[AgentZero]

Point taken. Enjoy!


“So, what do you think?” Kagan asked.
Himself, Alice & Saraea were in the galley of the Daedalus. The two women were seated at a small table, while Kagan slouched against the wall. The Daedalus was currently cruising across the vast expanse of space between the Victoria system’s two main jump nodes. The trip would take nine days, traveling at the maximum permitted speed designated by the system’s authorities. They’d just finished a leisurely dinner, during which Kagan had filled Saraea in on what had been happening, interrupted with great regularity by Alice who provided additional, although seemingly irrelevant details. He’d just gotten to the part about the explosion on Kolis Station.
“Well,” Saraea said slowly. “It sounds to me like someone’s trying to kill you.”
“But why?” Kagan asked.
Saraea shot him a meaningful glance. “Aside from the obvious?” she asked sweetly.
Kagan made a rude gesture at her. She made a ruder gesture back. And Alice made a much ruder gesture at both of them.
“Where in the civilized galaxy did you learn that?” asked Kagan.
“Nowhere,” she replied innocently, tucking both hands underneath her.
“As I was saying,” Saraea continued. “Whoever tried to do you in obviously didn’t much care about innocent bystanders, had access to state of the art equipment, an extremely skilled operative or operatives, and likely had an inside man on the job, too. Which leaves one of two possibi-“
She was interrupted as Alice suddenly jumped up, knocking over the table. “We’re under attack!” she shrieked.
Saraea and Kagan looked at her in puzzlement. “No, dear,” Kagan assured her. “For once we’re not-“ The remainder of his platitude disintegrated into the sort of language he’d been telling himself not to use around her as the ship lurched violently, throwing him to the ground. He scrambled to his feet and took off running down the hallway with Saraea in hot pursuit, only to find Alice already seated at the sensor station on the bridge.
“Three bad guys,” she informed them. “All of them bigger than us.”
“Any ideas on who they are?” Kagan asked.
“Um, yes,” she replied. “The ones with the funny spikey things on their heads. Kinda yellow greeny?”
“Taurens?” Kagan exclaimed. “What the hell are Taurens doing out here?”
“That’s the ones,” Alice replied. “Taurens. Terrans. Taurens, Terrans, Taurans, Terrans. It’s all good. Or bad. Yes, in this case it’s definitely bad.”
Kagan ignored her ramblings, something he was getting really quite good at these days and moved to a weapons station, while Saraea took the helm.
“Looks like three battlecruisers,” he said nervously. “Not familiar with the exact class though.”
The ship lurched again as their pursuers managed to land a couple hits, despite Saraea’s best evasive maneouvers.
“Oh no, we’re all going to die!” Alice exclaimed.
“More than likely,” Kagan replied as he began plotting in a firing solution that would hopefully slow the Taurens down enough for them to make an escape.
“Oh dear,” she replied. “I was being flippant.”
“No time for that now, the shooting’s starting,” said Kagan as his first missile salvo tore through space towards its targets. The battlecruiser’s point defense swatted the missiles down effortlessly, only allowing one through, and it was unlikely the huge ship even felt it. He made a few adjustments to the engine ignition sequence for the following salvo. The missiles would burn out a lot faster with the new configuration, but at this short range it wouldn’t matter much. The Daedalus trembled gently as her second salvo tore free, and this time the Tauren’s point defense only managed to stop a pair of the missiles, and the recipient of the salvo definitely felt it this time. The battlecruisers slowed their approach, increasing the distance between them and the Daedalus, which meant that the same trick wouldn’t work twice, but it at least pulled them out of energy weapons range. That victory, however was short-lived, as the three warships returned fire with their own missile salvos.
“Missile separation, we have incoming!” Kagan shouted.
“On it!” Alice shouted back, flinging herself across the bridge to land heavily at one of the defense stations. Her hands flew across the controls with blinding speed, and between her efforts and Saraea’s stomach-churning evasive actions, they managed to evade the first round of missiles entirely, but by the time the last of them fell victim to the Daedalus’ guns, another two waves were rapidly approaching.
“Time to jump node?” Kagan called out.
“Four days at present speed,” Saraea replied. “Though we could make it in twenty-seven minutes if we were to go to maximum acceleration. But that would attract-“
“Frack it,” Kagan snapped. “Max acceleration, now!”
The Daedalus surged forward, abruptly increasing the distance between themselves and the Taurens, and their missiles. The green-hides hadn’t planned on that, Kagan noted, as their missiles, realizing that they no longer had the power to reach their target, simultaneously detonated. Their burst of speed had temporarily pulled them out of even missile range, but Kagan knew that wouldn’t last as the battlecruisers began to accelerate.
“Tachyon spike!” Alice called out. “Looks like we’ve got more company. And I haven’t cleaned the good silver.”
Kagan looked up at his display as three icons representing Victorian in-system cruisers popped into existence on an intercept course. As they lacked in any sort of null-space drive system, they relied on Perth Nine’s massive null-space catapult to hurl them about the solar system. While this limited them to operations within one system, it also meant that the cruiser sized hulls packed considerably more shields & firepower than the three battlecruisers behind them.
The comm. screen flared to life and the uncompromising face of a Victorian captain stared out of them.
“ITS Daedalus,” he said sternly. “You are in violation of Article Twelve, Section Seven, Sub-Section Twenty Four, Paragraph Eighty Four of-” his head suddenly snapped to something off the screen. “What the hell is that?” he demanded.
On his display, Kagan saw the three cruisers break off and begin to accelerate towards the pursuing Taurens. Moments later, missile salvos erupted from both sets of ships.
“Phew,” Kagan breathed. “Looks like we’re gonna make it ok.”
“Well, not really,” Alice informed him.
In response to his questioning raised eyebrow, she gave her display a meaningful look. “We’ve been fined,” she told him.
“Have we now?” came the rhetorical reply. “Inform them that we will be happy to pay the fine at upon our next docking with Perth Nine.”
“Happily?” Saraea inquired. “When have you happily paid for anything?”
“When am I likely to be back here again?” Kagan countered.
“Touché,” she replied. “Now, captain, my captain, we are coming up on the jump node, so do you have any particular destination in mind, or shall I just jump randomly and let the Fates decide?”
“Hmmm,” Kagan mused. “As appealing as the centre of a sun or event horizon does sound, I’m afraid we’re going to have to pick a destination beforehand.”
He pulled up the local starchart on his display, and Alice’s finger went immediately to one particular sector.
“There,” she said insistently.
“There? Nothing there but-”
“There there there there theretheretherethere!” Alice began to stamp her foot and then bang her fist against the console so hard that Kagan was compelled to grab hold of her to make her stop. Getting dents out of permaplast was difficult & time-consuming, after all.
“Ok,” he agreed. “We’ll go there and see yer frackin’ nebula. Happy?”
“Yes,” she replied in a relieved sigh, before bouncing out of his lap and heading for the exit. “Now all this excitement has gone and made me sleepy, so I’m going for a nap.”
After she left, Kagan turned his eyes towards Saraea, only to find her staring back at him. “So,” she said. “She does tantrums now.”
“This does not bode well,” he replied dryly.
“For your relationship?”
“For civilization in general.”
“Heard that!” Alice’s voice drifted in from down the hallway.
With a look of astonishment, Kagan mouthed the word ‘How?’ to his friend.
“Heard that too!”