Star Trek Pioneer 1x01 Setting Sail

by R16

A crash by an alien ship on mid-22nd century Earth, sets a series of events, which could mean the destruction of humanity.

2064, Earth Orbit, Vulcan Atmosphere Ship T'Pokulikar

"Enclose in geosynchronous orbit, then start a re-entry over the American continent" The old burly alien captain declared. The aged Vulcan man sat at good posture on his command chair, surrounded by several alien shaped consoles. The entire room was oval shaped and several railings were above him. Upon these railings worked several younger Vulcan men and women.

"Re-entry begun over United Kingdom" One of the Vulcan females declared leaning over the railing, she walked over to her console again "Will release atmospheric sails over American east coast"

"Sufficient" the emotionless Vulcan captain replied, staring into several monitors adjacent to him, each showing different angles from a first person view of the ship entering the planets atmosphere.

The large Vulcan ship had a frontal cone, widening into three powerful engines in the back overshadowed by a singular circular nacelle; all polished in an ambassadorial fuschia finish. The behemoth alien vessel descended into the atmosphere, the front of the ship beginning to burn. -------------------------------- Arizona, several miles away from remote lightly-secret area known as 'Acquaintance-5'

Zephram Cochrane sat in the black leathery chair adjacent to the cockpit of the noisy hopper-jet. The old man wore a black suit and a tie, slightly dirtied by the desert as they were flying very low. Remnants of a hangover last night was consuming more of the geniuses mind than the meeting with the Vulcans. Cochrane was reading the profiles on the Vulcans collected by Earths foremost exobiologists, but there was no way the warp master could concentrate with the heavy sounds of the jet engines pounding the Arizona wastelands.

He tucked the documents under his seat and turned round to face outside, the sun glaring, the Arizona desert broadcasting mirage after mirage. "Every city in the world will look like this" the scientist looking at his advisor next to him "Once the radiation clears"

"I'm sure the Vulcans could assist in the recovery program" the young, eager man replied. The man had a layer of red hair, and also had a suit on dirtied by the desert. He had reasonable young features and talked in a New England accent. "As long as you don't get them drunk again Mr. Cochrane, like last year" The assistant smirked, the only reply from the scientist was a small sarcastic laugh and a turn of the head.

"The Vulcans transmitted the coordinates here" The assistant pointing at a spot in a map he folded out "Time to secure mankind's future" the assistant left off, Cochrane simply turned to look outside again. ---------------------------------- Somewhere in the Atlantic, Eastern Coalition Hunterseeker Sub ECS Greene. "Greene to Novakoff... Greene to Novakoff... come in Novakoff" The crackling machine replied in static, and the large southern American man retired back into his chair. A much smarter looking man sat in a chair at the center of the bridge. He had a well-trimmed moustache, as well as a loss of one eye, replaced with a black-eye patch.

"Take the ship to sea-level depth" The captain bent forward "Once at that depth, re-engage sensors and beacons"

"Yes, sir!" The mixed national crew complied with the commander, who sat back in his chair. The ascension of the sub could be felt, as the rusted screws which held the vessel together began to stress, as the ship rose. Water seeped from vulnerable spots, as the crews attention was focused on their controls.

"Sea-level achieved, sir!" The crew ran their fingers over their consoles; their faces eager for a new find, like they haven't seen a fellow coalitioner in months "Activating sensors"

The captain gazed forward, the atmosphere was quiet, it was somewhat more relaxing. It wasn't a worry that a seal might fail and the water pressure would crush the sub into salami. "We have an air contact!" A crewman shrieked, the man scrambling for the right sensors, and the captain jumped onto his feet.

"Non-coalition!" Those words alerted the Captain, was it a neutral, was it an enemy ,have they spotted us, are they ready to fire!

"All hands full alert status!" The Eastern man cried "Dive! Dive! Damage control teams to your stations!" The mans voice echoed through the sub through the use of a very efficient communications system.

"Sensors" the Captain made a swift turn of his head towards a pressured man. The man simply acknowledged him to which the captain replied "What exactly is it!"

The man took one deep breath, and dabbled his fingers on his crew equipment faster than a professional receptionist "It's a... it's" The man said staring at his computer screen. "I don't know what it is!"

The captain gave a long growl and thought to himself "Whatever it is, they are up there, and we are down here... the early bird is going to get a unexpected suprise!" The Russian dragged his head upwards "Weapons!"

"Yes, sir!" came a calm and collected voice at the front of the captain.

"Arm a Steppe SA-1034, nuclear warhead, proximity fuse" The captain commanded, the presence of anger in his eyes "I'm not going to let it happen it again" he mumbled to himself.

The weapons officer clutched his ear-piece "Weapon crews says the weapon will be ready to fire in several minutes"

"Position of enemy aircraft!" screamed the captain.

"She's descending over Eastern America" the sensors officer quivered, staring at his console while the captain held his left index finger and thumb tightly together, as his eyes were half-folded shut and his mind was anywhere but his submarine. ------------------------------------------ The Alien ship glided down, with its wings open, as it stuck out what appeared to be legs out of its underside. The vessel made a smooth landing on the dry ground of the Arizona desert. The spaceship rested as the dust of the American desert cleared. A small door almost unfolded on the Vulcan craft, finally resulting in a ramp which dug itself into the dirt. The insides of the vessel were revealed, then a white robed figure appeared.

Suddenly, several loud beeping noises came from inside the visitors vessel and the cloaked figure turned round abruptly. Then a white flash consumed around them, as the vessel was ripped to shreds by an tireless blast. The explosion continued, as the shockwave rippled the the dry Arizona desert, knocking a small hopper jet down. Again alarms went off on the small jet, as its booster pushed forward against the momentum of the blast, finally it broke through.

The gunship spun towards the ground, hitting the eye of the storm. The cockpit was smashed into the small craft, as it spun round, and coiled over. Parts of it flew off, as it came to abrupt stop as the relenting atomic wave came to a slowdown. ----------------------------------------------- Cochrane coughed, as he flung his eyes open only to reveal he had been suspended in some lead-jelly. The first words that came out the mans voice were not at all polite, as he repeatedly punched the lead-gelatin mix. He turned his eyes toward a beeping light on the wall, which kept flashing "nuclear countermeasures" over and over again. The suspended man managed to turn his head to only see his assistant dead and crushed by a beam of iron, the lead-jelly rapped around it. Suddenly he heard a rip as a scalpel-like tool ripped through the sticky substance, and Cochrane could move his limbs.

"Zephram Cochrane, sir, your hopper-jet was caught in a nuclear blast" came from an anonymous voice beside him.

"A nuclear blast!" Cochrane shouted "Where from? why? what the hell is going on?"

"Calm down, sir" the voice revealed itself to be a lead-padded man, his features covered by the grey-suit he wore. The man stuck a mask onto Cochranes face, which sent a shock through the muscles in his face. Cochrane swore through the implement, only to be talked down by his rescuer "Sir, its only repairing your lungs of any side-effects of the nuclear attack."

The older man abruptly lifted himself from the chair only to barely fall on his feet, on a unfamiliar grey Arizona desert. The sky was yellow, and was eclipsed by a fading mushroom cloud. He dabbled around with his feet, swearing some more, catching all the attention of the teams that worked around him. Then a few derelict pieces of purple metal caught his attention. He walked over to the man studying it "Is that remains of the... " Cochrane was cut off.

"Yes sir, this is a few pieces of the remains of the Vulcan ship" the scientist replied, as Cochrane picked up a piece of the metal. The man clutched his forehead tightly, turning round finding puddles of the remains of the alien visitors ship.

"Never again... " he uttered as the mushroom cloud settled in the sky. -------------------------------------------------------- 89 years later, several light-years away from Earth.

The alien ship streaked across the vastness of space. The vessel had very exotic colours which contrasted with the dull blackness of space. The fore of the vessel was dominated by a large sinister-looking cone, covered in windows, circuits, cargo-bays doors and a several coats of golden paint. The aft of the vessel had the secondary hull and the nacelles, efficiently built into the secondary hull, it too was covered by many coats of gold paints as well as several red streaks across the large secondary hull. This part of the ship had the engines, exhaust manifolds, shuttlebays and the large nacelles. On the whole the ship resembled a golden hammer, interrupted by the odd-alien looking curve.

The large hammer-like ship surfed space, like a surfer would ride the wild tides, while avoiding huge streaks of blue lights barely missing the alien ships hull. After each blue streak of light, each one of them seemed to get closer and closer to the alien ship, after several ray-bursts, one slammed into the hull of the alien ship, turning one of its bright purple engines, dark red. As well as a colour change a trail of yellow plasma leaked from the damaged ships engines. The blue lights were emanating from several more alien ships pursuing the hammer ship.

These ships were different from the one they were hunting. The entire hull bent almost like a clam, with small protruding wings mounting devices which shot the familiar blue lights into space. These ships instead of a gold- colour, were covered in a very dull, but more cost-effective brown coat. On each of the ships a alien crest was 'tattooed' to the side of the ship.

-------------------------------------- An alien shouted in a exotic language across to another, in a tone of distress. The other one replied with a hint of rage, then a third spoke in a more calm tone, then the two quarreling aliens went quiet and uttered only few words to the third, who was obviously in command. The aliens went back to frantically dancing their fingers over their controls. The aliens bridge was hexagon in shape with a light-brown colour. Each edge of the hexagon was occupied by a narrow beam. On each of the faces of the hexagon bridge lay a complex array of alien controls and monitors. The doors on two of the six faces on the bridge, were diamond shaped, and as one alien approached the door it folded out, almost like a piece of paper bent four times.

The ship rocked, as well as the bridge, and the alien commander waved his hand and uttered a few words, with the other aliens replying in a few words, obviously corresponding to what the commander said, and the one on the right side of the bridge hit a key button hard.

The ship stretched itself forward into space, while the stars stretched themselves the opposite way.

------------------------

Captain's Log Redford, Nigel December 9th 2153

Several Days have gone by, since the Orion raid on the Jupiter station construction site. Despite light casualties, people are still wary of an Orion attack. The SS Waterstone has been in orbit for Jupiter for 4 days now, our sensors corresponding with Subspace Relay Stations, spread throughout the system, and there is yet a follow-up Orion attack. When the alien pirates attacked our research stations spread throughout the Jupiter's moons, they obliterated most of our drone turrets. It will take at least a month to replace them. I know perfectly well that the Orions know of our weakness, so what are they doing? Are they toying with us? I know it has made my crew wary and on-edge, and-

"Captain Redford, please come to the bridge" came a familiar male voice over the comm system.

Nigel Redford pressed a button on the his computer, and the monitor changed from the paragraph representing Redfords log entry to the single word of "SAVING", and a small bar being filled up from the left side. When the bar was filled up, the SAVING was replaced by SAVED.

Captain Nigel Issac Redford was a tall man clad in his typical 'Sol Defence Force' wear, an all black jump suit with a yellow streak across the top, and a Plasma Pistol in his his right holster. The tall man was exactly 6ft 1, with blonde hair and a pale face. Being a man in his 40s, his face was covered in blemishes, warts and scars. The captain was a highly experienced man, who had served the SDF for the past 20 years, with missions ranging from fighting off Orion incursions to charting rogue asteroids. He had done it all for the safety of his homeworld. He had been raised with the eradication of international war, hunger, strife and disease, and he saw it as his responsibility, with others, to protect this Utopia which every man, woman and child had helped to build.

The large man walked across the deck of his ready room, he walked towards the door as it opened automatically for him. From one moment to the next he came from the relaxing atmosphere of his ready room to the busy bridge. On Antares-class vessels the crews were not large, but they were very centralised in key areas of the ship - Bridge, Engineering etc. At least 5 officers and 12 crew were on the bridge deck, all rushing round nervously, perhaps for the same reason he was called to the bridge.

One of the officer managed to turn their view to capture the Captain in their sights and exclaimed "Captain on Deck" him and several officer saluted the captain.

"At ease" he replied, the crew corresponded going back to their work, he motioned his first officer to approach him "Ces... what the hell is going on"

Caesar Hans was, compared to Nigel Redford, quite small, but still brought heavy authority in his voice. He too wore a black jumpsuit with a yellow streak across it, but with fewer decorations. Hans was 5ft 9, with dark brown hair (although nearing baldness), and his face marked by a large scar across his cheek. Caesar Hans, unlike Nigel Redford, had had an up-and- down career in the SDF, being kicked out once in 2144, then re-hired as a Commander in 2151, for his superior tactical experience in the Merchant Fleets. Unlike Redford, the protection of Earth was the last thing in his mind, he was just trying to make a living for himself in this hectic time.

"Our Subspace Relay stations orbiting Titan have picked a silhouette at Warp, approaching the Sol System" Caesar Hans was pressing numerous buttons on his console, and speaking at the same time before he was interrupted by Nigel Redford "Orions!?" Redford asked impatiently.

"No, sir" Hans replied calmly "Nothing like a Orion vessel, first of all its too fast and - the imaging data is in... would you like a glimpse at our 'invaders' captain?"

Redford did not like the term, Hans had given these 'silhouettes' but he responded with a simple "On screen"

The screen that dominated a large part of the bridge, changed from a image of Jupiter, to a background dominated with green lines crossing over each other and in the middle a hammer like object disappearing and appearing again. These were obviously the subspace waves emanating from the Relay Station bouncing on and off the alien object. Captain Redford stood up and stared at the object with only the beeping sounds interpreted from the waves hitting the alien object piercing his ear drums.

Caesar Hans brought his head to his console "It looks alright, Captain, it looks like the ship will just pass us"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Damage to our systems?" the alien commander asked calmly in his alien language

The alien bridge was in mess. Fused conduits blew everywhere, and the floor covered in scraps that fell from the ceiling, all around lay dead Aliens, or some of them frantically attacking a console with their fingers to make things work.

One alien turned around "Our Plasma drives are damaged, and the warp coils are buckling Alpha, but we can maintain our speeds... " he turned around to his console again but it blew up in his face, sending him crashing down to the deck with a thud, and blue blood seeping out of his green reptilian skin.

Another alien rushed to the half-damaged console, which killed his comrade, and started to breath erratically, then the ship made a huge thud

"What is wrong?" the alien commander demanded.

"The warp nacelles have been hit by some energy beam, we are slowing to sublight speeds, Warp 7... .6.6... "

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Captain stood up in his chair "Just past us?" Redford clicked his fingers and smiled "Ces, I have an idea"

Commander Hans face made a drop from a light smile to a frown "Idea, sir?"

Ignoring the look on Caesar Hans face, Nigel Redford rushed over to the helm station where sat Isabella Maxini.

"Maxini, what speed was the ship last traveling at?" Redford asked excitedly.

Isabella Maxini had spent her entire career in the SDF as well. she was 32 years old and previously a fighter pilot, flying Bulldog 'police-shuttles' she had scored quite a few kills of Orion Raiders. Nigel Redford handpicked her himself to be the helm of SS Waterstone. The last five years saw her have the best turn of her career, she was promoted to Lieutenant First-Class, and her salary increased ten-fold. She had reasonably long brown hair cut above her shoulder, she wore a black jumpsuit, with a red streak across it instead of a yellow one, she was 5ft 9, and had tanned skin going back to her Italian ancestry.

"Warp 7, since our last scan, sir, why?" Isabella asked confidently but with slight confusion in her voice.

Not offering her a explanation "Can we get in a reasonable distance if we past them at our maximum warpspeed" The captain asked.

"depends on the distance sir?" Maxini asked

"Scanning distance" Redford replied.

"Scanning distance?!" Caesar said with a bit of worry in his voice "You plan to bypass the alien ship at warp, and scan it?"

"Those new subspace-based scanners, have been here almost a year" Redford replied with more urgency in his voice."We haven't tested their full potential."

"They were never designed to do this" Caesar Hans asked with more worry in his voice."I suppose it is possible, since the scanning beam could accelerate to Warp 8; but theirs a chance, the beam would miss, and we would waste valuable fuel."

"We only distinguish ourselves in this universe, by doing things no one else has" Captain Nigel Redford ignored the complacent Commander and sat down in his command chair.

"Lieutenant, prepare to go to go to warp" The captain commanded with his dominating American voice.

"Aye, sir... sir, we are receiving new subspace relay information... the alien ship has jumped out of warp, moving at high-speeds in-system sir" Maxini stated

--------------------------------------------------------------------

"Warp drive is disabled, Alpha" an alien shouted out.

The alien commander, turned round and looked at the man who knew more than him at this moment.

"Where are we?" the reptilian asked.

"9 planet system, Mexa-6 star... the plasmatic manifolds are disabled, we are on a uncontrollable course for a Sena-2 Proto-Star"

The alien commander turned round and saw the celestial object he was to spend his last hours ripped apart in.

------------------------------------------------------------------

"Jupiter?" Redford asked.

"Yes they are heading for Jupiter" replied Caesar Hans.

Redford brought his hand up to his face and scratched in chin "They could be attacking Jupiter station?"

"It is true, sir" Caesar Hans leaned closer. "The Orion Pirates have used mercenaries against us before, I suggest we pursue"

Redford nodded, "Helm pursue the alien vessel"

"Sir, they are going to fast, our ion engines won't be able to keep up" Maxini told the captain "But captain, I believe we can catch up to them"

"Speak your mind, Lieutenant" Redford replied, waving his hand at her.

"Well on the bull-dogs, we were usually fighting ships which were much more advanced than us, they had weapons advantages, speed advantages- " Maxini was cut off by Commander Hans.

"Get to the point! Isabella" Caesar Hans demanded.

"To make us faster, I suggest venting plasma, and using the ion engines to ignite the plasma, therefore..." the Lieutenant finished her explanation with a swish of her hand.

Redford held his mouth open, in a vain effort to get what she was saying, he lifted on eyebrow and asked her "wont that damage the ship?"

"The speed should take us away from the explosion, sir" Isabella replied.

Redford turned his head to Hans and he simply shrugged "Do it" Redford demanded/

The small earth vessel vented a high amount of plasma, right behind the ion engines. After a high-degree of the green substance had rested itself behind the ship, the ion engines charged up. The blue glow ripped through the green plasma. Soon the green and blue palette was replaced by a huge explosion, throwing the SS Waterstone forward towards Jupiter.

The image of the alien ship came closer, and just below the viewer was Isabella Maxini pounding frantically at the helm controls in a effort to maneuver at these high speeds. Redford leaned over to Caesar Hans.

"What do you think" Redford asked "Should we disable it?"

"Then we can board it" Caesar Hans smiled

Redford leaned back over onto his chair and muttered "Alien treasure chest" he clapped his hands together. "Bring forward plasma turret to bear"

One of the crewmen called out "Plasma cannons locked on target, sir" the man uttered, his hands still staring at his console, then turned to the captain "Ready to fire"

"Fire!" Redford shouted.

The Waterstone beared close to the alien vessel, then released several orangey-red balls disrupting the calm of space. The small projectiles rippled into the alien ships armour, hitting everywhere but the engines, which themselves were throwing a large barely visible plasma stream in the Antares-class vessels path. The plasma bolts eventually pierced the light purple energy stream turning it into a flow of explosions knocking both the alien vessel and the Waterstone out of control.

-------------------------------------------------------------- The Alien commander roared at his crew "Lock weapons, and fire on that ship!"

"Alpha, are weapons our down, as well as engines, the core, were holding on with back-up systems" One of the alien crew responded.

The alien commander turned his head towards the view screen, to the see the image of a unfamiliar gas giant get larger and larger. "Thrusters" he asked his crew. "Thrusters!" he demanded more urgently.

"Thrusters are dis-" The reptilian crewman was cut off, but a thud that rippled through the entire ship.

The alien vessel almost smashed against the service of Jupiter, creating huge ripples in the orange service, slowly sinking in after the thud. The damaged SS Waterstone that was previously pursuing the alien vessel, was barely a kilometre behind it, in a effort to save itself from meeting the same fate as the ship it was hunting. Only a couple of hundred metres from the surface, the vessel fired all its braking thrusters, but not before sliding beneath the surface of Jupiter's atmosphere, and down into the deeper layers before it came to a stop. --------------------------------------------------------------- Nigel Redford breathed in and out lifting his head up and blinking his eyelids up and down, looking upon the blurry face of Caesar Hans, "What... what's going on?" he asked Commander Hans

"You were knocked out, the gravity pull from Jupiter has thrown our gravity systems all out of alignment" Caesar Hans patted Redford on the shoulder, just before a crewman suddenly slipped on his own feet, and floated up one metre and fell to the deck again. "Sir, I suggest you stand up sir, the gravity will not affect you that much if you do"

"Thanks, Ces" The Captain lifted himself off the chair, only to find a skip in his step, before coming to a stop. He thought for a minute and then spoke "Dam... damage report?"

"Weapons are offline, Engines are offline, thrusters are burnt out, only life-support working to any use" replied a crewman.

Redford walked over to the console where the crewman dictating the damage controls was working. He moved his finger round the monitors which displayed information and a schematic of the Waterstone herself. Redford started discussing with the young crewman about the damage, while Caesar Hans looked at his console and saw a red bleep on a wireframe of the bridge. It was coming from where Redford and the crewman was standing.

Caesar Hans threw his head around and stared where his Captain was working "Captain!, that console is about to de-" suddenly Caesar was thrown back, and a yellow ball of fire, replaced his line of sight of Captain Nigel Redford and unknowing crewman.

Caesar Hans lifted himself off the deck, only to be helped by Isabella Maxini. "Quickly, Commander, the ship is about to crack like an egg, we've got to get off the ship" she demanded.

Caesar Hans and Isabella Maxini rushed towards a lift, which slid down a deck to the shuttlebay, where four idle shuttles sat waiting. Caesar Hans was interrupted by the changing sight of the bulkheads as the solid metal walls folded in themselves like paper, and all around a creaking sound could be heard, which gave the commander a sense of claustrophobia within these familiar bulkheads. The Commander and Lieutenant walked up to the door of a shuttle. Isabella Maxini lifted her left hand and pressed a few buttons in key order, to open the door to the machine that they depended on for their safety.

"They gravity in here is fine for now." Maxini took a step into the shuttle and headed for the controls.

Inside the shuttle were numerous monitors and panels lined across the walls. The aft of the shuttle was very spacious, with six seats for passengers, but it became less spacious as the shuttle bent itself towards the cockpit, where the only room, was for a escaping Commander and a Lieutenant. Caesar Hans took a seat next to Isabella Maxini, and nodded to her. The other three shuttles had engaged their thrusters as the two officers could see from their window, then he turned round and saw their passengers, get into their respective positions in their shuttle. Then the door closed.

"Okay, we're ready to go" Hans motioned to Maxini as he looked out the cockpit window, to see the shuttlebay door opening exposing the terrible and vast storms of Jupiter. Caesar Hans took a terrified look at the storms, feeling a thud underneath him. He asked Isabella Maxini again with more urgency in his voice, "Yeah, are we ready to go?"

"Yes, engaging thrusters" Maxini told him, as they felt the shuttle break away from its landing struts, then felt a forward motion as they went forward into space. Suddenly the shuttle dropped deeper into the gas ocean as it left the shuttlebay. "What's going on now?" Caesar Hans asked with more worry in his voice.

"Its just... just the gravity pulling us down... engaging Deuterium braces" Isabella replied with most of her attention on the shuttle controls. The Lieutenants face finally turned to the worried Commander "There... we'll be alright"

Suddenly a thud knocked the shuttle ninety degrees as the crew inside were bashed against the ceiling of the small craft. Behind the distressed a shuttle, a huge yellow light emanated from where the SS Waterstone previously was. The bright eclipse consumed the other three escaping shuttles and threw the Commanders shuttle upward.

Caesar Hans turned his head right to look out his side of the window, now safe in this higher atmosphere "Well, Izzy... that was fun, if I bang my head at incredibly high speeds one more time, I'll ride shotgun in one of your shuttleraces" Hans turned back around to face Maxini, who was leaning back with her face scrunched and tears coming out of her eyes.

"Isabella?... Isabella Maxini?... what's wrong with you?" the Commander demanded never letting his guard down.

Isabella turned and looked at him "Its the pressure, Commander... I mean... everyone's dead". Then Maxini just threw her face in her hands and started to let the real tears out. "The captain, four fifths of the crew... they're gone"

The Commanders voice went softer "Hey, listen, it was the Captain who killed the Captain... and those other crewmembers, this was his idea"

"I suppose" Maxini replied "but... " The Lieutenant again made a massive jolt with her head onto the rest of her seat, and let loud crying noises out. Suddenly the crew and Caesar Hans, who were transfixed with Maxini's predicament, were thrown upwards from another jolt.

Caesar Hans lifted himself off the deck of the shuttle "What's going on now, Lieutenant?" The Commander lifted his tone of voice again.

Isabella wiped her tears, and looked again on her shuttle-console "A large gas pocket, of hydrogen has reacted her Ion drives... were slowly sinking... I suggest we find safe harbour quick!"

"Safe harbour!... where?" The Commander asked.

One of the crew spoke out, a afro-French woman in her twenties "Sir, perhaps we can board the alien ship, just like the Captains orders"

Caesar Hans turned around to acknowledge the woman "How do we board it?' he asked raising an eyebrow.

"We can use the cutting laser" Isabella Maxini stated, still sniffing from her losses, head still fixed on the shuttle console, occasionally her hands bouncing from keypad to keypad.

"That wouldn't be strong enough will it?" The Commander asked "I mean to cut through the hull"

"We fired several rounds of hot plasma at it" another blonde male crewman said "maybe that weakened the hull, sir."

"Okay Maxini, set course for the alien ship... " Caesar Hans ordered, just as the shuttle jolted once more. "Quickly!"

The shuttle maneuvered round the sinking alien ship, dashing around its sleek curves, stopping several times at the plasma damage inflicted by the former space-worthy human vessel. Finally the shuttle stopped at what appeared to be a shuttlebay door, conveniently plasma damaged. Suddenly a red compressed light shot out the shuttle and pounded the damaged door of the alien ship in a instant. Slowly the red beam cut through the alien door, then the beam ceased. The shuttle came charging with all its speed and knocked the cut door inward into the alien shuttlebay. The human shuttle flew in the opening and landed in the alien room. It almost looked like the interior of the dome, a gold inner dome, with a shaft at the top, possibly leading to another deck. Along the deck-floor, lined several alien shuttles which looked far more menacing than the one Commander Hans and Lieutenant Maxini were flying in. The still-moving shuttle picked up the discarded door it picked up earlier, with magnetic clamps, which shone bright, luminescent green surrounded with blue chain strip. The shuttle swung up a hundred and ten degrees and placed the door back to the burnt opening in the shuttlebay, it then leveled itself, and unleashed several more red beams, wider and less dense than before, effectively sealing the door tight, then the shuttle landed on a vacant shuttlepad.

Caesar Hans clamped the helmet to the rest of his astronaut suit, then followed up by pressing a few buttons on his left wrist. Suddenly a rush of cold air filled the Commanders helmet and he took one deep breath. "Are you people ready" he asked turning to the other crewmembers who were also putting on their space-suits.

Isabella Maxini let the air fill through her nostrils as she breathed, vapour forming on the front of her helmet, although she was still able to see Caesar Hans. "Ready" she claimed and looked to see that everyone else was also ready.

Caesar Hans lifted his fingers to two crewmembers, the same two who had offered suggestions "You, DeBrae" pointing to the woman "get the scanning recorders, and you, crewman Jarod, get the Plasma Pistols"

Both replied in unison "Yes sir"

Isabella came closer to Caesar, effectively being stopped by the clunkiness of the space-ware and asked him "Are we taming wolfs, Caesar?"

"I hope so" The Commander replied "It's what Nigel would have wanted"

The shuttle-doors opened, and eight figures emerged, all clad in body- hugging leather-ware, complete with helmets. Caesar Hans did a quick survey with his eyes of the alien shuttlebay. His gaze rested on one of the alien shuttles. He let a small pocket of air slip down his throat with a following gulp, then lifted his eyes once more, finding the shaft at the top of the alien-like dome. There was slight gravity, enough to hold all the crewmembers down, but Hans easily found some leverage, placing both hands on the curves of an alien shuttle and pushing him towards the ceiling, the rest of the crew following suit. Eventually all of them rested on the ceiling.

Hans bobbed his head over the shaft too look up it, he saw faint signs of light, and something obstructed, but it was dark. He got his wrist torch and slid the pressure switch over his palm and he squeezed lightly, giving him slight illumination from his light-emitting gadget. He squeezed as hard as he could getting maximum illumination. "Lieutenant, can you scan for any fatal substances if we go up this shaft?"

"You want us to go up this small shaft here... " Maxini asked opening her eyes wide.

Caesar Hans made a long sigh, then scrunched up his eyes and shook his head "Your an SDF officer... surely you can put your phobias aside"

Suddenly Isabella Maxini went into a defensive stance "I signed to the Solar Defence Forces to pilot massive warships on spacious bridges, not to emulate a hamster!" the loud Lieutenant then sighed and looked down at the shuttle-bay beneath her "but since the situation requires it... "

Hans made a smirk "Don't worry, from what I can tell, it's meant for moving personnel from deck to deck" Caesar spun around using the light gravity to his advantage, stretching out his arm, pointing at the bare walls "Anyway, there doesn't seem to be a door in here... "

When Caesar turned around, he saw the intrepid Lieutenant Isabella Maxini head up the small vertical corridor. The Commander smirked and placed both hands on the handle-bars to push up to the deck, when suddenly, Isabella came screaming down the shaft, bringing something with her. What seemed to be an alien body hit against Hans and he kicked it away, allowing it to float, aimlessly in front of him "Aww, I always my imagined my first contact to be less... dead" Caesar stated, waving his arms getting away the blood, from him "Anyway, that isn't an Orion"

"Our Captain may have started a war with this race" Isabella caught the entire attention of the group. "This isn't a war I would like to fight in".

Caesar Hans replied "Happy thoughts, Maxini" as he pushed himself up the shaft. "Happy thoughts."

The Commander was the first one to arrive at the end of the shaft, lifting himself out of the hole, only to find a heavy force pushing him down. He managed to crawl onto the deck and stand up. He shouted to his comrades "When you come up, the gravity will be normal, watch out for that." He kneeled down and opened his suit-case that was previously attached to his belt. In the case lay a Plasma Pistol, and several other projectile devices. Caesar Hans removed an EM pistol. "Use your EM Pistols, I want to ask questions later" he called to the crew that were climbing up the shaft.

Crewman DeBrae took out her scanning recorder, and moved it about. "Commander, this deck has an atmosphere" she stated.

Caesar Hans walked up his clunky space boots. "What kind of atmosphere" he asked.

"The chemical composition of the atmosphere is 80% nitrogen and 20% oxygen." DeBrae made a little smirk.

"Air" Isabella Maxini interjected.

"More or less" Caesar Hans replied, taking off his helmet, and the heavier elements of his space-suit. The rest of the crew followed suit.

The crew walked down the long corridor to come up to a strange alien door. Isabella Maxini used her scanning recorder on the surroundings and what's behind the door. "All the power relays become centralised in whatever is behind this door" she stated "I'm pretty sure that's the bridge"

"Okay" Caesar Hans charged up his EM Pistol. "Levinson, can you open the door?"

"I think so sir" came a reply from a red-haired female ensign. She glided her scanning recorder over the walls surrounding the door, until it beeped at what appeared to be a panel. She managed to remove the panel and hook up some sort of extension to her recorder "Okay, I'm what appears to be in door control, although the alien language is bugging up my recorder"

Suddenly the scanning recorder fused, and fell to the floor, with flame after flame spewing from it. Caesar Hans sighed and muttered "I have a very simple solution." He leant down and placed small pellets near the door, the rest of the crew backed away down the hall, Caesar Hans after them. The commander held out a small device in his hand and pressed hard on the button at the top of it. A huge blast consumed a small part of the hall-way, leaving heavy black char and a blown-out door. Caesar Hans waved his hand in the direction towards the door.

The eight SDF officers entered the hexagonal bridge, and looked round with awe at the alien technology. Isabella stepped in front of Caesar "So, what's the plan, Commander?" she asked.

"Well, hopefully we can use this ship to escape the gravity of Jupiter" Caesar replied.

"I hope you didn't mean to spend all day in here, Commander" Isabella Maxini continued "Because that hole in the shuttlebay, sown up by laser- welding, probably wont hold up to the gravitic stresses."

Caesar Hans kicked a collapsed alien on the floor slightly, then bent down and looked closely, and could see the skin expanding and contracting. He performed the same study on a few aliens and then stated "All of them are alive, looks we have double the pressure; to get out of here, and get to Earth as well, before they wake up." Hans looked at his small team "its ten against eight and, judging by the size of them, the odds don't look so good"

"We need to find a way to hack into their systems - DeBrae see what you can too" Caesar Hans ordered.

"Yes sir." The Afro-French woman ran her eyes along the bridge bulkhead, until she saw bending in edges on a panel. She picked up a small device from her equipment pack and held it up to the edges. A red beam suddenly burst out and hit the sides of the panel, and sparks flew off the panel edges and black char replaced them.

After a ten seconds or so, the panel fell off at this moment DeBrae got an impatient demand from Caeser Hans "Come on, DeBrae." He put his hands at his hips "We have a time limit" he continued, thrashing his index finger against his watchless wrist.

DeBrae performed the same procedure she did with the exposed door panel. She hammered the touch-screen keyboard on the bottom half of her scanning recorder and smirked a little. "I have access to the piloting, tactical and warp systems." Her fingers moved over the graphic-keyboard. "Tune to this frequency for Helm... "

"Maxini, your the most qualified to get us out of here" Hans declared, then the Italian Lieutenant got out her scanning recorder and looked at DeBrae, whilst keeping her fingers based on the panel of her recorder.

"The Frequency is 480.266 TCHf" DeBrae stated, turning to Maxini, who was pressing the appropriate frequency into her scanning recorder.

"Got it" Isabella stated and smirked, then the ship toppled a bit, almost throwing the small human troop to the floor "Sorry, just getting used to the controls"

"Don't make me have second thoughts" Hans told her. Maxini nodded and moved her hands carefully over the graphical controls.

Instead of a large thud, the crew felt the ship beginning to move slightly. Part of the crew looked at the viewscreen, while others watched over Maxinis hand movements. The large alien ship glided through the gases of Jupiter, being almost impervious to the huge gravitic stresses. In a few seconds the ship broke free into the agoraphobic but safe blackness of space. ---------------------------------------------------------- The alien captain woke from his haunting dreams to a familiar, but yet unfamiliar sight of his bridge. His eyes sprung open to unfamiliar and ugly footwear walking across his head and he heard the strangest alien language.

"Set course for Earth... as for these gentleman, put them somewhere where they won't bother us" One of them said.

"Yes, sir" Crewman Jarod replied.

Suddenly the Captain, felt two alien hands go under his body and pull him up. He felt an instinct, and he pressed a trigger in the middle of his four main fingers, throwing up two sharp bent blades. The man had almost pulled him up vertically, obviously with trouble. The Captain leapt out with blades and stabbed the alien in the chest. The being fell to the floor with his red juices leaking out of his garments. Suddenly he felt something else jump on his back and pulling him down onto the floor. This was who the Captain thought was the leader of these aliens. The alien threw his lower limbs up, kicking the leader onto the bulkhead, hitting a pipe ejecting pink coolant onto the bridge.

Finally his comrades woke up and one of them asked getting up "Alpha, who are these aliens?"

"Unwanted ones" he replied, hitting one with a bladeless fist throwing it to the floor, then withdrawing the bladed fist throwing it down, just after the alien rolled along the deck out of the way. --------------------------------------------------------- DeBrae fell back to the console where Maxini was working "Sir, the aliens are already starting to overpower us, the Commander is knocked out, and there is no way, any of us can handle these people in a fist-to-fist combat"

Isabella turned her head for one second at DeBrae then at her recorder "Err.. use your EM pistols, and while you're electrocuting them, I will try to accelerate to Warp 1 and try to not miss Earth" Maxini replied. The Lieutenants hands roamed over her panel, then pressing a final button. --------------------------------------------------------- The alien captain darted his blade towards an invader, before his hit being shook to the left, barely missing the being. He felt a shaking beneath his feet and one of his fellow crewmembers told him "We've accelerated to warp."

With an impressive display of strenght, the alien the captain was fighting surged forward and slammed him against the bulkhead. The Captain could tell he was using every ounce of his strength to hold him there, but the captain let out a laugh, and prepared to toss the alien out of the way. Suddenly another alien passed one of their devices along the deck, and the alien he was sparring with picked it up. The being withdrew and held the device up to him, then the captain saw his chance. He threw his blades at the alien before he saw the device light up and fired a small pulse towards his chest. He gripped his chest, as it seemed like his heart was contracting, then blackness claimed his sight. -------------------------------------------------------- Maxini tapped several buttons on her scanning recorder, and then looked at the small viewscreen and saw the stretched stars, unstretch before her and be replaced with the image of a large sphere containing shapes of blue and green with a blanket of white laid upon it.

"We've come out of warp, in orbit of Earth" she declared. -------------------------------------------------------- SDF Command, San Francisco It was the dusk in San Francisco and it would normally be peaceful at this time of night. Tonight, however, the streets were not peaceful. Sirens never used before went off like screaming children, as they filled the city- streets with fear. Men, women and children alike ran into their hover-cars and took off into the country. On the Golden Gate Bridge there were several traffic jams. In SDF Command, two high-ranking officers, wearing long black robes with long yellow streaks across them sat staring out of the large window.

"If the Orions are attacking, we will probably be their first target, Admiral Perov" the young commander chimed.

The Russian turned to him and put a hand on his shoulder "Commander Stone, activate all of our drone turrets surrounding Earth, and shoot down whatever is up there." The Russian lit a cigar "I'm not taking any chances which will endanger my planet." He put the cigar to his lips and breathed in, then took it out and blew out. -------------------------------------------------------- On the bridge of the the captured ship, the crew seem to be having trouble fighting off these scrawny alien invaders. The alien beta looked round, and saw his comrade slammed to the deck by two of the alien crewmembers, then he looked towards the front of the bridge, and saw a very isolated alien, call out several alien dialogues to its friends.

"Earth Interests has their biggest space-port in Paris, France" she tapped at her device several more times "I will land there"

He walked towards it, before the bridge shook. He turned towards the viewscreen and saw several red pulses slam themselves into the ship "The aliens' superiors must have thought they had failed' he thought "very hostile race, even to themselves."

"Were being hit! I'm going to land anyway" the alien pilot claimed. The beta watched the viewscreen turned to dark clouds. He saw his chance and jumped on the alien, throwing her hands confusingly over the console. ------------------------------------------------------- Isabella Maxini slammed into this floor, but quickly reacted and threw a kick into the aliens stomach, seeming to disable it. She got up and looked at her scanning recorder, and sighed and moved her hands to the keyboard once more "Righteous son of a... ,we've been knocked off course... I'll have to guide us in manually now"

DeBrae found herself surrounded by three aliens. She withdrew her EM pistol and pulled tightly on the trigger. One electronic blue-coloured ball fired out of the gun after another, seeming to disable two aliens. Unfortunately her third shot went a little above her target, and hit the coolant leak where Caesar Hans was lying. The bridge was suddenly rocked by a huge explosion. The ceiling broke free, and DeBrae was thrown to the ground. Maxini fell with her, as well as the six remaining aliens. They all saw the ship break free from the clouds, then drop after drop of water was hitting the deck of the bridge.

Isabella Maxini looked at how the drops of water fell after one another hitting the deck, and recoiling small tears in every direction "Rain" she thought. "Everyone, prepare for impact!" she shouted. ----------------------------------------------------- Antonio Levente sat patiently on the wet grass, staring at the butt of his rifle. The Argentinean was an SDF Marine Commander and had been stationed in Paris, France for several months now. He looked around at his fellow soldiers. They were acting strangely. He saw the direction they were facing was towards the Eiffel Tower. He made a quick glance towards the Eiffel tower, then he caught sight of a small object, getting larger and larger as it made it way towards them.

He rubbed his eyes, thinking the heavy rain had obscured his sight, but he let down his sight and there, it was clearer. "A ship, a big one at that" he thought, when his communicator beeped. He picked up the wet device from his belt, and pressed a small button flicking the top up.

"Commander Levente here" he spoke over the device with a loud Argentinean accent.

"Levente, you and your men have to evacuate your area, take positions in a semi-circular formation one clic away from where you are!" came a loud voice over the speaker. The Commander asked him why "An Orion invasion ship is about to crash in your area, retreat and then return to mop up, once the damage has been done"

"But the civilians?... " He asked

"Every police unit has been ordered to evacuate all civilians, but there will be more casualties, if you're not alive to mop up any 'hostile' survivors" The commander acknowledged him and told him men to move out. ------------------------------------------------------ Isabella Maxini came out of unconsciousness, instantly she felt the entire world pull at her stomach. She turned over and almost felt she would throw up. She lifted herself up and looked around her. She was standing on what was left of the bridge and saw outside a city getting larger and larger. She quickly got to her senses, and darted for her interface with the ship. She tapped a few buttons, before she was thrown up and chucked onto the deck.

The ships nose went up one hundred and twenty degrees and the bottom half of the ship hit a what seemed to be empty park. The almost clean hit between the ship and Earth, threw the ship up and it went nose first into the court yard of a Earth Interests building. It slid scooping up the concrete slabs as if it were ice-cream,finally stopping after several seconds. Its nose and port nacelle was wedged into the hard, disrupted ground. --------------------------------------------------- The alien captain picked himself off the deck, and the first thing he noticed was the lack of motion or turbulence on the bridge. Had the inertial dampeners been restored and they were merrily at warp-speeds off to plunder more worlds? Highly doubtful. Crashed on an hostile alien planet, highly likely, considering the roof was blown open to see buildings which towered over his vessel.

He looked at his comrades, who were also awaking from the crash. "Get to your feet" the captain demanded. They put more haste in their revival.

"Alpha, we should take a team out and secure a perimeter round the ship, while we try to repair it, and get out of this primitive hellhole" claimed the captain's Beta who was up trying to work at a half-destroyed console.

"Okay, I will lead the team" the Captain stated, going to a spot on the bridge, where he pressed a few buttons on the panel, revealing pistol-like weapons which resembled a tri-pod with space for a clenched fist in the middle. "Lets see these primates try to take real technology" he declared as he slapped the bottom singular barrel against his green, scaly palm. ------------------------------------------------------ Antonio Levente, and a small team of soldiers made their way through the rubble, Plasma Rifles in hand. Levente stepped up onto a rock which gave him leverage over a large pile of rubble. He withdrew his visual-amplifier device from his belt, and looked through it at the crashed ship. He caught site of several green aliens leaving the ship. He pressed a button the device, allowing him to zoom in closer. He found they were armed. The marine commander put his device away and jumped down from the rock.

"They're not Orions" he smiled gently, "But they are armed."

"What shall we do, sir?" asked a French soldier from his team.

"Okay, heres the plan" he withdrew an index finger from his fisted right hand and began to point at several damaged buildings around them "half the team, shall attempt a fore attack with plasma rifles, although your job is not to neutralise the aliens, but to lay down suppression fire to cover for the other half of the team. Our half will take Chemical-suppression rifles to several vantage points surrounding the crash site. Unfortunately all air support is evacuating all the civilians from this area, so this will just be a ground attack. Hopefully this plan will neutralize the crew, and hopefully no blood can be shed, unless these lizards have more suprises." He began explaining the details as to was in command and where to go... ----------------------------------------------------- The alien captain walked through the rubble with his alien comrades close behind them. The alpha listened to the chatter of the soldiers behind him.

"Where is the alien scum?" one of them asked, looking at the empty streets and buildings.

"Hiding" one of them replied with one edge of his mouth curling slightly.

The captain almost let out a snicker, but merely grinned "Hiding... I don't think so, this seems like a hostile and aggressive species, probably preparing to kill us on our feet." The captain threw his head about. "Use your superior strength, use all of your six senses, and you should pull through over this alien menace." The aliens acknowledges their leader.

One of them felt a very acute distillation in the air, and turned his head in the direction of the disturbance. He saw images amongst the rocks, and scrunched his eyes, and managed to make out the sharp edges of small figures. "Alpha... you are right, they are approaching."

The team drew their tri-pod weapons, and all of them pressed one of two triggers in the middle of the device. A small missile shot from the bottom barrel, trailing gas, going at fast speeds towards the humans. ------------------------------------------------------ Lieutenant Davenport held his plasma rifle tight in his hand, only being slightly loosened form the constant rain falling from the dark sky. He hiked towards the alien ship with an accompanying eight soldiers. His gaze was firmly fixed on the ground, before one of his fellow soldiers tapped him on the shoulder. He swung his head round to face the soldier, but he could not see him. He dropped his head a little lower to see all of his team lying on the ground. Suddenly he heard a noise, as if a large heavy object was piercing the air at great speeds. He turned his face in the direction of the sound, to witness several rockets only meters away from him. The head soldier threw himself to the ground, just before the missiles flew over his team and smash several boulders apart. "Charge!" he shouted, lifting himself up, and bringing his plasma weapon to bear. ------------------------------------------------------ The aliens drew their weak sights upon the smoke. The beta smiled triumphantly before several red plasma bolts came out of the dust-cloud and hit him on the chest. Suddenly the entire group brought their weapons to bear, and unleashed several double-green beams into the cloud being dimmed by the powerful rain. The group ran down the cliff and managed to make out the images of the soldiers. The Alpha bent down on his left knee, and pulled on the top trigger of his weapon, firing it and taking down a soldier. Then the alien hostiles fired their weapons at a small area, surrounding the kneeling alien captain. He quickly jumped out of the way, seeking shelter behind a boulder. The rest of his team followed his example. ---------------------------------------------------- Witnessing the battle from above in a wall-less building, Antonio Levente had set up his chemical-suppression device on a tripod-like stand. He opened a panel on the rifle and, before the rain could seep into the hole, he attached his visual amplifier. He bent down on one knee and put his left eye up to the amplifier and closing his right eye. Looking through the amplifier, everything was magnified ten-fold, as he could make out every vulnerable limb on each aliens body. His rifle was fitted with small high-degree tranquilizer bullets, meant to take down large beasts, ideal for this situation. The marine commander found his target and muttered "This is when the natives fight back" ---------------------------------------------------- The Alien Alpha triggered the second trigger device firing a rocket amongst the small aliens, dispersing them. Suddenly he felt a odd distillation of the air, and turned towards a damaged building. He head the sound of something metallic hitting something soft, and watched his comrade slump to the floor. He scrunched up his eyes to see an alien on one of the ledges of the structure, with a weapon. He fitted another rocket to his weapon, and brought it to bear on the alien. The rocket streaked out of its confines at full speed towards the building. ----------------------------------------------------- Commander Antonio Levente had just avoided the blast not being scorched, but the force of the weapon through the Argentinean off the building plummeting towards the ground. The soldier thought quickly as he watched the ground get closer and closer. Suddenly he stopped and felt a powerful pain in his stomach. He was bent over a damaged lamp-post. Levente managed to slip off, and grasp the small ledges with his hands. He felt terrible pains trailed across his stomach, but dismissed them, and saw the battle going on. They hadn't noticed him yet, so he moved across the horizontal hold he had and slid down the pole, slapping his boots on the puddled ground. ----------------------------------------------------- Caesar Hans eyes opened not to his familiar bedroom ceiling in downtown San Francisco but to an exotic ceiling and the traffic noises of San Francisco were nowhere to be heard. All he heard is what sounded like a plasma rifle discharging. He got up and remembered he was on an alien ship. "We must have landed" he thought, he walked up to the massive hole in the ship looking outside. "More or less".

He saw the battle outside, and then looked towards the ground, trying to find his EM pistol. Instead of his EM pistol, he found most of his crew lying on the floor unconscious. He leaned down to Maxini and prodded her, but she did not move. He took her EM pistol from her left hand and headed outside. ------------------------------------------------------ Antonio Levente withdrew his EM pistol, and ran up to the aliens. He discharged the weapon in one of the aliens back, knocking it down instantly. The shocked alien alerted his friends, who turned their weapons toward the Argentinean. He brought his weapon up to another alien, firing two bolts into its chest from a reasonable distance, knocking him to the ground. Levente, using all his training designed for combat with Orions, managed to avoid the aliens counter-fire, and managed to shock most of them. The commander jumped on a boulder and went for the last alien ------------------------------------------------------ The Alpha turned round, all of his team were down. He saw one of those annoying aliens jump towards him. Before he knew, a blue bolt hit his chest. Despite his sudden tiredness, and coldness, he managed to withdraw his handblade, and was going to hit the annoying mammal. Suddenly another blue-bolt hit him. Instantly he felt so tired and the rushing ground was his last sight. ------------------------------------------------------ Caesar Hans walked up with EM pistol in hand. Levente brought his pistol to bear. Caesar Hans looked up; Levente still held his weapon in place. "Identify yourself" he demanded.

"Commander Hans, Caesar, SDF Officer, service number V903-763" Hans replied putting his pistol away.

Commander Antonio Levente checked his data-pad device while the several of his soldiers came up, relieved the alien menace has been beaten. Levente widened his eyes and saluted faster than he draws his pistol. "Aliens neutralized, sir!".

"I can see that... Levente" leaning in reading his name tag "See that this doesn't happen again."

The Argentinean shook off his cheek and replied "Yes, sir!"

Caesar Hans walked away towards the ship disappearing in the heavy rain. ---------------------------------------------------------- 2 months later...

"Leslie Jarod was a beloved son, grandson and nephew to his relatives, and had did his great service to the defence forces... " The Humanist minister eulogised about the late brave crewman.

Caesar Hans sat at the back of a New Humanist Center amongst empty seats, away from the few family up front. The newly promoted Captain listened intently to the positive words being spoken about the late crewman. Last week he was at Nigel Redfords funeral, and it was even less filled than this ceremony. The interior of the center is just like any other humanist center, with orange walls, wooden beams lining the ceiling, a small staircase at the front for the minister, so he can deliver his words, or simply show religious authority.

Captains Personal Log, February 22nd 2154 This is my first personal log as Captain. It has been more than two months since the incident at Paris, and I find the world round me is not the same. I have been promoted to Captain, yet they have found no ship to put me on. They are not building any new Antares- class vessels, due to some new cruiser or something filling up the work orders... hell, they won't tell me about it as I'm only a *Captain.* At this point in my life, I use the term loosely . I have found myself questioning other people outside the SDF about this sudden thrust into galactic affairs... .

"Minister Ingrid." Hans walked up to his priest "I want to ask your views on something."

"Oh, what my fellow man, your previous questions have been 'should I take this captaincy or not'. Well you've decided that on your own, what help do you need now?" the minister replied smoothly.

"What do you think... " The captain put his hand at the back of his head "of the 'incident' a few months ago"

The religious man dropped his head from a moment then his eyes widened "Ahh, yes, the alien skirmish you were involved in." Caesar nodded. "Why?"

"I would like a religious point of view for my logs" Hans replied.

"Well" the humanist started "As they are fellow living beings, with their own thoughts and ideals, it is a breath of fresh air, to receive new culture, despite the way of deliverance having been so... uncoordinated and what we need to do... ."

... some people are positive about what it has done for society. How it has finally broken the human frustration to live in the galaxy and not be confined to his homeworld. I prefer the idea of aliens coming more to Earth, than the piddling Earth Interest jockeys trying to find them. Is this a negative view? I'm sure there are some people out there who do not think much of this infusion of new life into human society... .

Caesar Hans stepped out of the center and onto the suspended kerb in the air overlooking the whole of San Francisco. It was rush hour, and hundreds upon hundreds of hover-cars eclipsed the city in front of the Captain. He stepped to the edge of the kerb and held out his arm. With luck a checkered yellow taxi hover-car spotted him and leveled up onto the kerb and he got inside.

... suprising who these people are... .

"I mean how do you suppose these sons-of-bitches found us, hmmm!!" yelled the Taxi driver.

Caesar Hans just stared wide-eyes at the individual in the front-seat, and let out the words that were not terrified out of his mind when this man started talking "I.. I really don't... .".

Hans was cut off again "I mean they can't just come rushing into our solar system, uninvited, scares the crap out-of-us" the taxi-man banged his hand on the dashboard "you know what we should do... we should create a big shield... .a big metallic shield... round the entire solar system... what do you think?!" he demanded.

The Captain just clutched his suitcase tighter and replied "I.. really.... don't think that could wor... ".

"I don't care what you think... I care about what I think... I look out for number one" the taxi driver said proudly digging his right thumb into his chest and then his voice became more high-pitched and sarcastic, "These Earth Interest types... . want to go out and explore... and catch little butterflies on little planets, far, far away... from here, where life is real, and we don't frolic, we earn money".

Caesar Hans was amazed at how jumbled the statement was, and didn't really care what he was saying and replied with a "Uh huh".

"Yeah... and the SDF" The taxi-driver stated catching Caesar Hans off- guard at the tone which he talked about who he served, then calmed because he was wearing a suit from the funeral he was at.

"What about the SDF?" Hans asked while scanning the area outside for his apartment.

"There just a bunch of lazy know-it alls... . they'll get tired of defending the planet, but they will never get tired of making money!" the driver stated "This is your place, right?" he turned round.

Hans replied with a nod and passed the driver some money, then stepped onto the kerb and watch the second most out-of-touch individual he has ever seen drive away.

The experience with the taxi-driver told me, despite his mishandled logic, where we now stand in the universe. Are we now ready to take the universe whole with our ideas... or our guns, and one may wonder if an unknown alien race may do the same to us. Thank god the races we know are either too disorganised or too isolationist to attempt a feat. Although I still believe that this decade will end yet again with an isolated Earth and an even more unproductive society. More down to Earth, no pun intended, is that I live in San Francisco. I share my apartment with Isabella Maxini. We are not attached in anyway, she has different preferences when operations change from the helm controls too under the covers. My home is reasonably large, for all my things.

Caesar Hans stepped into his home and looked around and sat down on his couch. He let out a big sigh before catching a picture of him in his 20s outside the Military Academy, he turned his view to another picture; a picture of his love, Monica. Suddenly explosions filled his head. He shook his head to get rid of the hallucinations.

20 years ago, I was more eager to serve my homeworld and less "wise" than I am now. The "misjudged action" I caused a few years ago, made me change my views slightly. The Merchant Fleets have made me what I am today. I will not put down any of my experiences in the Merchant Fleet down in this log, because it could be easily read by any admiral with lackeys undignified enough to hack into my computer. Isabella has been taking the losses with the SS Waterstone very hard...

Suddenly the door slammed open and the Captain could hear garbled sounds of laughter. In came Isabella Maxini, clad in a black jumpsuit, her hair tied back, back from the shuttlerace, with a red haired woman at her side, in a very revealing dress. Caesar Hans turned his head round and asked, narrowing his eyes "Did you win?"

"Oh we won" Maxini replied "... twice" the two woman burst into laughter once more.

Caesar Hans stuck out his hand to greet the woman "Please to meet you, Ms...", she complied before drawing her hand up to her nose, sticking her thumb up a nostril and waving the rest.

"Its Mrs... " Maxini talked for her guest, hiccuping a few times "Mrs. Forrest.. the wife of the Grand Shuttle Prom Administrator." The other woman nodded, going into laughter.

"I'm sure, Mr. Forrest, will be pleased, that your taking such good care of his wife" Caesar Hans widened his eyes and made a small welcoming smile, only to be returned by Isabella, with narrowed eyes and her faced scrunched to make her look confused. "Go on, I think ill get dinner out" Caesar Hans waved his hand and walked past them.

The two women disappeared into the bedroom and Caesar Hans made his way to the door, until the adjacent monitor at the door started beeping. He walked up to the monitor, and read 'SDF transmission, security code required.' The captain typed in his SDF code and a motioned picture of Admiral Perov came on screen.

"Captain Hans, we would like you to report the Sol Defence Headquarters" the Russian demanded. Hans asked him the reason he wanted him. The admiral replied "I'm not comfortable discussing this over a directed particle beam, be there in an hour... " Caesar Hans acknowledged him and switched off the monitor. ----------------------------------------------------------- "Welcome Traygon Ambassador." Commander Stone motioned the large man in.

"Pleased meeting you Earth representative" the Traygon ambassador replied in his alien accent as he stood at the door. He had light orange skin, accompanied by heavy white facial hair. The man was clad in a large red and yellow gown, with his arms seemingly buried behind the robe . Behind him was a large troop of Traygon soldiers . Same facial features all slightly different, as far as a human can tell. They were all clad in a heavy, golden armour from their necks to their feet.

"I'm Commander Elliot Stone" the man rested his hand on his chest.

"My name is Foreign Minister Turaan, I am here to extradite the... err" The Ambassador struggled to find the words in his English dictionary.

"The Prisoners have been locked up and isolated from any section of our society" the Commander concluded "The deal is done; we get to keep the ship, we give your government the prisoners."

"It is fortunate that your forces managed to capture this criminal and his cohorts, Commander. He has committed genocide on several worlds including several our own colonies." The Ambassador sat down on one of the seats in the room. "Compared to the bounty for him, the vehicle which he uses is worth nothing"

"To us, ambassador, the gold bounty is worth nothing. Gold is virtually useless to the Earth economic market" Stone picked up a datapad, and sat down on a chair opposite the ambassador. "To us, ambassador, the ship is far more valuable"

Commander Elliot Stone saw an SDF Captain step through the door, making his way through the Traygon guards standing there, each one with slight hesitance to get out the way for the smallish man. "Caesar!" Stone got up and saluted Caesar Hans, who in turn saluted back to him, then they dropped formalities, smiled and shook hands.

"Ambassador Turann, this is Captain Caesar Hans, he will be involved in our next line of business" The commander said, opening his palm displaying Hans, who stuck out his hand for the Ambassador.

The ambassador stood up and shook hands with Caesar Hans in an almost goofy fashion. "It is good to meet you, Captain" with an acknowledging smile and returning comment, the ambassador followed with an almost curtsey-like gesture. The Captain showed signs of hesitance then followed the ambassadors example.

Caesar Hans sat next to Stone, while the ambassador turned to one of his guards. Elliot leaned over and mumbled a few words so only Hans could barely hear them. "If we're going to embrace new worlds, we have to embrace new ideas" Stone smirked.

Hans leaned over and asked his fellow officer "and what if he destroys new worlds?" The Captain leaned back with a smirk, and Elliot leaned back shaking his head, but also with a smirk.

The ambassador motioned his guard away after talking with him, then put his hand on his knees and and motioned the two gentleman with an appreciative smile. "So, my fellows" he asked in his almost superior-sounding accent "What's next... in... our... line... . business" he said trying to copy Stones earlier term.

"Minister Turran... I propose the other reason you came here - joint fleet actions" Elliot Stone smiled leaning forward; putting a joint confused look on Caesar Hans and Minister Turrans faces.

The alien ambassador brought a finger up to his lips and smirked a little "But Commander, your ships neither have the speed nor the range to keep up with our ships"

Caesar Hans continued "He's right Elliott, and what the hell am I doing here!"

Commander Elliot Stone smiled at the enigmatity, unaware of what he knows "It is true; Minister, our ships are not as advanced as yours, we would almost hamper your ships operations if you checked everything with our ships" Turann smiled at the comment "Until now" Elliot left off, leaving another confused look on Turrans face.

"The company DeSAAB has been developing a new long-range exploratory cruiser, that is faster and has longer range than any Traygon vessel" Stone continued, before being interrupted by Hans.

"But the Government hasn't given the contract or the necessary funds to develop a cruiser a now" Caesar Hans interjected, while Turran nodded his head following Stone and Hans questioning.

"This a private venture" the Commander replied.

"With Earth Interests?!" Elliot Stone nodded. "But Elliot you know what happened with the SS Perseverance, this is going to cost the SDF big, just like it did in the 20s!"

"We need a ship which can appeal to the tax-payers" the Commander replied. "The SDF offers us protection in a closed isolated place which is this solar system; the people feel that Earth has reached its limits, and our beginning to question our usefulness."

Caesar Hans merely huffed, and Stone continued "With more emphasis on exploration, the people will begin to feel excited about the human space program again." Hans looked back up at him. "We had to do something, or else it would cost us our jobs"

Turran finally interjected and asked "Let us see this new vessel."

Commander Elliot Stone turned to the Ambassador with a smile and replied "Of course" and walked up to the viewer. ----------------------------------------------- The Traygon ambassador walked out of the office merely muttering "Impressive" when suddenly, another Traygon walked up beside him and faced the direction in front of him. The ambassador too turned his head to the front. "I trust you do not possess good information from homeworld, Votzor".

The other alien associate merely dropped his head at the ground "The information came on a coded datastream, very narrow-band. The Earthers did not detect it"

"We are alone; you tell me here" Turann came to a full stop and turned to the messenger.

"The reactions have begun to form in the core of our sun; solid elements are beginning to form... " Lemonn was cut off by the ambassador.

"So its true" sighed Turann. "How long" he asked.

"6 years... " the other Traygon replied.

"6 years" Turann followed "Gods of old age and new unite" he begged. ---------------------------------------------- ... The display of the new vessel, SS Pioneer, was impressive to say the least. I am now the new commander of the vessel. Personally I could have not asked for a better luck. This vessel is perfect for getting me away from Earth. It is not that I hate living on Earth, but it is that I have been living in space for most of my life, and it is good to get a little bounce on my boots. The Earth Interests factor, I suppose can be tolerated, there will be very few of them compared to the amount of SDF personnel on the SS Pioneer. With personnel on my mind, SDHQ has allowed me to handpick my own crew...

... For my head of security and the commander of a very small group of marines on the ship. I've headed to the mars colony and decided to visit a familiar face... .

Caesar Hans' shuttle flew through the blackness of space and approached a huge red sphere. Mars got larger and larger in the head-window in the shuttle until several large bubble domes were visible. Caesar Hans looked directly at the colony, until a Lieutenant next to him spoke to him. "Better take a EM pistol, sir" the Lieutenant said, withdrawing a weapon from a drawer and handing it to the shorter captain "Crime is still rampant on this new colony - it's nothing like Earth."

The Shuttle made a soft landing on the landing pad. Caesar Hans stepped out of the shuttle and stared at the huge city covered by a sheet of Stellon and a sea of stars. The Captain crossed his arms and stared at the city. "Almost alien" he thought, "Yet human". The almost eery silence was interrupted by the sound of footsteps on the concrete landing pad. Hans turned his head toward them. "Minister Picard" he greeted "I'm here to look for one, Antonio Levente"

The well-dressed, grey haired man replied "He's our head of security here on Mars Colony, we'll take a hopper." The man walked towards the stairs of the landing pad, only to turn round to hesitant Caesar Hans. The captain tore his eyes away from the sight and walked down the stairs with the minister.

Caesar Hans trotted down the staircase, and the noises of a busy city reached his ears. When he reached ground-level the sound was almost piercing. "We've made massive improvements since planet fall at the beginning of this century" noted the Minister. They stepped into the hopper, then suddenly a huge boom echoed through the hangar, and the Captain was rendered unconscious. ---------------------------------------------------- The wing of Terran bulldogs streaked past the heavy atmosphere of Europa avoiding the huge shockwave consuming the moon. The heavy ripples consumed every blue and green element of the huge planetoid. Eventually the blast diluted into a black dust storm leaving nothing but a charred sphere. Lieutenant Caesar Hans screamed over his communications panel in his cockpit "What the hell just happened?" banging his hands over the console.

"Those massive energy readings... are gone, sir" the ensign shouted over the comm.

Caesar Hans turned to the planetoid beneath him and brought a hand up to his bubble-cockpit Stellon cover. He almost raked his gloved fingers down the glass, his eyes widening' He uttered one word. "... Monica." He pressed a button on his communications channel. "Where's the Antares" he asked his wing.

"Its chasing down that Earth Interests ship down to Saturn" another pilot spoke over the comm.

Caesar Hans looked at his sensor panel on his dashboard. He saw a blue- streak emerge from the large black sphere representing the dead planet on his sensors. Caesar Hans looked around a few times and called over the comm. "Pilots follow me" he ordered, gritting his teeth. His bulldog did a half-orbit round the dead moon. Caesar Hans saw an image on his sensors and looked ahead to see a two-hulled object, with a spherical dome in front, and tailed off at the end with two warp nacelles. "Ensign, where did you say that Earth Interests ship was?" he asked through his teeth, holding his finger on a button on his communications panel.

"Saturn, sir... ." The Ensign said unsure of herself.

Caesar Hans shook his head, and pressed another control communications channel "Lieutenant Caesar Hans to Antares, you are chasing a dud over..." All that reached Hans ears were static. He repeated his messages to no avail, dropping his head down to the sensors with a monitor saying "Communications Obscured by Planetoid" on the monitor. The Lieutenant saw a representation of Jupiter block the dotted lines which were his communications trails. He hit the dashboard again "Damn" he shouted.

Caesars rage was interrupted by a voice over the comm. "Sir, the vessel has been identified as the SS Perseverance" the comm said. "It is emerging from the blast origin, it is about to leave the moons gravitational field, it will be able to go warp in one minute."

Caesar Hans gripped his flight-stick and pulled on the thruster control. "Pilots, disable the Perseverance." He muttered to himself "these bastards wont leave here alive".

Suddenly the comm sprung to life and a unfamiliar Italian voice surrounded the Lieutenants cockpit. "SDF Bulldog's, call off your attack, we are not responsible, it was the other ship, the other ship! Please... turn back" the voice ended almost pathetically.

The vengeful squadron leader ignored the plea and shouted over the comm "All firepower, concentrate on their warp nacelles!"

The Double-hulled bulldogs unleashed a rain storm of red bolts upon the unarmed ships nacelles. The ships nacelle glowed blue before being smashed to bits by hot plasma bolts. The Perseverance spiraled to one side, and then erupted in a huge ball of flame. Debris scatted everywhere in all directions. Each bulldog managed to avoid the wild metal, except one, which tore into ones hull, burning it to a crisp. Hans looked out his window, at the fiery death of his comrade. ------------ "Nooooo!!!!!" Hans screamed, propelling himself upwards.

"Woah, its alright, sir" Levente said, leaning over him.

Caesar Hans withdrew a tissue from his left pocket and wiped the sweat off his head panting uncontrollably. "... only a dream." He looked up at Antonio Levente. "Levente" Caesar smirked then his eyes widened "What happened?"

"The hangar you were in exploded... we believe it was a terrorist attack" Levente replied leaning over so a doctor could treat Caesar Hans wounds. The Captain whined slightly from the alcohol the doctor applied to the open cut. "We don't know who this syndicate are, but there has been several bombings since Australia joined the world government in 2151".

"Minister Picard? where is he?" Caesar Hans swung his head around. Levente dropped his head. "Is he?" Hans stated, still lying on the floor, letting his head be dabbed.

"He is in the hospital, I think he's going to be alright" the Argentinean sighed.

"Well Levente, I didn't come here to see Minister Picard, no offence to him" Hans replied leaning up."I saw how well you fought against a potential unknown and dangerous enemy back in Paris... you don't belong here on Mars."

"What are you offering... .a job on a starship?" The commander smirked but the smirk faded as Hans nodded at him. "I make far more money here, than I would on one of the Solar Defence Force's Runners."

"This starship is going nowhere near any Antares runner." Caesar Hans lifted himself up to face the tall commander.

"Captain?" he asked while raising an eyebrow, "so your saying the job you are offering offers a much better salary than here?"

"Well I wont lie to you... " Caesar Hans replied."The good salary comes from the amount of... occupational hazards involved, long-term missions... " Hans was cut off.

"Where do I sign." The Argentinean smirked with nothing but a physical reply of widened eyes from Hans "Captain, I've always wanted to explore the unknown, if you are saying that... defend earth away from home, if you catch my drift."

"You are spot on my friend, lets head over to the hospital and see how Picard is doing, and I will explain it over lunch" Hans stated, making a light smile.

... I've chosen my head of security, and now he is on his way by shuttle to Lunar shipyards. I do have slight concerns about leaving the Solar System due to these terrorist attacks. I have yet to choose a helm, but as of now Commander Stone has given me permission to head to the captured alien ship and have a second look what me and my team "captured". ---------------------------------------- Solar Defence Force Military Prison, New Zealand. 0200 hours

A figure in a clad-black jumpsuit walked up to the gates and strayed into the lights. Commander Elliot Stone walked up to the main gates and greeted the two men guarding the large installation. "Morning, lieutenant" Stone said as the guard held a small-torch device to his eyes and fired a sweeping green beam across his eye.

"Morning, sir, another day with the prisoners?" The African-kiwi asked in his native accent.

"Last day on the job, alas, the Traygon want to pick'em up." The Commander looked at his watch "All the details should be on the news... oh... in 5 minutes"

"We know that, sir" stated the other guard "But we also know, you have all the juicy information on our in-mates sir."

"I don't know what your talking about... I'm just the messenger." He brought his left index finger up to facial height to make a point. "Remember what they say, don't shoot the messenger." He went inside the penitentiary with a smile.

The first guard spoke to his fellow guard as soon as he was out of reach "Its arseholes like that who keep back just enough information to keep the normal person well in the dark." The second guard smiled and nodded.

Suddenly the Kiwi guard turned round and suddenly the long-grass of New Zealand was replaced by darkness, and a big thud on the back of the head. ---------------------------------------- Elliot Stone walked into a dark area inside the compound well shadowed by the towering installation. He suddenly felt his name on the breeze, then it got louder. A cloaked figure approached him. "Who are you" he shouted as he withdrew his plasma pistol, but the cloaked figure was brightened by the red light of the plasma bolt heading towards him. The bolt hit his chest, throwing him backwards, the burning still tearing away at his insides.

The cloaked figure walked up to the slightly-burnt corpse. The plasma- burns had stopped and the seeping blood had finally put out the flames. It withdrew a hand from its coat, with a small-injector in it's palm. The needle pierced the dead officers skin, pulling up yellow fluids into the tubule at the end of the device. The injector was withdrawn. The intruder withdrew another hand with a small device attached to his skin. It opened the slip to the gadget and placed the tubule in. Suddenly the arms and skin fluxed to different shapes. The figure threw off the coat, and Elliot Stone stood firmly.

The impostor walked up to the front of the installation and saluted the guards. He felt the temperature change from a breezy cold to a very centralised hot, as he entered the building. He approached the cell where the alien prisoners were. He looked into the room with the cell showing two guards, stand in front of several metal bars separating the room. Behind the bars, were the sleeping captured reptiles. Stone walked inside and greeted the guards "I've to come pick up the prisoners, the Traygon ambassador wants them straight away"

"Right away, sir" One of them replied "We just need to do a retina scan and DNA scan"

"DNA scan?" the alter Elliot asked worringly.

"Yes, sir" the other guard corresponded. "DNA scans have been put into protocol. Due to new technology, people can easily exchange the looks of someone using the right equipment, but they can't change their DNA, that is a possible security risk"

"Oh" Stone nodded "Scan away"

The guard waved his scanning recorder over the impostor chest. "Wait a second, this doesn't...." the guard exclaimed just before, "Stone" threw his head forward, smacking the guard down. The other guard reacted drawing his EM pistol. With a rush of a right arm he hit the the weapon out of the guards hand. Before the guard could withdraw his fist, the impostor delivered a left fist towards his face. The force of the impact knocked the guard over onto the floor.

When the guards hit the floor, the impostor looked to see all the alien faces wide eyed and mouths open. "Stone" walked up to the bars and pulled on each of his cuff-links. The aliens exclaimed several words in an alien language toward him. He withdrew two small devices. The two gadgets were completely different in shape and size. He placed the flat device at the top of his mouth and the other wedged in his ear.

The aliens continued mumbling in their language. Suddenly their words starting translating into English. "... going on me men locked in this filthy hellhole" "Stone" smiled.

"Do you understand me?" the impostor asked.

"what... .I do now, what is that you put in your orifices... a translating device?" replied the reptilian.

"Yes" The impostor put his arms behind his back "As you can see with my disposal of the guards, I am your ally."

"Yes... you seem to be" the alien stated "Well maybe our... "ally" could help out of this cage your fellow aliens put me and my men in"

"O f course" the false commander bent over and picked up a key-card from the first guards belt, he brought up to the card-slot at the side of the bars. He placed it in and the bars whooshed open and the aliens walked out.

The Gamma-alien walked up to the Alpha and muttered his words "Sir, are you sure, you can trust this infidel?" He came closer and his words were quieter. "Why is he doing this?"

The alien commander turned his head toward the human and asked him "Mammal? why are you doing this?"

The impostor turned round and said "Lets just say we have the same friends and foes." The false commander stopped and turned round. "The people I work for have connections with the Tee-la-ky Guild"

The aliens once again went wide-eyed. "Ah yes, we have connections with the Teelaky Guild" the commander stated, "but were a bit behind on business; the guards didn't give us a newsletter with our lunch."

The false commander sighed and exclaimed "there are two plasma rifles here." The impostor picked them both up and handed one to the alien commander, who analysed it confusingly. He caught the reptiles eye, and showed him the way he was carrying it, the alien soon followed suit"

"Stone" turned round and headed out the door into the corridor. The second guard opened his eyes and lifted himself off the deck, catching the alien commanders gaze, who drew the weapon on him. "No don't fi... " Before the impostor could finish his sentence, several plasma balls discharged into the guards chest, throwing him onto the floor with the blood rolling down his lip. At the same time, the alarms pierced the convicts ears. "Don't fire your plasma weapons or the alarms go off" "Stone" said sarcastically.

"They have all ready gone off" The Gamma spoke out loud for the first time.

The false commander sighed and interjected "This way" pointing down the corridor. The convicts rushed down the corridor, with the alien commander talking as he walked quickly down the corridor. "Excuse me, mammal, but aren't we more likely to be found in these long corridors" the reptile withdrew his plasma rifle as he finished his sentence, seeing several human troops rush round the corner.

The impostor and the commander fired round after round of plasma at the troops as they returned fire with an equivalent rain of plasma. They were still to far away to get an accurate shot. The false commander held the gun with one hand and used his free hand to grip to a small crevice in the wall. The crevice was a hatch of some sort and it opened with a sound like a balloon deflating. "Get in the hatch" the false commander shouted. "Me and your commander will draw fire, then we will... .". Three plasma shots burned heavily into the impostor, making his skin warp to his normal shape. Uncovered, she collapsed on the floor with the SDF costume loose around her.

The alien commander stopped his firing and walked towards the hatch, dropping his head to look at the female corpse and leaning down to pick up the plasma rifle. "Mammals... " he huffed, rushing into the vent closing it behind him and turned to his Gamma, handing him the plasma rifle. "Quickly men, our only way out of here seems to be this vertical rail of bars!" The commander and his men made their way, one after another, up the ladder in the enclosed space in a desperate attempt to evade the soldiers.

Each of the alien team lifted themselves into the empty corridor and the alien commander stopped and turned to his men. "Those soldiers chasing us, they must be centralised at this complex" the alien commander stated.

"Yes, Alpha, it seems that way, otherwise how can they respond to our breach of security so quickly?" the Gamma replied.

"That means their weapons are stocked up here too" the commander smiled "Split up, and look for a room for weapon supplies, if you encounter the enemy, disengage and hide, meet me back here" he finished point his left claw to the ground. ---------------------------------------------------- At SDF HQ "What's going on" Admiral Perov asked irritably. Perov walked in zipping up his SDF costume, with bags under his eyes, and his mop of brown hair in a mess.

"Weapons alarms have gone off in the Military Prison in New Zealand" the officer said, pointing to New Zealand on the world map with a flashing red circle at the center of that country.

"Terrorists?" Perov asked, withdrawing a cigar and a lighter from a pocket in his uniform.

"Not quite, sir. We recorded this about an hour ago from the complex." The officer danced his fingers along his console changing the image of the world map to a image of a hall, with several large figures moving through armed with plasma rifles. "Our detained aliens"

Perov went wide-eyed and darted towards the officers console "Where are they now?" the Russian Admiral asked impatiently.

The officer moved his fingers along the console, while the screen moved along the camera views in the complex showing several different halls in the building on the other side of the world. Perov moved his head from the console to the screen. "We can't find them, sir" the officer said slowly.

The admiral took his burning cigar out of his mouth, and dropped it on the floor and stepped on it. He buried his face in his hands and walked to the large window overlooking the entire of San Francisco. He lifted his hands above his head and dropped them on the window and exclaimed "If the public, know about this, our whole space program could go out of the window." He lifted his head to see a shuttle coming in at high speed "That's a bit too fast for a ship to dock" he thought. He realised the shuttle was hurtling toward the window. As soon as he realised the shuttles course, the Russian threw himself out the way.

The Stellon glass cracked on the impact of the high speed shuttle. The cracks spread throughout the window, as the shuttle reversed and rammed the glass again, smashing it completely. The shuttle hit the ground of the large room, with every officer withdrawn behind a console or other object. Perov joked nervously to another officer "Space program going out the window looks better to what's coming in" he darted behind a console as the high-speed pieces of metal smashed the walls around the room.

The Traygon ambassador watched the shuttle smash into the building from an outer platform and sighed. He waved his hands and exclaimed some alien commands to his troop, and they headed down the platform, Traygon sword weapons in hand.

The Alpha reptilian walked out of the smashed-up shuttle as the shuttle doors swished down in front of him. He drew up the plasma rifle and looked around the seemingly deserted room. His comrades came close to him as he stepped out the ship completely. The room was a mess, smashed glass and broken consoles. The commander focused his senses and realised several mammals were hiding behind the piles of technical junk. The alien turned round at his subordinates who also seem to realise the enemy was close. He made a hand gesture moving his hand closer to the ground, to indicate to be quiet.

The intruders moved around the room, their footsteps making next to no noise. Admiral Perov moved his bloody hands around his pockets and holsters, trying to make next to no noise. He finally gripped his left palm around a plasma pistol and squeezed tightly withdrawing the weapon from his shredded uniform. He lay down on his back, so he can just catch sight of the invaders. They weren't terrorists, criminals or discontented soldiers, they were aliens and the reason they did not make a sound when they walked was due to their bare-reptilian-like-feet. Suddenly he saw one of them turn their head towards him. Perov felt a rush of fear rush down his spine as the alien drew his plasma rifle, the Russian admiral simply closed his eyes and try to think of happy times as a child in civilised Russia.

Suddenly a blue-beam shot itself across towards the advancing reptile, it lit the entire room. The beam burned into the aliens chest knocking him over before he could fire his plasma rifle. The alien troops eyes were dragged above as several figures dropped amongst them. One of the Traygon slashed the Gamma officers chest with his small-sword - Gamma collapsed on the floor, clutching the blood clot. The Alien Commander saw one of the Traygon swords dart for him, he quickly flipped out his fist blades, and swung it towards the sword, catching the edge of the sword in the bent connection of his blades. With the Alpha and the soldiers face to face just meters apart, he used all his strength to push the sword down. Once the fist-blade and the sword were down to the stomach, the commander drew up the rifle and smacked the Traygon on the face, knocking him to the ground. The Traygon stared up at him with wide-eyed as the head alien drew up his plasma rifle. Suddenly the rifle was shot out of his hand, and the alien swung towards the plasma-bolt and saw a tall human in the corner with one of their pistols.

Perov saw one of the aliens stare at him, but his gaze was disrupted with random plasma bolts slamming against the consoles and walls. The shots came from the adjacent room. Several armoured troopers started spilling into the room all armed with plasma rifles. The Russian admiral saw the one of the aliens pull up the wounded one, and ran to the door which takes them down the corridor, and the Traygon troopers ran after the alien breakouts completely ignorant of their human counterparts. The trooper commanding officer pointed towards the corridor the aliens and the Traygon had gone down, and the humans rushed after them.

Perov rolled his eyes at the troopers, wiped the blood from his face and ran up to a console. His fingers roamed over the touch-screen keyboard, until it showed a cross-section view of the complex. "Internal sensors still working" he thought, and he smirked as he saw dots moving around the cross-section, displaying the movement in the complex. He easily distinguished the staff of the building from the soldiers, as the staff were exiting due to the alarms going off due to the emergency and the soldiers were rushing through the building. He pressed a few more buttons and a screen displayed a real-time view of the corridors. The aliens were a few levels beneath him, near the supply transporter pad. He ran up to a vent-door and slid his fingers beneath the edge of the removable panel and pulled it off. He slipped down the ladder inside the vent while taking a communicator out of one of the pockets on his jumpsuit.

He tapped a few buttons on the gadget then called out "Lieutenant?"

"Yes sir" the reply came over the communicator.

"The criminals are on Level 5, Section 2, meet me there" he demanded over the device with his heavy Russian accent. he continued to climb down the ladder. ------------------------- The Alien commander and his cohorts reached the end of the corridor, and came to a room with numerous stacked boxes and a particularly large concentration of boxes on a central pad.

The gamma interjected, his wound clotted by several rags "Is that what I think it is?" With his question a rain of yellow energy consumed the boxes on the central pad. After fifteen seconds the energy consumed the boxes completely then several white streaks dispersed the energy and in five seconds, the boxes were gone.

The alien alpha smirked "Innovation comes in the strangest of places"

"Should we take it, sir, the Tee'lay Kin pays a huge price for one of these" one of the criminals asked.

"It doesn't look mobile." The alien commanders smile dropped as he saw the parts of the device installed in the ceiling in the floor "but I wonder" he walked up to one of the crates and lifted the lid of it.

"I thought so" he said as he took the exotic circuitry into his scaly hands. "I believe they are taking apart our vessel and putting it back together again, and this teleporter takes us to that ship." he finished pointing at the large gadget. The second load of boxes were finished being consumed by the transporter beam, then a third load was unloaded by an conveyer belt. The alien commander and his team quickly crouched onto the pad, as the energy swept over them.

Admiral Perov ran into the supply room, as the boxes in the center of the room whizzed away in a blaze of energy, his accompanying soldiers and Traygon troops came after him. "Where did they go" he shouted to the troop commander.

"We tracked them to this room, sir" the soldier said tapping his scanning recorder "Then they disappeared"

A Traygon soldier lifted his arm towards the transporter pad in the middle of the floor, just as it beamed out another round of supplies. Admiral Perov turned to him smirking "You think they went by the transporter?" The Traygon only replied in grunts and jerking of his stretched arm. "You really do!?" Perov asked in almost-frustration.

"Doesn't speak English sir" the soldier looked over his gun "As far as I know."

"Oh yes I forgot." The admiral looked at the transporter pad again. "do you, commander, think they went by the transporter"

"Sir, we use that transporter to move supplies to the captured alien ship, I don't think it can transport people" the soldier turned to the admiral "As far as I know"

"You're very unsure, soldier" Perov inquired

"That's why we have commanding officers, sir" the soldier replied

"That transporter pad transports things to the alien ship in orbit" Perov stated, he walked over to a nearby communications panel, he pressed a couple of buttons on the console, and as the monitor displayed the word 'CONNECTING" Perov turned round to a Traygon soldier whose gaze was locked on the console. "So, staying out of trouble?" Perov jokingly asked the Traygon, the foreign soldier simply returned an almost confused gaze.

The monitors image changed to a couple of red words stating 'UNABLE TO CONNECT'. "What?" Perov asked himself. "What the hell is going on?" ------------------------------ The aliens scaly lizards hands withdrew from the alien-panel. "I have disable the external communications, Gamma."

"So they are unable to communicate outside the ship" the gamma alien stated, as he and the other aliens hid behind the recently transported supplies. "Alpha, we have disabled the communications, what is the state of our opposition?"

"Unarmed and Unaware." The alpha smirked, bringing up his plasma rifle. "The command centre of the ship is 27 Kloes from our position, luckily were on the same deck" -------------------------- Captain Caesar Hans stood adjacent next to several men in white-coats, in a small reactor room on the captured alien ship. "So you are saying the main weapon system of the ship is a projected... plasma... beam?" Hans cast a confused look at the white-coat "Is that some kind of laser or something?"

The blonde white-coated man replied with a deep German accent "Nein, nein, ze projected plasma beam, is a force-field which carries charged plasma from one position to another" the man turned to some information on his scanning recorder "Das is very ingenious weapon, but we are months away from fielding something similar."

Caesar Hans continued to gaze at the man, still with a slightly confused expression on his face. "Forcefields? that's a big technological contrast from anything else in the ship... " The blonde scientist pointed in the direction of the side of the room, and Hans followed him.

All of a sudden, red bolts trailed across the room and impacted upon several surfaces. Several white-coats dropped to the ground, as the red plasma shower consumed the room. Hans turned to the source of the firing, and was struck with familiarity; these were the same aliens he took the ship from. He turned round and saw the once-stuck-up German turn into a puddle of fear. In the seconds he had, he scanned the room for some escape, he caught site of an open vent. With no care, he grabbed the scared scientist and jumped down the vent.

With Hans wedged in the vent he said "I don't think they saw us, they were obstructions between us and them." He turned his head to his German comrade. "So do you have a map or something?" ---------------------------------------------------- The aliens fired bolt after bolt into the alien bridge, knocking over two scientists. One terran reached for a idle plasma pistol lying on a console in the middle of the room, and drew it up and discharged the weapon right into one of the lizards chest. He felt his life pass before him, as several more bolts burned themselves into his chest. The flaming corpse collapsed on the ground on the bridge.

From above in the vents, Caesar Hans and the scientist merely listened to the random shots beneath them. "Zey have stopped shooting." The scientist turned a confused look to Hans. "Maybe our comrades defended ze bridge successfully"

"I seriously doubt it, the aliens were heavily armed... " Captain Hans sighed. "Our only option is to get off this ship; but we cant let the aliens escape... do you know how to bring the external communications back online?"

"Ja, but I have to access it from a deck above" The German replied.

"okay lets go, be quiet" Caesar Hans lay on his stomach and put his hands on the walls adjacent him and slid along making no noise, the German repeating this action barely a meter behind him. -------------------------------------------------- The Gamma alien felt a disturbance right above him, he looked up and saw the vents, he screwed his eyes, then slightly growled, and drew up his plasma rifle. The Alpha interrupted him. "Gamma, what are you doing?" he asked. The Gamma merely pointed above him, then the Alpha stated "Yes... I feel it too, Zeytraddi! bear your weapons above and fire, they are still two left!" -------------------------------------------------- Caesar Hans path of hearing was disrupted by a discharge of a plasma rifle echoing through the vents. A split-second later, the floor beneath him lifted and he felt himself lift off the warm surface of the metal. The captain turned around to see a huge disrupted hole behind him. He looked down it to see the scientist slumped off the floor beneath him, then suddenly several more rounds were fired into the Germans back. Hans drew back into the vent, his thoughts clouded by the recent incident. Another blast of plasma destroyed the opposite side of the hole, knocking Hans towards it. A further few rounds of red plasma bolts devastated the already damaged part of the vent. ------------------------------------------------- The Alien alphas eyes were locked on the spinning loose part of the vent above him. A rush of power ran through his thoughts, he knew he was going to kill the elusive being which had caused his suffering in the last few months in that hellhole. He pulled softly on the trigger. The bolts struck away, but his feet lost their grip as the entire deck rocked, and the bolts harmlessly hit a hard bulkhead. "We've been hit by another ship" shouted one of his subordinates who had rushed to a console. ------------------------------------------------- Captain Larry Stiles was a large man in his 40s. He was 6ft tall, and had dark brown hair with the first shades of grey showing. He too wore the typical SDF captains jumpsuit with all black with a red stripe piercing the middle. Complete with a pistol at his holster on his belt. He sat on his chair of his Antares Class warship Yosemite gripping the arm-rests tightly, with sweat dripping down the cold surface of the chairs side-metal armrests. His eyes were locked on the viewscreen in front of him, displaying a backdrop of earth and a moving foreign ship, a ship that now belonged to earth. He waved his hand to his communication officer. "Open a channel" he ordered in his eastern American accent. He breathed in and straightened his back in the chair. "Alien convicts, surrender the ship, and we will go easy on you. Fail to surrender, we will disable your ship, and an armed marine boarding party will take it from you... we cannot promise no casualties."

Stiles slid the side of his hand across his throat signaling his communication officer to cut off the message. The woman nodded with acknowledgment. "Send it through the universal translator system"

"Yes, sir" the woman responded. She danced his finger along her console, then turned to a captain. "Translated and sent, sir."

The Captain rested in his chair, until a voice from the back of the bridge disrupted his thought. "Captain, they are engaging their Plasma Drives." The Lieutenant tapped a few buttons in front of him. "They are charging their warp coils!"

"Mr. Xao." He turned to a Chinese man at the side of his chair-position. "Bring the new weapons online!" he ordered.

Stiles tapped at a button on his arm-rest. "Stiles to Shuttlebay, prepare for insurgency procedures!" With that demand, the Chinese officer responded to his orders.

"Plasma Spinners online, sir!"

"Lets start small, shall we?" Stiles leaned forward, his thoughts mixing doubt with enthusiasm. "20 rps, standard light rounds, fire!" Stiles ordered with urgency. --------------------------------------------------- As the Yosemite cruised forward towards the alien ship, it dropped several triangular tubed weapons out of his hull. The singular turrets started to spin slowly, getting faster and faster every second. Suddenly a stream of small bright red balls, flared out of the turrets towards the alien ship, ripping into its armour. --------------------------------------------------- The Alien alpha took position in his command chair as streaks of sparks erupted all over the bridge. He turned round and urgently spat orders to his crew. "Activate Damage control! Fire dissipation systems! Full power to Plasma and Warp drives!" he turned another forty five degrees to his Gamma. "Is the main weapons online, yet?"

"Not yet, Alpha." The gamma suddenly collapsed after answering- for some strange reason.

"What?... Pits of... let's not concern ourselves with this matter, we can help him when we reach our space, full power to engines!" he said as another Zeytraddi took the Gammas position. ---------------------------------------------------- Caesar Hans watched from above as the aliens which contained him were distracted with something else. He looked over from the vent to see another broken part of the vent but still connected out of the bridge. Hans started to shift his weight from each end of the vent over and over, to make it get a large swing. Finally, part of the vents broken sides latched onto the other ended vents sides, and the formerly trapped captain quickly crawled through, before the detached piece of metal let go. ---------------------------------------------------- "They are powering up their engines, gaining speed" Xao stated ,throwing his hands around his many consoles. "There is a warp field generating!"

Stiles turned his head to the Chinese tactical officer. "Arm heavy rounds for the plasma spinners, spin them at 2000rps!"

"Our spinners can't use heavy rounds, the proper eq..." Xao was cut off by Stiles shrieking at him.

"Dammit, Lieutenant!" Stiles tone of voice and the reference to the officers rank, indicated his frustration. The captain took a deep breath as he watched the ship get farther and farther away on the view-screen. Stiles dropped his head to the ground. "The scientists, the crew... computer... Mission log; From 2102 hours I have assumed all the human crew aboard the alien vessel are... . dead ,end mission log... Mr. Xao... prep the missile bays, arm 'Felix' type missiles."

Mr. Xao repeated his orders through his head-band, letting the lower decks know the specific tactical orders. A muffled reply came through his ear- piece and the Lieutenant turned to a gazing bridge crew. He gave a simple nod, and Stiles turned to face the picture in front of him. "Fire!" -------------------------------------- The small earth cruiser closed on the alien ship and launched a projectile at it. The escaping vessel was being gained on by a missile trailing plasma. Mere meters away, the small deadly device closed. Suddenly the opposing ship burst away at high-speed, finally ripping through space, leaving a bright flash in its wake. The missile simply exploded, its fiery waves leaving no mark on the infinite space. -------------------------------------- Two days later, SDF Lunar Complex orbiting the moon.

"Admiral Cohen, we must launch the Pioneer, it is our only chance left in catching up with the stolen alien vessel!" Perov slammed his fists down on the table.

"With all due respect, Admiral" the Israeli stated in a relaxed tone, waving his fingers in an arrogant manner, "the Traygon are in pursuit of the vessel, and, though they have no leads at this time, I'm sure they will get there in time"

"With all due respect!" Perov shouted, "Traygon ships maybe fast, but they haven't got the firepower to take that thing down when its fully armed. If I was an large alien reptilian commander with cold blood running through me veins, I would try and repair my weapons as soon as possible."

"Perov... Perov, the ship isn't exactly of great importance." Admiral Cohen dropped his eyes to the desk beneath him. "Even though we hardly scratched the surface in terms of the technology that ship could offer us, you yourself have just implied that the Pioneer could overwhelm that thing hands down, so we already have the deterrence we need. No point sending our only trump card on a worthless wild goose chase."

"I did not imply the ship could overwhelm it, Cohen!" Perov leant in, his words spitting at the other admirals face "I implied that the Pioneer had a superior weapons array to a typical Traygon ship, and it had a small chance of taking down that ship, and I am also aware the ship isn't important but the people are on that ship. Half of our best scientists, and Caesar Hans our best captain."

"Best Captain?" The admiral flicked his tongue across the top of his gum making a 'tut' noise and then he sighed. "Captain Stiles, informed me they were dead... " Cohen was cut off again.

"How do we know that?" Perov leaned back, his voice echoing round the room. "from Stiles assumption? That captain is an arrogant, son of a..."

Cohen stood up with a shade of red, running down his face, and his voice making a large roar. "Stiles is an excellent officer, and Hans has always been a large liability." Cohen sighed and sat down, with Perov standing opposite ready to face him following suit and sitting down as well. "Listen. The Earth Interests element of the Pioneer are quite willing to get underway. A rescue mission, I'm sure, wasn't their first choice for their new ship, but I'm sure the butterfly catchers will get a buzz about going Warp 5."

"I can assign twenty-five of my own officers and fifty marines under my command to the new ship" Perov stated.

"Earth Interests are quite happy to donate at least fifty of their personnel to the Pioneer." Cohen ran his eyes along a computer screen adjacent to them. "Although this is not the official launch of the ship, knowing those scientists efforts at security, I'm sure it will leak quickly... thank god the SDF retain the power of deniability." Cohen smiled at the Russian who had an unamused stern face.

"Commander Elliot Stone and Captain Caesar Hans I believe picked a bridge crew for the new ship?" Perov asked.

"I know that... " Cohen pressed a few more panels on his computer "Unfortunately, Stone did not fill out his bridge preference... as he had the general occupational hazard... of getting killed in action, now Hans... well he made his references, but it is secured to his home in San Francisco."

"His home?" Perov raised an eyebrow "I knew the man was a bit paranoid..."

"Head over there, Perov." Cohen stood up and saluted him. Perov repeated his actions and left the door. ---------------------------------------- The green-scaled alien ran a scanner over another. The Gamma zeytraddi felt the piercing x-rays run past his skin as well as fear, as he watched his fellow reptile stare at his scanner-screen with doubtful eyes. The other alien slapped his two tools together, securing them in place and let off with a sigh; the higher-ranking alien asked impatiently "Medical Unit? what is my condition, did the mammalian transporter affect me?"

"Yes, Gamma" The reptilian doctor replied "You're the only one whose cells have been irradiated by the transporter, there's risks in these things... thankfully for you it's an even chance."

"Even chance?" the depressed alien asked, his eyes widening.

"Yes, your cells could just settle down into their normal state after a certain period of time or..." the medical officer dropped his eyes stuffing his hands into the tears in his uniform "Or the irradiated cells could degrade and, well... leave you dead for his highness"

"Highness!"

"An expression, sir" the doctor coiled back lifting his hands in the air. "I abandoned our hateful monarchy with the rest of crew, I swear my life to Tee'lay Kin"

"Medical Unit!" The Gamma ordered "You are no longer needed here, go to your sickbay, and remove the infections the alien scum left"

"Right away, Gamma" The doctor walked away down the maroonish corridor at a fast pace, cursing under his breath as he went.

As the high-ranker looked in the direction of the departing alien, what remained of his lunch sat idle on a table apparatus in the middle of the room. Suddenly a small metal rod with a needle-like end, punctured into it and pulled it up, into a open vent and then it was closed just before the distressed reptile could turn to his unfinished meal.

The Gamma turned to the table and echoed words of flabbergast . His face stupefied and his eyes wide with confusion, he walked up the table, pounding his hands on the table and then letting out a roar, before pain overcame him and he gripped his gut. He practically limped toward the corridor in the direction of the departed doctor. ---------------------------------------- Caesar Hans looked at the sandwich-like alien delicacy with disgust. Finally, he took a large gulp and bit into the strange food. In a strange change, his unshaven face lit up, which was followed by sounds of satisfaction. He placed the lunch down on the cold metal of the air ducts, and picked up a discarded chalk-like rock and inscribed lettering into the metal. He thought to himself as he wrote on the duct- Captains Survival Log February 25th 2154 This is my first 'survival' log is Captain... after two days, I believe this is the only way I'm going to avoid insanity on this hellhole of a ship. I think we've been at warp for the last 48 hours, because every time I go close to the nacelles I get a sore headache, or maybe that was the hunger. The hunger has been relieved for a while, with me trying out these flawed individuals delicacy, which aren't half-bad, I suppose. I know I cant stay in here forever, and to the extent to some logic, this ship has to stop somewhere for supplies. As my father says always think ahead, well I am. I'm going to get off this rotten tomato of a shed if its the last thing I do, and considering the activities in this monstrosity, its the only thing. ---------------------------------------- The wind grazed the vacant air, as the air lanes were as quiet as a dormouse. The only sounds breaking the silence were the footsteps by the few SDF Marines that marched round the home of Caesar Hans. The small group of armed men paused in their tracks, and turned their heads toward a shuttle diving towards a empty space adjacent to the house. Perov walked out of the missing mans home, and took out a cigar and lighted it.

"Isn't that bad for you?" came an unfamiliar female voice. Perov turned to a tanned women a black jumpsuit.

"Who are you?" The Russian asked. "And this is a secure area what are you doing here..."

"I'm a Lieutenant, Isabella Maxini Service number A101-802" she said.

"Hmm sounds convincing enough... " The Russian sighed and turned around, then stopped in his tracks and his eyes widened "Why the hell are you here anyway?"

"I live here... " Maxini crossed her arms and leaned against the shuttle. "Why the hell are you here?"

"I didn't know he had a girlfriend" Perov said, causing the Italian to put her hands at her hips, almost insulted by the comment. "We are trying to access his files."

"I'm not his girlfriend" she said with a hard tone, staring him down hard "Why don't you just ask him?" Maxini asked raising an eyebrow.

"He's been missing for two days... ." Perov casts his eyes on a shocked Isabella Maxini "you didn't know?" the Russian admiral asked.

"I was at a shuttle race round Cheron" Maxini with a worried look on her face "Where do you think he is gone"

"Some alien convicts stole back their quarantined vessel, and took off. Hans was on it." Perov turned round and leaned against the wall, trying to find the words to tell the late mans worried friend "We think he's dead."

Isabella Maxini simply dropped her head, her hand gripping her head "So you... so you need to access his logs." The admiral could hear some sniffling, followed by a hard swallow. "I think I can help you"

The two SDF officers, went into the home of the lost captain. The temperature and humidity changing instantly, from the cold, moist air outside to the well heated but dry hair in the house. The Italian lieutenant did not utter a word as she walked up to a computer console. Her hands moved along the console, the machine coming on with a beep. She scanned several files of Hans with her eyes. "one of them is classified" she uttered.

"Can you open it?" asked the frustrated Russian officer.

"I'm not a computer genius!" Maxini shot back, then breathed in after an intense glare by Perov "Sir... "

"Okay, says 'enter password' " Maxini stated.

"Can you open it" the Russian admiral asked again, in an impatient tone.

The Italian turned her head to the Russian "What is so important about this file anyway"

The Russian sighed "I think it is the crew manifest picked by Caesar Hans for his new ship" he said, waving his cigar. "But since he's... "

"New ship?!" Maxinis eyes widened.

"Not much news gets to Pluto, does it" Perov asked sarcastically.

"No, I just never keep my communicator on" Maxini replied. "Cause I race... wait a sec" the Italian declared, turned round and typed in the password. which the machine replied with a simple 'Access enabled'.

"I hate to admit... " the Italian women turned to the Russian "not many people watch shuttle races anymore." The Russian admiral replied with a grin and headed out the door, the Italian stumbling after him. ---------------------------------------------- The moon, earths satellite. Its orbit, also home to one of Earths latest inventions, the Pioneer. The Pioneer looked nothing like the average Antares runner. The frontal section was a globe with a large dish at the front. Connecting the globe and the secondary section was a short cylinder- like neck, as well as the secondary section being a long cylinder. Connected at the back, were two very large nacelles, trailing from the back end of the ship, giving it much of its length.

"Very nice to meet you Ms. Maxini" Commander Levente greeted as he lifted her hand and kissed it gently. The Lieutenant simply smiled in a amused manner, turning her eyes to a serious-looking Perov.

"I didn't know they did that anymore..." Perov simply remarked. As he turned, he saw their new ship embedded in a space dock "There she is... "

Levente disregarded Isabellas hand and walked up to the window to see the starship "She looks a bit... emm" Antonio scrunched his eyes "She looks a bit like a lollypop"

"I have to fly that lollypop?" Maxini added with a look of bewilderment on her face as her eyes scanned up and down the new vessel.

The Russian admiral simply sighed "I'm sure you will all warm up to her..." the man said as he headed for the shuttledoors. ------------------------------------------ Svenn Holmes straightened his uniform thoroughly with his hands, straightening out the creases of his Earth Interest Uniform. The fact that the Solar Defence Forces would take Earth Interests newest ship was preposterous, also the fact that they need Earth Interests crew to run it. Holmes was a tall man, at least 6ft, and had greying, mouse-coloured hair, and a trimmed shave. His skin was slightly wrinkling to indicate late 40s or early 50s. His uniform was a long blue body-hugging jumpsuit, with several tools in zipped pockets.

"Okay, knowing these SDF types, and orders from that Admiral Perov, the first thing they'll want to do is head to the bridge and get things moving along, I can read these people like a book" Holmes droned on his Swedish accent to his fellow crewmen, then the shuttle-bay doors opened and three black-suited figures stepped "Like a book..." Holmes smirked.

"Director Holmes" Perov asked walking up shaking hands.

"Very good to meet you in person, sir." Holmes tone changed to a more loyal tone, instead of the critical one earlier. Holmes turned to a door and stated "This way to the bridge, sir"

"Holmes?" Admiral Perov stood his ground. Svenn Holmes turned around, confused in why the space-soldiers wont follow him "I've had a change of plans. Me and the officers here, Isabella Maxini, and Antonio Levente would like a tour of the ship" Holmes nodded to the officers, sweat-beads dripping down his forehead.

"Right away, sir." The Swede groaned, going through another door. ----------------------------------------- Quintin Marriot, the afro-English Earth Interests doctor waved his instrument in front of the SDF Medic "You see this?" The medic had his eyes on the tool, his face frustrated. "This is called a laser-scalpel" The doctor proclaimed in a sarcastic tone, slamming the instrument down on the table.

"Listen Mr. Marriot... " The Medic was cut off again, by the articulate but frustrated British doctor.

"No, you listen, this is my biobay, my tools, my stuff, and if one of your "troops" has a headache, I can give him something, not you!"

"Actually, this biobay is owned by the Earth government, paid for by the taxpayers" came a Russian voice from behind the afro-British doctor. He turned round and gasped.

"Admiral?" The doctor skipped over his voice. "I was just briefing Mr. O'Shale here, on the chain of command inside the bay..."

"Well... Quintin... Marr... iot" The Russian looked at the desk name "It is equal authority in the bay now, you will have full use of the facilities according to a specific timetable, I have placed in the ships database myself... is that clear?" Perov demanded.

"Yes sir" They both said in unison, but at different tones.

"To speak frankly, what makes this sick-room better than all other sick- rooms in the fleet?" the Italian Lieutenant asked behind the taller Russian admiral. Levente almost snickered at the explicit comment.

"You speak frankly too much, Maxini" Perov inquired. "Anyway, answer the officer, what's new Marriot"

"Umm... well..." The cockney Englishman smiled "The equipment makes the sick-room of your average Antares runner look like a very, very bare first aid kit"

Marriot continued walking up to the seemingly bare white walls of the room "The medical beds are in the wall..." The doctor slapped a small switch and three beds sprang from the wall, and rested on the ground. "The lab can be converted to a lab for other scientists too. Being in the Earth Interests, you have to be more than multi-talented" and with that comment, Maxini and Levente simply cringed.

Noticing the Solar Defence Force Officers make a slight nudge of annoyance, The relatively quiet Svenn Holmes spoke out "Hey Quintin, show them the Dermal Regenerator." He raised a thumb up to the doctor as the doctor made a corresponding thumbs up.

"Ladies and Gentleman." The British doctor almost seemed a bit too ecstatic, with a huge grin on his face. Pushing another button on the wall directly in front of Admiral Perov, a strange blue pulsating chamber emerged." A one of a kind." Marriot sighed.

Levente spoke up "Umm, what does it do?"

"obviously it regenerates things" Maxini replied, in a tone of all- knowingness.

"Regenerates what!" The Argentinean countered in frustration.

"Please!" Marriot interrupted the two bantering, as Admiral Perov played around with the console attached to the device, then he placed his hand on the relatively large body-shaped surface "Admiral please!" The doctors grin dropped.

A small cut on the admirals hand faded away as wave after wave of energy pounded the admirals hand. The pulsating stopped and the Russian lifted his hand, and showed everyone "Heals right?" Perov headed to the door "Maxini, Levente follow me... Holmes will follow you... I hate technobabble" making a last turn at Dr. Marriot. ------------------------------------------------ Caesar Hans lay in a small vent, head first, looking through a chain- covered hall which looked into the corridor. His eyes were particularly locked on the door at the end of the corridor, they showed signs of wonder, as it was a door he was unable to open, unlike the other doors on the ship. Suddenly he heard small noises on the floor of the corridors. Two Zeytraddi walked up to the door.

On the door was a circular panel. One of the reptiles brought his index digit and rested it on the top of the circle, dropped it down vertically, then moving his finger back up to the top in a clockwise position, then it went down again in anti-clockwise arriving at the top once more.

Suddenly a small device stuck out the door and scanned the aliens eye, he followed with a small beep, and the door opened, with a cold gust escaping the hinges. Hans watched from behind the vent as the two aliens disappeared into the mysterious room.

After a few minutes, the two aliens left. Hans sat agonizingly there for a few minutes. One of the Zeytraddi headed down the corridor, while the other stood in front of the door. The sore human captain, thoroughly fed up, headed back down the vent.

Suddenly the alien guarding jumped up, he immediately turned his head to the vent. He bent down and tore it off. Hans had to think quickly. The captain grabbed each end of the vent and surged forward, his body shooting out of the small vent, knocking his foe down.

Caesar Hans stood up and looked at the alien. The captain lanced out and kicked it in the head several times. It stopped moving, and Hans let out a sigh of relief. Then he turned to the door and grinned.

The collar of the alien top was squeezed as the reptile heap was dragged towards the complicated door. Hans brought the aliens hand up and managed to pry away the index finger. The same motions were repeated as the hand signals were completed and the door released the eye scanner. The eye-beam scanned up Hans face, taken by suprise Caesar Hans quickly closed his right eyes, and gripped the reptiles head and pulled him up to the scanner, and prying open his eye-lids with his fingers. The door opened.

With a smile, the Captain dropped the Zeytraddi, and walked inside. The room was blue, unlike the familiar maroon round the ship, and the equipment was different, almost organic in a way. The American walked round the room looking at the equipment, his eyes widening, folding his arms and stopping. He gazed at the bleeping circular device in the middle, it had several writings scribed on it.

Hans withdrew his scanning recorder -the blue light going on, as he pressed the 'on' switch several times- from one of his pockets. "Finally I can use this thing".

The scanners beams moved over and over the writing "This is not Zeytraddi writing" he muttered, the device scanned over and over it again. His eyes widening, and his face of one of confusion "The device, its translating it for me?... Who are the T'kon?"

Just as Hans turned his head in more bewilderment the ship suddenly shook causing the captain to jolt his head to the right. A second shake caused him to drop to his feet. He left the small alien room and proceeded to a panel on the wall.

On the panel was a monitor-like interface. He ran his recorder down it several times, and then a let out a sigh of satisfaction. The monitor switched as another jolt went around Caesar Hans. It displayed what looked like a Traygon runner "What a suprise" he mumbled "maybe I can give our chivalric friends a little advantage"

Moving his fingers along his recorder, pressing several more buttons, a different image came up on the small screen. It displayed a wire frame of the ship and a several flows of something going through it "Umm... looks like power flow, or food dispensers... lets get this right" Hans conversed to himself again. -------------------------------------------- The Alpha Zeytraddi sat rigid on his command chair, as he observed the Traygon pursuer on his viewscreen. It was getting closer, firing laser after laser, and the chances of getting hit increased.

"Range to enemy!" he shrieked at his crew.

"Three-hundred klos" The gamma replied with a basic tone.

Everyone on the bridge of the ship managed to keep an eye on the enemy as well as their consoles, motivated by the need to stay alive. Everyone also kept an ear to the Gamma who read the ranges as the ship got closer.

"two-hundred and seventy five" there was a light shake "two-hundred and fifty" the jolts got heavier, and the sound and smell of burning could be heard above.

The Alpha eyes were locked on the screen, as his body was coiled forward staring at the alien vessel, but his ears were tuned to his second in command "two-hundred..." The Gamma exclaimed.

The commander jumped to his feet and shouted "Full stop!" ----------------------------------------------- The Traygon ship finished a salvo of lasers, at the retreating ship, and its guns began to heat again. Suddenly the criminal ship came to abrupt stop and the pursuing vessel flew right over it. Immediately it began to slowly turn. ----------------------------------------------- "Fire all pulse guns!" The Alpha fiercely shrieked, still standing on his bare feet.

"Firing..." the Gamma replied, still keeping a serious tone. Suddenly the officer gripped his chest in almost-shock, as a look of pain went over him "Unable... to... fire"

"What?" The commander asked softly, his face curled in confusion.

Another voice from the bridge caught the Alphas ear "Enemy coming around for another pass." The commander turned to the lone death-blowing zeytraddi in the back. "They are firing... "

"Rotate Sedoff-Axi, four-hundred and fifteen asmoffs" the commander shouted, gripping the handles of his chair. ----------------------------------------------- The Traygon ship fired several blue-blasts from his side-guns, just as the opposing vessel rotated to one side, allowing the laser blasts to pass the top and bottom of the ship. Suddenly the Zeytraddi vessel shot out an energy-beam. The beam impaled itself on the attacker, almost holding in place. A bright light released itself from the beaming ship. The green energy ball traveling up the carrier-beam, finally smashing into the Traygon vessel. The badly damaged Traygon vessel sat there in space harmlessly drifting passed the criminals. ---------------------------------------------- "Successful test of Plasma Projection Cannon, Alpha" The Gamma stated, panting heavily, but grinning none-the-less.

The Alpha let out a sigh "Excellent!" just as the Alpha sat down on his char, another jolt shook the bridge "What now!"

"Traygon Ion Cannons still functional, damage on sections six to nine of the meridian of the ship" the Gamma exclaimed.

"Pulse cannons?" The Alpha asked, the gamma returned with a nod, then the gamma got another nod from the captain, then he stamped his thumb on one of the many buttons on his console. ----------------------------------------------- The chivalric ship blew to pieces as a rain of energy tore it apart, which emanated from the opposing starship. With the explosion the criminal vessel made a turn and ran. Its nacelles flared up and zoomed adding a million miles every second leaving a colourful trail of light on its engine wake. ------------------------------------------------ Caesar Hans felt his head bound by several alien hands as we dragged through several alien corridors. He was finally dropped in a familiar area. The aliens bridge was covered in those reptiles again, he would love to fight them all, but his reliable crew from the Waterstone wasn't here to help him this time.

Suddenly his face was grabbed and an alien device was stuck in his face, wrapped round his ear and the left side of his upper-head, then the Zeytraddi started talking. Their words completely confusing at the first, then becoming clearer. "What is your name, mammal!?" one of them shouted. "Rank? Name? I studied your pathetic hierarchy system while I rotted in your prisons!"

Hans immediately obeyed protocol and replied "I'm Ensign Third Class Robert Perdoe, service number V-999 012, now who the hell are you?"

Captain Hans comment was met with a smash across the face "Your uniform suggests your a captain!" The alien was at least slightly observant. "So Captain... Caesar Hans, you were the one which escaped" Hans had just caught them lifting a card out of one of his pockets.

"Could they read English?" Hans thought. "Who are you, scum!" Caesar spat out.

"I really don't think your in a position to make demands" Suddenly the alien keeled over with a pain in his chest.

"Don't scare it, Gamma" one emerged from the door "Bring it here!"

Hans was dragged across the floor to talk to a new Zeytraddi, it started to speak "I am alpha of this ship, much like a captain of one of your ships. I may be a Zeytraddi, but me and my crew work for the Tee'lay Kin." The Alpha smiled. "The only reason we're keeping you alive, is so the Tee'lay Kin can get a very large ransom for you back on earth."

The Alpha continued to talk "But, a captain from Earth, must be a very capable officer, after all you defeated me and my crew when you boarded my ship." Caesar Hans started to make out the familiarity of this alien "Yes, you remember me... how would you like to join the Tee'lay Kin?"

The Captain finally responded, "and why would I want to do that?" Hans smiled. "There will be no one of my own... species to talk to."

"Your humour is pathetic, and seriously discredits a captaincy in our generous organisation. There are several humans in the Tee'lay Kin, wanting to escape the... fascist hell which is Earth."

Hans looked up at the Alpha, and gave him a small smile. ---------------------------------------------------- "The new SS&E-99A Fusion Reactor has been specifically designed for long term missions, so this ship can actually leave the solar system and stay out there efficiently unlike its predecessors" Svenn Holmes smiled,

"That didn't stop you before" Perov declared, looking down at the massive engineering room, in its centre lay a fifty-metre long cylindrical core of fusing particles and plasma flows. Its function to power all systems, from the engines from the lights of the fine ship, Pioneer. "Very impressive, so now you Earth Interests types don't have to take every second glance at your fuel gauge while at warp?" The Russian smiled, and the Swede simply cringed behind him, as he inspected all the consoles.

"So, this is what powers the 'lollypop'" Levente declared with a soft grin, receiving a similar expression from Perov, and a confused expression from Holmes

Maxini simply walked over to a ladder that led to the lower deck of engineering and said "That's not funny anymore" and slid down the ladder- only receiving a sigh from Perov.

The Italian dropped her feet on the hard deck of engineering. The flow of the engines buzzing through her feet, and the fusion reactor whirring in her ear. She looked around, it was all very impressive, but her eyes locked into the middle of the room. Maxini let of a satisfied smile and walked over.

"Hi" came a greeting from the Italian SDF Officer, raising her hand and doing a small wave with her fingers.

"Hi... " came from the female engineer, her eyes still locked on her work, raising her head slightly. The south-east Asian woman's face screwed up slightly as she realised the Italian woman was wearing an SDF Uniform.

"So, what's a pretty thing like you doing at the bowels of a starship like this?" Maxini asked, her face still glaring with a grin.

"Getting away from nosy Militants" The Asian dotted her console with her fingers, then faced her "... and doing my work." Maxini was quite insulted by the comment but was still attracted to this lovely engineer; she was going to try again until a familiar Russian voice hit her ears.

"Lieutenant Maxini, I see you have met Engineer Jolana Kahn..." The Russian continued to talk, as the Italian smiled at the engineer, as the engineer simply caught her gaze and started talking to the other officers. ----------------------------------------- Svenn Holmes, Admiral Perov, Isabella Maxini, and Antonio Levente stepped onto the busy bridge. It was circular in shape, each "corner" having a door leading to somewhere else, except one corner. Occupying one corner was a huge viewscreen. On the viewscreen a pitch black of stars and space, and beneath, the typical positions for Helm and Navigation, just left of the viewscreen, tactical. Right of it operations. Closer to the middle, a blue bar spun round the heart of the ship, the Captains chair.

Crewmembers dabbled round the bridge. SDF Officers arguing with Earth Interests technicians, most of them had the look of experience on their faces, which brought up a question from Holmes "Pardon me, Admiral Perov?"

"Yes Mr. Holmes?" Perov replied, turning to Holmes, his face still full of awe from the bridge.

"May I ask, why they doesn't seem to be any green SDF officers here?" Holmes asked, looking round the bridge for a single incompetent crewman.

"Hans, the man of common sense" Perov muttered. "Caesar Hans, one of the objectives for our mission, Director Holmes, seems to have chosen an experienced crew for the ship... we can't choose an all green crew to boldly go where no man has gone before, can we?" Perov smiled at the use of the Earth Interest slogan, and Holmes simply rolled his eyes as Perov turned.

Perov walked up to Helm, where Maxini was rubbing her behind into the leather chair, and looking confusingly at the helms control "These aren't controls of a runner"

"No they are not, this ship flies like one of EI's Perseverances." Perov smiled sitting himself down on the navigation chair, before scrunching up his face, he reached under him and withdrew a discarded laser-wrench. "Holmes!"

"Yes, Admiral?" Holmes came rushing across the bridge to him.

"Get this bridge spic and span, I don't want to sit on a plasma pistol in the Captains chair when we get moving..." Perov declared

"You, sir?" Maxini asked with suprise before raising a slight smile.

"Your, sir?" Holmes asked, his face occupying one of confusion. "I thought I would take command?"

"We are about to undertake a Solar Defence Forces Mission, Director" Perov turned to Holmes, rising out of his chair. "One personally, I would like to command."

Svenn Holmes sighed "Yes, Admiral." Holmes swallowed and stood up straight. "What shall my function be onboard the Pioneer"

"You will take Operations, Levente take Tactical" Perov ordered loudly, as he walked over to and settled himself down on the Captains chair, with a satisfied smile, he leaned forward pressing a button on his chair, making his voice throughout the ship "Hail Spacedock, were ready to go. Activate Inertial Dampeners, Ion Drives discharge at quarter capacity" --------------------------------------- Inside the large dock round the moon, the many metal moorings restraining Pioneer to her dock gave way. Once all of them were clear, the huge starship started to move slowly out of its lunar prison. The vessel made a small orbit round the moon before launching itself into space at reasonable speeds. -------------------------------------- "Excellent" Perov muttered leaning forward, clutching his index finger and thumb together, his eyes locked on the screen in front of him.

Isabella let out a satisfied smile as her fingers danced along her console "Maintaining quarter-ion thrust" Everyone on the small bridge gave a small smile as they knew they were underway; even the mysterious Svenn Holmes grinned with delight.

Admiral Perov sat back on his chair, and grinned lightly, gripping the arm- rests with his hands and ordered to the crew "Alright everybody White Alert!"

The whole crew jumped to attention on the bridge as they're fingers were busy again and several lights on the bridge flashed a heavy white. Everyone rushed constantly calling down to the lower decks; shouting about items from "inertial dampeners" to "plasma ducts". Svenn Holmes turned to Perov. "So soon, sir..." he pointed to his console. "Shouldn't we optimise the Ion Drive output yet"

"I want to get a move on Holmes" Perov turned back to his crew "Okay everyone, calibrate the dampeners, full ion thrust, I want to get a good speed before we go." The alarm sounds echoed around the Russian as he stood and pointed to the space on the monitor "Warp speed now!" ----------------------------------- The ship accelerated, getting faster and faster as it surfed the stars. Suddenly the two huge nacelles at the back of the Pioneer got brighter and brighter. The ship started to overtake the stars themselves, as a huge burst of energy wreaked, the sound breaking the law of physics themselves. Pioneer streaked forward, her might, creating a huge flash in the middle of space, leaving nothing but space. ---------------------------------- Admiral's Log February 26th 2154 The Pioneers first warp runs have been excellent, and there has been nothing but the most trivial problems with the ship. The crew is another issue. The mixed crew of Solar Defence Force Soldiers coupled with Earth Interest jocks is not a good mix. There have been various fist fights in the mess, engineering and a fight over who gets to use the Doctors Lab, which resulted in a very sore cheek for our Quentin Marriot. Nevertheless, I hope the crew can eventually get along or I'll chuck off every EI bastard myself.

Perov sat on the comfortable seat in the ready room. The walls were bare, and the floors were clean. Perov was its first user. The Russian simply sat in the chair, his legs bent against the edge of the window as he looked at the passing stars. He turned round, sought out a computer and turned it on. His fingers roamed the keys for a few seconds until a picture of a group of people appeared on the screen. Behind them lay the Russian Kremlin, getting rebuilt from World War III.

The Admiral simply buried his chin in one hand, and grinned at the picture. The silence was broken by several chimes and a demand for Perov to report to the bridge.

"Report!" demanded Perov as he stepped on the bridge.

"Failure in the Inertial Dampeners, we have to drop out of warp or... " Svenn Holmes was cut off by Perov.

"Or what" Perov asked anxiously, his feet locked on the bridge floor, and his eyes staring at the EI Operations officer.

"Or the lovely new bulkheads, gets a new coat of red" Svenn Holmes lightly grinned and sighed.

"Maxini!" Perov shrieked his hand stuck out at the taken-aback Italian helm officer. The stars on the screen slowed down as Isabella Maxinis hands roamed her helm console, and the adjacent navigator pressed conjuncting keys.

"Full stop, sir" The Italian sat back, her back pressed against the chair and her eyes facing the dull space background of the bridge monitor.

"Perov to engineering" The Russian asked as he sat back down in his chair, his thumb going white pressing on the comm. button on his arm rest.

"Yes" came the voice of Engineer Kahn over the comm.

"What's wrong?" Perov asked his head looking at the panel like he was talking to the Muslim engineer.

"I think you should send an SDF engineer to look at this, its not in my field of expertise" stated Kahn, her voice harbouring fear.

"We haven't brought any specific SDF engineers" Perov said over the comm.

"Well..." The engineer replied, still containing some hesitancy as well as fear.

"Sir, I took engineering at the academy" Maxini suddenly turned; her eyes full; her behind raised from the chair.

"Who will fly this thing?" Perov said leaning back on the chair, his thumb still buried on the console. "Any EI Pilots here?"

The Russian received no response until he heard a muffled, foreign response from beside him "Sir..." Levente sat on his chair, looking at Perov, his eyes moving to the helm every other second. "I flew a gunship back in the 30s, helm controls are not ridiculously different"

"Well I'm sure they are no hostiles out here, go... " Levente walked to the helm chair, as Maxini bolted to a door, dragging the eyes of everyone, except Holmes who was still looking down a sensor-scope. Perov had his chin buried in his index and thumb, his eyes facing the screen "Out here... where is out here anyway?"

Holmes lifted his eyes from his scope "We are in Orion space, Wolf 351 System" his eyes again dropped to his scope.

"A solar system?" Perov asked almost unbelievingly, sitting back "What odds, and Orion space... Holmes take tactical!"

"Admiral?" Holmes asked questioningly, his eyes now locked on Perov, his chair turned, his mouth half-wide open, and his hands frozen on his knees.

"You thought I did not know about your combat experience on the SS Beagle?" Perov turned to face his monitor. "I know the EI ignored restrictions of weapons, on their ships, but I'm willing to forget it, if you take tactical... "

The cold face of Holmes simply returned to Perov, whose attention was locked on the viewscreen; a real look outside; a real look at the enemy. "Holmes!" Perov demanded standing "Tactical report of system."

"Four planets Admiral, two gas giants, closest is the fourth planet, a ringed gas giant... wait I'm detecting an energy source." Holmes slammed down on the tactical console, as he lost his temper with his tactical scope. "Admiral!... Admiral, I can get a better lock on the power source with the main scanners.."

"You are relieved from tactical, Holmes, take your sensor stations" Perov sat down as various officers paced the bridge, quiet nonetheless; nothing but beeps and footsteps and... loud alarms!

"Orion destroyer bearing 2, 8, 4 40'000 kilometres and closing!" Holmes shouted, one hand on the sensor scope the other holding down a tactical alert button on the tactical console. The Swede paced the bridge, and took position on the tactical consoles. Plasma Spinner control... missile bays... biological deterrents; all so familiar to Holmes.

"Holmes!" The loud voice of Perov burning into his ear "Spinners, 2000rps FIRE!" The EI officer quickly scrambled his arms on the controls tapping fiercely. --------------------------------- The Triangular silver ship fired green bolt after green bolt at the Pioneer. The shots missed and missed, thanks whatever supreme being that cared for the unforgiving abyss that was space. It was so far away. Suddenly another bolt entered the fray, a larger plasma ball, red, and flying from Pioneer. Its accuracy unchallenged, it slams into the Orion vessel, throwing it out of control. Following a small internal blast from within the vessel, a huge split-second blast consumes the ship. --------------------------------- "Okay, I'm not taking another chance, like that again" Perov said, his talk finishing with a lock of his mouth "Levente take tactical, Holmes, back to operations".

"But the helm" Levente said, his hands stretched out on the console, his behind slightly lifted from the chair.

"Now, now, I know you want to broaden your horizons from the helm, but now is not the time." Perov stuck his chin between two caressing fingers and stared blankly at the vacant chair. "I will take the helm... unless Maxini is finished?"

Suddenly a blip came in on the speakers "Its a sabotage device sir, human. We cant go to warp, its wedged in the inertial dampener system, so it will take me a while to wedge it out without breaking the inertial dampeners entirely" the Italian accent came over the speakers. Perov sighed. --------------------------------- Maxini's hand reached out and switched off the communications terminal, and went back to work, a light grin on her face. Her eyes switching glances between the device to disarm and the beautiful Jolana Kahn. Kahns eyes were telling a much different story, wide-eyed and distasteful "What?!" asked Kahn.

Maxini simply sighed "Nothing." With an angry twitch, the Italian almost snapped an odd wire on the device; simply throwing down the laser cutter and turning to Khan "What is your problem?"

"My problem?!" Kahn shot up straight "Your the problem!"

"I'm the problem?!" Isabella Maxinis simulated Kahns body stance, her question met with a simple nod "How am I the problem?"

"If they were no SDF on this ship, that device would not be there" Kahn declared.

"Ok, you have a point, but... " The Italian had a finger raised in the air, before she slouched back into a defensive stance. "You sound way too bitter about a simple crew deterrent!"

"That's right!" The Indian engineer had attracted a great deal of technicians eyes as they all tried to get on with their work, but were all concentrated on the argument. "Everywhere the SDF go, comes death and destruction, buy one get one free as it will... " Kahn finished with a stern, mad face.

"Now that's not true" Maxini and the Security marines being the only officers keeping calm in the entire engineering room.

Thankfully the stir was broken by the recoil of the ship. Repeatedly the ship shook, and the Earth Interest crews interests were dragged elsewhere. Maxini reached for a communications terminal once again, and spoke into it. "Maxini here, who are we firing at?"

"We have witnesses from the battle earlier" came the voice of Perov over the comm. ----------------------------------- The Russian eyes were locked on the convex viewscreen, as red bolts darted away towards the escaping vessel. Perovs mouth opened to let out two words. "Disable him." The Russian sat back down on the helm chair and turned to Levente at tactical "Prepare some marines to board him."

"Sir" came a Swedish voice from the side of the bridge; the Russian temporary pilot turned to Holmes, who had a look of worry on his face "Sir, we should just get out of here, chances are they are more enemy ships in the area, and this ship... is well new."

"If the bastard had friends, why would he be running" Perov asked, still manipulating the helm board.

Levente too kept all his attention on the his tactical display firing shots at the escaping ship, but uttered "Maybes he's trying to fool us, let us disable him, board him..." Levente turned to Perov trying to illustrate his opinion with his hand "We would be stationary, when we board him, and a very easy target."

Perov grasped his chin. "We'll use shuttles to board it, obviously he has hatches on the thing."

Levente leaned onto a communications terminal "Teams 1 through 3, report to the main shuttlebay." After the comment sent through the terminal, Levente leaned to his tactical displays "We've closed range sir... and hit it... its dead in space... sir"

"Excellent, Commander" Perov swiveled his chair to Levente. "You're an officer of many talents."

"Thank you sir-"

"Report to the main shuttlebay" Perov ordered, pointing his finger in the direction of the door, Levente left his seat with a verbal acknowledgment. "Holmes, tactical" The Swede sighed as he reported to his least favorable post. ---------------------------------------- The Pioneer swiveled round the ringed planet; one last patrol, to see the shuttles had done their job in securing the freighter. The large warship drifted in to take a closer look. --------------------------------------- Admiral Perov climbed down the ladder, his feet landing with a thud- his body keeling over- he quickly walked through the simple linear ship. Doors zipping up and down, the ship appeared to only have one deck, and each room was adjacent to the other. Perov finally made it to a large room, in front of it, transparent material showing the Russian the outlook of space, in the middle, an alien women, rambling in her native language- surrounding her several human marines.

"Looks like your 'he' is a 'she" Perov leaned to Levente, as the women rambled "Have you tried the personal universal translators"

"They don't work, sir, and we've spent the last fifteen minutes using several methods from sign language to cheese on a string."

"Cheese on a string?" Perov asked.

"It comes in the rations box, sir" Levente replied.

"That's not what I meant, I meant... " Perov sighed "Have you interfaced the computer systems?"

"Yes, sir!" Levente replied once more with a smile. Perov walked up to a scanning recorder lodged in one of the rooms computer terminals. He tapped a few buttons on it, then let off a grin. He withdrew a communicator and spoke into it.

"Pioneer, prepare to receive these language codes through your universal translator." Perov took a look at the still rambling alien female. "Then translate audio codes to this ship and translate them into basic earth codes, understand?"

"Yes, sir" came the voice. The womans voice was slowly overlapped by an English translation, a low female monotone sound came out.

"... the meaning of this, you alien pigs, what do you want from me, I have several friends you know, minus the one you blew up... ."

"Shut up!" Perov shouted, the women silenced, looking angry and confused "You understand me, then?"

"Yes, barely, you have language devices, pretty big scores for pirates."

"Pirates?" Levente raised his eyebrows, still holding his gun steady.

Perov grinned. "Yes, we are pirates, Kalorian Pirates from Kalor prime, about fifty uteres away"

"Kalorians ey, you've come a long away just to trash my ship" the women said "What do you want, you can't take me, because I'm one of the Orion's best affiliates, although I bet they trade in much better women than me."

"We..err... Kalorians have equal rights for both our sexes" Levente replied, turning to Perov, and motioning him to turn round and talk privately "Kalorians sir, who are they?"

"From Kalorian Prime, you fool, has your operage disease consumed your soul" Perov shouted. The Russian dragged the officer down two rooms "That is a Jylon trader, they have marvelous hearing."

"Oh I understand, sir" Levente nodded. "Kalorians?"

"Something I made up, ucteres is a common way of measurement out here, and why I did not mention that we're humans? Because after fifty years of conflict with Orion cartels, I've found out, that we've been demonised in all their local religions, and no one likes a demon" Perov replied. "And don't worry about Jylons recognising us, Orions hold a myth to its fellow traders, that we're creatures so ugly, that if you look into our eyes, you will turn to cobalt." Perov finished off with two fingers in his eyes, then stamped back onto the bridge.

The women caught the Russian entering the room "So what do you want Kalorian?"

"Information" Perov replied, making a grin at the angry women.

"Hmm, what kind of information?" The women asked.

"Have you seen this ship?" Perov asked, lifting his scanning recorder to her, showing an outline of the convict vessel that Perov and his "pirates" were pursuing.

"Never seen it before in my life" The women said with a bit of stutter, her eyes wandering.

"Strange, as we got this off your sensor banks" Perov said, his grin dropped, his eyes accusing.

The woman froze, the monotone translation of her voice, mere static, she simply uttered "Yes, I have seen that ship."

"Thank you for mentioning that, we have that on recording" Perov folded down his scanning recorder "Oh and by the way, we didn't touch you sensor banks, were still going through your computer core"

Biting his lip he withdrew his plasma pistol from his pocket, the soft sounding flow of the plasma, indicating the gun was charged "Now tell me when you last saw them, and where they are going."

The woman gulped, how could she be outsmarted by this Kalorian" I met with them, twenty-six chrems ago... and... they were heading to Kin Forso in vutes fifty-six" The women edged off "And I don't think you will ever see them!"

Suddenly the women pressed a button on a computer terminal causing several transparent metal-shields to drop around a small spot in the bridge where Perov and the woman were standing, blocking off Levente and his marines. Then she jumped in the air, kicking his pistol away. Before Perov knew what had happened, she had the pistol in her hand with a direct shot to his head. She pulled the trigger... .

Nothing. With a small voice of confusion for the trader, Perov pushed her down to the ground, then pressed the same button she pressed lifting the shields up, allowing the marines to surround the downed women. "Oops, I forgot to load it" Perov grinned, and with that he dropped the plasma pellet onto the floor just adjacent to her head.

"Now were there any Kalorians with the people that crewed that ship?" he asked the woman, leaning down and gripping her hair.

"One" she replied.

"Thank you" Perov said, letting her go and walking away. ------------------------------------- Perov, closely followed by Levente, stepped onto the bridge of the Pioneer. In the middle of the room, stood a worried Swede. A Swede called Svenn Holmes. His hand was wedged in his mouth, and beads of sweat rolled down his head.

"What's wrong with you Director?" Levente asked, grabbing the attention of Holmes and Perov.

"I'll take my position back, Holmes" Perov smiled, sitting down.

Holmes opened his mouth, stuttering a few words; "Did you delete their sensor banks? They won't be able to identify us will they?" The Swede walked back to his seat. "I remember the last time this happened"

"You mean the honorable Earth Interests has been in the same situation?" Perov asked shocked, then his face went stern. "Anyway, we shot the warp engines, sensor banks ripped"

"She could explain the geometry of the ship, sir, it is quite a simple shape" Levente inquired.

"Simple like her creators?" Perov left of, catching the confused glaze of Holmes and the many EI crewman onboard "It was a joke, get back to your stations."

"Wasn't that funny" Maxini said under her breath, catching the attention of Perov.

"Ah Isabella, I see your back from engineering." Perov was handed a report by an EI ensign. "You did very well according to this report, apart from complaints from Kahn... hmm you're now chief SDF engineer, your salary is now increased 2/3rds"

"Funny joke, sir" Maxini interjected, with a grin on her face.

"set course for the Gamma Hebron system, Warp 4.5, White Alert!" the alarm sounds buzzed through the ship, as Perov descended into his chair. ------------------------------------------- The earth ship streaked into the distance, creating a blue trail of warp plasma and ionized gas. As it accelerated, a simple blinding light consumed it, and there was nothing to be seen but several planets, and a smashed up freighter. ------------------------------------------- Gamma Hebron sector Kin Forso Tee'lay Kin Spacestation

Captains Log February 26th 2154 This is my first log as the "Gamma's Beta" aboard the starship which was stolen from Earth. Apparently the starship belongs to an organisation called the Tee'lay Kin and we are here at one of their main outposts, "Kin Forso". The name of this ship is the In'jiken, roughly translated meaning "Native Beast." I have been drafted into their navy, and it is my hope, that I can find out as much as I can about them and escape back to Earth. Escaping wont be easy, as these Zeytraddi, the primary crew of this vessel, are not as stupid as they look and have deterred me from escaping by placing an explosive device in my mid-section. I knew that "dinner" tasted funny. I am keeping this log on my scanning recorder, which I managed to get the hard drive working again, so I don't have to scratch my logs onto walls. My duties are to serve the Gamma of the ship, who I must say, has a greater degree of insanity than the other Zeytraddi. Perhaps I can use that.

Caesar Hans faced the alien console. The Theta went over it before he went into the station. The captain, now "Gamma's Theta," basically knew what he was doing, but his concentration was disrupted by the chair he was sitting on, as well as the clothes he wore which chafed his skin so much.

Hans looked over onto the bridge. These 'Zeytraddi' were his crewmates, or fellow drones. This ship has a stricter hierarchy than the presidential 'Starship One!' What interested Hans was the unstable Gamma. One of the crewmates had told him about the officers conditions, and Hans watched like an eagle. The gamma twitched, his left eye repeatedly closing and opening and his body shaking. This was a disease caused by the Transporter; a device meant to transport non-biological materials.

Hans then looked at his console. It was the sensor console, the sensor screen now displayed the interior of Kin Forsos bay which 'Native Beast' was in. His finger darted at more buttons. The screen displayed the outside, nothing but outlines of ugly, alien ship. Suddenly another silhouette appeared. It resembled a globe on a cylinder, with two nacelles. Two nacelles! It couldn't be! Pioneer! ------------------------------------ Levente, Maxini and Holmes all walked down the corridors of this dirty station. Perov had told them to maintain the Kalorian disguise. It was going well so far. Holmes had gone on this away-mission purely for Earth Interests interests, something the company had every right to do in these circumstances.

"Are you sure this... Caesar Hans is here?" Holmes asked with a bit of frustration and doubtfulness.

"Hum... 'Kalorian' lifesigns are light, sufficient for one" Maxini stated, ramming her fingers, on her scanning recorder, then turning to Holmes "and that 'Caesar Hans' is your new captain, when we take over."

"I'm not detecting any Orion lifesigns" Levente smiled, and snapped his pad closed. "I'm sure we will be fine!"

Suddenly a purple-scaled alien with three legs came running down the corridor, jumping up on boxes and bouncing off walls. Every other alien simply looked at the mad thing, while Maxini, Levente and Holmes were distracted in finding Caesar Hans. The alien jumped on the three officers. Suprisingly strong, Holmes managed to knock it out with the butt of a Plasma gun he found in his shoe. They all got up with a sigh.

"Weapon!" One of the aliens shouted at the visitors. English could be finely heard, due to the universal translators being built in the walls, so convenient, but what a curse. "Weapon, dese aliens be using, weapons not aloud, also insult to our Kin." The hairy tall alien in a long cloak pointed at them.

Levente shouted back to the aliens "No, no, not weapon." He did his trademark smile trying to calm the aliens, which were all looking very hostile at this moment "Umm, shaver, dispose of body hair." Leventes sentence structure was brought to the level of the aliens, trying to negotiate with it and his multi-racial friends.

Maxini whispered very slightly into Holmes ear "Why the hell did you bring that here, you read the stationmasters rule, no weapons, mean no plasma pistols".

Suddenly a green alien with large ears rose up, like a Labrador hearing something far away. "Pistol ey, th..th... Pistol is a weapon, plasma pistol" he smiled as he noticed Maxinis suprise. "Y.y..you think wh..whispering can defy me, I can hear v..voi..voices round the station!"

Maxini simply scowled "Well hopefully not your own." She put her hands at her hips. "Why don't you get a speech therapist!"

A blue, bald alien with a crevice through his head came up to the officers. "Plasma pistol, you say" The blue alien smiled, his arms crossed, his feet shot out in front of him "Plasma projectile handheld weapons are only used by two races, Klingons and... Humans... your not as ugly as I thought... and not as big."

"Who are the Klingons?" Levente asked, still separate from the statement. then he caught several guards walking towards them. "Oh god" he shouted. The Argentinean went behind, a table and kicked it down, the surface going from horizontal to vertical. Then the officer picked up a loose heavy circuit and threw it at the guards. With that they opened fire with their beam-weapons, the same he's seen before in Paris, Earth.

Holmes opened fire with his plasma pistol. With a shot to the green aliens, he fell to the ground. He targeted another alien, and took him down. Drawn away from the battle, Maxini was amazed at an EI officers shooting skills. Suddenly a plasma bolt hitting just below her floor-bound knees, drew her attention back into the fight.

Levente caught sight of a large console in the wall, with a spinning wheel at the end. He pondered as the fight ensued. "Svenn?" the Argentinean asked the Swede.

"Yes?!" Holmes replied with some anger, frustration and nervousness.

"Can I have your pistol?" Levente turned to a suprised Holmes. "Just give it to me, you'll see".

Svenn Holmes handed the pistol to him. The Argentinean brought the weapon up to eye level. His eyes locked on the huge console. The Argentineans eyes were his scanners, his infra-red. His index finger, his delivery tool. With a squeeze of the trigger, the plasma bolt darted towards the console, smashing it. Just as Levente expected, the whole room rose off the ground.

The Bolian who had questioned them before, held onto a bar in the ground, his feet firmly wedged in it. He held up a huge black rifle. With his eye firmly immersed in the lens, he made a small cackle, and shot a round at the Earthers, only knocking their plasma pistol away.

The Bolian was about to fire another shot, but he felt the weight in his body increase again, as he saw a hovering device fly into the room. It had a malt brown colour, and its curves moved. Its colours almost familiar, almost Traygon. A Traygon device! He saw his comrade Kinners fall back down to the ground. Turning his eyes to the entrance to the next section stood four large aliens, all carrying poles of a sort.

"The Traygon?" Holmes confused look was drawn towards the new aliens, who lit up their poles and went into a battle-stance.

"What are you fellas doing here" Maxini asked smiling, still crouching behind the broken table.

"Fellas?" The middle Traygons face resembled Holmes look of bewilderment for a mere three seconds. "Our vessel has been shadowing yours since Jikuj'bal"

"Jikuj'bal" Levente questioned, his eyes still on the alien guards firing numerous energy beams at them, him returning fire with their only plasma pistol.

"Wolf 351, in our language, Commander" Holmes stated. "So can you give us a little help; ally to ally?" Holmes smiled at the Traygon, them offering small grins back. The Bolian stepped up and targeted Holmes Just as his fingers pulled the trigger, one of the Traygon flew up, and through his pole forward, smashing the bullet back through the air. The blue alien stood mystified for a time, just enough so the Traygon could throw the Ion Discharge end of his pole towards the Bolian. With a rapid tap of buttons, the small blue blast, shot across the room, knocking the Bolian down. -------------------------------------- On the 'Native Beast' bridge.

The communication officer sat rested in his chair, but all of a sudden, he sat up, listening to his ear piece. He uttered one word. "Humans?!"

The jittering Gamma whose skin colour had changed from green to yellow, with elements peeling off, jumped up. Unable to stand straight, he stumbled towards the communications officer. "Humans? where?!"

"Kin Forso sir, them and a group of Traygon have dispatched ground level security" The comm officer, felt a hand pressing on his neck. The gammas hand had shot out and squeezed his neck.

With a terrible, gurgling voice, the gamma stated "We're on ground level security!" With that, he threw the officer aside. He sat down, tapped several buttons on the console, and spoke into the earpiece "Kin For..Forso, disengage clamps we are leaving!"

"Sorry Native Beast, only your captain has the authority to carry that out, and he will be coming aboard now"

"No!" The gamma slammed his hands up and down on the console "Disengage clamps!!"

"Theta?!" The monstrous head turning towards a bewildered, and slightly disgusted officer "Fire pulse cannons at the docking port... ..NOW!" Frightened, the Theta hands danced along the controls. On the viewscreen it displayed the white bursts blowing away the door which kept them in here.

"Sir, were still help by docking clamps" the Theta said "and we have no weapon arcs to cut them" The gamma dug his face in his chin, and then rose up with a slight nasty grin. --------------------------------------- Lopek Grim lined his ornaments along his shelf. His white shelf, his ornaments comprised his achievements working successfully for the Tee'lay Kin. He had just made Alpha, and was ready to be handed his own 'Fast Monster' warship. Grim let off a smile of relief, as he lined the last of his ornaments

Suddenly, the wall behind him blew out, and he felt a massive force pull on him. Lopek launched in the air, as the vacuum pulled against him, throwing towards the now-exposed a hanger bay, covered in some, sort of yellow energy shield... -------------------------------------- "Something hit the shields Gamma?!" the Theta exclaimed looking down at his shield display, showing the Native Beast layout surrounded by a shield, and a small blip on its left hand side.

"Who cares?" The gamma lashed out "Are the clamps destroyed?" The gamma asked.

"Yes sir" the Theta was caught off guard, as two glaring green beams, glided towards and hit the Gamma Zeytraddi, knocking him down with a thud on the floor. The theta turned and saw the Alpha at the door. -------------------------------------- "There have been several incidents in ground level, sir!" The Bolian tapped at his console. He span his head round at the commander, who sat in his chair, cloaked, and gloved, simply patting his hands together. This was the operations of Kin Forso. A large spacious room, with huge rectangular windows, so a view of space could be seen. It was the top of the castle.

"Incidents?" The commander asked leaning forward, his mask coming into plain view. "What sort of incidents?"

"Sir, Humans are on the station!" The bolian replied tapping at his console.

"Humans... " the commander rested back and intertwined his fingers "Anything el.." the commander was cut off as the station shook, as the 'Native Beast' could be seen clearly through the windows, as it flew out of a broken hanger door, and into space.

"and sir, the 'Native Beast' has forced its way out of the station." the Bolian stated in a frightened low tone, his speech followed with a gulp.

"I know that Bolian!" The commanders voice was deep and gruff. He was angry, the rage almost spread like an explosion round him "Where is the humans sh... I don't care, target the humans ship!" -------------------------------------- Panels on the station surface began to retract. Long double barreled 'turrets emerged from green lit holes. The turrets came alive, spinning around towards the Pioneer. The metal bar descended back along the barrels of the gun, then let go...

The explosion rippled through the guns, they blew apart to a million pieces, as nothing emerged. The Pioneer began to drop her guns, and the spinner-like devices span slowly, giving a rain of plasma, scorching the surface of the station. ------------------------------------ Holmes hands were above his head, as an alien weapon was wedged into his back "Hey, how about you let me go, I can pay you, just let me take a 'persecutor' and I'll be on my way... " Holmes pleaded.

"Shut up human!" said the tall yellow alien, with a triangular gun in his back.

"See this uniform, its different from the others, I'm not military, I'm a civilian, can you let me go?" Holmes was kicked as he fell to the ground.

"All humans are scum!" the yellow alien declared.

"I suggest you redefine your perspectives in the mirror" Maxini stated, as she was thrown down too.

"Are all your females this insolent" one of the Tee'lay guards asked.

A Traygon facing the wall with two guns wedged in his back replied "Yes Pirate, its very like the fact, that all females in this Kin are whores!" With that comment, the huge soldier was stunned in the back and fell to the ground. The huge alien hit the floor, followed by the pirate that hit him. Several cloaked figures that had been present for a while, had begun to attack the pirates.

Leventes cuffs were snapped as an electric device overheated the metal binding them. His hands were released. He rubbed at each of his wrists to relieve the soft pain he felt while bound. The Argentinean stood up and smiled at his rescuer, who had dropped his robe - to be one of the alien criminals they were chasing!

"Your one of them, why are you attacking them!?" Levente asked, trying to control the temptation to smack this alien HARD.

"Testing... ahh yess I see, these universal translators are marvelous!" The aliens face straightened, and his eyes wide. He brought up his hand, startling Levente, but then he gripped the side of his uniform. "Royal Zeytraddi Marines!"

"Why help us" Levente asked as he turned, and knocked an alien down, with his fist. "You don't even know us"

"Umm there is little what a Class-9 Marine can tell but... " the alien turned, shooting his arm out, and knocking over another Tee'lay Guard about to assault Levente "This Tee'lay Kin types seem to be hindering our goals, and are therefore are enemies... and we have a saying on Zeytraddium, our enemies enemies are our friends"

"How convenient..." Isabella Maxini shot forward knocking a Teelay Guard over "So your called the Zeytraddi then, care to help us?"

"Of course alien!" the soldier said.

"Call me Izzy" she smiled, but was drawn to a freed Holmes picking up a plasma pistol, and smiling proudly as he had found an advantage over his foes. A sudden smack to his face by a long-armed yellow alien knocked him to the ground. The pistol flew towards her, she hesitantly picked it up. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the blue alien sniper. She drew up the weapon; her hands shaking. She quickly pulled on the trigger, killing the alien, as he was about to shoot someone. The Italian gulped slightly, wandering off into a trance, quickly being grabbed by Levente, followed by some Zeytraddi marines, who had Holmes with them. ------------------------------ The 'Native Beast' shot to warp, as a hangar door on Kin Forso flew away as if something had smashed it out. Out emerged a vessel, a small shuttle. The persecutor shuttles, the menacing persecutor shuttles. It flew towards Pioneer, as she drew her cannons at it. ----------------------------- Perov swiveled round in his command chair, to see Holmes, Maxini, Levente, some Traygon? and ... criminals! stomp onto the bridge. The Russian simply stuttered for a while, as the officers walked across the bridge and took their station. "These are criminals!" Perov declared and confusedly looked at the Traygons "Why have you brought Traygon onboard?" Perovs voice was quieter and more bewildered.

The aliens stood there looking bewildered, and then Levente swung round in his seat "These are Royal Zeytraddi Navy Marines and some Traygon" he smiled "Sir, would it be alright for them to hitch a ride to their meeting point?"

Perov sat and clasped his hands and turned to the marines, who still stood looking about, and sometimes getting in the occasional ensigns way "You all can sit down." Only the Traygon sat down, while the Zeytraddi looked around in slight awe. Perov gripped his chin in frustration, only to catch Maxini in his glance, who seemed to have her palms gripped on the front of her helm console. Suddenly the Russian was alerted to a Swede accent.

"I don't think they understand us now, we don't have universal translators built into the wall" Holmes declared, his fingers dancing along his science console. Levente made a hand signal to them in the form of a flat palm. He moved it up and down, after a few seconds, the marines planted themselves on the deck.

"Boldly going where no man is going before." Svenn Holmes looked at the many officers, trying to communicate to the aliens. Communicating through body language, for the most part. "Baby-sitting lost alien soldiers... " ------------------------------------------ They were at warp! In a few minutes, they would accelerate to a warp speed, which the Pioneer which could not possibly maintain. Caesar Hans had to do something. He gripped the console beneath him wondering what to do. In the background, several Zeytraddi complimented themselves on escaping. Worst of all, he still did not know what the mission was.

"The engine room!" he thought.

He could not possibly leave here, without being asked where he was going, or had no permission to go. He looked at his console. The device on his neck allowed him to listen to their language as if it was English, and he could speak English to him, but not the console. He was only here to be some human liaison to the crew. He withdrew his scanning recorder. It was small and compact enough to be hidden from his 'fellow' pirates, and they were not looking now. It would be a long shot to translate this, and despite that, it would take a long time. Suddenly, the console appeared in a understandable form on his recorder. He had no time to contemplate this luck. Tapping his fingers on the screen, he set a five second timer of a light beryon dissipation of the bridge. Without a second thought, he grabbed the recorder. Hans ran through the automatic door, and then heard a sharp zap noise. The captain stood there for a few seconds, and looked in, and saw the unconscious men, the Gamma lying amongst him. This particular alien grabbing the attention of Caesar Hans. Its faces started to deform. Then a thought sprung to Hans - head to the engine room, disable the warp engines and cause some sort of 'boom' to get the Pioneer here. Hans rolled his eyes at the vagueness of his own suggestion, but he knew he had to get out. All before the Alpha finds out what he's done!

Hans clapped his hands together. "Okay!" --------------------------------------- Isabella collapsed in her chair. Her quarters were her own, but they were small, nothing like her room back on Earth. On Solar Defence Ships, not much thought is given to comfort in a strict military organisation. Being a senior officer, and a 'invaluable' officer, Maxini, got quarters to herself, but it contained nothing but an uncomfortable bed, an array of drawers and a small mirror. Isabella looked into that mirror. She saw the person who ended a life of another. She had flown in the Jupiter Defence Corps, flying armed bulldogs, but she had never actually killed before; the 'fighters' the Orions used against them were remote-controlled drones, and when they were destroyed, the mothership made a fast retreat. This was the usual scenario over the years. She looked tired. The Italian in the mirror had a face of contempt. She stared emotionally at the reflection.

Maxini was suddenly alerted to the bleeping at the door. Who the hell could this be? Levente? He seemed to care about my depression. Perov? He has to command a ship, doesn't he?

The door swung open, and there was... Jolinar Kahn? "Khan?" Maxini asked. The Indian made her way inside the Italians quarters and sighed- all this time, Maxinis face having a look of confusion. Khan cleared her throat.

"I'm sorry" Jolinar Kahn, said with a reluctant gruffness "I'm sorry for treating you like crap earlier... you know, it was only because I dislike the Solar Defence Forces."

Isabellas lips turned into a small smile "Its okay, I only approached you because you were beautiful." With that comment, both of them erupted into laughter.

As Jolinar calmed down, her mouth opened once more "When I came in, you looked depressed?" Kahn came to a stop in her giggling. "Why?"

"Umm... nothing." Maxini was caught offguard by the open question - even she wasn't that open. The Italian concentrated on everything superficial about a person, not how they looked. The powerful glare of Kahns green eyes, made her pass into tears slightly. "I shot someone on the alien spacestation today... " with that Maxinis comment ended with a tantrum.

Jolinahr Kahn was taken aback "Well, I'm sure whoever you shot, you shot to save yourself. " Kahn came closer. "Or to save someone else?"

"I've never shot anyone before" uttered Maxini, holding a tissue to her eyes, the tissues effectively soaking up her tears. With a sudden step towards the Italian, the Indian embraced the woman, holding her in her arms. Just then, Kahn, felt the fingers of the other woman dig into her uniform-clad back, and move down. The engineer withdrew quickly.

"I have to go" Jolinahr muttered, and stepped back. Her walking pattern seemed almost clumsy "I have engine..er... stuff to do" she walked through the door with a smile.

"Bye..." the Italian blessed, her face almost emotionless. She turned to her mirror as the door closed. As she saw herself in the mirror and felt almost devious, her smile almost reflected that. ------------------------------------- "... And that's why I had to do it, don't worry, dad will be back" The Russian admiral spoke into the grey monitor, his chin lifted as he uttered the last words into his personal log. "End log... computer, store, code, Perov-967A, transmit, at nearest subspace beacon, and then transmit to Earth, then uncode" Perov finished his last words before the door of the office slid aside, and in walked a giant. A non-human giant. A Traygon

"Admiral Perov" The Traygon asked, the Russian returned with a nod "The Traygon Oneek would like to send his regards... "

With slight hesitation, Perov lifted his head and made a small grin at the alien, "Please sit down." ------------------------------------ Isabella Maxini walked onto the bridge, it was strangely quiet. Slight fatigue had her firmly gripped. Fatigue, caused by her secret depression and insomnia. She gripped the base of her nose with her left index finger and thumb, as she walked towards her station. Looking at the station next to the pilot, she asked "Where's the officer..for..navigation"

Svenn Holmes turned to her. The Swedes face was tired, he had likely been sitting there all night. His voice almost groaned as he opened his mouth and he uttered "Ensign..what-s-it, err" the tired man was interrupted by Antonio Levente. The Argentinean looked the opposite of Svenn, he was geared for work, and had a slight satisfied smile on his face.

"Ensign Lee, is in his quarters"

"Hmm... found that ship yet" Maxini turned to Holmes

"Hmmm, no" Svenn Holmes eyes widened, as his console bleeped "Wait a second, this looks like something"

"How do you know that's them" Maxini asked with interest, walking over to the EI employee.

"Same plasma readings, I think" Holmes huffed "I need better resolution! Take us to warp!"

"We can't just go to warp at the flick of a hat" Levente inquired. "And you need the commanding officers orders" As the Argentinean talked on, Holmes pushed his finger on the intercom.

"Engineering?"

"Yes?" came a female voice.

"Are we up for warp speed?" Holmes asked

"Wait a second" the female voice was silent for a few seconds, then came alive again "Yes, deuterium flow is at 97%, and engine temperature is at an optimal 5000 degrees Celsius"

"Okay, get ready" Holmes asked "now orders, orders" the Swede muttered.

"Orders!" Maxini complied as she pressed another button on the intercom. --------------------------------------- "Okay I understand, on another note, how did you get onboard Kin Forso and find us" Perov asked. The Traygon opened his mouth to speak, but the speakers came alive with an Italian voice.

"Sir, please can you come to the bridge?"

"Is it important?" the Russian asked over the comm.

"Yeah, we think its Hans and the criminals" the Italian continued.

The Russians face went to stern, and he gripped a fist. His chair moved back as he stood and asked the Traygon to excuse him, as he headed out to the bridge. ------------------------------------- As the Admiral stepped on the bridge, Holmes asked immediately "Sir, to get better scanning range and resolution, we need to go to warp, these subspace scanners, are much better when we are" the Swede explained.

Perov simply replied "Do it." ----------------------------------- Hans had finally vented all the used plasma, and exploded it. Hopefully that got Pioneers attention. He looked around him, and saw all the stunned Zeytraddi. This Tee'lay weapon is amazing, stun setting and everything. When he got off this rust bucket, he would take a few of these. He walked over to a large door, it opened, he ran down the hall, where he found the vertical shaft to the shuttlebay. The Captain made a small gulp and jumped down the hole. Hans fell slowly as he ground to a halt in the gravity- challenged flight deck. He found it hard to reach one of the shuttles, as his weightlessness hindered him. Suddenly he smiled, and pointed his alien pistol at the ceiling. The green ray fired out the gun, and hit the ceiling. The carefully co-ordinated recoil of the weapon was pushing the human down to a shuttle. ---------------------------------- The eyes of the Alpha opened. The green scaly eyelids flicked back and forth, revealing two deep yellow eyes. These eyes slowly open further to their full disturbing glory. The large reptile gripped the sides of his bed, threw his weight upwards and faced the wall in front of him. He turned his head ninety degrees to the left. He lifted his left hand, and flicked a switch on the device left of him. "Command...". After several seconds the wall device did not respond "Command?!" His temper grew louder, as he stood on his two feet on the ground, and rushed out the maroon- coloured door. --------------------------------- "Ok" Caesar Hans said to himself "I have to get out of here". The captain plugged his scanning recorder into the controls. As he patted his chin for the next few seconds, he smiled as the device made a sound to indicate it was finished. His fingers roamed the touchscreen on the device, and the small shuttle came to life. Suddenly another sound came from it. One of negativity. Apparently the ship had gone to warp.

"Damn, they're awake!" Caesar Hans cursed. "How the hell do I get out now!"

Strangely, several sounds came from the recorder device, and it displayed something. Warp coil? Schematics to install a warp coil so the ship can fly out of the ship. How? "Never mind" thought Caesar Hans as he lifted a small compartment door indicated from his recorder. --------------------------------- As the Native Beast was at warp. The Alpha withdrew from the controls, and went to the unconscious crew lying on the deck. He lifted one to his feet, but he simply fell over. They were not dead, they were still breathing, and they still maintained decent colours. He thought for a second. Hans! The Alpha went to the controls, and pondered where the disgusting human could be. He smiled, and tapped a few buttons on his control, finding which persecutor he was in with the hanger bay sensors. -------------------------------- Caesar Hans ran his hands almost confusingly over the alien helm controls; his mind to focused on getting out of this hell, rather than the sudden beep from an anonymous part in the shuttle. "Human!" the gravely voice blurted.

"If it isn't the good old Alpha" Hans smiled still focused on getting the ship flying, with the aid of his 'extra-ordinary' scanning recorder "How's the crew" he giggled

A terrible, cackling laugh came over the comm "Not in pieces, like you will be!"

"Oh shit!" Hans cursed to himself, as he remembered the explosive wedged in his torso. Suddenly his scanning recorder -independently-accessed the aliens shuttles systems, and sent some sort of electrical charge through the small interior. ------------------------------ The Alpha pressed constantly at the device which would cause the humans end, but another Zeytraddi officer simply said "No explosion detected, Alpha."

"Impossible, something is wrong with your sensors!" the Alpha pushed the other Zeytraddi away, and looked at the console simply growling, before being interrupted by another consoles continued chirping. He gazed over the other console, and his face grew greener, and more bloated. "These humans are a plague!" ----------------------------- Caesar Hans lifted himself off the deck... he was okay! How? He looked to the scanning recorder and shook his head and ran up to it. "Who are you!?" He attacked the possessed device with his hand before it sent a slight charge down his wrist. "Arrgh! Never mind... for now."

The humans captains voice dropped to a more a pleading tone. "Just please get me out of here, please?" As his face turned, his eyes rested on a monitor, and he saw a familiar Silhouette. "Pioneer... " ----------------------------- "We are matching warp speeds with the alien vessel" Holmes looked up from his console. "Warp 4.7, this is already putting a strain on the engines."

"Keep on hailing them, tell them to surrender" Perov ordered the communications officer, who was holding an earphone, speaking in to it several times the same line Perov had ordered him to say. "How fast does this thing go anyway?" The Russian turned to Perov.

"The Pioneers maximum rated warp speed is Warp 5.1, anything above would destroy the fusion reactor." Holmes filled the bridge with his grim words, as the collective mood was one of gloom. "They are increasing to Warp 4.8"

Perov quickly ordered his crew "Warp 4.8 now!" his words sending nervous feelings through the crew.

"Accelerating... " Unlike the rest of the crew, Maxini looked like she found the entire experience exhilarating. "One thing; we can't actually fire at them whilst at warp, can we?"

Levente was unusually quiet on the journey so far. He spoke up with short answer. "No... " he tapped at his console again "Plasma bolts can't achieve warp speeds."

"How are we going to stop them?!" Maxini seemed stupefied.

"Word of mouth; fear?" Holmes suggested.

"Increase to Warp 5" Perov said, alerting a lot of responses in the crew.

"Sir?" Even Maxini was questioning the abrupt order.

"Do it!"

"Well we can accelerate faster than them" Holmes analysed. "Whether they have a higher maximum speed is beyond me... "

"Our course intersects there doesn't it, Ensign?" The Admiral walked forward and braced his hands on the forward console, his head turning to the navigation officer.

"Yes, sir." The navigation officer was silent for a moment, then his eyes widened "Sir, if you want to make our courses parallel, its impossible, it would... require billions of calculations, and we have to drop out of warp, and then... "

"I'm not planning to go beside them..." the Russian declared before the navigation officer could finish his sentence. "I'm going to cut them off."

Maxini simply scrunched her eyebrows, and swallowed before she slowly spoke. "Your assuming if we get in front of them, they will drop out of warp, and we'll get them, Sir?"

"Yes... " Perov slowly agreed "and Lieutenant?"

"What if they don't stop?" Maxini asked her head turning to look at the commanding officer, a face of slight fear and slight confusion.

Holmes started to speak, his hands still roaming over the controls, his eyes still focused on his many monitors. "The normal force if we collided would be multiplied thousands of times, since we are traveling at warp."

"We'd crack like an egg" Levente declared, his eyes locked on the viewscreen, his hands gripping his hips.

Perov too felt his heart beat, beating faster and faster. Letting himself taking a gulp down his throat before he barked to the crew. "Warp 5.1 now!"

"Yes, sir" Maxini ran her hands over the console "Warp 5.1... "

"Don't raise the lever too much!" the navigator whispered immediately to Maxini, his face full of fear, as the ship shook slightly.

"Shut up" Maxini whispered back.

"Fifty metres from enemy vessel... " Levente declared.

"The ship is accelerating to Warp 5.2" Holmes barked.

"Damn! drop to Warp 4 point... ."

"Wait, there are two ships" Holmes went on.

"What?" Perov turned to Holmes, then quickly rotated his waist "Keep us at current speed... Holmes, what are you talking about?"

"One small ship has emerged from the larger ship" Holmes described, to a Perov who dug his fingers in his hair, looking at the Swede quite skeptically.

"What?!" Perov threw his hands about "Is that possible, I mean at warp?"

"They are aliens... " Holmes muttered.

Levente immediately shot up. "It could be a bomb" the Argentinean warned. "We have to deploy countermeasures."

"At warp?" Perov replied, the Argentineans face ascending into realisation, with it finally dropping back to the consoles. "Scan it, if it's a bomb, we'll just drop out of warp."

"You know if we do that, it'll take three hours to charge the engines again" Svenn pointed out.

"So you prefer potential death over convenience?" Maxini asked.

"Bit more exciting" Holmes replied quietly, as he dropped his head down to his consoles and ran his fingers along the delicate earth machines. He scrunched his eyes, and raised his left eyebrow. "One life form... "

"Shuttle... Captain Hans?"

"Quite an action hero, Hans?" Holmes smiled.

"Nearly" Maxini stated, her eyes still focused on maintaining the course. "Maneuvering at warp like that... I don't think any inertial dampeners can take that, it will... we have to get them out of there!" the Italian shot, her chair rotating to Perov, her face one of realisation.

The Russian gripped his chin with his thumb and forefinger. His face was one of thought and slight confusion. "If this was at normal speeds, we could use the grappling hooks, and pull the vessel into the shuttlebay... "

"Wait, wait... " Holmes threw his hand in their air.

"Hold your mouth" Perov demanded, then rested his hands on his knees "What?"

"The grappling hooks extend outside the warp field" Svenn complained "If we use them at warp, they will be ripped off, and the gap in the warp field, the stresses could do some fair damage to us as well!"

"Mr. Holmes... " Perov turned to him. "This whole trip, all you have done is whine, complain and insult my officers" Holmes nearly spoke up by lifting his hand in the air, but the Russian saw the moment to stand. "If you only talk about statistics and odds, why don't I just get a trained Russian-speaking monkey to replace you? Hmm... "

Holmes sat there, staring at his knees. "I do have one idea... " The Swede pathetically said. Perov put his arms at his sides and listened. "In the Earth Interests, we experimented with expanding the warp field... the first two Perseverances we used exploded, with the loss of a total 48 employees... " With this comment, a distinct groan could be heard from the head console. The Italian dug her head into her hands, nevertheless the Swede continued.

"We succeeded on a third ship, one month ago..." Holmes rolled his eyes to his less-judging console. "...but maybe that was lucky... oh and the shuttle is losing integrity."

Perov sat down and slammed his thumb on the intercom button of his chair. "Engineering!"

Instead of a pleasant acknowledgment, came the distinct distress of a female engineer. "Sir, this constant warp speed is going to blow the engines."

Perov skipped the telling-off and made the following orders; "Ms.Kahn, can we expand our warpfield, spherical-wise?"

"Not at this speed" came the response.

"Okay, what maximum speed then?" Perovs voice became restless.

"Warp 5 possibly... "

"Drop to Warp 5" Perov ordered his navigation officer, then his head turned to the intercom.

"Okay" the Indian engineer stated "Heres your bubble."

Suddenly the entire bridge, was thrown into disarray, as the lights flickered, and the floors seemed like they were bouncing off a trampoline; the sounds of creaking could be heard throughout the ship. Perov gripped his armrests and shouted to the crew, who could carry out the task to bring Caesar Hans back. "Extend the arms!" ------------------- The Native Beast pulled away from Pioneer, as the earth ship drew out her grappling arms. The bronze pipes, complete with tri-pod like hands on the end, moved themselves towards the small alien shuttle. With uncanny accuracy, especially at such speeds, the "arms" shot out and grabbed the shuttle. Suddenly, the arms almost began to peel; the mechanical devices quickly drew the small shuttle into the Pioneers hangar bay, moments before they exploded, sending debris hundreds of times the speed of light in the other direction. ------------------- Levente leaned back in his chair. His leather chair was holding him. The Argentinean let out a huge sigh of relief and turned to the Russian admiral who was staring at him intently. "Got him."

"Send the marines." Perov smiled.

"What if its not Hans, what if its some alien supersoldier?" Holmes interjected.

Perov almost turned angrily to Holmes, to which then Levente spoke up "I'm sure the marines can deal with whatever it is." The Argentinean smiled "and take our captain to sickbay"

A smile appeared on a certain helmswomans face, as she tapped a few buttons on her console, to maintain the field.

"Well the grapplers are gone" Perov sighed "Luckily, they left a trail brighter than the yellow brick road, isn't that right Holmes? You can pick up where they're going?"

Holmes sighed and tapped on his sensor console for confirmation. He tilted his head back and turned to the Admiral. "Yes, I think I can tell where they are going from the large amount of plasma particles they have left in their wake." Holmes started to use his hands to illustrate his point. "If we drop out of warp, charge the engines, and plot our course, to an unknown system, approximately 3.2 light-years away at coordinates... "

"Mr. Holmes." Perov lifted his hand to him. "I just need to know we can catch up with them."

The Russian again jabbed his thumb on his intercom, this time a different switch from engineering. "Traygon Xugith' I'm coming down to discuss the current situation"

Silence for several seconds.

"Understood" came the muffled, almost foreign response. Perov lifted himself from the chair, and headed to the door, before stopping in his tracks. "Oh, I almost forgot, Levente your in command, until I get back... oh and drop out of warp." The Russian left as Levente smile widened, as he lifted himself from his own chair and descended on the captains chair. Holmes simply moved his eyes right once, maybe to subtly convey his dissatisfaction, and Maxini found Leventes hesitation amusing.

"Dropping out of warp... ." she giggled as the ship made a thud. ------------------------- Hans eyes flickered open. Above him, random blue lights flashed on a darker blue background. Each light was different from the other. The lights were accompanied by purplish ribbons. It was... beautiful. Hans tried to move, but he was restrained somehow. He remembered the shuttle, how it seemed to fly all by itself, almost making it to the Pioneer. Was this? Hans spoke out. "Is this heaven?"

"Nope" came an almost English accent. Suddenly the lights were replaced by a grey ceiling, and a lighter grey-blueish wall. A man drew his head in front of Hans "This is my sickbay" the man stated.

"Pioneer?" Hans replied.

"Yes" The English man replied. "You're on the second holy crusade." The mans statement was almost sarcastic.

"Crusade?" Hans asked. The captain was light-headed and couldn't think straight. "What was that thing?"

"Dermal Regenerator" the man replied.

"Who are you?"

"Quenton Marriot." The English doctor seized a hypospray and violently stuck it into Caesar Hans neck. The bottle at the end of device promptly filled with blood. Marriot took the sample and stuck it into some sort of tubular holster at the end of a machine. The doctor went around the machine, and looked closely at the monitor "Plasma... fine... Red blood cells... fine... White blood cells... fine... eh? What the hell is that... ?" The doctor was caught off by a Russian voice at the other end of the small, cramped bay.

"Doctor?" the Russian asked almost cheerfully. "Is he awake?"

"Yes." The doctor moved to one side, and almost arrogantly started arranging his tools, and then looked at the glaring admiral "I'll leave you two alone."

The medic paced the ward towards the door, muttering things like "Now where do I go?" almost angrily.

"Admiral..." the patient spoke up.

"Captain..." the admiral replied. "How was your little trip"

"Interesting" Hans replied, the man moved his hand and patted on his right hip. "Souvenir... bomb"

"Bomb?!" The Russian almost jolted, as Hans smiled.

"Disabled... "

"Well we need to get it out of you" Perov stated. "Oh, by the way, we picked up some Traygon and Zeytraddi."

"Are they confined" Hans asked.

"No, they seem to be after the Zeytraddi that held you."

"Are they from the Monarchy?" Hans asked. Perov simply scrunched his face in a confused way.

"I've not asked them." Perov put his hands at his sides. "All I know is that they are on our side."

"Shades of grey, Admiral" Hans replied, slightly confusing the Admiral. "For all we know, these royals could be our enemies."

"You and your labels" Perov joked. A silence followed. Perov simply clapped his hands and said "Well, I'll leave you to rest." The Russian stepped out the room, then suddenly turned his head to a small apparatus containing Hans blood. --------------------------------- Admiral's Personal Log February 30th 2154, Two days at high warp, and following the plasma 'trail' of the enemy vessel. What appears to be remainder of a solar system. A black hole and accretion disk making up its center. One wonders why this Tee'lay Kin Organisation would be interested in it. In light of the current scenario, we hope to seize the enemy vessel by boarding her. I was a soldier before I went into the navy. I'm going to be a soldier one last time, an Admiral one last time, before I do what's best for humanity. I will take a small marine troop and seize the ship. What follows will depend on the situation. On a lighter note, Caesar Hans is back on his feet, and he will be scheduled to take command of the Pioneer at 1700 hours.

Caesar Hans gripped the back of the chair and gasped. Turning his head, he surveyed the bridge from the captain's view, standing. He looked down at the chair wondering what it would be like to sit down. Getting comfortable. He walked round the small-built in chair. The new captain bent his knees, and immersed himself in this throne. Gripping the arm chair rests; blessed with the ability to make a difference in the galaxy. Captain Caesar Hans opened his mouth slightly. "... leather."

"Glad, you like the chair" Perov blessed. "In my opinion, bit too small, but the EI like small things." The Russian giggled to himself, while Hans explored his small pad of buttons adjacent to his arm rest.

The helmsman sat at the front of the bridge; not Italian; not a woman. An SDF ensign, running his eyes over the panel. It beeped. He looked suprised, but prepared. The young man rotated his chair to the captain. "We will be arriving in the system sir, in ten minutes"

"Red Alert!" Caesar Hans almost instinctively ordered; "All senior officers to the bridge."

"Disable all tactical, long-range, and medium range sensors" Hans ordered, much to the confusion of Perov.

"Flying in blind?" The Russian asked with a half-smile, and a very curious slant to his eyes.

"The big sensors will reveal our position" Caesar Hans said, intertwining his fingers on his knees, looking up at Perov almost professionally. "I hope that accretion disk can reveal the enemy for us... "

"You're right... " Holmes uttered.

"What was that, Holmes?" Perov asked, lifting his head to the Swedish scientist.

"The heavy gravity field of the blackhole will likely be pulling on their ship, and if they are close, our smaller sensors can easily pick that up... " Holmes stated.

Hans simply smiled to himself. Then Maxini came on the bridge, her hair, still immersed in a towel, and her uniform half-done up. "Party-time?" she asked.

"Take your station, Lieutenant." Hans voice almost went comically deeper, and he turned his chair to the Italian. The woman smiled back, and in slight shock.

"Yes... sir" the young man moved himself to the navigation console, while Maxini embedded herself in her home away from home, the pilot chair. The Argentinean, Antonio Levente, sat himself down at the tactical station, merely muttering and smiling slightly "Welcome to the bridge, captain."

"Commander... " Hans smiled, his hands braced on his arm-rests, turning to the welcoming tactical officer. "Spin all six spinners to 2000RPS, load plasma, load the missile bays, preferably of the 'Firestreak' brand, don't want to damage them too much... "

Perov headed to the lift-panel, his shoes touching the removable surface. The Russians hand drifted to the control panel. "Admiral Perov?" came a voice from the middle of the bridge. "Thank you" Hans uttered.

"Don't thank me... " Perov simply made a stern impression, and pressed on the lift controls. With the press of a button, the surface descended, as well as the Russian. ------------------------------------ Space. A disruption of space. A disruption of the gravity field. The gravity field which can be closely related to hell. The gravity of a black hole. The disruption was like no other, disrupting a typical 'warp into the system' by the Pioneer. The Earth ship ran into the system. Running into a moon?! ----------------------------------- "Full stop!" Hans shrieked.

The bridge almost bent in itself, as the much praised inertial dampener was unable to stop the sound of the massive screech to a halt. Hans felt his head thrown forward, as his ears suffered the groaning of the hull, as the massive hulk of the ship finally came to a full stop.

Maxini. Her hair was in a mess, and she ran over the console with her eyes and fingers. "We... we have stopped... Ca.. I mean captain." She simply turning her head to meet the eyes of a shocked captain, who was staring at the viewscreen.

"Where the hell did that moon come from?" Hans asked, his face bathed in shock.

"The question you should be asking is... " Holmes turned, a smug look on his well-aged but calm face. "Where the hell did that planet come from?" His eyes turning to stare at his one working scanner.

"Planet?!" Caesar Hans drew himself from his Captains chair. Not ordering, but collaborating with his crew as he looked over the science console, and nodded. "Planet... but how?" Holmes danced his finger along his console once again.

"They appears to be some sort anti-gravity field, emanating from inside the planet... " Holmes face became more confused every second, disbelieving what he is seeing. "The planet is slightly charred, but otherwise intact... the moon is perfectly fine, the only that's damaged it is meteorites... that probably came from that asteroid field!"

Levente walked over, and looked at the science console, and dug his chin into his fore finger and thumb. "It looks the supernova stopped its destruction, at this planet, like the resulting shockwave was stopped somehow."

Hans lifted his head to the bridge crew. "Any other science boffins in here?" he asked, almost jokingly.

"I'm as stupid as a Vulcan comedian" Maxini smiled.

The captain turned his head to the Italian. "As long as your on this ship, I really don't want you making stupid jokes like that... " Maxini simply raised an eyebrow in defiance, and Hans simply turned to Levente "How do you know that?"

"I don't know that, captain" Levente smiled, "but if your asking how I could make something out of these little dots on this screen... I went to the Buenos Aires Earth Interests Academy... "

"Bit of a mouthful" Hans simply shrugged. "I wonder what kind of butterflies are on this planet" the captain said sarcastically, as he went down to sit on his Earth-Interests made "captains" chair.

Hans simply thought to himself "Its not my chair, its the people's chair... "

"I have a ship on visual" Holmes stated. "I've picked up with the sensors... I'm left with... and a bit of help from the accretion disk and the planet... which it is orbiting."

"Mr. Holmes is it?" The scientist simply nodded. "Put it on screen" Hans ordered. That was the ship, the boxy design, the brownish features, hmm, orbiting the planet. Missiles, hit that spot with missiles, they are dead. The Alpha? He was a smart man... I mean reptile... or amphib- whatever, anyway, a tactician by any mans book or... nevermind. The question on my mind is, has he seen us?

"Mr. Holmes have they seen us?" Hans asked the scientist.

"No, it looks like, all their main scanning rays are directed toward the planet, and it also makes them look like a Christmas tree."

"Christmas?... That reminds me" Hans joked. "Missiles loaded, Levente?"

The Argentinean caught his top lip with his teeth. "Yep" he simply uttered.

Caesar Hans muttered to himself "Fortune favors the crooks until the police catch them, and takes the fortune back to the people... " He put his hands at his side, and cleared all emotion from his face. "Fire!" ------------------------------ The huge suspended globe at the fore of the Pioneer, leached forward as it spat several objects into the darkness of space. The six small cylinders complete with flames on the end sped into space. At the end of their path, lay the enemy. The enemy ship; once it was theirs; once it was Earths; now it was theirs. Caesar Hans looked on. It was clear that the aliens agendas were going to disrupt the political fabric of the Galaxy, not with political flair, but with old alien technologies. Not if Earth had anything to say about it.

Hans, in this part of space, he was Earth. The six objects of light representing Earths foreign policy approached their "meeting". The missiles hit the target with a force the size of the planet they were orbiting. The blast slowly cleared.

Not a scratch! ------------------------------ Alpha drew himself up and sat down on his chair. Instead of cursing, he smiled. The alien knew, the mammals would find them sooner or later. Luckily he knew they could use the moon to conceal themselves from detection. True, their sensors were not operating, but their missiles just left enough information, for his enemy to get a bearing on.

"Tell Energy Pods As & Ax to leave their position, and lock on enemy ship" the Alpha demanded. While the charismatic reptile made his orders, the Gamma sat idle, try to get a bearing on the situation. He studied the viewscreen image of the Pioneer closely; try to understand their motives, try to understand their goals and try to understand their vulnerabilities!

"Yes, Alpha. Energy Pods bearing on 42 Klo inverse 980 Klo" the tactical officer responded, at the front of the small operations center. ------------------------------- Two small devices lit up. Two small brown spherical devices, each with small pattern lines, highlighted by a luminescent green. The alien colours contrasted with the moon behind, which was a spherical yellow rock. Suddenly the devices moved. Their acceleration incredible, unviewable by the human eye. The two greenish metallic drones shot towards the human ship, making several circling maneuvers to attempt to maximise damage to their prey. ------------------------------- Caesar Hans lifted himself from the captains chair. Again, he was pulled away from the relaxation, and pushed forward into responsibility as Captain. The captains eyes locked onto the small drone devices on screen, his eyes deciphering their movements in seconds... . "Engage countermeasures!" shrieked the Pioneer's captain. ----------------------------- The Alpha almost grinned, as the small devices darted towards their targets. Their spherical structures, glowing an orange, yellow, expanding. Expanding? Exploding!. Two red beams from the alien ship had essentially vapourised the two notorious devices that should have destroyed the mammalian presence in this system. The commander felt a leak of rage in his throat - it was coarse as he screamed to his crew. "Fire eight salvos!" the reptile screamed to his crew. --------------------------- The 'Native Beast' rotated to the 'Pioneer'. A showdown, a battle, a feud. They were hundreds of kilometers away from each other, but each 'sharpened its talons.' The maroon coloured 'Native Beast' was the first to make her move on the chess-board of space. Two Energy Pods, no, four, no sixteen! dropped from the underneath of the alien ship, and shot unhindered through the hundreds of kilometers in the Pioneers direction.

The Pioneer simply stared on. Her batteries of plasma cannons and laser phalanx cannons awaited the blitzkrieg of these alien probes. The shrieks could easily be imagined by each of the bridge crew of the Pioneer - even though there was no sound in space, each human could imagine the shriek each spherical device made as it shot across space, towards space.

Pioneers lasers spoke again, as several red beams shot into the distance. Several orangey flares, could be seen in the distance. They had hit them. How many? Eight, Eight! Eight more to go. The other eight spherical bombs were undeterred by their 'comrades' destruction, as they faced down Pioneer to the bitter end. The human ship once again responded with lasers, as well as some sort of projectile cannon weapon. The numerous pieces of metal piercing space at nearly the speed of light, combined the with the concentrated red beams, made short work of the alien devices, and space was 'quiet' once more. But not for long. ------------------------------ Hans stood there on the bridge. The beads of sweat rolling down his experienced forehead. Squeezing his fists, and looking onto the enemy vessel on the convex viewscreen. He'd had his first brawl with the enemy, but Caesar Hans felt this was almost a mere rock-throw compared to what's to come. "All missile bays, 1 through 6, launch!" -------------------------------- Several cylinders with points, shot from the Pioneer. Then slowing as they lighted from their hind-end. All six of the Human-made missiles roared at the alien cruiser. The dull metallic textures echoing efficiency, relentlessness and no emotion. The enemies destruction will come through. Nothing obstructing their goal. Again, the Felix-type Fusion-based Missiles exploded harmlessly on the enemies shield.

The two vessels continued to trade fire over long distances. The alien vessel fired its spherical probes, the Pioneer shot them down. The Pioneer threw volley after volley of missiles, and the enemies energy shields did not give way. As the Native Beast launched a volley of probes at its current foe, it launched several more objects at the same time. Probes? No, bigger. Persecutor-class shuttles! They were headed for the planet. --------------------------------- "Captain.. err... Hans, I have some interesting sensor information to contribute" Holmes stated. "You might be interested."

"Oh?" Hans asked, his tone of voice still nervous, and his body movements erratic as the ship kept shaking from all the nearby explosions. "Can it draw my attention from a full blown space battle!"

Svenn Holmes was taken aback. "They appear to have sent several small craft down to the planet, Captain Hans!"

Hans turned to the Argentinean roaming his hands over his console almost calmly; "Keep up the plan of attack, Commander" The captain drove his sweaty hand over the last vestiges of hair he had, sat in his chair and wedged his thumb into the communicator on his arm rest.

"Perov, change of plan!" Hans shouted into his communicator. The captain swept his bridge with his eyes, as the silence was almost eery, with the gulp of his throat, he shouted again. "Perov?!" -------------------------------- The Earth shuttles slowly dropped into the atmosphere. Their course otherwise calm, if not disrupted by the numerous explosions round them. Each blast seemed to get closer as the small shuttles reached into open space. Once outside the Pioneers laser defence screen, each of the four crews would have to say his hopes(or prayers) to get to the planet.

A spherical probe seemingly seem to break from a salvo of six which were trying to tame the Pioneer; and to eventually... kill her. The stray one seemed almost exploratory, leaving its pack, and seeking something else. Every shuttle attempted evasive maneuvers, as the small probe got closer.

Success! Partially... The probe exploded, and the blast wave missed all but one shuttle. This shuttle vapourised as the wave simply tore it apart like it was tissue paper against large forces of water. The remaining debris was thrown along in the forgotten void of space.

Finally, three of the shuttles started burning at their fronts as they approached the planets atmosphere, and began their long descent towards their target on the surface. --------------------------------- Perov leaned forward, one knee bent with his foot firmly on the shuttle navigator chair, looking out the shuttle windshield at the pale blue atmosphere. The Russian dropped his eyes, to the massive alien city below. Alien city?! It was impressive, many abandoned... spires. Sight-seeing wasn't a mission, as it was coincidental there being an alien city down here. Perov knew his mission... to a degree.

"Confirmed, sir" the Scottish marine looked over the sensor readouts at the right side of the shuttle. "Miguel Vasquez and his shuttle team are dead... "

"Their deaths wont be in vain" Perov lied, as green particle beams shot across the sky, trying to falter the Russian and his comrades. "Land there..." -------------------------------- "Railguns depleted to 1000 shells, Lasers overheating, Sir!" Levente stated loudly, as he ran his fingers over his consoles at impeccable speed; a blanket of sweat over his forehead. Holmes looked up at Hans, who sat there thinking, slight confusion on his face. The Swede knew exactly what to do, it was so obvious. There was only one logical option.

"Lets see how they can handle it up close, Helm, take us to within 150 metres, Tactical, spin Plasma spinners to 2100 rps, load plasma!" Hans ordered, rubbing the nail of his thumb against his forefinger, looking on at the enemy.

Maxini and Levente acknowledged their orders, and typed a different pattern on their consoles, which made the ship move in a different way. However, the Earth Interest man in the corner face resembled one shocked to death, his jaw stretching towards the ground.

"What?" Holmes simply asked.

"What is it, Director?" Hans turned to Holmes.

"This is suicide" Holmes declared, standing up, grasping the situation.

"Fill out your complaints in your report, Holmes." Hans ignored Holmes and turned toward the viewscreen.

"Report?" The Swedes face burned with rage. "Report! There are fifty Earth Interest personnel onboard, who I am responsible for!"

"This is suicide! you are going to kill us all, the logical choice would be to retreat!"

"You do not understand the situation, Holmes." Hans remain calm, although his fingernails were digging into his arm rests.

"I'll tell you what the situatio--"

"Holmes!" Hans raised his voice. "Be silent or Be Arrested!" The directors hands fisted, but nevertheless he sat back down, muttering to himself. ---------------------------------- What was going on? The Gamma slowly tried to grasp his reality round him. He had been ordered to maintain long-range fire with the Earthers ship until they destroyed them. He ran his eyes over the monitor... she was closing! They were going to attempt close-combat. Close-combat, our long- range weapons would be useless. If we try to fire, the Di-Cobalt explosives would take the Native Beast with them. He looked quickly at all the different officers. Different opinions, different choices, his was put above others. His opinion was likely to be flawed, as he was ill, nevertheless he could not show weakness!

"We have lost contact with the retrieval team" exclaimed a lowly officer above the Gamma. That was one opinion less, one voice less in this battle against a foe as unpredictable and savage as these humans. The gamma gripped the sides of the small, uncomfortable chair. It was boiling... how to stop them?... he could not think in this heat.

"Drop the temperature 90 janaries" The Gamma ordered.

"Commander... " came a questioning voice.

"DO IT!" He would not tolerate questioning... deception... deception! "Open a channel!" ----------------------------------- "Sir, they are broadcasting a surrender, and wish to dock" claimed the German communications officer, with slight relief on his face, possibly with the thoughts that the battle might be over. Caesar Hans looked for a number of seconds at this officers face. It was a trick... he knew how these people thought. People? Monsters.

"Disregard it, Lieutenant, and maintain your course, Tactical lock weapons" Caesar Hans stood, putting his right foot on the surface of the first officer chair, looking at the enemy vessel, hearing the cries of an angry Swede.

"Hans! They want peace!" Holmes threw his arms out, the Swedes face staring directly at the American captain "We can't fire, these are the actions of a madman!"

"Mr. Holmes!" Hans almost barked at the scientist. "I was on that ship for two weeks, I managed to integrate into their crew for part of that time, I know, to a degree, Tee'Lay Kin tactics and cowardice methods!"

"Since you are coming at them like a madman, they are probably what all of us would do!" Holmes claimed. "Peace!"

"They probably know we want that, Holmes!" Hans barked back "Sit down... I know how they think, and your beakers and test-tubes will be safe, when we come out of this!"

The Swedish scientist sat down with a smug-look on his face "Commander... Fire!" -------------------------------- The rain of plasma bolts shot across the relatively short distance between the Pioneer and Native Beast. The small red bolts slammed into the alien ships shields. Amazingly, some broke through the energy wall and slowly burned their way into the Beast's hull. The Plasma spinners on the Pioneer spun round, round and round, getting brighter with each spin, and launching another bright, red bolt into the blackness of space. Each of them finding their way into the equally bright shields of Native Beast. ------------------------------ The Gamma shrieked. This was not good... only course of action, obliteration, respond with lethal force... appropriate order... Charge pulse cannons and fire... that's it... "Charge pulse cannons and fire!" the Gamma ordered, with a slight gurgling sound accompanying it. ------------------------------ "They are charging weapons!" Levente stated, with a slightly louder tone, than to all his previous tactical statements. Caesar Hans had always found that Leventes statements had no emotional or passionate backdrop. They were neither biased or hateful, they were the facts! Hans had to think, this ship has combat thrusters... .

"Helm, engage all ventral thrusters, after twenty seconds disengage fore thrusters, and roll us over on aft, until were behind those bastards!" Maxini acknowledged the eager captain, as the captain himself ran up to the tactical station "Commander, two words, keep firing!" ----------------------------- The white bolts of the Native Beasts guns shrieked across space. Their speed unmatched as they barely missed the evading Pioneer. The Pioneer herself then displayed her own firepower, as each of her Plasma spinners launched a red bolt at the Native Beast. The Beasts weapons shrieked... and missed, while the Pioneers spoke again, with a squeal denting the Beasts shield, as it lifted itself with its thrusters, almost spinning round the Tee'lay Kin vessel. Each second firing round after round of plasma, as it finally came to a stop behind the Native Beast, ready to crack the soft underbelly of the Tee'lay Kin's Armoured Giant.

The Pioneer sat behind the Native Beast. Its forward thrusters, pushed the Earth starship backwards, moving away from its enemy. The Native Beast unable to react to the Pioneer, not out of will, but of design. There were no weapons on the aft of the Native Beast, only its massive engines. Why was the Pioneer moving away? The question was soon answered when the Pioneer launched missile after missile from missile tubes; the combined smoke trails making a cylindrical wake against the blackness of space. A total of seven missiles were launched, and each one smashed into the now frail shields of the Native Beasts; combined with the Plasma bolts, the strange energy barrier simply disappeared. With nothing to protect the strong hull of the Native Beast, the energy balls started to burn into the hull of the giant Goliath. -------------------------- "Aft shields are down!" came a voice from the bridge. The Gamma rotated his head to another voice "Warp nacelles are hit; our drives our disabled!" the helmsman shouted. He just sits there, what is he doing? The Gamma leeched forward and gripped the isolated Zeytraddi and with unknown strength, threw him across the deck. The light-headed alien settled into the pilots chair, and dabbed at the controls. Slight confusion on his face as he growled, and pushed the throttle to full. -------------------------- "They are pulling away" Levente stated, as Hans lifted his behind off his chair, and looked at the viewscreen with slight concern.

"What is this, retreat?" Holmes asked.

"Depends who'se in command... " Hans did not look at the Swede, as his eyes were reserved for the retreating enemy vessel. Who is in command? Alpha? obviously a cold calculating strategic retreat; to the other end of the system, no doubt, an ambush. Gamma? fear must be a strange concept to him now... he is obviously speeding up for an attack run, turn round, and hit us hard.

"He is turning round, we should go evasive, until the warp engines can go online." Holmes gave his attention to the viewscreen, which Hans lost concentration of. With a simple narrowing of his eyes at Holmes, he made an order, as he stood.

"Engage forward ventral thrusters, and full speed" Maxini acknowledged, as Hans turned round, and looked up at the almost peaceful ceiling of the bridge; everywhere else in the bridge was not. ----------------------------------------------- The Native Beast made a slow turn, and faced the Pioneer, and launched several upon several white; glowing; hot bolts at it. The bolts passed the small area of empty space, as the Pioneer was not occupying it. It was a good deal above the Native Beast, the Earth ship bearing down on her, accompanied with her usual red plasma rainfall. ------------------------------- "The armouries are just down here, Alp---" the reptiles voice was cut with a strange alien language in the distance. The interrupted reptilian officer twisted his head round, his jaw dropping slightly - the Traygon Lancers and Earth soldiers surrounded the head criminal, the mysterious Alpha. The reptile stared at the humans; they pointed their weapons at the commander and his small group, who drew their own weapons slowly; the tri- pod beam and missile pistol-like weapons slipped out their pockets like snakes. Suddenly one of the humans stepped forward with a much smaller weapon. It started to scream at the reptiles, a slight hesitation in his voice as he made several indecipherable demands.

The Alpha walked up to the smaller human. He breathed deeply as the human stared at him, possibly trying to stand up to him. The tall zeytraddi grinned. Could the humans tell if he was grinning. His grin dropped, and he lifted his arm and swung it across the humans draw. As the small mammal hit the ground, the shooting started. Each party managed to find some cover, as each Zeytraddi and human retreated behind the ancient debris. No one bother to study the ancient texts, as the green beams, ion energy balls and red bolts occupied the air. One beam managed to find itself on a humans chest and it remained as the human squealed, as his skin melted. As the beam left his chest, the charred corpse fell to the ground. With the distraction with the corpse (humans; an unnecessary amount of compassion) the Zeytraddi regrouped and launched their secondary weapons; several rockets with explosives at their tips. They found themselves awfully close to the plasma rifle-armed soldiers and lanced Traygon. The resulting series of explosions allowed the Zeytraddi to retreat into the hills. There was no way the Alpha and his band of fighters could take on that many humans and Traygon. ------------------------------- The battle in the heavens was furious as red and white bolts crossed directions. Each ship, Pioneer and Native Beast, exchanged weapons fire. The earth vessel was keen on maneuvering as she was far more vulnerable than the shielded Tee'lay Kin vessel. Every time the Native Beast made a fore run at the Pioneer, the fragile Earth ship kept on evasive. ------------------------------ "Fire a drone" the gamma uttered, as his hands danced along the helm controls.

"Gamma... ." came a voice, behind the commanding officer. The tone of the address was depressing, negative and unwanted by a now furious Gamma.

"Fire a drone!" The reptile almost vandalised his helms controls, as he threw his arms up and down on them like a spoilt child. The Gamma relieved himself from his fit, as the doubtful tactical officer carried out his orders. ----------------------------- One more menacing spherical device left the underbelly of the slow and cumbersome Native Beast. It sat under its mother, just before it went to unparalleled speed. It shot at great pace towards the Pioneer. The Earth ship almost having a clumsy response at the sudden enemy move; it lurched away with its thrusters, as well as throwing several lasers into the space in an attempt to shoot down the murderous sphere. With great luck, one of the laser beams hit and the sphere erupted into a shockwave. The shockwave did not damage Pioneer, but almost chucked her, like a person throwing a rock. The earth ship spun, as a less-shaken Native Beast turned to her.

The Pioneer finally came to a stop; but the hell wasn't over in the heavens. Several white bolts emerged from the Native Beast. The pulses were fast, direct and accurate. There was no escape! The bolts shattered the Pioneers secondary hull like glass; and the transferred force was unbearable, only barely corrected by the Pioneers thrusters on the other side of the ship. ---------------------------- Caesar Hans picked himself up from the cold, hard deck. He felt a stinging pain in his forehead; he sat up and looked around to see a shaken crew, cracks and chipboards falling from the ceiling, burnt out consoles. He lifted his right hand to his head, and ran it over. It felt wet, thick. He drew his hand back and looked at it. Blood... The crew was in a similar state, beaten out, their vulnerabilities exposed, their defences tested to the limits. This gash did make Hans something. Angry! But anger never got anyone anywhere; aside dignity with a frown. Must be smart. The captain picked himself up and placed himself in his chair. Still a perfect fit. Maybe a sign. Caesar Hans smiled.

"Secondary Hull has been hit" Levente claimed; his voice panting, but still had the tone to do his job and succeed.

Hans dropped his smile, and looked around. Everyone was slightly concerned. Maxini was staring at her console, with slight hope and much concern. Why is she most concerned? Questions for another time... If they will be another time. Hans stabbed his thumb into his control panel, until the skin around it went pale white. "Engineering." A slight pause. "Engineering..."

"Yes, Cap- roll down those carbon shields! - Sorry, Captain.. Yes?"

Hans smiled "How are you down ther- Dam! wait a sec, Maxini evasive!- Okay, how are you?" the captain wiped the sweat off his head.

"I don't swear over the comm- takes the impact out of it" came the reply, as Maxini smiled.

"Nice to see your alright" Hans intertwined his fingers and placed them on his knee; although he still had anxiety in his voice; as the ship was trying to dodge a ruthless enemy "Umm, Kahn- warp?"

"What's wrong with the Plasma inductors?- sorry, captain, the warp coils are charged and everything."

"Listen, Kahn, divert all your attention to me, understand?" An acknowledgment came over the com as Hans listened intently. "Excellent, can we get a good warp 3?"

"Yes, but I need the ship at full speed."

"You heard the lady, Maxini" Hans ordered.

"Yes, sir, full ion thrust" the Italian slightly writhed and grinned the comment by Hans much to his confusion, then her eyes moved back "Won't that give them time to target us... sir?"

"Lets hope their chronometers are a bit slow" Hans joked.

"That's the speed, 30 seconds till Warp threshold- No white alert?"

"Its hurts my head- shut up, and keep your concentration on the trigger" the captain ordered. ---------------------------------- "Gamma, they have a direct course; but they are too far away for a conventional weapons assault" the zeytraddi officer growled. "Our engines are too damage to match their speed"

The Gamma simply sat in the pilots chair. Pushing his hands against the console in front of him, and dropping his head. The only sounds heard from the infected beasts was quiet gurgling and heavy breathing. "Prepare the plasma projector!"

"Sir, our plasma reactor" shouted an officer. "Its too damaged to commence plasma transference!" The Gamma simply drew his pistol out of his pocket. In a split-second, the weapon was clutched in the hands of the commanding officer, and a split second later a beam hit the reptile. He was not dead; although no one in that bridge knew if they would live to see tomorrow... even if they destroy the human ship. -------------------------------- The protruding cone which stuck out of the Native Beast like a broken arm, began to grow brighter. The maroon colours were engulfed in a light blue light. Within a second, a blue beam left the Native Beast. At the end of the blue beam the Earth ship, Pioneer was impaled on the light, although the beam seemed to do no visible damage. At the base of the beam, a huge greenish blue ball of energy began to manifest itself.

The huge energy ball traveled down the beam, only disturbed by the hundred pieces of metal flinging in its direction. Metal, not from the Pioneer. A strange ship. A huge length. The actual structure resembled three spheres joined together, with a huge fin dropping from the second sphere. At the end, it shone bright, with a blue light, presumably its propulsion. The strange ship fired one projectile. A larger weapon; a missile. A missile! The screaming explosive blew up beside the Native Beast throwing it off course, as well as its menacing plasma projector. The energy ball of plasma disappeared into the emptiness of space; and Pioneer; looked like it took the same discourse. -------------------------------- "A Zeytraddi cruiser?!" the Gamma roared, slamming his hands on his console. "But how? Their warp speed... it would take them years!"

"Gamma, it's true that the King sends vessels on crusades to the far side of the galaxy" Theta, the medical officer stepped up. "No matter how long it will take.

The commanding; but disturbed reptile simply growled "Destroy them!" ------------------------------ The Zeytraddi almost aware of its fate; began to disengage small craft from its structure. Each craft going in its own direction. The larger mothership herself; ripped apart by the plasma bolts from the Native Beast. The large Tee'lay Kin ship flew past; as the Zeytraddi ship simply exploded. The small craft, almost struggling to get away. Fortunately, the Native Beast did not bother with the small craft. The ship headed in the direction of the Pioneer. Its nacelles were damaged, so it was unable to pursue the Pioneer at warp. The ship trudged at sublight speeds. ------------------------------- The spires were beautiful, the skies were clear, but Perov and his men did not have time to admire the view. They had chased the criminals up a steep slope, and the "Alpha" and his men have seemed to have disappeared into the alien complex. One of the marines stepped up and withdrew a scanning recorder. He then drew out a small dish-shaped object and connected it to the recorder. He lifted it to the sky, and moved it from side to side.

"Got anything?" Perov asked turning to the officer. The soldier simply shook his head. The Russian was slightly nervous and ran one of his hands through his hair as he took a deep breath. "We'll split into two groups, all Traygon, three marines come with me... McGrath, you take the rest of the marines, and go into the err... town, we will patrol the perimeter." McGrath simply acknowledged the Russian and headed into the town.

The scanning officers configured recorder started to beep; Perov reacted almost instinctively to the beep. "What is it?" Perov asked, as the officer lifted the monitor from the main device, and stared at the screen.

"No bio readings... coming from the sky... a ship... "

"What kind of ship?" Perov asked.

"Not an Earth shuttle... nor one of theirs... " as the marine dropped his sentence, Perov turned to the head Traygon, his gaze one of question. -------------------------------- McGrath trod the almost marble pavement, his feet lifting themselves in an almost lazy fashion. In a similar fashion, he waved his rifle, pointing it at random objects. "I've got a contact." The Scotsman swung round to the dedicated officer, staring hard at his own scanning recorder.

"Looks like a ship... " said the marine.

"A ship? Earth?" McGrath asked, his eyes not on the officer, but scanning the clear blue sky, his head constantly turning in an almost fearful manner.

"Traygon... " The officer stated.

"You mean that?" another pointed into the sky, to see an almost boomerang shaped ship land, encrusted with gold panels and various exterior cubes, presumably engines. It was further down the path. Figures. The criminals? No. It was Perov and the Traygon. McGrath ran down a marble path leading out of the town, prompting his men to follow him with his rifle.

Just as McGrath looked up on the three men lying on the green grass, the sounds of an artificial weapon discharged. Not of the beam weapons that the enemy use, but a plasma bolt. The Scotsman looked on to see several red bolts coming his way. The Scotsman couldn't believe his eyes or ears. He came to his senses and realised that... Perov was trying to suppress the Scotsman not kill him. Luckily McGrath called his bluff, and ran after the Russian.

It was too late. A large walkway unfolded onto the green grass. Emerging from the Traygon ship. Perov and the Traygon with him ran up it. Perov simply threw... three red plasma bolts into the dedicated... but confused marines, before he ran into the ship. In the next few seconds, the ship had disengaged itself from the grass, and lifted itself into the sky. That was the end of it.

"Sir, the men are okay, just thumps to their heads" a marine voiced out to a jaw-dropped McGrath.

"I don't think... " the Scotsman rotated his self to the marine. "I don't think they are okay yet... " ------------------------------------- A peaceful space, spoilt by the force of plasma engines ripping through space. The Native Beast shot towards the coordinates where the Pioneer was located. The ship was covered in plasma burns through gaping holes, the energy shield around the ship flickering from time to time and the plasma engines constantly coughed up a ball of waste every minute. She truly was a bleeding animal, but she would dispose of her prey.

A huge asteroid field lay in front of the Native Beast. From space dust to moon-sized asteroids, it was an impressive sight. If the Pioneer was in there... ------------------------------------ The Gamma hands lazily rolled over the 'borrowed' helm console; his hands plotting a course into the field. Rubbing his cracking face from time to time. Tired... Tired and angry.

"Shouldn't we wait for them outside the field, Commander?" came a voice from the back. The Gamma simply growled out loud.

"Plo... plo... show me..the course of the fi..field." The gamma struggled with his words, the pain was intense, the reptile barely keeping an eye on reality.

"Scanning." After a few minutes, the Zeytraddi officer stated "rotating clockwise round the blackhole; held in place by a gas giants gravity as well as the blackhole"

"Earth... sh... ship?" the Gamma uttered.

"No, Commander" the officer replied. The theta stood with his arms crossed, a really angry look painted on his well face.

"Gamma, you are not fit to command." The theta said. Strangely the Gamma ignored him running his fingers over the console, plotting a course into the field.

"Gamma, I'm taking charge" The theta walked closer; his body language uneasy as he came closer to the ill individual who was making indecipherable responses and groans to the Theta, but still had his eyes on the console.

The theta took one brave step closer. It was his last step. Three blades found themselves dug deeply into the medical officers chest. The Gamma stood up, and held the blood-coughing officer on his blades. He put his right hand round the medical officers back, and then dug deeper with the blades. The theta stop coughing and the Gamma simply discarded him with his blades.

The Gamma started to sit down, but did not get the opportunity; the bridge rocked, and the Gammas body thumped across the deck. ----------------------------------- The remains of an asteroid floated past the Native Beasts bruised shields; and the dust sat while a familiar shape came out of the darkness. The Pioneers guns went blazing as red bolts made their way through the brown dust and impacted on the Native Beasts hull. Parts of the dorsal side of the Native Beasts hull, started to explode, as the red balls of plasma slammed into them at high speed. The Tee'Lay Kin ship simply reeled from the force, sinking deeper into the field as each bolt forced the Native Beast downward. --------------------------------- Even Svenn Holmes looked sure of victory, as the viewscreen showed the Native Beast pounded into submission.

"Sir, I knew it!" Levente smiled "Their shields work in a sort of single- vector; as well as integrated to a really quick defence system."

"In short, their shields are all diverted to one side, because the computer told them too." Levente nodded, as Caesar Hans stared on. "Betrayed by their own computer system, astounding."

"What's astounding is that... I think their shields are gone... " Maxini rotated in her chair.

"Keep the thrusters in line with the cannons, Lieutenant" Caesar Hans ordered, with a smile at the corner of his lips.

"They have engaged full engines, they are pulling away" The Argentinean, Antonio Levente stated, as Caesar Hans looked wide-eyed at the viewscreen.

"More or less" Hans muttered, his jaw slightly open. -------------------------------- The Gamma tried to control the ship; the slightest disruption to his concentration could mean the end for everyone. If only everyone else knew that. If only they would listen to him. His hands moved slowly on the console, the ship making a temporary escape from the Earth scum that tracked them to this moment. The Gamma turned his head to the viewscreen which occupied the front of the bridge, he waited for his angle on the Pioneer! Pioneer, its ugly curves, and globe-like structure, he couldn't wait to destroy this monstrosity. He managed to bring the angle to just in front of the Pioneers main missile ports. "Fire!" -------------------------------- The Native Beast listed, as the numerous white bolts escaping from her narrowly missed Pioneer, all but a three of them. These three bolts continued with their superluminous velocities until they were stopped by the not-so-thick armour of the pioneer. The contact between the plasma and the armour was explosive. Debris flew from the front globe of the Pioneer. ------------------------------- "That would be a fatal hit, if we still had missiles left" Levente noted. "They are still bearing on us."

"Full Ion Thrust, course 9-9-Mark 41!" Caesar Hans ordered, his eyes were still on the viewscreen, watching the Tee'lay kin Beast making its last stand, fighting like a trapped beast.

"Aye sir, setting confirmed Navigation points" Maxini corresponded. Holmes sat rather quietly for the last half hour, but now again, he leaned forward considering his fate, to see if he and his crew of scientists and scholars would live or die in the next five minutes. ------------------------------- A large asteroid moved slowly across space. Without motive nor precise course, it slugged along, slave to the gravity forces holding it in a precise direction. The huge rocks peace was disrupted by a blue light and metal approaching it. The Pioneer fired all her might into her engines, as she pushed herself forward. The earth ship slowly slipped underneath the asteroid completely hidden from the view of the monstrous beast that tracked her. ------------------------------ The Gamma watched the screen; as the Native Beast sunk below the asteroid after the Pioneer. The reptile watched as he narrowed his eyes on the Earth ship. Feeling satisfied, he drew himself away from the controls, and relaxed on his chair. The pain was still beating away, he would not die in vain! "Lock on Plasma projection beam!"

"Locked" came an irrelevant voice. The Gamma looked on, as the bright, luminous green beam implanted itself on the Earth ship. There was no escape now. The Native Beasts plasma bolts had disabled her completely. Plasma leaked from the nacelles, and almost half of the globular section was missing. Victory.

"Gamma!" came a monotone voice.

What? Caesar Hans, is he here? how?

"Gamma... "

"Where is that voice coming from" The gamma demanded.

"The channel, it just opened itself, Commander!" the officer, was confused, as his fingers danced painfully on the console.

"You should really learn from your commanding officer... " Hans voice was painful.

"The Alpha?" The Gamma questioned.

"Two objects, Commander!" the officers eyes widened, his fingers frantic "Closing in fast!"

The Gamma couldn't think, as his bowel convulsed. His eyes slowly closed, as his rotting corpse hit the console, he worked on to win this long. Another thump came three seconds later. Bigger, and lethal. ------------------------------ The first missile blew a huge chunk of the Native Beast. The chunks engulfed in flaming plasma. The plasma beam all but vacated the hull of the Pioneer, which was pulling away slowly. The second missile finding its way to what remained of the dying beast and vapourised it. The Tee'lay Kins most powerful dreadnought, was now a memory... ------------------------------ Caesar Hans leaned back, his back relieved of all tensions, as the viewscreen displayed millions of pieces of metal thrown off in many directions. Each little debris thrown aside by the fiery storm that resides where the Native Beast targeted the plasma beam onto his ship. The American leaned forward, his eyes narrowing on the explosion.

The crew all had different reaction. Levente had his fingers still dancing along his console, analysing damage, heat to the guns, etc. but a small smile appeared at the corner of his mouth. The Italian helmswomans face was decorated by a smile, her fingers intertwined. She turned to the crew to see their reactions. Holmes sat stunned; his life, the life of many great human scientists gambled by the damn soldiers who came out on top! The Swedes eyes widened, and his fists clenched.

Caesar Hans rotated his chair. Stopping it in the direction of Levente. "Levente?" A smile on the captains face "Great job.. .you know, with the missiles in the field thing... "

"I simply copied their tactics, Captain... " The Argentinean stated.

"Yeah, well, they wouldn't have suspected that" Hans smiled.

"I would... "

"Shut up, Lieutenant"

The mischievous Italian giggled; she turned, getting one last gloat at the explosion. Suddenly a thought came to her head, and her eyes narrowed "You think the people on that ship were willing to die for the superior officers?"

"The Tee'lay Kin is criminal syndicate; you either join them or die" Caesar Hans stood, moving his hands across his jumpsuit, wiping the dust away. He looked around. Not too bad! Layers of char painted the bridge, as well as broken panels. Caesar Hans spoke again "These people however are not from our part of the galaxy. All were of the one race, recruited into the criminals organisation willingly. They died for what they believed in." Caesar Hans found it fit to lie; despite the discontent among the Zeytraddi ranks, he didn't want to plague the young officers minds with the dreariness of the universe.

The captain sighed "Set a course for the planet, Full power to engines." The captain sat down, and placed his elbows on his arm rest, and the tips of his fingers touching "This battle is not over yet... " ----------------------------- McGrath attempted to gain his footing, as the numerous green beams burnt the small sphere of land around him. The Scotsman found his entire group of marines scatted. He looked up to see several huge figures, only lit up by the green energy weapons they fired. It was an ambush!.

Lieutenant Second Class Anthony McGrath and his group had decided to head further into the city, after recovering from the confusion of Perovs betrayal. What were that mans motives? As far as McGrath was concerned, Perov was a simple bastard. The group had reached this small plateau, and were greeted with enemy fire.

Three marines, held their ground, and fired plasma round after plasma round at the spires above them, the bright, orange accretion disk of the blackhole obscuring their views. As if by some miracle, the sound of the air piercing brought one of the aliens to the ground with a hard thump. His back burned with plasma rounds, he was dead mid-flight.

Suddenly the Scotsman felt an indescribable force. He tried to push against it, heavy gear and all. It was too strong, he felt his body fly back and smash against the paved alien walkway. His helmet came loose, rolling across the ground. With both hands, the marine lifted himself from the ground. Sitting on his behind, he saw the sight before him. He could barely see in front of him; the air was distorted somehow. The distortion cleared. Where there was once nothing, stood some strange alien saucer. On the ground, it projected several images. Images filled with writing images, text, diagrams, nearly everything. The Scotsman scrunched his eyes together, but at the corner of his eyes, he saw the reptiles had made it down from the spire vantage point.

Concerning himself with the mission, the Lieutenant leapt forward firing his gun repeatedly at the criminals. Instantly, the threat to the aliens was no more as McGrath was no more. What remained of the Scots body was merely a black mark to the nearly stainless ground. Three large metallic tentacles with what looked like a projectile weapon on the end, terrorised the survivors, swooping round, twisting and looping in an attempt to antagonise the survivors. One alien became irritated by the tentacles, he raised his weapon, too late to be alerted by the shout of another, the alien fired, then all but vapourised by the distortion beam the devices fired. ------------------------------- In a bid to stop the casualties, the Alpha dropped his weapon on the ground. Lifting his hands in an attempt to show the devices that he was unarmed. Believing the devices had an intelligence, the Zeytraddi almost begged, repeating "I'm unarmed!" The tentacles further swooped towards him, simply twisting around each other. The Alpha took a deep breath hoping they only fired on those who did fire. ------------------------------- The three human marines slowly stepped away from the devices, knowing their fate if they fired their plasma rifles. One ensign, Linda Xu, a Chinese- American citizen of the Sol system raised her eyebrow to the alien holding up its hands to the tentacle. Shouting something at it, she did not know what. Disregarding the moaning alien, she turned as her fellow marines walked away. She ran with her head behind her. She could no longer run, as she felt something hold back her waist.

She rotated her face left, to look up Caesar Hans, her captain. With fear and light-headiness cursing her, formalities slipped her mind. "Lets get out of here!" she demanded.

"Lets not" came the voice from the authoritative man. Xu calmed down, her arms dropped, and the rifle was passed to a hand, the end facing the ground. She simply turned at stare at the device. Something was emerging?

"Heat? I couldn't believe it would be summer warmth" Svenn Holmes climbed up the alien "stair-case" towards Hans, Levente, Xu and the other two marines. "Amazing, no sunlight, and there's still heat, this is... what's that thing?" The Swede tilted his scanning recorder at the circular device, now compassing two layers of a black silvery finish.

"We'll find out" uttered the Argentinean, raising a plasma pistol at the device. One of the tentacles leapt out and grabbed an alien. The alien almost squealing, The tentacle wrapped around him, simply dumped him next to the humans. Hans simply smiled. The alien sat up. It was the Alpha, he shouted some words to Hans. Without the translator, the captain could not understand, but he was sure they were not pleasant.

"Who's this guy?" Levente asked pointing at the image of a cloaked figure in the middle of the saucer.

"SILENCE!" It ordered. --------------------------------- "SILENCE!" It ordered. The Alpha sat there slumped, he could not believe what was happening. He had been coming to this planet for months, taking its technology, and fitting his ship with it. Nothing like this ever happened, but now there was a security system. One that humiliates me in front of that human scum, Caesar Hans!

The alpha leapt up. Anger in his voice, he screamed at the figure, no longer fear, just irritation. "What is this? I demand you tell me what you are doing?"

"You are not in a position to demand anything." ---------------------------------- "You are not in a position to demand anything" the cloaked figure uttered, his voice almost echoing in the open-aired city. Strange, the bright blue skies had turned dark. The temperature had dropped, and Holmes, in reaction to the temperature drop wrapped his hands around himself, leaning towards Han " I think our friend is demanding something"

Hans desperately didn't want to be rude to the Swede, after all, when this is over, he didn't want to ruin his mood before he goes on his foreseeable trip catching all the butterflies on the planet! The captain just nodded, and walked towards the figure. "I'm Caesar Hans of the Solar Defence Forces, may I ask your identity"

"Grid 6, 6, 87, Tyoy System!" The figures "teeth" were gritted and his arms were crossed. "Most intelligent inhabitants? Primitive Bi-peds... this is the result of their evolution?" The figure laughed, as Levente simply raised an eyebrow.

The figure rotated to the Alpha, who looked up at the figure, also with a curious expression "Grid 9, 18, 48, Opeca-9 System." The figure dipped his face into his hand, a expression of thought on his face. "We had yet to explore your system, if we had known your ancestors were there, we would have destroyed your sun... we would have destroyed all your suns!... your species and theirs do not deserve to... pollute the galaxy we groomed."

The spires behind the figure collapsed, as two spherical domes rose to the surface. Completely black, and not a mark on them, they stood, completely blocking out the sky, bathing the remaining alien and six humans in blackness. The figure alighted from the machine that projected him. "Umm, should we get back to the shuttle?" Levente leaned in whispering to Hans.

"Did you hear what you said, he's going to vaporise our sun..." Hans whispered leaning back and slightly turning his head to the Argentinien. With the captains calm suggestion, the Swedish Earth interests director leapt forward trying his hardest to whisper.

"Why are you so calm about this? He's going to destroy the entire human race!"

"Maybe he's bluffing" Levente suggested.

"You don't just bluff, about destroying the whole human race!" The director raised his hands to the huge domes ahead of them "Especially with you move huge domes about"

"So when someone moves a dome, you think a sun will blow up?" Levente asked, deliberately trying to annoy the Swede.

"Now we really don't have time for this! Come on" Hans barked at the two men, then turning his head back to the figure and the Alpha, who was still pleading with the figure. Hans eyes widened, when the skies dark blue colour turned a bright orange. The captain looked to the emanating light, and saw two orange beams. Huge beams, coming from the domes, its jaw slightly open. "Err, Holmes? Can you figure out where our sun is in the sky?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Levente asked. "Its there."

"Levente is right, being the magnificent astronomer is" Holmes said sarcastically, the tone quite apparent. "But you are slightly off just about there" Holmes narrowed his eyes and breathed hard.

"But what about our families, our friends... " Leventes face was long, and a frown decorated his face. "I'll never see my mum and dad again"

"Don't worry, we'll fix this." Hans was still quite calm, but nevertheless disturbed by the entire experience. The captain jogged along to talk with the figure. As Hans ran down to the centre of activity, Holmes turned to Levente.

"So your mother and father live on Earth?" Holmes asked with a curious expression on his face, his hands at his sides, his eyes wide, waiting for an answer.

"Did live on Earth" Levente exclaimed, letting out a long sigh. Svenn Holmes made a sigh of his own, and watched the activity ahead of him. Hans was busy pleading with the alien hologram. ------------------------------- "You can't just destroy suns, because you want too!" Caesar Hans complained. "Where is this empire of yours anyway, 100 years of interstellar travel, and its no where to be seen."

"My empire; the T'Kon empire" the words struck Caesar Hans like a bullet. It all made sense. The Alpha and his Zeytraddi pirates had been coming to this world for god knows long, to plunder all its technology. It explains the mysterious generator he found; It explained the Pioneers difficulty against the Native Beast. "My empire is long gone... "

"I am a preserver, this planet is an outpost powered by an artificial core at the centre of the planet" the figure explained, quite willing to explain everything. "The heat, the environment, the sky, all provided by a huge power plant core in the centre"

"We did not pillage your planet, they did" Hans complained.

"True, but our justice system considers the past, present and what might of been..."

"Your saying, if Earth found this planet before these other aliens, they would pillage it?" asked a narrowed-eyed Captain Caesar Hans.

"That is correct..." The figure continued.

"That might be true, but we didn't, they did." Hans opened his arms, his face forward, his head bathed in sweat "Surely you can give us a chance to prove ourselves in the universe..."

"Hint'u jo fis t-keeeee'Ng" The Alpha exclaimed grabbing the attention of a confused Hans.

"Yes, we do have the right, we do have the authority, to suggest who dies and who does not..." the figure exclaimed.

"I'Opppeee!"

"That bit of insolence will cost you your peoples lives..." as the figure finished his sentencing; the bright orange beam in the sky turned red, and the radius of the beam expanded. The sky promptly turned red; and far, far away distant in the stars, one star just died. The huge shockwave leapt out of the stars crust at the speed of light; smashing all in its way. Ships, planets, asteroids all vapourised so many light-years away ------------------------ "I don't understand, you need mass to propel something at warp speed" stated Holmes, lifting his scanning recorder to the large beam heading off into space. "This beam is reading no mass; just energy."

"Laws of Physics change with time, I suppose" Levente suggested.

"You can't change the laws of physics."

"Never say can't" Levente claimed. "Now its our turn to go to the extinct book."

"I'm sure, Captain Heroic down there, will fix this" Holmes stated, with a despairing look decorating his face. ------------------------ "Now for your race... " the T'Kon stated

"No, no wait!" Caesar Hans stated "I'm sure the T'Kon empire, had some sort of... objective... goal! if you like."

"To preserve the galaxy and freedom from oppression"

Caesar Hans narrowed his eyes at the cliché, but nevertheless hid his discontent, and reached with his hand to illustrate his point "How about Earth takes the T'Kon empires place..."

The figure stood silent. "Instead of a few million year old outposts targeting suns, Earth can be a live, and active body, we can fix the galaxy, preferably without bloodshed."

"Interesting, tell me more... ."

Caesar Hans gulped "Well, umm, when a war breaks out, when genocide happens, Earth will be there, to aid, fix and resolve!"

The figure nodded. "Okay, Earther, the T'Kon will give you and your kind a chance" Caesar Hans felt all the tensions drain from his heart, as a grin decorated his face "But, Earther... we have many outposts, you have now brought Earth into our sights... if you fail, the humans permanently fails..."

"Agreed... " The sky was suddenly blue again; as the orange beam that was previously targeted at Earth's sun disappeared, as well as the figure. Suddenly, the ground on the planet began to shake. Caesar Hans attention was torn away from the shaking ground, as one of the large spires that made up the city sank into the ground "Now we get out of here!" ------------------ The shuttle docked itself into the Earth starship; Pioneer. Pioneer herself pushed as hard as she could; the flickering in the Ion engines evident, as she skipped her away from the shattering planet. Suddenly, the warp nacelles on the Pioneer glared brightly, as the Pioneer instantly accelerated and shot to somewhere else in the galaxy. The planet shattered apart; millions of debris heading off in different directions. ------------------ Captain's Personal Log, March 2nd 2154. 3 months ago, I was serving on the Jupiter defence line. Now I'm in command of Earths largest warship with a burden on my shoulder; a burden which, if neglected, could quite literally annihilate the human race. I know I'm a long way from the rather indifferent ex-con commander I was three months ago. The man who got me where I am, has gone AWOL. I'm sure he has his reasons; but I need his support right now. Admirals looking over my right shoulder; a million-year old empire looking over my left. The next hour will dictate my life to come. Caesar Hans sat in the leather chair, uncomfortably comfortable. The walls were cream. Opposite the captain, lay a painting of an Antares runner. Hans remembered those, and he smiled. The American rested his elbows on the wooden arm rest, and he lifted his left leg above his right leg. Suddenly his ears were alerted to the sound of heavy shoes clumping on the carpeted floor.

The nervous man shot up into the sky, faster than a ballistic missile. His eyes straight forward.

"At ease, Hans" came a mocking, but identifiable voice. Hans rolled his eyes, and rested his stance, turning to the giggling Swede.

"Why are you here?" Hans asked; slight indifference in his voice.

"I've got my bags packed" Holmes eagerly said.

"Bags packed!?" the confused look lay on Hans face, when he heard some more footsteps, clamping upon the floor.

"Good even... I mean good morning, gentleman, still cant get used to it always been dark" came the voice of a well-known Israeli.

Hans stood up straight, his hands behind his back, and his legs straight. Facing ahead of him. "That's a badly painted painting" thought Hans as he locked his eyes in front of him, staring at the painting of the Antares. Moving his eyes to the left slightly, Hans could see a comfortably seated Holmes

"Sit down, Hans" Cohen said more sternly. The captain dropped himself on the chair, his eyes locked on the Admiral, whose eyes were dropped over his some papers. The captain felt almost ignored, similar to a child in a headmasters room. Hans had many assumptions about the next ten minutes; Cohen would start a big conversation, which will end with him remaining captain, but bumped back to the Jupiter defence line. As for the Pioneer; she'll be disarmed and given entirely to Earth interests, with Holmes as her capable but cautious director. Please...

Cohen looked up, about to tell Hans his fate. "How far have you been, Captain?"

"How far from Earth?" Hans was caught offguard. Cohen simply nodded, a slight smile on his face. "Today, the furthest I've been is 13.6 light- years, sir."

"Expect to make a new record in times to come." Cohens grin got larger "SDF command has decided to let you keep Pioneer."

"Thank you, si... " Hans was cut off by the Israeli, who has promptly leant forward to brief the captain.

"Now, I know Perov was the one that got you this post, and he... well... he can't be found at the moment... " Cohen dropped his eyes on his papers; scattering them around, looking at different documents "You are a capable commander, capturing a notorious criminal, and he's downstairs in lock... and... well that speaks for itself really."

Hans breathed a sigh of relief. He knew he kept his voice down when talking to that figure, and promising Earth would not be malevolent in return for its continued existence. If anyone, the captain didn't trust anyone with this, it would spread, and there would be panic.

"When a Traygon fleet entered the system, you.. .umm... fought the criminal in, they found something interesting."

"Shattered planet orbiting a black hole" Hans suggested.

"That's one thing" One thing? Hans thought, what else was there.

"Several escape pods, all containing a group of Zeytraddi"

"Escape pods in the asteroid field, we vapourised that ship... " Hans stated.

"That's right, we did, I was there" Holmes spoke up the first time in the five minute talk, only to reinforce the Captains point. Well, Hans was sure from the admirals point of view, that two witnesses can be credible.

"No, escape pods, 900'000km from the shattered planet..."

Hans was confused. The American turned and laid his eyes on Holmes who was equally confused. The Swede simply narrowing his eyes and spoke up "We didn't detect any other ship... "

"It must have been when were trying to escape to warp." Hans placed his hands on his thighs and leant forward "Long-range sensors were down, and the Native Beast was locked onto us with her plasma cannon."

"This ship was in system at the time; it engaged the Native Beast, I think allowing you to escape." Cohen actually grinned, and crossed his arms "The captain thought he was helping, and it was quite rude of you to leave him like that... "

Holmes simply faced down and uttered under his breath "...sorry"

"Well, they were obliterated then"

"Yes, a few shots from the 'enemy vessel'- which I assume is the 'Native Beast'- took out their reactor, and they had to evacuate quickly"

"You said they were Zeytraddi" Hans narrowed his eyes, and leaned back "from what I found out on the Native Beast, the Zeytraddi sector is tens of light-years away"

"Yes" Cohen stood "They traveled for two years to get here... under from what we could estimate from their measurement system... warp three." The Israeli perched on the desk.

"They were trying to apprehend the criminal we caught - he's killed more than 6000 backwater aliens on some world... " Cohen looked left, trying to avoid telling Hans right to his face.

"' 'Alpha' has killed some 32 million Zeytraddi " The Israeli admiral shook his head. "He was some sort of dictator back there, in the 'Zeytraddi' sector... Hans, Pioneer is now under my command, I want to tell you your first 'mission'.

Hans nodded, his eyes wide from what he first heard. He knows now, he's still in command of the Pioneer. Short-term mission or long-term mission? "Short-term mission or long-term mission, sir?"

"Long term mission" Cohen intertwined his fingers "You and the Pioneer SDF crew and EI crew, will return the Zeytraddi marooned crew... as well as those marines you picked up at that 'Kin Forso' place... you will return them to the Zeytraddi sector."

"You may say, its trivial, but this is your first public mission." Cohen walked across the metal-deck, coming to a small porthole. A small hole, to all those stars; so many stars "We need the average person back home throwing out some credits for the long-range space program for a reason; this is a reason."

"On the way there, you can explore, deviate within your mission, all I know you have to be at Zeytraddium within a year" Cohen declared, turning to the two men.

"Why a year" asked Holm.

"I don't know" Cohen replied "So you two, your responsibilities are being called on by the people... and by me, dismissed."

Hans stood up and stood still waiting for his ears drums to ring with Holmes complaints. Nothing, only the patter of feet, as the Swede walked passed him. Hans smiled and walked on. --------------------------------------------------- Caesar Hans sat slumped. Around him was an empty hall, surrounded by metal walls with maroon finishes. The pattern of panels layering the wall, was not welded, clearly bolted. Typical Traygon style. Caesar Hans sighed, maybe the Traygon found something romantic about bolted steel and brown finishes, but humans did not... quite industrial actually.

As the American looked ahead, and gazed at the ten coffins ahead of him. Each one being attended by a preaching Traygon. Most notably a religious figure. No matter what the Traygon called it. Hans was at another funeral. His hands clamped, staring ahead. His mind trying to remember the faces of the diseased, while the other half worrying. Hans probably felt guilty not remembering these individuals, that's why he showed his presence at their funerals.

Suddenly a huge shadow descended over Hans. The captain turned, and saw a huge figure. "Blanketing the dead, Hans?" it spoke. That voice! so familiar. It couldn't be, he was human! Hans confusion was evident on his face.

"This shape-shifting tool is so useful; true its done nothing about my size, but I do look human... look at my... fingers!" The Alphas 'hand' reached out wiggling his digits. Hans rotated left, about to lift his left leg.

"Not so fast, I have a gun under this cloak, move and you die."

"No riddles this time, Alpha" Hans stated with a sarcastic smile, frozen in his track.

"Home is where the heart is, Hans." As the Alpha made his trademarked riddles; a group of clearly flustered Traygon ran down the hall adjacent to the room, clearly angered about the Alphas escape. Hans head was turned for a mere second, then turned back. He was gone...

"For a big lizard, he's quiet" Hans muttered to himself.

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