-- Chapter I - Cat to Water -

Amelia frowned as she inspected the rather poor-looking used ships surrounding her. She was looking at the best ship dealer on Manhattan, and she had two hundred thousand credits to buy a ship and some decent weaponry. One particular ship took her fancy, a used Patriot.

"Aah, that lass used to be the steed of one of the finest LSF fighters in history. It might need a second clean-out, I still haven't been able to get the radioactive guts out of her cockpit. Other than that it's in perfect condition. At least the pilot died instantly rather than rotting from radiation first," the dealer said to her. She gagged and peered inside. As described there was some green slime covering the seat and the controls. She'd have it repaired by the equipment dealer though. No problem...

The dealer was thin and tiny. He was barely Amelia's height, one and two-thirds of a metre. He seemed to despise all the ships he sold as if he had something that could own a hundred of them. He also had a menacing glare, which seemed to be inhuman - like something had twisted it to the point where it was no longer normal.

She handed over all 7000 credits and then walked all ten paces to the equipment dealer. She saw a very nice-looking weapon over in the corner, enclosed in a glass case.

"Aah, that's not for sale. It's my most prized weapon. I have two, the other one's in storage elsewhere. It is called the CERBERUS, but nothing else is known about it... it's hell powerful though. Some mercenary gave it to me... I think his name was Dylan. He went by the name Psychotic. He's a bit of a criminal but he's a great guy. I don't know where he is now - maybe up exploring. He does that for a living and he gets millions for it.
"If you're outfitting that Patriot over there, I'll put some good weapons on it. A freelancer cashed some nice weapons in a while back, probably the best that that Patriot can handle. Just watch your power meter. They eat it up like there's no tomorrow," the short, fat dealer said. His face was pockmarked by scars and there was a tattoo covering his entire right arm. He wore thick sunglasses as well even though he obviously wasn't much of a pilot.

"Yeah, OK, so what kind of weapons you got?" Amelia questioned, and brushed back a couple loose strands of black hair.

"That all depends," the wiry dealer responded with a meaningful glance at her wallet.

"I got one hundred and ninety-three thousand. What can you give me for that?"

"The works. Let's see... Scorpions, Drails, Lavablades, Justices, Stunpulses, Heavy Starbeams. I'd suggest Drails and Scorpions, but you take your pick. Oh, and the Drails will need some repairing, but I can do that anyway."

"Gimme a stunpulse, two drails and a scorpion," While Amelia wasn't a fan of flying, she knew her stuff when it came to ships. "Oh, and a clean-up. There's... uh... some radioactive stuff smeared all over the cockpit. Might need a new one."

"Sure, I got some decent repairmen. Gimme... let's see... seven thousand for the weapons and six hundred for the clean up. I'd suggest you get some nanobots and shield batteries, if it's freelancing you do. I still haven't gotten your name yet."

"Amelia," she said while inspecting the shields.

"Aren't you gonna think up some kind of tag? You know, like Psychotic did?" the dealer asked with a frown.

"Maybe... Not yet though. I'll just go by Amelia Oxedis for now."

"Fair enough," The dealer gave a half-grimace.

"So, would you be looking to buy mines, shields, cruise disruptors...?" the dealer asked after noticing Amelia's interest in the other weapony.

"Hell yes. I got money to burn. Gimme the Guardian shield, a Wasp disruptor... oh, and a countermeasure dropper. And a Deluxe Thruster. Not sure about mines though..."

The dealer looked dumbfounded that this girl seemed so trigger-happy and destructive. He looked anxiously over at his prized weapon and then quickly looked back at Amelia who'd stacked the things she wanted in a small pile in front of him while she was checking out the mine rack.

"Gimme a... Razor mine. Yeah. Razor mine. And as much ammunition as all this'll handle, and a full stock of nanobots and batteries," Amelia announced, almost blurted.

"Uhh... you sure you can afford that? It's gonna cost you... hmm... three thousand seven hundred for the mine dropper, and three thousand six hundred for the shield. Another eighteen hundred for the disruptor, one thousand for the countermeasure dropper, three thousand for the thruster... and ten thousand for all the ammo. That's quite a bit of money, you know. Twenty-five thousand for all that, give or take. You'll probably need more than just a couple thousand for the repairs you'll have to undertake. Oh, and if your cockpit breaks you're dead. Even a tiny hole will make you literally explode."

"Wonderful..." Amelia gagged at the thought of the green slime that was being taken out with her cockpit which was once human flesh.

As soon as she'd gotten her parts mounted she instantly ran out of the room and got in her refurbished Patriot. Strapping herself in and pulling on her flight helmet she manoeuvred her way to the nearest pub and docked, purposely landing on a couple suspiciously black-clad people nearby, engines scorching them to their bones, and then some. All their boss would find would be a couple piles of ash. Amelia Oxedis was peeved, and if any Xeno came near her they'd be dead in seconds.

She leaped out and sprinted into the bar. Among others, she noticed a black-clad person over in the corner who she discerned was not a Xeno because of the way he didn't hide his face, and Michael King, an ex-LSF freelance pilot who was known for his incredible skill with light fighters. She knew King vaguely so she walked up to his table and sat down.

"Hey, Amelia! Never thought I'd see you here. You taking up piloting or something?" King recoiled and smacked his head on the wooden part of the seat, and grunted.

"Yeah, I got KOSed by the Xenos, so I think I'm gonna have to get used to flying. In fact I thought you might have a mission I could do for practice," Amelia spoke, blue eyes scanning the room just in case. She slung one sinewy arm over the back of the seat and crossed her left leg over her right.

"Sounds nasty," King responded with a frown and suddenly looked up to a second man standing over the table. "Hey, look what the tide brought in. Trent, nice to see you!" The man sat down next to Amelia with his mug of imported Sidewinder Fang. He had short, cleanly cut dark blond hair and eyes that could bore a hole in a wall just by looking at it. He wore the typical freelancer clothes - gloves, long-sleeved leather jacket and carried a pair of blasters on his hips. Amelia was just wearing a simple black short-sleeved leather jacket and jeans, as usual. And her trademark sunglasses, can't forget them. Apart from that only a pair of thick leather gloves warmed her up.

"Yeah, I need work. I'm finished prowling the Omicrons. You got anything big? One hundred kay?"

"Hey, hey. Trent. I don't got that much money. Orillion might, but I don't," King half-frowned, half-grimaced and took a swig of his Liberty Ale as Trent did his drink.

"Orillion? I didn't notice him. What might he give me?"

"Meh, I don't know. Ask him before he leaves."

"Sure thing. Maybe I can get myself some nice weaponry."

"Maybe you can."

And off Trent went. Amelia watched him sit down a couple tables away next to the black-clad guy she saw earlier. After a brief conversation the pair left the bar together.

"That's my buddy Edison Trent. He's one of the best pilots around, possibly the best," King noticed Amelia's questioning look and coninued. "He's got something like five hundred thousand kills under his belt, second only to Orillion himself."

Amelia coughed up the ale she just swallowed.

"Shit! How did he get that many?"

"He has ways. I only have a couple thousand from my LSF days. But anyway, down to business. You need work, correct?"

"Yes. Preferably killing Xenos."

"Well, go ask the bartender for the job board, and bring it here."

"Sure."

Amelia got up and slowly paced towards the bar, drinking in her surroundings like a sponge. She got on a bar stool and quickly asked the bartender for the job board before heading back in the same manner.

"So," King asked, "What have we got?"

"A bounty hunter job, kill Xenos in Sector 4D. Six thousand, should do for now."

"OK, let's head out."

King jumped up and jogged out, Amelia following behind. By the looks of things, King owned a Hawk Light Fighter, outfitted with some pretty neat guns. Amelia jumped in her new cockpit and gunned the engine. A roar signified it was on - she lifted off and shot out of the planet's atmosphere.

In front of her cockpit window a hologram popped up, outlining the waypoints and the difficulty. A man's voice came over the communications channel, and it wasn't King's.

"This is the mission comission. Amelia Oxedis, you and Michael King will travel to Sector 4D and attack any Xeno ships that are there. Their ships will be overlayed with an automatic targeter, so all you need do is shoot them. You can scan the ship for its hull strength and shields, which is highly recommended as well. These Xenos shouldn't be too hard, they'll be in Starfliers. Apart from that, good hunting!"

"Confirmed."

This time King's face showed up on the comm channel.

"Yo, Amelia. We'll do some basic training before we head out there. For a start, aim at me and pull the trigger. You won't damage my hull, just the shields. And only tap the trigger, OK?"

Amelia was shivering. She hated flying to the point where it was unbearable. But she did as she was asked. King's shields wavered but soon regenerated themselves.

"Good, now this time I want you to target me. You'll get a cross-section of my ship, and the status of its shields and hull. Just aim at me and tap the white button near the trigger."

Amelia moved her overlayed crosshairs over King's ship and did as she was told.

Soon she was a lot more comfortable with the basics of space flight, and, after entering formation with King, entered Cruise drive and shot off to her destination. She'd started to get used to flight and she wasn't quite so intent on throwing up, like she had been when she saw the green slime that used to be someone's intestines glued to the cockpit.

The HUD reminded her of an over-done computer game. Simply because the ships looked weird when shown in a green, white or red box which seemed to be five metres behind the ship itself when it was moving.

"Oh well," she thought.

Thirty kilometres later, she was startled awake (She'd fallen asleep?) by King yelling at her to wake up, since the Xenos had finally arrived. Seems like they were there for a while.

She gunned her engines, and as soon as the Xenos were in range she punched the afterburners for a second... and killed her engines. She knew this trick from jetbike racing, killing your engines to make you drift around corners. This time she drifted past the two Xeno Stargazers that had appeared, turning her ship to shoot at one as she passed it. Its shield were wasted after two shots. She saw the pilot scream (and heard it over the comm channel) as three solid blasts knocked out the engines and a fourth destroying the ship itself. An Advanced Scorpion came loose, and as she'd been instructed she pressed the "Tractor Beam" button. King, meanwhile, was busy owning a couple Starblasters dumb enough to go near him. All up there were ten - three Stargazers, and seven Starblasters - most of which were swarming King and his Hawk, who was elegantly swooping between shots, and two dead, one to each of the freelancers. At one point, King shot a Wasp missile at a Xeno just as he (she?) fired a dodgy Javelin missile. The wasp managed to fly straight into the tube.

Amelia jumped when a Xeno exploded, knocking her ship back. A piece of wing spun past her. She looked back in shock as King came in line with a Xeno and shot a Wasp to stop its killed drift. (She gasped, "They're learning our tricks!" over the comm channel. King laughed.) However that Xeno's ship was half-dead anyway, and she wondered how it was still intact with the engine on fire. (The oxygen must've been leaking severely to see the fire...)

"Warning. Entering sun's corona."

"What the f...!" Amelia swore and noticed the wing tips starting to melt slightly. She cut her engines this time and whipped around to face three Starlance heavy fighters who'd silently followed her.

"Surrender. We have you in a corner - either melt in the sun or come with us," the lead Xeno said matter-of-factly over the channel. Amelia groaned.

"Uhh... King, help!" she said over the private channel.
"Ach, these bastards have Starlancers and Starblazes! They've gotta have some kind of base around here. My Hawk has lost its shield, so I'm going on hull and one less wing. Get out of the sun's corona and hope they don't have Hornets"
"Incoming!" Amelia screamed as she watched a Starblaze in the distance shoot a bright red missile at King's ship. All she heard on the other end was a very staticy "Sh..."... and then nothing.

"King?" Amelia stuttered.
"Yeah?" a familiar voice groaned.
"I thought you got missiled"
"Hah. I was lucky, the shield came back up as it hit me... that there was a Cannonball. Something you never see. They're the strongest missile I've ever seen. You might want to come here and help me"
"So... that "sh" that I heard was a "shield restored", not a "shit"
"Yeah"
"OK, let's take these fools down"
"Warning. Wing lost." The sound of the on-board computer broke the conversation.
"Crap, I lost two of my wings! I gotta get out of here"
This time a Xeno came through the channel.
"You aren't going anywhere"
"Yes I am, scum! Die!" She unloaded on the Starlance in front of her, the Stunpulse killing the ship's shield and, with a drift, shaved a wing off, the thruster and the shield. She promptly tractored all this up before leaving the corona. A blast followed soon after, this time more like an engine explosion. The Xeno she'd shot at had succumbed to the heat in the Sun's corona and exploded, the other two careening wildly into the sun, screaming all the way. King's voice echoed into the comm channel.
"Whoa, nice one"
"This... is fun. I thought flying was bad"
"Indeed it is! Come on, there's only one left. The others were all killed when I wasped one of their cannonballs. Nice, eh"
"Whoa... not bad."

Almost as soon as they destroyed the final ship, things went sour.

"Warning. Solar flare spiking in thirty seconds."

Neither of them had heard this before.

"Oh, shit! Get out of here!" King screamed, and engaged his cruise drive, as Amelia followed suit. Three seconds and they were at 300m/s. Amelia poured more power from her shields into her engines, knowing that the flare would kill her even if the ship withstood it. She saw a massive dragon-like flare erupt from the sun behind her. Only thing was, it was just a wall of fire, not one of those over-done dragon heads that she saw in computer games.

"Uhh... King"
"Ugh, this isn't gonna be pretty. Even if we outrun it, the residual heat will continue on and probably scorch our engines. Come on, kill your shields. They won't help here."

Amelia did as she was told and stopped all shield regeneration and then poured the power from her shield to her engines. 600 m/s.

The flare was closing fast. She launched a countermeasure and watched how long it took before it was swallowed up by the incoming flare.

Ten seconds.

That wasn't bad but it wasn't good either. She steered towards Manhattan, which was only twenty K away. She gunned her engines to the point where they would overheat should they be further overpowered. King followed suit, and soon enough the flare dissapated... but they knew that they'd have to be fast to outrun the heat flare. In the rear vision monitor she saw the heat distortion, and the explosion of a transport who got a little too close to the heatwave. Funnily enough it was carrying niobium, and since she was close enough to it she tractored what she could up. She was such an opportunist, but she knew when and when not to take chances. Three K away, Manhattan loomed ahead, an opal on the permanent night of space. Two K... The heat began to shoot up her engines. One of the three engines stalled momentarily... but, on cue, the heatwave began to retreat.

"This is Amelia Oxedis, Freelancer Kappa Fifteen-dash-five. I need to dock urgently."

A robotic voice responded.

"Affirmative, Kappa Fifteen-dash-Five. You have received priority clearance. A message has been left for you to visit The Shanty Bar."

"Confirmed, initating landing sequence."

A quick docking and visit to the commodity dealer with her 30 metric tonnes of Niobium (which gained her a couple thousand quick bucks) saw her on the way to the nearby tavern, just across the "street" to the one where she'd met King and Trent. Street, meaning "the next space-scraping building behind the first".

King was not present - he'd had a couple wounds where the pressure started to leak and a valve popped off its socket, smacking him in the elbow after ricocheting off his knee.

She noticed the same black-clad dark-complexion man sitting on one of the corner benches opposite some aliens in strange liquid. The aliens were long since dead, though. He noticed her arrival and beckoned her to sit down with him.

Avoiding suspicious gazes she just walked casually one way and then back another, as if just looking around. She soon reached the man in the corner and sat down.

"Good evening... you must be Amelia Oxedis"
"Yes, indeed. Who are you"
"I am Orillion, the leader of the Order"
"Really? Wow. What do you need from me"
"You have only just started piloting but you are exceptional. Better than most of the trained pilots I know, and I'd bet if you had to fight Trent you'd probably win. So I have a proposition.
"A couple days ago, something happened in the edge worlds, pretty close to the Hispanian capital of New Madrid. A group of Outcasts reported a large amount of radiation around the newest Omicron system, which we have yet to name, connected to Omicron Chi. We need someone who is willing and able to enter the system, and look for some key objectives including possible Nomad presence. You will be paid a total sum of ten million credits for this and you will have a ship and weapons bought for you. Whatever you need, we'll give you. We have rumours that the Errads are in the system already, but they're friendly so it doesn't really matter. They'll help with the Nomads if there are any"
"You say this as if it is nothing... but I know from experience and Trent's stories of the war forty years ago that it's more than that"
"Indeed, but we have more than enough in terms of weapons and supplies. All you need to do is get in there, scout around, and come back with anything you need. The Order base in the system is functional but has yet to be populated. We're sending in the first fifty crew members when you finish the mission, should you take it"
"OK, fine."

Orillion stood up slowly. He was almost seventy now, but because of Cryer's successful remake of Cardamine, almost everyone in Sirius had had their life expectancy almost tripled - King was an old man as well - but still fighting, acting, looking and piloting like he was still a teen, as were most Nomad war veterans who'd stayed alive for ten years after the war, long enough to get on "Cardayours", the mock-drug that Cryer had produced. It had put the Outcasts out of the smuggling trade, hence their new mercenary ways and the alliance with the Corsairs to make the United Hispania Forces and the Hispania Express - two factions who had sprung up only tewnty years after the Nomad Wars.

"We can't go through Kepler anymore, after the dark matter storm that occurred a couple days ago. Thankfully, LSF patrols have found a jump hole straight from Colorado to Shikoku, and have got a good trade lane up and going from the former Kepler gate to the jump hole," Orillion began explaining how to get to the Omicron systems. "From there we go straight to Sigma 15, then Omicron Minor. The ship dealers on Toledo have access to just about every single ship in Sirius including the Firefeeder, a prototype Erradicator VHF. Then from there to Omicron Major where, stocked up by Colonel Trent, are the best weapons that money can buy. After that we head straight to the unknown system"
"Sounds good," Amelia said hopefully, and got up to follow Orillion to the docking bay.

"Just keep in formation with me, and you won't have to do anything. Nothing should attack us, even Xenos. Just stick with me," Orillion spoke again once they were on the landing platform.

Amelia had just gotten herself way too deep into the Order's war against Nomads.