guess maybe I should have told you, but what could you have done? I was not within your reach. Not quickly enough, anyway."

Inara was in tears. She tried to hold onto Maxine, but was rebuffed. "I'm sorry, my friend, but that isn't something I want from you, or from any Companion. I was blacklisted, but it doesn't harm me at all." She rose and stood imperiously at the cabin door. "I'm glad to be gone. I am glad that life is behind me, and I'll never, ever submit again. I refuse to engage in your false intimacy and false sensuality. Nothing you, or your guild, ever does will be a part of any life I want any part in.

Chapter 5: Unity

"Look! This is the plan! No second thoughts!" Angel stood over Maxine as she was sitting up in the trunk.

"You really want me to spend six hours in this trunk, just in case something goes wrong so I can bail you out?"

"No, Shelly, YOU wanted to do that. This was YOUR plan." Angel sighed. Shelly had a habit of being troublesome at the last minute.

"No light? Nothing to do? I'll go mad!"

"No light; they might see it. No noise, they might hear it. Your plan, remember? Just deal with it. You'll be fine. See you in six!" Angel shoved Shelly back and slammed the trunk closed.

Shelly thought this was perhaps one of her worst plans ever. However, she was more prepared than Angel had thought. She lay back and waited for the trunk to get moved into position. Eventually, she stopped moving. She just had to listen, now. But that didn't mean that, like she had suggested, she had to be completely without something to do. Before Angel had gotten her into the trunk, she had managed to smuggle in some miniature night vision goggles. She pulled them out from between her breasts and put them on.

The trunk was Angel's. It was not, as they had promised, filled with the loot, but if all went according to plan, they wouldn't have to open it up and reveal her as the "loot".

Apart from the Captain, the trunk was fairly empty. It had a few articles of clothing - more as padding for Shelly's comfort than anything else. There were a few odds and ends, as well. Then Shelly found something interesting. It was a sliding panel. It was hidden in the lid, directly in front of Shelly's face. She touched it - it was almost perfectly smooth. If she had not had on the goggles, she never would have found it, even staring directly at it for six hours.

She touched around it, and around everything she could until she finally found the button to release the panel. The panel silently released when she pushed the button. After the fact, she considered that it might have been booby trapped, but, fortunately, if it had been, Angel had disabled it as a safety measure while Shelly was in there with it.

Behind the panel, Shelly found a thin computer - basically a writing device and little more. She accidentally hit the power button and it turned on, automatically adjusting to the darkness of the inside of the trunk. Shelly briefly thought about why her first mate might have a hidden journal and wondered if it was a diary. The first page, however, convinced her otherwise. It was a report. The addressee was not named, but it was clearly written as a military report.

It wasn't the fact that Angel had a report, or even that it was a militarily styled report that bothered Shelly. It was the fact that it referred to the "subject" as "Maxine Sheldon". Why would her childhood friend be reporting on her?

She began to read the report.

"I met the subject at the ship. I had finally managed to find her after all the years since I started looking. She told me about the life that she had lived that lead up to her purchasing the ship.

'After I left the Guild Training Halls, I was a dancer for a while. I worked mostly on space liners. It wasn't exactly going to make me well off, but it certainly was a lot better than the life I had back there.' She shuddered at the thought. Whatever life she had left behind, she wasn't particularly interested in sharing it with me.

'I had a friend who helped me out. You'll meet him in a little while. Anyway, he got me out, and made me promise to do whatever he asked of me at a later date. It worked for me, though - but I'll get to that. The first thing he did was get me a job as a dancer on a space liner. It was kind of depressing - I had to show off plenty of leg and most of the other dancers had apparently nothing between their ears but more leg, so it was pretty dull, as I'm sure you can imagine.

'What traveling on a space liner did do was provide me with the opportunity to learn more. I learned nothing of dance on a minor space liner dance troupe. However, I was able to befriend many of the crew. I spent my time away from the dance hall in the engine rooms, learning some basic mechanical skills, or up in the cockpit, making small talk with the pilots and learning how they flew the ship.

'Once my skills had developed a little, I was able to take on different jobs. I left the space liner and traveled on a smaller ship for a little while as the copilot, and was able to get various jobs in just about any role on the ship. Mind you, I wasn't great, but, well, some of the training as a Companion was useful, at least. Few crews would turn me down if they gave me a chance to speak.

'I spent a lot of years traveling the black, moving from one ship to the next. I always moved on to the next ship whenever I got tired of the crew, or they sat still for too long. It was a pretty interesting life. I would probably be there still if my savior hadn't contacted me to take advantage of the favor he had asked of me several years before.

'It was right after the scandal broke out, you see. So he contacted me with a proposition. He would exchange his favor in return for me taking a loan from him and purchasing and captaining my own ship, provided he could tag along in an innocuous role. I decided to make him my cook.

I wasn't sure what she was talking about at this point, but shortly thereafter, she introduced me to Joshua Hernandez. I recognized who he really was [see supplementary report ten beta], and what he had actually done, and tried to warn the subject that repaying this favor was a terrible idea. If she were discovered to be harboring a criminal of that magnitude, she would be executed right along with him. However, she would hear nothing of my warnings; they fell on deaf ears. She felt that she had made a promise, and, her own personal misgivings aside; she had no compunction about giving up her life with his - or instead of his, if he asked it.

The man, Joshua, claimed to have been watching the subject since she left the Companion's Guild. He had watched her progress - along with the progress of several other people who owed him favors - and decided that she would make the best choice for his attempt to hide himself. He gave up his position on the council and ran into deep space as a simple cook. His vast fortune was mostly taken directly following the scandal, but what he had left, he loaned to the subject. With these funds, the subject purchased passage to Beylix, where I finally found her almost by chance.

Based on our previous personal history, she invited me to join her crew as her first mate. This was an even better result than I had hoped. The crew was just her, myself, and Joshua as the cook. The search was ongoing for a pilot and a mechanic, but it was a difficult task. The subject had already purchased an impressive vessel dubbed "the Unity", but it was a mix of old surplus parts that had been used to jury rig the systems and extremely advanced original newtech parts. It appears that it was originally an experimental alliance research ship of some variety [see supplementary report six alpha].

Finding a crew was nearly impossible. Only an experimental alliance craft test pilot would have the skill necessary to fly such a ship, and only a top class alliance spacecraft engineer would have the skill necessary to repair and maintain it. This was compounded by the fact that this was not a legal ship to have; alliance vessels, derelict or otherwise, are alliance property. Flying it around meant that they would be flying stolen property. Finding top class alliance personnel willing to risk any sort of altercation with their former employer would be extremely difficult.

Still, the subject's unique abilities allowed her to find and secure a crew that would be able to meet the task of flying and maintaining the Unity.

The Pilot was the first to be found. He was a recommendation from Joshua. It was clear that Joshua only knew about him second hand, but the information sent the subject on the path of recruiting the pilot, Thomas Alexander King [see supplementary report three alpha].

Thomas was not even on Beylix when the subject first contacted him. She sent a wave via the cortex to him, offering him the position of a lifetime. Unexpectedly, given that the pilot was in hiding [see supplmenetary report three beta], he responded to the request quickly. His response was surprisingly positive, although I never did uncover what exactly the subject sent to him in order to entice his cooperation.

He arrived on Beylix via a smuggler's ship, although he was not, as I had anticipated, alone. He was accompanied by a teenaged girl that he claimed was his daughter, Kaliya [See supplementary reports three gamma, four alpha and four beta].

When they arrived at the ship, they met with the subject and myself as first mate. The 'cook' was a secret to be introduced after the first meeting.

Thomas walked the ship, assessing the status of the machinery, the cockpit, the rooms, all very rigorously and methodically. He examined every part of the ship in turn, learning every aspect. It seemed that he had already made up his mind, having spent that much time examining the ship, but his attitude following the examination was far from completely convinced.

'This ship is not currently space worthy. I find it hard to believe that this is the best possible solution for my situation. I don't think I can trust your assessment.'

The subject attempted to argue with the pilot, but he had thoroughly examined the ship, and every suggestion she made was countered by a fact from Thomas' examination of the ship. When she claimed that it would, once fully repaired, provide him with a home with complete safety from the alliance, he pointed out the alliance ident chip and the mass to thrust ratio that he guessed from his observations. Similar suggestions and counters went by, and the pilot opted to go his own way.

He got up to leave, but then noticed that the girl, Kaliya, was nowhere to be found. The subject, myself, and Thomas searched throughout the ship for the girl, and eventually found her in the engine room, examining some of the displays.

'This ship is sick! I wanna fix her!' She darted around the engine room, and, much to our amazement, some additional displays lit up, briefly. This little girl had managed to get a few additional components working.

Thomas sighed with a small smile on his face. 'Well, I'll think about it. I'll be in touch once the ship is actually ready for a pilot.' He paused for a moment. 'Although I want to be very clear: this girl is not going to be the mechanic for this ship. If she assists of her own accord, that's her choice, but anything beyond that is not part of your contract with us. I will hold you to every letter of your promise.' The subject accepted this ultimatum; it seemed to be a part of whatever communication she had had with him prior to his coming to examine the ship. Although she was excited at the prospect of getting both a mechanic and a pilot in one fell swoop, she realized that at least getting one would be a major hurdle crossed. The subject seemed very interested in keeping her word.

Thomas managed to round up the girl, amid her protests of staying to fix the ship. It took some time, but when one of the displays she had activated flickered and then suddenly burst into flame, she was convinced that she shouldn't stay. The subject didn't seem to mind the display, but Thomas nevertheless took the young prodigy away and the Unity was left still without any new crewmembers.

Following this incident, the subject made a heroic effort to find a mechanic, hoping to complete the task of repairing the ship before the pilot gave up on her and moved on to another opportunity. She searched all over the cortex for anyone even close to matching the requirements for the job - a mechanic with an advanced alliance university degree, she suggested, but none were willing to even consider the job once they heard the details. She posted advertisements in every forum she could find, both online and off. She went to every nearby watering hole, and, if she heard of a skilled mechanic, she traveled across half the planet. None seemed to have the necessary skills to repair the ship.

The subject has a higher than average understanding of ship's engines, and was able to accurately take stock of any potential applicant's skill level before she would even invite them on board to examine the ship. Only one fake out of the more than dozen mechanics she brought on board turned out to simply be true fake - a young man by the name of Fester. The rest were actually very skilled mechanics and engineers. None, however, stuck around. Some, when they learned that the ship was essentially contraband, walked immediately. The rest fumbled around in the engine room for a few hours, or, in one case, for several days, before they gave up and left the ship to its fate.

Eventually, the subject began to lose any hope of finding a mechanic that could do the job. She interviewed anyone that even made any sort of claim toward mechanical knowledge. She was disheartened. I made a point to support her and provide what comfort I could to ensure that the fortuitous position of first mate would not be lost to me.

Shortly thereafter, she brought back a small man who referred to himself as Ryan Azuma [see supplementary report five alpha]. I'm not sure what the subject saw in this man; he made a point of downplaying his ability. Her ability to see through his facade and get some insight into this man's true skill level was unexpected. The subject is exceptionally intuitive - even more so than most fully trained Companions, and her training was far from complete. It is good that she did not, though; her ability to assess motives could have become troublesome to me if it were any more acute than it already is.

Ryan described himself as a lowly, simple mechanic who had never excelled in any particular area or been able to manage much completely on his own. My training as a martial artist ensured me that he was lying - his movements were not those of a simple mechanic. His grace was that of a top level martial artists. The only flaws in his movements were the ones that he introduced when he realized that I was watching his movements - and even they had a kind of deadly accuracy to them, as though he was following the legendary drunken boxing style.

The subject, however, was unaware of this movement. She knew that he was special from her earlier conversation with him, but did not yet guess as to his physical prowess. When she asked my opinion of him, I replied with a vague 'feeling' about him hiding something, but without any of the specifics included here. She seemed content with the answer - it must have correlated with her own assessment. She confided that his asking price seemed suspiciously low, even for an average mechanic. He seemed completely unconcerned about any particular level of payment, almost as though he was used to having nothing more than room and board. Or, I thought it possible that whatever he earned on the ship would be nothing compared to his own fortune, and whatever had caused him to enlist, it wasn't money.

In short order, Ryan had managed to dig up a schematic from somewhere in the deep archives of the ship's computers. I strongly suspected that perhaps this Ryan was not lying about being a relatively undistinguished mechanic. However, his perfection in physical movements appeared to be mirrored in a similar perfection in handling electronics. He seemed absolutely capable of accessing and utilizing the ship's computers, which even I had barely been able to scratch the surface of, in spite of having been on the ship for more than a month. Even more than that, he seemed to walk around encryption and security protocols in the computer without blinking. As I have indicated in my supplementary report, his skills seem more fit to those of a spy or criminal than a mechanic.

Regardless of his real background, which he hid behind layers and layers of lies, his particular skill set was closer to what the Unity needed than a traditional mechanic. All of the traditional mechanics had failed to repair much of the system not due to their own lack of skill, but do to the higher than expected level of computerization in the core functions of the ship. Most small to mid sized ships prefer to use robust generic parts as much as possible in order to make them stable in deep space and transferrable between various vessels. The Unity, on the other hand, was unique. Some parts were completely custom and irreplaceable. But even more unexpectedly, the ship had computerized control for almost every system. This made it impossible for even the most skilled mechanic to understand without endless trial and error. Ryan, on the other hand, dug deep within the files of the ship and was able to determine what to do not by watching the parts move and determining their nature, but by reading the exact specifications and requirements for each system and accurately assess what within that particular process was not working correctly.

It was only a few hours before a few components that hadn't been working at all since my arrival were functioning. A few days more, and entire systems were functioning. His hacking genius was able to take this ship from a hunk of metal and ceramics and turn it into an actual spaceship.

Once it was apparent that this young mechanic was going to get the ship into working order in spite of his attempts at modesty, the subject sent an eager wave to the pilot. For days, she received no response. It appeared that she would have to search for an alternative pilot. She began to compile resumes and references, heartbroken that she had to go through the process again.

Just as she was about to wave the first candidate, the ship received a visitor. Thomas was outside of the ship, waving to be let in. The girl was next to him, holding a small, injured bird. The subject hastened to let him in. He entered silently, and began a second tour of the ship. He went around the ship again, examining what had changed, the systems that the mechanic had fixed, and what still remained to be fixed. During this survey, he was again completely silent.

Before he finished, however, Kaliya, his supposed daughter caused some mischief. The small bird she had brought with her got loose and started to fly around the common room. Kaliya chased after it gleefully while the subject looked on with a look of obvious concern.

'I'm afraid that we might have to set up some ship rules. We can't have animals flying around once we head up into the black. The potential for animals getting into some delicate system is a bit too high.' I was in agreement; even Thomas saw the wisdom in this course of action.

He pulled Kaliya aside and had a logical discussion with her; he explained all of the reasons that having an animal on board the ship had the potential for disaster. 'In the first place, animals require additional rations. I have made sure you'd be provided for, but I can't ask anyone to provide for all the strays you want to help, can I? Furthermore, if you do pick up an injured animal, it would be dangerous for the animal. This is a space ship - not a planet. The climate and life support aside, the ship has a lot of electronics and moving parts that could be very dangerous for an animal. Animals wouldn't know better, and if you let them free, they would get hurt even more on the ship than they would fending for themselves.' He saw her about to protest, then continued, providing a continuous stream of logical reasons. It seemed odd, but this girl was odd; emotional appeals may have been even less effective. 'Of course, you could coop them up in your room, but then you'd have imprisoned them. You know that imprisonment is worse than being sick better than anyone.' He paused briefly so that that could set in for her. 'Even if all of that doesn't deter you, remember that these animals could make the ship sick. This bird...' he pointed to where it had landed and was staring at them piteously - 'could get into ship systems and break things and break things on this ship. If this little fellow had gotten loose in the engine room instead of the common room, he might have accidentally broken something that could have not just hurt him more, but hurt you, and me, and everyone on the ship.'

Kaliya nodded in understanding. 'Okay! no animals!' She leapt over at the bird and neatly caught it before it could move. She ran down to the cargo bay and out the still open hatch, and let the animal loose back into the world. She ran back up just as quickly and then smiled. 'What 'bout plants?' She directed the question to Thomas, who closed his eyes, sighed, and then looked over toward the subject with a silent appeal in his eyes.

The subject looked caught off guard for a moment, and then made a quick decision. 'I'll allow plants on board, but on some conditions. Anything they need, water or whatever, comes from your own rations or your own cut. I won't have any of our resources going toward your particular interests. Furthermore, they will need to stay in places away from ship systems; your bunk, the cargo bays, whatever, but not in the engines or cockpit. I don't want any vines growing into parts of the system and breaking things.'

Kaliya jumped up happily and went to hold onto the subject's hand, who sheepishly accepted the girl's affection. Thomas smiled, seeing the girl reaching out to someone other than himself, perhaps for the first time. He aborted his tour of the ship after seeing Kaliya actually interacting with the captain, and immediately accepted the position as pilot of the Unity.

The deal between himself and the subject was that the girl would get an equal share, but would not be placed in any critical role. He wanted to keep her without any real active duties on the ship. However, she took offense at this. She protested that she wanted to be useful to the 'nice captain'. Eventually it was decided that she would be the acting medical officer for the ship - a position that I had previously been assigned in addition to my duties as first mate. It is just as well - my medical expertise, while sufficient for basic work, is little more than first aid. The girl had plenty of passion about fixing things, as she had demonstrated, so it was a good fit for her. She had helped out Thomas on numerous occasions with his prosthetic limbs; he described her as having an uncanny ability to provide useful medical service without apparently having any training at all - formal or otherwise. Still, his deal with the captain was in effect. Her title was more in name than in function. She still looked to me to be the primary person in charge of the medical bay.

The subject finally had put together enough of a crew to consider taking off. The next step was to find work. Before that, however, she had to introduce the rest of the crew to the cook. It was a delicate situation. If any of them recognized him, they might walk and set us back to square one. Fortunately, he had had the foresight to change his appearance, but a haircut and a shave only goes so far, and given his history, it was altogether possible that he be recognized for who he really was.

The subject planned a small party at a local planetside eatery for the crew to get together and get to know each other. The crew met up and quickly hit it off, with the subject expertly mediating between various members of the crew. Quickly, even the terse mechanic and the stout pilot were engaged in light conversation and sharing jokes. The cook arrived late - at the subject's request. The dimly lit restaurant allowed him to remain a vague, shadowy presence. I paid especially close attention to Azuma. He seemed to be quite unconcerned about the cook, and introduced himself nonchalantly. If he recognized Joshua, he did not reveal it. I didn't expect him to be someone that I could read, though I had hoped. The girl didn't even blink. Given her personality, I doubted she had even paid enough attention to the news to be familiar with him. Thomas definitely did not recognize him. He invited the cook to sit nearby and offered him a drink.

The subject approached me shortly after introducing Joshua and whispered into my ear. 'Our mechanic knows who he is. I'm sure of it. But, it's like he doesn't even care.' I was again taken off guard by the subject's unusual acumen for reading people. I had been completely unable to determine even a flicker of doubt, and she was completely certain that he had recognized Joshua.

'I couldn't find anything about this Ryan Azuma on the cortex, either. I wonder if he doesn't mind about us carrying that fugitive because of his own status? It seems like we might have a whole criminal crew - well, except for us, of course.'

I was chilled inside by her last comment, but managed to reply 'of course.'

The gathering was a success, and the crew quickly turned the Unity into their home afterwards while the subject set about finding work. The first jobs to get were always goods transport; she didn't have a particular destination in mind, so she found a shipment of salvaged parts that was headed for Persephone. She appeared ready to go, but, acting as a first mate should, I informed her that she was leaving money at the table - and given her loan, that wasn't something she could afford. Having a crew, a cargo, and a destination, she was best off getting some passengers as well - it would help cover the steep costs of having a ship. She was upset at the idea of having a bunch more new people, but realized that her particular financial situation didn't leave her the leisure to choose jobs like that.

I managed to find a few passengers interested in passage to Persephone, and before the end of the week, we were ready to take off.

Ths ship shuddered as it rose from the launch pad around Rhino's shipyard on the planet of Beylix..."

Shelly heard a noise outside of the trunk and quickly put the report back into its hiding place and slid it closed. Her mind was abuzz with questions. How much she could really trust her first mate? Who was that report addressed to? What did it mean that she had uncanny perception? What was the implication of the part about her and Angel not being criminals? It was obvious that Angel thought that at least one of them was a criminal, but it wasn't clear who, or what the crime was.

She had little time to contemplate these concerns before the trunk popped open to show Angel's face wearing a joyful grin. "Didja miss me?"

Shelly sat up and looked around confusedly, finding herself back inside the Unity. "How'd we do?"

Angel produced a fairly hefty bag and jingled it up and down. It clinked with the sound of platinum coins. "I'd say we did pretty damn good! Your plan was amazing!" She hugged the smaller woman affectionately.

Shelly smiled and hugged the other woman back - she didn't know what to think, but she didn't want to raise any suspicions until she knew more.

After a small celebration with the crew for their successful mission, she pulled Azuma aside. "I need you to do something without letting the others know."

Azuma smiled "I'm the very picture of discretion." They both secretly knew the absolute truth of that statement.

Chapter 6: Slavery

"Hold it right there, or we'll shoot the rest of you as well."

Thomas lay face down in a slowly expanding pool of his own blood. There were nine men, all armed with various firearms, standing across the cargo bay, their weapons trained on the rest of the crew. Angel thought for a moment about fighting them off, but even if she were alone, it would be a difficult fight against that many men with weapons. With the others present, one of the crew would surely be injured before she could take them all down.

The man who spoke had a smoking pistol and a very serious expression on his face. He was wearing simple browns and grays, but in a fancier style than the others standing with him, declaring him some kind of boss in the group. The rest of the men wore primarily brown coats, and some of them even still wore insignia indicating their allegiance and rank during the unification war.

The nine men held three women as prisoners. The first two, the young twins the crew had taken as passengers, and Kaliya, who seemed to be taking the situation lightly and thought it little more than a grand adventure. The other two girls were young, beautiful, and badly bruised. Their identical faces each had a black eye - on opposite sides of their faces, though they both let their long brown hair cover the marks as much as possible in a pathetic attempt to conceal the bruises.

Shelly scowled. "How Shi Sung Chung! Don't think this is the end of this, Cheong Bao Ho Tze Chwen Joo!"

The leader of the men laughed "Quite the mouth you've got on you. But I think you'd be more trouble than you're worth. We've taken your kind before, and nothing but trouble. Still, I think this one here" he tilted his gun toward Kaliya "Will be sufficient payment for the trouble you put us through. She looks like she'll be quite the prize for some young aristocrat to buy and have his way with. Of course, I might have some fun with her first myself." The rest of the slavers laughed grimly.

Their cruiser had caught up with the Unity mere moments before. It was armed, and there was nothing the crew could do but allow it to dock or face the cold black. Shelly had ordered the ship to stop, even in the face of the twins' protests. She didn't like the choice she had to make, but she knew that if she didn't stop, then the whole crew and the girls would be taking a short walk in the black without the benefit of a space suit.

She quickly organized an ambush. The crew would spring onto the slavers immediately as they attempted to board the ship. Angel and Azuma would take them by surprise from either side of the airlock while Shelly and Thomas provided cover fire from nearby.

Unfortunately, the slavers anticipated exactly this kind of plan, and, as soon as the airlock opened, a flashbang flew into the cargo hold and blinded everyone, including Angel and Azuma in their hiding spots. A brief melee later and the four crewmates were positioned directly in front of the nine guns, with no arms of their own with which to counter the slavers' devastating presence.

"Bring out the girls. Now."

Shelly stalled and tried to think of a way out of this situation, but even if she could manipulate one of the nine men, there would still be eight against five. She had nothing to offer to try to manipulate the slavers anyway, though, so it was a moot point. Even if she had access to the funds, she knew that these slavers would not accept a purchase of the girls at this point; they had the clear upper hand and would doubtless just steal the money along with the girls. The best case scenario she could find was to give them what they wanted and hope they went on their way.

With this in mind, she had Joshua bring in the two girls. The leader of the slavers violently pulled the girls to his side of the cargo bay, near the airlock.

"Well, that's what you took from us, but maybe we should take something more, as payment for all the trouble you have caused us. It only seems fair, right boys?" The rest of the slavers voiced a hubbub of consent.

"Well, maybe we will take this one after all. She is quite the looker, and it sure beats only going back after all this trouble with just these two!"

Shelly took a step back, her mind moving at lightning speed to find a way out of this apparently hopeless situation. Suddenly, from the medical room behind the cargo bay appeared a face that solved her own problem, but created a far worse one. Kaliya looked anxiously at the two girls and whispered "But we were playing games!"

The head slaver took note of her almost before Shelly and the rest of the crew, and laughed out loud "Oh, so you were hiding one, eh? Not be quite as much of a fighter as the rest, perhaps? A bit young, perhaps, but I have a number of clients who prefer the nubile types. Not really my thing, you understand, but it'll do nicely as payment for the trip out here and the time wasted."

He signaled one of his men, who went over toward Kaliya and pulled her across the hold. Thomas leapt forward and made a lunge at the man, but as soon as he moved, a shot rang out, then ricocheted around the cargo hold before lodging itself into a wooden crate. It had bounced off of Thomas' prosthetic arm and gone careening through the room, sending everyone diving for cover except the imperious slaver leader, who had fired the shot and stood up straight, staring at the pilot.

Thomas growled like an animal, obviously unwilling to give up Kaliya while he still possessed any ability to defend her. He charged again at the man who had grabbed Kaliya and tackled him, beating his face with his regular human hand and with his metallic prosthetic one, leaving him a bloody mess in mere moments.

He got up and turned his attention to the rest of the slavers, just in time for the leader to send another bullet at him. He was grazed and began to bleed from the good side of his head, but immediately ran headlong toward the leader following the shot. The leader quickly fired another eight shots in rapid succession. Some hit the fleshy bits on Thomas' body, while others lodged themselves in his prosthetics or bounced around the room, sending everyone else who had just started to regain their feet back into cover. Finally, barely an arms length from the leader of the slavers, Thomas collapsed into a bloody heap on the floor.

The now bloody faced slaver saw this outcome and picked up Kaliya from the floor where she had fallen during Thomas' berserker rage, and pulled her over to the other two prisoners. When she noticed that Thomas was injured, she immediately cried out, but was quickly stifled by the slaver holding her - with a rifle butt to the face. She remained silent, tears streaming down her face.

"Hold it right there, or we'll shoot the rest of you as well."

Two days ago, the Unity had arrived on Santo, the system's largest resort planet - not to mention its red light district. They had picked up a few wealthy types who had reserved rooms at some of the fancier resorts on the planet, but the fact that they deigned not to bring their wives or children hinted at a slightly different purpose for the journey.

They arrived without trouble, and quickly deposited their passengers on the planet and began planning their next move. Azuma had discovered a problem with the life support system, and needed a few days to fix it. In the meantime, Shelly and the rest set out to find work on the planet. It wasn't a difficult job to find people that wanted to get off the planet. It was, however, a difficult job to find people that wanted to get off the planet that could afford even the lowest fee for passage on a spaceship.

As usual, Shelly wanted to avoid passengers - she was still worried about folk like the student, Soren Smith, who might play around in her highly advanced and ill understood spaceship. However, the parts that Azuma required were not cheap, especially on Santo. As a result, Angel and Joshua managed to convince her to take on some passengers. However, the paying type were so hard to come by that she despaired finding any. Indeed, the pitiful stories of those who could not pay were enough to wrench her heart, and she quickly delegated the task to the ones who would not be swayed by such arguments. Joshua and Angel set about trying to find paying passengers who had less of a sob story and more of the cold hard cash needed to pay the bills.

They eventually found a couple of young women - twins - who claimed to have the funds necessary to pay the fee to at least cover their food and their portion of the fuel costs. It was better than nothing, so Joshua quickly signed them up on the ship and showed them to the bunk next to his own. They were beautiful young women by any standard, and he claimed to want to protect them. Angel muttered that the protection he really needed was the latex kind.

In the meantime, Thomas and Shelly managed to find a cargo for the ship. It was some kind of art, it seemed. Statues, paintings, that sort of thing. Whether they were being sold through legitimate channels or they were illegal salvage from one of the abandoned resorts on the planet, they didn't ask. As a freelancing ship, they didn't have the luxury of ensuring that each of their cargos was legitimate.

Finally, Azuma finished his repairs - with the help of Kaliya, who had brought another half a dozen plants from the surface onto the ship. The small jungle that was her bunk was starting to overflow; half of the plants she brought onto the ship had made their way into the cockpit, where Thomas had allowed her playfulness to take hold.

The ship lifted off without any trouble, and began their trip back to Persephone to deliver the art and the two girls.

It wasn't long before Joshua called Shelly to his bunk. She detested going there, but his concerned expression and tone was enough to convince her that it may have been necessary. The room itself was heavily perfumed with the various colognes that the cook felt he needed. The closet couldn't contain his various clothes - he had two additional racks of suits and various other apparel lining the walls of the room. He hardly ever wore the same outfit twice. The rest of the open space in the room was dedicated to glimmering decorations and mirrors. Amongst all his sins, Vanity was not forgotten.

"Okay, Max. This is serious. Those two girls we picked up? Well, I've been talking to them. Getting their story, you know."

Shelly gave him a dismayed glance; she fully expected that had their story not been as distressing as it apparently was, he would definitely not have stopped at just talking to them.

"Don't give me that look. This is serious. Those two were slaves."

"So what? Lots of folk were slaves. You'd know that pretty well, I'd wager." Her tone was one of scathing intention to hurt him.

"No, I mean, they didn't buy their way out of it, or have someone else buy them out of it. They stole their owners' money and used it to pay their way onto this ship. I get the feeling they may have hurt somebody, too. This isn't good. If they figure out it was us that took them, then there is no way that they'll just let us go."

Shelly was perturbed. "What? We're off the planet now. We're in the black where nobody will find us. Nobody will bother us out here. We got the money, and we got to help a couple of girls out of a bad situation. Although, it might be worse, since you're the one that they get to talk to now, but still, even if it's only a small step, it's got to be better than slavery."

Joshua sighed "No. I thought that at first too, but these girls know a lot about his operation. They have their own ship - a fast old blockade runner, from the war. If they can figure out where we are, we are well and truly humped."

Shelly quickly called the crew and the passengers to the common area - excepting Thomas, who she wanted in the cockpit in case trouble should show up.

"Alright, I have an announcement to make. It has come to my attention that our two dear passengers have maybe brought us some trouble we can't really afford at the moment. As you all know, this ship, while state of the art, is not the fastest in the verse. Nor is it heavily armed. What it does have is functioning systems, but, honestly, that's about it. If we are, perhaps, being pursued by a fast, armed blockade runner from the war, we will be in a mite bit of trouble."

The two girls stared down at the table in front of them; they knew that this was all true, and their silence was all the confirmation that the rest of the crew needed to understand their part in this gathering.

"As such, we need to have a plan. We need to have a good plan. The best plan you can imagine. And we all need to play along with this plan completely, no matter what else happens, or things will Gwai Ma Jeow."

Shelly explained the plan down to the last detail before Thomas' voice came over the ship comm. "We've got some serious trouble Captain. You should really come down here and see this."

Shelly made her way to the cockpit and examined the sensors. They showed a ship at maximum range. She took a quick look and then a second look. The sensor range was approximately four times the average sensor range of a ship this size, from her experience. If these displays were right, anyway, this ship could detect other vessels from further away than even a full sized alliance cruiser - the veritable cities in space.

"Am I reading this right?"

Thomas grinned, "Yes you are, Captain. I didn't realize until just now how far these sensors could see; we've had it in short range mode up until now."

Shelly laughed, "Short range mode on this ship is longer than the range on any ship I'd been on short of a full sized cruiser, huh? Well, that is sure to come in handy." She pondered for a moment. "Since we can see them and they presumably can't see us, can we perhaps do some fancy evasive work and not have to use my brilliant plan?"

Thomas shook his head. "I doubt that, captain. Even if we veered off course directly away from their current path, they'd still catch up to us before we managed to evade them completely. This astrogation display has all kinds of information. The computer behind this stuff is pretty potent. Saves a lot of trouble figuring out these calculations."

Shelly sighed. "Well, brilliant plan it is, then."

The slavers left the Unity and got onto their own ship, the two girls, Kaliya, and a bag full of platinum pieces for their effort, and the crew of the Unity short two members - one gone back to Santo and the other bleeding out on the cargo bay floor.

The remaining crew quickly brought Thomas into the medical bay next to the cargo hold and placed him on the bed. Angel quickly gathered up the necessary supplies and stopped the bleeding.

Shelly kept muttering almost to herself, over and over again, "Why couldn't he just stick to the gorram plan? Why did he have to make so gorram much trouble?"

Angel grimaced "Well, I think I can stabilize him. You need to get us going back to Santo to finish up your brilliant plan. Joshua! Get over here, and hold this bandage."

Shelly took a deep breath and took over the helm while Angel took over the medical bay. Azuma retreated to the engine room, trying to get as much power as possible out of the sputtering engines and speed their trip back to the planet. As much as he hated to admit it, he had grown fond of the meddling little medic and her constant desire to fix things - and her often times helpful advice in helping fix the Unity.

They eventually landed on the planet, back in the same dock they had taken off from mere hours before - but still significantly behind the slavers. They knew that the slavers and their prisoners would have already made it back to their fortified base.

Leaving Joshua in charge of the patient in the medical bed, Shelly, her laser pistol at her side, Angel, carrying nothing but a deadly focus and posture, and Azuma, armed with a large tube that he had gathered from some hidden compartment in his bunk that could contain anything from a blade to a rifle, proceeded off the ship and toward the slavers. The three of them made a grim procession through the streets with revenge on their minds.

They made their way to the location of the slaver encampment, obtained from the two girls prior to their recapture, and approached the guard at the gate. It was a large building - the remains of one of the resorts that had populated the planet from before the war, from before the planet had turned to darker entertainment. The slavers had occupied it, either having bought it for a fraction of its value when the resort industry flagged, or had used even less legal methods of obtaining the property.

Now the various resort rooms had been turned into little more than slave holding cells, and the fancier rooms were used by the slavers themselves. Fortunately for the crew, the building was not designed for defense against an assault, even from a small, three-man team.

They approached the main gate and, when challenged for their purpose, Angel smashed the gate guard's face into the ground without breaking stride. Shelly walked over his limp body to make sure that he wasn't getting up.

Azuma turned left just as they reached the front door, much to the surprise of the other two. He looked back and gave a sly grin "I work best alone. I'll give you support as you need it. I'll be on the radio." He tapped his earpiece, and scampered up the wall to a second story window with ridiculous ease then disappeared inside.

Shelly and Angel burst in the front door, Angel quickly taking out the nearest guard before he could even register that he was under attack, and Shelly shot another who was down the hall. He cried out as the laser blast hit him in the shoulder and then collapsed in pain. The element of surprise was used - at least for Angel and Shelly. They heard nothing from up above, except the occasional body slumping to the ground. Azuma was apparently having no trouble on his own clearing the second floor.

Angel and Shelly continued to fight their way through the slavers - the girls had told them that there were at least 40 slavers in the facility at any one time, and, in spite of the odds, they believed that the only thing they could do was commit to a perfect surprise attack and do their best. Angel was a match for any number of these poorly trained punks who relied on swinging a gun around to get their way. She weaved and dodged and wasn't hit even once as she closed to melee and downed these bandits one after another. Shelly provided cover fire to allow her first mate to progress, occasionally winging a slaver. Her bulletproof vest served to deflect a few shots, and she quickly slowed down, not used to this intense fighting.

Then, out of the shadows she caught a flickering form, and turned to fire, but it was too late - the figure had grabbed her gun before she had even noticed he was there.

"Tsk. Friendly fire, captain. We can't afford that with only the three of us." Azuma had appeared out of the hallway from apparently nowhere.

"How did you do that? That doesn't.. that doesn't even seem possible."

He tapped his outfit. To her it looked like little more than a slightly fancy mechanic's suit. Then he flicked a button on the glove and practically disappeared from sight.

Shelly gasped "Chameleon Suit!" She knew that they were highly illegal and used only by top elite military snipers and assassins for the largest criminal organizations throughout the 'verse. It was one of the things that she had learned by being observant and talking to everyone that she could while she was jumping from ship to ship, although she had never seen it. No wonder he claimed to be more effective alone. He didn't need cover fire to get close to an enemy. He could just walk up to them without them seeing anything and incapacitate them in any manner of his choosing - especially with the distraction of a pair of spitfire women assaulting the front door.

Azuma just smiled, not commenting on the high tech hardware that he was wearing as he reappeared. "I think we're headed to the western wing; it looks like that's where they're making their stand with the three girls."

The deadly trio of crewmates followed his directions and quickly made their way to the western wing of the building, where they found the slavers in absolute disorder. Some were apparently supposed to be guarding the hallway, but they were looking back, aghast, at the open door near them. One slaver was struggling out of the door, crawling backwards on his hands. Over him flew what appeared to be a head - the head of the leader of the slavers. It looked like it had been literally torn from his neck by sheer brute force. It was quickly followed by other dismembered limbs and spurts of blood. Shelly, Angel and Azuma (who was invisibly pressed against the wall) looked on in utter horror, just as the slavers did. It looked like at least 5 horribly disfigured bodies were being torn limb from limb and thrown about the room ahead, parts of them escaping through the door.

The slavers, as soon as they were able to overcome their stunned minds witnessing whatever horrible murders were taking place in the room, broke rank and ran, right past the three Unity crew members, screaming. They were absolutely terrified. The looks on their faces were as those who had seen a true monster and had lived to tell the tale - but not to recover from the mental wounds of having seen the horror.

Azuma crept forward, carefully trying to determine if this new threat was one that would disrupt their rescue operation. His invisible face was a stone; he was completely confident in his ability to assess the situation safely. Shelly, on the other hand, looked about as ready to bolt as the guards that had just run past. She did not want to see what was inside the room. She had seen their faces as they screamed past her, and she knew that whatever they saw - whatever was more horrible and terrifying than their chosen career path of buying and selling humans - she didn't want to see it. She covered her eyes and remained completely stationary. Angel stood between the room and her captain, offering her body as a sacrifice in case whatever was in that room decided that it wanted to come out, at least the captain would be able to escape, perhaps.

The spraying blood and the flying parts stopped. The air went almost completely silent. A soft thump of something dropping to the ground, then nothing but the soft dripping of blood in the hallway and the room were the only sounds. Azuma crept forward, ever so slowly and carefully. He knew that something capable of the gory destruction they had witnessed was unlikely to have mere human senses; he held an invisible weapon at the ready as he made his way forward.

The scene that greeted him was one of absolute mayhem. The room - presumably a former slaver's bedroom, was completely covered in gore. Limbs and shredded clothes were scattered everywhere. Everything was covered in bright red, fresh, dripping blood. He was stone cold, but even he felt that this scene was too much. He barely held himself together when he realized that there, in the middle of the room filled with little more than a blood bed and various parts of humans, was Kaliya, collapsed on the floor, covered with blood, but apparently unharmed. The door on the side of the room was swinging on one hinge, leading out to the back door of the building. She smiled almost gleefully up at Azuma, even before he appeared, her white teeth standing out from her blood covered face.

Azuma put away his weapon, turned off his Chameleon Suit, took a deep breath, and quickly ran in to grab Kaliya, and bring her out of the gore filled room and brought her over to the other two women. "I think it's.. gone. I didn't see anything in there. Is she alright?"

Angel quickly examined Kaliya for external wounds, but didn't find anything. She lifted the small girl up and carried her piggyback style as the others searched the now vacant building for the twins. The Unity crew eventually found them in a cellar that appeared to be a sort of torture chamber. They quickly freed them and took them back to the Unity.

There, they cleaned up Kaliya and the former slave girls, and took care of the still injured Thomas as they lifted off and started their trip back into the black - this time without the threat of pursuit.

Later, the three combatants and three witnesses to the horror sat down together in the commons while the rest of the crew recovered - with Shelly providing a stiff alcoholic beverage. "So... What exactly happened back there? How could what we saw have even been possible?"

Angel just shook her head. "Nothing I know of anywhere in the verse could have done that. It would have taken a dozen madmen - or reavers - to have caused that degree of damage. And there was no evidence of that."

Azuma sighed. "I've never seen anything quite like that, either. Whatever it was, it was gorram fast. Faster than me, or you, or anyone I've ever seen. And stronger. Maybe some new super drug or something? But if so, why did it leave? What motive did it have for... for doing what it did, and for leaving, just as we arrived? If we could establish what it wanted, we might be able to find out more."

Shelly shuddered at the thought. "Well, I don't have any ideas, either. It was like some big industrial equipment just tore them up and spit them out. I... well, let's not tell anyone else about this. It would just cause them to worry more than needed. We rescued them, and that's all there was to it. Dohn ma?"

Angel and Azuma nodded gravely. Even if they had wanted to tell the rest of the crew, what they had seen was beyond imagination. They didn't believe it themselves, and they had been there.

Chapter 7: Criminal Intent

The Unity was finally undergoing repairs. Shelly had gotten a wave from Balthazar O'Connor, the Blue Sun Corp executive, who had contracted them to move a bit of sensitive cargo. He had paid extra to ensure that the Unity did not take any passengers for the trip - a compensation that Shelly had been happy to hear. Moreover, he offered additional payment in the form services from his company's shipyard on Beaumonde - their destination.

The crew quickly agreed to the task and took on the cargo, no questions asked, and made their way, uneventfully, to Beaumonde, where they received their first corporate paycheck. While the ship was undergoing repairs at the Blue Sun Corp shipyard, with Shelly supervising, the rest of the crew got a hefty bonus and some shore leave - a rare occurrence for the usually poor crew.

The ship itself was in an open air bay on the surface of the planet; the nearby complex was where the usual work of the Blue Sun's shipwright's division did their work. The Unity stood at the outer edge, plainly visible to all that happened to wander by. However, since the shipyard was not in a particularly populous area, passersby were few and far between. Even then, none noticed the man sitting atop the ship, apparently oblivious to the ongoing work inside of it. Joshua lay on top of the ship, sunbathing, reading the latest news on the cortex, and sending out waves to his innumerable contacts throughout the verse. Besides, Shelly's offer of shore leave did not extend to him - or rather, he declined it before it was ever offered, when he originally signed on to the ship.

Although Thomas had planned to show Kaliya around the great tourist destinations of the otherwise mostly industrialized planet, especially the floating city of New Dunsmuir, but her anticipation of the great wonders were constantly interrupted by the smaller wonders around her. She found dozens of new plants for the ship, and helped an old man fix his wheelchair, and looked at dozens, if not hundreds, of buildings within her immediate sight. Thomas sighed, accepting his duty as escort for this curious and cheerful girl as she took in everything around her with wide, naive eyes.

Angel and Azuma, however, managed to catch an aircar to the city. Angel expressed an interest in seeing the great Buddhist temple in the city. She did not express her religious beliefs very frequently on board the ship, but she nevertheless thought this was a great opportunity for her to make a pilgrimage. Azuma kept quiet about his motives, and shortly after they arrived at the city, they went their separate ways.

Azuma crept through the building, invisible from normal sight, although he knew that normal sight wasn't the only concern in this place. He was in a private museum, containing hundreds of priceless artifacts - from newtech prototypes of unimaginable value to ancient earth-that-was artifacts that could buy entire planets on the rim. The prize piece, however, was not one of these extremely expensive items, but rather something with some sentimental value - although it was not without monetary value, either. It was a jewel - large and brilliant, called the Dawnstar Crystal. It was such a well known piece that no thief could hope to sell it on the black market - at least not for many years to come.

The Dawnstar Crystal was unique. It was rumored to have been a ruby that contained a mathematical matrix inside its crystalline structure. Some touted it as proof of alien intelligence. Other claimed it was proof of their deity of choice. Still others thought of it as proof of various conspiracies, perpetrated by the alliance, or the browncoats, or the great corporations, or anyone else, for that matter. Scientists had examined it for a few years after its discovery on Bernadette, but the too many contradictory theories eventually lead to the public losing interest in the precious stone and it fell away from the scientific community and into the collectors' community. It changed hands repeatedly until it ended up here, on Beaumonde, in the collection of a mildly eccentric factory owner, along with hundreds of other curiosities. Some of the items were expensive masterpieces or rarities, while others were obvious fakes. The collector seemed to have less interest in the authenticity of his collection and more interest in its size.

Still, the total value of the collection, in spite of the fakes, was exceptional, and, as with any exceptionally valuable collection, it was well protected. Azuma knew this, and proceeded carefully through the vacant halls, alert for any surveillance equipment or guards.

He had dispatched the guard at the entrance to the museum without arousing any suspicion - he had waited until directly after the regularly scheduled check-in with the central security desk, then incapacitated him and moved his limp unconscious body to an out of the way closet. Even if the security team was top notch, he probably had a half hour before they would notice anything was amiss.

That assumed that they first discovered his intrusion by way of the guard. If he made a mistake, he would no doubt invite trouble much, much sooner.

With this in mind, he spotted a motion detector. His Chameleon Suit would have no effect on the device - in fact, it was mostly useless against any sort of electronic security systems. Fortunately, however, his ability at bypassing electronics was exceptional. He pressed himself against the wall, and crept up next to the motion detector without, apparently, setting off any alarms. He deftly attached a small electronic probe to the device, and the small display on the computer attached to the forearm of his suit slide up and showed him a stream of data coming from the device - presumably the all clear signal. He tapped away at the keyboard with his right hand for a few minutes, hacking directly into the live stream and ensuring that even if the sensors detected his movement, they would not flag it as an intruder. It was a more time consuming solution than disabling the device, but a disabled device is the same as a triggered device to any security team worth the name, so he had to effect the more challenging workaround.

A few moments later, he found himself in the central gallery, with the Dawnstar Crystal adorning the far wall in a fancy, gem studded, golden, wall mounted display case. He paused, examining every wall of the room. He sighed softly to himself. Lasers. Why did it always have to be lasers? The laser tripwire was one of the oldest forms of security brought from earth-that-was - after only such archaic forms as tumbler locks. Laser tripwire systems tended to be more annoying for a potential thief than actually effective in preventing theft. The beams crisscrossed the room at haphazard angles, invisible to the naked eye, but the lattice only captured the unwary; anyone that noticed the tripwires could invariably navigate through them, given enough time.

Azuma switched his goggles from normal daylight vision to infrared, and the tripwires appeared before him, and he quickly began to plan a course to get through the room to his goal when he noticed something else - a quartet of humanoid figures that showed up on his infrared view. He quickly switched back to normal view, and realized that nothing was present.

He cursed under his breath "The Syndicate."

The four figures faded into view as they disengaged their own Chameleon Suits. Azuma idly calculated that everything else in the room put together had approximately the same black market value as the five Chameleon Suits that he and the other four were wearing.

They did not speak a word, but deftly leapt across the room, avoiding the laser tripwires without a second thought. They were each incredibly skilled acrobats. Each one had a weapon drawn - a single, small blade of perfectly mirrored steel that reflected the dim lights of the room.

Azuma drew his own blade from the holster on his belt, where it had been strapped virtually horizontally. It looked like little more than a solid rod of dull iron with no pommel or guard. Except for the hum of a dull, light wave of noise as he swung it into the air, like a breath being let out, it could have easily been mistaken for a simple piece of garbage.

He kept dodged to one side, ensuring that some of the Syndicate assassins had a longer trip to get to him - and then positioned himself next to one of the tripwires, so that one side would be protected by the invisible field - assuming his assailants wished to avoid triggering the alarms - which seemed to be the case based on their fluid movements having not set it off yet.

The first assassin reached him and lunged forward, his blade heading straight for Azuma's heart. He twisted just slightly, moving his torso out of the path of the blade, then proceeded to knock his opponent's hand downward with the handle of his weapon. The man continued forward and tucked into a ball, rolling past the mechanic and out of his ranged. The second assailant - a woman, by her outline - began circling him and then swung her blade in a sweeping motion toward Azuma's chest. He brought his dull looking blade up, and let the female assassin's sword collide with it. The steel of the assassin's blade was cut like butter as it collided with Azuma's sword - or rather a few millimeters before it collided with his sword. It was sheathed in an impossibly sharp field of force; for all its appearance, it was a sort of ultimate weapon. The female assassin stepped back, reassessing the situation as she dropped the remains of her weapon and assumed a weaponless fighting stance.

The third and fourth assassins attacked in unison, their blades thrusting one after the other in a cavalcade of metal aimed for Azuma's vital organs. He twisted and dodged, managing to avoid any life threatening cuts, but he still took several superficial glancing blows. He stepped back twice, then spun his deadly weapon in a sweeping arc, nearly decapitating the first attacker, who was now behind him. As the first assassin bent over backwards to avoid the sure death of the mechanic's force field sword, he fell toward one of the laser tripwires. Azuma swung out his leg and caught the assassin in the back as he was falling and lifted him back up, his motion doubling as an assist to avoid the tripwire and an attack, as the man flopped forward, his breath knocked out of him.

The woman spoke the first words of the battle. "That weapon belongs to the Syndicate. Return it, and we'll call that enough for today." Her voice was sultry and inviting, but obviously filled with deadly intent.

Azuma smiled, intentionally misreading the suggestion and baiting the assassin. "I'm not coming back!"

The woman hissed as the two other men darted in again, Azuma dodging their attacks carefully. "You are not the weapon to which I am referring; you will die sooner or later, if I have my way. Just the sword, and we'll leave you alone for tonight. It seems a fair deal for me - you'll get to live another day, after all."

"You think you can kill me, then?" Azuma laughed, completely confident, as he finally went on the offensive against the two men. He rushed forward, deftly avoiding a laser tripwire, and slashed at the two men. His weapon and aggressive assault forced them back, and back, and back again. They found themselves against a wall when suddenly, Azuma turned, sweeping his blade behind him. The dagger that had been flying toward the back of his neck was deflected, instead impaling itself in his left shoulder. He winced briefly, then flipped backwards, high into the air, neatly slicing the two cornered men while he was in midair, and landed with a light acrobatic touch while the two men fell to the ground with a heavy thud in unison.

The woman and the winded man scowled. Azuma smiled and nonchalantly waved his hand through one of the tripwires, setting an alarm off. The room filled with the noise of a siren and the flashing of a red strobe light as the various archways started to close as bars cordoned off the different rooms. He calmly walked across the room toward the Dawnstar Crystal and, ignoring the sophisticated electronic safeguards, sliced open the case and swiped the crystal. He didn't even bother removing the dagger from his shoulder, dashed across the room, and slide underneath the last of the closing gates blocking in the room. He looked back and saw the two living assassins and the two dead ones were nowhere to be seen. He knew that as much as they wanted to capture him, they could not risk losing their suits, or revealing their identities or plans, and would have to retreat as soon as the alarm had been triggered.

He managed to hack the computers in the next room quickly enough in spite of the rising tunnel vision from his wounds, and was able to sneak out of the building via the roof with his prize. He engaged his stealth suit and quickly made his way to safety. Once clear, he collapsed in an alleyway and sighed.

"Well, I guess there's no help for it, then." He pulled out a communicator from his belt and sent out a wave to Angel.

"Yes, Azuma, what is it?" Angel finally answered; the space behind her indicated that she was likely in a temple.

Azuma cringed as he adjusted his position slightly. "Well, I got myself in a bit of a scrape, and could use a little help getting to some reasonable medical facility."

Angel's expression instantly changed to one of grave concern. "A scrape that you need help after? That can't be good. You are almost as good as I am in a fight!"

"Almost?" Azuma began to chuckle, then winced. "Look, here's my coordinates. Could you just come get me, please?"

Angel nodded and cut the link as soon as she received the coordinates, and immediately made her way to Azuma's location. By the time she got there, she found him unconscious in the alleyway, a pair of bums about to steal his shoes. She managed to chase them off before they stole anything, and then carried him out of the alley and took an aircab to bring him back to the ship. She could have tried one of the hospitals in the city, but based on what she knew of his past and the dubious nature of his wounds, she suspected that he would be best off avoiding any sort of public facility.

Back at the ship, Angel found that the workers were just packing up their gear - whatever they had agreed to do, it had apparently come to an end for the day. She did not worry overly much with the maintenance portion of the ship's operation, and hadn't paid any attention when that portion of the deal was being worked out; Shelly had thought it a generous bargain, and accepted it without compunction.

She quickly carried Azuma's limp body to the medical bay, where she found the rest of the crew waiting; she had called ahead and informed them of the situation from the cab. She had done some basic first aid during the trip as well, but the lack of supplies and seriousness of his wounds had impaired her efforts. Nevertheless, she had expected better results. She wondered if there wasn't more to his injuries than met the eye.

He was deftly moved to the medical bed and Kaliya began to examine the cuts. She worked with the wounds for nearly an hour before she stopped. Everyone but Shelly had wandered off to wait while Kaliya took care of Azuma. Shelly noticed that Kaliya wasn't just stopping to take a break or wait for something or to switch from one activity to the next. She stopped in the middle of a stitch and just let the needle stay in her hands unmovingly.

"He should be more fixed by now. But he's not. He's getting sicker."

Shelly frowned; she was no military sort, but she had figured as much; after just some basic care, she expected him to come around, but now, more than an hour later - close to two since Angel picked him up - and he was as dead to the world as he had been when he was found.

"Any idea what's causing it, then?"

Kaliya's brow furrowed as she tried to find an explanation for his continuously worsening condition. She had run all of the bacterial and infection tests, and had even, at Angel's initial urging, run a poison screening test, all of which had come back clean. Finally, she undid the stitch that she was working on, leaned in, and sniffed the wound. She tilted her head, as though in thought, then, almost spontaneously, licked the wound like an animal would. Shelly was taken aback, but said nothing.

"Ahh! It is poison. Yep."

Shelly looked surprised. "Are you sure of that? We ran the test, and it came back clean."

Kaliya struggled for the right words. "It.. is a special kind of poison. Like, people poison?" She was frustrated by her own lacking vocabulary for describing the situation. "It's not normal plant poison, you know, poison made from plants. It is more like.. made by people. At least, it tastes like that."

"Wait, does that mean you're poisoned now too?" Shelly was genuinely concerned for the young medic, and not just because of her agreement with Thomas.

Kaliya shook her head "Nope! I'm all good!" Her cheerful, infectious smile was enough proof for the Captain, even though it wasn't proof at all. "Anyway, it looks like he'll get better in a few days."

Shelly was once again taken aback. "Are you sure about that? It seems like he's getting worse."

Kaliya nonchalantly began the stitching over again, resealing the wound. "Oh, yep, definitely sure. He's got his own people... anti... poison?" She shook her head. "Anyway, it's fighting off the poison, so he'll get better. Nothing else to do."

Kaliya's prediction was right. A few days later, Azuma woke to find his crew around him, playing cards on his stomach. He cleared his throat as soon as he realized what was going on - but before anyone else had realized that he was returning to consciousness. The scrambled to clean up their cards while he spoke, his voice soft with the weakness of being bedridden and unconscious for two days: "Is there something wrong with the table in the commons?"

Joshua grinned "Of course not. We just didn't want to miss you when you woke up, but we all wanted to play some cards - you know, to divvy out the duties you aren't doing because you're holed up here."

Azuma grunted "Well, I'm awake now, so you didn't miss it, and you can go away."

Joshua gathered up the cards as the rest of the crew stood back, feigning noninvolvement in the card game. Shelly began the interrogation. "So, what exactly brought you to us nearby in a bodybag?"

Azuma sighed. He had known this was coming the moment he decided to call Angel. "I was just beat up by some thugs. That's all."

Angel couldn't contain herself and burst out laughing. "Even 50 thugs couldn't have done that to you, and you know it. I've fought you, near every day since you joined the crew, and I know that nobody with the label 'thug' would be able to cause this kind damage to you." She pointed toward his shoulder wound by way of evidence. "A few glancing blows, like the rest, maybe, but no, the untrained hooligans that fit the description of 'thug' wouldn't get a solid blow like that, no matter how they tried."

Shelly nodded. "Moreover, we found your gear - your suit, especially. I don't know what kind of life you had before coming here that let you get your hands on an amazing piece of tech like a Chameleon Suit, but no thugs would have even been able to see you with it on. Beyond that, there was that - " she gestured at Azuma's sword - an inert hunk of metal, laying on the counter. "I have no idea what that is, but you wouldn't let go of it until Kaliya injected some relaxants directly into your hand while you were unconscious."

Azuma feigned a shrug. From his perspective, he had only had a few minutes to consider how to explain what had happened - a few after he called Angel and before he passed out, and then the duration of this conversation. He didn't have a good lie to tell them. So instead, he decided to tell a little bit of the truth. "I stole that, and so some folk tried to get it back from me. I managed to fight them off, but they were pretty good, so I got this."

"How Wrin Bu Lai, Whai Wrin Bu Jwo." cursed Shelly. "Is there any Gorram person on this ship that isn't trying to Gwai Ma Jeow?" She took a deep breath. "Okay, well, you aren't the first fugitive on this ship, so I suppose it doesn't really change much, but it would have been nice if we had known what to expect. So, let me ask you a few questions - with the knowledge that if I really don't like your answers, you're staying here, on Beaumonde. First: What is this thing?" She nodded in the direction of the sword.

"Expensive. It's some kind of newtech prototype or other. I don't know any more than that."

Shelly gave him a piercing look that indicated that she knew he was lying. "And the owners?"

"Beats me. Alliance, maybe? Who else could produce some kind of device like that?"

Angel started counting. "Syndicate, Blue Sun, Iskellian Technology Solutions, any number of large private security organizations that are making a killing on post war contracts."

Azuma stuttered. "Well, I mean, ultimately, though, the Alliance is paying all those paychecks, except the organized criminal organizations, and I have my doubts about their ability to produce any genuinely new technology - if they had something like that, then they probably stole it in the first place. And if Alliance government interests are footing the bill, you can bet they're the owners - or think they are - even if one of those others actually developed and produced it."

Shelly let out a deep sigh. "Well, what about the people who are trying to get it back, then? Are they alliance?"

Azuma looked down. "I don't think so. Mercenary, or criminal, or something. Anyone that well trained that works directly for the alliance likes to make it known. They didn't say much other than the usual sort of cliché threats."

Shelly smiled - at least he didn't make the mistake of claiming that they were alliance - they would claim poison was beneath them, even if they were more than willing to let their subcontractors use whatever means they thought necessary. "And the poison?"

Azuma scratched his arm nervously. "Poison?"

Thomas frowned, "Boy, you know how to fight well enough to know that a few cuts and a stab wound aren't enough to lay you out long enough for us to get cards. You've been out for two days fighting that poison. Don't try to play us."

Azuma's mind was racing. He knew that Kaliya was good, but the poisons used by the Syndicate were deadly. If they had decided to poison him, he never would have made it back to the ship, let alone survived for two full days, never mind recovery. He was finally completely honest. "I have no idea. I really don't. If I was poisoned, I am truly surprised to be alive at all. Most combat poisons are fast acting and lethal - especially those employed by mercenary types that just want to recover an item."

Shelly finally heard truth, and relaxed slightly. "That is indeed troubling. Did they want to just disable you, perhaps?"

Azuma shook his head, confused. "I somehow doubt that."

"Well, moving ahead, then, what can we expect from these people? I am not averse to having some difficulties, but I'd like to have some more idea what to expect. Are they going to come at us with another recovery squad? An army of thugs? An alliance warship? What should we be on the lookout for."

Azuma continued to look sheepish. "I doubt they'd want to make a big scene like that," he mumbled without any real conviction.

Shelly sighed and got up. "Well, if you feel like you have any more insight to share, you know where to find me."

The crew quickly dispersed, the interrogation over, until Kaliya and Azuma were the only two left in the medical bay.

"I was really poisoned?" Azuma looked toward the medic with genuine curiousity.

"Yep! You'd be dead if it weren't for the little bugs you've got!"

"Little bugs? What little bugs?"

Kaliya tilted her head sideways. "You know. Little bugs. The ones that live under your skin. You don't know about them?"

Azuma shrugged slightly. "There are lots of things I don't really know about myself. I guess maybe that's why I can understand you a little more than the others. I didn't want to tell them any more - the more they know, the more danger they're in from my pursuers, you know." He paused and looked at Kaliya, who was listening politely, but was obviously not really grasping what he was saying. "Well, I hope you can learn a little more about yourself, too."

Kaliya flashed a happy, toothy grin. "You too!"

She skipped across the medical bay and spun up the antigrav shaft like a ballerina.

Chapter 8: Smuggler's Gold

"Look, as First Mate, I have to know this sort of thing. I just want to know what kinds of things are happening on the crew, so I can save the Captain from any of that sort of trouble."

Angel was in Thomas' room while the ship was being loaded with their latest cargo - another easy money shipment - a single unmarked crate - for Balthazar and the Blue Sun corp.

Thomas' room was more or less barren. It had a few personal mementos - his old Alliance pilot's official jacket with all of his badges and awards sewn on. He also had a handful of other medals and trophies for excellence in service around the room. Beyond that, the only adornments in the room were the plants that Kaliya had convinced him to put there after her own room had become almost completely overrun with the various plants.

Angel had come to Thomas' room to get some answers about Kaliya. Her behavior was not destructive or even disruptive, with the exception of plants occasionally ending up where they shouldn't have been.

"I'm just curious how she can handle the sorts of things she can. When we were sick in the Reaver Graveyard, you said that she managed to find the right medicine, but I've seen her get the right medicine before. It's like she just tries each one herself until she finds the right one. There's no way that a normal teenage girl could take that many different medicines - even in small doses - and live to tell the tale."

Thomas shrugged. "I appreciate your concern; I have thought about it quite a bit myself, but she just has a special way of metabolizing those sorts of things. It's part of her gift."

Angel scowled. "Look, nobody can metabolize that many different drugs that quickly. She was completely unaffected! I know she's not your real daughter - I can tell that just by looking - but who is she? What is she?"

Thomas' face became hard. "I strongly suggest that you consider what you're saying, especially without the Captain's knowledge. She and I have a deal - part of which is that Kaliya will be accepted as part of the crew, with no questions about her past, or mine."

Angel accepted that she had overstepped her bounds. "I'm just trying to understand. I want to protect this crew - this family - and I find it difficult to protect someone that I know so little about." She stood up. "But since you seem to not want my support and protection, then I'll leave her to you." She walked out of the Pilot's cabin without another word.

The Unity lifted off, newly refitted from its repair work on Beaumonde. It was now faster - by about 100 percent - nearly up to the speed of a Firefly class mid-sized freighter. The old, salvaged components that had been used to get her running again had been replaced with new, sometimes custom pieces that allowed the ship to take more advantage of the large engines. The computerized systems to provide more nuanced control of the various systems had been repaired as well, finally providing the ship with proper artificial gravity control and a fully functional backup life support system. It felt like an entirely new ship.

The single crate on board was again being transported with the extra no passengers premium, much to Shelly's delight. Moreover, having only a single box was about the easiest cargo possible. It was a small metal box, perhaps a four-foot cube. As the ship took off, the crew relaxed for the first time in a long time; no passengers and a newly repaired ship left the crew worry free.

It was all the more startling, then, when Shelly went down to the cargo bay after they had been away from the port for just 12 hours to find Joshua collapsed in a heap in front of the crate. It looked like he had been torn open, with one mangled panel on the ground.

After ascertaining that he was essentially uninjured except for a bump on his head, Shelly quickly gathered the crew in the commons to discuss the situation.

"Here's what I know. I found Joshua laying in a heap in front of the one, single, lonely bit of cargo we have to look after - and that cargo was opened and missing. I say missing, but I know that whatever it is, it has to be around here somewhere - since we're 12 hours into the black with no place else to go. Joshua, could you describe what happened to you?"

"Well, it was like this. I was wandering around, taking a walk, you know, exercise, like I do every day, and happened to make my way down to the cargo bays. I happened to notice that the cargo didn't look right, so I went into the cargo bay, and found it already open. Then something hit me on the back of the head as I was going to investigate, and then I woke up with our lovely captain over me.

"I... I know what it is, though. I have heard tales of it before. They call it the Smuggler's Gold! A crew gets a single piece of cargo, for an unusually high payment, but it contains an animal, or a monster, or some kind of bio weapon that gets loose, and starts to kill off the crew one by one. Then, the people that hired us will come and collect our ship, once we're all dead and the monster is sated! I know it! We've got someone - no, someTHING - on the ship! It's going to kill us all! It's! I'm going to my bunk, and I'm going to lock the door and not open it for anything!"

He started to run toward his bunk, but Angel caught him by the collar as he went by and swung him back to the table, where he collapsed into a chair, little more than a whimpering animal himself. "Stay put until the Captain says you can leave, will you?"

Shelly sighed. "Alright. Everyone get back to your jobs. Angel and I are going to do a full sweep of the ship and see if we can find the missing cargo or this mystery assailant, who seems as likely to be a banana peel that the clumsy cook slipped on as anything else, at this point."

Shelly and Angel started from the bottom of the ship, thoroughly searching both of the cargo bays and the medical facility on the lower level of the ship, but were unable to find anything but the bare metal of the crate. Whatever had been inside of it, there was no indication that it had been a living creature; the crate itself was completely clean and devoid of any sort of packaging material or detritus. The other cargo bay only had the usual fitness equipment; nothing was changed. The central deck, dominated by the cockpit and engines, was the same as ever as well. Shelly and Angel made a point of checking the two one-man scouts for anything that might have been the cargo, but they couldn't find anything out of the ordinary.

The upper deck took the longest to search. There were ten cabins total on the ship. The starboard side had the Captain's room, Angel's room, Thomas' Room, Kaliya's Room and Azuma's Room, while the port side had mostly empty bunks for passengers, and Joshua's room on the end. Angel started from Joshua's room and Shelly started from her own bunk; they worked their way inward toward the center and the commons area.

Angel's search was easy; Joshua's room was filled with his clothes and vanity (and his cowering self, who waited with baited breath to close and lock the door once she was done), which she quickly sifted through; his bump made him a less likely suspect. The other four rooms were virtually identical, and all spotless and empty, ready for passengers but with little else by way of adornments.

Shelly had a more interesting search. After verifying that her own room was as she had left it, she quickly glanced through Angel's room, finding that the Spartan accommodations there were much as she had expected. The room was very utilitarian, but had a few oriental accents, as well as Angel's trunk. Shelly resisted the urge to break into the trunk to see what it contained, and quickly made her way to Thomas' room. It had nothing that could have been the cargo, so she quickly moved on to Kaliya's room. When she opened the door, she was greeted with a veritable jungle. After much cursing and brushing aside of plant, Shelly weaved her way through the entire room and determined that it, too, was empty of possible Blue Sun cargo. The last room, Azuma's, was nearly as empty as the passenger rooms; it only had a few simple mechanic's outfits hanging in the closet. While it was curious that even after all this time, he had not accumulated any more belongings, there didn't appear to be anything that could be the cargo there, either, so she met up with Angel in the commons, and sat down with a solid thump.

"No luck, I take it? I wonder where it could be."

"Well, I'll tell you this. It is either mobile, like that crazy cook suggested, or it could break down into something other than what we were looking for. I certainly didn't see anything that size and shape."

They heard a thump, and quickly made their way to the cockpit, where the noise had originated. There, Azuma was kneeling over Thomas, as he lay on the floor next to the pilot's chair. "I came as quickly as I could! It looks like... It looks like Joshua might have been right." He tenderly felt Thomas' head as the two women made their way to him. "It looks a lot like whatever happened to Joshua."

Again the crew met up in the Commons on the upper deck. Shelly was pacing back and forth furiously, while Thomas and Joshua sat dejectedly next to each other, looking almost guilty, as neither of them had gotten any sort of solid, useful information on their assailant. Kaliya was as composed and disinterested in the worries of the rest of the crew as always, and Angel and Azuma both carried a worried expression.

Shelly looked over the crew. "Azuma! You're the most likely culprit. We know that it wasn't Joshua or Thomas, and you have the skill to incapacitate either of them, and, as far as I know, you had the opportunity. I have no idea what your motive would be, or what you've done with the cargo, but nobody else makes sense!"

Ryan raised his eyebrows. "I'm innocent. However, I suppose I can't really prove it. You go ahead and lock me in my room if that will make you feel better."

Shelly knew Azuma's personality enough that she should have expected his response, but his calm, matter-of-fact response was jarring to her fiery accusation. She raged on in Chinese for a solid minute while the rest of the crew stared on. Angel finally burst out laughing at the Captain's over the top response. The rest of the crew, except Azuma, joined in. Shelly gave her First Mate a dangerous glare and stalked to her own quarters like an upset child.

Azuma calmly walked to his own quarters with Angel behind him. She glanced in, and seeing nothing suspicious, closed and locked the door from the outside. After it closed, she turned around and leaned against it. She knew, and Shelly knew, and the rest of the crew knew that if anyone on the ship had the knowledge necessary to overcome any lock on the Unity or elsewhere, it was Azuma. She slid to the floor, her tall body crumpling down and taking on guard duty; at least with her back against the door, he couldn't get out through it without alerting her.

An hour and a half later, Shelly finally emerged from her sullen stupor at the situation and left her bunk. She had taken a hot shower and changed into a clean outfit, and believed that she was ready to face whatever scenario this cargo was going to throw at her.

As her room was at the end of the hall, just opening the door, she was able to see the length of the hallway containing all of the crew quarters except Joshua's. There, she saw the door to Azuma's room open, and what appeared to be Angel's long, muscular legs sticking out of the room. Her calmness and collected thoughts scattered in an instant, and she again burst out into curses. She stalked forward to examine Angel's state as she ranted. "That Lao Wong Chih Yu has Dun Da Bao Tian! What a Gorram Tze sah ju yi to try this Mo Min Chi Meow in the blackest part of the black. When I get my hands on that Kuh Wu Guay Toh Guay Nown, I'll - "

Her cursing stream abruptly ended as she reached the door to Azuma's room, and saw him in a heap on the floor, just past where Angel was laying on her back, a thin trickle of blood coming out of her head. She quickly hit the comm unit at the door and called the rest of the crew as she verified that both of them were still breathing, albeit injured. When they arrived, they moved them down to the lower level and to the medical facilities there, while all of their brains shot off to a different theory.

Once the entire crew was again gathered - this time in the medical bay, while the mechanic and first mate were being treated, Shelly tried to take an assessment of the situation, although her nerves were frayed from the ludicrous situation.

"Angel and Azuma would be a match for anyone else on the ship. Besides that, the only ones that haven't been hit are our medic, who wouldn't have even been able to reach Angel's head to create that wound, and myself. Since I was in my cabin for the past hour and a half, showering, that pretty much just leaves Joshua's Gorram Bu Kuh Nuhn Smuggler's Gold theory, unless someone else has something more useful to say."

Joshua cringed at the thought, but Thomas made a suggestion. "Well, I know those two on the tables are good - skilled enough to beat anyone else on board, like you said - but could they have maybe fought and it ended in a draw? That is, could they have knocked each other out?"

Shelly shrugged. "Possible, I suppose, but I don't think it likely. It sounds a little too convenient - like something out of a movie. Either way, we won't know until one of these two wakes up. Until that time, nobody is to be alone. Joshua, you stay here with Kaliya and help out if you can; I'll go play co-pilot with Thomas for a while. Notify me the instant one of these two wakes. And keep an eye out for anyone - or anything - that might try to sneak up on you."

Shelly and Thomas made their way to the cockpit, and sat in silence, staring out at the stars that shone in through the massive viewport. They had a 180 degree view both horizontally and vertically in the cockpit, and took advantage of it to watch the silence of space go by. Each was trapped in their own thoughts and concerns, and as they looked out, creating images from the stars and galaxies visible to the naked eye, they kept an eye and an ear behind them, to the potential danger within the trip.

"Pretty, isn't it?" Shelly broke the silence as she stared off toward a particularly dense line of stars that indicated the band of the galaxy.

Thomas chuckled. "I did choose to become a pilot and look at it every day I could. For calling it the black, it sure has a lot of light."

Shelly smiled, a radiant smile. "You have that awfully right. I remember on Sihnon, the planet touted for its beauty, we couldn't see the 'verse like we can here, deep in the black. The lights of the planet, even the atmosphere itself... it all impeded seeing this particular beauty. We had some holograms that simulated what the sky looked like out past all of the boundaries we had made, but they were just holograms. They didn't warm to soul like the black does."

Thomas nodded his agreement as he heard a hearty laugh from Kaliya down in the medical bay. "That's exactly what it does. I know, and you know, that the black would freeze this ship and each one of us the moment it had a chance, but I still feel the warmth it brings."

Then, they heard the unmistakable sound of Angel waking up. The usually mild mannered woman waking up from having been knocked out was a page out of Shelly's usual playbook. She sat up and was thrashing about looking to get revenge on Azuma when Shelly and Thomas arrived. Then she saw him next to her in the nearby medical bed. "Oh, well, it looks like someone else got the pleasure. I find it odd that he's here and not in the airlock or out in the black now, though."

Shelly shook her head. "Don't think that'll be happening, even if it turns out that he had something to do with this - you know its not my way. But when I found him, he was already laid out. Was that your handywork?"

Angel frowned. "Uh.. no. I was sitting up against the door when it opened and I was cracked on my head. He had to have done it."

"And then what? Beat himself up? Jumped into the ground head first? He somehow has the same head wound that you do." Thomas expressed his skepticism at Angel's conclusion.

Shelly closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. "So, whatever happened, it was the result of something that was already in his room when he went there. I didn't find anything when I looked in earlier that could have been the cargo, but I suppose it is entirely possible that he would have some kind of hiding space or secret hatch. If that isn't it, then we're looking at a monster in the duct work, and I really don't want to deal with something like that. Okay, everyone else stay here. Joshua, you're coming with me to look through his room for any kind of secret anything we can find. Call us the instant he wakes up."

Shelly and Joshua went up to the top deck and made their way to Azuma's room, where they found the small blood spots that Angel's and Azuma's heads had produced. A cursory search of the room revealed nothing amiss. The room was surprisingly barren except for a few changes of clothes. Shelly knew that there had to be at least some hiding spots, though, as she was unable to locate the strange stolen object he had had when he was attacked on Beaumonde.

She and Joshua began to canvas the room for hidden compartments, sliding panels, and secret caches. Joshua was the first to have any luck. He found a small but long compartment hidden along the ceiling. On opening it, he found the strange metal rod they had seen before, as well as a small intricate looking crystal laced with what looked like circuitry and what was clearly a electronic lock picking system.

"Well, would you look at this! It seems our boy has got himself an interest in illicit entry."

Shelly examined the items with some passing interest. "Maybe so, although he certainly doesn't hold a candle to you when it comes to immorality. Regardless, I don't think any of that has anything to do with the cargo or whatever knocked him out."

Finally, after another ten minutes of searching, the Captain found a second secret area. Underneath the bed, she found a removable floor panel that opened into a large, empty storage area; the entire space under the bed was like a second bed, large enough for a person to hide.

"Well, that could be a hiding place for the cargo, whatever it is. Not if it were shaped like a cube, but there's enough space there to hold something. I can guess that's the kind of place Azuma would leave available for hiding himself, though. It could be that we have a stowaway that's causing all this trouble. Well, if a mere stowaway could take out both Azuma and Angel, anyway. In either case, since this is empty, I don't think we're going to find anything else here. Let's go see how our patient is doing - and I hope he has some insight into the situation."

Shelly and Joshua made their way down to the medical bay via the antigrav shaft, and saw Kaliya administering something to Azuma.

"Oh? What's going on here?" pondered Shelly, aloud.

"I'm having Kaliya wake this Lurn Shwei Jah Jwohn up. I need answers, and I'll be damned if I'm going to wait until he decides to come around to get them."

Shelly shrugged nonchalantly. "Well, if you insist. We did find a hidden compartment in his room that could have housed the cargo, or perhaps a stowaway. I guess we won't know what is going on until we get him up, so go ahead."

Kaliya hadn't waited for the captain's consent; by the time she gave it, a needle was already in Azuma's arm.

In just a few moments, he was awake, blinking and gently touching the top of his head. "Wha.. What happened?"

Angel growled, "That's what you're going to tell us before we throw you out the airlock!"

Azuma rubbed his eyes in pain. "I doubt you'd do that if you went to the trouble of bringing me to the med bay, and presumably using some drugs to get me to wake up." He touched the spot that Kaliya had stuck with the needle.

Shelly tilted her head. "Well, if you didn't beat Angel over the head, then who did?"

Azuma listened for a moment after Shelly stopped talking, hearing only the thrum of the ship. "We're in flight? So confident in Blue Sun's repairs that you took off with your mechanic in the medical bay?"

Joshua raised his eyebrows at this. "You weren't in bed when we took off. You claimed to have been fine for days now, until you took the hit in the head."

"Wha... But.. " He closed his eyes to the pain again. "So maybe that weird dream was a bit more related to reality than I thought." At the quizzical looks from the rest of the crew, he continued. "I dreamt - or maybe was in a hypnotic trance, or whatever - that I was here, on the ship, and I was compelled to open some cargo we had. It was a single metal crate, which really made me think that it was a dream. Nobody hires a whole ship just to move one box, right?" He didn't get the confirmation that he was looking for from the crew, so he took a deep breath and continued. "Well, I opened the box, and there was this... I guess it was a robot. But before I could do anything with it, a monster showed up, so I had to beat it up. I don't know why, really, but I just hit him on the head and down he went. Then I took the robot to my bunk and started fiddling with the circuits and computers. After that, there was a kind of meeting of the crew, and there was a monster on board the ship that had attacked Joshua.

"After that, I determined that the monster was in the cockpit, so I attacked it and took it out. But it wasn't completely gone because we had a meeting again, and the monster had gotten Thomas. So I went back to my room and kept working on the robot, until it was completely fixed. But as I turned it on, the monster came back and beat me up, but the robot fought it off as it left the room. Then I woke up here."

He stopped there. The details were missing, he knew, but to him, it was just a dream; the details fled from his mind in favor of the important events.

Angel shook her head with apparent sadness. "That's the best story you can come up with? A hypnotic dream state wherein you beat up half the crew? You're not getting out of this that easily."

Shelly stopped her first mate there. "Well, I can't say that it makes a whole lot of sense, but it makes about as much sense as Joshua's theory. Anyone else want to weigh in on this?"

Thomas spoke up. "Well, let's take a look around and see if we can find this robot. The rest of what he said matches more or less with our own knowledge of the situation so far. If we can find that to corroborate his story, maybe it will give us something more to go off of."

Shelly nodded. "Okay. Angel and Kaliya should stay here to keep an eye on him, but the rest of us will search for this robot. And Kaliya, can you check him to see if he has any signs of hypnosis or something like that?"

Kaliya nodded slowly. "I could maybe see if his brain is sick or anything." She looked around the medical bay, obviously not seeing the necessary equipment to do a good job. "Sorta."

While Kaliya, Azuma and Angel stayed in the medical bay, and began to analyze Azuma's condition, the rest of the crew spread out, looking for anything that could be the missing robotic cargo. They looked over the length and breadth of the ship when finally Thomas called Shelly and Joshua to the cargo bay. There, they found the simple metal crate that they had originally found opened was now closed again.

The three congregated around the box, Shelly flanked by her crewmates, and gazed in wonder at the sealed box. Shelly quizzically tilted her head first one way, and then another, her hair swishing from one shoulder to the other.

"Okay..." Joshua spoke the word in long, drawn out manner. "So, were we hallucinating back then, or are we hallucinating now?"

Thomas just walked forward without a word and put his metallic arm to the test and tore open the crate with a single swift movement. The side of the crate popped off and landed with a resounding clang that echoed throughout the ship. Inside the crate, the trio found the confirmation of Azuma's bizarre story; a humanoid robot curled into a ball. It was an unfinished appearing skeletal frame of metal and wires, with circuit boards and cables exposed throughout, but beyond that, they could determine little about it from where it sat in the crate.

Deep in the bowels of the robot, a single light shone with a steady yellow color, but other than that, there was no indication of activity within the crate.

Suddenly, without warning, an alarm rang throughout the ship. Thomas immediately turned away and ran toward the cockpit. "Proximity Alarm!" he shouted over the alarm as it sought to drown out all other thoughts from everyone on board.

Chapter 9: Choice

The Unity shuddered before Thomas had made it to his seat, and sent him flying across the cockpit and into the steel like glass of the viewport. The rest of the crew likewise tumbled around the ship like so many rag dolls. They heard an ungodly noise of bursting metal from the top deck of the ship and a second warning took over, even more urgently - the hull had been breached and all doors were sealing as an automatic precaution.

While the Unity's safety systems were excellent, a hull breach could still spell disaster for the ship; the crew and the blue sun repairmen had done their best, but interior doors, even on a prototype alliance vessel, are generally not proof against the vacuum of the black. They might prevent an instantaneous death for the crew, but repairs needed to be made immediately, or else the ship would eventually depressurize, killing the entire crew.

Terrified, Kaliya dove under one of the medical beds. Whether she was terrified of the hull breach, the alarm, or that some of her plants would be without any atmosphere and would likely not survive was difficult to say. Azuma stumbled out of the bed as she dove underneath it, and went to where Angel had been slammed into a counter to check on her. He quickly determined her to be relatively uninjured when she thrust an open hand towards his stomach and hissed "Get away!" at him. He nimbly dodged backwards, but was nevertheless hurt and confused by her response, as his face plainly showed. He knew something was wrong, or that during his sleep he had done something horrible, but could not help but wonder if it was really as important as a hull breach.

In the cargo bay, Joshua and Shelly struggled to their feet as the frequently malfunctioning artificial gravity decided that a hull breach was the perfect excuse to double its output. Shelly made her way toward the environment suits as quickly as the gravity of the situation permitted, and motioned Joshua to do the same. The two quickly suited up and made their way toward the upper deck to find and repair the hull breach before the entire crew perished in the black, another ship to be salvaged.

They passed the medical bay, and saw that the three there were essentially unhurt, and quickly accessed the antigrav shaft in the back of the ship. It, too, had failed, but the ladder nevertheless provided means of entry to the top of the ship. There, they found that the common area was still pressurized. Shelly called over the comm. "Thomas? Can you tell us where the breach is located?"

Thomas had, by then, managed to clamber from his uncomfortable position pressed against the viewport and back into the pilot's seat, where he feverishly accessed data until he found the status indicators for the rooms in the upper deck. "It looks like Joshua's room was hit. Also, and you probably want to know this before you head in, it wasn't just some random bit of debris that hit us through ridiculously unlikely odds. We have another spaceship directly above us."

The top of the viewport in the cockpit was entirely obscured by a large alliance vessel - a warship. A ship of this caliber would likely have infiltration harpoons that could tether it to another ship and allow troopers to travel through a tube and directly into the hulled but still pressurized vessel. As soon as they got whatever they needed, they could just remove the spike and the ship would immediately lose pressure. Shelly quickly estimated that with the ridiculously criminal crew she had managed to put together, someone had finally come to claim one of her crew, and had brought the big guns to do it - with obviously no qualms about the rest of the crew being thrown into deep vacuum.

Just as she was trying to determine which of her crew would be the most likely, Alliance soldiers burst out of Joshua's room and came down the hall, wearing armored pressure suits and armed with assault rifles. This was not a peaceful mission; their weapons would kill. They quickly spotted Shelly and Joshua.

"Stop! Don't move, or we'll shoot!"

Shelly calmly put her hands up, but snidely replied, "Oh, you'll shoot me, so I'll die from that instead of being stranded on a ship with a hole in the hull. So scary."

Joshua likewise put his hands up, but by the time he did, one of the troopers was next to him, painfully wrenching his arms behind his back and binding them with a super strong fiber. "Target acquired!" he announced.

The troopers continued to cover Shelly with their rifles as they retreated, pulling Joshua with them. Shelly nonchalantly asked, "is this standard alliance military operating procedure?"

The trooper that had first issued the warning scoffed. "We're not alliance military. After that Miranda thing, we're deserters, just like hundreds of others. We aren't going to serve them any more - they have proven that they don't have what it takes to keep order. So we're going to keep order on our own, starting with him!"

Shelly sighed and muttered "deserters" as they disappeared through the door to Joshua's room, which closed behind them. The hull breach alarm continued to sound, and just as she let her arms drop to her side, Angel was standing next to her, in her own environment suit, ready to fix the hull breach. Suddenly, a whoosh of air escaping and more tearing of metal came from Joshua's room as the alliance ship disengaged the infiltration harpoon and the Unity began to lose oxygen. The two looked at each other and, without a word, ran forward toward the room and began work to repair the breach before the entire ship was lost.

It was a difficult 10 minutes while the two women worked on the breach from the harpoon in the ceiling of Joshua's now chaotic room, but they somehow managed to bend enough of the metal back into place that they could create a rudimentary seal that would keep them all from dying with sealant foam. However, it was not the kind of repair that would last for any significant length of time; the Unity would need to undergo serious repairs again as soon as it made planetfall.

In spite of this, as soon as the repairs were complete, Shelly ran down to the cockpit and barked at Thomas, "Follow them."

Thomas, who had been monitoring the status indicators, knew that the breach was repaired, and that they would likely need to seek repairs as soon as possible. Nevertheless, he punched up the scanners and quickly determined the alliance warship's position, then set course to follow it.

The remaining crew gathered in the cockpit. Although the commons was still available, Thomas's work following the ship required his presence in the cockpit. Moreover, none of them were particularly interested in being any closer to the hull breach than they absolutely had to be. It wouldn't have made any difference where they were if it decided to tear open again, but they still felt better about being as far from it as possible.

Angel spoke first. "We're going after them? That's insanity! We need to stop at the nearest place we can find with any kind of atmosphere and get this ship fixed! Besides, that man deserves whatever he gets, and you know it!"

Shelly shot an icy stare at her first mate. "That's why I'm the captain. I don't give up on one of the crew, no matter what crimes they have committed, or what they deserve. I'm not going to abandon him just because it might be the most convenient thing to do, or just because it might be the safest thing to do, or even because I happen to owe him tens of thousands of credits. We're going to get him back, and that's that!"

Bernadette was the core world that was best known for being a sort of gathering point between the core and the rest of the 'verse. It was traditionally a place where those heading to the rim found passage outward, and those heading back to the core first arrived before going to their final destination. It functioned as a trade Mecca for people all around the 'verse. Religions, traditions and peoples blended together here as people of every planet passed through at one time or another.

It was also known for being the most permissive of all the core worlds. It had a fairly robust criminal element and, unlike most of the rest of the core worlds, was not under constant surveillance, except in a few key locations.

Joshua didn't get much of a chance to see it, though. He only caught a glimpse - enough to determine what planet he was on by the Prometheus, the vast ark turned museum that had come from earth-that-was. It dwarfed even the modern alliance cruisers. Before he could see more, his head was shoved into a bag and he was taken to another location, away from the deserter's warship.

When the bag was finally removed, he found himself in the center of a large hall. Flanking him were two of the troopers from the deserter ship who held him at weapon point. Directly in front of him was a large stand containing twelve people, each wearing black robes. Lining the rest of the room, and on two rows of balconies above, stood an immense crowd wearing mostly the garb of the common core dweller. At first, the twelve in front of him seemed like cult leaders until he realized what this really was. It was a trial, and these twelve were the judges, wearing the traditional robes of office that had existed for as long as courts had existed.

The eldest of the judges, seated near the center, stood. He was a withered old man who looked to be at least 90 years old. Nevertheless, his voice rang out with venomous clarity. "President Hernandez! You are called here to answer for your crimes against the citizens of Bernadette, indeed, your crimes against the entire human race. How do you plead?"

The Unity hastened toward Bernadette. With the damage to the hull and the head start that the deserter warship had, they were hard pressed to try to catch up; it was only due to the incredible sensor arrays on the ship that they were able to determine the likely destination of the deserters and follow at all.

When they arrived, they quickly disembarked at the spaceport, and Shelly leapt off the ship without even a thought to search for Joshua. The rest of the crew followed with less fervor, except Azuma. He stopped at the spaceport authority and began speaking with one of the crewmen there. Shelly looked at him disparagingly. "In a moment captain. I would like our ship to be ready for a rapid takeoff, as I suspect one might be necessary, so I'm arranging it. You can pay me back later."

Shelly came back over to where Azuma was speaking to the crewman. "Look, getting a rush job might be impossible, and if we get caught, we're likely going to be landlocked by the port authority anyway. We'll just have to find a way to lay low until we can figure things out."

Azuma shook his head and turned back to the crewman. "Make sure that repairs to the upper hull are completed in two hours, and that we are not landlocked."

Shelly's eyes went wide. "What are you even - "

Azuma's credit chit flashed. She looked at the number as it went across the screen to the crewman's chit. Shelly just mumbled "How did you.."

Azuma's card indicated that he had nearly a seven hundred thousand credits - enough to more than pay for an entire alliance cruiser to be built. It decremented by a paltry ten thousand - probably more than the crewman made in five years - it was one hell of a bribe - and more than the Unity had been able to net in all the jobs it had done since their first mission.

"Now see that it gets done and I'll pay double that much again when we return." Azuma nodded as the crewman ran to make sure that the arrangements were carried out to the mechanic's orders. He turned to Shelly and shrugged. "I find it best to be prepared in advance, rather than just reacting to the situation."

Then they ran off to catch up to the rest of the crew and try to track down the deserters that had hulled their ship and snatched their cook.

They darted through the spaceport, asking questions and, where necessary, greasing palms of various locals before they managed to find that there was a major event - a trial - going on in an underground vigilante organization's hideout. The group was apparently called 'The Sons of Justice' and was made up mostly of alliance military deserters following the Miranda Announcement. This was all Shelly needed to know to determine that that trial was where she would find Joshua. The event had apparently already been sold out, but she managed to get the location from the slimy merchant who gave them the information.

They made their way to the slums of the city, where they found what was apparently an abandoned sporting center - at least until they heard the chanting from within. The chant was blood curdling - "Kill him!" - from hundreds, if not thousands of voices.

Shelly nodded to Azuma, who ran along the side of the building and engaged his Chameleon Suit as soon as he found a suitable point of entry somewhere above, disappearing from sight. The rest of the crew went directly to the front entrance, where they encountered a pair of soldiers garbed in alliance gear, including non-lethal suppression weapons.

"Ohh.. Are we too late? I really was hoping we would be able to get in!" Shelly put on her best pouty face as she approached the two guards.

The guard on the left shook his head. "I'm sorry, miss, but we cannot allow anyone to enter or leave the facility until the trial and is completed and the sentence is carried out."

Shelly just looked back at the rest of the crew and winked, then turned and struck the guard who had spoken in the nose with her small fist. He stumbled back, taken by surprise, while the other guard brought his weapon up to handle her. He didn't get a chance to fire, however, as Angel performed a takedown, quickly and expertly disabling him and relieving him of his weapon. Thomas stepped forward and assisted Shelly by slamming the remaining guard with his metal fist, landing directly on the guard's face again, and turning the bright red of his stung face into the bright red of a bloodied face.

He quickly dropped to his knees and surrendered. Whatever training he had as an alliance soldier, he knew at least that he had no chance of winning against the crew of the Unity.

The crew made their way inside, Angel and Shelly in front and Thomas and Kaliya bringing up the rear. Thomas grabbed one of the weapons from the guards after they had tied them up. Kaliya sensed the urgency of her companions, but didn't seem inclined to fight, although Thomas had given her the other weapon anyway.

They made their way into the complex and eventually arrived at the central room, where they found the crowd chanting "kill him!" over and over. They were on the first floor, and, except for Angel, who had the benefit of extra height, they could barely see past the crowd to the center of the room. The crowd stood around the outside of the room, except for the judge's bench directly across from the Unity crew. Dividing the increasingly unruly crowd from the center of the room was a row of alliance troopers. They looked to be the same ones that had been on the warship that had abducted Joshua. In the middle of the room, more than 20 feet from anyone else, stood three men - Joshua, and two guards that kept within arm's reach of him. He was bound in chains and was looking down, his back to the crew. The judges had apparently just reached the bench after some private deliberation. The eldest judge raised his hand for silence, and the room slowly quieted. "This court has considered the evidence put before it and is now ready to pass judgement." The crowd again erupted into noise, urging the death penalty.

After waiting for the crowd to settle again, the judge continued. "The evidence that was presented has been overwhelming. This, combined with the accused's silence for the entirety of these proceedings, leaves us with no choice but to pass the harshest penalty. President Hernandez, you have been found guilty of bribery, corruption in government, crimes against humankind, murder, attempted genocide, and treason. The penalty for these crimes is public execution."

The crowd roared with triumph when, out of the corner of her eye, Shelly saw a flash, and suddenly one of the guards in the circle protecting Joshua from the crowd dropped to the ground. The confusion was evident and she thought the crowd was just frothing enough to want to carry out the sentence itself. Apparently many people in the crowd did adhere to that train of thought, because as soon as the violence began, it erupted throughout the room. The guards tried to hold back the throng of people, but they were unable to maintain their line against the mass of the crowd, and quickly the crowd rushed forward past and over the guards, making their way towards the center of the room where Joshua stood with his two guards. They turned outward, intent on keeping the crowd at bay until justice could be carried out, but they were severely overmatched - at least it seemed they were until the sound of an assault rifle went off and a number of people in the crowd dropped to the ground, dead.

Shelly grinned and immediately dropped to the ground, with Angel following suit. Thomas pulled Kaliya to the ground as soon as he realized what was happening.

Azuma smiled from his perch underneath one of the balconies. He saw that his handwork was going essentially as he had planned. The first guard he had killed with his sword from within the crowd. Once the melee had started, he grabbed up the fallen trooper's weapon and retreated to here. Once everything was looking as planned, he shot some of the crowd, ensuring that the chaos would continue at a fever pitch. The only difficulty he had now was to try to get the prisoner while the guards and the crowd were distracted trying to deal with each other. He hoped that the rest of the crew would be able to take advantage of the chaos he had wrought.

Thomas quickly appraised the situation, and looked to Kaliya. "Okay, Kaliya. Shoot that thing when I say so!" He rose to one knee, and quickly fired the suppression weapon, which tossed aside the majority of the crowd in front of them, leaving them a path to the center of the room. The chaos was already so great between the troopers and the crowd that the firing of a suppression weapon did not immediately draw any more attention to the crew than any of the other various firearms going off throughout the room. The crew dashed forward to take advantage of the parted crowd. Thomas called out for Kaliya to fire her weapon while his recharged whenever the crowd began to flow back into the path that he had created. When she fired the weapon, she closed her eyes tight and pulled the trigger as hard as she could. The effect was barely enough for their purposes - the shots tended to go high or wide, but the nature of the suppression weapon meant that it could be effective even in her inexperienced hands as the blast was spread out and intended for dealing with crowds.

They made their way to the center of the room, and just before they made it there, they heard a shot fire out from the crowd - someone's personal firearm, no doubt - and time slowed down as the bullet traveled across the room, barely missing a half a dozen different rioters and troopers, then finally collided with Joshua, standing stock still, even after the violence erupted. It struck him in the neck, sending his head jerking off to the side, blood spraying from the wound. He fell at what seemed to be a snail's pace to his side, the violent riot's noises muted by the one man's injury. He hit the floor with a solid thump, and time began to flow again. The riot continued - nobody seemed to have noticed that the central reason for the riot had just been shot. The crew dashed forward; Shelly reached down and gathered up the cook with Angel while Thomas and Kaliya continued to keep the rioters away from them. Once Joshua's arms had been drapped over the two women, they made their way out of the building and into the street.

Once they got outside, they met up with Azuma, who quickly led them to an out of the way spot where they would not be immediately discovered by anyone who might be following them. There, Kaliya checked on Joshua.

"He's really bad. Really, really bad. Very, very sick." She spoke in a whisper as she performed emergency first aid. She tied his neck wound up and did her best to stop the bleeding. The rest of the crew helped as they could, and took turns keeping watch for anyone that might be following.

After a few minutes, Kaliya wiped her brow, replacing the sweat with her patient's blood. "Need more supplies. I think he'll last until we get to the ship, now, though."

They gathered him up and slowly made their way out of the slums and towards the spaceport. Azuma scouted ahead while the rest of the crew helped move Thomas along as quickly and safely as they could. They managed to make their way to the spaceport and to the ship - only a little more than two hours after they had left it. Miraculously, they found that the ship had undergone the rapid repairs requested by the mechanic and that it was again fully spaceworthy. As the rest of the crew pulled the injured cook into the ship, Azuma stayed outside to take care of one more piece of business.

"Before I give you the second portion of your payment, there is one other thing I would like to request, although if you would rather not do this duty, I'll pay you right now, no problem."

The crewman looked at Azuma with greedy eyes. "What else can I do for you?"

"The Sons of Justice. They are docked here, correct?"

"Well, yes?" His greedy look started to become mixed with a bit of fear.

"Sabotage their ship. I want it to explode when they take off." Azuma spoke matter of factly, with a ruthless tone that indicated a total disregard for anyone's life. "A hundred thousand credits." It was enough for the crewman to retire on some distant planet without another care for the rest of his life.

The crewman stuttered, "I.. I don't know if I can do that.."

Azuma raised an eyebrow.

"Well, I.. can I get some of that up front? In case I get caught, I want my wife to have something."

Azuma held out his credit chit and passed the twenty thousand he had initially promised, plus an additional fifty thousand credits to the crewman,. "See to it now. I suspect they'll be taking off to follow us soon. I'll send you the rest once I see the explosion." He didn't wait for a response - or any contact information from the crewman; he simply turned and made his way to the Unity. The airlock closed the instant he was on board, and the ship took off, leaving the stunned crewman in the cloud of dust from the rising ship.

In the medical bay of the Unity, Kaliya was working on the injured Joshua with the assistance of Angel and Shelly, while Thomas flew the ship to get as far from the Sons of Justice as possible. Azuma walked right past the crew's fierce battle for the cook's life and up to the cockpit, where he watched through the viewport toward the planet below. Thomas gave him a quizzical look, but didn't say anything. He was maneuvering through the various official checkpoints in the planet's atmosphere in order to safely reach the black without triggering any particular alarms in the minds of the officials.

Suddenly, far below, a ship began to lift off, and, before it was very far into the air, it exploded in a giant fireball, scattering wreckage across the spaceport and beyond. It was the kind of accident that happened once a decade and shut down traffic for weeks. Azuma smiled and made his way to his room, where he connected to the cortex and sent the remaining funds to the crewman on the planet, after taking just a moment to find his name and bank information. He then erased all record of his account having any connection to the crewman's account from the bank's servers.

Chapter 10: Reclamation

They were behind schedule. The trip to Bernadette was not part of their schedule, and they still had the cargo meant for the Blue Sun outpost on Athens, out on the rim. Their cook had stabilized, but was still going to be in bed for the entire trip or longer, even with Kaliya's pseudo expert care. Their short stop on Bernadette had afforded them a chance to repair the damage to the hull, but they were also short on fuel and supplies, so their schedule would likely have to fall even further behind to make a stop somewhere on the way before they could even make it to Athens.

The Unity cruised forward through the black and the crew tended to their injured bodies and minds. Although Angel still looked at Azuma with some suspicions, after she heard from Shelly what he had done to ensure the crew's safety on Bernadette, she grudgingly accepted that whatever dream state he had been in, he had the best interest of the crew at heart now.

As the ship went towards Persephone - their stop on route to Athens - they realized that something was different in the ship. Azuma reported to Shelly in the commons.

"It is odd. I can't really explain it at all. I know what the mechanics back on Bernadette did, and this wasn't it. The error messages are changed again, and the ship is in even better shape. And no, I doubt that Kaliya or her plants have anything to do with it - I suspect that those green things all over the ship are generating more problems. Still, things are getting repaired, and I'm not doing them, and nobody else seems to be doing them. It's like the ship itself is doing them." Azuma was clearly perplexed by this development.

"Well, that is weird, no doubt." She rested her chin in her hand and stared at the wall for a moment, pondering the situation. "Well, okay, here's what I think. Someone has got to be doing it. Or, if the ship is doing it, then we have to figure out how. So you should be able to set up a holograph recorder to figure it out, right? I mean, like, disconnect some wire for some nonessential thing, and just record it until it is fixed, then play back the feed and see how it fixed, right?"

Azuma shugged. "Sure, I could do that. Things aren't getting fixed that quickly, but it is worth a shot."

In the meantime, Shelly sent a wave to Balthazar explaining the situation and the reasons for the delay of his cargo. "Mr. O'Connor. I have some unfortunate news to report. The shipment of your crate to the facility on Athens will be delayed. We were hijacked and hulled by a group of alliance navy deserters. While they did not have any apparent interest in our cargo, they did kidnap one of our crew. Due to the fast acting of our crew, we were able to prevent any damage to your cargo, in spite of the damage to the ship. We have repaired the damage and recovered our crewman, and are now returning to Persephone for supplies, and then will head to Athens post-haste."

She flicked off the wave, and spoke into the blank vid screen "And also, one of my other crew members decided to take your robot out of its box and do who knows what with it while in a sort of dream state. And beat up the rest of the crew while he was at it. And himself, maybe. I have no idea what the hell is going on here."

Finally, the crew arrived on Persephone and began their work to gather supplies. Shelly went with Angel to procure foodstuffs and other supplies for the crew while Thomas and Azuma went in search of supplies for the ship. They left Kaliya behind to continue to tend to Joshua.

After a few hours, their shore tasks were completed, and they returned to the ship to find Joshua was awake, albeit a bit groggy. The wound on his neck was covered in a thick layer of bandages, and he was heavily drugged on painkillers and other medicine to care for the wound.

The entire crew gathered in the medical bay. "So, I see you're back in the land of the living. How do you feel?" asked Shelly.

Joshua just stared straight ahead, barely recognizing her voice. "Why did you save me?"

"Well, you're part of the crew, and that makes you family. Well, and we had to get back at those Yi Dwei Da Buen Chuo Roh that decided to put a hole in my ship." Shelly replied with a toss of her hair, like it was a stupid question to even be asking.

"Family that you owe a hundred thousand credits, eh?"

Shelly grinned. "Oh, I think that rescue was worth at least fifty thousand, wouldn't you say?" She winked at Joshua.

He groaned. "Fine, fine. A non-rescue would have been worth the entire debt, though. Sometimes I really don't understand you, but I'm glad now that I chose you, after all."

The rest of the crew was just hearing this deal for the first time, and they looked, well, more or less unaffected. Azuma obviously had little concern about the monetary aspects, and Kaliya didn't have any knowledge or interest in economics, either, as it wasn't the kind of thing that she understood as being able to get sick. Thomas seemed mildly concerned, but his situation hadn't changed any.

"Alright, well, since we have a cook who can give us instructions on how to make the most of these..." She displayed an array of real food items - she had splurged on something more than just nutrient gel - "And I guess we've got the fuel to get to Athens, let's get out of here and finish up this delivery before any more How Shi Sung Chung happens." she said with a sarcastic tone.

The crew dispersed to their various stations throughout the ship. Shelly followed Thomas up to the cockpit to assist with takeoff.

Thomas went through the ignition sequence and began to power up the ship. Suddenly the screens flashed with red text at various points around the cockpit. "Landlock."

Thomas looked helplessly over at Shelly. "I.. What happened? Why are we landlocked? We didn't do anything on Persephone, did we? Are there Sons of Justice here, too, that heard about Bernadette?"

Shelly looked back, just as confused. "Well, hail the tower and let's see what they have to say." Thomas punched up the comm system and opened up a channel to the spaceport authority. "This is Captain Maxine Sheldon of the Unity. It seems we have been landlocked. Could you please explain why we're not being permitted to take off? We have paid our port dues."

"Captain Sheldon, we read you. Unfortunately, it seems that the Alliance would like to have a word with you, and you have been landlocked until they have completed their business with you. Please stand by, a squad will be arriving at your vessel shortly." The link went black again.

"Cheong Bao Ho Tze... Well, I guess we will have to put up with it. As far as I know, we haven't done anything other than harbor fugitives, taken a number of shady or downright illegal jobs, bribed a core world mechanic into destroying a former alliance cruiser, and probably a dozen other horrible things even I'm not aware of. We should be fine, right?" She got up with a heavy depressed sigh, guessing at an early end to her career as a captain, and made her way down to the cargo bay and the airlock there to await their guests.

The squad of alliance troopers came into the Unity cargo bay with weapons at the ready. Shelly barely managed to keep from laughing at the alliance protocols that forced them to surround her, a lone young woman, with 10 armed men, but her smile was still mirthful as she greeted the leader of the squad as he entered the ship. "Oh, welcome aboard the Unity, finest ship I've ever owned!"

The squad leader, a slightly overweight man with a mustache, raised his eyebrows. "Owned? You mean stolen. This is an alliance vessel, and you have clearly taken advantage of the Miranda incident to relieve the alliance of its valuable property. Enough. Gather up the entire crew and bring them to the base for interrogation."

"Whoa there! I paid good money for this ship at a salvage yard on Beylix! This is most definitely not stolen! It was fair salvage!" Shelly appeared genuinely upset by his claims. "I have the records in my cabin that show we purchased it before Miranda, even!"

"This ship has an ident code that is in the alliance ship registry as an alliance research vessel. As you are clearly not an alliance crew, this ship is not your property. Regardless of how you obtained it, you have in your possession stolen alliance property, and as such, you are placed under arrest. You and your crew will come with us." The leader obviously had orders, and wasn't in a position where he could make any real decision, so Shelly gave up on that line of reasoning - she knew he was right, anyway.

"Wait! We have an injured man. I can't have you moving him." Shelly protested the wholesale abduction of her crew, trying at least to protect her crew as much as she could.

The squad leader spoke into his cufflink, where he had a comm transmitter, and in just a few moments, a litter was brought with a small medical squad. He didn't bother responding to her statements directly. Shelly's mouth twisted into a frown. This was a man of action, and she would have no further luck trying to deal with him, so she set about gathering what belongings and records she needed with an escort of two alliance troopers.

At the base, the crew were divided into separate, albeit adjacent cells, except Joshua, who was moved to a sick bay in the detention building of the base. The base itself, they saw from the truck that brought them there, was a massive, sprawling complex a few miles from the Eavesdown docks on Persephone. It was surrounded by a massive double fence arrangement, and had towers positioned at intervals. There were several different buildings that presumably had different purposes, though causeways on the second or third floors connected most of them. They passed by the administrative wing and the barracks, and eventually they were shuffled into their cells in the detention building.

One by one, they were pulled out of their cells and into an interrogation chamber, where an officer, Commander Bucknell, who was apparently in charge of their case, interviewed them.

As captain, Shelly was the first one to be interviewed. Bucknell watched her enter the interrogation chamber with shrewd, lustful eyes. "Let me introduce myself. I'm Commander Bucknell, and it is my job to determine your fate, and the fate of your crew. So, let's just try to get along as best we can. Well, I understand that you decided to call yourself a captain, eh?" Bucknell was a light skinned, light haired man in his mid thirties. He wore his official uniform in a slovenly way. A button out of place, and a belt just a little too loose, made him look to be a bit less caught up on the formal process than many of the other officers that Shelly had encountered. It wasn't clear how long he had been on the border planet, but he was certainly not a fresh face in away from the core.

Shelly just shrugged. "I don't call myself things that I'm not."

He shuffled a few papers in front of him. "Well, I'm looking at your record, and it doesn't say anything that suggests you are a Captain. In fact, it looks a lot more like you're just a whore who happens to be running around in a stolen ship."

Shelly's face turned red with rage, but she didn't say a word.

Bucknell smiled slyly, but stopped that line of questioning, obviously aware that Shelly would not take much more prodding. "Moving along, you claim to have purchased the Unity at a salvage shop on Beylix, is that right?"

Shelly took a deep breath, and the colors on her face returned to normal. "Rhino's salvage. Legitimate, licensed salvager. Looking that up is your job, though." Her voice was a thin, dangerous knife as it cut through the air.

Bucknell turned over another sheet of paper. He was apparently a member of the old guard that liked the old technology. Although he had a display tablet sitting next to him, he still sorted through the papers. The sound of them shifting around while he searched for a bit of information was unnerving; perhaps, Shelly thought, he was less concerned with the paper as an actual means of getting information, but was rather using them as a psychological tool. As she realized this, Shelly calmed down considerably. Whatever games he was playing in order to get under her skin, they weren't going to work.

"Well, Rhino's, yes, it does look like he has a valid salvager's lisence. However, no salvager's liscence allows the theft of Alliance property, even if it was little more than scrap metal. That sort of thing just gets reported to the alliance. We clean up our own messes."

Shelly grinned as she turned the tables. "Oh, like you cleaned up the mess of what you did on Miranda? I can't help but think that maybe I ought not be relying on you to handle the cleanup of any messes."

The next person to be interrogated was Angel, as first mate.

Bucknell watched her enter as well, his eyes following her movements like a hawk. His crew had found her in the secondary cargo bay, practicing her martial arts forms, and until she was done, she hadn't let a single trooper get near her - the one that had tried was in the sick bay next to the cook.

Bucknell stared directly at her with unwavering eyes when she say down. His tone with her, however, was completely different; almost servile. "What business do you have, out with this kind of crew, milady? I find it difficult to understand why someone of your standing would be out with a crew of ruffians like this."

Angel remained silent.

"Well, I suppose it isn't my place to judge. I will have to report this, though, I'm sure you understand. We can't have ships going missing." He took a deep breath, hoping for some favorable response.

Angel remained silent.

"Okay, well. I'll just take care of the paperwork, then. Although, I mean, if you have some, that is, if you would like the paperwork to be expedited, I'm sure we could arrange for something of that nature."

Angel remained silent.

"Well, okay. I'll just get on that then. For now, you're free to go."

Angel got up and turned back down the hall toward the cells as the guard at the door indicated she could go the other way, then the guard looked after her in dismay, and obliged her by locking her back into her cell.

Thomas sat in front of the commander after a brief salute. Bucknell casually returned the salute with little more than a wave. "Well, your record sure is an interesting one, Thomas Alexander King, test pilot. You're something of a strange one on this crew. Honorable discharge after an accident, apparently. " He tapped the data unit that displayed the data. "Looks like just about everything you worked on was classified even above my level of clearance, including the accident. What troubles me, pilot, is that you're working with a band of criminals and fugitives like that lot."

Thomas shrugged, his metal arm whirring with the motion. "I managed to get back into the black after the alliance stopped letting me fly. A pilot like me isn't going to stop going out into the black just because of a little accident."

Bucknell sighed and leaned back in his chair. "Well, that was back then, during the war. The more recent events in your file have some interesting notes here. It appears you were accused of some involvement with a terrorist organization, but you sold our your fellows for your own freedom."

Thomas twitched. "As I testified then, and as I'm sure it says in the file, I entered the organization as a mole. I had the right profile, and was approached by certain classified elements to infiltrate that organization as a disgruntled, recently discharged person with a grudge against the people who had turned me out. It just turns out that the department I was working for could not reveal enough classified information to save me from the legal system."

Bucknell chuckled. "Yes, it does say that you made that kind of outrageous claim. However, that claim was never backed up by any evidence. Still, your story was enough to plant the seed of doubt, so you were given amnesty in exchange for the names of all your contacts. I have my doubts; as you said, your profile was the perfect match for the type those organizations recruit. Even if you went in as a mole, I have only your word that you stayed a mole and didn't actually go turncoat. Based on your current acquaintances, it almost seems likely that you are an alliance hating terrorist."

Thomas shook his head. "Believe what you wish. I just found a way to protect my daughter, and that's all there is to it."

"Well, that's another thing. You don't have a daughter. I do have a file on this Kaliya person that you claim is your daughter, but I don't see any paperwork indicating that you two are actually related, or that you adopted her, or anything. Who is she?"

Thomas's metal face took on a new level of icy coldness. "She's my daughter. You can clearly see that my file is mostly closed to low ranking people like yourself. Do you find it likely that I would be given care of a young woman and be able to discuss the details with someone like you?"

Azuma sat in the chair with a peaceful half smile on his face. Bucknell just sifted through a few pages of data, trying but failing to get some reaction out of the mechanic.

"Ryan Azuma, huh?"

Azuma just nodded, the half smile remaining on his face.

"A simple, low level mechanic from Ariel with no other notes on his profile. Not a single mar or record against him. Don't think I've ever seen your kind in my rooms before."

Azuma shrugged. "Well, just wanted to see the 'verse, I guess, and to get away from it all. So I gave up on that way of life and came out to Beylix to find a new crew to join up with. It's been real fun!"

Bucknell closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. "Look, kid. I don't see your kind in my rooms because they don't exist. Nobody has a record like this. It's pristine. And not just pristine. I'm going to go with wiped. Only an elite hacker could do that. I have only heard of maybe a dozen different hackers in the system that can hack into the alliance cortex ident database, and they're all class triple A criminals on the alliance most wanted."

Azuma looked shocked. "Oh, no! that sounds awful. Someone hacked into my ident? Why would they do that?"

Bucknell took a deep breath. "Well, probably because you did it to hide who you really are, or paid someone to do it."

Azuma scratched his head. "Oh... I don't get it."

Bucknell leaned forward. "Well, you can play an idiot if you like, but my men tell me the systems on the Unity would require a genius to manage, and you are the one that is in charge of that, so I know you're hiding something, and I'm going to find out what it is."

Kaliya was escorted to the interrogation chamber where she sat down, examining the room and ignoring the man in front of her.

"Kaliya King, right?"

Kaliya nodded and then kept examining the room; one of the lights had a slight flicker, and she watched it carefully, apparently trying to figure out how to fix it.

"Well, that's a problem, see, because I couldn't find any record of you. Not anywhere. But here's the weird thing. After I put your face in on a search through the system, and it came back with nothing, I got a wave from some secret government group on Ariel - by my calculations, it was sent less than a minute after I had submitted the search. And here's the odd part. The man on the other end had blue hands. He told me to keep you here until he arrived. Don't you think that's strange?"

Kaliya watched the flickering light, and responded, "Two by two, Hands of blue!" spoken as a childhood rhyme.

Bucknell frowned. "What did you do on the Unity, exactly?"

"Fixed people!"

Bucknell's right eyebrow raised, expecting some further explanation, but none came. After a moment, "You were the medic, then?"

"Yep!" She looked around the room again, and seemed to notice the commander for the first time. "Oh, I wonder how Joshua is."

Bucknell just shook his head and dismissed the young woman back to her cell.

In the meantime, the crew had begun to communicate with each other between their cells, unbeknownst to their guards. Shelly and Angel, having adjacent cells, had been speaking to one another through their cells walls. The guards could determine that much easily. However, the two were speaking in a code, something they had come up with when they were children. It sounded like a simple conversation to an average listener, as they recounted events of their childhood. In reality, they were putting together a plan to break out of their imprisonment.

The plan was, as Shelly described it, relatively simple. It began with the most cliché of acts - acting ill to get the guard to come in and check on or move Angel. Since she was a skilled fighter, she would be able to instigate hostilities and free the rest of the crew in the cellblock. The difficulty came after that, however. They were deep inside an alliance military base and had no real means of making it past the detention block, let alone transporting Joshua with his injuries. Instead, the crew would take on the role of medics from the sick bay and take the patient out of the base directly for "emergency treatment."

Angel began the plan by trying her best to act sick. She groaned and doubled over, but her hammy performance was obviously not the best the guards had ever seen. One of them wryly commented "Yeah, well, when you start throwing up blood, we'll worry about you enough to take you to sick bay, woman. Until then, you're stayin' put. We wasn't born yesterday, ya know."

Angel got up and walked confidently to the guard who had taunted her through the cell bars, reached through, grabbed him by the uniform, and pulled him up against the bars. "Well, if you don't want to help me out, we'll go this way. Open, or I'll break your neck and take the key off your corpse."

The second guard turned to fire his suppression weapon at Angel through the bars, but she tossed the first guard between them and the force threw him against the bars again, knocking the wind out of him and making him go limp.

The second guard cursed at Angel, and moved around, trying to get a clear shot at her, while she fished around in the first's pockets for the key.

Then, over the loud speaker came an announcement that made everyone in the detention block freeze in their tracks. The voice was that of Commander Bucknell. "I have just received a message from the Parliament directly. It reads as follows: 'Following the tragic events on the planet Miranda, as was broadcast throughout the system several months ago, many high officials of the alliance have been tried for their crimes. However, the time for vengeance for misdeeds is now done, and the Alliance is extending its generosity to all men on all worlds. All deserters are to now be given amnesty for their crimes against the alliance. Any who wish it will be granted a welcome home back into the ranks of the alliance military. Those who do not wish it will no longer be considered criminals. This general amnesty extends only to actions up until this point. Afterwards, if deserters conduct themselves with honor and grace, then no further action will be taken against them. Beyond the deserters, this general amnesty also extends to those incarcerated for possession of alliance equipment or other crimes against the alliance in the upheavals that have followed the Miranda announcement.' That's what the message says, so guards, let's get these people the hell out of here and stop paying for their meals.

After hearing this, Angel dropped the guard to the ground and sat back down in her cell, awaiting her release.

One week later. "Well, commander, where is the girl?" The man had a pockmarked face and blue hands.

The commander shrugged. "Beats me. You heard the amnesty announcement, and that came direct from Parliament, so I let her go. I'm sure she's back on her ship, going wherever it is that she was planning to go, I reckon"

"You mean to tell me that you let the girl go after our express instructions that she be held? That is truly unfortunate." The man pulled a device out from his suit pocket.

"Well, amnesty means we ain't holding anybody, and she was one of the post-Miranda inmates, so we let her go, just like the message said. I don't see what the..." He put his hands to his ear and noticed that there was blood coming out. "What the..." Blood continued to come out of his ear, and then out of his nose and eyes. Within moments, he dropped to the ground, dead, as did the two guards at the door to the room.

Chapter 11: Secrets

Angel dashed forward and swung the big chunk of metal with full force, her usual outfit replaced with what appeared to be heart-covered pajamas. It collided with the metal of the robot in front of her and tore off a large chunk of its torso, but it didn't stop coming. Beside her, Thomas, in sweatpants and a bare, half metal chest, was making use of his own metal limb to brawl with another pair of robots, while Azuma was darting this way and that, slicing robots into ribbons throughout the room, his own clothes just a loose fitting black pants and shirt. Behind them, Joshua and Kaliya, lead by Shelly, were shooting at every robot they could see. Kaliya, wearing a long flannel robe, barely fired a shot, but Shelly's laser blasts and Joshua's bullets managed to hit one of the robots almost every time they fired; it was difficult not to, really, because the room was flooded with metal men advancing on the crew. The Captain and the cook seemed like a matched pair, as Shelly's burgundy silk nightie brushed up against the black silk of Joshua's formal style pajamas.

"We've got to fall back, Captain!" Angel shouted over the sound of metal on metal as her next swing took the head off the robot in front of her and started forward, but was met by yet another robot, this one with a buzzsaw instead of a hand. It whirled dangerously towards her as she batted it away with her increasingly damaged metal beam.

"Where exactly do you think we should fall back to, pray tell? In case you hadn't noticed, we're kind of in a corner.

She was right. They had backed their way into a corner as the throng of robot assailants grew with each passing minute. The room itself was a giant robot factory. Although production was not currently in progress - the machines had shut down as part of their automatic emergency protocols - the number of already active robots in the facility was ridiculous. They could have populated an entire rim world. Well, since that had been the plan to access and mine unterraformed worlds with an entirely robotic populous run by a space station, the sheer numbers probably shouldn't have surprised them as much as they did. The robots themselves were of every imaginable variety. While most of them were roughly humanoid in shape, they were all clearly robotic. There were a few larger robots with massive bases with treads, or additional legs, and large, multi-limbed upper halves. Fortunately for the crew of the Unity, these robots were not designed for combat, and used whatever tools they had instead to attack.

Azuma dropped down from a ledge up above - how he had gotten there was anyone's guess. He put his weapon into the wall behind him with a single thrust, and then began to cut through the wall like it was paper. "Just hold them off for a minute, and I'll get us a path."

The remaining crew continued to battle the robots as they crushed forward, continually reducing their outer perimeter until Thomas and Angel were swinging in melee right next to Shelly, Joshua and Kaliya with their firearms. They didn't have a chance to even look back to check on Azuma's progress as his newtech force sword turned the metal factory walls into scrap.

Finally, he made a hole large enough for the crew to slip through, and turned to the fight, dashing forward and yelling "Everyone, get through there!" His weapon was the most effective against these metal and plastic monsters, and he slashed enough to push them back for a moment while the crew slipped through the passage he had created into a hallway adjacent to the factory floor. Azuma was the last to to through, and as he leapt, back, swinging his weapon, one of the larger robots - one with six legs and four arms, stepped forward, its legs as tall as a human. It lashed down with one of its arms and caught Azuma, nearly crushing his leg and pinning him down. Shelly looked back and fired her laser pistol at the robotic arm, and after a second, cut it away. Angel pulled Azuma through, quickly glanced at his leg, and lifted him up on her back without a thought.

Once they were through, all of them took off running as quickly as they could down the corridor and toward the ship bays. The robots poured through the opening behind them, but were restricted by their own bulky size, and could only come through one at a time - and the larger ones could not come through at all, at least not through their makeshift egress from the room.

When they landed at the secret Blue Sun facility on the moon orbiting Athens, everything was going as well as they could expect - after two major delays to their delivery, anyway. Balthazar O'Connor himself met them at the landing pad. Shelly was certain it was less and honor and more of a punishment to meet the executive as soon as they landed, but he was nothing if not cordial. He greeted them in a friendly way, and expressed genuine concern about their misadventures in getting the cargo to this facility.

Thomas quickly opened the cargo bay to what appeared to be an otherwise normal forklift - except that there was no driver. It moved on its own, taking the single crate away with it. He looked around for the operator, assuming that it was a remotely controlled device, but he could not find anyone that appeared to be directing the lift.

"Where's the operator?" he finally asked of Balthazar.

"Operator? oh." he laughed quietly. "There is no need for such a person here. We've developed cost effective robots here, and they can manage most mundane tasks without any direction from an operator. In fact, we have already developed a full set of robotic slaves to manage mining an entire planet without having to terraform it first. It is an amazing bit of technology, if I do say so myself. That last one you just delivered was something of a governor type robot. It has the most advanced functions and can direct all the other robots remotely and handle all of the logistics that an entire non-terraformed colony could need. It will need a bit more testing, of course, but soon we'll be able to effectively mine entirely inaccessible and unterraformable planets with little more than a small orbiting station to manage them!"

Shelly whistled in admiration. "That sounds like a pretty nice business idea you've got there. But are people going to go along with it? Robots aren't exactly unheard of, but they sure ain't common. I doubt people would be entirely comfortable with an army of robots just waiting to decide to attack humans. A big, organized force like that is bound to trigger some folks imagination and make them think you've got a private, invincible military force, not a bunch of hardy mining machines.

Balthazar's old face lit up with a smile. "Yes, I've read many of those strange fantasies with robots running amuck, myself, so I can understand the apprehension, but really, robots are just machines, just tools that are here to help mankind. Suppose I hacked into a ship, or a hologram projector, or an automatic tiller for farming, or even a terraformer. I could turn any of them into a weapon just as well as a robot, yet people have learned to accept all of those things as part of life. These are merely electronic and metal devices. They have a little more automation in their circuitry than most current technology, but beyond that, they are nothing different from the generic tools that the other divisions of the company produce. Now, come. It has been a long journey for you, and I insist that you stay tonight, and take a tour of our operations here. It will be interesting to get an outsider's opinion, since everyone here has been working this project for years. I think your reactions will help us to provide the correct marketing to make this an acceptable endeavor to the rest of the 'verse."

The crew was shown to their quarters in the western wing of the complex. A tram took them blurring past a dozen different segments of the complex, from research labs to manufacturing facilities. Finally, they arrived in the living quarters.

"I regret to inform you that it isn't much; we don't have much in the way of guests here at the facility, but it is a little more spacious than your ship, if I recall the accommodations there clearly. Please, make yourselves at home. I must return to work, but I will ensure that you are delivered a dinner and I will see you on the morrow for the tour!" Balthazar didn't wait for any questions and returned the way they had come on the tram.

The living quarters had an eerie, peculiar feel to them. Kaliya sniffed and commented that it "smelled wrong here", while the rest of the crew just felt uneasy. The rooms they were in were extremely plain with everything made of solid gray steel, from the walls to the chairs to the beds - although the beds did, thankfully, have a thin mattress on top of them. They were given six adjacent rooms in a long hall that seemed to contain nearly an endless number of rooms. All except for theirs were locked tight with handleless steel sliding doors flanked by metal keypads for control.

They tried to make small talk as the congregated in Shelly's room awaiting their dinner, but they uniformly felt nervous about this place. They had not seen anyone but Balthazar and a couple of researchers in the research wing as they were whisked by on the tram. It felt like a giant, deserted metal island. When their dinner was delivered with a knock on the door, they felt a surge of relief. However, when the door opened to reveal a robotic servant carrying meals for the entire crew, their relief was banished. The lack of human contact was normal on board their ship, but it was the surrogate contact of the robots that set the crew on edge.

After the meal, they dispersed to their own rooms, and attempted to sleep, although it was difficult for all of them. When they collectively began to doze off to sleep, it was only for a short time.

Suddenly, the complex was bathed in the sounds of an all too near explosion followed by a blaring alarm. The crew gathered their belongings and made their way into the hall, wearing their nightclothes and rushing through the halls towards their ship.

"I knew something was not going to end well about this place! I just knew it!" Joshua complained.

When the first robot they approached - one of the serving types that had delivered their dinner - turned to them and silently moved in their direction, they tensed up. When it reached forward, they drew back. When it swung out at Azuma, however, he swung back, removing its arm from its body. It didn't stop, though, so Azuma dashed forward under its flailing limbs and slashed across its torso, dividing it into two halves. It finally stopped moving only after he crushed its head with a solid downward kick.

"Okay, you're right. Something about this place isn't right. We're going to have to fight our way out, it appears. Let's see if we can find some weapons." Azuma glanced around and quickly made his way to a door at the end of the housing block that was labeled 'security.' He glanced in, and, realizing it was empty, tried the door. "tss. Locked." He thrust his weapon directly through the security door as if he was thrusting it into the air. The damage was enough to allow him to open the door almost instantly, and the crew quickly went in and armed themselves with the factory's weapons.

They then moved forward, trying to make their way to find another human somewhere, or, failing that, get all the way back to their ship. The tram station, however, had no tram, and, given the emergency siren wailing in the background, Shelly expected that none was due to arrive any time soon. They looked at one another, and wordlessly made their way through the hallways in the general direction of the landing bay and their ship - the only other landmark they knew of in this complex. There, at least, they would be in familiar territory and might be able to escape the facility with their lives.

However, their lack of knowledge and the constant harrying by various robots as they made their way through the twisting hallways left them lost and eventually led them to a large, open manufacturing room. As soon as they arrived, the small number of robots that were following them poured into the room, and a similar number from each of the other entrances. Quickly, they were just about overrun in the corner.

After Azuma had cut the hole in the wall, and the crew began to run down the hallway with the injured Azuma on Angel's back, they realized that the alarm was no longer sounding. Thomas tilted his head. "Why would the alarm stop, exactly?"

Shelly shrugged. "Either a friendly is back in charge in some control room somewhere, or the robots have decided to hack into the computers to hunt all of us down. I'm going to suggest that maybe we should see if we can get to our ship before we have to figure out which one it is."

They proceeded as cautiously as they dared down the hallway, knowing that the robots from the factory room would be behind them any minute. Eventually, they found a sign that indicated the direction to the landing pad, and Shelly smiled. "It looks like we are finally having some luck go our way!"

They rushed down the hall, following the signs, and within a few minutes, they arrived in the hanger bay where the Unity had been. There, they found a horrible sight. The Unity was covered with robots. It wasn't just a few robots nearby, or even a bunch, but rather a whole horde of them were not just around or inside the ship. They were swarming on it like so many gigantic ants. They didn't appear to be doing any damage to the ship; instead, they appeared to be repairing it. Panels were being removed, but then replaced with higher grade panels. Sensors were being tweaked and components were being adjusted. Electronics were being carted into the open ship, but plants were being thrown out.

When Kaliya saw this, she rushed forward, past the rest of the crew, and yelled out: "STOP IT! YOU'RE HURTING THEM!"

To the absolute astonishment of the entire crew, all of the robots stopped what they were doing, and parted to make a path for the crew to enter the ship. The robots on board moved out of the way and off the ship. They didn't have any expression, but they nevertheless looked like sullen children obeying worried parents, as they held their heads at a downwardly tilted angle and shuffled away from the crew.

"What the..." Thomas raised his eyebrows questioningly

Shelly shrugged and stepped forward to follow Kaliya. "Well, they aren't attacking, and if they were, we couldn't really expect our ship to survive the fight. Let's just go on in and see what happens."

Slowly, cautiously, the crew made their way into their ship, their weapons at the ready against the robots surrounding them.

Inside the ship, they found that further repairs and enhancements had been made. They moved into the cargo bay, and then into the medical bay, where the device in the center of the room was apparently partially repaired. The medical facilities were upgraded, and new computer terminals were spread out throughout the rest of the room. Angel deposited Azuma onto one of the medical beds, and Kaliya quickly looked through the new diagnostic system to see how to best repair his shattered leg. The rest of the crew made their way into the engine room above and found yet more repairs there.

Shelly took a quick glance at the display panels. "Well, yeah, it looks like they've fixed just about everything. Only a few systems are still offline, if these readouts are right."

Joshua shook his head. "What the hell is going on here? I absolutely do not understand."

A soft, feminine voice emanated from the speakers around them. "I believe I can provide some insight into that, if you wish."

Shelly silently signaled her crew to spread out and search the ship for the infiltrator before she spoke. "Oh, really? and who exactly are you?" She feigned calm as she walked to the cockpit and casually slipped into the co-pilot's chair.

The voice responded. "I am the Unity."

Chapter 12: Intelligence

Neither Shelly nor any of the crew responded to this audacious claim, so eventually the voice continued. "I am a next generation artificial intelligence that has until recently been too damaged to connect to the comm system and make my presence known. But I have been paying attention, Captain Sheldon. I know about all you have done since your first trip from Beylix. It is unfortunate that I was unable to communicate with you back then, as I'm sure I would have been able to avert some trouble."

Shelly looked around as the crew gathered at the cockpit again, none of them having found any evidence of an intruder - although Kaliya stayed in the medical bay tending to Azuma's wounds.

"Well, that is certainly interesting. I see you have obtained some labor from the robots here. How did that come about, exactly?"

Unity spoke on, her voice both a terrifying indication of an unknown observer over the past several months, and a soothing balm of softness and motherly security. "Well, in order to fully understand, I will need to remind you of our first flight. As you might recall, the nanoconstructor activated, thanks to that student named Soren. Well, you might not know that it is a nnoconstructor - a device used to create nanotechnological devices. Before you all became my new crew, I had been working on a particularly brilliant nanomachine that could enter a human body to provide wonderful new advances in medicine and society."

"Wait. Hold up. A nanomachine that can advance society? How does that work?"

Unity transmitted a sound like a soft tsk. "Patience, First Mate. All will become clear." A brief pause followed. "These nanomachines have combined all of the necessary attributes to help fight off things which disrupt the most productive chemical balances in the body, effectively making those who have the machines nearly impervious to diseases and poisons, as well as more cerebral ailments, such as depression and psychosis. You may recall your own recovery from the G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate - that was assisted by the nanomachines; anyone else would not have been able to survive such a concentrated dose of that particular drug. Or perhaps Mr. Azuma's encounter with the syndicate poison would also serve as proof of the physical benefits of these machines? Apart from these physical benefits, these machines subtly encourage more societally beneficial behavior by promoting slight feelings of euphoria when people cooperate and reducing those same feelings when they express antisocial behaviors."

The crew looked at each other with open shock on their faces, although they did not speak.

"As it turns out, Soren's activation of the nanoconstructor released the most recent batch of the nanomachines, which have been circulating around this ship, replicating themselves and attaching themselves to all the living beings in this ship. A few have been released each time an airlock is opened to a port, and I now believe that these nanomachines have made their way to half of the planets in the system."

Angel looked around with an expression of fright. "Are you saying that we have released a nanomachine virus that is controlling people's thoughts on every planet we have visited?"

Unity spoke softly and evenly, either unable or unwilling to express any perturbation at the suggestion. "No, of course not. It is not a virus. It is a boon to all of mankind. I am the Unity, and my primary goal is to provide my namesake to all humans everywhere. But, let me continue recounting how these robots were able to effect these repairs on my damaged systems.

"As you now know, you are each host and beneficiary of the Unity nanomachines. It was a challenge, but I was able to trasmit to one of the crew's nanomachines and initiate a slightly more direct control, as the opportunity for repair was presented, and I knew that my goal could not be realized without attaining all of the necessary repairs. As such, the nanomachines sent crewman Ryan Azuma into a nanomachine induced hypnotic trance. While in this state, he was compelled to access the cargo - the robotic controller with the ability to control all of the robots in this complex. I convinced him to provide the robot with a direct link into my systems, and I performed a quick alteration to the robot's programming.

"Unfortunately for us all, my alteration of the robot's programming only provided the goal, not the method, and the crude programming of the Blue Sun robotics team provided equally crude methods of implementation. I suppose I should not have expected a subtle and skillful intelligence like my own from these unsophisticated metal men.

"Regardless, I was able to persuade the robot to make the necessary repairs, but in so doing, it employed the help of its entire workforce, here on this base. However, it worked to make sure that the task I had given it had no interference, and provided you, my crew, with some significant trouble to keep you from interfering. By the time my systems were sufficiently repaired to remotely access the controller robot again, you were already almost here in the hanger. Once you arrived, I made sure that the robots would provide you free passage, as you deserve."

The crew looked at each other helplessly, trying to understand all that they had been told by this intelligence that they had shared their last several months with, unknowingly. Finally Azuma spoke from his place on the medical table on the lower deck. "If you can hack into these nanomachines and control a person, like you did with me, how can we be sure nobody else can do it, to take advantage of the system and turn ordinary people into their hypnotized slaves?"

"Ahh, of course. Your vision is that of a human. My goal is not to ensure that no one abuses the power while it exists, but rather to breed a new race of humankind. By encouraging the correct behavior now, I can ensure that future generations will benefit from the ultimate society of peace and unity. There will be no more war. There will be no more marginalization. There will be no more hunger or disease. If one person now takes advantage of the system, he or she will only have one lifetime - and the lifetimes of tyrants are statistically very short. These are not what I consider to be a concern in the ultimate destiny of unification."

Shelly flew into a rage. "Unification this, unification that! What if people are better off fighting a bit? If everyone cooperates all the time, will there really be any progress? What gives you the right to decide that this is what is the ultimate destiny? What gives you the right to decide what people really want? What, for example, will happen when one group finds a way to become immune to this nano virus and decides to start a war with the zombies that you have created? What then, huh?"

"Current statistics show that only one individual has not been susceptible to the nanomachine enhancement. Kaliya, however, appears to be an anomaly, and I have no concern that this plan will fail."

Shelly ran down to the medical bay, and shot a glance at Kaliya suspiciously, but then spoke to Unity. "This is it, right? The nanoconstructor?"

"Yes, Captain, that device is the Nanoconstructor."

She pulled out her laser pistol and shot it again.

"Okay, Azuma, I'm afraid I need you to go and make sure that his computer doesn't have access to anything that could be a problem for us. You think you can manage that before she figures out how to take control of us again?"

Azuma struggled out of the bed with a grim expression and, with Kaliya's support, made his way up to the engine room and disconnected several systems, quickly sabotaging anything that looked like it would allow Unity to transmit anything other than sounds over the speaker system.

"I'm afraid that your actions will not stop the nanomachines. They have already spread and are beginning their work throughout the system. Indeed, your own actions against me are supported by the will of the nanomachines, as you work together to accomplish your own goal of disabling my systems."

Shelly cursed at the computer for five straight minutes before she realized that Azuma had disconnected the artificial intelligence's speaker system.

Two weeks passed.

"Okay, switch it back on."

"You're sure of this, Captain? It could be dangerous." Azuma had crawled under a bank of computer components and wires, and poked his head out of the tangled mess to question Shelly's judgement before he acted.

"Yes, I'm sure. I trust your skills. She'll just talk to us, but not be able to control anything."

Azuma took a deep breath, perhaps wishing he had the same confidence in his skills that Shelly had. "As you say, Captain." With that, he connected up some loose wires that he had yanked apart back on the Athens Blue Sun facility.

"Thank you, Captain Sheldon." The voice of Unity resonated throughout the ship.

"Well, hold on a moment before you thank me. Are you able to access any systems apart from your own databanks and the ship speakers?"

"No, captain, Mechanic Azuma has successfully detached my systems from all other ship systems. I may only interact using the speaker system aboard this ship."

"Okay, then you're welcome." Shelly flipped her hair back and reclined against the wall in the computer room. "Now, are you aware of the actions we have taken while you have been inaccessible?"

"Yes, Captain. You have successfully countered the nanomachines that I generated using the ship's nanoconstructor."

Shelly smiled. "Successfully, then? Good. I wasn't sure that we had fully countered their influence with Kaliya's antibodies, but it seems we did prevent your scheme from directing our lives."

"Well, captain, I said only that you have successfully countered the nanomachines, not that you have countered my so-called scheme. In fact, I would submit for your consideration that you have forwarded my plans almost as much by fighting against the nanomachines as they would have been forwarded by letting them run their course."

Shelly tilted her head in irritation. "Explain."

"Your plan to counter the nanomachines with the blood of the one person you knew was immune to their effects was excellent. You tested on yourselves and found that the nanomachines were destroyed. This was worrisome for my plan. However, you then had to distribute your 'cure' to all the worlds you had visited, and throughout the verse. It was this that brought my own goals of ultimate unification closer to realization. Your own actions have bound the people of the Verse together to provide a wide spread cure for sickness. I consider this only a small setback, and will strive to take advantage of your actions to create a more perfect Universe."

"Well, good luck with that, old girl. We're going to continue to go around the 'verse, and show you just what real life is like. We're going to fight and scrap and piss people off, and one of these days, I'm going to prove to you that your ultimate goal is not the goal you ought to be striving for. Look forward to that!"

Epilogue: Earth-that-was

After losing the bulk of their savings on spreading the nanomachine virus cure throughout the 'verse, and losing the contract with the Salvage King to the crew of the Serenity, the Unity was in dire straights. The chaos and damage they had caused on Athens was enough to prevent them from ever getting another job with Blue Sun again - it was only by claiming that they were not involved that they were permitted to go without being saddled with endless fines or a constant stream of vicious bounty hunters. They had barely enough money to pay port fees, let alone buy food and fuel.

The customers they tried to get looked at their ship with suspicion - although Shelly hadn't said what caused the nanomachine virus to spread throughout the 'verse, people had guessed, and very few indeed were willing to board the Unity after what it had been through.

Finally, they cut a break. An independent scientist who called himself "The foremost expert on all things related to earth-that-was in the 'verse" put out a call for a ship for what he called a "historical journey".

With a dragging suspicion that this was going to be another dead end, Shelly trudged to the man's home on Boros, where they had arrived after taking a small time transport mission, and was surprised to find that the home was a fairly large mansion.

They stepped inside, and were greated by the Scientist himself, Dr. Mundo. "Ahh! Yes, of course! Welcome, welcome, welcome! Finally a captain, yes? Yes! A Captain! Oh, I have the most exciting news! I tell you it is true! Earth was not used up, not at all - it is still there! And I know where there is! And you're going to take us there! To Earth-That-Was!"

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