"St. Claire, how's it lookin'?" I sat myself in the tin can of a throne in the middle of the control centre. Yay.

"It's quiet out there. Got ourselves a little space fluff but that's about it."

Space fluff is virtually harmless, but gross. It is basically a huge, thick cloud of dust, debris and bodies belonging to an unfortunate accident or something. I just assume people ignore the no smoking in engine room rule and get themselves blown up.

"Good, good. Prepare the jump co-ordinates… John I see that Joe Louis, get that food off the bridge!" I snorted.

A slim male swivelled in his chair to look back at me, "Yes ma'am!"

I looked over my bridge crew at their panels. St. Claire, bit of a heavy girl, short blonde hair in tight curls and her attitude can make some people think "BITCH", you get to know her and you'll find she's a sweet heart. Jack, sly bastard has issues, but he is amusing and I love his piloting skills. Especially with this whale of a ship. Then there is John, he has a huge crush on St. Claire, I can tell by the way he looks at her. How cute. Well I know I don't fancy his thin, wiry frame and dirty blonde tousled hair, and I don't think St. Claire does either. Unless she's playing hard to get with him.
Then there is good old me, black, wavy hair, blue eyes and freckles. I'm not actually naturally a black haired gal, I have light brown hair but I find it's boring and went black for something new. Unfortunatly it has started fading.
I can see those damnbrown roots.

"Co-ordinates ready..." John typed on his console, "…proceed with warp?"

"Go ahead." I strapped myself in.

"Proceeding with warp sequences. Dante-Scythe powering up, 15 percent."

This would be the first time I had taken a warp through space and to be quite honest I was scared shitless.

"Dante-Scythe: 40 percent."

I could see soft white whisps of particles coming up over the bridge window.

"Activate starboard and port bow cameras, I want to see what's going on."

I watched as two views came up on the giant vid. screen placed above the bridge window, at first all we could see was white, the cameras adjusted.

"Dante-Scythe: 70 percent."

Two prongs had jut out from the angular casing I had spied before, and between the prongs a great amount of energy was building up. The inside of the prongs were glowing a little orange though I knew it was built to handle the heat. Well I figured it was supposed to.

"Captain! Rebel contact picked up on radar! It's tailing us!" St.Claire yelled out.

"Dante-Scythe: 90 percent."

"Claire, how far?" I glanced at the progress of the Dante-Scythe.

"At their rate we might just get through this portal without confrontation."

"Why didn't we pick this up sooner?" I growled.

"It appears they were using the space fluff to mask themselves, ma'am."

I tensed; I have never fought in space. Ever. I only hoped that if there was a fight, I could make up some plan fast enough to destroy them and save us.

"Dante-Scythe, ready to warp!"

"Complete warping procedure now!"

There was a blinding flash of light and the ship lurched back.

"Throw on the brakes!" I yelled out with eyes shut tight.

While we couldn't see it, I remember when the scientists were explaining that a beam is shot out several thousand miles where the portal will open and the ship can proceed to move through.

Sure enough when I opened my eyes a black mouth yawned in front of us, only way we could actually see it was from theglowing orange lightfringing the outer rim.

"Move, move, move!"

The rebel ship was extremely close; on the camera I could see their missile pods opening up. Jack typed in commands and the ship lurched forward as the burners launched us towards the portal.

"Rebel ship matching speed. Catching up."

I gripped my arm rests tightly then got a plan.

"John fire two homing missiles out our ass, maybe it'll slow them down."

"Right away!" John worked his magic and two missiles shot out the stern. The ship scooted on through the portal and I was glad to see it immediately started to close, however I would not take my eyes off the video screen until I saw the portal disappear entirely.

"No!" I slammed my consol, the rebel ship slipped through! Wait… I watched the two missiles impact on the little bastards bowand I then watched in shock as the impact pushed the ship back towards the closing portal.

I couldn't help but laugh when the rebel ship got stuck amidships. Meaning half the ship was in the portal, the other half was sticking out the other side.

"Nothing to worry about now, we can just chillax and enjoy the ride."

"Twenty objects in bound."

I snorted.

"The rebel's ma'am, theyfired their missiles at us."

Looking back to the aft cams I saw the rebel ship get torn into two asthe portal closed entirely, but twenty specks were following us in this abyss.

"Requesting evasive manuevers?" Jack called out.

"Request denied. We'll shoot them out with lasers."

Jack swivelled about in his chair, "You realise the probability of hitting those missiles is slim to nothing."

"Seems to me someone is not following orders." St. Claire looked over her shoulder.

I looked through my thick, black framed glasses, down the bridge of my nose at Jack and said nothing. I smiled to myself as he twirled around and John readied the lasers after the tiny spat was settled.

Then I thought of something.

"Fire off two of our larger missiles, when they get close to the twenty, blow up our missiles."

Jack seemed more pleased with this tactic and I was glad to see as we blew up our two missiles the other twenty exploded from the shock blast.

Oh goody, I thought of something that worked.
I wondered; how badly damaged would we have gotten had those twenty missiles hit? They weren't big… I probably would have lost crew down in the bulkheads.

"ETA?"

"Two hours." St. Claire chimed.

"Relax a bit, take a nap, whatever." I unbuckled myself from my seat, stood and stretched,"John! What did I say about that Joe Louis?"

"Right! Getting it off the bridge now!" He began shoving the chocolate cake thing in his mouth and I shook my head.