CH25

"Anything babe?" Johanna stepped up behind her husband. They had been IN the tormented zone for a month now and they had nothing.

Jim shook his head. "There are a lot of storms, they are seriously messing with my ability to scan. I thought I had the residue of used fuel that an engine like a Talyn would give off, and then a storm came along and blew it all over the place.

Right now I'm trying to speculate on the direction the trail was taking me and going that way, but I've got nothing. No other signs and no other ships in scanning range. No systems either." Jim was shaking his head.

They really were looking for a needle in a haystack, a really huge haystack.

Johanna kissed the top of his head. Her husband was doing his best and she knew it. At least the storms had left them alone. They had so few automated systems for the storms to affect.

"There is something we need to talk about however." Johanna hated bringing it up, but it was important.

"Leave it to you to get serious." Jim teases, which earns him a light swat to his shoulder. "So what's on your mind?"

"We had just over 8 months of blood when we left the last system. It took us 2 months just to get to the edge of the tormented zone, and we've been in here for a month now. One month from now and we'll be down to 4 months worth.

If it takes us 2 months to get back to the edge of the zone, plus 2 more months to get to the closest system, we'll only have a few days of blood left. And we'll have to hit every hospital in that system just to get back to 8 months again." Johanna points out.

"And only get 2 months deep into the tormented zone before we are forced to leave again to go back to that same system. Likely filled with Hunters and probably with help like a Command Carrier.

We'll be dead before we can even blink." Jim deflated.

"Or we stay out here until we find them or run out of blood." Johanna points out.

Jim twisted in his seat to look at his wife. His eyes told her "The girls may already have run out of blood and we'll all die out here". It got Johanna to lean down and kiss him.

Jim turned back around to look at his screens. They stay until they find them alive or drifting in space, dead, because their daughters ran out of blood.

Johanna leaned down and placed her arms around him and kissed the side of his head. They stayed till they found them or they died trying.

It was now 2 weeks later:

Jim was lying in bed with his naked wife lying partially on top of him. They were both depressed since they had no leads on where the girls had gone. They had both decided they needed a distraction and they both reminded each other why they loved the other.

Vampires didn't get pregnant easily so when Johanna had found out she was pregnant with Katie, it had been a happy surprise. The fact that she was their only child together had made her even more special.

They both loved their daughter a lot. Running across Lanie shortly after a pair of Hunters had found her parents had been another happy accident. Now they had two daughters that they had done everything possible for.

Jim could feel the soft rise and fall of her chest and his wife slept. His thoughts were interrupted by the beeping of his scanner. It got Jim to jump and unceremoniously dump his wife on the floor while he ran naked for his screens.

It took Johanna a few moments to get her composure after having been dumped on the floor out of a dead sleep. Johanna ran for the bridge a little behind her husband, just as naked.

"What is it? …. Is it them?" Johanna was actually conflicted if she wanted it to be the girls. If they were out here in the middle of nowhere after all this time, it likely meant they were dead. And if it wasn't them, it might be Hunters or something or someone just as bad.

"It's a Marauder." Jim tells her. "It looks like it has been zapped by a storm. It's just drifting and it's power output is at zero." Jim tells her.

"A Marauder." Johanna didn't like the sound of that. Marauders were only assigned to one type of ship, a Command Carrier. "Any sign of the Command Carrier?" A Marauder had range, but not that much range.

Jim however shook his head. "The two of us are alone. … "I'm going to pull up right next to it." Jim tells her.

"WHY?" Johanna would just as soon let it float dead in space.

"I'm going to go over and search it and bring back what is on its computers and anything else I can find." Jim tells her. "And before you go ballistic on me, if there is one that means there is more than one. It also means there is a Command Carrier out here somewhere.

And if there is a Command Carrier out here in this mess, there is likely a Hunter ship with it or near it. Who else has the authority to order a Command Carrier into the tormented zone where they are likely to take a pounding from all these storms." Jim points out.

"If we can get the data off the Marauder, it will be one section of tormented space we don't have to look in." Johanna got it, and gave her husband a kiss to the back of his head.

"I'm going to get suited up. Keep an eye on the scanner and let me know if someone else shows up." Jim gets up and runs for his clothes and then his suit.

"Anything?" Jim yells out before he gets in the airlock.

"All clear." Johanna yells back.

It was an hour later when Jim was back to find that Johanna had met him at the airlock desperately looking for news, still naked.

"They got hit and had a catastrophic hull breach. One pilot and two Marines. … I down loaded everything on their flight system for us to review. However I have an idea." Jim had thought this up on the way back.

Johanna groaned, Jim's plans always gave her a headache.

"I think I can fix the hull breach and fire the Marauder back up. Using their flight recorder I can use it to find their Command Carrier and fly the Marauder back to it." Jim starts off with.

Johanna however was convinced her husband had lost his mind. He had been out for a spacewalk for too long. "Have you lost your mind?"

It got Jim to smile. "I'm going to take the last Proton Bomb with me. When I get close enough I leave it on automatic and jump with you in our ship a little ways behind me. You swoop in and pick me up and then we run for it.

Hoping to outrun the blast wave, and poof, they are down one Command Carrier." Jim liked it since that would free them up from having to worry about the damn thing sneaking up on them while they looked for the girls. Plus it meant the Command Carrier wouldn't find the girls.

Johanna however was worried about this plan. "We've lived this long because we run when they get close. Fighting back just isn't us."

"I know, believe me I know. But think about it. They are already down 2 Hunter ships. We do this and succeed they will be down 2 Hunter ships AND a Command Carrier. They will never enter the tormented zone again.

After we find the girls we will be free and not have to run. Hopefully ever again." Jim tries to get his wife to see what he sees.

Losing a Command Carrier would be a big lose for them. It would make the tormented zone sound even more dangerous than it already was.

"Fine." Johanna moans. "But if we die doing this, I'm going to kill you." Johanna points her finger at him.

It was now 2 days later:

Jim had spent the two days patching the hull breach and ejecting the bodies out into space.

Jim had fired up the systems on the Marauder and activated the engines and was on his way to the location of the Command Carrier. Jim had left it on auto-pilot and was just finishing working on the communication system.

Now when the Command Carrier tried to contact him, they would get back this broken static mess that would sound like the Marauder had been hit by one of the storms taking the communication system down.

Jim did however still have his suit communication system that he still had on except for the helmet. Johanna was just barely on his scanner as she followed him in.

The beeping of his scanner alerted him to the fact that the Command Carrier had just shown up on his screens. A Marauder had state of the art scanner systems, however the storms were making a mess of them.

Jim kept going and slowed down just a little and then suddenly added power, only to slow down dramatically. This got the desired result as he picked up a communication from the Command Carrier.

"The Zelbinion!?" That told Jim a lot. "Selto Durka." Jim spoke his name with pure venom in his voice. Jim suddenly liked his plan a whole lot more now.

Jim gave the Marauder another sudden surge of thrust only to have it back off again and then grabbed his helmet.

"Here I come babe." Jim opened the air lock and pushed off with all his strength straight for his wife who was a little behind him.

Johanna cut power and tried to go dark except for her ability to scan for her husband.

Johanna was standing at the airlock waiting for it to cycle and then helped her husband take his helmet off so she could kiss him. "Please babe, no more crazy plans. I'm not sure my heart can take it."

It got Jim to smile. "Let's get out of here." Jim ran for the bridge and fired up the engines and turned around and set the engines to 120% and headed back the way they had just come.

"It was the Zelbinion." Jim tells his wife who was strapped in, in the other seat.

"Durka." Johanna spoke his name softly with pure venom in her voice. She suddenly liked her husband's plan a lot, a whole lot.

"If this is going to work, it should blow just about, …." Jim's screens started beeping. "Grab hold of something, here comes the blast wave." Jim warns her.

There was a storm forming not far from them and Jim changed course to get the other side of it. This would place the still small storm between them and the blast wave. Jim was hoping it would help deflect some of the blast.

There was some buffeting from the storm however the blast wave seemed to go around the storm allowing Jim to sit on the back side. "We're clear." Jim starts breathing again, noticing his wife do the same.

Johanna instantly un-did her restraints and went over to her husband and wrapped her arms around him from behind. "I love you babe and I like that last plan of yours." Then Johanna kisses his head.

No more Durka! They had heard stories from people, not just other vampires about what Durka did to vampires before allowing them to die. Johanna would have preferred that he suffered greatly, however just dying was enough.

"Now what?" Johanna asked still with her arms wrapped around her husband with her chin resting on his shoulders, looking past him at the screens.

"Now we are going to go over to this storm over here and use it as a shield for the moment." Jim points to a different storm than the little one they are still sitting next to.

Their little storm was just sitting there, getting bigger. That one was bigger and on the move.

"Why?" Johanna didn't see anything as her eyes scanned the screens.

"This is why." Jim places it up on one of the larger of the two screens.

"I still don't see anything." The area was a mess. Had been ever since they had entered it.

"Let me replay it for you." Jim goes back to just before the Command Carrier blew up. "Now watch this area here, closely." Jim points and lets the recording play.

Johanna saw something. …. It didn't make any sense to her, however there was something. "What is that?"

"That, love of my life, is a Hunter ship riding out the blast wave behind their precious shielding." Jim explains.

"Hunters." Johanna whispered out the word with pure disdain for their very existence. "Now what do we do?" They were out of Proton Bombs and stood no chance against a Hunter ship.

"We are going to use this storm here as cover and follow them." Jim moves their ship so it is a little behind the storm. Not close enough that it affects them, but allows them to hide in its shadow. "So long as the storm and them go the same direction."

"WHY?" Johanna was sure her husband must have gone space mad now. "Shouldn't we be putting as much distance between them and us as possible?" Vampires run, Johanna wanted to run.

Jim nodded his head. "Except for one thing. We are both looking for the same thing." Jim points out.

Johanna stood up straight. "The girls!"

"The storms are going to be hard on them, however their scanners are state of the art. They can see things that we can't. Plus they aren't called Hunters for no reason." Jim points out.

Now Johanna understood what her husband was thinking. Hunters may kill vampires, but they did so because they were so damn good at hunting for their kind. "We let them lead us to the girls." Johanna suddenly liked this plan. "And then what?"

Jim shrugged his shoulders. "Depends on what we both find. … They find the girls ship floating dead in space, we ram them and we all die out here." Jim describes one possible scenario.

They would be too low on blood bags to last long enough to get out of the tormented zone, and living without the girls, just wasn't living. It would be a new form of hell.

"If we find a system that the girls have landed in, then so do we and we fight to live. It's likely only this one Hunter ship and that Command Carrier are all that's in here. And if neither of them ever come back out, its likely no one will follow them. …. Ever!" Jim points out another option.

Johanna wasn't one for fighting, she didn't have her husband's ability to think and do what he was talking about. "And what do we fight with?" All it got Johanna was a grin from her husband that was almost scary looking.

"That was the Zilbinion." Tom states to Josh who was standing behind him running his hands down his chest. Tom could also feel Josh stiffen.

They both remembered what Sorenson had told them about losing either their ship or the Zilbinion. "Was it a storm?" Josh asks standing up straight but never taking his hands off Tom.

"Storms are everywhere, there's even a new one forming here." Tom points to the storm Jim and Johanna were hiding behind to avoid the blast wave.

"Nothing else?" Meaning was it a ship that had killed the Zilbinion? Not that anyone in their right mind would take on a Command Carrier.

"They have Marauders out all over the place just as we ordered them to. I've got one that was headed their way and likely another one right behind it. The first one was obviously damaged in a storm. There was even contact between the two." Tom adds still looking at his screens.

"What happened to those two? They go up with the Zilbinion?" Josh asks.

"All three ships are off my scanners, I do have debris from the Zilbinion all over the place though." Tom tells him. "Nothing seems to be under power."

"We still chasing that scattered mess we picked up?" Josh knew they had found something that looked like a trail, just that it was jumbled and really large. It's just that it was also faint.

"Our last contact with the Zilbinion had their Marauders were finding nothing, so as little as it is, it's also the best we've got. …. Unless you want to go back to Sorenson without finding the Beckett's AND losing the Zilbinion." Tom points out.

"I'm thinking we get the Beckett's and then we retire." Josh states, thinking of spending his time in bed with Tom.

"And leave behind our winning's for taking out the most number of vampires?" Tom reminds him.

"Like Sorenson is going to keep his word when we come back without the Zilbinion?" Josh counters his thinking.

Tom let out a heavy sigh, knowing Josh had a point. They were the best Hunter team out there, however losing the Zilbinion, even if it was to a storm in the tormented zone, meant they would never see their winning's.

"I'm going to go make lunch and check our galley. We're going to need to find a system in a few months or we'll die of starvation." Josh pats Tom's shoulders and kisses the top of his head and heads for the galley.

Tom could only agree, they were already past the point of no return. Even if they found the Beckett's and killed all four of them, if they didn't find a system to replenish their galley and get fuel, they were just as dead.