Yuri returned to her hotel room and fell down on the bed, just kicking off the shoes. Alone and tired as a dog. Mario turned out workaholic. They spent good times together working, but for resting and relaxing he was no big fun. He was good in bed, definitely over average, but still… Unfortunately… Sad fact, as otherwise he could be excellent partner.

They had meet into Mario's room into suburbs, and into her hotel apartments, as Kei had checked out and now lived on the 'Independence'.

Yuri stood up and slowly undressed, while preparing warm bath to relax. They were there on the end of second week of their mission, and it so far was moving on into turtle speed, if moving at all. Many of their cases were moving on into the breathneck speed, from one crisis to the other. Trofarian secret was moving like on slick molasses. Good thing was, if they would nail the pirates that were preying on the spacelines for a quarter of century, they would at last clean their darn nickname. Even the tabloids would have to admit, that the Angels were the best, and all they did was for the best of United Galactica…

The week with Mario wasn't without results. They had patched many security holes, caught two gangs of young hackers and infiltrated and disrupted few other. They had uprooted thousands of tax-slippers. However, the main target, she was hoping to get, was still being elusive. No tracks of the master hacker, that had changed records into so many UG records about the lost ships. And no big catch into her traps on FLT relay station too.

Yuri had set up more that a couple of traps for him. Some of them were prepared still at home and now just were slapped into the trofarian network. Even Mario didn't know about them. Yuri had almost cleared him from suspects list. Almost. "Trust no one" was slogan of her academy trainer. Even if Mario was innocent, the hacker may use him to fetch info about the tracking…

Over the week she had only few times meet Kei. Her partner has had that smug look on her face like the proverbial cat who had just cleaned a pot of sweet cream. She didn't said, where exactly on 'Independence' she was sleeping, but Yuri had just to take one look at her to tell, she had got what she wanted.

Sighting, she descended into the water…

The wailing siren warned on the tree sec startup. It wasn't yet registered into Kei's brain, at the moment quite busy with other things, when the ship moved.

Kei wasn't against surprises into the sex, on contrary, she felt that the more differences, the better. However, lying under the partner who suddenly had gained three times his weight wasn't exactly on her list of top ten pleasant experiences.

"Battle alarm! Battle alarm! All hands report to their posts! Battle alarm!" siren wailed.

"Into… right… time…" John gasped, trying to relax the pressure against Kei.

"Attention! Five secs of low gravity! Five! Four! Three! Two! One! Accelerating under triple g!"

They had used this moment to roll side by side, while the ship was doing some maneouvers.

"Cant… agree… most…" Key whispered back, as the triple g-force again pressed them down.

"Battle alarm!" siren continued her wailing.

"What happening?"

"We will find out soon."

Just a few mins later, the intercom announced about the two min normal gravity. They both immediately were on their feet. Cursing, John struggled into his space uniform. Maybe it wasn't so aestethic as the parade form, but it was capable to keep human alive for short exposures to vacuum and to stop many other damage. When he was done with it, Kei was already running toward her post on the bridge on top speed, her 3WA uniform on.

John caught up with her on the grav lift, and they entered bridge not as the last ones.

Siren screamed again. The first leitenant was shouting orders for the engine section. "Attention! Attention! Acceleration over 5 g in twenty seconds!"

"What the hell is going on?" John jumped into his captain's seat, along with those still standing, who all fell down on their posts and strapped into the safety networks.

"Acceleration to over 5 g in ten seconds!"

"UG transport get attacked in outer beltway!"

"Five secs! Four! Three!"

"We will be too late!" Kei shouted. It was a flight of two hours even on 5g acceleration, and they would have to brake as violently second half of the way as now they were accelerating…

"Two!"

"Just watch!"

"One! Zero! Accelerating!"

5 g pressed them into their seats.

Kei was watching how the ship was making a widening spirale leading away from the planet.

"Safe cruise speed acquired! Igniting warp drives two mins and counting."

"WHAT?"

Kei with shock was looking toward the others on the bridge. "We have neitralisators?"

"No." answered someone from her left side.

"Then how the hell…"

"We got out of the trajectory of any major objects and use series of very short jumps. So we move faster that light, and get to them before they get away to their bases."

"Igniting warp drives in sixty sec and counting."

Kei pulled the information visor over her eyes, with right hand manipulating information request displays.

The schematic view of Trofar system appeared on the screen, with they as a white cross moving into mad speed away from the Trofar IV. They were alone. No, wrong. There was signs of the great disturbation of gravity. Someone had jumped just ahead of them.

"Who else?" Kei asked.

"Two patrolling cruisers already jumped. We will catch up and pass them soon."

Kei discarded visor and replaced it with the weapon systems control. Trofarians was on par with UG on many spheres of military, but there were some, they still lagged, somewhere even for a decade or two. Mindlinks was one such a weakness. Although most of technology has the inputs, acquired from UG or other independents, most of personal lacked the implants. In result, all technology was reworked for the traditional input-output usage.

Cursing all the fools into universe, Kei was working with the not-the-newest console, listening through the voice-report of diagnostics.

Then they jumped.

Kei near lost her stomach, when she felt the disturbing warp effect. Someone screamed. Few sections of ship flashed red on the damage report screen, before turning yellow. Kei tried not to think what was happening on the other objects, say the orbital stations or some unlucky transports that happened to be nearby.

On good side, eight light second jump has carried them away from any gravity sources near, out from the plane of the planetary objects. Only one that remained was the star, and that could be ignored.

"Warp igniting thirty seconds and counting. Prepare for the change of course. Acceleration 8 g."

"Eight!"

Kei near bit her tongue off, when the pressure tossed her back into the seat. For a second the lights dimmed, then reappeared.

On her screen flashed relayed info from the patrol cruisers.

"Two frigate class custom-built assaulters. Both running on the top speed, entering warp, vector…"

Before Kei managed to read to the end, they again jumped.

Yuri with sight stepped out from the bath, turned into furry-feeling bath towel and went to the main room. On the mirror corner had been stuckt small message. "Crack Silvie's personal code."

Yuri turned and looked at her desk. She yawned. Chef of the planetary security has having the best code she had met so far. She had managed to break one variation, but that was covering her personal data. Diary entries. Talks about her cat and the kitten she would soon have. Some 'not-so-nice' words about her superiors, Zachary Singh including. Nothing that requested such a security. There was second code, one that she had yet to decipher. Maybe that would offer better chances. Yuri instinctively knew that here had to be something hidden. That woman himself was the proverbial snake into the bush.

Yuri sat down and connected to the desk. She called up the info about person in question. "Tell me, what is that you are hiding?" she asked. There was something into the Silvie's face, that made her uncomfortable. Some catlike grin, that was messing up her mind.

After few unsuccesful guesses, Yuri restarted the codebreaked and logged off. Sometimes the old as ages 'frontal assault' was the only way. Yuri went to the bed, dropped towel on chair and slid under the cover. She opted for using the recently released 'perfect sleep' chip, then decided against it. It lacked the dreams. Five mins later she was sleeping.

What she dreamed about, stayed hidden, but it was something pleasant, if someone may trust the smile that played on her face for most of night.

Kei was far from sleeping - she was tossed around into her post, in spite of all the safety harness she was wearing. They had entered two more jumps, luckily the after-effects weren't as bad as the first time.

As an another thought, Kei had at last discovered how the Trofarians were able to jump so close from the planet. They haven't discovered the gravity well neuitralisators, UG was working on. They had found something else - so simple, that why nobody had guessed it before, remained mystery.

As far as Kei knew, the warp jump from the close vicinity of the objects with big gravitation mass threatened with the backfire. The two gravity wells interfering, some parts of the ship threatened to stay behind and some parts of planet to follow. They had it happen with them personally once, and the result was death of the all passengers and crew of that poor space liner. The bigger the object interfering, the closer to gravity center, the more power was necessary to use to enter mockspace, and it meant greater chances for disaster. On Lyra Disaster, firing warp engines from the low orbit had torn off quite a chunk of planet's atmosphere, called terrific tsunamis into its oceans, increased volcanic activity, and as later astronomers discovered, caused slight instability of the planetary orbit. Trofarians had entered warp into greater distance from their planet, but there still was to be some impact on it and all orbital stations and ships.

Trofarian solution was a bit different, but original. They still couldn't jump out from the low orbits, something only UG compensators would offer. However, mad dash on 5 g's for the ten min had ensured that even if planet would fell something, only the instruments of gravitometric labs would register it. The orbital stations no doubt were warned about the warp and took precautions. That left the question of the ship. There Kei discovered the secret. Trofarians had two sets of warp engines. The first ones were used to jump from the close vicinity of the planets. They were one-time use, crude and powerful, and were dropped behind, when leaving mockspace, their energy spent, and their structure destabilised. They tended to explode from overload too, and Kei shivered about that though. All other jumps were then done by the main warp engines.

"If I get back, it may be good idea to sell to the navy. They will like it," Kei thought. "I would have to share with Yuri though, she has to get the specs on the technology."

Another jump caught her unprepared. Then the battle alarms kicked in.