Starlight

Ch3:  Don't annoy the Reaper.

    "You'd be surprised. I've found that the quickest and easiest way to cure an Aerophobe is to take them on a joyride in my Avenger Starfighter."

            Flt. Cpt. Lanson Richson; January 3, 2383

Sector 2-9-14-Delta-2

Coordinates: 25-31-Gamma-71

    Space, the quiet either of the universe.

    For once, it actually was true, in the light of a dying volitile white dwarf.  Then again, it wasn't utterly quiet.  A lone black-hulled ship, trimmed in the silver and gold of the Alliance Commanding Officer, drifted in the night, her pilot keeping watch and wait.  The Long Shot was well over-due for it's arrival, but not to the point where foul play was beginning to be suspected.  Still, the absence was worrying, and the small runabout couldn't hang around much longer.  "Come on, Akalia... You've got to be around here somewhere."

    The pilot re-adjusted the Falcon-class runabout again, moving to a slightly new spot in orbit of the fading star, scanning briefly, to try and detect the missing cruiser it was supposed to have already met up with.  Alas, not even a lone Ohansu fighter to keep the monotony and dull boredom from growing arrived.  Of course, the laws of probability could not overlook such an unlikely event. 

    The ship's proximity alarm at last rang, just about putting the pilot into a shock that made him jump out of his skin, having slowly tensed up in attempting to find the lost craft.  However, the reassuring sight of even the currently highly-battered Long Shot quickly calmed him back down.  As he soothed his thudding heart, he checked the documents and equipment he would be leaving quickly, before calling up the hailing frequencies. 

    "This is Grand Admiral Davison contacting the Long Shot.  You are several hours late, and have some explaining to do."  Davison fought off the nervous tic beginning to build in his forehead, hoping he wasn't going to start chewing his fingernails in some form of nervous breakdown from the odd behaviors. 

    "Oh, Admiral... I'm not authorized to speak for the captain at the moment.  She is currently engaged with events that need her attention."  The traffic controller for the Long Shot was understandably nervous, considering how long Davison had been waiting.

    "Where is she, then?"  It was all Davison could to to keep his blood pressure down, and to keep himself from screaming in frustration.

CSS Long Shot; Deck 8; 17:01 FT

    Akalia was growing in turns with her annoyance and worries over who or what could be causing the ruckus in Sickbay. Her mood was not helped by the fact that she had been crawling through wrecked sections of hall for almost 30 minutes, trying to get around a failed lift section.  As she finally crawled out of the last damaged hall section, heading for the Sickbay door, she was ready to do anything to protect her crew yet again, if such protection was needed.

    "No!  Hey!  Ah!  My oath and duty as a medical officer prevents my being allowed to release you!"  Dufray's pained and somewhat worried groaning could be heard from the main medical coodination center just inside the door. The sounds of someone possibly sitting on him, pressing his breath out could be heard.  The odd acoustics of the main medical bay meant that it was nearly impossible to detect which ward or hall section the noise was coming from.

    Akalia now began angrily over-ridding the manual locks on all the doors, checking their interiors for the scuffle.  She was not about to have anyone but herself harrass Dufray, not on her watch.  She slammed doors open, still hearing the argument from Dufray's side, his harrasser's voice behing too faint for her ears.  She would have both sides hides, if it came to that point.

    "Absolutely not, I will not let you go back on duty!  Especially considering your last visit to sickbay, I will not!  The captain has forbid me to let you go back for at least a week after any injury serious enough to put you in here!  Doubly so, considering the fall you took earlier!"  The poor CMO's rebuttal sparked a bit of... something in Akalia's heart, as she finally located the door that needed to be busted through.  By this point, Dufray was shouting, almost like he was ready to call uncle in a particularly painful wrestling match.

    As the good captain muscled her way past the lock systems, she could hear a few more shifts, one or two accompanied by the wincing urks of Dufray's attacker.  She finally squeezed through the opening doors to the secondary Intensive Care unit, to find Melony painfully holding a headlock on Dufray, with her legs holding his right leg to his head. 

    "It's like mercy, only you're supposed to say 'You're cleared for duty!'  Come on, you know you can say it."  Melony was apparently using what skills she had been given by her father for... less than honest means, after all.  The kid was so busy keeping Dufray in the rather painful lock that she did not notice the captain moving into the intesive care unit. 

    "He cannot say it, because I said so.  And, if I wasn't so happy to see you still alive, I'd have you thrown in the brig."  Akalia carefully began pulling Melony off Dufray, making sure not to grab the young vixen by a broken limb.  Akalia was...  rather shocked still, that Melony had survived.  She had to have fallen at least 7 decks in those few moments. 

    As Melony paused for a moment to look up at her captain, Akalia puller her fully free of Dufray, gently bringing her over to a medical bed to lay down.  The good captain was still somewhat certain that she had hit the emergancy button a second after Melony had hit bottom.  Dufray brushed himself off somewhat, as he uncricked his back and sat up, watching Melony for trouble.

    "Sorry, m'am...  I won't do it again, at least where you'll have to see it."  Melony apologized in her own fashion as she was laid down.  It took a few moments to get her settled along the bed, waiting for Dufray to get to work on fixing her remaining splints and cracked bones. 

    "Oh, nevermind that.  Don't worry about it, you're lucky to be alive period.  You fell something like 7 decks, and lived to tell about it.  That's pretty lucky in any book.  You don't need to push it further."  Akalia let the facts of Melony's continued efforts sink in.  She either was so fogged-out that she couldn't feel the pain, or else she really did feel that the ship came absolutely first.

    Melony tried to straighten her sickbay gown as the itching of Dufray's regenerators working on her knocked up body began.  "Come on, it takes more than a conk on the head to keep me down."  Melony tried to sit back up, only to be kept down by her broken bones protesting, and Dufray and Akalia's gentle hands on her shoulders.  "Okay, so a broken arm might do it, though..."

    "Oh, I'd call a broken fibula, three broken ribs, a mild concussion, broken nasal and ear cartelage, a bruised spleen and a sprained knee more than a conk to the head.  You're not going anywhere for at least a week."  Dufray continued to work, getting Melony's ribs first, being the likeliest to cause problems, before moving on to her arm.  "Truthfully, you're lucky to be walking at all, instead of screaming bloody murder."

    "Which reminds me..."  Akalia reached for her data-pad, remebering the message Captain Richson had nearly gotten himself killed to send.  She let Dufray finish his treating of Melony's bones, before starting to shoo him out.  "Dufray, you need to go.  I just got a confidential, emergancy message that Melony needs to see, and only Melony.  Shoo!"  Dufray only got out a few spluttering protests before Captain Diess sealed and locked the door behind him.

    "But she doesn't need messages, she needs sleep!"  Dufray's rather annoyed protest was muffled by the thick door, but his message was clear enough.  There was a slow knocking on the door for a few moments, before the sound trailed off. 

    "He is right, you know.  As much as I don't like admiting it."  Melony finally laid her head back, letting herself be supported by the cushy medical pillow.  She winced once as her somewhat crookedly bent left ear came to rest, but the twinge quickly died away. She tried to nestle her head down into the pillow, but the captain wouldn't have it quite yet.

    "Fleet Captain Richson doesn't send messages unless they are vital, especially messages that are sent during imminent peril to his life of a type that he never faces without any other choice. Figure out what he's using as the password, and get his message." Akalia pushed her pad into Melony's reluctant hands, before quickly moving to the door, and shutting it behind her without further ado or pomp. 

    Melony groaned for a moment, slumping back down again.  She let her arm flop over the side of the bed, the pad scraping against the carpeted floor somewhat.  "Ug...  why is it everything is trying to happen today?"  She tried to roll over to her right for a moment, before stopping as a spike of pain hit her from her mostly healed ribs.  As she got back on her back, her vision waivered from the pain that was just now finding it's way to her.

    "This must be one of those days when the world is after someone, or something..."  Melony finally leaned the pad over herself, taking a look at the authentication screen.  She had to squint for a moment to keep her vision from swimming, but details resolved themselves all the same.  At first, the referencing didn't make much sense, before the old memory of the event in question snapped back.  "It couldn't have been, could it?"

    She entered in the name of a mid-level techno-fair she had entered into once, with a school science fair exibit that had done fairly well up to that point.  The pad hesitated for a moment, before asking for specifics.  She put in the year and the city, New Navarre...  she had to stop for a moment, to keep the ironic laughter down so she wouldn't pop a lung.  The namesake of one of the Alliance ships had sealed her fate, after a fashion...

    As she remembered the events of that disasterous fair, she couldn't help but notice an odd old captain, one who had been nameless at the time, and finally figured out who he was.  It had been Richson himself, had to have been.  That odd old starfleet captain had generally fit the markings he had, along with a few other things.  She was more perplexed on how he managed to seem so old than any other aspect of the encounter.  Her half-smile finally crashed as she recalled the laughingstock end of the fair, and her flat-out failure to convince.

    The pad finally beeped a confirmation, and offered to play the clip at long last. Melony listlessly jabbed at the virtual button on the screen, setting off the message.  The screen staticed for a moment, before clearing up to reveal a most annoyed Cpt. Richson stepping out from behind the recording device.  He cheered up his expression as he cleared his throat.  "Ah, Melony. I've only met you twice so far, but you have great need to listen to what I say.  This will take quite a while, so I suggest you settle in, sit back, and listen close."

    "Both of the times I have met you, I have felt something.  Some would call it an echo of destiny, others would call it an omen of a doomed life.  Myself, I prefer the more accurate point, of it being a suggestion of something grander to come, for good or ill.  You are not going to like this, but, you are one of many people to come in this war who will be drasticly important, helping to determine the very ebbs and flows of the allied forces fight.  If the suggestions I have picked up once or twice are correct, the very survival of existance could depend on the Alliance winning this war, and I don't like it one bit."  Richson seemed fond of speaking in oddly phrased riddles, and using words to confound.  During many points in his speech so far, he had been staring Melony uncannily in her eyes, as if he had exact knowledge of how she would be arrayed in prospect to the player.

    Melony slowly worked her way backwards, inching herself up until sitting almost on her pillow, back against the wall.  Richson's slow, methodically thought out words and tone sent shivers down Melony's spine, her tail bristling with some warning.  The captain slowly backed up against the bookshelf behind him onscreen, as if taking comfort and wisdom in the numerous books and collected words behind him.

    "I won't lie to you, this could very well mean your death in the long run.  But you'll also be in an elite, if you will.  I've only ever encountered 16 individuals who have ever got my attention in your way.  And that's counting myself.  Of those, all but three are dead.  Your Captain is one of the remaining, along with Admiral Davison after a fashion, and as I said, I am the third remaining that I know of.  I tried once to make a group of protectors, if you will, but it failed, through no fault of my own..."  Richson steeled himself some, getting ready for the big push, and warning.  The screen had an interference pattern garble it for a moment, perhaps from the hasty transmission and heavy compression.

    "What is he after..."  Melony was somewhat confused, and was getting worried. Starfleet captains never beat around the bush when something like this was occuring.

    "The rarity and rather unusual situation that this is dictates a high level of secrecy.  You need to tell no-one, especially Captain Diess.  She would mean well, but she would try to impart her own, somewhat limited knowledge, and fail.  Consider this an under pain of death topic."  Richson had to swallow several times, as if fighting to get the taste of bile out of his mouth after speaking badly about his wife.  Then, he squared up his shoulders, once again looking Melony squarely and uncannily in the eyes.  "I will discuss what I am teaching you in a moment, but first you need to know how I will be getting you out to me."

    "I've arranged for Admiral Davison to ship out a trainer Avenger out to you, under the pretense of cross-training you at my behest.  In reality, I've had the coordinates for our meeting location programmed into the main computer of the fighter.  How you manage to slip out from under Captain Diess will be up to you. I have no way of knowing the exact circumstances you will be laboring under."  He paused to let Melony think for a moment.  Or, perhaps, to refresh his speach in his mind. "If I am not at the coordinates provided, wait for me there, I will either show up late, or will have a message bouy stop by to give the updated coordinates.  I would suggest a disaster cover, though, for your escape."

    Melony nodded, figuring that herself as the best way to give Captain Diess the slip.  Just warping out would have the Long Shot chasing after her in less than a few seconds, but if they thought she was dead, then they would conduct a standard search pattern for debris, and by the time they picked up her warp trail, she would be long gone.  The trick was to find a cover story for making an accident scene...

    "You have a talent kid, one that amazes my Chief Engineer, along with most other individuals I have tried to explain it to.  And that is saying something, considering the caliber of individual Starfleet usually took." Richson chuckled, trying to break the building mood on his end, and as if recalling fond memories.  "People with the particular... abilites that come with your echo tend to develop a near-impossible talent as their first sign of destiny.  In myself, it was espionage and piloting that took off."

    Captain Richson sobered up so fast as to give Melony a worried double-take.  He had turned all business far too fast for the information he was about to give to  be any good. "The problem is, kid, that I have found that the power that allows this destiny, and the abilities you have now, and will have to come, causes severe problems in those who cannot handle it.  For those who do not have control, whether instictive or learned, it will corrupt and destroy; with the individual becoming irrational, impulsive, with a short temper and often times being slowly destroyed from the inside by their own power."

    Melony Urp'ed. The description fit her very well, and was most assuredly not a good sign.  And from the rather withering look that the recording of Cpt. Richson was giving her, it was getting worse.  Then again, with her luck over the day so far, worse would be just in line with everything else.

    "Yes, I quite suspect you're already seeing the same trend I am, in your behavior.  You're already starting to skip along the irrational stage, and dipping deeper.  I unfortunately have reason to believe that the more powerful the person, the earlier and quicker these stages hit.  Possibly even within the short span of a week, if the scale continues up to insanely powerful individuals."  His implications would send shivers down the spine of any rational being, and left every muscle shaking in Melony's body.   "I'm just hoping my message is reaching you before it gets too far."

    "So am I, Captain..."  Melony knew fear, yes, any rational being knew fear to at least a small degree.  But, now fear was coming over and getting buddy-buddy with her, and planning on moving in with the rest of her full time.

    The captain looked like he was about to say something, but he stopped, mouth hanging slightly open for a moment, as if he was re-thinking what he was saying.  He then clamped shut for a few moments more, as if mentally chiding himself for nearly saying something moronic, or giving away far too much information.  Melony began fidgeting, hoping that this was an upwards turn from the gloom and doom that had been given so far.

    "Alright, so you're wondering why would I bother telling you all this bad news?  Because I will say that there is good news to go with it.  The universe always does try to keep up symmetry."  Cpt. Richson twitched a smile for a moment, before straightening out.  "So, you're wondering what possible good news could there be?"

    "Yes, actually..."  Melony groaned somewhat, almost head-slapping with embarrasment.  At least the ship didn't have cameras and audio devices in the sickbay wards, just in the sensitive zones. 

    "Well, I suggest throwing rationality to the wind for the next few moments, for what I am about to say usually makes no sense to the unintiated.  If one does survive the initial manifesting of the ability and power I have been talking about, and control themselves, strange things start happening.  They can predict the courses of a future event, sometimes manipulate chance, change the will of certain individuals, and many other things you would end up calling me loony over if I tried to explain."  Richson gave a rather odd look across the screen, one of those looks that just would leave a person wondering what anyone was thinking at that very moment.

    "If you've ever watched some of the old B-grade movies, you might have an understanding, slightly of what I'm talking about.  I've had to talk in general terms because there have never been enough members of the order I've set up once or twice to find it necessary to give a label to any parts of it.  We used to know what we were all talking about..."  Cpt. Richson's smile once again died away as he turned grim again.  Melony couldn't help but note his mercurial moods.  Who knows, maybe he had good reason for them...

    "My once thriving organization was once the guadians of order, protectors against the darker fiends still left in the universe.  We were the white knights of the people, and upon our shoulders stood the chances of the universe's survival.  Time has forcibly hid the old memories of my order, and much has been forgotten.  But, at the same time, if new members are beginning to emerge, then quite likely this points to a far greater focus of this war.  For all we know it could well be erupting across all of creation."  Richson shuffled a bit for a moment.  By now, he had pretty much bared as much of his inner workings as he could, and could only hope that Melony would take his offer.  "Please hurry."

    With his last pleading note, the recording clicked off, and self-deleted.  Melony finally shut her eyes, and buried the back of her head into her pillow.  "There has to be some force out there messing with my head..."

CSS Long Shot; Main Hangar; 17:23 FT

    One of the hangar technicians was slowly signalling the runabout in with hand-strobes as the Captain watched.  The main compliment of fighters for the Long Shot had been shoved into various side rooms, to make room for the large ship now entering.  As it cast it's shadow across the deck, the tech slowly backed up, providing guidance to the landing spot allocated.

    Akalia stepped out onto the Toldinium plating of the deck, moving across to the centerline of the hangar as the doors finally cycled shut, the drive exaust from the Falcon class ship slowly dying down as the main drives uncompled themselves.  As the craft's landing gear thunked to the deck and the systems shut down, she stepped forward to greet it's owner, in remarkably better cheer than she had been in less than 30 minutes before.

    The technicians immediately began diagnostic scans on the craft, avoiding the one or two plumes from the life support exaust.  As they bustled, Akalia pulled herself together, straightening up to attention as the access ramp began to cycle to the deck.  The slow and dignified sound of Grand Admiral Davison's boots clomping down the ramp towards Akalia was music to a weary captain's ears.  The captain saluted her superior as he came to a stop before her, greeting him with composure. 

    "Akalia..."  Davison nodded once, as Akalia lowered her salute, before going for an undignified fanboy class tackle-hug.  A hug which the good captain neatly side-stepped, letting the Admiral grab onto thin air instead, until the ships gravity took over, dropping him to the deck.

    "Still wishing you had dissuaded me from my husband, instead of pushing your captain into marrage?"  Akalia squatted down by Davison, who still had a rather surprised look on his face.  From the light grumbling coming from the Admiral, she guessed it was likely still the case...  "Oh, you silly old man, you should know better than to attempt a fanboy glomp by now.  Old age is catching up to you."

    Davison slowly sat up, feeling a lump growing where he had smacked his head into the deck.  He just knew a migrane the size of a small planet was on the way, no course to otherwise available.  "And why are you so cheerful?  I was listening to the shipboard comms, and hearing about the casualties from some attack, along with the damage reports."

    "Because I just found out that the kid you passed over to me has more lives than Richson, silly."  Akalia helped Davison to his feet, before giving a hug she had been saving from the old days, squeezing him hard enough to turn his normally black face blue.  After a few moments of frantic tapping on her shoulder, she finally let him go so he could shake the breathlessness from his head.  As he regained his normal color, she patted him on the back once, before starting up, and walking to the airlock.  "I assume you have the supplies requisitioned?"

    "Yeah, missy.  I've got 'em.  Such impatience in an old-timer."  Davison coughed and hacked once or twice more as he moved off with Akalia.  Of course, they burst into chuckles as she grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking him a few times.  "Man, I'm getting too old for all of this."

    "Come on, you old coot.  I think we had better get you down to the sickbay, to see about that cough of yours, and the kid."  Akalia motioned to the cargo handlers to begin moving the pallets of equipment off of Davison's runabout.  In the meanwhile, she was helping the still occasionally spluttering Davison off the flight deck.

    "So, how exactly did she survive a 10 deck fall, from what I've been hearing?"  Davison mimed someone falling way down and going splat to counterpoint his words.  "Dagum near impossible height to survive, even with forcefields and parachutes."

    "Lucky timing and annoying stalking on her father's part, my best medical officer on another part, luck good enough to leave Richson green with envy, add in the hardest skull this side of tiburnium, and that's how she survived."  Akalia lightly poked Davison in the shoulder with a claw as the two entered the portside corridor. 

    "Hey, watch it with the claws.  I have no intention of going fuzzy anytime soon."  Davison chuckled slightly as he pulled away.  He rubbed his waxed scalp some, as he walked the outer edge of the corridor.  His joking tone did have a serious undercurrent to it.

    "Oh, come now, if it weren't for your getting burned that one time and liking the bare scalp look, you'd still have a hairdo the size of most people's pride."  Akalia gave the old admiral a pointy smile as they moved.  "Besides, I'm not contagous.  Well, not very contagous anyway."  She reached over, bringing her left knuckles into play to noogie the old man across his scalp. 

    "Hey, ow!"  Davison had to bend over to pull free, rubbing his abraided scalp once again.  "I'd rather not take any chances. No-one knows how those couples who get a little too cuddly manage to end up changing one another, and I'd rather not learn personally.  Besides, it's not my fault the spotlight dome is still in style."  He ducked a laughing smack as the pair moved along towards the lifts.  "I hope you didn't leave pawprints on my waxing.  It took me a week to get it fixed the last time."

    "Hopeless romantic, even 50 years later, you're still as bad as the day I first met you and your 'bud'."  Akalia shouldered Davison into the amid-ships lift, before bouncing in beside him.  "It was bad enough you turned Lanson into one, but you've got to stop.  It was fine when you were just the first officer of the Kep Salu, but..."  By now, Davison was already pre-emptively wincing for the supreme nag tone that Akalia had developed over the years.  "You are the supreme commander of the Alliance military forces.  You're supposed to be sober and responsible!"

    "Aww, come on now, I'm..."  Davison tried to interject himself while Akalia was breathing, hoping to set up a short break between rants.

    "I know already from sources on the Metamor that you've been drunk enough to blab to anyone at least once, and you're willing to go out with any girl who shows half an intrest in you!"  Once Akalia managed to get onto a long-term rant, you could only deal with her, since she hardly ever let up.

    "Akalia, I haven't had time to myself since the city-ship launched!"  Davison's unexpected grabbing of her shoulders surprised the vulpin, breaking her line of thought as Davison looked her in the eys.  "I've been so busy trying to keep the Metamor and the Alliance together that I barely even get sleep!  I'm going crazy, for pete's sake!  Sure, it looks pretty in black and white down here at the cruiser level, but every one of the city-ship captains wants to go off on a tangent!"  His rather frazzled tone and the somewhat loony look to his eyes surprised Akalia, who had been expecting something else.

    "But... you could have told me earlier!"  Akalia grabbed onto the railing along the inside of the lift as it continued to move upwards, passing through the inter-hull connector.

    "I didn't want to break the illusion and dissapoint you in your fellows.  I wanted you to at least be happy in that the Alliance was united in it's fight, for the sake of you and your crew."  Davison's hands clenched into fists as he gritted his teeth and laid his head back against the bulkhead.  "The truth is that I'm one of the three city-ship captains that is actually keeping us in this fight.  The council, and the other captains...  they're all trying to get me to reverse my decision on moral grounds, and tuck tail and run."  His rather exasperated and frazzled voice lightly echoed in the cramped lift.

    "And they haven't figured out by now that if these guys were ambitious enough to take over our galaxy by force, then it's only a matter of time before they chase us down, no matter where in the universe we are?"  Akalia was beginning to catch on to why Davison had been seen more than a little out of it on his bridge more than once. Her voice was already beginning to develop a throaty growl as she started working herself up over the matter. "You should have told me you were dealing with that caliber of idiot.  The two of us, with our seniority ought to be able to knock those idiots down a couple of pegs."

    "Having you join me would only hurt my position, not help it.  Frankly, several of the councilors consider you... unstable and a danger to the Alliance.  Far be it that the fact you've been commanding for longer than any of them have been around, no, they consider themselves better than everyone."  Davison thunked his head back against the bulkhead, about ready to scream after being reminded of one of the marathon filibuster sessions by one of the worst ones of the bunch.

    "Now that is a load of-"  Akalia's attempted venting of her feelings was quickly cut off by Davison as he clamped the tip of her muzzle shut with a hand.

    "I know."  The lift doors opened onto Deck 8, and as Davison let go of Akalia's muzzle, jerking his hand away so it wouldn't be teasingly nipped, he gestured out.  "After you."

    "Bah.  Why did you ever let a bunch of socialist pacifists without any dignity or sense of duty get assigned to the ship commands and couuncil?"  Akalia's tail whipped at the thought of all the real decisions being made behind closed doors aboard the Metamor, and a bunch of hippie peace-lovers without common sense commanding the fleet.

    "I had nothing I could say about it.  The people elected them.  And, if some of the things the council is trying to pass gets through, they'll learn exactly what I feel."  Davison scowled as he started prowling the corridor, heading for sickbay.  "They wanted a democratic goverment, and they got one alright.  One that could well try to turn us all in just to save their own hides!"  Davison remembered at least enough self-control to keep his voice down as the two walked, though his tone was icy furious, the temperature of intergalatic space.

    "So those fools actually talked about that?  Why didn't you arrest them right then and there?"  Akalia was rather shocked at how quickly corruption could sneak into a goverment.  And moreso at how far someone would go to save their own hide.  "Why haven't you warned the fleet about this?"

    "I was bound to secrecy, and they haven't actually yet committed treason.  Anything discussed there, short of actually breaking the law, is to remain secret.  Luckily, the ship captains, all of them, oppose that idea as much as I do, and such a proposal would have to pass both halfs of the council to get through.  Besides, I simply reminded them on that count that if they wanted to pursue such actions, before the Ohansu caught me, I'd make damm well sure they got what would be coming to them.  A most painful death."  Davison stopped at the sickbay door, turning to Akalia.  "Unfortunately, I'm going to have to order you not to tell anyone about what I just said, under the usual punishments.  If they find out I told you, some serious trouble could occur, and quite likely it would lead to the destruction of the fleet."

    "Understood, sir."  Akalia stepped through the opening sickbay door, nodding at Dufray as he checked off on a padd involving some inventory.  "Dufray, do you know if the kid is done with her message yet?"  Akalia slowly led Davison over to the intensive care wing of the sickbay, to check on the young vulpin vixen.

    "When I went in to check on her, she was staring at the wall...  at least until she repulsed me from the ward with a barrage of pillows because I caught her without a top on.  I'm pretty sure she's fully clothed again, though."  He motioned the command pair on as he grabbed a medical pack so he could do some checking up on all of them.

    As the trio entered into the ward, Melony was laying on her side, facing a bulkhead, the pad dangling from her arm onto the deck.  She did have her clothes on, thankfully, likely expecting an arrival.  She had a nearly blank look, like some insane person, or someone who had seen something too big to comprehend.

    "Kid, you okay?"  Akalia's slightly less than helpful query got Melony to roll onto her back.  Akalia and Davison looked at each other for a moment, with eyebrow raises passing between them.  "Do you still have those bugging jammers?" At the quick nod from Davison in response to her whispered question, she gestured to activate one and kill any signal leaving the area.

    Davison reached into his flight boot, pulling out one of the small cylinders.  He set the diminuative device on a nearby bed to Melony, setting up it's small tripod and pressing the activator on the top as he set it down.  "We're in the clear now.  I take it this is about Lanson, right?  What's happened now?"

    Akalia gave Dufray a piercing look, sending him scuttling out of the ward, before continuing.  "He's been diagnosed with some kind of disorder. So far it's the first time it's been spotted.  According to his own word, he could die at any time now.  It he's lucky, again according to what he's said, he could have 50 years."  Akalia had to take a moment to blink back a small tear that was threatening to run down her muzzle.  "Why is it fate has decided to play tricks with my family?"

    "Because you bend fate?"  Melony quickly quieted under the combined stares of the two.  At the questioning eyebrow from Akalia, she finally sat up slowly, propping herself up on her still aching elbows.  "That was part of the message your husband sent to me.  He also talked about a few of your familie's secrets, m'am.  He wanted to keep the knowledge from dissappearing during the conflict."  Melony managed to come up with a believable story to cover for her slip-up, and from the look on Akalia and Davison's faces, it seemed to have worked.

    "Well, I guess that would explain why he contacted, but why you?  Why not someone else in the fleet?"  Akalia leaned onto one of the beds nearby, puzzled by her husband's thinking once again, and trying to figure out what tactics he had learned in the many years of their enforced seperation.

    "Redundancy.  He's kept the particular secrets he's given me in several locations to protect against their loss."  Melony didn't like the half-truth she had put herself to, but she kept to the course.  It was better than an outright lie, so she didn't feel absolutely miserable over the fact.  "He asked me to keep the individual secrets under wraps, however, even from you, Admiral."

    "He must not think highly of his chances for living long enough to see the end of this war if he's begun entrusting his god-knows how many secrets to people he's barely met."  Davison  sat on the bed across from Melony, pondering what information he could get out of her.  "What was the general impression  you got out of the recording? I want your honest opinion."

    "I could sense a sort of quiet desperation from him."  Akalia spoke up as she uncrossed her legs, straightening up to face scrutiny.  "He seemed like he felt events were spiraling out of control and hope.  There is something out there that he's noticed that is enough to get him worried. And you know how hard that is to do."  She began pacing, her tail swishing in time with her thoughts and footsteps.  Her boots creaked as she stepped across the floor, adding to the rhythm.  "It was almost like the time when he was told he was the one who had to shut the door on the Canis's prison."

    "While I don't know who those Canis people are, I did get hints of the desperation part."  Davison and Akalia nearly fore-head slapped themselves, having forgotten Melony was in the room at the moment, as the kid continued.  "He mentioned more than one odd thing when talking to me, along with talking for a bit on when he first met me.  It turns out that was before the little incident..."  Melony's mention of her near-disasterous fight with the core of the Long Shot as her first duty aboard got a wince out of Akalia.  "I had met him earlier, when I was 15.  He was attending a Starfleet technological fair which I had managed to squeak in a exhibit for.  I didn't know who he was at the time, owing to his rather surprisingly good impression of being more ancient than the hills, and the fact that at the time he was still only being referred to by name.  But, either way, while he was talking about me, there was... hope..."

    Akalia and Davison looked at each other with long worn out looks, before riviting their gazes onto Melony.  "Hope for you, or hope that you are someone important in the long run, or will do something?"  Davison kept a canny gaze upon Melony, as he waited for her to respond. 

    "Couldn't tell."  Melony glanced around at the nervous looks by the two older officers.  "So why did we have to come all the way out here instead of going to the Metamor? It would have been simpler, and would have saved one of my nine lives."  Her improvised joke got a few chuckles out of Akalia and her fellow old-timer.

    "For talking about what we were just now, the Black Fleet, and your future. In fact, a fellow aquaintance asked me to drop something off for you, along with a few other things for the Long Shot."  Davison chuckled slightly as he imagined the bepuzzlement of the cargo crew moving the unopenable crates.  Along with the ones looking at the supposedly empty space in his ship.  Why Richson had asked him to drop off that fighter, he would likely never know, but so he had.  So many secrets in this day and age...  "Which reminds me, Captain.  The locks on the crates are keyed to your DNA signature, so you'll have to open them yourself.  Then again, that's likely what you want anyway."

    "Yes, sir.  It should be interesting to see what you managed to collect from my want list.  And what is this about a drop-off for Melony?  I didn't ask for anything for her.  She's still waiting for 18 before I start officer training."  Akalia continued her pacing, the squeaking of her boots growing oppresive in the quiet room.  Due to it's nature, it had been so heavily soundproofed as to block out any sound from outside.

    "You'll see about what I brought."  Davison leaned back, snuggling onto one of the beds to try and work out some of the knots that had developed in his shoulders during his trip out.  "Have you had any sighting of the Black Fleet since Kalida?  I know you've at least seen combat when you weren't supposed to."

    "Oh, yes...  we have indeed."  The velment rage of Akalia's voice caught Davison's attention, getting him to sit up once again.  The room was utterly silent again as the captain stood, facing one of the holographic windows between the beds.

    "When?"

    "Today.  Flip the location and sector coordinates around, not too long before we managed to escape to you with help from Richson himself."  Akalia's eyes narrowed as she pivoted around.  "We were in the middle of escaping a battlefleet, I had gone down to engineering to fix the slipstream drive, and I left Andre in charge.  Apparently, he had headed into the Tibaltiar Anomaly to boost the shields using the gravametric variances."  There was fire in Akalia's eyes, a fire from the old hates that had been stirred up.  "And IT was there.  It has been restored, and is leading the Black Fleet once again."

    Davison loosened his collar as he shook his head in disbelief.  "We destroyed it!  There was no way possible for them to fix it, it was destroyed!"

    "I wish I could say the same.  Andre exchanged broadsides with the command hull at less than 20 yards.  The sensors have records of the pass, and the ensuing chase and the effort Richson put into distracting it."  Akalia's voice had turned soft, but even now it was more dangerous than ever.  She had never forgiven those fools who had formed the Black Fleet, and she never would.  Now she had even more reason to be vengeful.  "The KP II was battling it for over a half an hour before it escaped."

    Davison kicked the stand for his bed, before jumping to his feet.  "Why won't they DIE!?"

    "Calm down.  While the homicidal rage is understandable, expressing it quite yet isn't.  Besides, the one to most worry about is absolutely dead.  It is impossible to escape getting vaporized by a starfighter's main cannons in zero G, while in a EVA suit.  It's not possible to fake that.  Only his legacy troubles us now."  Akalia paced again, moving along the length of the room.  The darkness outside the windows was almost velvety, since the Sickbay was displaying the port side view, away from the dwarf.  "We'll have to go over the analysis, and spot and possible makeshift repairs."

    "You'll probably want her once she gets fixed up."  Davison pointed at Melony once, getting an eyebrow raise from her as he walked over to one of the holographic windows, trying to get solace in the matter.

CSS Long Shot, Main Hanger, January 26, 5:45 FT

    Sleep was a luxury Melony was still wishing she had kept.  What had possessed Captain Richson to send her a fighter to escape in, she'd never know.  She had spent the last few days, once she had been released from Sickbay, practicing in the Holodeck so she at least wouldn't die crashing her fighter into something.  On a console, she was great.  When actually flying a mockup of the ship...  well, she'd need some work on her piloting.

    Which brought her back to her present prediciment, already into a cobbled-together and well-armored flight suit she had built with help from the engineering staff, staring at her new fighter in the hanger.  It was diffrent from Akalia's Avenger, a side-by-side seater instead of the more traditional pilot before copilot design.  "So, why exactly are you leaving me in the trainer by myself, and flying your own ship?"

    "You did fair enough in the simulation.  My craft has been upgraded enough over the years that I feel safe in knowing that I can tow you back to the ship if anything goes wrong."  Akalia slapped her protegee's armored back, before wincing and shaking her hand.  "A note for myself, never slap someone who is wearing an armored flight suit on the back, because it really hurts."

    "Just another precaution.  I'd hate to find my cockpit getting holed and then finding out my suit wasn't strong enough to protect me.  Just hope I don't panic again."  Melony finally secured and latched down her helmet, locking on the face-plate and gold-tinted visor.  She shrugged and wriggled about once more, testing to see if there were any bugs left that she hadn't thought of.  "Never let anyone else design your own equipment."

    The young vixen walked to her craft, feeling intense jitters at the very antheisis of her life so far.  She just couldn't see herself flying alone, and she was only moving closer to the craft by a supreme effort of will.  Then again, her father hadn't liked the course she had been taking with her life recently.  Then her thoughts flicked back to the warnings that Richson gave her, and she pressed on.  If Captain Diess trusted Richson enough to heed warnings from him, then so would she.  Plus, she still owed him a favor.  At least she wasn't completely and utterly terrified, thanks to the simulations she had run.

    "Don't worry so much.  The modern fighter pratically flies itself!  You'll be perfectly fine, I promise."  Akalia was checking something on her own craft, bent under the now flight-locked wings.  Her sheathed tail could be seen around the port landing gear as she tinkered for a few moments.  "I hated it myself almost as much as you until my husband started teaching me to fly.  We all have a fear of it until we get used to it."  Akalia finally came out from under her craft, having taken the time to check up on it properly, before climbing up the side.

    Melony gulped slightly, then slowly grabbed onto the ladder-holds on the side of her craft, and climbed up onto the upper side of the fusilage.  It took her a moment to get straightened out, before slipping into the cockpit of her new craft.  The seats squeeked from never being sat on before, and the infamous new ship smell filtered through her suit's intakes was a symphony to Melony's nose.  "Ahhh... one of the few good things about this.  It's too bad no-one's ever figured out how to bottle this smell and create an engineer's line of perfumes."  Melony couldn't help but shudder ever so slightly in an engineer's joy as she squished into the primary seat.

    "Now I've heard some strange suggestions over the years, but that one takes the cake.  Or would, if it hadn't already been suggested.  I've been getting some strange feeds from you, you okay?"  Akalia had to shout to make herself heard over the ignition of her own fighter's main engine.  Though, the tone gave Melony an idea of how big Akalia's grin was, though whether from her suggestion, or the fact that another chance to fly had been presented, Melony couldn't tell.

    "Oh, I'm just fine, now.  Nothing like the sensations of starting up a new craft to get an engineer out of a funk." Melony ran her gloved hand over the control panel, breathing deeply the wonderful smells of the new fighter.  Already she had the craft on standby mode, and the perfectly timed beeps of the various components as of yet still in perfect condition got yet another smile out of her.  "This almost makes the whole ordeal to come worth it." 

    "What was that?"  Akalia didn't quite catch her protegee's comment and she had to glance over the wing of her fighter over to the port side of the hanger to check.

    Melony smiled, keeping silent as she finally shut the cockpit on her own fighter, and started it's own ignition sequence.  "Oh, nothing.  Nothing at all."  She looked over her instruments as the comforting throb of the main reactor starting filtered in.  Melony looked over her instruments, looking to see what all she could recognize now.  She had familiarized herself with an Avenger's controls on the holodeck simulation, so she wouldn't have any nasty surprises out in space.  The controls were similar, but not that close.

    "Okay.  I'm ready, are your preflight checks done?"  Akalia was already guiding her fighter to the starboard launch lane as she looked back to Melony one last time. 

    "Yes, M'am."  Melony had merely checked the instuments having looked at the craft several times the day before while opening up the maintence compartments on it.  She slowly idled her craft over to the port launch lane, holding it steady.  "I'm as ready as I'll ever be."

    "Good.  Control, this is Knight Leader, along with Knight 14, requesting permission to launch."  Akalia buried the back of her head into her seat's headrest, since she knew what was coming.

    "This is Long Shot control.  You are go for launch."

    "Easy enough."  Akalia slammed her throttle all the way to maximum, firing her afterburn at the same time.  The exaust of her craft flared blinding white, bouncing off the hazard forcefield, before the Avenger rocketed forward, quickly vanishing from sight in the void of space and arrowing out to a safe distance.

    Melony winced once more, feeling her fears flare up again, even though she knew she had no choice in the matter.  She finally pushed them back, throttling up her craft slowly.  She eased it out of the Long Shot's hangar, twisting off to the side.  "Nice and easy..."  The sudden clashing scream of the targeting warning going off poofed her out like a poodle, as Akalia's Avenger screamed overhead, the shockwave of it's engine rumbling off.

    "Kid, not only would you have held up the line during a full squadron launch, if this had been an actual combat situation, you would have had your butt blown off!"  The good captain came by again in a close pass, nearly clipping Melony's sensor fins off this time.  The soot-streaked craft reduced to a dot moving among the stars for a moment, before beginning to circle the Long Shot once again.

    "Alright!  I get the point!"  Melony's surprised shout reverberated in her ears as Akalia pulled away.  She finally jammed the throttle up to three quarters power, matching up with her captain.  She ended up with her exposed skin matching the color of the ashy-white hull of the older craft.  She had enough of a time keeping herself from flipping out without the captain giving one of her rather startling lessons.  After she had calmed her beating heart down some, she finally worked up the courage to start asking questions.  "So what exactly do you plan to mess with my head over today on my first flight?"

    "Technically it's your second flight, but it is the first on which you are in control of your craft."  Akalia was enjoying teasing Melony over the details.  It was not often she took to the skies, and any chance was good enough to put her in a cheery mood.  She shook her fighter out some, to see how it had fared in getting repaired, before speaking calmly and in her instructor tone.  "You'll be getting some manuvering training.  I know you did just fine in that training program, but that was fake, this is real life.  Craft are imperfect, unique.  Some say they have a personality, maybe even a soul of their own.  You've probably noted that before, though."

    "I did."  Melony eased with her captain into a turn designed to be an inspection circling of the ship.  She could see the blotches from armor patchings over hull scarring, and thicker, somewhat buckled patches where hull breaches had been, where the inner hull still needed to be repaired.  It pained her ever so slightly to see the old girl like this, though she had been with her for only a short while. "The Long Shot has always taken far more than the specifications alone say she could.  She's a surivor, and though she has her own little bugs, they'll always just make you laugh in the end and wonder why you ever worried."

    "Ah, yes, so she does.  I'm still trying to figure out how she was hardwired to always drift a little bit to the second star to the right." The still somewhat recognizable phrase got a snort out of Melony, which got a counter-chuckle from Akalia.  Her voice slowly warmed as she recalled all the fond times finding out how the ship handled.  "She's even got a slight bounce to her when at high warp velocities, like she's dancing."  Akalia chuckled as the loop was brought full circle back to her point, and she changed course slightly to put herself back on track.  "Anyway, a simulation is perfect, the optimal for a class, despite how the real world is."  Akalia looked over her port shoulder to see Melony ease into a wingman position, the wing-tips see-sawing up and down with their pilot's inexperience.

    "In real life, you'll only ever get that golden measure on your first flight, for the first 5 seconds out of the hanger.  No matter how much you try after that, no matter how well you tune it, you never do quite ever get her past 95% of the performance you originally had."  Akalia patted the throttle of her craft, feeling the comforting vibrations of her third home.  She wondered if perhaps she should spook Melony some.  "Even if you get upgrades for your craft, they never quite work as well as you're told they will.  There is always glitches and slowdowns in your performance, somewhere."

    "Now, now... I might be able to get this baby stuck at 97-99 percent of optimal."  Melony just kept her craft as close to perfectly lined up with Akalia's as she could.  At least she was relaxing somewhat.  With the only references to position being Akalia's Avenger and the Long Shot, there simply wasn't enough to get her phobia going at full tilt.  Empty space without ground was not nearly as traumatizing as flying over the ground at insane velocities.  Melony could at least hold the fear back with the rational that even if she started spiraling out of control, she'd have to go a long, long way before hitting something.

    Akalia groaned, knowing that Melony was near impossible to live with when it came to engineering matters.  Maybe someday she'd have her peg knocked down a few dozen feet.  "Either way, in a situation requiring heavy manuvering, a pilot must learn how to use his craft's shortfalls to his advantage."  Akalia banked off to starboard, leading out from the dwarf star the Long Shot still stealthily orbited.  Soon, she'd come up to the small feature that she wanted to take Melony.  "So, for today, for your first live flight, the manuvering is going to be something that isn't severely complicated.  Namely, a low-speed asteroid run."

    "WHAT!?!"  Melony's fighter wobbled crazily as it's pilot wavered between sticking with the lesson plan and running back to the Long Shot.  She managed to keep in formation though, barely holding herself from taking off.  In her suit, she was sweating, wondering if now would be a good time to escape.  "You do know my father would go bonkers if he knew we were doing this, right?"

    "Oh, relax, most of these rocks are no bigger than your head.  If your father decides to throw a tantrum over your getting the lessons you need to survive in this universe, then he can throw 'em all he wants.  I'm still going to teach you.  This is not dangerous at all."  Akalia got a sudden thought, though, reminding her of a switch-up once by her husband.  "Then again, considering the size of your pride at times, you might have a problem after all."  She let Melony splutter for a few more moments.  "Ah, I'm just joking with you, kid.  They're small enough to bounce off our shields and deflector systems.  There are only a dozen big enough to be a problem."

    "And let me guess, they're also the ones that I'm supposed to practice around and they're all in one nasty cluster just to make things more interesting."  Melony's throat began to dry with fear and she felt around for a cupholder, before mentally knocking herself upside the head for forgetting that she had not brought a drink.  She started muttering about the failings of the design of the cockpit, starting with the lack of a synthisizer.

    Akalia was silent as she entered the dust belt surrounding the asteroid cluster.  She hadn't thought the kid would be that quick on picking up her habits, before she started kicking herself for letting old age make her repetative.  "Am I really that predictable?"  She dipped her port wing, neatly dropping it under the first basketball sized hunk of star-crap.

    "Well, I hate to tell you this, but it certainly seems like it much of the time."  Melony jerked her fighter to starboard a few degrees, to avoid a sister-chunk to the first, rather than underestimate the tilt needed.  She focused on trying to keep from freaking out, concentrating on the throb of her fighter's main reactor.  The little craft wobbled in her control a little as it vaporized a scattering of marble-sized asteroid kibble.  Melony had to close her eyes for a second, with her heart racing again.  "So when are we going to see these rocks?"  A greater jolt reminded her that there were far larger things in the field, that could smash instead of bounce. She opened her eyes to a more crowded space.  "Shake, rattle, and roll indeed."

    Akalia's grin grew a little bigger at the sentiment.  "Well, I'll give you this much, you've got the seeds of a pilot's sense of humor."  Akalia completely rolled her craft to avoid a cluster of bigger rocks, before setting her craft to 1/3rd Impulse power and letting the gas and dust slow her down to give more reaction time.  She glanced backwards to see that they had already passed beyond sight of the Long Shot, the craft lost among the small specks of stars.  She had it on sensors though, so they wouldn't be lost among the rocks yet.  "You've got good sense to be careful, too.  This was once the site of an old battle.  A mighty old battle."

    "Oh...  just great.  Probably torpedoes lying around, then."  Melony had to groan at the thought of new problems to be found.  She worked with both the console and the interphase built into her suit to keep herself out of trouble. Then, a blinding glare from the local star blinded her for a moment, before getting blocked out by her suit's systems.  "And let me guess.  You have something you want to check out, in addition to all the tasks you have already set out for me."  She finally powered up her guns, taking a single shot to blast a particularly large rock she didn't feel like dodging.  It poofed far larger than she would have thought...  Then she shook it off as inexperience with vacuum reactions and other nonsense.

    Akalia noticed the flash, along with the small warning popping up on her screens.  "Kid, number one rule when flying in a debris area or a ship graveyard:  Don't ever fire except as a last resort.  You don't ever know when a rock or piece of junk might be hiding a nasty surprise, like a torpedo." A flash made her look up, to see a huge piece of hull plating she had not seen before.  As it slowly rotated, it revealed the ID registry of the ship it had once been a part of.  Memories came back as Akalia recalled the ship that went with it.  "So, the Jerico didn't survive the battle.  I had always wondered..."

    "I assume you want to set markers for salvage?"  Melony could feel a new kind of jitter start up in her bones.  It was the kind that the dead sent to you when you moved across their haunted graves.  An insignificant bleep from her console made her look down.  There were two odd blips on her long-range sensors, but while they reminded her of something, she couldn't quite make them out.

    "You know, kid?  A long time ago I would have said no, but now..."  Akalia sighed as she brought her craft down to 1/5th Impulse power.  It jerked once or twice, with Melony's trainer following suit, but it held the course given.  "Now we'll have to bring the Shi'Rann in.  She's got the best salvage suite in the fleet."  A huge girder twisted to port, far out, the keel of a long-forgotten ship.

    "Are those the rocks up ahead?"  Melony rubbed an ear against the inside of her helmet, trying to clean out the odd high-pitched whine in the back of her ear.  It was like the ringing after a lond noise, only far louder and more incessant.  Something about the odd shapes of the huge rocks far off in the distance tweaked at Melony.  "They look like they were a small planet, once."

    "They were.  We're at the edge of the Tigris Expanse.  This was once the last stand of a grand battle long ago.  They were a last stronghold of an evil empire I helped to overthrow, and was once a hide-out of the Black Fleet, who gave you a few of your new scars."  Akalia started frowning, hearing the odd noise in the back of her head.  Her fighter shook as she held one-handedly onto the controls, rubbing at her helmet with the other.  No matter what she could do, she couldn't get that whine out.  "Now what the heck is that sound!?"

    "If you're not hearing a high-pitched screaming whine, then I don't know."  Melony ran it through her mind, wondering if a fault had developed in one of the fighters.  She knew it was familiar to her, but she couldn't place why the soul-quaking sound would be so.  "Sheesh, it sounds almost like the simulation of that one drive I tried to... develop..."  The piece clicked at last, as she realized what it was, the shockwave rebound from the drive.  "Oh, crap!" She broke formation violently to starboard and up, rolling off into a wild bank to try and spoil any bead someone might have on her.

    "Kid, what in the flippin' heck do you think you are doing?"  Akalia spiraled after Melony, looking around for trouble.  As she throttled up to speed, matching Melony's half impulse, she put her shields up to combat status, in case by some sheer chance the kid actually had spotted something.  It would be what would save her hide less than a minute later.  She looked around quickly, seeing nothing but rocks.  "Melony, there is nothing out here!"

    "Captain, trust me, we've got-"  Melony's frantic plea was cut off rudely.  Not by a rock, but by her scream as she barely missed getting blown apart by a torpedo and weapons fire from the fighter she had been expecting.  As she threw herself into the best evasive manuvers she could think of, she gloated a little bit.  Even if her drive was in the hands of the enemy, at least it worked.  "HAH!  And they said it wouldn't work!  Well, even if they can cloak, they can't hide the sound that's the proof!"

    "Keep at the evasive action!  Akalia to the Long Shot, respond!"  Akalia could hear the black hiss of jamming.  She switched across the spectrum, finding no channel that could reach to the Long Shot open.  All she could hear over the hiss was that impossibly screaming fighter.  And, just when she thought she had heard enough, the sound got worse, the vibration starting to create a migrane between her ears.  "Dagumit, now I'm hearing it in stereo."  Akalia realized in a surprised panic that there could be only one meaning to that, and dropped the deck out from under her fighter, with less than a second to spare.  Fire rolled over her as the second fighter barely missed her.  "I've got a second one behind me!  Okay, you seem to know something about these things, so you figure out how to hit 'em."

    "Dagumit, give me a moment!  I never figured I'd ever be flying against my own work!"  Melony's lack of experience turned out to be her salvation as she wildly flew all across the area, pulling manuvers no sane pilot would pull by virtue of not having a clue.  She thought wildly, trying to figure out what rational weaknesses would be aboard the fighters.  "Any engines on those things will be devoted to manuvering, they have something better for propulsion!  They can waste space on shields, weapons, and armor, so we can't outfight them!!  And we definately cannot outrun them, if we tried to go to warp, they'd hit us before making the jump up, and they should theoretically be able to make better sublight speeds!"

    "Stop telling me the virtues, if you know about then, give me ideas on how to smash 'em!"  Akalia caught Melony's pursuer with a suistained blast from her main cannons on the way down from a loop. When the ship came out of the white detonation of charged particles, intact, but reeling in surprise, Akalia had to admit that the buggers at least knew how to put up a good defense.  "It doesn't look like they have shields, but that armor appears to be dispersive.  Takes pretty heavy layers to make that stuff work.  You're probably right about them being able to take any assault from us!"  Akalia's own craft bucked violently as a blast finally connected with her aft shields.  "We can't take this for long enough to get the Long Shot out here!  We're gonna get ripped apart in a minute!"

    Melony nearly screamed again as the captain led her craft overhead, the anti-collision guidance systems in her craft kicking in to drop her out of the way.  When the captain's shadow clipped hers, Melony got one of those rare flashes of insight.  "M'am, did you notice our dual problem having a bit of manuvering trouble in your rear views?"

    "Not really.  I'm busier trying to avoid FLYING BOLTS, than noticing how a ship handles when it is right behind me."  Akalia's scathing sarcastic tone burned in Melony's sore ears, as the Captain pulled another radical evasion, nearly wrapping her own wings around herself.

    "Well, I don't think these guys have anti-collision guidance, since they just clipped each other!"  Melony wondered how such a feature could have been overlooked, since it was standard issue on most craft.  Then again, the hurried looks she took trying to figure out the craft suggested that they were prototypes, with many features forgotten in the rush to launch. Akalia's silence in the matter suggested she hadn't caught on quite fully.  "So, m'am, do you think your luck is up for a game of chicken?"

    "What?"  Akalia banked her craft around, coming about a good 120 degrees in space.  Off in the distance, she could make out the flare of Melony's under-specification craft flaring up past normal maximums to Afterburn status.  "Oh, crap..."  It quickly grew larger, closing with insane speed towards her, on a near perfect collision course.  Behind it, the crazy new fighter closed in, trying to pour shots into Melony's craft.  Akalia held her course, speeding up as well, realizing what was about to happen. 

    Death stared the two craft in the cockpits, before they split, Melony going under, Akalia pulling a 90 degree turn straight to dorsal to avoid the ensuing collsion.  All that could be seen as the two new craf collided was the white flash of the initial relativistic collision, and then the mighty golden blaze as the warheads aboard detonated in one fell explosion.  Akalia's craft swerved under her control, fishtailing in the blast, before turning completely around as she cut power.  In the distance, all that was left of the two experiments was an expanding cloud of particles, and a few small bits that escaped vaporization.

    "Nice work kid, you're crazy enough for two."  Akalia let her fighter slowly drift along it's last path, as she waited for Melony's likely humorously complaining reply.  When 30 seconds had passed without it, her chuckles began to die away into panic...  She hadn't come out here to loose the kid again.  "Melony, respond.  Kid, that's an order!"  Only the expanding field of debris kept her company in the silence...

    Andre at last clicked onto the channel, the Long Shot's stronger transmitter burning away the remaining jamming traces. Off in the distance, it's speck closed rapidly on Akalia's own.  "Captain, what in the heck is going on out there?  We've got jamming, and an explosion big enough to set off sensors from here clear out to the Metamor!  It looks almost like there was some sort of battle.."  The cruiser glided to a halt, having rumbled up behind Akalia, almost close enough to touch. "And where is Melony? Wait..." The low voice of someone else intruded on the channel, before Andre rebuked it. "Nah, why would she go to warp?" 

    "WHAT!?!" 

T-2/D-NCC-1712-15; Aria System; 16:00 FT

    Melony eased her fighter around the green planet, looking for the Kep Salu II.  Nothing broke the silence of the region, space un-ruffled by any recent passages.  She finally dropped the cloak on her craft, letting the scoarched stealth coating on her trainer's hull hide her.  Darkness fell in her cockpit as her craft slowly glided into the planet's shadow, the terminator between day and night falling behind. 

    The darkness left her soul uneasy, as she close-orbited.  "Where are you, Captain?"  Her question was whispered, afraid of the dark in this system.  Nothing felt quite right here, and it seemed like space itself might be waiting to eat her whole.  She shut down anything that might un-necessarily lure something in, save for a single ultra-low power broadband signal, hopefully that would beckon in Richson. 

    She looked over at the planet, past her starboard wing at the jungle beyond.  Lightning flashed in the night, showing the structure of a massive hurricane-like formation lashing violently at the jungle.  She shivered, setting the craft to auto-pilot.   

    The strange lighting of the area, and the strobing lightning below lent an eiree feel to the whole region, as if the world below was a monster waiting to wake up.  She had heard tales of the dark planet, Aira, but she had never thought she would ever be here.  It was a mere fable according to most people, a tale thought up to make starfleet look better.  Well, Melony suspected that they would be shivering just as much as she was. 

    The whole situation was slowly creeping her out.  She rechecked her sensors, once again finding no trace of any ship, save for a rapidly fading high-speed impulse wake in the system.  From the look of it, a Salu class battlecruiser, though she couldn't be certain by any means, since she wasn't a recon operative.  Yet. 

    Her voice was quiet in her cockpit, as she mused in the dark.  A trembling sound, frightened somewhat by the looming presence of the dark-enshrouded planet.  "What in the heck did you have to do so urgently, or is it that something is chasing you?"  Melony shivered at the sound of her own voice, and shut up, letting silence reign once again. 

    Melony looked back to the dark world, before looking at her instruments again, watching for signs of ships approaching, especially the Long Shot.  When she got back to the ship, Akalia was going to slowly tear her hide off in small kibble-sized bits, if she was lucky.  The very thought got Melony worried for yet another reason, understandable in her present enviroment, and she re-activated her ship's cloak, so she would have an easier time avoiding un-wanted pickups.

    Another beep from her console once again reminded Melony of her ongoing problem.  In her haste to use the detonation for cover, she had flown too close to the colliding fighters, and now her starboard equipment showed how close to death she had come.  Pinholed and smushed, the starboard wing and sensor fin were both pincushioned and perforated.  Even worse was a gaping hole in the leading edge of the wing, a foot-wide gash that was ready to split apart at any moment.  Aira was not exactly the safest place to make repairs, but if she couldn't get to Richson within the day at the most, it would be her only choice.  The aura of at the least creepy desertedness did not give good musings about the planet.

    "Come on, SHOW UP!"  Melony's angry shout precursored her thunking her fist down onto the console.  The sound was hollow, like her willingness to go through with Richson's plan, now that she had been exposed to one of his haunts.  Then, thoughts about everything fled from her mind, as the mass sensors and ion detectors shot off the scales, blaring what must have been 90 diffrent kinds of alarms.  A dull roar of a ion-wavefront shockwave buffeting her craft slowly began, the aural indicator of the massive ship coming.

    Melony breathed a sigh of relief for a moment.  "There we go, that's got to be him..."  Melony looked around, hoping to catch sight of the fabled Kep Salu II decloaking nearby.  However, as the wavefront's shockwave roar continued to build, a shadow deeper than the night finally made her look aftwards.  "Holy crap..."  Her voice retreated into her happy-spot in terror, as the pointed tip of the Citadel began passing over her craft.  The small ports along the hull looked like jewels in the night, shining the outline of the monster of the dark. 

    Melony eased her fighter back, at least having sense enough to have her sensors take the most detailed scans possible, to add to the collection of data already taken for the craft.  The hull slowly passed, at less than a tenth of impulse speed, seeming never ending.  "Jeeze it's a really freakin big ship..."  Melony finally was just moving to the point where she just couldn't find anything else to be emotional.  She had experienced everything in the past week, and by now, she just wanted to live to see another day.

    She looked back, hoping to see the end of the ship, and only seeing the lower hull's support pylons looming behind her.  Screaming, finally just mindless screaming and evading, Melony yanked on her controls, moving out of the way just as the hull flashed by beside her.  Then the slow rumble flared once again, as the main engines roared overhead, before quieting as the Citadel pulled away.

    Melony's heart slammed it's way along in her chest, her fears of flying re-affirmed.  "Dear god, have mercy on my soul..."  Her stammering voice echoed once in the cockpit, as she looked over the massive ship, knowing what it was, but she had never expected that it would be so big...  "Sweet mercy, it must be three times the size of the Metamor. How in the name of this universe did they build something that big that could still fly under it's own power?" 

    It was then, with her attention finally returning to her craft, that the ever-persistant klaxon of a major failure called her attention back.  She checked her readings, to find the starboard wing folded completely in half and twisted back to her craft at the perforated section.  Now she would have to jettison the wing, because it would rip her apart if she tried to fly it into an atmosphere, unless...

    "No, no way, I've got to be kidding myself..."  It was the most insane thing she had ever thought of, utter suicide for a mission.   She looked at her wing's status, then looked to the Citadel, then back to her wing, then her supplies, then back to the Citadel. "I can't believe that I'm going to do this.  Even though there is nothing else left to loose..."

    She gave herself no time to feel her fear, and jammed the throttle wide open, rocketing towards the rear hull of the Citadel screaming...

TBC...  maybe...