It took the better part of two days to get the other two ships back into some semblance of being spaceworthy, every minute spent by crews working diligently to seal the large gash in the side of the Tempest Flame's hull. And while the Storm Wave's hull looked better there were numerous microfractures from the pockmarked hull that needed to be sealed before those sections could be repressurized. The fresh crew and surplus of materials from the Clear Skies made the work that much faster, and while the facilities aboard her were unfinished they were still a change in scenery and a sight cleaner than those aboard the other two ships.

During the second day of repairs Clear Skies picked up an echo on her experimental deep space sensor array and the three captains figured someone was coming to check up on their pirates. Rather than stick around they decided to push to get the Tempest Flame's superluminal drive back online and rendezvous at a set of coordinates just above the galactic plane a few sectors away.

| -. o0o .- |

Amelius pushed the circuit diagram he'd been working on away from him in disgust. Nearing fifteen hours of eye straining work on just one security feature for the gateway project, Amelius knew he needed to take a break from his work. He was working on integrating a sensor package into the gate's ring frame. Unfortunately the current sensor package was resisting the attempts to fit it in the limited space available, and connecting it to the gate's power source had varying degrees of success. The original sensor arrangement worked decently if a little hard on the gate's power supply pulling just slightly more voltage than the fusion bottle could handle. It was easy enough to fix after removing a few of the sensor modules leaving the minimum basics, sensors to check for the proper mix of gases in the atmosphere including detecting poisonous gases, a proximity sensor to determine if there was anything in front of the gate that would prevent exiting the subspace pocket on the other side, and an camera for standard visuals.

Five hours in he'd run into the issue of overloading the network between two gates resulting in a premature shutdown after five minutes transferring the sensor readings back along the tunnel. It took two hours rewriting the program on both network crystals. He had to add the updated communication protocol to both the gates he was working on. The idea was that older gates could still function on the gate network with the newer ones.

He carefully set the crystal he'd been working on in a tray next to the circuit diagram and marked his place so he'd know where he left off. Behind him the test gate, smaller than the one used for missions but a decent size for a local site to site transport, lay on the work table. The inner workings of the gate were exposed showing the superconducting coils and other internal components normally hidden by the hard metal naquadah shell. The case was a marvel of materials science in that the metal served as a giant capacitor which absorbed energy and discharged it into the inner workings at a steady rate.

The properties of the metal where such that it could take several lightning strikes, store the electrical energy and then provide that energy to the gate for a connection without frying the internal components from the surge.

Amelius walked out the door and headed for the nearby mess. Pouring himself a cup of coffee, he pinched the bridge of his nose and sat back.

| -. o0o .- |

The three ships crossed the distance in a day. Hanging silently in the void above the spiral bar galaxy below them. The two battle scarred ships and their captains had learned that few races ever traveled in the void above or beneath the galaxy preferring to hop from star to star within the galactic plane. A similar failing tended to ensure that the few space faring races they'd met clung to a specific orientation for up and down tending to fight their battles thinking two dimensionally. They automatically oriented themselves relative to the planar of whatever system they were in, a notion that was drilled out of the Alterans during their training, when they had that luxury.

There can be something said when an entire race is working as one to achieve spaceflight, instead of working as nations against each other. While progress is still agonizingly slow, it's still progress, and it's stable progress. The sense of urgency competing nations feel to be the first to reach milestones is considerably lessened allowing technology to advance to meet the goal rather than rushing ahead with barely tested theories.

While they hadn't had much experience with conflict given their unified existence until recently, they did understand the need for defensive and offensive weapons. Their training and ship design gave them space superiority. At least as long as the morals of the civilians didn't get in the way.

| -. o0o .- |

Fenris walked into the council room.

"I'm inclined to point out that two of our sister ships were in no condition for a sustained conflict. The quick actions of the captain ensured the threat was neutralized." said one of the female counselors at the end of the table.

"Well," blustered one on the opposite side, "there's still the issue of simply trusting this information that's been added to our database. I'd like to think we wouldn't rely on knee jerk responses based on information from an unknown race."

A few of the counsel looked like they wanted to physically beat down the dissenting voice. Some muttered idiot under their breath.

"We aren't simply trusting it. We've been measured in our response, given the record of the race in question all of our interactions with them has been positive thus far."

"If I may," Fenris called out taking his place at the podium to address the council, "We have confirmed threat assessments of the race in question with the other two ships. We are in the process of confirming what we can of the information gifted by the Omeyocan with the other two captains as we speak. The only issue as I see it remaining about the engagement is the quite lethal response."

Fenris projected communication logs on the holo displays. "If you see the record you'll note that we received communiques from our other two ships informing us of the aliens hostility before action was taken. That combined with the threat assessment provided by the data package given to us before arriving was what lead to the decision to respond with lethal force."

Fenris stared pointedly at the dissenting council member.

| -. o0o .- |

Thelya met up with Arwen in the mess hall. "So how was your day?"

"Mostly quiet. Turns out this new brain of mine is quite handy at circuit design, genetics and physics. Odd combination, that."

"Oh?"

"Well you know, before well, other me was tactical and dark ops. Bit confusing but enjoyable seeing what the science side of things is compared to before when the most I cared about was how big the explosion could be."

Thelya gave him a quick hug before looking around, "Oh look there's Amelius, my brother's on his team."

She grabbed his arm and steered him over to the table where Amelius was looking at a circuit diagram on his tablet, while nursing a cup of coffee.

"Afternoon Amelius." they greeted sitting down with their meal.

"Hello Thelya, Arwen Model Two." He greeted them happy at the distraction.

They talked about each others work for a few minutes before Arwen motioned to the datapad that Amelius had set down. "Looks like you could use an extra set of eyes and another brain working on that."

"Sure" he pushed it over to him as he chatted with Thelya.

Arwen had opened a separate document and was copying over the schematic and making what seemed like a thousand modifications as he was doing so. "You've actually got a few redundant pathways here. Some of these can be used for the more functions without the need for additional circuits." He handed the tablet back with the new diagram on top. "Just needs a slight modification software side to access those features. Get Tav or Ike to program it for you. Thelya tells me they're quite the geniuses at that."

Amelius was staring at the new design for what he'd been working on for the past few days. "Thanks, Arwen." he nodded to both, "Thelya. If you'll both excuse me I want to work on this while it's fresh in my mind."

Arwen and Thelya finished their meal with quiet conversation before agreeing to head to the gym for some exercise before heading back to their quarters.

| -. o0o .- |

Tav was in his quarters meditating. It had been a busy last few days, the new faces going about the city from the other two city ships brought something different to life. Amelius was tied up on the big project in his lab. The anti-virus scans had just finished clearing the eighty percent mark on the database backups. Ike had set up the new scanning program on the active portions of the database to prevent further infection. They'd started sorting the contents of the data dump from the Omeyocan.

He was pushing himself deeper into his meditation instinctively and because the last few times he'd been close to reaching something that felt like warmth, comfort and light. He'd reached the closest yet but felt he couldn't hold himself there much longer, so he brought himself out of the meditation to find Ike holding a scanner to him while sitting across from him.

"Welcome back to the land of the living Tav." Aikino greeted Tav with a grin.

"Make any progress while I was meditating?" Tav asked Aikino as his roommate sat down on the bed.

"Nah, Amelius kicked everyone out a few hours ago saying we all needed a break. The database recovery should be finished sometime in a few weeks. We should be able to begin sorting the new data the week after." Aikino let himself fall back onto the mattress.

Tav blew air out the side of his mouth at a strand of brown hair that was falling into his eyes and asked, "Alright, what should we work on next?"

"I think I saw something we can mess with in the mess controls. Give everyone meals that have the food arranged in silly faces. Either that or the gym controls." Aikino sat back up and held out the data pad he'd been using to scan Tav before he snapped out of his "Check the readings I was getting while you were meditating."

"Low level EM field. Synaptic activity five percent above normal. Hey, you didn't edit this picture did you? Are my hands glowing? Artificial gravity field disruption four percent." Tav looked at the datapad with an expression of disbelief. He wouldn't have put it past Aikino to play a prank, however, he also knew his friend was a scientist as well as a prankster and the excited gleam in his eyes wasn't the same as his practical joker grin.

"No joke, haven't changed a thing only took the readings." Aikino replied seriously.

"This is… Awesome!" Tav stared at the readings.