The Chain Unbound

Chapter 4

'And She Laughed No More'

With exception to the occasional family vacation and the few times off world for her education, Mikolo sh'Estihi travel experience off-moon were non-existent.

She felt little difference between the luxury liner serving as the family yacht and the tramp freighters hired out by the University of Freecloud for their expeditions. Faster programmable matter coalescing and expanded replicator database options were all academic with speeds measured in nanoseconds and the menu options ranging in the millions. As she found luxury entertainments to be banal, she made her own fun by deep diving into another book or listening to the music of old worlds.

She thought, therefore, a courier vessel like the Master and Servant would be no different.

Until she had to live in one for an orbit.

"A stardate. No... a day." She reminded herself. Not knowing how long they'd be on Titan Station. She found prudence in re-adjusting to the temporal measurements of human space.

It didn't help alleviate the cramped conditions that were her quarters.

Her quarters were the definition of post-Burn sparse. The programmable matter allowed for a small dresser, a platform bed, and a small desk and chair. Wide enough for her to stretch, if barely, and only because she was so short. No expanded holo-viewers to patch her tricom as there was little room to project its user interface.

There were prison cells on the home moon larger than the Master and Servant's guest quarters.

But it was preferable to the proposal brought forth by the vessel's 'Captain'.

Anib th'Thyniss, the Captain of the Master and Servant and Regulator in the employ of Mikolo's clan, explained how couriers usually traveled alone,. They rarely hosted any passengers, with exception to the cheap, the poor, or the desperate willing to suffer the accommodations for a quick ride out. Anib offered his bed, situated in an alcove behind the double-stationed helm and open to visual from all space (unless its expansive viewing port was blacked out for privacy). Anib went to detail how the guest quarters were tight for anyone, much less a redbat-sized shen female like herself. And it wasn't like he could use the guest quarters. They didn't leave enough room for him to stretch! So, to solve both their problems it was natural they share his spacious king-sized bed. You know, for the sake of mutual comfort.

And pay no mind to the pinups and posters of alien popstars and holoporn actresses in various stages of undress. Besides, he reasoned, it gets lonely in space, and don't shen females share similar interests in the female form as their male counterparts? Why not admire their beauty and see where the voyage took them?

Mikolo kept the guest quarters, but for the sake of spacial sanity she sought another refuge. She thought one presented itself in the securely locked cargo hold among the storage tesseracts. When she broached the subject, Anib testily told her to mind her own business, as the cargo was not to be disturbed. Besides, why worry her pretty little head about several tesseracts full of grain?

After giving terse instructions not to mess with not so much as a self-sealing stembolt, Anib grumped back to his pornucopia to watch holos.

Keeping herself from wasting away in the cabin fever environment proved a further challenge. Exercising in the common area either brought unwanted attention and leering, or a snappy demand to keep the volume down. It was easy to disturb his activity, except when he slept, his snores reminiscent to an ice saw back home.

Requests to use the communications suite to contact her parents brought further aggravation. The last time she requested an open line to the home moon, Anib lectured her on the importance of subspace radio silence.

He put into condescending words, "This isn't a luxury cruise, Miko! This is a courier vessel. We're traveling through lawless sections of space, and our cargo makes us a target for any amateur raider looking to make a name for themselves. So no, you can't call home. I don't care how homesick you are."

"Really?" She flexed a skeptical antenna. "They want to rob us for tesseracts full of grain?"

Anib flushed deep blue and spoke down at her incredulously. "Yes. Starving people want our precious grain. Seriously princess, this never occurred to you? Must be nice living in your universe."

The accusation of naivety stung her. She spat, "Really? You think I don't know anything? Then educate me."

"Alright then! First lesson is mind your own business. Life's cheap out here. It's easier for strangers to shoot you than to put up with you. So why don't you go play with your artifacts instead of bothering me with your nonsense?" As he stormed off to the cargo bay, he muttered, "Sometimes I think you're not worth the effort."

Mikolo retorted out of delayed spite. "Got to give effort to get effort!"

Anib closed the cargo bay hatch before her words landed. She instantly regretted her words. Not out of any sympathy for Anib, but out of regret for lowering herself to his petulant, childish level.

This left plenty of time to examine the contents of the time capsule in further detail.

The data module was of particular interest. Once she reconstructed the data, she discovered a wide range of files numbering in the gigaquads. Small by modern standards, but a wealth of data from the golden age. The time capsule's original owners fancied themselves people of culture, filling the data module with music files, art, written works, and visual media spanning the old Federation.

Out of place in the files was the folder pertaining to star charts and planetary data. Hidden in one of the music folders marked 'Klingon Death Metal', she found data on flashpoints of temporal incursions, unusual temporal activity, schematics on a chroniton torpedo system, and a complete planetary survey on a Klingon monastery world called 'Boreath'.

"My poor ancestor. I know you tried, and I know you didn't have much to work with. Guess you couldn't know the temporal wars churned things up badly enough to make your data useless."

The music collection proved an interesting diversion, as there were songs she missed in her historical studies. The styles jumped wildly from the aggressive to the harmonious, all serving well to drown out Anib's activities. It was an excellent diversion while she examined her antique flabjellah and phaser. Replicating additional parts for both was easy. So was their disassembly and reassembly, guided by historical holo-instruction programs. Soon she had perfectly functioning replicas of both, leaving the originals in their antique state.

Considering the restrictions Anib placed on her travel and activities, she preferred the room.

It also gave her time to plan.

First, what to do once she reached Titan Station. The station was in the orbit of a moon around Sol System's second largest gas giant. It was practically a shuttle run to old Terra. Couldn't be difficult, right?

She broached the subject one night at dinner, asking about the viability of seeing the former Federation capitol world. She made her case for historical study, no more than two or three days.

Anib almost spat out his lunch. ""Seriously? That's the last place we want to go. Even if they hadn't closed their borders for the last century they wouldn't take too kindly to us if they found out where we're going. Titan Station's been raiding Earth shipping for years. They see where we're going, the Earth Defense Force'll likely see us as enemy combatants. For the love of the gods, why do you think we're running silent? It's in case the EDF get off their lazy asses for a change and start chasing us. So we're not going anywhere near Earth. Besides, plenty of culture and history on Titan Station. You'll see. I'll take you to their red light district. You'll love it."

Understanding the etymology behind the red light district better than the man who proposed to go there, she politely declined.

But once on Titan Station, she would need a guide. Anib would have to do; she may need his invitation to the red light district after all. Once one appealed to his ego and vanity, another practice she avoided during the journey, Anib became incredibly indiscreet and braggadocios. He talked about the places to go and people of note at the station and the Colony.

With her own latinum, and the knowledge she gained, Mikolo could make her own way to Earth from Titan.

Then there was warning her parents. She held a lingering skepticism towards James Corrigan's warning from the past. Still, despite this and a contentiousness with her parents, she didn't want them in danger. Thavaan could handle himself. Anyone stupid enough to attack her Zhavey risked the wrath of the matriarch of the School of the Three Sisters, its hundreds of students, and its centuries tradition of Estihi Clan close combat training. Charan and Shreva, however, were the ingenuous products of the gilded cage. They would be helpless in the face of any retaliation. They needed to know. If she was wrong once danger didn't materialize, her quad of parent's dismissiveness would be no different than usual.

One obstacle remained. It was hard to send a communique with the subspace communicator locked out. Only Anib had the authorization.

She was more confident in her ability to get a message out than she was navigating an alien space station. The programming and user interfaces of Anib's vessel were unchanged from centuries of programming basics. Part of her job entailed plenty of digital data recovery and programming languages in multiple alien languages. If she could beat a hur'q dna lock, she could eventually crack Anib's access code.

Eventually being the operating word. A code cracker program meant for duotronics took longer on a computer used to processing on a quantum level. She had to wait.

For hours. She agonized over every second lost that could ensure her parent's safety. She suffered the flip-flopping unwanted advances and unsubtle belligerence of the Master and Servant's captain.

It came to a head when he broke the silence on a mostly wordless dinner in the commons area.

"Miko, I don't get it." He set his cup of katheka down with too much force, spilling its contents over its lip. "Why are you so unfriendly towards me?"

She stopped in the middle of guiding chopsticks full of noodles into her mouth as she felt unseen, stiff hands clutch at her heart. It was the tone she found unsettling. It lacked his usual clumsy attempts at joking intimidation, taking a graduated step into actual frightfulness with a chilling and flat delivery.

Mikolo finished her noodles, slowly, to buy time to find the right polite words. "Anib, how long have we known each other?"

"Since primary school."

"And how long have you shown any interest in me?"

"Since we first met."

"Ok, now how long have I shown any interest in you?"

Anib considered a moment. "Hardly ever, which I don't get. I've been nothing but nice to you since we first met. Surely you've noticed."

She conceded, "I've known for years."

He snapped, "Then why didn't you say anything? I mean, what sort of contempt must you have for me? That you'd known all these years, after all those times I tried to gain your notice, only to be rebuffed? You know how insulting that is?"

She spoke calmly out of an urge to defuse his temper. "Look, it's not like I wasn't flattered once. I was! It's that I never felt the same way for you as you have for me. I thought you'd figure that out, move on, find someone who'd love you for who you are. Instead you keep fixating on me, and that only serves to hurt you, to hold you back." Cautiously, she placed a hand on his shoulder, to reassure her agitated traveling companion. "It's not personal, or out of any hate for you. We both want different things, and they're not compatible with each other. That's all."

"And why in Gre'thor not?" Anib demanded. "Haven't I done enough to prove I'm worthy of you?"

She took a step back. "It's not about worthiness, Anib! For the love of the gods, I'm not interested in you. That won't change! Now please, I'm worried about you. This obsession you have with me is not healthy. You're perfectly suitable for someone else. If you stopped going after me, you'd learn that too. So please stop, for both our sakes."

Mollifying Anib felt like disarming a quantum torpedo without tools, but for a moment his stillness gave her hope.

Anib slapping her hand away shot her optimism down and brought back the clutching panic in her heart. She took a step back as Anib turned around, towering over her, a full foot above her own height. His antennae flattened to the top of his head. His voice carried a low, chilling snarl. "Yeah, well it's nice to know all those years of you stringing me along were for nothing, huh? Nice to know I'm good enough for everyone else except the great Princess Mikolo!"

She stammered, "Stringing you along? What?"

"What do you mean WHAT? You know exactly what you did!" He shrilled, speeding up the beat of Miko's panicked heart until she heard the blood rushing in her ears, stuffing her antennae and itching them like a powerful static shock. "I showed you ever kindness in the universe? Like all the males I fought off for you? All the little favors, the gifts, the times I tried to get your attention? But that wasn't good enough, was it? So I WORKED MY ANTENNAE OFF for your thavaan, for VERY LITTLE wages, just so I could get his blessing to court you, so I could some day keep you in the lifestyle you're accustomed, so you'll stop running out of EXCUSES TO SAY NO!"

"That's not how it..."

"THEN HOW IS IT THEN?!" He palms slammed down on the table, forceful punctuations to his sentences that rattled the programmable matter furniture and left Miko flinching with each powerful blow. "HUH?! HOW IS IT?!"

Out of panic, Mikolo yelled, "Calm down! Please! What are you going on about?!"

It was his reassertion of calm, strained under panting breath and barely concealed contempt, that scared her the most. "I'll tell you what I'm on about, rich-bitch. You have no idea what goes on outside your pretty little head. You're a long way from home. There's nothing between you and your family but hundreds of parsecs of empty vacuum. And the next closest stop? They'll eat you alive, some literally, but not before running a shuttle service over your skinny ass."

Anib turned his back on Mikolo to walk off.

"Out here, your family can't protect you. You can't protect yourself. Only I have that power. All things to consider when deciding whether or not to be nice to me, Princess."

Mikolo returned to her room, waited for several painful, slow minutes for her heart rate to go back down and her panic sweat to stop excreting, before she thought of a new plan.

Part of her felt unsurprised, but frightened beyond expectation. The bully boy she grew up exactly how she expected. Problem was, they were well outside of childhood and none of it was cute or excusable. There were too real consequences to his behavior, and she didn't want to be on the receiving end of it.

She needed off the Master and Servant and away from Anib.

There was a single escape pod, locked out by the ship's controls. To further exacerbate her situation, the Sol System was the closest at five hours away. She couldn't use the escape pod while there was reasonable expectation Anib would turn the Master and Servant around and re-capture her. Titan Station, or the Titan Colony, were no longer viable options, as they were territory more familiar to Anib than herself. That left Earth. Her intended destination, the one place in the solar system Anib was eager to avoid, and now her only viable option of escape. Ejecting while the Master and Servant was closest to the human homeworld offered her best chance of freedom and safety.

Her code cracker had three more hours of testing combinations to go. It spoofed a sample of Anib's DNA, copied from the waste extraction buffer. She needed the password to unlock access to the ship's systems.

Her time capsule and personal effects, packed on a hover sledge. She had her antique phaser belted to her waist, her flabjellah sheathed and hooked to a sword frog on her belt. She was ready to go.

When the code cracker dinged its readiness, she waited for Anib to fall asleep. For a lazy brute, he regimented his schedule well, falling asleep at the same time each day. Mikolo expected him to wake up minutes before they arrive at the Sol System, leaving her a narrow time window to eject out of the ship and aim the escape pod towards Earth.

Rocketing off to a planet with many unknowns, away from a man with a confirmed violent streak. She admitted to herself there was a lot in this plan that could go wrong.

But she was part of a causal loop. If James Corrigan, the man in the loop with her, already encountered her four more times, then it stood to reason she had to succeed. Or they never happened. Right?

Mikolo wished she brushed up on her temporal mechanics instead of studying the time capsule's contents because she wasn't sure. She reasoned it best not to test the theory.

It was a needless distraction as she slid her cabin door open and padded down the hall to the commons area silently. Years of training under her zhen mother at the School of the Three Sisters taught her to walk silently over sheets of wrapping paper. The cold metal floor on her street slippers was much easier. She made no sound. Anib's deep snoring behind her was undisturbed when she hit the nighttime mode on the control panel, muting its audio cues and dimming the holographic projections. She accessed her tricom, loaded the code cracker program, and submitted the falsified login credentials. Seconds later, she had access to all the ship's systems.

First, to ready the escape pod and plan its trajectory, all done in seconds.

Then the warning message she composed during the journey. She accessed the communications suite, copy pasted the message and brought up the send button.

Anib's inbox caught her eye, including the last message he read.

It pertained to Anib's shipment of kemocite to Titan Station.

Her antennae shivered and sprang up as she read the message. "Kemocite? We're flying on a ship full of kemocite?!"

Even in the laissez-faire mercantile stations of the Emerald Chain, kemocite was a controlled substance because of its volatility. The same properties making it desired as an explosive compound also made kemocite unstable and difficult to transport. In many solar systems it was illegal to ship kemocite anywhere deeper than the Van Allen belt, permits or not.

Judging by the way Anib reassured his buyer he'd act with the greatest discretion, Mikolo figured their cargo was illicit.

The last line of the message sent her in a panic.

'The Old Man doesn't need to know.'

'The Old Man' was the informal name his subordinates gave to her thavaan, the Chief Patriarch of the Estihi clan.

Her situation was clear. She was traveling in a warp-capable bomb with an equally unstable and obsessed captain, on their way to double-cross her clan in ways her original plan to cut and run couldn't begin to equal.

Stronger arguments to leave she'd never heard.

She stopped, her urge to find the escape pod and eject stopped by guilt. Her parents still deserved a warning. She hunched over the console, pulled up her letter, and added a warning about Anib and the kemocite.

Robbing her of valuable seconds.

Mikolo hit the send button as soon as her antennae felt the tingle of a rapidly oncoming distortion in the EM field.

"YOU BITCH!"

She had seconds to sidestep a wild swing from behind. The sudden violence sent her panic into overdrive. She reacted to Anib's sudden attack by instinct, to avoid, then to run away.

"YOU SLUT!"

Anib rushed at Mikolo, reaching to grab her. When she backed into the copilot seat, she stopped enough for Anib to close the distance and grab a handful of her hair. She screamed, trying to pull away, but the pain in her scalp was too much. She had too much of her hair, his grip too tight to pull loose. Anib had little trouble pulling her head back. His backhand struck her face hard. She felt the roughness of his weathered knuckles abrading her skin, rattling her skull, breaking the orbit of her eye. Her vision shrunk as her eye bruised over. The base of her antenna felt a kink from broken cartilage. She saw flashes of light in her eyes. She lost her footing as she fell to the ground. Mikolo rolled, shielding her face and scrambling on all fours in an attempt to stand back up.

"YOU WHORE!"

In the panic and confusion, she left herself open to Anib's thick leather boot. His kick felt like a fast metal weight slamming into her gut! She felt the urge to vomit, cough, and scream in pain, but with the air driven out of her lungs and the overwhelming ache in her stomach, the best she managed was a wracking, sputtering cough. She tasted the blood in her mouth, felt it trickle down her lip. Blinded by eyes that refused to see anything but stars and pain, her antennae sensing the swirl of the EM field as Anib loomed over her, her first urge was to curl up a protect her stomach and head, unsure where the next blow would land.

Years of experience being struck in sparring practice didn't compare to the sudden, intimidating violence or a real assault. She wanted to shrink into a ball. She wanted to cry in pain, leak tears, yell out for Anib to stop.

But part of her was chiding herself, like the lessons of those same sparring practices, yelled in shrill cadence by her zhen mother. "You scared of getting hit? That's what they want! Don't give them the satisfaction! It's only a little pain! You can take it! And you can give it too! Fight back!"

Mikolo found her nerve and opened her eyes and her hand to reach for her belted phaser pistol.

To see Anib's disruptor, flashed to full materialization in his fist, aimed at her head.

"Reach for that musket of yours and I'll show you what a real modern weapon can do." Anib, savage satisfaction on his leering face, flicked the safety on the disruptor on his fist. The weapon whined as it loaded a charge.

Mikolo's flopped on the ground, her hands away from her weapons, feeling ashamed she found her nerve too late.

"See? That's better. Now let's see how badly you fucked us..."

=/\=EDF Command to ENS Benjamin Hornigold, we have unknown subspace communications activity near the Jovian perimeter. Suspect a light vessel running under stealth. Identify, assess, and respond, over.=/\=

=/\=ENS Benjamin Hornigold to EDF Command. Probably just Wen's Raiders. Didn't we work a deal out with them? Over.=/\=

=/\=We did, Hornigold. And we checked with their liaison. Not theirs, but they're expecting traffic today. Give them a minute to find out who. In the meantime set course to intercept. Command out.=/\=

"By... the... gods..." Anib whistled, looking at the screen and switching back to training his disruptor on Mikolo, "I didn't think you could fuck me any harder than I ever could fuck you, yet here we are. You called your parents?!"

"They had to know..." She croaked.

"Know what? How your little stunt called the Earth Navy on our heads?! Or how your parents never heard from their darling little princess ever again after her skinny ass went out the airlock?! You blew our stealth, you moron! Now we're really fucked!" His fingers furiously stabbed the pilot controls. "Your value to me is seriously being tested right now. You better hope to the gods the local navy doesn't break it's habit of staying in Earth's orbit, or we'll have serious problems here!"

=/\=Hornigold to Command, we have positive signature match on the vessel. Standard Emerald Chain courier ship. With a little something extra. Radiological readings from the hold are off the scale. Over.=/\=

=/\=Command to Hornigold, just got word from our liason on Titan Colony. That's a kemocite shipment from Andoria. Since they started co-operating with us they've chosen not to interfere. You're authorized to seize the vessel and capture its occupants. Over.=/\=

=/\=Thank god for their newfound spirit of understanding. Moving to intercept. Hornigold out.=/\=

"Not that! My parents... are in danger..."

"Really? You don't say?" Anib looked away at his controls. He cursed under his breath as his fingers relayed commands. The vessel changed course. He quickly glanced at Mikolo, causing her to freeze up. "It's funny, I wasn't sure whether your old man finally wised up to what's going on and had you on my ship for your own safety, or if you faked his message and were running away from home like a spoiled brat. I figured you'd eventually wise up and call home once things got a little too real for you. Didn't think you'd get this far though. That's on me."

"What?" She said, confused, "That's not it... please, you don't understand..."

"No, YOU don't understand. You lived in your sheltered estate, digging around your precious little artifacts, while I was out in the REAL universe. And guess what? Universe is going to Gre'thor in a torpedo case, little miss. The next delivery season your Old Man's counting on? Emerald Chain don't have any more dilithium. No more dilithium, no more delivery season. This was my last chance to make it big before it all went down. If you came with me, all the better."

The shock was as hard as the blow to her stomach. She was expecting Anib not to listen, but didn't expect a revelation like his to come out.

The Emerald Chain? Successor state of the former Federation? The only superpower who survived and thrived after The Burn? Collapsing?

It sounded like the most absurd statement she'd ever heard.

If it's true, all of Clan Estihi's economic interests were doomed. They relied entirely on interstellar shipping. And with Clan Estihi in charge of the home moon, they would take the blame for the biggest economic collapse in Andorian history since The Burn.

Anib's wild eyes and twitching antennae showed he believed his rantings.

And saw no no reason to argue interstellar politics while he had a disruptor aimed at her head.

An idea came to Mikolo. She needed Anib to keep talking and buy her more time. Her voice was returning while she fought off the nausea and pain. "Ok, say you're right and everything's gonna collapse soon. You're stealing from my thavaan to set yourself up, huh? How far you think you'd get before my family hunted you down?"

"Far enough. Got a big enough dilithium crystal to travel halfway across the galaxy and this score will land enough latinum to live in comfort for the rest of my life. And I'm serious. They won't come after you. They can't. You'll see after a couple months. By the time it's all over you won't have a clan to return to! If the Emerald Chain doesn't tear Andoria apart trying to keep things together, whatever tyrant who takes over won't let your clan's collaborating ass live to tell about it."

Mikolo found herself laughing. Dark, bitter, mocking laughter.

Anib's antennae flexed as his face fixed in a confused look. "You think me being able to do whatever I want to you right now is funny? Is that it?"

Her laughter stopped between fits of giggles. There was no humor in her face. She had her eyes locked onto Anib, her antennae pointed straight like spears at a target. There was a deep anger in her that settled her stomach and steeled her resolve. "Nice story. Here's one for you. It's about what I said to you at our secondary school graduation. You remember? I said I'd sooner die than mate with you?"

"Guess we're gonna test that little theory out, are we?"

"Guess so." Mikolo stood up on shaky feet. "But you look uncertain, and I know why. You know you can't possess me, but if you kill me out of spite, you won't have access to my power or wealth. Maybe you do want to return to Andoria, take things over. You know what that makes me? Your key to legitimacy. Well, you can have it! You won't have my heart or my body, but I'm more than glad to give up my power, all you'll miss out on if I'm dead. What do you say? Put the disruptor down and go from there?"

Anib considered for a moment. She waited for the opening, his dropped arm.

He pressed the disruptor to her forehead and chuckled, "All I did, all I put up with, all I ever wanted, it was all so I could have you. All you had to do was give our love a chance to grow." His finger flipped through the safety on his weapon. "Since you made it clear that's never gonna happen, what's the point in having anything else?"

Mikolo closed her eyes, and waited for the disruptor bolt to disintegrate her body.

"I hope staying cold hearted was worth it for you, bitch, because now you're gonna die."

A beep at the console caught both their attentions.

They were being hailed.

Mikolo and Anib glanced over at the console. Sensors detected a vessel in close range, coming in fast.

"Will you be answering that?" Mikolo asked.

=/\=Unidentified Emerald Chain vessel! This is Captain Kirpisuu of the Earth Naval Ship Benjamin Hornigold! Come to a complete stop and submit to inspection! Comms, harmonic beam off. Command, we're being completely ignored. They're going full impulse for Titan but their shields aren't up and they aren't answering our calls. This behavior is unusual. Over.=/\=

=/\=Copy that, Hornigold. You are authorized to fire a warning shot off their port bow. Over.=/\=

=/\=Roger Command. Let's see them ignore this.=/\=

The longest seconds of her life were spent waiting for Anib to decide between pulling the trigger or answering the hail. His indecision left him beyond agitation, fluxuating between the two decisions, wary of Mikolo's every twitch while losing seconds and the hailing vessel's patience.

Anib sweated, his words coming out uncertainly. "Probably the Jovians giving us an escort."

A bright blue beam of light lanced past the viewscreen.

As a towering, horseshoe shaped starship sped across their bow, they heard a booming voice. =/\=Unidentified Emerald Chain vessel! This is Captain Kirpisuu of the Earth Naval Ship Benjamin Hornigold! You are in violation of regulations C1922 and F031 of the United Earth Charter. Come to a complete stop and submit to an immediate inspection! This is your only warning!=/\=

Anib looked once more at the console and back at Mikolo. She was seeing a timing pattern, informal, but exploitable. The console. Keep him thinking about the console. "Great, now they're skipping polite subspace chatter and going straight to hull vibrations! Answer their hail before we all die!"

"SHUT UP!" He screamed, pulling the disruptor away from her forehead. He paced in an agitated fashion. "Just shut up and let me..."

Mikolo spotted an opening to exploit. She felt the blood rush to her head, the thunder of her overactive heartbeat as her fury took over. She charged Anib, closing the distance faster than he re-aimed his weapon. She grabbed his disruptor arm, locking it under her armpit, her heel tripping behind his, pushing the unbalanced Anib over with a palm strike to the jaw.

By the gods was the much larger Anib heavy! She barely kept a grip while he fell and spat out teeth. He depressed the trigger of his disruptor weapon. She felt the intense heat of discharge on her back like a sunburn, but she held on, steering his body away from the consoles. While she had surprise on her side, she pulled the disruptor out of his grip while kicking his shins, tripping him up. As Anib fell, he kicked out with his big boot, catching Mikolo in the chest.

She rolled over the pilot console and landed on her back.

Pain up and down her back. The shock of sudden violence.

She could handle both now she had purpose.

Survive.

She fumbled for her phaser as Anib crawled on all fours to retrieve his disruptor.

=/\=Hornigold to Command, we have shots fired inside the unknown vessel. Shooting to disable. Over.=/\=

=/\=That's a negative Hornigold. You risk igniting the cargo hold. We want them alive. Beam them out.=/\=

=/\=Negative, Command. Too much interference from the cargo. Suggest exterior perforation before pacifying. That'll calm them down and leave them vulnerable to transportation. Over.=/\=

=/\=Very well. You are clear for exterior perforation. Don't screw it up.=/\=

Anib and Mikolo were both picked up off their feet when they heard a rending crash above their heads.

During the standoff, Anib did more than ignore the Hornigold's call. While agonizing over the decision to answer the hail or keep Mikolo pacified, he also failed to raise the shields.

Making it easy for low-powered phaser shots to punch through the courier vessel's hull.

Without a chance to hold on to the nearest handhold, they had enough time to close their mouths before being sucked into space.

After experiencing the intense warmth of Sol's sun on their skin, the pelting of small bits of debris on their skin, the chilling rush of vented atmosphere, and pain their blood vessels rupturing, the two Andorians hovered on the edge of unconsciousness. They were beamed aboard the Benjamin Hornigold.