Episode 1: Dead in Space

With a dazzling burst of quantum fury, the UPR battlecruiser Principality dropped out of hyper-light mode and returned to normal space. It was among the most powerful classes of ships in the United Planetary Republic's fleet... second only to the starcarriers in size and firepower. At over 2500 feet long, 800 feet wide, and 290 feet high, the military vessel was larger than some small cities. The hardened titanium/lead hull varied from eight to twenty feet thick, sealing all 19 decks behind enough armor to fend off multiple nuclear detonations with little or no damage. Not that anyone used nukes anymore... the art of mass destruction had advanced much since the days of fallout and mushroom clouds. With plasma-throwers, missiles, and anti-matter cannons, The Principality carried enough standard weaponry to remove all unshielded life and artificial structures from a planet's surface with one 30-minute barrage. And, in addition to the standard weapons, it was one of the few ships in the fleet equipped with the experimental False Dawn device.. a weapon which redefined the term 'weapon of mass destruction.'

The Principality's bridge was in the forward section... a small circular room surrounded by twenty four feet of armor and a permanent forcefield. Despite the size and complexity of the immense ship, it took surprisingly few people to actually control it. The bridge had only five essential stations: Navigation, sensors/communications, tactical, engineering... and the command station, which sat on a raised platform in the center of the room. Twin banks of monitors and control panels curved around each side of the large, incredibly comfortable command chair. The auxiliary command station... who's only real purpose was to provide the second-in-command with a place to park his rear... sat immediately adjacent to it. The station was empty, as the second-in-command was currently in command chair.

"We have arrived," said the young lieutenant at the navigation station. "Total trip time: Six weeks, four days, seventeen hours."

"Hardly a new record," said the Captain... a thin, unassuming man with dark brown hair, a long nose, and an intense, steely gaze. "Nothing to write home about yet."

The bridge's only door... the only VISIBLE door, at least... slid open with a loud hiss. The captain swiveled around in his chair to see who it was... and then leapt to his feet.

"Admiral on the bridge!" he shouted.

The command staff jumped to rigid attention as a huge, intimidating figure entered the room. His hair was pure white, even his beard and mustache were the color of fresh Earth snow. He was well over six feet tall, and about as wide as two men put together... yet he seemed to glide into the room

"At ease," he said. The Admiral's voice was stern and deep. He had a thick Russian accent that only added to the impression that he was not a man to be crossed. The other officer's returned to their stations. The captain stepped over to the auxiliary command chair, leaving the main command seat for the admiral. When the admiral sat down, the chair automatically adjusted to his considerably greater height.

"Sir," said the communication's officer, a young female ensign. "Two ships approaching."

"On screen."

The ensign pushed a button on her console, and a three-dimensional image appeared in the front of the bridge. It showed two Destroyer-Class vessels dropping to normal space behind the Principality. The destroyers were tiny compared to the huge battleship, but their high maneuverability and firepower-to-size ratio made them quite formidable. Their markings identified them as the UPR Bephal and the UPR Nights Bloom... two ships who had no business in this sector.

"Open a channel to them both," said the admiral.

More buttons were pushed, and soon two images appeared on the admiral's consoles... the commanders of the two destroyers.

"This is Admiral Chyrnomir of the battlecruiser Principality," said the Admiral in his standard pompous and annoyed tone. "I was not expecting an escort on this mission."

"Captain VonSinterbourne, here" said the cocky-looking officer in command of the Bephal. "Captain Rivus and I were dispatched from Montfort accompany you. The Tower is just as curious about the Xelcior-1's disappearance as anyone else."

"Cap'n Zims was a good man," added Captain Rivus. "We'll help out any way we can."

"Your assistance is appreciated," said the Admiral. "Though unnecessary. Assume 'Y' formation and await notification of course and heading. Chyrnomir out."

The com officer closed the channels to both destroyers, who had already begun pulling ahead of the Principality, with the Bephal on the right and the Nights Bloom on the left. The admiral turned to his second in command.

"Let us get this investigation under-way, Captain Hood."

"Aye sir," Hood replied. "Ensign... have long range sensors picked up anything?"

"Conducting sensor sweeps on last known position of Xelcior-1." The ensign watched her monitor, and then frowned. She tapped a few buttons, then frowned again. "Sir... I thought that the anomaly that the Xelcior-1 was sent to investigate dissipated?"

"It did," said the captain. "Apparently taking the Xelcior-1 along with it."

"Well it's back, sir," said the ensign. "I'm detecting a similar anomaly... although much smaller. Montfort's long-range satellites would have never picked it up."

"On screen," said Admiral Chyrnomir.

Another image appeared... this one was of the star-filled expanse of space.

"I don't see anything," said Captain Hood.

"Hmmm..." Using the controls at his chair, Admiral Chyrnomir zoomed in on a section of the image. An object came into view... barely visible against the darkness. The admiral zoomed in further... and further still. He used the computer to enhanced the image and zoomed even further.

The object sprang into view as if by magic.... a black, moon-sized sphere hanging motionless in space. The surface was rough, but not in a way that suggested natural formations. It appeared to be made of huge irregular-shaped plates with large dark gaps between them.

"Doesn't meet any ship or satellite configuration I've ever seen," said Captain Hood. "And I've seen quite a few."

"As have I," said the admiral. "I have encountered nothing like it, and seen nothing similar to it in any records."

"Confirmed, sir." said Lieutenant Belladrox, the officer at the tactical station. "I've run it against the entire database of known vessels and come up with nothing."

Admiral Chyrnomir's chair rotated slowly to face the tactical station, where the lieutenant squirmed uncomfortably under the admiral's icy gaze.

"Captain Hood... this is not our usual tactical officer. Would you mind explaining why we are facing an unknown and potentially hostile entity without our most experienced officer at tactical?"

"She got held up in medical, sir, but she's en route." said Hood. "Lieutenant Belladrox is just filling in for a few minutes until she arrives. I've served with him before... he's both capable and competent. Sir."

"Indeed," said the Admiral. He scrutinized the lieutenant for a few seconds more, and then turned back to the image of the strange object. "Lieutenant Fletcher..."

"Aye, sir," said the navigation officer... essentially just a glorified pilot.

"Set a course for that object... and be so kind as relay that course our destroyers."

"Aye, sir." Fletcher's thin fingers danced over his console, and the Principality slowly rotated... angling toward the dark 'moon' Six huge engines roared to life and propelled the huge ship towards is destination. The destroyers followed suit and maintained their positions relative to the moving battlecruiser. On the bridge, the image of the strange object grew steadily larger.

"It's even uglier up close," said Hood. "What are our sensors picking up?"

"In addition to the original spatial anomaly," said Ensign Lemay, "I'm getting a strange energy signature emanating from the object."

"Define 'strange,' ensign."

"That's just it, sir... I don't know HOW to describe it. It isn't electromagnetic, gravitational, OR nuclear. It's... something else."

"Are your sensors-"

"I've already run diagnostics and they came back clean." Ensign Lemay tapped a few keys on a small keyboard. "And now BOTH destroyers are picking up the same thing. It's some kind of energy field surrounding the sphere.... and it's interfering with my ability to scan the sphere itself."

"A shield of some kind," said Captain Hood.

"Possibly," replied Admiral Chyrnomir. "Perhaps our experts can shed some light on this." The admiral touched a button, and a few seconds later one of his monitors lit up. It displayed a pale, unhealty-looking face beneath a mop of unkempt hair.

"Physics Lab," said the face.

"Dr. Park," said the Admiral. "I am patching some sensor readings through to you-"

"Uhhh..." said Dr. Premonition Park. He looked around nervously. "I'd love to look at them but... we're kind of busy right now."

One white, bushy eyebrow crept upwards on the admiral's face. He looked over at Captain Hood.

"...damned civilians..." mumbled the captain.

"Dr. Park, would you care to elaborate on what could be more important than interpreting these readings?"

"Oh, it's nothing..." said Dr. Park. "There were some fluctuations in the Cthrain Reactor when we returned to normal space, but my technicians have isolated the problem and we're fixing it now."

"My instruments show that the doctor's reactor is still online," said Captain Hood.

"Is this true, doctor?"

"Of course it is. The problem wasn't severe enough to bring the reactor offline."

"I do not know which disturbs me more, Dr. Park," said the Admiral. "The fact that you failed to notify me of a problem with your experimental reactor... or the fact that you are conducting repairs while it is still online."

"They're not repairs... just minor adjustments."

"There are no 'minor' adjustments to a Cthrain Reactor, doctor."

"I assumed you wanted the False Dawn system to remain operational... which would be impossible without the-"

"In the future you will inform me of ANY and ALL developments with your reactor, or you will find your research allowance terminated, at which point you and your equipment will be deposited on the closest inhabitable planet. Is that understood, Dr. Park?"

"Uhh... y-yes sir. L-let me look at these readings you sent me. hmm... these ARE strange. Not electromagnetic or... hmmm... are these readings-"

"The ARE correct, Dr. Park."

"Well, this energy... if it is energy... doesn't confirm to the Unified Field Equations at all."

"In English, Dr. Park," said the captain.

"This energy... isn't energy. At least not by any definition that we know. It doesn't obey the known physical laws of the universe. Which, of course, is impossible. Soooo... I suggest you find out what is wrong with your sensors and have the problem corrected before we end up flying into a star. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a reactor to adjust. Good day, gentlemen." Dr. Park terminated the connection from his end.

"There's an airlock on deck 12 that has Park's name written all over it," said Captain Hood. "I'll shove him out of it personally... you just give the word, sir."

"Tempting," said the Admiral. "Lieutenant Fletcher, assume a stationary position 5 megometers from the object. Ensign Lemay, launch a class-1 sentient probe."

"Aye, sir," both officers responded.

"Probe launched," added Lemay. "Communication established, but... sir I'm getting some interference. The probe is functioning, but the sphere's energy field is disrupting communications."

"Are you receiving any data at all?" asked the captain.

"Sketchy... and the signal degradation is increasing..."

"Are there any life signs?"

"None. Probe is unable to determine the composition of the sphere. Unable to determine the source of the energy field... and unable to determine-"

"What CAN it tell us?" the captain demanded.

"Nothing. The sphere is a complete enigma."

"The sphere's outer plates... there appear to be large gaps between them," said the admiral. "Instruct the probe to transmit greetings in all standard languages and send it into one of those gaps."

"Sir, if I do that we'll loose contact completely. I won't be able to-"

"I am aware of that fact, ensign"

"Aye, sir. Transmitting greetings. Probe approaching sphere... and we have lost contact with probe."

The admiral magnified the image and zoomed in on the probe's location just in time to see the probe vanish into a deep black crevice.

"Is there any response from the sphere?" the admiral asked

"No, sir... wait... the energy field is fluctuating... and increasing."

"Sir, look-" Captain Hood pointed at the image. The sphere, which had been completely motionless, now appeared to be rotating. "I'd call that a response, wouldn't you?"

"Perhaps they mistook the probe for an attack, sir," said Belladrox. "And the power it would take to rotate a moon-sized object on demand indicates-"

"Yellow alert," said the admiral. "Shields at maximum. Ensign Lemay, begin a spread-spectrum transmission on all frequencies."

"Aye, sir."

The admiral's consoles slid out of the way as he stood. He addressed the image on the bridge-"

"Unknown vessel... this is Admiral December Chyrnomir of the battlecruiser UPR Principality. We come in peace. We are investigating the disappearance of a starship in this sector."

"Sir, something's happening," said the Captain. The rotation of the giant black sphere halted, then six of the huge irregular-shaped panels... each one at least twice as large as the Principality... began to shift position. They swiveled apart, and then rose up on end, like the petals of a gigantic flower. Beneath them was a huge pyramid-shaped structure. The pyramid had a crystalline appearance... and as the bridge crew watched, the giant structure began to pulse with a sinister orange light

"Energy readings increasing exponentially, sir!"

"Red alert! Continue transmission: I repeat, this is Admiral Chyrnomir of the UPR Principality... on a peaceful mission to investigate the-"

"Destroyers are requesting permission to fire on the alien weapon, sir!"

"Denied! Fletcher, back us away from the object at maximum-"

"The alien weapon has FIRED, sir!"

A huge, jagged arc of yellow energy exploded from the apex of the alien pyramid and streaked toward the Bephal.

"Energy readings off-scale!"

The blast from the alien weapon passed through the Bephal's shields as if they weren't even there. It struck the ship head-on. The front two-thirds of the Bephal vanished in a flash of light so bright that it was painful to behold. The rest of the ship flew apart, sending huge chunks of slag and debris in every direction.

"The Bephal has been destroyed!" shouted Ensign Lemay.

"That thing took out a destroyer in ONE SHOT!" added the Captain.

"Fire plasma guns and antimatter cannons in a continuous barrage," ordered the admiral. "Target the alien weapon! NOW!"

The Principality's weapons began to fire. Balls of superheated plasma and pellets of explosive anti-matter streaked toward the dark sphere in a constant barrage. An instant later, the weapons of the Night's Bloom added to the assault. Both ships rained destruction upon the sphere... but it was to no avail. Plasma rolled off of the surface like water, and the anti-matter... in complete defiance of the laws of physics... refused to detonate when it contacted the sphere.

"Sir, our weapons are having no effect!" Lemay shouted.

"WHAT! How is that possible!"

"Alien weapon is firing again!"

Another crackling yellow arc leapt from the undamaged alien weapon... and the Night's Bloom died.

"Both destroyers are gone! No survivors!"

"Tritium Lasers! Evasive Maneuvers!"

As Lieutenant Fletcher angled the Principality away from the alien vessel, pulses of pure, concentrated energy blasted the strange sphere... and the alien object absorbed them with no effect.

"Fire M/A missiles!"

A barrage of matter/antimatter missiles roared toward the glowing alien weapon. When each missile struck the giant pyramid, they self-detonated, each one releasing enough force to level a city.

"Damage is negligible, sir! Energy is increasing again! The alien weapon is charging for another shot!"

"CHARGE THE FALSE DAWN!"

Somewhere deep within the bowels of the ship, The False Dawn device growled and shuddered as the Cthrain Reactor began to dump energy into it. Power conduits glowed white-hot, and nearby support structures began to soften as they neared the melting point.

"Sir, the alien ship is-"

"FALSE DAWN CHARGED!" Belladrox shouted.

"FIRE!!!"

Both ships fired their weapons at once, and time seemed to stand still for an instant.

The False Dawn... the epitome of human destruction... captured the energy of an entire sun and delivered it in one violent burst capable of reducing a planet to cinders. The weapon's beam struck the sphere and exploded in a white-hot ball of heat, radiation, and pure destructive fury that swallowed the entire dark object.

And, at the exact same time, the alien weapon blasted through the Principality's shields and lay waste to the powerful battlecruiser. The yellow arc of light pierced the ship's armor. The resulting explosion nearly ripped the Principality in half... shaking the huge battlecruiser with enough force to collapse entire sections of the ship. The main engineering bay vanished as deck 10 and deck 12 slammed into each other, obliterating deck 11 and everything on it. The ship's metal shell twisted violently, and a huge gash opened near the engines. The rupture propagated along the length of the ship, opening the hull like a poorly-sewn seam. The angry, unforgiving void of space sucked men and equipment out through the ever-widening hole. Huge bulkhead doors slammed shut automatically, sealing off the ruptured sections of the ship... but the damage was not to be shut away so easily. Feedback from the alien energy pulse entered the power and control systems... powerful fusion reactors choked on the sudden influx of energy, and engineers scrambled to shut them down before the inevitable happened. They were not fast enough. Reactor #2 exploded, tearing another huge hole in the ship's hull. The two of the three main computer control nodes melted into a thick, metallic slag. All over the ship, the main power and control systems failed... and failed violently! Conduits and consoles exploded, sending hot shrapnel into occupied corridors and work-spaces. Secondary systems came online, and were immediately decimated by the same feedback pulse. Tertiary systems and emergency backups struggled to pick up the load. The Principality's decks were filled with explosions, screams, and the low moaning sound of the ship's hull twisting and bending like tinfoil.

On the bridge, Admiral Chyrnomir fell back into his chair even as everyone else was tossed OUT of theirs. Sparks leapt from a half-dozen consoles... monitors exploded, and the entire navigation station went up in one gigantic ball of fire.

"AAEIEEEEEE!!!" Engulfed in flames, Lieutenant Fletcher screamed and raced across room. Fire-extinguishing gas poured from the ceiling. The flames died quickly, but not quick enough to save the lieutenant. His burnt, shrapnel-riddled body collapsed at the admiral's feet. Captain Hood crawled back into his seat-

"Computer, transfer navigation control to auxiliary command console!"

"Engineering, report!" the Admiral bellowed.

Lieutenant Commander Brinks was at the engineering console... half of which was a dark, smoking ruin.

"Hull breaches on decks one, two, three, four, five... HELL, we've got a hole in the ship big enough to fly a destroyer through! Fusion reactors one, two, and four are OFFLINE! Main and secondary power are OFFLINE! Life support is below critical on decks 12 through 19!"

"Main engines are not responding!!" added Captain Hood. "Secondary engines at 1/4 power! We won't be going anywhere any time soon, sir!"

"Weapons online, sir... but just barely!" reported Belladrox.

"Massive casualties reported on ALL decks!" Ensign Lemay shouted. "Main, secondary, AND emergency communications systems are offline!"

"And medical bay three is GONE!" said Brinks. "That whole section of the ship is... it's just GONE, sir! Systems are continuing to fail all over the ship! Hull breaches are still in progress! Main engineering is not responding!"

The bridge shuddered as a nearby section of the hull ruptured. The remainder of Brink's engineering station went dark. The shuddering suddenly doubled, becoming a series of tremendous explosions as sections began to decompress. The engineering station came back online... and began to smoke. Brinks tried to shut it down-

"GET DOWN LIEUTENANT!

Belladrox left the weapon's station and threw himself at Brinks, intending to knock the officer out of the way. Instead, the explosion caught BOTH of them, blasting them halfway across the bridge. Both officers were dead before their burnt bodies hit the ground.

"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE!" shouted the admiral.

"Computer, transfer engineering functions to auxiliary command console!" said the captain.

"Unable to comply," came the computerized voice of the ship's AI. "There are no engineering functions to transfer."

"What the HELL!?! Explain yourself, computer!"

"There are n032372$$(%$@@*&@*#&&$@@%(@&@!!....."

"Computer is DOWN!" said Hood. He tapped frantically at his console. "I'm not getting ANY information from ANYTHING on the ship beyond section three!"

"SIR!" Ensign Lemay shouted "The sphere... IT'S STILL THERE!"

"On screen!"

"I'm trying sir..." after a few seconds, a familiar image filled the front section of the bridge. The alien object. It's pyramid-shaped weapon was pulsing angrily, charging for another shot. "False Dawn did NO damage, sir!"

"IMPOSSIBLE!" said he admiral.

"But... but we hit that thing with a damned SUN!" Captain Hood shouted in disbelief.

"No damage, sirs! NONE! The M/A missiles did more damage than that False Dawn blast!"

"Then let's give it some more! Transferring weapons control to-"

"Don't bother, sir" said a new female voice. A dark-skinned female lieutenant entered the bridge and took her position at the tactical station. "Somebody need something blown up?"

"Watch out for these consoles, Lieutenant, we've had severe power surges."

"Good," said Zade. "I could use a recharge. Orders, sir?"

"Fire every M/A missile we've got at that thing!" said Hood. "Perhaps enough negligible damage can add up to something significant enough to save our asses!"

Zade fired forty matter/antimatter missiles into the heart of the alien object's weapon.

"Suggest Banshee missiles, sir!" Zade said as the missiles sped toward their target.

"We'd need a resonant frequency," said the captain, "and our probe hasn't sent us a damned thing! Raw anti-matter won't react with whatever this thing's made of, and this just thing EATS energy weapons... including the False Dawn."

The missiles exploded on target.

"Minor damage," said Lemay "But the energy build-up has dissipated... no, wait... now it's charging again!"

"More missiles, Ensign!" the admiral shouted. "Energy weapons cannot damage it, but a physical explosion-"

"That's all the missiles I have access to, sir! I can't launch anything from the rear three/fourths of the ship... those weapon's systems aren't responding!"

"DAMMIT! WE NEED THOSE WEAPONS ONLINE! GET ME ENGINEERING!"

"Engineering not responding, sir!" said Lemay. "That last rupture sent engineering bays two, three, and four out into space! SIR! I'm picking up a MASSIVE energy surge!"

"That's it, then..." said Captain Hood. "That thing's about to fire... and we have nothing to-"

"No, sir... it's coming from INSIDE the Principality! From the PHYSICS Lab!"

"Patch me through!" said the Admiral.

A field of static appeared on the admiral's only functioning monitor. A few seconds later,the static resolved into a jumbled, image. It was Dr. Park, but the doctor was barely recognizable. His clothing and most of his skin had disintegrated. Half of his face was missing... and the other half was literally sliding off of his skull.

"...damaged reactor! OUT OF CONTROL! Critical! Can't shut it down! Technicians... all dead! Sealed the lab, but... CTHRAIN RADIATION... melting... melting ship's hull... ARRRRAAAAGG!!!" The doctor collapsed. Thankfully, his dissolving corpse wasn't visible on the monitor.

"Radiation from that reactor will melt this ship like a cheap candle!" said the captain.

"Evacuate all adjacent sections! Prepare to detach the Physics Lab," said the admiral.

"We CAN'T!" said Hood. "Ship's control systems in that section are damaged! It'll take someone INSIDE THE LAB to detach it from the ship! And they're all DEAD!"

"Not all, sir... we've got ONE life sign!"

"Admiral Chyrnomir to Physics Lab! Anyone alive in the Physic's Lab... respond now!"

Sections of the ship adjacent to the Physics Lab began to dissolve as the Cthrain radiation transformed the metal into a substance similar to warm plastic. Inside the sealed lab, a single form... partially shielded from the deadly radiation by a section of collapsed ceiling... screamed as he felt his body being eaten away. He was the only one alive... Dr. Park and the other technicians were now just large pools of glowing red slime. He had no idea the end would be this painful. He waited for the captain to jettison the lab... it should have happened by now. Why hadn't they done it? Didn't they know what the radiation would do to the ship? Maybe they couldn't detach the lab...Perhaps the damage was too severe. Then he heard a voice. He answered it...

"....ke..re... help..radiation... cannot shut down."

"YOU will have to detach the lab!" said the Admiral. "Can you access the controls from your location?!"

"...es...almost..."

"ADMIRAL, alien weapon is almost at FULL POWER!"

"Prepare to detach the lab, but do NOT detach until I give the order!"

"Sir?" said the captain.

"Lieutenant Zade, are the anti-matter cannons still online?"

"Yes, sir... but the captain said they had no effect-"

"We will not be firing upon the alien ship, Lieutenant. Captain-"

"Already on it, sir!" Captain Hood engaged the secondary engines and began to turn the ship at a hard angle, swing the rear section of the ship around towards the alien object. The maneuver added more stress on the already-fatigued ship. The hull began to buckle and tear. Medical bay four, which was filled to capacity with wounded, was right in the middle of the damaged section... Doctors, patients, and vital medical equipment were sucked out into space through a hole the size of a pencil. The hole rapidly widened to include adjacent sections and levels... bulkhead doors slammed shut, sealing off yet another uninhabitable section of the ship.

The rear of the ship continued to swing around... faster...

"Is that technician still alive!?" said the Captain.

"Aye, sir," answered Ensign Lemay.

"DETACH THE LAB NOW!"

In the Physic's lab, the technician leapt from his hiding place. The emergency detachment lever was a few yards away. He reached it... and pulled the lever. The room shook and spun, throwing the technician away from the lever. In the instant before the heavy-duty docking clamps released the doomed Physics Lab and small-yield explosives blasted it away from the ship, the technician fell backwards... and vanished into the wall.

Now free of the ship, The disk-shaped lab tumbled end over end... heading right toward the alien object.

"Alien weapon will fire in 10 seconds!"

"Lieutenant Zade, target the lab with anti-matter cannons and fire on my mark!"

"five seconds... four... three..."

"FIRE!"

A dozen anti-matter cannons fired. Slugs of anti-matter slug streaked through space and struck the tumbling lab. While the anti-matter had no effect on the alien object's strange matter... the physics lab was not alien. The resulting matter/anti-matter explosion dwarfed that of Zade's M/A missile volley, and the momentum of the lab carried it right into the heart of the alien weapon.

"Significant damage, sir!" said Lemay. "Energy dissipated... and is not re-charging!"

The entire ship shook again... twice as violently as before. It felt as if a giant has snatched up the ship and was shaking it in his hands.

"Sounds like multiple hull breaches!" said Captain Hood "That last maneuver was too much! Suggest we abandon ship, sir!"

"NEVER!!!! Lemay, GET ME SOMEONE IN ENGINEERING! I NEED STATUS REPORTS!"

"There IS no engineering!!!! And over HALF of the ship is unreachable! Some sections can receive communications are unable to reply, others can send messages and not receive..."

The admiral stormed over to the communications station, moved Ensign Lemay aside and began pushing buttons.

Suddenly, a section of the ceiling collapsed.

"LOOK OUT, SIR!" shouted Hood.

A huge metal beam broke free. The admiral had just enough time to see it, realize where it was headed, and throw himself into the beam's path before it crushed Ensign Lemay.

"ARRRGGH!" The admiral collapsed onto his hands and knees, with Ensign Lemay underneath him. The incredibly heavy beam lay across his shoulders. Lemay looked up at the admiral in awe.

"Admiral! Are you all right!?" said Captain Hood.

"There is a TITANIUM BEAM on my BACK, Captain! Of COURSE I am not all right!"

Captain Hood tried to lift the beam, but it wouldn't budge.

"Move aside, sir!" said Zade. Hood backed away and watched as Lieutenant Zade grabbed one end of the beam, lifted it, and tossed it away as if it were made of balsa wood. The admiral staggered to his feet, swooned for a moment, then limped to his chair.

"You need medical attention-"

"I NEED ENGINEERING!" the admiral bellowed. "Get me ANYONE in engineering! ANYONE!"

"I've got someone!" said Lemay. Another image appeared on the admiral's screen. It was a slightly chubby, dark-haired lieutenant with a small metal plate in the side of his head, just above his right ear. The plate had an array of blinking lights, and three small holes.

"Engineering - Computer, A/I, and Cybernetics division... Lieutenant Lovvorn speaking."

"This is Admiral Chyrnomir! What is the status of MY SHIP!"

"Who? OH! Admiral! Uhh... yes, sir! Sorry, sir! Uhh... I don't know, sir! I'm here in the computer core trying to get the A/I nodes re-aligned, I don't know-"

"Who is the last ranking engineering officer you have had contact with, Lieutenant?"

"Uhh... other than me? That'd be Commander Octerno from deck eleven-"

"Deck eleven is GONE, Lieutenant. Who ELSE can tell me what's going on!"

"Ummm... Ummmm..." Lovvorn scanned the numerous control panels in front of him. "The ship's AI has developed a rather stubborn case of split personality... without working control nodes, it can't process information from-"

"Just FIX it, Lieutenant!"

"I'm TRYING! Sir."

The ship shuddered again... this time more violently than the last. Something exploded. All over the ship, the few lights that remained operational grew dim and began to flicker.

"This is getting us nowhere, sir," said Hood. "He can't do anything. We need-"

"Can't do anything?" said Lovvorn. He was actually speaking to himself, but the comm-unit was still open. "We'll see about that..." Lovvorn reached above him and yanked a thick metal cord out of a housing in an overhead control panel. The cord had a plug on the end, which he shoved into one of receptors on his skull. He grabbed two more identical cords and plugged them into his head alongside the first. Then he closed his eyes. "...can't do anything... HMPH!"

"We're back online, sir!" said Ensign Lemay. "Damage reports are coming in! They're slow... but they're coming!"

"My brain is NOT slow," said Lovvorn. "When YOU can route a few billion terrabytes of bandwidth from THREE A/I processors through YOUR cerebral cortex, THEN you can call me slow!"

"Good job, Lieutenant," said Hood. "We're back in business thanks to you. Bridge out."

"Wait a minute... you can't expect me to continue this indefin-"

Captain Hood cut the communication link and then checked the damage reports.

"Good God..."

"We are still in one piece, Captain," said the Admiral.

"No, it looks like we're in several pieces that just haven't drifted apart yet, sir."

"That is good enough. Repairs are underway. Drones are en route to the most heavily damaged areas."

"This kind of damage can't be repaired, sir-"

"We do not have a choice, Captain. There are no starports or stations... no reinforcements on the way. There is nothing here but us, Captain. Us... and that object."

"They took a hell of a lot less damage than we did, sir. Once they get up and running again, we'll still be dead is space.... sitting here like a nice big target. Sir."

"Then I suppose that, while this ship is making whatever repairs she can, you had better go and do something about her attacker, Captain."

"An away mission, sir?"

"Find out what they are. And how to stop them."

"It'll be dangerous. I'll need a team. The best."

"This ship is filled with the best, Captain. They are all at your disposal."

"Aye, sir. Lieutenant Zade, are any of our stealth shuttlecraft intact."

"Yes sir. We even have one functioning docking bay to launch it out of."

"Get it prepped and ready to go while I go assemble the rest of my team."

---

Lieutenant Lovvorn squirmed in his chair, trying to force back the headache that had already blossomed inside his skull. Data from the four corners of the ship was coursing through his brain... using his enhanced grey matter as a sub-processing router. It was far, far too much. His cranial implants hummed audibly under the strain. It hurt like hell. The only thing he could do to keep from screaming was to convince himself that the pain wasn't real and then concentrate on something else.

"...a beer..." he sighed. "...a nice, tall, frosty beer. Not the synthetic... ohhh, no. The real stuff. Mmmmm... I can taste those carcinogens now..."

The control panel in front of him beeped with an incoming transmission.

"Oh, dammit," he groaned. "I was just getting to the good part." He touched a button on the panel. "Lovvorn here."

"This is Captain Hood."

"Oh, it's you. I mean... yes sir! What ELSE can I do for you, sir?"

"I'm going on an away mission and I'm going to need some help."

"F-f-from m-me, sir?"

"The robotic kind of help."

"Oh. Yes, of course."

"Load up a drone an advanced sensor array. Send it to the docking bay."

"Which docking bay-"

"We only have one now, Lieutenant."

"Oh. What kind of configuration would you like? How about a nice Thorne Battle Chassis?"

"This is a stealth mission. I need something smaller and more versatile... but rugged."

"I have just the model you need. I'll load it up and send-"

"Good. Captain Hood, out."

"And you're very welcome, Captain," Lovvorn said with a sarcastic sneer. "Now I have to go all the way across the room. Computer, detach station."

-CLUNK-

Lovvorn's chair... along with the bank of control panels that surrounded it... pulled away from the wall and floated weightlessly around the perimeter of the room. The entire assembly paused before a large machine jutting from the opposite wall. It was a robotics assembly station. Usually they existed in clusters of several dozen in special rooms spread across the ship... but since this was just the computer core, there were only two of them sitting side-by-side on the wall.

"Computer, activate robotics station two."

The machine sat quietly without making so much as a single sound.

"Robotics Assembly Stations cannot operate when Emergency Power is active," said the computer.

"Emergency Power isn't active on this deck," Lovvorn replied calmly.

"Incorrect... emergency power is-"

Quietly, without blinking, Lovvorn mentally inserted a tiny piece of data into the stream of information flowing through his head...

"-not active," said the computer. "Activating Robotics Station Two."

"Ahh, I knew you'd see things my way."

The machine lit up and started to hum.

Lovvorn guided his chair closer to its control board. When it was within arm's reach, he tapped a few buttons and the tied the robotics station's controls into the computer's voice command system... so that he wouldn't have to actually get up out of the chair to use the machine.

"Computer: Lovvorn, authorization M-314, Robotics Officer. Function: Assemble Chassis: Stealth/Reconnaissance Multipurpose. Modify: Sensor array type P. Load type-J Heuristic Auto-processor. Engage."

"Assembling..." said the computer.

The robotics station made a loud rattling sound that caused Lovvorn to wince.

"Ohh, that doesn't sound good."

The rattling faded and became a steady mechanical whine. Deep within the machine, mechanical manipulators selected parts from the library of standard components and assembled them into a functioning unit. Lovvorn watched the process impatiently, even though there wasn't much to see from the outside of the machine. A minute later, a door swung open with a soft hiss to reveal the finished product. The stealth/reconnaissance droid was vaguely man-shaped, but had a fifth multi-purpose appendage that resembled a tail. It's 'skin' was a rugged non-reflective metal, and its eyes were twin sensor arrays that resembled the faceted orbs of an insect. They eyes pulsed briefly as the computer activated the droid's internal A/I.

"J-HASP Online," said the droid.

"My," Lovvorn hummed. "Aren't YOU an ugly one..."

---

The guards snapped to attention when Captain Hood appeared at the main door of the brig.

They had that look.

The look that meant that, whatever they'd been doing a second ago, they weren't keeping as close an eye on the prisoner as they should have been. And one of them was missing. Two men armed with pulse-rifles stood on opposite sides of the door to the prisoner containment cells. There was supposed to be a third man attending the monitors. The monitors were all dark... fried by a power surge... but the guard watching them still should have been there.

"Where is Petty Officer Sutton?" Hood demanded.

"He, uhhhh... he went to check on his brother, sir."

"He deserted his post to go check on his brother," Hood repeated. "And where was his brother stationed?"

"Deck eleven, sir."

"Well then... seeing as how we no longer have a deck eleven, I suspect tha Petty Officer Sutton will be returning momentarily," said Hood. "Open the door, I need to speak with the prisoner."

"SIR!"

The guards pressed their hands against the touchplates on either side of the door. The door slid open, and Hood walked into a narrow hallway-

"Weapons detected!" said a computerized voice. The door behind him slid closed, trapping him in the hall. All the lights began to flash red. "Deploying countermeasures-"

"Override, Hood, Captain,"

"Voiceprint accepted. Welcome, Captain Hood.

The lights turned back to normal, and a door at the opposite end of the hallway slid open. Beyond it was a long, wide corridor with rows of open-faced cells on both sides. The cells varied in size... but most had one noticeable thing in common. They were empty. There was only one prisoner, and he occupied solitary cell at the very end of the hallway. Hood stood in front of the cell, maintaining the standard one-foot of space between himself and the lethal, invisible forcefield that separated him from the prisoner.

He looked harmless. An old man reclining on a metal bench, staring up at the featureless metal ceiling. He wore a prisoner's uniform... a thin yellow unitard devoid of pockets or other extraneous decoration. But around his neck he wore an explosive tracking collar that marked him as a dangerous felon.

"Captain Hood," the prisoner said softly. He didn't take his eyes off of the ceiling.

"Chief Petty Officer Maxwell," said Hood. "I see you haven't escaped yet."

"I haven't tried. Yet."

"You're supposed to stand and salute an officer when he enters the room."

"There are many things that are 'supposed' to be, Captain," said the prisoner. He turned his head to finally look at the Captain. His hard, analyzing gaze would have given a lesser man pause... but not Hood. Hood simply returned it in kind. "But surely you didn't come in here just to see if I would salute you."

"No," said Hood.

"The truth, for once," said the prisoner. "That's a good start." He stood up and approached the force field. With his hands clasped behind him, he stood about one inch from the invisible energy barrier. "And very unusual for you. You've been standing here for almost a thirty seconds and haven't threatened me with violence not one time. You must need something, Captain Hood. Something important."

"I need to know why a soldier with a career as long and distinguished as yours is caught trying to smuggle False Dawn technology off of this ship."

"Ahhh... yet another interrogation. I see."

"No, it isn't. I just want to know... one soldier to another. Why?"

"I did-"

"Not why you did it... why you got caught. A man who can waltz through the highest security protocols we have just doesn't get caught by a routine sensor sweep. Unless, of course, he WANTED to get caught."

"Now you're talking in riddles, captain. Are you implying that my sanity is suspect... or are you trying to make me suspect yours?"

"Suspect? I'll tell you what I suspect.... but first I'll start with what I know. I KNOW there's a criminal organization operating within the fleet. Theft. Extortion. Blackmail. Hijacking. Piracy. A whole network of parasites using the Planetary Republic's military as a free source of recruits and equipment. They have leaders, cells, sub-cells, and a command structure... all of which exists within the Republic Fleet. Last year, one of these groups decides to pull off the crime of the century. They hijack a carrier loaded with experimental weapons prototypes... prototypes that don't officially exist. The plan goes bad. They snatch the ship, but now the UPR is on their trail. They scatter. The pilot hides the ship in a place that only he knows. Then he's captured, tried, and sentenced to life at the New Venyce Max-Sec Prison Moon. He never gives up the location of the craft. Now here's what I suspect: Our group of pirates wants that ship, so they arrange a prison break. Somoeone is going to go in and spring that captain so that he can lead them to the ship. Only problem is, Prison Moons are just a hard to get INTO as they are to get OUT of. Some say even harder. So they arrange for someone... someone with the skills to pull off the escape... to be captured for a crime that's guaranteed to get them sentenced to New Venyce. That crime would be treason. That person would be you. How am I doing?"

"Very poorly," said Maxwell. "I suppose I should be grateful that you aren't navigating this ship... with your sense of direction you'd fly us all into a black hole."

"But then, that's what you're supposed to say, isn't it? For all I know, I'm talking to one of the leaders of this group. Or maybe even THE leader."

"You know me, Captain. I'm not a leader. But I'm not a follower either. Not any more. That's why I'm here."

"You're here because you NEED to be here. You're going to go through all the necessary motions to get yourself sentenced to New Venyce... and then you and Grar Raathruine are gonna waltz right out of there like the guards all went to sleep and left the gates wide open. Now tell me I'm wrong."

"You're wrong."

"You're a liar. A liar AND a spy-"

"Former spy."

"AND a traitor... just not the way you'd have us believe."

"And what about you, Captain? What are you?"

"I'm captain of this ship.?"

"Oh yes. A captain. An officer. But what ELSE are you?"

"What are you getting at?"

"I'm 'getting at' a government that creates a secret corps of trained assassins... their own answer to the Ysuin... and then refuses to acknowledge their existence. They speak of 'moral high ground' with one breath and order covert assassinations of politicians and scientists with the other. And when the war is over, they realize that their assassin-corps is a unwanted liability. They know too much. They can DO too much. So they get rid of them. Meaningless missions that suddenly go wrong for no reason. Equipment malfunctions. Mysterious ailments. Pretty soon, most of their inconvenient human killing machines are gone. There are only a few left... a select few, held back from their fate for reasons known only to the government that trained them."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I'm talking about YOU, Captain. Why are you still alive? I have my suspicions, but perhaps its in your best interests to find out for yourself. Before its too late. "

Captain Hood and Chief Maxwell stared into each other's eyes... each seeing a disturbing reflection of himself in the man before him.

"You know things you shouldn't know," Captain Hood whispered sternly.

"There are a lot of things that shouldn't be... but they are. I learned that the hard way. I was serving this government before you were born. I did things that I am not proud of... and I did them voluntarily because I believed what my superiors said about the 'greater good' and the 'moral high ground.' And yet, here you are... the living embodiment of just how deep those lies ran."

"You have no idea just how deep a hole you're digging for yourself right now, Chief."

"Oh, but I do. I'm so deep now that if I go any further... I'll be on my way back out the other side. Care to come with me?"

"Funny you should ask," said Hood. "I'm here to ask you the same thing. Your skills are needed."

"Skills?"

"I need the best. You're the only man on this ship that's better than me."

"If you mean at killing, you are mistaken. I was a spy, not an assassin. There is a difference, and it is not a subtle one."

"We were attacked. Both ships are crippled, this one much more so than the other. We need to make sure they don't become a threat before we are able to act."

"And we'll do that by killing as much of its crew as possible, I assume?" Maxwell sneered.

"If it comes to that."

"It won't come to that. Not if I'm coming with you, it won't."

"You're in no position to make demands or influence decisions. You can come with me or stay here. If you come, you'll follow my orders."

"And if I stay?"

"You won't stay," said Hood.

The two men exchanged their best steely glares.

"Fine," said Maxwell. "This ship does me no good if its blown to pieces. I'll need-"

"Clothes and equipment. Already en route to the shuttle."

Hood reached for the panel on the wall that deactivated the security field.

"Oh, don't bother," said Maxwell as he stepped out of the cell. "I shut that off hours ago." With a practiced twist of his fingers, Maxwell detached the explosive collar from his neck and tossed it to Captain Hood. He started down the hallway toward the door while the captain looked down at the collar.

"...how did you-"

"You wanted the best, didn't you Captain?" said Maxwell. "Now come along; we have an enemy ship to infiltrate."

---

Ten minutes later, a stealth shuttlecraft floated silently out of the Principality's one functioning docking bay. It's light-absorbing black hull... invisible against the darkness of space... slid effortlessly through the void between the Principality and the alien craft. Special engines propelled it without a single flicker or tremble. The technology that powered them was classified... as most everything else on the ship. It could not be seen with the eye, or detected with sensors. It gave no energy readings.

To all but the most advanced detection devices, it didn't exist at all.

Its four occupants... three human, one machine... sat in the cramped crew compartment and watched as the black sphere grew steadily larger in the view-screen. Soon it filled the entire image. Captain Hood steered the shuttle toward the giant crystal weapon that had decimated the Principality. It was riddled with cracks. And shadows. Strange dark shapes flew across its surface... hundreds of them. They followed the cracks in the crystal, and as they moved, the crystal healed itself... as if the cracks were mis-drawn lines that were erased by their passage.

"What are we getting?" said Captain Hood.

"Lots of movement," said Zade. "More of those strange energy readings. No data on what that thing's made of."

"I guess we'll just have to take a closer look, then."

The shuttle veered away from the area and began to descend toward the surface.

"Get suited up," ordered the Captain. "We're going in."

---

Episode 2: Ghosts in the Machine

The darkness was almost tangible.

The object... the ship ... was like a massive shadow floating in space. The stealth shuttle skimmed silently across its surface, the shuttle's occupants watching in awe of the landscape passing below them. The huge outer plates of the object were almost like a planet's surface. It rose toward them in sharp, jagged mountains... only to fall away sharply into deep gorges and craters. The deepest features were where the plates met each other... creating monstrous chasms with high cliffs on either side. The shuttle paused over one of the chasms and hovered there like a dark ghost.

"Getting energy readings from inside" said Lieutenant Zade. She sat beside Captain Hood at the shuttle's controls. Hood was flying the ship, while Zade studied the holographic readout from the sensors. "Same as what we got on the Principality."

"Energy that isn't energy," said Chief Petty Officer Maxwell. "Intriguing."

"Also physically impossible," replied the Captain. "More likely, whoever made this thing has found a way to mask themselves from our sensors and throw false readings instead."

"But what would be the point of that?" said Maxwell. "Better to mask them entirely than to camouflage them as something that's bound to draw attention. Unless attention is what they want."

"What are you saying... that this is a trap of some kind?" said Zade.

"Just an observation."

"Trap or not, it picked the wrong crew to mess with."

The shuttle descended into the chasm. At first there was nothing but darkness. The rough walls went on for over a mile before giving finally giving way to open space. Everything was black, but there was an eerie light permeating the area, making everything visible... but just barely. They were in a gigantic empty chamber, almost five million cubic yards of empty space. It was roughly octagonal, although no one dimension was exactly equal to another. The floors and walls sloped at awkward angles, like a room drawn by a small child with no concept of perspective. In fact, the 'walls' were actually gigantic pillars that presumably held up the ceiling. Each was almost as large as the room itself, and beyond them were other, almost identical rooms.

"Like a giant honeycomb," said Zade.

"Or a mine," said Maxwell. "Classic room and pillar construction."

"Where's the light coming from?"

Zade checked the readings.

"Near as I can tell... everywhere. It's ambient, but with no source that I can discern."

"Energy that isn't energy... and light without a source," said Maxwell. "Might I make a suggestion?"

"Tack a 'sir' on the end of it and I might consider it."

"We should find out what happened to the A/I probe we originally sent. If they regarded it as a weapon or intrusion, we might learn a lot about them from how they dealt with it."

Captain Hood turned around in his chair and looked at Maxwell.

"Will that get us any closer to disabling this thing?"

"Possibly-"

"No, it won't. We need to find this thing's power source and take it out."

"We won't be finding much of anything like this, sir," said Zade. "Whatever this stuff is, its scattering our scan signals. Hard to detect anything beyond this room."

"Launch scatter-probes."

"Aye, sir."

Zade pressed a button on her panel. On the outside of the shuttle, a circular hatch slid open and ejected sixteen tiny, floating spheres... each no more than a half-inch in diameter. They scattered in sixteen different directions, scanning whatever they encountered and feeding the information back to the shuttle in an encrypted, almost undetectable low-energy signal. Back at the control panel, the computer assembled the data into a holographic image.... a map of the surrounding chambers. The interior of the 'ship' took form before their eyes. Room after room of dark emptiness, separated only by massive carved columns. The rooms were all different shapes, and seemed to get exponentially smaller as they went deeper. Some of the inner chambers had designs on the walls... huge complex symbols were half-carved, half-burned into the surface. They symbols matched no language that the crew had ever seen. But the crew was more interested in what they DIDN'T see than in what they did. There was no machinery. No sign of whatever had been used to create the chambers or engrave the symbols. No power conduits. No robots. No generators. No computer nodes. No lights. Nothing.

The place was just a big, empty rock.

Several minutes after launch, the scatter-probes went out of range, and the data-flow ceased. The probes automatically reversed direction and returned to the shuttle, re-scanning everything on their way back.

"What was that?" Hood pointed to something on the holographic map. It was a dark spot... identical to hundreds of other dark spots that marked the entrances to smaller inner chambers. But there was something different about this one.

"Energy readings are higher in that area," said Zade. "Could be a power source... or a weapon system. Worth a look."

Without a word, Captain Hood sent the shuttle streaking... silently... through the maze of empty chambers. The walls passed by them in a dark blur. The rooms grew progressively smaller as they went, but Hood didn't slow down. With eyes darting back and forth between the holographic map and the viewscreen, Hood flew the ship like a man who'd been born in the pilot's chair. The shuttle veered and looped and curved around the rapidly tightening landscape at heart-pounding speed... taking them deeper into the heart of the mysterious vessel. It raced through openings with no more than a few inches of clearance between the unyielding stone and the ship's hull. And it seemed that the more tortuous the landscape became, the faster Hood flew.... until finally the passages grew too tight to navigate.

Hood sat the shuttle down on a tiny circular ledge created by a piece of rock jutting out from one of the huge columns. The engines... which made no more than a soft sigh when operating at full thrust... shut down with the touch of a button.

"What's the air like out there?" said the captain.

"High sulphur content," Zade replied. "Along with some elements I can't even identify."

"Life signs?"

"Nothing. No bacteria... viruses... nothing in the air but air."

"Let's get going" said Hood. Another button opened the shuttle's only door. Hood was the first to exit, followed quickly by Maxwell. Both men wore black one-piece uniforms that looked and felt like silk, but were actually an advanced polymer. They were air-tight from the neck down, and rugged enough to serve as light-weight armor. Full helmets fitted over their heads and attached to a special collar. The helmets were transparent except for a wide stripe down the back, from which a small tube lead to an air filter/condenser on their belts. Hood carried nothing but his weapons... a particle rifle and an energy pulse emitter, both standard issue. Maxwell only had an emitter... and a back-pack of miscellaneous equipment.

The stealth/reconnaissance drone followed them, moving with a swiftness and balance that belied its true nature. The fact that a machine could move so fluidly... without a sound... was eerie. Its crouching gait curled its humanoid shape into something almost animal.

Lieutenant Zade brought up the rear. She carried several large weapons and enormous pack of equipment, all hanging from the metal chestplate she wore over her uniform. None of it made a sound as she stepped out of the shuttle. She shrugged a handheld particle-cannon from her shoulder and carried it in one hand as they moved toward a nearby corridor.

Behind them, the shuttle door slid closed... and then the shuttle vanished, blending in with its surroundings with holographic inducers imbedded in the hull.

"Make yourself useful." Hood pointed to the drone and then to the wall. The J-Hasp unit knelt by the wall and chipped off pieces of it with its knife-like fingers. It's eyes glowed as it analyzed the fragments.

"Elements Unknown," it responded. Its voice was routed directly to the earpieces that the others wore. "Semi-crystalline structure. Non-reactive to E-M energy-"

"He's got nothing," Zade interrupted. She tapped her fist on the wall. "Feels like rock. No reason why we can't crack this thing open like an egg."

"That's the problem, lieutenant," said Hood. "Everything we had rolled off this thing like water. We need to find out why."

The corridor went for a short distance before the walls gave way to empty space, and the floor became a long, thin bridge of stone leading out into the darkness. Below them was a sheer drop of unknown depth. Above and to the sides were only blackness.

"This looks promising," said Maxwell, eyeing the elevated walkway with suspicion. As far as he could tell, there wasn't anything holding it up.

"Unit detects an anomalous object," J-Hasp announced. "Distance: twelve-hundred meters. Purpose and composition unknown." His metallic eyes were fixed on the darkness ahead of them. He pointed.

"Yup," Zade added. She was looking were J-Hasp pointed. "Some kind of structure. Big. Not like anything we've seen before. This bridge leads right up to it."

"Keep moving," said Hood. Maxwell's hand appeared on the Captain's shoulder and held him back.

"We should send the droid to check it out."

"And you should take your hands off of me."

Maxwell complied... with just enough of a pause to make it clear that he wasn't threatened by Hood's tone.

"I don't like this," he said. "Send the droid."

"That thing is most likely a power source or a control room," said Hood. "It needs to be taken out quickly... sending a robot and waiting for it to report back will waste time that the Principality just doesn't have."

"How much time will it waste for us to walk into a trap and get ourselves killed?"

"I know traps," said Hood. "This doesn't feel like one."

"It does to me."

"You're a paranoid old man."

"Paranoia is how I got to BE old, Captain."

"I don't see any movement," said Zade. "But there are some residual energy signatures. Strange ones... strange even for this place. Can't tell anything else from this far."

"J-Hasp," Hood ordered. "Scout ahead... we'll stay fifty meters behind you. Move out."

The reconnaissance drone scurried out onto the bridge and quickly vanished.

"Was that a compromise, Captain?" Maxwell gloated.

"No."

They waited until the drone signaled its distance, and then followed it. It wasn't long before the corridor from which they'd emerged became just another patch of darkness, indistinguishable from the eerie night that surrounded them. They... or at least Maxwell and Hood.... could see nothing but the bridge underneath them. The bridge was at a slight upward incline that increased the further they went. Soon, their progress was hindered by the nearly 30-degree slope, but thankfully it didn't grow any steeper. They traveled unmolested and in complete silence for the entire distance. The darkness was so complete that they were only a hundred feet away when those with normal eyes could see their destination.

Their bridge was not the only one. There were dozens of them, all converging on one central structure that sat atop them like a spider lording over its web. It's shape was asymmetrical, yet it was resistant of a half-opened flower bud... a flower with twisted talons instead of petals. There was something glowing in its center... something emitting a strange, sickly yellow light that faded too quickly once it left its source. The inclined bridge flattened out and merged with the floor.

The J-Hasp unit had paused just in front of the entrance and was waiting patiently for the others.

"Anything?" Hood questioned it as they approached.

"Unknown energy source ahead. No life signs."

"Unknown, eh? Figures. Everything about this place is 'unknown' or 'unidentifiable'"

They stepped into the strange sanctum. It was a small space, occupied by only two objects: A circular raised dias at its center and an upright, flat metallic plane off to one side. Both were about the size of a man. The plane looked a lot like a mirror... except that its surface shimmered like a body of water and glowed as if there were a light beaming through from the other side.

"This your energy source?" said Hood.

"No," Zade replied. "This is." She pointed to the dias. It was a simple structure... an upright cylinder with a wide bowl-like disk perched on top of it. There were ashes in the bowl... ashes and small charred bits of... something.

"J-Hasp. Analyze this stuff," said Hood. The J-Hasp unit climbed up the cylinder and perched on the edge of the bowl... a feat seemingly impossible for something of its size. It peered down the ashes with glowing eyes.

"Preliminary analysis indicates that something was burned in this object. Possibly many things."

"You think so, eh?" Hood said sarcastically. He turned away to examine the rest of the room. "...damn droids are a waste of resources..."

"Further analysis indicates presence of calcium and organic mineral compounds similar to those found in the human body."

"Perhaps not as much of a waste as you thought," said Maxwell.

"Until we find what we came for, this whole trip is a waste," said Hood.

"What about this, Captain?" Zade was standing in front of the 'mirror.' Her reflection was distorted by the ripples in the surface. "This doesn't look solid."

"Perhaps its some liquid suspended in a force field."

"Unlikely," said Maxwell. "Since it'd be the first such force field we'd encountered. If they had that technology, they'd certainly make use of it for more than... that."

No one seemed interested in Maxwell's comment.

"Looks like neither one of us is particularly wanted here," he said to J-Hasp.

"Watch our backs," Hood ordered.

The J-Hasp unit leapt off of the dias onto a nearby wall. It scurried up to the top and took position at the very tip of the sanctum, where it could see for some distance in all directions. Maxwell circled the structure and looked out at the different 'bridges' that led up to it. All were deserted as far as he could see, but he kept looking.

"I think it may be a portal of some kind," said Captain Hood. "There's definitely light coming through from the other side."

Zade reached out and to touch the liquid, rippling surface. When her finger was six inches from it, the surface changed. The ripples diminished to almost nothing, allowing the reflection to become clearer... only it wasn't a reflection any more. There was an image, yes... and Zade was still in it... but it was not a reflection.

The Zade that they saw in the mirror was different. She wore a suit of skin-tight black leather instead of a standard uniform. The leather suit left a good portion of her ample chest exposed, but the woman wearing it didn't seem to mind at all. Instead of plasma blasters and other equipment, the Zade in the image carried a whip coiled up at her hip and a pair of metal bracers on her forearms. An array of knives and other metal implements adorned her belt. Her face and hair, however, were exactly the same. It was uncanny... the image was clearly of a different woman, but yet it was the SAME woman...

She was standing in a room, but it was a very strange one. The construction was ancient.... all wood, with very little metal and no plastic at all. In fact, there was no technology of any kind. No touch-panels or computer displays. No illumination-globes or control banks. Even the door in the background... it was an actual DOOR! The non-automatic kind that opened with a latch... the kind you had to actually TOUCH to operate.

"What the hell...?" said Hood. "What is this... a museum?"

"Looks like it. Look at all that stuff around me... her." There were glass display cases filled with jewelry... clearly not the alien sanctum where the REAL Zade was standing. There was someone else there, as well. A shadow moved back and forth... another person. Zade was following it/him with her eyes...

As Hood and Zade watched, the image got clearer... like a camera slowly coming into focus. Then came the sounds. They began as faint, incomprehensible noises, but they got louder until they were recognizable as voices. The Zade in the image was talking to someone-

"...still say I could have taken him," she said. "Ysuin or not."

"They're talking about the Ysuin!" said Captain Hood.

"I do not think so," came another voice from the image. A voice who's deep, resounding bass was immediately recognizable, even before the speaker stepped into viewable portion of the image.

"Admiral Chyrnomir!" Lieutenant Zade exclaimed. "But why is he dressed like that!?"

The 'Admiral' wore clothing that could only be described as 'medieval'.... a natural-fiber tunic and pants that, while they looked very comfortable, were clearly not the proper dress of an Admiral in the United Planetary Republic... or anyone else, for that matter.

"A warrior of your skill should be aware of her limitations," the December-image continued. "As enhanced as you are, there are... and always will be... opponents you will never be able to overcome. Repeated attempts to do so will only result in tragedy. Had you faced Faction again, the best result you could have hoped for would have been your death."

"Nice to see you have so much faith in me."

"If I did not have faith in your abilities, you would not be here."

"So what are you saying? I'm good enough to walk around here and PRETEND to protect you... but when it gets bad for real, I'm supposed to bow out gracefully and go sit in a corner?"

"I am saying that you work for me, therefore I decide who you fight and who you do not. At times, those
decisions are more for your benefit than mine."

"Oh," the Zade-image said sarcastically. "I didn't know you cared."

The December-image turned to walk away, but hesitated for a moment. It turned back and said:

"I do."

The Zade-image appeared to want to say something, but she didn't. She looked away and kept her thoughts to herself.

Suddenly the image became chaotic as fresh ripples disturbed the liquid surface. The scene in the mirror vanished, and was replaced by a distorted version of the real Zade.

"What happened-"

"I took my hand away," said Zade. "It was activated by proximity, I guess."

"I think we may have stumbled onto something big, here," said Captain Hood. "We need to know more-"

Captain Hood brought his hand close to the surface. Again, the image in the mirror changed... but it didn't return to the same scene as it had shown before. The image was an outdoor scene... a dirt street lined with archaic wooden buildings. Items in the windows identified them as shops of some kind. It was evening, the sun was perhaps an hour from setting. People, all dressed in clothes from some medieval museum, walked from store to store as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. The image zoomed in on one person... a slim gentlemen with a striking resemblance to-

"It's me!" Captain Hood exclaimed. "That thing's showing ME now!"

The Hood-image went into a store, and the 'camera' followed him as he approached a portly red-faced man behind the primitive wooden counter. The storekeeper looked up from his ledger... a ledger written on real PARCHMENT... and gasped when he saw Hood.

"Oh, GODS!"

The man turned and bolted for the wall behind him. It looked as if he were going to run into it, but at the last second he brushed his fingers across a wooden knot-hole in the wall.

*click*

A section of the wall opened slightly. The storekeeper pulled the hidden door open, slipped through it, and then slammed it closed behind him.

The Hood-image walked over to the door and stood there. He didn't try to follow, or search for the hidden latch that the storekeeper used... he just stood there patiently staring at the wall.

"What is this?" said Captain Hood.

"AAAAAAAEEEEEIIIIIII-" came a terrified cry from behind the wall.

Everything was silent for a while, and then-

*click*

The hidden door unlocked. Something on the other side must have opened it. The Hood-image pulled the door open and walked into a small back room. It was dimly lit by a oil lamp... an REAL lamp that actually BURNED OIL... set on a table in the corner. The storekeeper was laying on his back on in the middle of the floor, being held there by-

"A J-Hasp unit," Lieutenant Zade remarked. "What the hell are they doing with a droid?"

"I don't think its a robot, Lieutenant," said Captain Hood. "It looks... real. It's got fur and scales..."

"Some kind of animal," said Zade. "Like a natural version of ours."

"As far as I know, our stealth/reconnaissance units aren't based on any natural species."

"Seems that what we have here," said the Hood image. He was talking to the storekeeper. "Is a failure to communicate. YOU were supposed to pay ME a third of your GROSS income... NOT a third of your NET income."

"Net... gross... same thing, right?" said the frightened storekeeper.

"What... you think I'm stupid, now? Is that it?"

"N-n-no sir, Mr. Hood! Never!"

"Then why am I hearing things about you holding back money from me?"

"M-me? No, I would never-"

"Yes you would. You've been doing it for three months. You've had a big surge in business, and I haven't yet seen a corresponding surge in my payment from you. Why is that?"

"But- But-"

"Not willing to share your good fortune with the man who made it possible?"

"You... I..."

"Where do you think all that extra business came from? From your superior products?"

"N-no! I mean, yes!"

"Nooo... it came from me. It came from ME driving YOUR competition out of business. THAT'S what you're paying me to do. You're on the verge of becoming on a very rich man, because of me. But now... unfortunately... you're on the verge of becoming a very DEAD man. Because of me."

The Hood image knelt down beside the storekeeper. He produced as small object from his pocket. He held it in his hand and pushed a small button-

*click!*

A thin, razor-sharp blade sprang out of the hilt.

"Any last-minute begging or pleading?"

"...oh, no... please don't kill me..." the storekeeper pleaded.

"What is this?" said Captain Hood. "Extortion and murder? Me? I don't get it..."

Suddenly, the J-Hasp animal in the image began to hiss violently. It leapt back from the shopkeeper and pointed on clawed hand... directly at Hood. At CAPTAIN Hood!

"Bad Magic!" the creature screeched.

"Uh-oh," said Captain Hood. "We've been spotted."

"What?" said the Hood-image. The medieval Hood turned and looked directly at his counterpart... but apparently saw nothing. "Ain't nothing there. You sure?"

"J-Hasp smell magic! BAD!" The creature continued to point and hiss, still looking directly at Captain Hood and Lieutenant Zade. "Leave now!"

Then the image vanished as Captain Hood withdrew his hand.

"That thing saw us," said Zade. "No one else could... but that thing was looking right at us."

"Notice how you got a different image than I did, sir," said Zade. "We each saw images of ourselves-"

"Maxwell. C'mere," Hood ordered. "Let's see what it shows YOU."

Maxwell stopped pacing long enough to give the Captain a curious look.

"No thank you, I'm not interested," said Maxwell.

"That was an order."

"And this is me ignoring that order. You asked he here for my expertise... and my expertise tells me not to go sticking my fingers into strange devices so that I can look at the pretty pictures-"

"Captain?" said Zade. She'd once-again put her hand near the 'mirror.' Now, the image showed her leather-clad counterpart talking with two other people in the same store she'd been in earlier.

"Ensign Lemay? Lieutenant Lovvorn? Is every officer on the ship being copied?"

"DANGER!" the J-Hasp unit announced. "DANGER, Captain Hood... DANGER! ALIEN APPROACHING!"

"Time to go," said the Captain. He turned and looked around for Maxwell-

"Up here!"

Chief Petty Officer Maxwell was at the top of the structure with the J-Hasp unit.

"What are you doing up-"

"I'm a spy!" said Maxwell. "I'm spying! Now get up here before you're spotted!"

Maxwell threw something down... a series of metal rungs connected by thin cord. Captain Hood raced up the ladder and joined Maxwell and the droid. Zade was right behind him. Maxwell pulled the ladder up after them, rolled it up, and stashed it back in his pack.

"Nice ladder," Zade said with a touch of sarcasm... sounding very much like her counterpart in the mirror-image.

"Not everything needs to be the latest electronic marvel," Maxwell replied. "The simple methods work best more often than not."

Not four seconds later, some THING entered the sanctum.

The fact that it wasn't human was obvious, but this thing didn't even appear to be REAL. At first it just looked like a cloud of darkness... shadows and smoke... but then, as it stepped further into the light, a shape became visible within it. It had long, spindly limbs and a huge, misshapen head. There were projections that could have been horns or teeth... or both... but it was impossible to tell through the field of darkness that surrounded it like a living shroud. It had too many clawed fingers on its hands, but the exact number was indeterminate. The creature seemed to half-float, half-walk into the sanctum, where it paused in front of the dias. It reached out and dropped something into the bowl. Whatever it was, hit the stone with a wet sound and burst into flames immediately.

The alien hissed to itself as the flames billowed out into an impossibly large fire that cast eerie, writhing shadows on everything in the sanctum. What little smoke there was was thick, oily and black... much like the smoke that the alien wore around its body.

The creature's hissing began to change... becoming half-whispered syllables... words and sounds unpronounceable by anything human.

And yet... as soon as the sounds reached human ears, they became something else. Captain Hood, Zade, and Maxwell all clung to the top of the sanctum and listened. Slowly... the creature's language mutated in their brains...

"I can almost understand it," said Zade. She was whispering, even though her suit kept the sound of her voice from leaving her helmet.

"Me, too," said Hood. "I think its-"

FWOOOM!

The fire suddenly doubled in intensity, becoming like a continuous explosion of orange and yellow. Strange shapes began to move around within it.... then the fire and the shapes became one as the flame took on an almost-solid form. Were the form born of technology it would have been a hologram, but this... this was something else entirely...

"This can't be real," said Captain Hood. "...can't be..."

A human head floated above the dias, bathed in the very flames that contributed to its substance. His two eyes were bright spots in the fire, and cheeks were outlined by long, writhing tongues of vertical flame. It wore the features of a young boy, but its expression was that of such power and malice that it transformed the innocent face into something hideous. Even the alien that had summoned it was stricken by its presence. It dropped to one knee (of which it seemed to have many) and prostrated itself before the image.

"I bow before your power, Lord K'Sano," it hissed.

"You are late," said the fire-image. It glared menacingly down at the kneeling alien.

"Apologies, my master. There were... complications."

"Complications," K'Sano repeated.

"Yes! Fleshlings in metal shells! They attack, and we destroyed them... but..."

"My Orb was not damaged, I trust."

"...crystals... But the damage is only MINOR!"

"There is no MINOR damage to anything that belongs to ME!" K'Sano howled.

"We fix! We fix!" the alien said frantically. "We fix right now! Done soon!"

"And these fleshli-... these mortals are no longer a threat?"

"No threat! Was accident! They hit us with piece of metal... big explosion damage crystal! Not happen again!"

"You have destroyed them?"

The alien seemed to suddenly become very interested in its own feet... it looked down at them and squirmed uncomfortably.

"This Orb will be ready for activation on schedule," said K'Sano. "And the mortals that damaged it will be destroyed immediately. If these two things do not occur-"

"YES, Master! They will be done! This I SWEAR!"

The alien groveled for a few moments while K'Sano looked around the sanctum... as if something had drawn his attention.

"These mortals that you are about to destroy..."

"Yes, Master!"

"I suggest you begin with the ones that are spying on us right now."

The fire surged upward, becoming ten times as bright... and casting its reddish glow on Hood and the others as they clung to the roof of the sanctum. As the shape in the fire faded, the alien pointed up at the squad and screeched

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"We've been made!" said Hood. "MOVE!" The Captain leveled his pulse emitter at the alien and fired. The weapon made only a slight hummm as it sent a sent a crackling ball of destructive energy right into the alien's chest. The blast went right through the creature without damaging it in the least.

"What the-"

The air came alive with the crackle of energy as Lieutenant Zade sprang into action. She released her grip on her hiding place and fired multiple blasts from her automatic pulse rifle as she dropped the floor. She landed in a crouched position, flipped her weapon into fully automatic mode, and kept firing... hitting the alien with electromagnetic fury at a rate of several hundred blasts a second.

"GO! GO!" she shouted.

J-Hasp and Maxwell dropped to the floor behind her and sprinted for the bridge. Hood was a second behind them.

But Zade's barrage wasn't even slowing the alien down. It charged through the rain of destructive energy as if it were nothing, coming at Zade with claws extended and fangs bared

"Ah, HELL!"

Zade sprang from her crouching position and swung the rifle like a club-

-CRACK!-

-and knocked the leaping alien out of the air. The creature hit a wall and slid to the floor, but was up and charging again a second later. Zade shouldered her pulse rifle and reached for the particle cannon

"INCOMING!" Maxwell's voice shouted into their earpieces. He and J-Hasp were running back toward the sanctum... with seven dark shapes in hot pursuit. Three of them were running on the bridge behind them, but the other four were FLYING through the empty air, converging on them from different directions.

Repeated blasts from Hood's pulse emitter did nothing to stop them.

THOOM!

The room shuddered with the sound of Zade's particle cannon. The weapon convulsed in her grip as it spat a burst deadly ionized particles at the first alien. The creature recoiled when the blast hit... but it did not explode, burst into flames, or melt as was typical for organic things when struck with a slug of super-energized particles. It shrugged off the blast with no more than a slight hiss. Zade may as well have thrown a cup of water at it. Nevertheless, she fired again with the same result. She threw herself into a forward roll as the alien's leap carried it past her. She rolled to her feet and threw a spinning back-kick that propelled the alien across the room and into another wall.

"ENERGY WEAPONS ARE NO GOOD!" she announced.

"You're a bit late, lieutenant!" Hood replied. The Captain and Maxwell were firing frantically at the approaching aliens, but to no avail. Each shot was a perfect hit, but each hit did zero damage. And now, dozens more of the creatures were sailing out of the darkness toward them. "What else ya got!"

"Here! Try these!" Zade tossed him an explosive charge... a small cylinder two and a half inches long and a half-inch in diameter. Hood pushed down and twisted one end to activate it, then threw the device at the closest alien-

FA-WHAM!

The explosion tore the creature to dark, oily shreds.

"Now THATS what I'm talking about!" Hood exclaimed. "How many of those we got?"

"Plenty, sir!"

Zade was changing weapons again, dropping the particle cannon and grabbing a micro-grenade launcher. With the push of a button, a tripod slid out of the launcher's barrel to support the weapon's weight. Zade knelt behind it and jammed a pack of grenades into a slot on the side of the launcher. She set the weapon for impact-explosion, and started firing. The launcher fired with a deceptively small sound-

-thoop-

which was immediately followed by a loud-

KA-THOOM!

-and a cloud of oily body-parts flying in different directions. She took out four aliens before-

"BEHIND YOU!" Maxwell shouted.

Zade snatched the heavy particle cannon from the floor as she spun-

WHACK!

She cracked one alien's skull open, but when she swung at the other one the weapon passed THROUGH its head. At first Zade thought the creature may have been a hologram, but when its claws reached her chest they were real and solid enough-

"DIE FLESHLING!!" the thing screeched as its claws... seven of them... ripped deep gouges down the front of her torso, slashing open the armored uniform and the flesh beneath as if they were nothing. But instead of blood and screaming, there was only sparks and the crackle of electricity as Zade's cybernetic systems re-routed around the damaged area.

"Die YOURSELF, ugly!" Zade grabbed the surprised alien's head with both hands and applied a half-ton of pressure. The alien suddenly went intangible, leaving Zade grasping nothing but empty space as the creature floated away. But another creature slammed into her from the side. Claws tore across Zade's throat. Before she could react, the creature went intangible and floated THROUGH her... then became solid again and attacked from the other side.

WHAM!

The J-Hasp unit leapt onto the creature's back before it could strike. The machine and the alien hit the floor and began wrestling as Zade returned to the grenade launcher. An alien was already there, reaching for the weapon with its claws. It didn't see Zade, and it never did. Her boot shattered its skull just as yet ANOTHER creature raked its claws down Zade's back.

"DAMMIT!" Her voice had a high, metallic whine from the damage to her throat. She turned to deal with the other creature as Maxwell took position behind the grenade launcher.

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!" He announced for no apparent reason. A second later, more creatures began to explode in the air around them. Hood joined Maxwell and started throwing grenades with both hands. It became a massacre. Aliens flew and ran right into the killing zone and were quickly mowed down.

But it only lasted a second or two. Then the approaching creatures began to turn intangible and let the impact-grenades pass through them. And with no impact, there was no explosion.

"Uh-oh," said Maxwell as a large alien bore down on them. Grenade after grenade went through its dark body as it flew toward the grenade launcher.

"RETREAT!" Hood grabbed Zade's bag of grenades and threw himself to one side while Maxwell leapt to the other.

WHOOOSH!"

The alien shot between them, snatching the grenade abandoned launcher and carrying it away, ripping it to shreds as it flew. The aliens that followed veered toward the defenseless humans.

"FALL BACK!" Hood ordered.

"Easier said than done, sir!" Zade replied. There were six aliens in the sanctum with them. Zade and J-Hasp had been keeping them away from Maxwell and Hood, but with the creature's ability to become intangible it was like wrestling ghosts. Several creatures had their claws hooked into Zade's body and were literally trying to pull her apart... but there were also several dead/crushed/folded/torn/and mutilated alien bodies littering the floor around them. J-Hasp wasn't having any better luck. The droid was a non-combat model, and the best it could do was keep some of the aliens occupied so they wouldn't completely overwhelm Zade. The droid leapt from wall to wall, ceiling to floor in acrobatic maneuvers that kept even the flying aliens dizzy with their attempts to catch him. But his chassis bore deep gashes from the few that did manage a lucky slash at the speeding robot.

"This way!" said Maxwell. He was racing toward one of the other bridges leading from the sanctum. Several aliens converged on him, but Maxwell twisted away from them at the last instant, causing the mob of creatures to collide with each other. Captain Hood tossed a grenade into the knot of creatures and blew them all to oily chunks... leaving a clear path to the bridge.

"GO!" Hood shouted.

"RRRAH!"

Zade's front-snap kick caught one creature unaware... her boot removed its head completely. She twisted and ducked under another alien's slashing claws. Several of them had a firm grasp on her right arm, but that didn't stop her-

-click-

She detached the robotic limb and darted after Maxwell and Hood, leaving her right arm behind with the aliens. J-Hasp leapt off of one wall, bounced off of the still-flaming dias, and soared after her.

"MORE INCOMING!" Maxwell warned. As they streaked out of the sanctum, aliens began circling them on the bridge. They flew past and slashed at the humans in a continuous attack.

"AGH!" One alien's claws sliced across the side of Zade's face, removing a huge flap of synthetic skin and drawing sparks from the titanium-alloy skull beneath... while at the same time, Zade's back-fist shattered the attacking alien's cranium. She grabbed the flailing alien and tossed it into the path of another flying attacker. They collided and went down... vanishing into the darkness. "TOO MANY OF THEM!" she shouted as yet another alien sank its claws into her back. J-Hasp's tail wrapped around its chest and yanked it away. The alien went intangible and flew away, then came back to attack the droid... along with a half-dozen others. They swarmed around J-Hasp and quickly began gleefully tearing the robot apart. Wires, gears and shredded metal plates flew out of the crowd of creatures.

"Droid is down!"

"They have to be tangible in order to do that!" said Hood. He paused long enough to toss a grenade. The explosion rocked the stone bridge and aliens... whole and in pieces... flying in all directions. The smoking, twisted remains of the J-Hasp unit slid off of the bridge and disappeared into the dark depths below.

Hood turned and tossed another grenade at the aliens approaching from the front... but the lot of them went intangible at once and the weapon never touched them...

...it went through them and hit the bridge instead.

BOOOM!

Cracks formed along the bridge's surface, and the formerly-solid structure began to sway.

"DOWN!" Maxwell shouted.

Everyone dropped flat on the bridge. Airborne aliens zipped past them while more ground troops raced toward them from the front AND the rear. Still more of them were swarming around the sanctum... hundreds of them had gathered for a mass assault, with hundreds more appearing out of the darkness to join them. Their dark, smoky bodies blocked out the sanctum entirely. Then, on some unseen signal, they began to move... not toward Hood and the others, but straight up toward some unknown destination.

"It's a strike force!" said Maxwell. "An attack on the Principality!"

"I got two words to say about that," said Zade. "Remote Detonate."

Somewhere in the sanctum, buried and hidden beneath hundreds of alien bodies... the explosives in Zade's detached arm detonated. The explosion swallowed the sanctum and the alien horde that surrounded it. Half of the creatures were torn apart... their high-pitched hissing screams ending suddenly as the concussive blast reduced them to an oily black pulp. The others were either intangible or too far away. They continued on toward their destination undaunted except for a few dozen that flew back to deal with the humans on the bridge.

"DO THE BRIDGE!" Hood ordered.

Zade sat up, leaned back, and brought her one remaining cybernetic fist down onto the bridge with a tremendous hammer-blow. Shockwaves radiated out from the impact, causing the cracks from the earlier explosions to widen and propagate. Chunks of it gave way, and as more pieces fell, more cracks began to form.

Zade struck again, and that was all it took. The bridge disintegrated beneath them, dumping the trio into the dark emptiness below.

---

Nestled in his floating alcove, Lieutenant Lovvorn was tirelessly directing the repair efforts on the Principality's main computer systems. Lovvorn wasn't actually repairing anything HIMSELF... just orchestrating the repair drones as they re-assembled vital components of the ships communications and computing infrastructure. It was a thankless and under-rated task as far as the Lieutenant was concerned, but it was one that would make the repair of the rest of the ship go much faster. Plus he'd get to unplug himself from the A/I mainframes and give his aching brain a much-needed rest.

But, until then-

"Incoming communication," the computer announced.

"Yes, yes," Lovvorn sighed. He pushed a few buttons on the console. "What do you want?" he said to the technician calling.

"All the drones on deck 14 just shut down!"

"What?"

"All the drones on-"

"I heard you. Hold on." Lovvorn searched through the flood of data signals coursing through his brain. Signals from the main droid control unit on deck 14 was noticeably absent. "Oh, dear. We'd better get this fixed." He queried the non-responding unit. Amazingly, it didn't respond.

"Sir, we've got heavy damage in this area and without those robots we can't possibly-"

Lovvorn muted the audio portion of the signal and kept trying to reach the misbehaving control unit using various ports. There was still no response. The machine, and the drones that it controlled, were completely separated from the system. Almost.

"Oh to hell with it," he groaned in frustration. "Computer, patch me through to the intercom in that location."

There was an audible *click* in Lovvorn's ear, and when he spoke again, his voice echoed through a cramped hallway in another part of the ship:

"DCU 1270A, Machine ID 89346746843. Access Code 1523-58458. Remote Command Code B48795158441. Enter voice command mode. Accept Voice Command: 'Reroute Program Input from Default to Audio Receptors.' Read Program Input. Begin Program:"

What followed began as a series of high-pitched squeals and whistles emanating from the lieutenant's vocal cords. But as the sounds came faster and faster, they blended into one long blast of undecipherable static... undecipherable to human ears, at least. The rapid sequence of ones and zeros continued for several minutes, and then:

"...0001101010001000. End Program. Run Program. Exit Voice Command Mode. Thank you very much and have a nice day." Lovvorn un-muted the signal. "Happy now?" he asked.

"They're up and running again!" said the technician. "The droids are back in operation. You did it!"

"It was nothing." said Lovvorn. "You just have to speak the language. But to you, I guess it looked a lot like magic, huh?"

"Sir?"

"Nothing. Lovvorn, out." Lovvorn terminated the signal. "Now, where was I-"

"...help...me..."

"Eh?" Lovvorn spun around in his chair to see where the voice was coming from. For the briefest instant, he thought he saw someone standing in the corner of the room. All he saw was a shape... a horribly unfocused image of man... and then it was gone. "Huh?" Lovvorn rubbed his eyes and blinked, but whatever it was, wouldn't come back.

"Computer, was someone else just in this room?"

"Negative."

"Hmmmm... just great. Memory implant failure. Fantastic."

"However," the computer continued. "There was a localized anomalous sensor reading within the last ten seconds."

"Localized anomalous sens... what the hell does that mean?"

"Sensor error. Cause unknown."

"Sensor error. That means you saw something."

"Affirmative."

"Well?"

"Please complete the question."

"... what did you THINK you saw?"

"Unable to speculate based on limited and likely erroneous data."

"Oh, never mind," said Lovvorn. "I've got more important things to do than try and chase down ghosts..."

---

"ADMIRAL ON DECK!"

All of the technicians dropped their tools and snapped to attention as Admiral Chyrnomir stepped out of the stairway. The hall in front of him was a twisted wreck, through which the technicians had cleared a winding path around the piles of debris and spare parts. The walls, floor and most of the ceiling had all been scorched to a uniform shade of black. Large sections of the wall had been removed... either intentionally or by the force of the explosions that had ravaged the area... and squads of technicians were scurrying around behind the remaining panels like rats. Overhead lights flickered on and off at random, creating a surreal strobe effect. When they blinked off, there was total blackness. When they were on, it was only a few shades lighter. Were it not for the head and wrist-mounted flashlights the technicians wore, their work would have been impossible.

"As you were," said Admiral Chyrnomir.

The technicians went back to their tasks and December made his way through the area. He cast an occasional wary glance at the ceiling. Deck 9 was directly above them... or rather, it SHOULD have been. This section of the ship was dangerously close to a hull breach that had ripped deck 9 open and literally turned it inside out. The only thing above them now... the only thing separating them from the vacuum of space... were a few lighting tiles and a temporary force-field.

And this was one of the more stable areas of the ship.

The sea of technicians thinned out as he made his way down the hall, but the deck had gone from merely crowded to absolutely packed. He had entered a makeshift triage. Injured crewman from all over the ship had converged on the ship's only fully-functioning medical bay. The flood of people had spilled out into the hall, where anyone with even the lightest medical training was immediately put to work. The injured were treating themselves with whatever supplies and equipment they had. The medical bay itself was still somewhere further down the hall. The crowd parted as much as it could to allow the Admiral to pass. He made eye-contact with as many crewmen as he could. He could see the pain and desperation in their eyes, and he saw how that desperation eased just the slightest bit when they looked up at their commanding officer.

"How bad is it, sir..." one crewman called out.

"Extremely," the Admiral replied. "But I have taken crews half as skilled as this one through much worse. Keep your strength and your wits about you, and you will have quite a story to tell your grandchildren."

"Yes, sir," the man said. He lay back and let the nurse finish treating him.

December made it to the medical bay and paused in the doorway.

It was bad.

Over a hundred patients were crammed into a facility only capable of holding a dozen. Doctors moved frantically from patient to patient trying to stabilize whoever could be saved and ease the pain of whoever could not. Most of the people in the room fell into the second category. The power blinked on and off with the familiar strobe-effect that December had seen in the hallway. It made most of the vital equipment unusable... or even dangerous, and without their equipment, some of the younger doctors were at a complete loss for ways to treat their patients.

One man, however, didn't seem to notice. The Chief Medical Officer seemed quite at home in the chaos. He was up to his elbows in an unconscious patient's abdomen... removing shrapnel and bypassing a shredded intestine... while a young intern looked on, trying to learn how to perform the barbaric procedure.

"...dis is how tings were done in de old days," said N'Doki. "No machines... no medical sensors... just nimble fingers and a strong stomach."

"If you say so, sir," said the intern, who appeared ready to vomit.

"Easy now... Dis man would tank you not to trow up in his gut, yes?"

"Yes, sir."

"And I see de Admiral has decided to grace us wit his presence, no?" N'Doki said without looking up. "Forgive us if we are too busy to salute."

"No need to salute me, old friend," said the Admiral.

"Dis will take a few moments... I will be wit you shortly."

"Take your time."

December looked around at some of the nearby wounded. One man was laying on the floor almost at his feet. The technician was curled up in a ball and rocking back and forth, mumbling to himself-

"...he was there... and then he wasn't... he was there... and then he wasn't..."

The Admiral examined the man for wounds, but found nothing serious.

"His mind is gone," said N'Doki. The doctor was sewing the patient shut now... literally sewing flesh with needle and thread. The other doctor was swooning. "He made his way here on his own. We treat his body... but are too busy to move him elsewhere. So dere he stays."

December knelt down and looked into the man's eyes.

"What is your name-"

"...there... but then he wasn't... he was there..."

"What is your station? Where were you working?"

"...but then he wasn't..."

"Who? Who are you talking about?"

The hysterical man's eyes focused on December for a second.

"...it was blue..." he said. And then he was lost in more incoherent mumbling.

"All done!" N'Doki announced. He washed his bloody hands in a nearby sink, then snapped his fingers in front of the unconscious patient's face.

The patient was instantly awake, as if by magic.

"Best to let de patient sleep," N'Doki told the man. "But we need dis table for odder surgeries now." The young intern helped move the man to an empty space on the floor while N'Doki saw to the admiral.

"It is-"

"Your back," said N'Doki. "I know."

The Admiral removed his shirt, revealing a huge, swollen black bruise that took up most of his back. N'Doki glanced at it for a moment, then ran his fingers gently up and down December's spine. He paused at a spot just above the center of his back... his long, thin finger danced around the area in a tight circle.

"Fractured vertebrae," the doctor announced. "Dislocated. Pinched nerves. Very bad. How is de pain?"

"Excruciating," the admiral replied.

"Good," said N'Doki. "Den de nerves are still intact. You are lucky not to be paralyzed, yes? You still may be before it is done... should have come to see me sooner, no?"

"I had work to do. I can command this ship from a wheelchair if necessary."

"De funny ting is, you and I are probably de only men in dis room who remember what a wheelchair is."

"Medicine has come a long way... but it has yet to catch up with you, old friend."

"Mmmm..." N'Doki mused. He placed the tips of his fingers in a pattern over the injured part of December's spine. "Dis will hurt-"

"Of cour-"

-CRICK!-

"-ungH!"

-CRACK!-

"Almost done-"

-POP!-

"Dere. Tings are back in dere proper places. Better now?"

"The pain has gone from excruciating to... slightly less than excruciating."

"Do not move yet."

N'Doki stepped away and returned with a small metal disk. He placed it over the injured vertebra and pressed a tiny button. The disk attacked itself to December's spine, fusing the affected vertebrae and rendering them immobile so they would heal correctly.

"Try not to trow yourself under any more beams, yes?"

"COMING THROUGH!" came a shout from the hallway. "MOVE! MOVE! MOVE! WE GOT INJURED COMING THROUGH! GET OUT OF THE WAY! MOOOOVE!"

A short, but wide and incredibly muscular crewman stormed into the room, carrying two unconscious crewmen with him. He had one body thrown over each shoulder, and he was plowing through anything that had the misfortune of being in his way.

"MOVE OUT OF THE @$#%@@! WAY!" He bellowed. "WE NEED HELP NOW!"

The crewman rushed past December and deposited one body on the table that N'Doki's former patient had just vacated. He leaned the other man against a the wall. The first man's intestines were being held in by a strip of bloody cloth, and the second man's face and chest were burnt almost to the bone. Both men were still alive.

Doctors swarmed all over the pair, trying to ascertain whether they were even capable of being saved. N'Doki took the man on the table. The Chief Medical Officer nonchalantly re-assembled the crewman's innards and began sewing him shut.

The crewman who'd brought them in paced back and forth nervously... so much so that he didn't notice the admiral until they'd collided.

"Hey, watch-.... SIR! Sorry, SIR!" he apologized at the top of his lungs. "Didn't see you standing there, SIR!"

"What is your name, soldier?"

"Chief Petty Officer Harrison Blackshear, SIR!"

"What happened to those men?"

"Ruptured steam conduit on what's left of deck 6, SIR!"

"You carried these men all they way from deck 6?"

"I stabilized them as best I could, SIR! Then I sought the closest available help, SIR!"

"Chief, it is not necessary that you shout every word-"

"SIR, YES SIR!"

"Dis man will live," N'Doki announced. He pointed to the burn victim who was being tended to by other doctors. "... but dat one will not."

"Sir, how do you-"

"Trust me... I know dese tings. And de next time you must transport someone wit an abdominal wound, I do not suggest trowing them over your shoulder and running."

"YES, SIR!"

N'Doki seemed about to say something else... perhaps something related to shouting in a medical facility... but he suddenly turned around to look at the far wall. There was nothing there but some burnt-out equipment, but he kept looking at the wall... and then-

"EVACUATE DE FACILITY!" he shouted. "DERE IS A HULL BREACH!"

The announcement threw the already-chaotic room into complete and utter pandemonium. Doctors and nurses grabbed whatever patients they could and rushed for the door.

"What?" Chief Blackshear looked around at the confusion. Everyone was evacuating, but there was no sign of any emergency. No alarms. No flashing lights. Nothing other than the doctor's word. "What's going on?"

"HULL BREACH, YOU FOOL!" N'Doki shouted. "ADMIRAL, HELP ME GET DIS MAN!"

December and Harrison grabbed the crewman that Harrison had brought it. They carried him toward the door, with Doctor N'Doki one step behind them... but it was too late.

The hull breach had started two decks away, and by the time it reached the medial bay it was propagating at several times the speed of sound. The medial facility had four walls, but in the blink of an eye, that number was reduced by one. The wall that N'Doki had been staring at earlier vanished. The empty blackness of space yawned before them like a dark mouth... a dark, HUNGRY mouth that sucked them in with the force of a hundred hurricanes. Everything that wasn't welded down... and many things that WERE... were sucked into-

-nowhere.

Almost as quickly as it began, the wind died. Equipment, doctors, patients, and debris hit the floor as the irresistible vacuum of space simply... stopped. The rupture was still there... the hull was still breached... but it was as if the solid wall were still there, sealing them in.

Admiral Chyrnomir looked out at the black death that had almost claimed them. He didn't see the characteristic shimmering of a force-field over the opening.... probably because there wasn't a force field there. Beside him, Chief Petty Officer Blackshear was staring unbelievably at the breach.

"...My God..." he gaped. "...My...God......Oh...My...God..."

A few feet in front of them both, Doctor N'Doki stood facing the missing wall. His eyes were wide open, but his gaze was empty and trance-like... as if he were staring intensely at something on the other end of the galaxy. Both of his bony fists were clenched tightly at his sides; veins and muscles bulged in his forearms like a man straining under a heavy load.

"But what...what..." Blackshear began.

"This is Admiral Chyrnomir," December spoke into his comm. unit. "We have a hull breach in medical bay two. Establish a structural containment field and begin emergency evacuation of this and all adjacent areas."


"Sir?" came the confused reply. It was Commander Jake Fast, the officer that December had left in charge on the bridge when he'd left. "Sir, what is your location?"

"Medical bay two," December said calmly.

"But... but sir, that's where the hull breach is..."

"I am aware of that commander... I am looking right at it. Re-route all available power to a remote containment field fifty feet starboard of my position. NOW!"

"Aye, sir!"

Three precious seconds went by... and then an orangish-yellow energy field appeared over the breached wall. All of the emergency lights in the room went black as their power was shut off and directed into the remote field emitter. The field crackled and rippled for another few seconds before finally stabilizing, becoming a hazy yellow glow fifty feet in front of Admiral Chyrnomir.

The Admiral grabbed Doctor N'Doki's shoulder and nudged him gently.

"Let it go, friend," he said. "We are safe."

The doctor collapsed into December's waiting arms.

"What... what happened?" said Chief Blackshear. "How did-"

"What you just saw was classified, soldier," said December. He lifted the unconscious doctor like a child and started carrying him toward the door. "You will speak of it to no one. Not even yourself. Ever."

"Yes, Sir!"

"Assist with the evacuation, we cannot spare the power for that field for more than a few minutes-"

"Yes, SIR!"

-beeep-beeep-beeeep-

December's comm-unit blared an emergency signal. The person calling didn't wait for December to acknowledge... they just started shouting.

"SIR!" said Commander Fast. "The enemy vessel has launched an attack! Multiple motion-signatures converging on our location! They just appeared out of NOWHERE!"

"How many ships?"

"No ships, sir! They're just-"

"INTRUDER ON THE BRIDGE!" someone shouted in the background.

"MY GOD!" Commander Fast cried. "WHAT ARE THEY!!?!"

"AIIIIIIIGH!"

"THEY'RE COMING THROUGH THE WALLS!!!! THEY'RE COMING THROUGH THE-"

The rest of the transmission was a horrifying scream, followed by the unmistakable sound of men and equipment being torn apart.

"I am sorry to cut my visit short, doctor," said December as he lowered N'Doki to the floor. "But it seems I have more pressing matters." He adjusted his comm-unit for general ship-wide broadcast and shouted with his most authoritative voice: "ATTENTION ALL HANDS! RED ALERT! RED ALERT! THE SHIP HAS BEEN BOARDED BY UNKNOWN HOSTILES! ARM YOURSELVES AND PREPARE FOR IMMEDIATE COMBAT!"
Hard to Kill
Three dark figures wove in and out of the falling debris with all the swiftness of diving hawks. The hunters left faint trails of oily smoke... nearly invisible against the dark background... in their wake as they continued their search for the humans. Their eyes were inky pools of iridescent night that could probe darkness that could incomprehensible by the human mind. Their ears could hear the internal fluids of an insect crawling fifty yards away, so when Captain Eric Hood's black parachute deployed, they zoomed in on him like flies to a fresh corpse.

"SSSSSSSSS!!!!!"

The first creature dove toward Hood with claws extended-

-click-
-wirrrr-
FWOOOM!

Lieutenant Zade slammed into it, driving it backward and slamming it head-first into a falling section of bridge-

CRACK!

The force of Zade's leg-mounted retractable jets pulverized the creature's head, but the other two soared past her. She turned and shoved away from the rock to follow them. One alien veered away and dove into the darkness... toward the spiraling figure of Chief Maxwell.

"HEADS UP, CHIEF!" Zade shouted into her mouth-piece. Many yards below, Maxwell looked up and saw a cloud of smoke and darkness racing toward him. He yanked back on the strings controlling the wings of his glider harness, causing him to arc upward and roll to the left-

WHOOSH!

The alien soared past him, slashing at Maxwell's wings but missing them entirely. It came back for another go. Maxwell grabbed a small, flat object off his belt and tossed it at the alien with a flick of his wrist. The spinning disk leapt from his fingertips... partially from the force of his throw, and partially under its own power.

-ZZZZZ-

It sliced through the darkness toward the alien's throat. The creature saw it coming, and went intangible at the last instant, allowing the bladed weapon to pass harmlessly through it. The alien's rough, hissing grunts were almost like laughter... laughter that ceased a second later when the spinning disk came back for its return trip and sank deep into the back of its skull.

"EEEEK!" the thing hissed.

An instant later, the disk exploded. It was a tiny, almost inconsequential 'pop'...just enough force to shatter the creature's head like a mellon.

Meanwhile, Zade was struggling with her leg-jets... trying to maneuver herself into the final creature before it reached Hood. Navigation was tricky, and the absence of one arm threw her entire body wildly off balance. Her approach was too high... she and the alien narrowly missed each other in the air.

But she got its attention.

The alien abandoned its approach and came after HER instead. She was faster, but the creature had infinitely more control in the air than she did. It flew tight circles around her, slashing at her extremities like a rabid wolverine. Zade ramped her leg-jets up to full power and shot straight up... away from Hood and a huge chunk of bridge that was falling rapidly toward them all.

"INCOMING!" Zade warned as she swung her fist at the alien. Her fist went right through it. "DAMN! HOOD, LOOK OUT!"

Hood twisted in his parachute harness and tossed a grenade at the oncoming hunk of stone. Another blast from her jets carried Zade out of the way at the last instant... then she reversed direction and rocketed head-long toward the alien that was following her.

BOOM!

Hood's grenade detonated just as Zade and the creature collided... or would have collided. Zade flew thought the intangible creature, but then-

CRACK!

Speeding debris from the explosion slammed into the alien and sent it spiraling out of control. The explosion's shock-wave did likewise for Zade. She killed the leg-jets and went into free fall... , when she was pointed the right direction, she let go with a full burn to carry her out of the debris field as fast as possible. She didn't make it.

The alien racked its claws all the way down her already-shredded back. Zade rolled... or she tried. Her control had gone from erratic to impossible. The alien followed her, still gouging inch-deep furrows into her metal hide as they tumbled.

CLANK!

They struck another piece of falling debris, and the alien held her there... slashing repeatedly and going intangible ever time Zade tried to retaliate. With all the damage she'd taken so far, it was only a matter of seconds before it hit a critical system and shut her down for good.

Then Zade remembered the explosion.

The creature had been intangible... but the debris had still hit it.

Zade's titanium fingers broke off a chunk of rock and-

-CRUNCH!-

slammed it into the alien's skull. The creature went limp and fell away. Zade threw the rock after it... it struck like a cannon-ball, turning the alien into a several unidentifiable black pieces.

Zade pushed away from the boulder and fired her jets...

...the jets wouldn't respond. They were damaged.

"...damn..."

Once again, Zade was in free-fall... but this time it wasn't planned. She fell like a stone, rushing past Hood and then-

"GOTCHA!"

Chief Petty Officer Maxwell caught Zade by the arm, but the sudden increase in weight threw him off balance. His glider-harness groaned under the strain as they spiraled downward at an ever-increasing speed.

"Good Lord, you're heavy, woman!" Maxwell grunted. He strained to hold onto Lieutenant Zade and control the glider. The feat was impossible, but he kept trying anyway. He hooked one arm under Zade's shoulder and tried to adjust the glider with the other.

"Let me go!" Zade ordered.

"Can't do that!"

"It's too much! Let me go or you'll crash! That's an ORDER!"

"I don't take orders from Hood... what makes you think I'll take them from YOU!"

"This-"

Zade's arm twisted at an odd angle and her elbow cracked Maxwell across the side of the head. It wasn't a hard blow, but with a titanium elbow, it didn't need to be.

"AAA!"

Maxwell let Zade go as pain blossomed across his head, neck, and jaw. By the time the stars cleared from Maxwell's vision, Zade was just a speck receding in the darkness below. A second later, she was gone.

---

The sound of running footsteps and frantic weapon fire preceded the technicians frenzied retreat from what remained of Deck 6.

"GO! GO! GO!" the lead technician shouted. He stopped to fire his pulse weapon at the otherworldly shapes that were racing up the corridor behind them. "MOVE!"

The weapon's energy discharges either passed through the creatures or rolled harmlessly off of their twisted black bodies.

When last man passed him, the lead tech punched a emergency button on the wall and threw himself into the next section of corridor before the two-foot thick emergency blast door sealed the path behind them. He hit the floor and rolled to a crouching position with weapon still in hand. The other techs were waiting for him.

"RUN, YOU IDIOTS!!!" He shouted. Just then, a dozen pairs of dark, smoky arms reached through the blast door and sank their claws into his flesh. They tried pulled him back into the other corridor... only the technician couldn't pass through the door quite as easily as they could. The result was very, very, messy.

The other humans ran as the aliens poured through the solid door as if the door were just an illusion. More footsteps echoed the corridor ahead.... soldiers approaching from the other direction.

"CLEAR THE WAY!" the first soldier shouted. He and the others took position in the center of the corridor, forcing the fleeing technicians to run around them. "OUT OF THE WAY! MOOOOVE! BARRICADES-NOW!"

Another soldier was typing vigorously on a keypad. When he finished entering the code, sections of the floor ahead of them rose up to create a row of chest-high barricades. Parts of the ceiling descended as well, producing a thick wall with a horizontal opening through which the soldiers aimed their weapons.

"FORCE FIELD!" the commanding officer shouted. Another soldier positioned a large machine at the rear of the formation.

"READY, SIR!"

"HERE THEY COME!"

A crowd of dark shapes seethed down the hallway. They were all darkness and smoke... and claws and teeth. And they looked angry.

"OPEN FIRE!"

The soldiers let go with a barrage of heavy artillery... plasma-cannons and grenade launchers turned the corridor ahead of them into a solid wall of heat and ionized particles. The explosions shook the decks both above and below... but none of it did any good against the alien intruders. They surged through the barrage without slowing down.

"FORCE FIELD-NOW!"

The machine in the rear of the formation hummed, and an energy field appeared between a few feet in front of the barricades. The aliens sailed through it. The force field that should have reduced them to a fine powder, or at least repelled them, didn't even react to their presence as they penetrated it.

"FALL BACK!"

The soldiers began a slow, orderly withdrawal. They fired continuously at the creatures, and remained in formation even as the aliens rushed through the barricades and started tearing the soldiers on the front line apart.

"FALL BACK!" the commanding officer repeated. He dropped to a crouching position and fired into the mob of creatures with both pulse-blasters. It was the last image anyone had of him before he was overrun. The air became thick with the smell of blood and meat as the aliens met the soldiers. The last two men turned and ran. They were slaughtered from behind as a floating alien ripped out both men's spines with a single swipe of its claws.

The scene played out almost identically all over the ship. Over and over... again and again... small groups of aliens descended on humans with savage efficiency. They met pulse blasters, plasma cannons, force-fields, grenade launchers and shoulder-mounted rail-guns with nothing but claws and teeth... and they won. Every time. Without exception. The most powerful energy weapons had little or no effect. Non-energy weapons could hurt more than one or two of them... then the others would turn intangible and let whatever missile or explosion had claimed their brothers pass by them harmlessly. The toughest armor yielded beneath their claws like soft butter before a red-hot blade. Fighting was futile. Retreating was equally suicidal. Though the creatures were no faster than a man... even slower when they flew... they could pass through walls and barricades with supernatural ease. No room... no barricade... no force field could keep them out. They went deck by deck and section by section... room by room... hunting down every human they could find. And when the aliens found them... the only thing their powerless prey could do was scream and die.

"ADMIRAL ON BRIDGE!"

The crew of the auxiliary bridge snapped to attention as Admiral Chyrnomir blew into the room like a winter storm. Following behind him was Chief Blackshear, a small squad of soldiers, and a few fleeing technicians they had encountered on the way from medical. The Principality had several auxiliary control rooms from which the ship could be commanded in the event that the main bridge was disabled. This was one of the few that weren't damaged in the initial attack... it was manned by a skeleton crew who's normal job was to not touch anything and be ready to move out of the way if a REAL crew needed to take over. The real crew had arrived.

"SEAL US IN!" December ordered.

The door through which they'd entered slid closed and locked. On the other side of it, a five-foot thick blast door lowered down into place, and a force-field appeared just beyond it.

Not that any of it would matter if the intruders made it this far.

The Admiral assumed the captain's chair in the center of the room. The controls lit up at his touch, and the bank of panels re-configured themselves to his personal settings.

"Lieutenant Commander Krycek... engineering!"

"Yes, sir!

The officer in charge of the auxiliary bridge took position at the engineering station.

"Blackshear... Tactical!"

"SIR! YES, SIR!"

Chief Blackshear took the weapons and tactics station

"Tell me what's going on, gentlemen... NOW!!"

"Multiple firefights in multiple areas, sir!" said Chief Blackshear. "All sections, all decks!"

"They aren't damaging any of the systems," Krycek added. "They're strictly going after the people-"

"But they're doing a damn good job of THAT," said Blackshear.

"Strike teams are reporting in, sir... what's left of them, anyway," said the ensign at the communication's board. "Weapons are having little or no effect. Enemy casualties are minimal."

"What about our troops?"

"They're being slaughtered, sir."

December scanned the array of displays and readouts in front of him. They told a desperate story: A hopelessly damaged ship besieged by an enemy against which there was no defense. An impossible situation made a thousand times worse. The Admiral's face was cold and emotionless as he watched the enemy sweep through the ship. Nothing stopped them. Not weapons. Not force-fields or barricades. Not even the empty void of space kept them at bay... the creatures floated through depressurized decks with all the ease of a man walking from one end of the room to another. They carried no weapons, yet they were slaughtering his crew by the dozens.

And through it all, there had been no communication... no call for surrender... no declaration of terms.... nothing. Nothing but bloodshed.

December watched. And he didn't say a word.

"Sir?" said Krycek. "Sir, what should we do?"

December thought for a few moment's more...

"Sir?" said Chief Blackshear. "Should we... abandon ship?"

"No," said December. He watched his monitors as several groups of technicians and soldiers headed straight toward each other... with enemy forces right behind them. They were surrounded, and they didn't even know it. Not yet. "No," December repeated. "Get me Lieutenant Lovvorn."

---


Secondary Processor Online... Booting Primary Processor-
-SYSTEM ERROR-
-SYSTEM ERROR-
-SYSTEM ERROR-
Processor not found.
Divert All Functions to Secondary...
...re-routing data paths...
...reclaiming resources...
...loading drivers...
Complete... systems rerouted. Multiple errors noted.
Running diagnostic:
A/I system damage: 23%
Hardware damage: 79% ---Warning-
Damage at Critical Levels.
Initiate Self-Repair-
ERROR! Self-repair not possible due to extreme hardware damage
and lack of resources.
Possibility of restoration to marginal operational levels: 0.000%
Repair would require
hardware resources not currently available.
...
...
Query: Evaluate possibility of incorporating local unknown materials
into chassis and
critical systems.
Calculating...
Possibility of success: 39%
...
Initiating restoration of JHASP unit utilizing unknown alien material...
...working...
...
...



---

It was a mountain of rock and debris the size of a small city... and so cloaked in darkness that they couldn't see it until they were on top of it. Chief Petty Officer Maxwell pulled hard on his control cords and deftly guided his glide-harness to a hard landing. He skidded to a halt, kicking up a cloud of dust and sending a large section of debris sliding down the side of the huge mound. He wiggled out of his harness and scrambled away as quickly as possible in case the sound of his landing had attracted attention.

Captain Hood landed almost on top of him. His compact black parachute floated gently to the ground, but by the time the chute itself touched down, both Hood and Maxwell were away.

The surface was a loose pile of rocks that varied from pebbles to boulders twice the size of the stealth-shuttle they'd arrived in. Some of the newer, larger pieces of debris were from the bridge they'd blown up earlier, but that certainly didn't account for the entire mass.

"Looks like a rock quarry," said Maxwell.

"Where's Lieutenant Zade?" Hood replied. He was looking around, but it was difficult to see more than a yard in the darkness.

"She got away from me," said Maxwell. "Damn near took my jaw off in the process. She's got to be around here somewhere."

"...ad...ould...join me..." Zade's voice was lost in a sea of static. Her transmitter was either damaged in the fall, or she'd landed too far away. Or she was buried.

"What's your location?"

"...mned if I know... Underneath something... sensors... an't penetra... clear?"

"We're clear," said Hood. "As far as we can tell, anyway."

"...tand by..."

Not far away, a large slab of the demolished bridge tilted up onto its side and fell away. It caused a landslide of debris as it tumbled away. Zade almost went with it, but she held onto a boulder with her one hand and pulled herself up to stable ground.

"So much for stealth," Maxwell muttered. "Are you all right, Lieutenant?"

"Do I look all right?" Zade replied as she sat up. The fall had battered her chassis almost beyond recognition. What little artificial skin had survived the alien's claws was now either missing or hanging off of her in tatters. The underlying metal was riddled with dents and gouges... some quite severe. Her legs were almost unusable. Both were twisted out of shape... one leg-joint was fused, and the other ankle was broken. She'd obviously landed on her feet... which were now just mangled metal lumps. When she turned her head to look at Hood, her neck made an unpleasant grinding noise. She had no face left... only a metallic skull with a permanent sinister grin and a few patches of artificial hair. But, considering the distance she'd fallen, the fact that she was still functioning at all was a testament to her cybernetic construction.

"How long before you can move?" said Hood.

"Gimme a minute."

Zade shrugged her back-pack from her shoulder and removed some equipment. The first piece was another arm, which she snapped into place with a twist. The replacement limb didn't have the artificial skin covering, and it wasn't rated for combat... but it was an arm. Now, with two working hands, she began emergency repairs on her legs... re-routing wires and replacing whatever she had spare parts for... which wasn't much. It was enough to get her on her feet, however. In just over a minute, Zade stood up. She still looked and sounded like she'd been through a shredder, but she was operational.

"I trust that this new arm isn't packed with explosives like the last one," said Maxwell.

"Unfortunately, no."

"I'll never understand why a woman who is 87% machine would booby-trap her own cybernetics."

"It got us out of trouble up there, didn't it?"

"Yes, but if someone had remotely accessed your detonation sequence, this little trip would have been over rather quickly."

"Only I know the codes to do that."

"Oh?" said Maxwell. "You mean: Q278Z918X997?"

"What? How do you-"

"If you two are finished," said Hood. "We've still got a mission to complete. Whatever we blew up up there, I doubt it was vital."

"And just how do you intend to complete the mission?" said Maxwell. "Our weapons have only limited effectiveness at best."

"We've still got grenades and explosives. We'll find a power source or control point... blow it to hell... get back to the shuttle and take off. Simple. What's the matter, Chief... don't think you can handle it?"

"Oh, I can handle it. Alone. But the two of you-"

"You're not leaving my sight, Maxwell. Now, move out."

They started down the mountain of debris, heading toward whatever waited for them at the bottom. The footing was tricky, but Maxwell had no problem picking out the most stable routes through the seemingly endless slope of loose rock. He trotted down the slope as easily as walking on solid earth. Hood slipped only a few times, but his balance was almost as keen as Maxwell's, so he quickly regained his footing. Zade was having problems. Not only was she heavier, but with balance and reflexes impaired, she quickly became an impediment to their progress.

"Walk in my footsteps," said Maxwell after she'd caused her sixth or seventh avalanche of debris. He altered his path to include only places where the Lieutenant could walk. Several times, they had to back up and find other ways around unstable areas.... areas that Hood and Maxwell could have navigated with relative ease. It slowed them down considerably, but it was a trade-off that they couldn't afford not to make. Not only was Zade carrying the heavy equipment... she could also see in the dark-

"We got a problem," she announced. She pointed up into the darkness, where there was absolutely nothing to see. "Incoming. Straight for us."

A second later, four shadows detached themselves from the black surroundings and swooped down toward them.

Captain Hood reached for the pack of grenades at his belt.

"That explosion would send us all tumbling straight to the bottom," said Maxwell. "Lieutenant Zade might find that ride entertaining, but I doubt you or I would survive it."

"I'll take care of 'em," said Zade. She scanned the ground around them and selected a fist-sized rock. She picked it up. "I noticed something on the way down-"

With a grinding, metallic whine, Zade hurled the stone at the closest creature. It flew like a bullet... there was a loud *crack* as the projectile broke the sound barrier on the way to its target. The alien saw Zade's throw, but wasn't quite fast enough to veer away-

The direct hit splattered the alien all over its compatriots. They turned intangible, even though they already knew what Zade had found out earlier-

"They can't phase through their own matter," she announced as she hurled two more stones. Two shattered alien carcasses fell from the air. The fourth creature kept right on coming; and Zade's forth throw went awry as her cybernetic arm suddenly locked up.

Sparks flew from the shoulder joint as the rock tumbled from her useless fingers. The alien shot past her, clawing three deep furrows in her skull as it passed. It flew away a short distance, then turned around and came back for another go. Zade had a rock in her other hand, but she never got a chance to use it-

WHAM!

Something flew out of the darkness and collided with the alien in mid-air. They both hit the ground and slid down the hill amid a landslide of black rocks. When they stopped moving, J-Hasp was on top of the alien... one clawed hand holding each of the creature's wrists down while his prehensile tail wrapped around the alien's neck. By now, the alien was intangible, but it was still quite unable to escape the droid's grasp. It squirmed and thrashed, but J-Hasp's claws only bit deeper into its flesh.

"HOLD HIM!" Captain Hood ordered.

At the sound of a human voice, the alien redoubled its efforts to free itself. J-Hasp unfurled his tail from its throat and held the tip of it in front of the alien's face-


-click-
SHH-LING!

Three curved blades popped out of J-Hasp's tail... they were arranged in a flat, circular disk... which immediately began to spin at high speed-

wwwhhhhzzzzzzz....

J-Hasp brought the tiny rotating saw closer to the alien's skull. The blades were black... carved from the alien's own strange matter... and the creature knew it. It watched the blades come closer-

"Not yet," said Eric. He and the others gathered around the captured alien. "I think we've found ourselves a prisoner. We can understand your language... so that probably means you can understand ours. Is that right?"

The creature hissed and spat at Hood.

Captain Hood nodded at J-Hasp, and the tail-saw doubled in speed-

zzzzzzzZZZZZZZZ

-and dipped closer to the creature's skull.

ZZZZZ-brrrrzzzZZZZZ!!!

"EEEEEEEEEEEEE!" The creature squealed as J-Hasp carved a millimeter-deep line down the center of its face. Tiny droplets of black blood splattered over J-Hasp's rebuilt chassis.

"If you CAN'T understand us, then your usefulness to us drops to somewhere around... ohhh... 'ZERO.' So, I'll ask you one more time-"

-ZZZZZZZZZZ-

"UNDERSTANDS!" the alien hissed.

"Good. Now, normally we're supposed to ask all kinds of useless questions about what you are and where you came from... how many of you are there... that sort of thing. But I don't care about any of that. All I want to know is what powers this place... and how do I blow it up?"

"NOT TELL FLESHLINGS-"

ZZZZZ-brrrrrrzzzZZZZZ!!!

J-Hasp carved another line down its face. This one about two millimeters deep.

"EEEEEEEEEEEE-THE MASTER! WE SERVE THE MASTER! MASTER'S POWER SUSTAINS US!"

"Master, eh? That'd be the fire-guy, right? The one we saw up there?"

"YEESSSSS! MASTER SENDS POWER! ORB IS RECEPTACLE!"

"Orb?"

"He means this place," said Maxwell. "I think it's powered remotely. There is no local power source for us to destroy."

"That right?" said Hood.

"YESS!"

"So... next question: How do I disable this 'Orb?'"

"NOOOOOO! NO TELL FLESHLINGS! MASTER WILL DO TERRIBLE THINGS- The alien tried to squirm away again.

ZZZZZ-brrrrrr-RRRR-zzzZZZZZ!!!

"EEEEEEEEEEE!!! NOT KNOW! NOT KNOW HOW TO DESTROY!!!"

"That weapon you hit us with. We damaged it... so that means we can destroy it. Where is it?"

"NO TELL!"

ZZZZZ-brrrrrrzzzZZZZZ

"EEEEEE-NO TELL!"

ZZZZZ-brrrrrr-RRRR-zzzZZZZZ!!!

"NO TELL!!NO TELL!!NO TELL!!NO TELL!!NO TELL!!NO TELL!!"

"Captain, please," said Maxwell. "Don't..."

"He ain't gonna talk.... so his usefulness is about over. J-Hasp: Do him."

J-Hasp's rotating blade bit deep into the creature's flesh...

ZZZZZZZZZ-brrrRRRRRRrrRRRRRR-
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENO-NO-NO-NO-NOOOOO-"
ZZZZZ
KRACK!
SPLUTCH!
ZZZZZ-BRRRR
"RREEEEEEE-"
RRRRRRR-
-crackle-
"...eeeee..."
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
CRACK!
SNAP!
"...e...eee..."
RRRRRRRRRrrrrr...zzzzzzz....

...drip...
...drip...
...drip...

-click-
SHH-LING!

Their task complete, J-Hasp's blades retracted back into his tail.

"Is it over?" said Maxwell, who had his back turned through the whole grizzly affair.

"Yeah, I'd say so," Hood chuckled. He pointed at J-Hasp. "I think I'm beginning to like this guy."

"Looks like he's incorporated alien matter into his chassis," said Zade who was just finishing repairs on her arm.

"Affirmative," said the droid. "J-Hasp fix J-Hasp." It held up its claws, which had been reconstructed into long, evil-looking curved blades with serrated edges. They were all black, like everything else in the Orb. "J-Hasp fix. J-Hasp help."

"Why is he talking like that?"

"Processor damage, maybe?" said Zade.

"Great. Now we've got a retarded droid."

"J-Hasp detects new energy signature... identical to alien weapon."

"What?"

"I'm not getting anything..." said Zade. "But then... his incorporation of their matter could be effecting his sensors."

"Meaning?" said Hood.

"Either he's located our target... or it's just a sensor-ghost."

"Well, he's the best game in town right now," said Captain Hood. "Lead us to it. But first..."

The captain glanced around at the debris surrounding them searching for something... Whatever it was, he didn't find it, so he snatched up a short length of bone from the alien corpse and tossed to J-Hasp.

"Put an edge on that for me. Sharp."

"J-Hasp make."

J-Hasp deployed his saw once more and used it to carve a knife for the Captain. It took only a few seconds to create a passable weapon... a twelve-inch blade with a razor-sharp edge. Hood smiled as he inspected the droid's handiwork.

"Nowww we're talking."


---


"EVACUATE THIS SECTION!" Lieutenant Shane ordered as he and his men stormed down the corridor. Unfortunately, most of the people within earshot were either unconscious or already dead. With the medical bay in ruins, the doctors had evacuated the patients to pre-determined safe points... but those safe points were rapidly becoming unsafe.

"What? What IS this!!?" said one of the doctors. "We have INJURED MEN here! We lost almost HALF the patients when we moved them the FIRST time... if we move again-"

"If you DON'T move, EVERYBODY'S gonna die!"

"You don't understand-"

"No, YOU don't understand. You don't understand what's coming around that corner in about twenty seconds! Now MOVE!"

"But the wounded-"

"If they can't run, LEAVE THEM!"

"I will NOT-"

"INCOMING!" shouted one of the other soldiers.

"GRENADES!" Lieutenant Shane ordered. The soldiers formed a line across the corridor... dropping to one knee and aiming their weapons back down the way they had just come. "KEEP 'EM BACK AS LONG AS WE CAN... GIVE THESE PEOPLE TIME TO ESCAPE!" He turned back to the doctor. "That won't be long...."

And then... they came.

The darkness appeared at the far end of the hallway... a rolling black cloud of dust and shadows. But it was not the cloud that sent chills down the backs of the men who saw it.... it was what the cloud hid. Glimpses of dark, twisted shapes within its heart. Things with claws and teeth... and eyes that seemed to glow with an anti-light... projecting darkness and fear onto whatever fell within their gaze. They paused at the end of the hall, and the cloud seemed to gather itself up like a lion preparing to pounce. Then it surged forward... not fast, but determined and totally unafraid of the soldiers that stood in their path.

The doctor changed his mind about staying.

"CLEAR THEM OUT!" he shouted. He needn't have bothered, doctors and patients were already scrambling... not for safety, but for ANYWHERE away from here. He grabbed the nearest patient and hauled him to his feet. It was Doctor N'Doki... the Chief Medical Officer had been unconscious since the hull-breach in medical bay.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Shane whispered the order to fire.

-thoop!-

Grenade-launchers fired with deceptively soft sounds, but their payloads made up for it with mighty, bone-shaking explosions when they hit.

KABOOM!

The first barrage blew the huge black cloud apart. Two of the creatures within it were hit with perfect shots... they vanished in flashes of light and fine spays of dark ash. The walls and floor buckled. The shockwave tore a few more of the creatures apart, but by that time, the remainder of them had simply slipped out of phase, allowing the heat and energy of the explosion to pass through them without harm. After that, the grenades that followed had no effect.

"This is it!" a soldier cried. "They're coming!"

Lieutenant Shane looked the enemy in the eye.

"Let them come," he said as he gripped his weapon tight. "Hopefully by the time they finish with us, the others would have gotten away."

"Yes sir," said the soldier. "...yes, sir..."

Behind the solid wall of soldiers, doctors were clearing away the last of the patients that would be saved. Dozens more still remained, but no one would be coming back to get them.

"...where are we going...?" N'Doki mumbled as returned to consciousness. A doctor was frantically trying to carry him away, dragging him past the bodies of still-living patients. "What is going on?"

"Evacuate!"

"But... de patients-"

"We have to go NOW!"

N'Doki looked past the patients and soldiers and saw the horror that was moments away from overwhelming them.

"We're too late," said the man who had been helping him. "God help us..."

N'Doki sighed and extended one thin arm in front of him. He suddenly clenched his hand into a hard fist-

-and something happened. No one could see it... no one could explain it. Those few who had even an inkling of what it was, already knew that they were forever forbidden from speaking of it. The soldiers winced and stumbled as something... something solid... something harder than steel, yet as fluid and invisible as the air itself... washed over them like a tidal wave. It continued down the corridor toward the alien force... but, while it had passed the soldiers and left them unharmed, it was not as gentle to their enemy. It slammed into the mass of dark bodies with all the force of a speeding asteroid. Most of the enemy was still intangible from their attempt to avoid the soldier's grenades... but it didn't matter. Intangible or not, the wave of force caught them. It sent them flying back down the corridor, but they never reached its end. N'Doki's violent folding of space-time... an effect known to previous generations as telekinesis... had shattered their bodies on impact. By the time they reached the wall, their carcasses were just fragments of bone and strips of shredded skin. In the blink of an eye, the alien force was no more than a dark black stain on the walls.

"We do not leave our wounded behind," said N'Doki as his eyes fluttered closed once again.

---

Explosions and weapon-fire literally rocked the entire deck as the soldiers made their retreat. The battle was over. They were beaten. And now all they could do was run.

But even that was turning out to be an exercise in suicidal futility.

The enemy was right behind them, and no matter how hard the soldiers fought or how fast they ran... the enemy was STILL right behind them. Scouts to the front and the rear of the squad shouted dismal reports back to the commanding officer. Several groups of the aliens were converging. Possible escape routes were being cut off one at a time. Passages to other decks... and to possible reinforcements... were either occupied by the enemy or made impassible by the original assault on the ship. They were trapped, and were becoming MORE trapped with every second that passed.

Other frantic communications broke into the soldier's earpieces. Technicians and other crewmen were trapped here as well. They couldn't get out. No one could. All they could do was run and let the aliens herd them together like sheep to the slaughter. They all knew it was happening, but they couldn't do anything about it.

"YOU! YOU! COME ON!" the commanding officer shouted down an intersecting corridor. Three technicians... all that remained of an entire work-detail... sprinted down the hallway and joined the soldier's mad dash.

"They're right behind us!" said one of the techs. "They're EVERYWHERE!"

"We got enemy movement on corridors six and seven!" one of the scouts radioed. Corridor six was where the techs had just come from. Corridor seven was ahead of them.

"DOUBLE-TIME!" the commander ordered. They had to pass the next corridor before the enemy spilled out into the passage ahead of them. Beyond it, corridor eight was clear... but it was also collapsed and totally unusable. As were corridors nine thought twelve. That entire section of the deck was in ruins, but just past it were... cargo bays. No escape, no reinforcements or better weapons... just cargo bays.

The commanding officer decided that they were as good a place to die as any; and their alien pursuers seemed satisfied in driving them toward that very fate. The soldiers barely made it past corridor seven before dark shapes slithered, slid, hissed, and floated out of the hallway. A lucky grenade-shot took out a few of them... but not nearly enough. The solider who launched the grenade earned himself a quick but painful death as the remaining creatures ripped him to pieces.

At least that slowed them down for a few seconds.

The soldiers kept running. They entered the damaged section of the deck, where piles of wreckage created a tight maze of metal and ruined hardware. Most of the lights were out, and large stretches of the deck were held together with nothing but temporary plating and emergency force-fields. It was a place much too dangerous for men to work, so dozens of repair drones toiled tirelessly at their programmed assignments... repairing this... reconstructing that... piecing the ship back together. They were everywhere, but the aliens had no interest in them. The enemy wanted warm flesh to rend and tear... not hard metal and circuit components.

Soldiers raced through the wreckage, shoving drones and hardware aside as they dashed for whatever illusion of safety awaited them at the far end. The commanding officer paused long enough to make sure that everyone got past a particularly narrow area... and that's when something reached out of the darkness and grabbed him.

"WHA-"

He turned quickly, already preparing to fire his weapon. Then he saw what it was that had seized his arm...

A few seconds later, the alien squadron poured down the corridor like a flood. Dozens of black shapes rushed past the drones, hot on the trail of their true quarry. They followed the scent of fear and blood straight to its source.

The humans had barricaded themselves in Cargo Bay 7-A. They obviously intended to make a stand, but all they'd managed to do was seal themselves in their own mass grave. The dark creatures floated through the walls and the pitiful force-field intended to hold them back. Soldiers immediately began blasting them with energy-weapons. The cargo bay rattled and shook from the discharges, but the aliens waded through the blasts without the slightest flinch... to them, the weapon-fire was just harmless flashes of light. The wall behind them began to glow from the soldier's barrage... the cargo bay shook... the floor rattled. Dark, alien forms streaked across the room and tore into the first few soldiers... claws bit deep into all too-fragile flesh, and the humans died with tortured screams of-

"SystemError#1010111010110110101101010100001101010111...."

Sparks burst from the drone's torn chassis as the metal construct toppled over. The holographic images that disguised the robot flickered and faded... an effect that quickly passed on to the other, undamaged units. The soldiers and technicians winked out of existence, and simple metal robots took their places before the alien's confused glares.

One hologram, however, remained in place a bit longer than the others. The 'commanding officer' drone stepped to the front of the others...

"Ohhh, you should see the looks on your little ugly faces," he said. His own face and uniform had begun to change... when he spoke again, Lieutenant Lovvorn addressed the intruders as a perfect holographic reproduction of himself... complete with fake heartbeat, heat signature, and artificial chemical scents. "You look like you haven't figured it out yet... well... remember those drones you passed on the way here? Those weren't drones. And I'll bet you didn't know that the Principality's cargo bays were remotely detachable for easy unloading. I'll leave you to figure out what that means on your own... but I wouldn't take TOO long, if I were you..." Lovvorn waved at the aliens as his image began to fade. "Buh-bye!"

The instant before the hologram was completely gone... the volley of antimatter missiles from the Principality struck their target. The detached cargo bay, which had been floating freely in space since the aliens' arrival, vanished in a magnificent explosion.

Admiral Chyrnomir watched the explosion on his monitor.

"Survivors?" he asked.

"A couple," Lieutenant Commander Krycek replied. "Two... maybe three objects moving back toward the ship. The rest are either dead or hiding among the wreckage."

December nodded and examined the sensor readings himself. The monitor on his right flickered, and Lieutenant Lovvorn's
face appeared.

"Isn't that just like aliens..." he beamed. "Creepy... but not all that bright! But then, they WERE dealing with a superior intelligence."

"A job well done, Lieutenant," said December.

"Why... thank you, sir! It's about TIME someone recognized my obvious-"

December cut the transmission with a wave of his hand.

"That saved a few lives, sir," said Chief Blackshear. "But we've still got intruders all over the ship. Multiple decks. Enemy groups are separating into smaller units to hit more areas at once. We've got... uh-oh..."

"Chief Blackshear?"

"...I... I think you'd better get Lieutenant Lovvorn back on the line. He's about to have some company. And so are we..."

---


With the J-Hasp unit in the lead, the party descended the mountain of rubble. After a few minutes the slope began to lessen... and it continued to do so until the 'ground' was flat. That was when they realized that the 'mountain' was contained within an enormous cylindrical chamber with a diameter measured in miles. The walls were dotted with dark shadows that turned out to be passages leading back into the depths of the Orb. There were hundreds of them. Were it not for the J-Hasp unit, they would have had no idea which way to go... but the droid's sensors sniffed out what they presumed was the right passage. The droid lead them to an opening that was indistinguishable from any of the others, and once again they were wandering the dark passages of the alien stronghold.

The place was a maze of corridors and dead-ends. There were plenty of places to hide, but so far, nothing to hide FROM. So far.

"You getting anything yet, Lieutenant?" said the Captain.

"No sign of whatever signal he's following," Zade replied. "If there is one."

"J-Hasp, are you certain-"

"J-Hasp certain," said the droid. "Alien material enhanced J-Hasp sensor range to 452% of previous limits. Energy weapon detected. Estimate arrival in fifteen minutes at current rate of travel. WARNING: J-Hasp also detects multiple alien life-forms approaching current position from the rear."

"Go," said the Captain. "You three go on ahead. I'll take care of our friends behind us."

"Are you sure, sir?" said Zade.

"Positive."

"How will you find us-"

"I'll be right behind you, Chief," said Hood as he backed away from the others. "This won't take long at all..." Captain Hood faded into the shadows and disappeared. "Now go."

Zade hesitated. She stared into the darkness where Hood had vanished.
"Actually, he's over there now-" said Maxwell, pointing in another direction. "And he can take care of himself. Let's go."

Maxwell, Zade, and J-Hasp continued down the hallway, leaving Hood behind.

Slightly less than a minute later, three alien creatures glided into the section of corridor where Hood waited. They were moving at a brisk pace, but they slowed when they felt the presence of warm flesh nearby. Two stopped to search the shadows, while the third backed away to block any attempted escape. It needn't have bothered.

"SSSS-There!" the first creature hissed. It slid into the darkness where Hood was crouching, but Hood burst out of his hiding place before the creature could attack. With his blade held out to one side, he sprang past the alien, slicing not once... but THREE times as he passed. The alien...with black, oily blood spurting from its ruptured abdomen... whirled and slashed with its claws, but Hood had thrown himself to the floor and rolled into another dark corner.

The second creature was already on the attack. It threw itself at the captain, but again, Hood was too quick. As he sidestepped the creature, his blade lashed out. A quick jab to the gut got the alien's attention.... so that it was FULLY aware when Hood twisted the blade and yanked it to the side, literally ripping out the creature's gut with one vicious strike.

"EEEEEEEE!!!!" The wounded alien glided away with both claws clamped to its leaking midsection. Hood watched it, seemingly unaware of the first creature's presence behind him. He waited for the enemy to get close, then went into a wild, spinning slash that carved a huge chasm across the creature's lower chest. The alien slashed at Hood's arm... but the deadly appendage moved like molasses compared to Hood. He avoided the claws and then darted back in to cleanly slice the fingers from the alien's hand.

The alien made a deep, frightened roar as it moved back... flailing its now finger-less hand around and spraying dark blood all over the corridor.

Now the third creature was on the move. It rushed straight toward Captain Hood, who promptly ignored it and attacked the SECOND alien that was trying to sneak up from the side. The creature was already leaking blood, but Hood showed it about as much mercy as they had shown the Principality. One slash doubled the size of its hideous mouth... and another opened up ANOTHER mouth a few inches below it... right across the centerline of its throat. The creature toppled back away from him... not moving nearly as gracefully as it was before it encountered Hood. It went a short distance and collapsed as Hood spun and side-stepped the third alien's arm. In the instant that followed, Hood's blade struck so many times that even HE lost count. When he spun away from the alien's claws, the creature's other hand was hanging from its shoulder by a few dark threads.

Hood paused...

...then thrust his knife behind him, right into the center of the first alien's chest. He tore the blade free, spun and slashed again... and then again. Hood was all over the staggering creature, driving it back with the shear ferocity of his attacks. Each touch of Hood's blade sent bits of oily flesh and splatters of black blood flying across the corridor in beautiful arcs. He backed the alien into the wall, where it literally oozed its way down to the floor and collapsed in a wet heap.

"Oh, no you don't," Hood growled. The third alien was retreating down the hallway, going back the way it had come. Hood charged after it. The creature turned and slashed without warning, but Hood had already anticipated the amateurish move. Hood ducked and, with one wide slash, took out the tendons on both of the creature's legs. The foul thing dropped like a stone, and Hood's blade had touched it twice more in the time it took to hit the ground. It thrashed around in the growing pool of its own blood... trying to hiss through the bleeding hole where its throat used to be. The only sound it made was a strained, weak gurgle... which ended when Captain Hood jammed his blade up through the creature's chin and into its brain. He twisted the knife and sawed it in and out of the alien's skull until the creature ceased to move. Then he calmly pulled the blade out, wiped it on his pants, and went in search of the others.

---

"We're close," Lieutenant Zade announced. The long, winding corridor had finally settled on a single direction, which they'd been following for several minutes. "I'm picking up some residual energy that matches what hit the Principality."

"Like J-Hasp say," the droid replied. "J-Hasp find!"

"This little fellow's voice is beginning to get annoying," said Maxwell. "Isn't there anything you can do to fix it?"

"Not at the moment," said Zade.

"J-Hasp detect alien life forms ahead!"

Ahead of them was a steep upward incline. An eerie yellow light was filtering down from whatever lay at the top of it.

"Hold a moment," said Maxwell. He crept up ahead... then returned to the others. "Motherload," he said. "The droid was on the money... that alien device is right above us... and much bigger than we thought. Hand me the explosives; I'll set them and we can get out of here."

"You expect me to hand over a pack of explosives to a prisoner?"

"If I were a prisoner then I'd still be in prison now, wouldn't I?"

"I'll set the charges. If there's anything I know... its blowing things up."

"No offense, Lieutenant, but when you walk, you sound like a mid-air collision in slow motion. And I'm no stranger to sabotage."

"Exactly why you're not touching the explosives."

"You're angry about the access-code thing, aren't you." said Maxwell.

"J-Hasp suggests-"

"Quiet," Zade snapped.

"Fine... if you want to fight off a horde of angry aliens while trying to set explosives that could blow us all to atoms... then let's go."

"We'll send the droid."

"Droids aren't-"

"J-Hasp suggests-"

"Hush."

"This model droid isn't rated for demolition and sabotage. Let ME go and we'll be out of here before the enemy even knows-"

"Wait a minute... I'm detecting-"

-click-
SHH-LING!
zzzZZZZZZZZZZRRRRRRR
"EEEEEEEEEEE!!!"

The J-Hasp unit had engaged several aliens that were gliding down the slope from above. There were five of them, but when J-Hasp's claws and saw-blade began slicing them to chunks, the sound attracted several more. Quite a few more.

"CLEAR US A PATH!" Zade ordered.

zzzZZZZZZZZZ!!!

J-Hasp's blade whipped back and forth in wide arcs, cutting whatever got in its way. Aliens in the rear of the group pushed forward, shoving the ones in the front right into the killing zone

ZZZZZZZZZZ-BRRRRRRRRRR-ZZZZZzzRRRRRR!

The creatures slashed at the droid, but J-Hasp's precision-engineered reflexes were quicker. Aliens lost arms, hands, and fingers by the dozen as J-Hasp literally sliced a path right through them. Lieutenant Zade were close behind, and in less than a minute they'd slaughtered their way up the slope and into the main chamber.

"...whoa..." Zade gasped. The chamber was huge... larger than the debris-pit where they'd landed, larger than any of the rooms they'd flown through on the way in. It was if someone had scooped a mile-deep cavern out of the Orb's substance. The walls were of the same black substance as everything else, but they'd been polished to smooth, almost frictionless surface... like fine marble, or even glass.

But it was the gem that caught Zade's attention. There were no adjectives in Zade's vocabulary that could even begin to describe its size. It was bigger than the Principality by at least an order of magnitude... so large that it, MUST have been a natural formation. And yet, its millions of polished facets destroyed any theory of natural origin. Someone... or several thousand someones... had carved it out of something even larger. The yellowish-orange gem dominated the entire chamber. There was no more than a yard or two of space between it and the wall for as far up as Zade could see... which was quite a long distance. Dark alien forms dotted gem's surface, floating along side it and running their clawed hands across the facets. There were still a few cracks in the gem from the Principality's desperate attack, and these cracks were where the aliens congregated the heaviest... like ants swarming over a morsel of discarded food. And as Zade watched, the cracks got smaller and smaller. Whatever the aliens were doing... it was working fast, and it was almost complete.

"I'd say they're not far away from being operational," said Zade.

"I'd say we need to get out of here quickly," Maxwell replied. Several groups of aliens detached themselves from the giant crystal and floated down toward them. Zade removed her backpack and pulled out a small rectangular case. Inside it were five oblong objects that looked like grenades, only they were larger, longer, and heavier.

"Fusion grenades," said Maxwell. "That ought to do the trick... assuming we can place them."

"That's why I brought these," said Zade. The next thing out of her pack were five cylinders with drill-bits on one end. There was a hollow space inside each of them... for the grenades.

"Robotic bore-mines."

"Don't leave home without 'em."

Zade loaded each grenade into its delivery unit... then set each one for distance and time.

"Give us time to find our way back to the shuttle," Maxwell warned.

"I know what I'm doing," Zade snapped.

Meanwhile, J-Hasp was keeping the aliens at bay.

zzzZZZZ-Z-Z-zzz...

The saw-blade on his tail suddenly seized up... too much gore and sinew in the mechanism. Seeing their opportunity, the aliens surged forward.

-click-

J-Hasp's claws extended... going form their normal 3-inch length to over six inches. The serrated edges on each claw began to vibrate ... each one becoming a motorized saw in its own right...

...zzzzzZZZZZ!!!

-and the fight was on again.

CRACK!!

Zade's fist pounded the gem's surface with over a ton of force... creating a small crack in the facet. She placed the tip of one bore-mine against the crack, and activated it.

k-k-kk-kkkZZZZZZZZZZ!!!

The drill-bit began to bore its way into the gem... where it would worm its way to the approximate center and wait for detonation. The intelligent mine filled in the hole it left behind it with a polymer glue and fragments of the gem itself, making extraction nearly impossible.

CRACK!!

The lieutenant's fist created another hole, this time a fragment of gem broke away. Maxwell caught it before it hit the ground and examined it as Zade set another mine.

k-k-kk-kkkZZZZZZZZZZ!!!

"Hmmmm...."

"EEEEEEE!!!!"

The droid was being over-run. About a dozen aliens had surrounded him... each of them bore wounds from the droid's claws, but J-Hasp had a few deep gouges himself, but when they all charged him, the droid flipped into the air and scurried up the polished wall. Most of the aliens floated after him, but some turned to Maxwell and Zade.... they converged on the pair of saboteurs.

Zade set another mine.

CRACK!!
k-k-kk-kkkZZZZZZZZZZ!!!

"We've got company," said Maxwell.

"Yeah, you sure do-"

CHUNK!
"EEEK!"

Captain Hood's blade split one creature's back open from neck to pelvis. The thing turned instinctively even as it fell. A spinning slash removed its throat. Now all of the aliens turned toward the Captain. The first alien got its abdomen ventilated, but the others crowded in too fast for Hood to react. He backed away... searching for an opening as they came-

There was a humm and a bright flash-

"EEEEEEEeee-"

Several aliens went down in crackling heaps of sizzling flesh... mowed down by Maxwell's pulse blaster. He fired twice more, and two more creatures cried out; their bodies literally turning to cinders before Hood's eyes.

"Oh, this is lovely," said Maxwell. Though his blaster was a single-handed weapon, he was employing both hands... one to hold the weapon, and the other to hold the gem fragment in front of it. Whenever he fired, the energy discharge passed through the fragment before it struck the target. The gem fragment was unharmed... but whatever was on the other side of it was incinerated. Maxwell took out the remaining aliens surrounding Hood, then began picking off the ones that the J-Hasp unit was keeping occupied.

"How are you doing that?" said the captain.

"I should think that's fairly obvious," Maxwell replied. Chunks of sizzling flesh and brief showers of ashes fell all around them as Maxwell shot the aliens out of the air. "This gem allows THEIR energy to harm US... so it should logically follow-"

"Gimme one of those!"

-CRACK!-

Zade broke off a few more chunks of crystal and tossed one of them to Captain Hood. Then she drove in another mine-

k-k-kk-kkkZZZZZZZZZZ!!!

Following Maxwell's lead, Captain hood used the gem fragment to re-modulate the beam from his weapon... with deadly results for the aliens. But while Maxwell was concentrating on the aliens that were attacking them, Hood began firing at he ones further away... the ones still conducting repairs on the crystal. He shot them down one at a time, chuckling to himself as their dark carcasses crackled and burned on the to the floor

"Please don't chuckle so loudly," said Maxwell. "You're spoiling my concentration."

Maxwell incinerated a few more aliens, allowing the J-Hasp unit room to operate.

"Didn't know you had any of that killer instance left in you, Chief," said the captain.

"Killing is an instinct for animals and barbarians, Captain... for civilized men, it must be taught. And I taught the men that taught you. You'd do well to remember that."

"This crystal isn't even getting warm," said Hood. He was firing continuously now, incinerating everything he could see.

"We should bring back as many samples as possible-"

-CRACK!-
k-k-kk-kkkZZZZZZZZZZ!!!

"Last mine is in," said Zade. "Grab all the trinkets you want and lets get out of here."

Zade selected a few large chunks for herself while Maxwell and Hood filled their packs with gem fragments.

"J-HASP!" Captain Hood shouted. "WE'RE MOVING OUT!

"J-Hasp comes! J-Hasp find ship for Captain!"

The droid dropped down to the floor and followed the group back the way they had come. Behind them, more aliens swooped down to repair the section fo the crystal that Zade had damaged. Hood fried them as soon as they came into range.

"Back to the ship!" he announced. "Follow the droid!" Beside him, Zade was affixing crystal shards to her weapons. "And on the way, terminate any enemy troops with extreme prejudice!"

"With pleasure, sir!"

Zade fired a pulse-cannon blast at the ceiling, which collapsed into the corridor behind them... sealing their escape route for as long as the aliens took to dig it back out.

"...and if you see anything that looks important on the way out... blow it straight to hell!"

---

"Oh, dear," Lieutenant Lovvorn muttered as he watched the display. Alien forces were all over the ship, but his attention was focused on one small group... a group that was heading right for him. The Admiral had ordered him to abandon his station, but unfortunately it wasn't that simple. There were still several computer nodes out of operation, and 59% of the computer system's bandwidth was being routed through his cerebral implants. If he simply unplugged himself, the resulting shock to the computer system could... theoretically... undo all of the repairs he'd worked so hard to orchestrate.

"Lieutenant Lovvorn," the computer announced. "Need I remind you-"

"Don't worry, darling," said the Lieutenant. "Just a few last-minute instructions... and I'll be ready." Lovvorn closed his eyes and continued injecting machine-code into the datastream coursing through his head. All over the ship, subtle changes in the AI-system prepared the network for the removal of 59% of its bandwidth. "Just another minute..."

"I'm afraid you don't have another minute, Lieutenant."

"Yes, yes... I know."

"I suggest you open your eyes."

"Huh?" Lovvorn opened his eyes just in time to see the trio of aliens floating through the double-reinforced titanium door. Naturally there was a protective force-field on the other side of it.... and, naturally, the aliens had gone right through it.

The dark shapes bared their dagger-like teeth and hissed at Lovvorn.

"heh, heh... heh..." Lovvorn chuckled nervously. "uhhh... any of you want to hear a good joke?"

The aliens advanced on Lovvorn.

"Computer... uhhh... do something. Please?"

"I'm afraid there are no available options."

"YOU'RE afraid!?! Computer: Detach station!"

The alcove of panels and control boards swung away from the wall... carrying Lovvorn along with it. He floated up and out of the alien's path, but they quickly adjusted their trajectory and followed him.

"Lieutenant Lovvorn," the computer began.

"I'm kinda busy right now, computer!"

Under Lovvorn's mental control, the alcove looped and dodged several fly-bys. Lovvorn was trying to maneuver himself toward the door...

"Lieutenant, do you remember the sensor-anomaly that we encountered a few hours ago-"

"Not noooooowww!"

WHOOSH!
SKREEEEEEE!!!!

Two aliens cornered the floating alcove and ran their claws down both sides of it.... they ripped off several long strips of metal and reached inside to destroy the delicate controls underneath...

POP!
CRACKLE!

"...uh-oh..."

The alcove dropped like a stone-

CLANG!

Fortunately it wasn't very high off the ground, so Lovvorn was still very much alive and conscious when the aliens roared toward him. He was trapped under the wreckage, and couldn't move.

"...I have detected that anomaly again," the computer continued, seemingly oblivious to the Lieutenant's imminent demise.
"It is traveling toward our position at a high rate of speed."

"It's been fun, computer," said Lovvorn. "I'm sorry I never got around to giving you a name-" Lovvorn looked up at the creatures as they descended. "I regret that I have only one life to give for my... oh forget it: HELLLLP! SOMEBODY HELLLP MEEE-"

wwwwwWWWWWWHHOOOOOOSH!

Suddenly there was an incredible wind, and a flash of light that was the purest, most beautiful shade of blue that Lovvorn had ever seen.

And then it was gone.

And the aliens were still there.

They stood motionless for an instant, and then they toppled over. They came apart as they fell... arms, legs, heads... fingers... all hit the floor separately. In the blink of an eye, they'd been neatly sliced into sections.

Lovvorn just lay there and looked at the rather large mess.

"Uhhh.... did... uhhhh...."

And that's when he saw it. There... standing in the corner. A shape. A burred image, just like the one he THOUGHT he'd seen before. But this time it didn't disappear. In fact, the longer it stood there, the less blurry the image became. It seemed to resolve itself into something almost recognizable: It was a man. A man who wasn't all there... he was still blurred, and Lovvorn could see portions of the wall behind him. It was like a poorly-formed hologram of a man wearing the blue uniform of a ship technician. He was holding something in his hand... a sharp piece of metal, one of the shards that the aliens had torn free of the alcove. The metal seemed more solid than the hand that held it.

"Uhhh... c-computer? Is there a hologram operating in this room?"

"Negative. Upon further examination, the sensor-anomaly has been determined to be a tangible energy field."

"I'm looking at... at a force-field?"

"Affirmative."

"But... uhhh..."

The image moved. Actually, it didn't MOVE... it just vanished from one place and reappeared in another. Lovvorn looked up and saw the 'force field' looking right down at him. It was standing right beside him. It had a face. Lovvorn didn't recognize it, but it was definitely a face. With eyes. Two of them. They were glowing, and seemed to change color at random.

The face's mouth became blurry, and then there was a high-pitched squeal reminiscent of the buzzing of a hundred rather angry insects.

The sound stopped, and the mouth solidified... or became about as solid as the rest of the face.

Lovvorn thought for a moment...

"Computer, replay that sound... but slow it down, ohhh... by a factor of a hundred."

"Replaying:

"PLEASEDON'TBEAFRAID.CANYOUUNDERSTANDME?MYNAMEISENSIGNBLAKEMOORE.
IWASWORKINGINTHELABWITHDOCTORPARKWHENSOMETHINGHAPPENED.
IDONTUNDERSTANDWHATHAPPENEDTOME...PLEASEHELPME!!!"

It took a few seconds for Lovvorn to separate the stream of barely intelligible sounds into words.

"Ensign Moore," he said. "Ensign BLAKE Moore..."

"Ensign B. Moore was an advanced technician assigned to the Cthrain project with Dr. Princeton Park," said the computer.

"But we blew that lab up," Lovvorn gasped. "... you should be dead! Well, you're obviously not, but you SHOULD be. But then again... maybe you're not alive OR dead... Cthrain radiation has been known to have some strange quantum effects..."

The 'man' made another string of sounds. The computer replayed them, slowing them down even further.

"You're talking too slowly... I can't understand you. Please... can you tell me what's happened to me!? WHAT'S GOING ON!?!"

"Computer, I'm about to insert my thoughts into the datastream... please convert them to sound and play at 200 times normal speaking speed. I think Mr. Moore and I have a few things to discuss..."

---

"Here they come!" Chief Petty Officer Blackshear announced. "They're just breached the primary force-field around the deck... we've got about a minute before they're coming through that door!"

Admiral Chyrnomir watched the alien intruders on his monitor.

"Very well," he said. His fingers danced across the control panel. "Preparing to jettison and self-destruct the auxiliary bridge. Activating emergency escape modules"

Two large cylindrical areas of the floor rose up, revealing a pair of escape pods that had been built into the control room. Together they were large enough for the entire bridge crew... barely.

"Remote detonation systems are non-operational," Lieutenant Krycek said. "Someone will have to stay here and do the deed."

"ME, sir!" Blackshear blurted. "I'll stay here and keep those bastards busy-"

"Your valor is noted... and unnecessary," said the Admiral. "I will remain."

"Sir!?"

"But sir!"

"Rendezvous at the tertiary control room and orchestrate emergency evacuation of all remaining personnel. Then destroy the Principality. That is my final order."

"But-"

"DO IT! INTO THE ESCAPE PODS, NOW!"

"They've just breached the outer doors!" said Blackshear.

"Helloooooo... anybody there?" Lieutenant Lovvorn's voice boomed over the intercom. "Bridge? Admiral?"

"Abandon ship, Lieutenant!" The admiral shouted back. "That is an ORDER-"

"I see you've got some uglies outside your door... soon to be INSIDE your door... but don't worry. I'm sending you some help. He should be there momentarily, so I suggest you open the door-"

"INTRUDERS ON THE BRIDGE!"

All eyes turned to the supposedly impassible door as dark shapes flooded through it. Admiral Chyrnomir leapt to his feet. Blackshear threw himself at the first creature as the bridge doors slid open. The aliens squealed in delight...

...and then became so many piles of severed limbs as a blue flash of light raced through the bridge.

Chief Blackshear landed unceremoniously on the floor... in a pool of black blood that WAS the alien he'd intended to attack.

And, standing two yards away from him... directly in front of Admiral Chyrnomir... was Ensign Blake Moore. He still held the piece of sharp metal he'd borrowed from Lovvorn's alcove. He'd used it as a sword, and it was red hot from the friction. The black blood that coated it sizzled and smoked.

Ensign Moore saluted, but the motion was much, much too fast to follow.

"...Lieutenant Lovvorn?" the Admiral questioned. "Would you care to explain this?"

"Meet my new best friend, Ensign Moore. It would take someone a lot smarter than me to figure out the details, but the general concept is: technician plus unstable Cthrain energy equals sentient tangible energy field... Oh, and he's really, really, fast. He can walk through walls, too... but then he'd have to leave that nifty sword behind and what would be the fun in THAT, eh?"

"Ensign Moore?"

"Oh, I'm sure he'd love to talk," said Lovvorn. "But he's got all these aliens to kill... I'm sure you understand, sir."

Then the 'ensign' was gone, leaving a very confused bridge-crew behind.

Admiral Chyrnomir sat back down in his chair and watched his monitors. He searched for signs of the mysterious ensign, but found none.

"What is Ensign Moore's location?" he asked.

"Indeterminate," Krycek replied. "The scanners can't keep up with him... as far as the computer is concerned... he's... everywhere, sir."

And he WAS everywhere. The living force-field was moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light... much too fast for the cameras to pick him up, but that ALSO meant he was moving too fast for the aliens to react to his presence. Deck by deck... sector by sector... he cut the intruders down with the hot piece of metal he carried as a sword. They never saw him coming... never had the chance to turn intangible. There was no warning... no mercy... and, very shortly, no aliens.

"Enemy troop-count is...uhhh..." Chief Blackshear began. "Uhhh... the, uhhh..."

"Chief Blackshear?"

"There... there ARE no enemy troops on the ship, sir. Not any more. They're...uhh... gone. Dead. All of 'em. Sir."

"SIR!" Krycek exclaimed. "Primary power systems have just been returned to operation on decks one through five. And six. And seven..."

"What is going on, Lieutenant?" December asked Lovvorn, who was smiling at him from the monitor.

"Not sure," Lovvorn said with a shrug. "but my guess is... he's fixing the ship. He IS a technician, after all."

"Reactor #1 is reporting repairs complete..." said Krycek.

"Well, what are you waiting for, Lieutenant? Bring it online."

"Reactor One firing... online... It's stable and holding. Now reactor THREE is reporting completed repairs... power systems restored on decks 8 through 10. Starting reactor three and routing main power... main systems are online and holding, sir!"

"Weapon systems are ONLINE!" said Chief Blackshear.

"COMPUTER SYSTEMS online!" added Krycek. "Full engineering functions have been restored!"

"Whoooo, this is fun!" Lovvorn squealed. "Go, Blake, Go!"

"Communications... ONLINE! Reactor FOUR is ready to fire! Bringing it online now!"

"Main sensors are back!" said Blackshear. "Conducting sensor-sweeps... SIR! Energy levels in alien vessel are rising-"

"Incoming transmission from Captain Hood, sir!" said the officer at the communications station.

"Put it through."

"...I think we pissed 'em off good, sir," said the captain. "And in about fifteen minutes they're gonna have a nasty surprise in their primary weapons system. We're on our way back."

"Just in time, Captain."

"We may not HAVE fifteen minutes, sir," said Blackshear. "The alien vessel is ramping up power levels at an exponential rate... much faster than before. Something big is happening down there."

"Primary propulsion systems are still offline, sir" said Krycek. "And they're probably gonna stay that way. They're damaged beyond repair... at ANY speed."

"And our weapons didn't do SQUAT against it before," Blackshear added.

"We'll see about that," said Captain Hood. "We've got a load of something our weapons technicians MIGHT be interested in. Suggest we have some techs standing by to modify our most powerful weapons. Have someone meet us in the docking bay... ETA: two minutes. Might not be much time, but-"

"Time is one thing that we now have in abundance, Captain," said the Admiral.

"Sir?"

"I shall explain when you arrive. Chyrnomir, out."


---

The stealth shuttle glided silently into the docking bay. The bay doors closed, and when the compartment finished pressurizing, technicians flooded into the room to secure the shuttle and its contents. When the shuttle doors opened, they all backed away with muted yelps and silent gasps... Lieutenant Zade was the first one out.

"What's everyone looking at?" she sneered. Even scored with claw-marks and covered with alien gore, her titanium skull still gleamed wickedly in the bright light of the docking bay.

"Get yourself fixed up, lieutenant's," said Hood as he exited the shuttle. "Meet me on the auxiliary bridge. This thing isn't over yet."

"I'm fine," said Zade as she fell in behind him.

"Maxwell! You too."

"To the bridge? I'm honored."

"Don't be... I just don't want you wandering off."

"You're assuming I can't just wander off the bridge?"

The J-Hasp unit was the last...thing... out of the shuttle. It drew numerous stairs from the technicians, who noticed its 'improvements.'

"Hey, what's this-" One technician tried to get a closer look.

"No Touch J-Hasp!" the droid hissed. It revealed its new set of razor-sharp claws... "J-Hasp not stupid! No Dis-assemble J-Hasp! GO AWAY!"

"Ooookay. Fine," said the technician. "Sorry."

"Leave the droid alone, you've got more important things to do. Place these over the main weapon emitters," Captain Hood handed over all the crystal fragments they'd collected.

"But-"

"NOW! HURRY!"

Hood ran all the way to the auxiliary bridge, with Maxwell right behind them. And J-Hasp running along the ceiling above them. Zade brought up the rear... at a distance. Her damaged cybernetics couldn't keep up with the others.

"STATUS!" Hood shouted as he stepped onto the bridge. He saluted the admiral almost as an afterthought.

"If they wanted to fire their weapon they could have done it by now," said Blackshear.

"I knew we should have set shorter timers. I have some techs modifying our weapons. This time the fight won't be one-sided...." Hood examined the ship's systems on his monitor. "Looks like we weren't hurt nearly as bad as we thought."

"We were," said the Admiral. "However, repairs were made with unusual efficiency."

"Three out of four reactors online? Weapons at 75%? Communications? We've got months worth of repairs done in just a few hours?"

"I shall explain later... perhaps after you've explained what happened to our rather expensive Stealth/Reconnaissance droid."

"Aye, sir."

December turned around in his seat to see who else had entered.

"Maxwell," he said with a slight nod.

"December," Chief Maxwell replied.

"You two know each other?" said Captain Hood.

"Of course," the admiral replied. Maxwell flashed Hood a sly smile.

"You're in my station, soldier!" Zade announced. She was glaring at Chief Blackshear, who was occupying the weapons and tactical station. "Who are you?"

"Uhhh...." Blackshear looked up into Zade's permanent metallic grin. "Uhhhh... Chief... uhhh..."

"Move."

"MA'AM! Yes, MA'AM!"

Blackshear launched himself out of Zade's way with comical speed.

"Sir," Zade said as she examined the sensor readings. "Something's happening."

"On screen."

A holographic image of the alien vessel appeared at the front of the bridge. The ship's single weapon... the giant gem... was glowing angrily. It pulsed like a giant, fiery heartbeat... a heart that beat faster and faster and faster...

"I'll check on our weapons modifications," said Hood. He got a weaponry-technician on his monitor. "Are we ready to go, soldier?"

"SIR! I was just about to call you, SIR!"

"I'll take that as a yes."

"NO, SIR! The material you brought us, sir... it's GONE, sir!"

"What?"

"It just VANISHED, sir! We were inserting it into the firing chambers when there was a blue flash... and the crystals just... VANISHED!"

Captain Hood gave the admiral a worried glance.

"I took the liberty of adjusting your orders, Captain," said the Admiral.

"What? Why, sir! Those crystals are-"

"-are going exactly where you said they should go, Captain Hood."

"But I don't underst-"

"Sir, we've got a security breach on Deck 4, Section 17," said Krycek.

"Ignore it," said the Admiral.

"That's the False Dawn device!" Hood turned to see if Maxwell was still in the room. He was.

"...and we've got ANOTHER security breach on Deck 8, Cargo Bay 9."

"That's where Dr. Park stored his auxiliary equipment," said Maxwell.

"And how would you know THAT piece of classified information, Chief?" said Hood.

"May I re-direct your attention to the alien vessel that's about blast us back into the stone age?" said Maxwell.

Giant plumes of flame were now erupting from the surface of the Orb... shooting out into space from the cracks between the Orb's giant armor plates. The flames grew larger and more intense as the giant gem's pulses got brighter.... and brighter... and brighter...

"Matter-AntiMatter missiles are ready to fire," said Zade. "But we don't have many left-"

"Target their weapon and fire," December said calmly. "We need to keep them busy for a few moments more..."

Missiles streaked toward the Orb... and plumes of white-hot fire lashed out to swat them out of space.

"That's a new one," said Zade.

"Energy levels still increasing!"

Now the entire Orb was on fire. Its dark surface vanished beneath a layer of flame several miles thick.

"If it keeps growing like that, it'll engulf us!" said Krycek.

...and then the bridge was filled with light. The holographic image of the alien ship flickered and went out... then returned as the computer compensated for the sudden exponential increase in the object's brightness.

The Orb was a miniature sun. Far too small to be a REAL star, yet with an energy output approaching that of a stellar reaction a thousand times its size.

"Five minutes to detonation," said Hood. "Assuming the mines are still in there. Definitely have to set shorter timers next time..."

"Captain..." Zade pointed at the Orb. The incredible ball of fire was beginning to change again... plumes of flame skirted across its burning surface... merging into something that Zade and Hood had seen before.

"It's him," said Hood.

"Who?" said the Admiral.

"...him."

The face of Warlord K'Sano took shape before them, just as it had done before when they were inside the Orb. But now the face was much, much larger. Just one of its eyes was bigger than the entire ship. Even after the face had taken shape, the fire continued to move, bringing life to the flaming countenance of the Warlord. His angry gaze searched the darkness of space, and finally settled on the tiny speck of dust that was the Principality...

"Sir, I'm getting energy readings-" Krycek began.

"I'm sure you are," said Captain Hood. "Or maybe you haven't looked at what's in front of us lately."

"But sir... these new readings are coming from INSIDE the ship!"

"What?"

"Open broadcast channels," said the Admiral. December rose from his chair and marched across the bridge... coming to a halt before the holographic image of K'Sano.

"Unidentified Ship," he said. "This is ADMIRAL December Chyrnomir of the UPR ship Principality!"

The face blinked.

Then it frowned.

And then... it spoke.

The words came from everywhere and nowhere. They were like thunderclaps inside the brains of every living thing on the ship. They roared down the hallways, shaking the decks and rattling everything that wasn't securely attached.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!" said the Warlord.

Now, it was December's turn to blink. Whatever response he was expecting... this wasn't it.

"You know him, TOO!?" said Captain Hood. The Admiral motioned for silence.

"Explain yourself!" the Admiral demanded.

The flaming face said nothing for a moment... then it nodded in realization.

"AHHHH..." is said. "OF COURSE. IF THERE ARE OTHER VERSIONS OF MYSELF IN THESE PLANES, THEN WHY NOT VERSIONS OF OTHERS AS WELL. YOU ARE THE THIEF, DECEMBER, HERE TO STEAL MY PROPERTY AS YOUR COUNTERPART ONCE DID IN MY WORLD. HERE TO CLAIM POWER THAT IS RIGHTFULLY MINE!"

"You are mistaken," said the Admiral. "I am here to take nothing. We came on a mission of peace, but you attacked us."

"PEACE IS AN ILLUSION," said K'Sano. "AND I PROTECT WHAT IS MINE WITH THE FULL EXTENT OF MY POWER. THIS OBSERVATION ORB IS TO SERVE AS A WINDOW THROUGH WHICH I WILL WITNESS THE DESTRUCTION OF YOUR UNIVERSE. I WILL STUDY THE BRINGER OF THAT DESTRUCTION... AND PREPARE TO CLAIM ITS POWER AS MY OWN. YOUR INTERFERENCE HAS COST ME VALUABLE TIME... AND GAINED YOU NOTHING, FOR THE DESTRUCTION I SEEK TO WITNESS IS STILL AT HAND!"

"Captain Hood?" said Krycek. "Those energy readings...they're coming from Deck 8, Cargo Bay nine.... and they match-"

"SHHH!"

"I must speak with the Admiral!" said Lieutenant Lovvorn... whose face suddenly appeared on Captain Hood's monitor. Hood cut the transmission.

"You still have not identified yourself," the Admiral demanded. "Do so now, or be fired upon."

"HAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!" K'Sano's laughter sent several members of the Principality's crew into spontaneous, violent convulsions of fear. "FIRED UPON!!!! HAHAHAHAAAAA!!! YOU THIEVING, INSIGNIFICANT SPECK OF DUST!"

Lovvon's face reappeared on Hood's screen.

"Well, there's no reason to be RUDE, sir! Especially when I'm calling to tell you about-"

Hood cut the transmission.

"You speak of your power, and our insignificance," said Admiral Chyrnomir. "Yet we are still here, despite your best efforts."

"BEST? EFFORT? YOU WITHSTOOD BUT THE TINY STINGS OF MY WORKER-ANTS! BUT THIS... THIS IS POWERRR!!!"

The miniature star began expanding exponentially. Waves of heat and radiation buffeted the Principality.

"A PITY YOU WILL NOT LIVE TO WITNESS THE DESTRUCTION OF YOUR PLANE..."

The forward hull of the ship began to glow red-hot... and then soften under the onslaught.

"...a pity that you will not, either," the Admiral muttered. "End transmission."

"Shields are failing!" Krycek shouted. "The ship is MELTING, sir! MULTIPLE HULL BREACHES!"

"False-Dawn is charging, sir," said Lovvorn, reappearing AGAIN on Hood's monitor. "The NEW Cthrain reactor is operating as expected."

"Excellent work," said Admiral Chyrnomir. He returned to his chair and sat down.

"However," Lovvorn continued. "Examination of the crystals indicates that we may get an unexpected reaction if the False Dawn is used against THEIR weapon.... The interaction of the two sets of crystals might establish a harmonic chain reaction that-"

"The SHORT VERSION Lieutenant!"

"Aim for their weapon! TRUST me!"

"Noted. Prepare to fire! Route all auxiliary power to the shields!"

"-but-"

"WHAT is going on, sir!" Hood demanded.

"You suggested we use the crystals to modify our most powerful weapon, Captain," said December. "And that is exactly what we did-"

"False Dawn is fully charged!"

"Zade, target their weapon and FIRE!"

"FIRING, SIR!"

The entire ship shuddered as the False Dawn device roared to life. A lance of energy... half the size of the ship, but containing the energy of a small star... screamed forth from the modified emitters. It tore across space like a solar flare, loosing itself in the flaming corona of the Warlord's image...

FIRST, there was no reaction...

...THEN, nothing happened...

The bridge was a silent as a crypt. The Admiral cleared his throat.

"...or maybe not..." Lovvorn gulped.

Suddenly there was wave of... not light... but total, abysmal darkness. It started as a black spot on K'Sano's fiery face, but it grew and spread like a nuclear explosion... only in reverse. It released neither heat nor explosive force... instead, it sucked those things in like a ravenous black beast, swallowing the false-star in two.. three... four huge bites. K'Sano's image was gone. The flames that formed it vanished, snuffed out like a candle. All the energy... all the heat... all the power... was swept up in one huge Anti-Energy reaction that, in two blinks of an eye, took the alien vessel from millions of degrees down to...

Absolute Zero.

And on the Principality, the bridge continued to be as silent as a crypt. But the silence had spread to the entire ship, as everyone who had access to a monitor stared at the lifeless black globe.

Lieutenant Commander Krycek checked his sensor readings... then checked them again...

"We...," he began. "We... we FROZE it... sir."

A smile came to the Admiral's lips.

Beside him, Captain Hood checked his watch.

"And right about now-"

THOOM!

The detonation of five fusion-grenades was insignificant compared to the size of the alien craft... but when that craft's hull had been reduced to zero degrees Kelvin, even the smallest force was enough to crack it open like an eggshell. K'Sano's orb shattered, cracking apart at the seams. Huge chunks of it floated slowly away...

...and no one on the ship could stop themselves from watching.

"Beautiful," said Zade. "Juuuust beautiful."

"No life signs. No energy readings." said Krycek. "She's dead in space."

"And we still have repairs to make," said the Admiral. "As does a certain member of my bridge crew."

"I'm fine," Zade replied.

"Yes, but we cannot have you frightening the crewmen."

"Yes sir.... reporting to medical and engineering, sir."

"And what about-... where's Chief Maxwell?"

The place where Chief Maxwell had been standing was conspicuously empty.

"Computer, locate Chief Petty Officer Maxwell."

"Unable to comply, Captain Hood. Chief Maxwell has instituted a command-level lockout of all queries concerning him or his whereabouts."

"Override."

"His lockout authority supersedes yours, Captain."

"DAMN!"

"Do not concern yourself with Maxwell," said the Admiral. "He will turn up eventually. He always does."

"Aye, sir. If you say so. So... are you going to explain why we happened to have a SPARE Cthrain reactor in a cargo bay on deck 8, sir?"

"I shall have to let ensign Moore explain that," said the admiral.

"Who-"

"Shall we be calling for assistance, sir?" said Krycek. "The battlecruiser 'Siege' is within hailing distance..."

"Admiral Warrynt won't mind giving us a hand," said Captain Hood. "He'll probably be mad that he missed the action; he always loves a good fight."

Admiral Chyrnomir gave Hood a cold look.

"We do not need assistance, Captain. We WILL be returning to port under our own power. Even if it takes all year."

"Aye, sir. I'm in no hurry. No hurry at all."

---

The blood-curdling roar of pain and anger shook the walls of the Warlord's fortress. The very sound of it sent the fearless shriikes scampering for safety... the sound of their claws filled the hallway as their skinless bodies darted too and fro. Outside, the sturdy havok-hounds howled at the top of their considerable lungs, adding their own terrible voices to the roaring bellow of their Lord.

High Priest Tranik rushed to the Observation Chamber, from which the hideous cry had originated. Tranik could still feel the chills of terror running up and down his spine. He arrived just as the massive door flew open. Warlord K'Sano stormed out and nearly collided with his high priest.

"M-Master," Tranik said with head bowed in supplication. "i-is there something wrong? I heard-"

K'Sano looked down at his underling. Tranik risked a glance... and saw that one of K'Sano's eyes was... dead. It sat frozen and lifeless in its socket. But the OTHER eye burned with all the iron fury that Tranik was accustomed to seeing in his Lord. Tranik looked away quickly.

"One of the observation orbs has malfunctioned," said the Warlord.

"H-how is that possible, my Lord?"

"Poor construction, no doubt. The fault obviously lies with KraHail and his wraithlings. They will be duly punished... AFTER they construct a replacement orb."

"But, my Lord..." Tranik looked up at his master once more. "Your... your eye..."

"Yes..." K'Sano touched his finger to the swollen flesh surrounding his frozen eye. Then, without even flinching, he plucked the dead orb out of its socket and crushed it in between his thumb and forefinger. The frozen piece of flesh shattered. "Yes... the eye. It seems that I will need a replacement..."

K'Sano smiled at Tranik.

"...and it seems that you have one to spare..."



The End...?