Author's Note: Well, here goes nothing. Let me know what you think of the prologue, particularly how I introduce the three characters. They're all OC's who are important to the storyline, but don't worry, canon characters will show up very soon (as in next chapter). It's my first fic, but I'm an adult, so give it to me straight.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything other than Kip, Marl, and CID.

Prologue: The Getaway

"Looks like five ships just launched from the starboard fighter bay" Marl announced over the intercom of the modified J67 freighter as it sped away from a Dreadnought class battleship bearing the green trim of a Cornerian vessel, "and I'm picking up energy readings from the port fighter bay, too. Looks like they cracked your firewall, Kippy. Sorry" she apologized.

Seated in the cockpit, Kip Phoenix swore softly. He hadn't expected the "present" that he'd left in the Dreadnought to last very long. After all, it was just a simple firewall that prevented the mag-locks keeping the fighters secured in the bays from disengaging, but he had hoped to have at least locked the freighter into its jump sequence by the time the Cornerians cracked it.

"Well, that's just fan-freaking tastic" he groaned as he continued to furiously scan the ship's navigation computer for a safe haven to flee to. "Well, since you're already in the gunner's nest, Marl, would you mind getting on the main gun and cooking a few of these bastards for me?"

"Broiled or deep fried?" the she-wolf asked.

Kip flicked a switch on the dashboard, powering on a holographic HUD that kept him updated on the integrity of the ship's shields, hull, and power routing. "Just broil 'em, if you please, miss" he requested offhand, giving a few quick commands to the nav. computer. "Broil" was the pair's code word for "stun" or "disable", whereas "fry" or any variation on it, obviously, meant "shoot to kill". "I'd rather not give the Feds reasons to add to the already high bounty we're likely to have hovering over us because of this job." He diverted more power from the shields to the thrusters, hoping to minimize the speed advantage the Cornerian interceptors undoubtedly had over the freighter. "Oh, and I hope you strapped in. I'm pushing the engines to their maximum now."

"Of course I buckled up, 'Dad'" Marl chuckled, and a low humming was heard as the ship redirected some of its power reserves to the main gun and turrets. "Broiled Feds, coming right up. Mind if I fire up the auto-turrets?" she asked.

The nav. computer relayed data on the next sector of the system to Kipp's biomechanical eye, and despite mounting frustration, the half-fennec fox grinned. "By all means; the more guns the merrier".

He ordered up a list of potential ports in the sector he was examining, giving thanks once again for the upgrades to his neural interface that he'd bought on Macbeth last month. He could establish a much stronger connection with remote enabled computers than before, and the machines in turn now responded all but instantaneously to his mental commands; he and his partner would have been toast four times over today, at least, if it hadn't been for the tiny processor hardwired to the half-fennec's brain. Still, he had no idea where they could run to, now that the Feds knew what his partner and he had done. Corneria, obviously, was out of the question; the Federal Prison Station in Sector Y was easier to break into undetected than that rock. Fichina, Katina, Aquas, and Zoness, the four other planets that had officially joined Corneria to form the Cornerian Federation after the Anglar War, were also dead ends, for obvious reasons.

An alarm blared, and Kip noted four red radar blips coming up on his tail. The one in front fortunately froze and faded to grey, Marl apparently making short work of the point ship, and Kip wasted no time blasting forward at full speed, banking sharply to the left to make their enemies' job a little harder, and hopefully make Marl's a little easier. He continued to perform periodic banks and, though too many could potentially blow the freighter's stabilizers, quick flips and barrel rolls as he continued to demand more options from the nav. computer.

Eladard was close, and neutral territory, but Aerospace Dynamics practically called the shots on the planet these days, and Kip doubted his "dear old uncle", George, would risk losing the good will of the Cornerian fleet, his company's longest standing client, just to protect his rogue nephew.

Titania and Macbeth were similar stories: neutral planets caught between the Federation and their rival entity, the recently formed Venomian Directorate. They would be all too willing to hand over two thieves, if only to ensure the Cornerians didn't have a reason to "send in the troops"; and Kip knew the Feds wouldn't think twice about invading a planet to find Marl and him, knowing what they'd taken from them.

Normally, Dash Bowman's quickly burgeoning autocracy would be all too happy to turn a blind eye to the presence of anyone who had pissed of the Cornerians, but the half-fennec knew that the second any of the chimp's eyes and ears got wind of what he and Marl had boosted from the battleship, they'd be just as eager as the Feds to get their hands on it. That ruled out Venom, Fortuna, and Papetoon, which had recently surrendered control to Bowman following a military coup. The two smugglers had shared a long laugh over that bit of irony.

The ship shuddered, the dashboard displaying an additional thirteen percent dip in shield stability. So far, the frieghter's shields were down to 63 percent. Kip glanced at the radar, and noted six… make that eight red blips closing on the freighter, fast. "Are you actually firing that thing or what, Marl?" he demanded.

"Don't get your boxers in a knot, Kipp!" his partner snapped in response, the sound of laser fire intermixing with her voice. "We are dealing with a battleship full of fighters, here. Besides," she huffed, "if you'd been paying more attention, you'd know that I've already disabled four ships, so why don't you help me and get us the hell out of here!"

Kip gripped the controls tighter. "I'm working on it!" He'd need to buy a little more time. "CID!" he yelled.

A roughly spherical, black droid, about one and half times the size of a medicine ball, propelled itself out of its charging unit with a powerful thrust of two thick arms attached to his frame, and hovered into the cockpit, regarding the pilot with the three orange optical sensors arranged in a triangle on its front.

"Yes, Father?" CID, or the Combat and Infiltration Drone, asked.

Kipp grimaced. He hated how the droid refused to call him anything but "Father". "Would you go take control of the aft auto-turrets, CID? You're a better shot than the onboard combat computer".

CID whirred loudly, a sure sign he was excited. "Certainly, Father" he said, turning to go join Marl in the turret control room.

"And CID" Kip continued, concerned, "don't tamper with the firing settings this time. The fact that we're firing ion charges, rather than plasma, is NOT an accident."

CID's voice modulator emitted a reasonable imitation of a sigh. "As you wish, Father" he moaned, and continued out of the cockpit.

Kip shook his head. When he'd given CID the prototype Combat Logic Program he'd swiped from one of his uncle's labs, he hadn't expected it to make CID relish the idea of battle, but that was the only way to describe the way the droid now took to any combat related task.

"We've got incoming missiles" Marl's voice once again came over the intercom. "Now might be the time to use that toy you've been saving."

Kip chuckled. "Well, shit. I was getting attached to the little fellow, too."

"I'll buy you a new one next time we're on Titania, brother."

Kip could hear Marl smiling through the intercom. Fortunately, it was contagious. "I'm gonna hold you to that, sis" he warned, flipping a switch on the console. He was rewarded with a muffled hissing sound as his "toy", a special ion mine that detonated when it sensed the heat of the encroaching missiles, was released. "Ion Chaff", they called it on the black market. The superheated metal thrown around by the explosion baffled the missiles' guidance systems, and even better, Kip had the satisfaction of watching five enemy blips turn grey on his radar as their pursuers passed through the high density electron cloud left in the wake of the explosion. He'd have to thank that ballistics expert he'd bought the mine from next time he saw him. His expression fell again as he went into a new series of evasive maneuvers, trying to minimize the damage as a three new fighters dropped his shields to thirty percent with a salvo of laser blasts; more like if he ever saw the guy again.

A quiet "beep" drew his attention back to the lines of text running down the sightline of his biomechanical eye. The nav. computer was requesting permission to jump to one of the "transit stations" orbiting Sauria. Normally, the space stations where off-worlders looking to do business with the Dinosaur Clans congregated were great hideaways, since no military force, save that of the Saurians themselves, was allowed access. However, countless bounty hunters had moved their base of operations to the stations, chasing after convicts inadvertently released by the chaos of both the Aparoid and Anglar invasions. They'd be more than happy to hunt Kipp and Marl on the Cornerians' behalf. The half-vulpine gritted his teeth and rejected the nav. computer's request.

"Father?" CID sounded… frightened? "The enemy fighters seem to be falling back a bit. I believe that the battleship may be preparing to join the fray."

Kip switched to long range sensors, and sighed when he notice what CID had. There was an easily noticeable build up of energy towards the front of the Dreadnought, where the main cannon was. Apparently the Cornerians had finally gotten fed up with them. Luckily, the clever hacker had left one last, much more advanced "gift" inside the battleship's systems. The energy signature continued to build up for a few moments, then became erratic as the virus kicked in, forcing the mirrors that focused the energy into a massive plasma blast to realign mid-charge. Within seconds, the pent up energy found a rather violent manner of release, taking the entire main gun with it in a fiery blast that Kip could see out the canopy of the cockpit as he performed another evasive bank.,

"Holy hell, Kip!" Marl scolded , assuming the explosion had been her partner's doing. "Next time you rig up something like that, tell me, so I'm not scared shitless when I don't need to be!"

CID added his two cents, sounding dejected. "And you refused to let me shoot to kill! Why do you get to have all the fun?"

Kip sighed. The droid was right, several Cornerians were probably vaporized in the blast, but he really needed to teach CID a lesson about killing's relationship to "fun". "I thought we'd be out of here before the battleship managed to break my firewalls. It was a precaution" the half-fennec was a little steamed at the situation, and his voice began to crescendo. "You know I don't kill unless I absolutely must, CID!"

"Easy, Kip" Marl said, trying to be as soothing as possible. "I don't like that the plan's gone to hell, or the killing for that matter" she continued, taking down another fighter as she spoke, "but unless you want to add our corpses to the pile, I'd recommend you just hurry up and send us somewhere."

Kip sighed. His partner was right. He'd been trying every maneuver he could think of, and while it had bought them time, the relentless Cornerian assault had left their shields in shambles. They were barely hanging on at twelve percent, and Kip didn't need his instruments to tell him one of the freighter's wings had taken damage; the thing was much more unruly than it had been half a minute ago. Problem was, he had almost exhausted his options. He thought they'd be best off jumping into the middle of the asteroid belt just beyond Corneria, and hope that they found a derelict mining station that could be brought back online. Normally, that was the kind of risk he wrote off as "suicidally heroic", and he tended to shy away from even the remotely heroic, but at this point, Marl and him, for lack of a better phrase, were postively screwed if they didn't lock into a jump in the next few seconds. He was about to give the order when the nav. computer delivered him one last, unexpected option.

It was an old set of coordinates. Kipp had heard the station had gone active again since the Anglar War, but there were no guarantees that it was still in that spot. Most stations not bound directly to at least a planetoid's gravitational field drifted slowly over time, and he'd heard a rumor that this one had recently gone fully mobile with a set of experimental, high power warp engines (no doubt pieced together using pirated technology). He also had his doubts the guys who ran the place would open the front doors for thieves. Or at least, for thieves who'd swiped one of their shipments a year ago. Bounty hunters shied away from the place, however, and the station masters themselves preferred other forms of work to hunting bounties. He gave the ok for a jump, and the nav. computer did its thing. The freighter took a couple jarring hits before the jump began, but was soon safely locked into its warp route.

Once the freighter was safely on its way through hyperspace, Marl entered the cockpit, the flickering lights (Kip made a mental note to look at the lighting system when they next landed) embedded in the walls casting odd shadows on her face, making the normally copper fur around her muzzle, face, and ears appear much closer in tint to the black, copper, and grey streaked coat that began between her ears and dominated the back of her head and neck. "Well, we've had cleaner getaways" she admitted, shaking her head and grinning. "Mind telling me what took you so long, Kip? You're usually more decisive than that."

Kip smiled innocently. "Well I thought you could use the targeting practice, kiddo."

"Watch it, buster, you're not that much older than me."

"All right, all right, no need to kill me just yet, sis" Kip help up his paws defensively, maintaining an expression of mock fear. "Honestly, though, I had a hard time finding a safe haven. The Cornerians aren't going to let this slide; they know what we took. I'm almost certain of it."

"True" Marl admitted with a sigh. "Why else would they bother sending the ship's whole fighter contingent after us?" She rested her head on her left paw and glanced at the half-fennec pilot. "So where'd you finally settle on?"

Kip chuckled nervously. "You're not gonna be happy, but" he said, "we're going to see if the Sargasso Industrial Station will let us dock."

The she-wolf's emerald eyes grew two sizes. "Star Wolf's home base?!" she gasped, sitting up. "You honestly think Star Wolf is going to provide us sanctuary?"

The half-fennec shrugged and leaned back in his chair. "You've got a better idea, sis? O'Donnell and his boys are wanted men too, you know, and the Cornerians are the one's fronting the money for their heads as well."

Marl crossed her arms and frowned, clearly not convinced. "An alliance of the wanted, then; and just how do you propose to sell Star Wolf on the idea?'

Kip just grinned. "Now you know I don't plan that far ahead, miss. We've got a good four hours before we leave warp, provided none of the damaged engines blow out," he explained with a wink. "I think I can whip up something that'll at least pique Wolf's interest by then."

"Oh yeah? How?"

"Same way I always do!" Kip pulled his black and grey paddy cap down so it partially covered his eyes, and crossed his arms behind his head. "I'm gonna take a nap! Wake me up when we're about half an hour from the station. Oh, and don't let CID fiddle with the turrets. If he keeps trying to increase their firepower without my help he's gonna blow this whole outfit to hell."

Marl nodded and smiled; Kip hadn't slept much in the days leading up to this job, and he knew she'd been worried about him. She might be his "little sister", but she often acted more like his mother. "All right, bro, I'll keep this bucket flying for you. Do me a favor and try not to snore."

Kip grunted and closed his eyes. "For the last time, I don't snore."

"Whatever you say, Noisy."

Kip suppressed a chuckle and focused on the low humming emanating from the console (he found the noise soothing). As he drifted off to sleep, he began to imagine what it would be like meeting Wolf and his gang. A number of the scenarios that popped up ended with the smuggler getting shot, but he couldn't suppress of feeling of ecstatic anticipation. It was one of those moments where he admitted to himself that he was often a bit of an adrenaline addict.