––––––––
"We have a problem," Reason said, "I have lost contact with the secure lab structure."
"The entire structure?"
"Yes," Reason said, sounding perplexed, "and I am not currently able to isolate the cause of the problem."
"This could not have come at a worse time," Shivia said, "She pointed at a wall of monitors in front of her.
Each one showed the action in the shuttle bay on the alien spaceship from a different angle, from above, from the nose of the gunship, from the armor cameras of the Tarazet marines.
"I am sorry," Reason said, "but I thought you should know immediately."
"Get me Fellu," Shivia ordered.
A hologram of her deputy appeared with them.
"What is happening at the secure complex?" Shivia asked, dispensing with any pleasantries.
"The secure wards?" Fellu said, "I don't know. My work hasn't taken me there in two days."
"Two days?" Shivia was aghast, "Take a detachment of marines and go investigate. I want a status report on every Z-human."
"As you command," Fellu said.
Her hologram flickered out and Shivia could turn her attention back to the video from the shuttle bay. There were three insectile warriors and they moved and reacted far quicker than any human. They had attacked her marines very vigorously, she had to admit that, but then one had been hit in the head and her marines had been able to seek cover as the insects attempted to reach their fallen comrade and drag him out. Now a sort of stalemate had developed where her marines fired from cover among the landing gear of the gunship and the insects fired back using what was left of the landing bay door for cover. Shivia knew a little about military encounters and she knew that a situation like that could last for hours until the stalemate was broken, which was alright with her, it gave her time to think.
She had the Z-human technology and the alien spaceship within her grasp, but both were showing signs of wanting to slip through her fingers. She had to be smart if she was going to end the day with both prizes. The most puzzling thing was the insects. She suspected that the insectile aspect of the three warriors was because of their armor, but what shape were they underneath. She wondered if Altia was one of the insect warriors, fighting alongside that brigand of hers, Knave. Altia was a very smart young lady, but if she thought she could hang onto a prize like the alien spaceship, against the might of the Tarazet Deep Space Fleet, she was very much mistaken. And then the alien spaceship was gone.
All the video feeds were cut off and the spaceship disappeared from the central video screen which had been showing it hanging in pace.
"Where did it go?" Shivia asked.
"It's accelerating fast," Reason said, "reacquiring."
The spaceship was centered in the middle screen again, its drives glowing, but the feeds from inside the docking bay didn't come back.
"Get me the admiral," Shivia barked.
A hologram slowly materialized in the center of the room. It was an older man, corpulent and wrinkled. He had a wide nose and flared nostrils. His hooded eyes, Shivia knew, hid a fierce intelligence and he had an admirable lust for power. He opened his mouth to speak, but Shivia didn't give him the opportunity.
"How far away are you admiral?" She interrupted.
"We are at maximum speed."
"That's not what I asked."
"Two minutes," the admiral said.
"Are you seeing these images? Are you getting the telemetry?"
"Yes," the admiral said, "We have the target craft in our sights."
"Can you catch it before it hits warp?"
"Yes," the admiral said confidently, "It is faster even than we thought, but this trap is going to work."
Suddenly, confusingly, Fellu was standing beside the admiral. Shivia knew that to interrupt her meeting with the admiral it must be something important.
"Thank you admiral," Shivia said, "and good luck."
She killed the connection, and the admiral, looking peeved at being dismissed so summarily, faded away. Fellu took a step forward.
"Shivia, you told me to gather a squad of marines," she said.
"Yes," Shivia said, "To investigate the problem in the secure unit."
Why was the woman going over this again, Shivia wondered, she was no simpleton.
"There are no marines," Fellu said, her face concerned and confused.
"I don't understand," Shivia said.
"I'll send you a feed," Fellu said.
Shivia looked to her wall of monitors where numerous views could be seen of the passages and halls used by the marines. They were mostly bare rock with the necessary equipment, bulkheads, light fittings, showers, sleep bunks, decontamination sprayers, hologram projectors and innumerable other technological systems, embedded in the rock. It was very spartan and dirty in comparison with the antiseptic white cladding of the science areas, and it was empty. There were no marines noisily hanging out in the rec room, nobody in the gym and nobody practicing on the firing range.
"It's strange," Fellu said, "The local systems show the marines being detailed, team by team, to the secure unit."
"Where did those orders come from," Shivia asked, "Because they certainly didn't come from me."
"The orders originate," Fellu said, "from the secure unit."
Her face, slightly blue in the degraded hologram, looked confused.
"But," Fellu continued, "Nobody based in the secure unit has the authority to give those orders."
"We've been compromised," Shivia said.
She paused for a second, considering her options. The Seat of Reason was immobile. However bad the situation got, it could be contained and recovered. The spaceship was escaping at extreme velocity. The spaceship took precedence, and the Z-humans would have to go on the back burner.
"All right," Shivia said, "We'll have to investigate that more fully, but right now we've got an escaping spaceship to catch. Meet me at my personal launch."
Shivia cut the connection and, without another word, walked from the room. She stalked through the short corridors to the docking bay that held her personal launch, the Raven, and a boarding ramp was extending for her as she entered the bay. She walked up the ramp, and noticed that Fellu had come scampering round the corner and caught up with her. She went straight to the bridge, followed by her deputy.
"Raven," she called.
"Yes Shivia," the ship's computer answered.
"Get us off this rock."
The ship rocked gently as its gravitic drives engaged, levitating it through the giant airlock of the docking bay and out into space.
"Has the fleet arrived?" Shivia asked.
"Yes, Shivia," Raven said, "They have been in system for some seconds now and are setting up a cordon to prevent the alien spaceship from jumping to warp speed."
"Excellent," Shivia said.
The bridge of the Raven was large and there was a lot of unused space with only two command couches. The couches were orientated towards a large window, surrounded by screens and holograms all showing units of the Tarazet Deep Space Fleet or the alien spaceship itself.
"Take a seat," Shivia said to Fellu.
There was nothing to be seen through the window itself, as the hunt was happening much too far away.
"Get me Reason," Shivia said.
"At once," Raven said.
Almost immediately a different voice could be heard, the voice of Reason.
"I see you have decided to evacuate, Shivia," it said.
"Just a precaution," Shivia assured the base AI, "It seems that you have an infestation in your innards."
"The base commander did warn you that the Z-subjects were an unknown quantity and could pose a hazard if brought within the Seat of Reason for study."
"We have no time for this," Shivia cut off Reason, "How many drones do you have available."
"Drones are not usually deployed within the Seat of Reason," the AI replied, "There is usually no need."
"I am aware of that," Shivia said, "but the circumstances would seem unusual, would they not? You don't even know what is happening within your own secure center."
The AI didn't answer. Fellu shifted uncomfortably in her acceleration couch.
"What I propose," Shivia said, "Is sending a phalanx of drones down into the secure unit to see what's happening. I assume it is something unsavory."
"I understand," the AI said.
"You will not be controlling the drones. The drones will be piloted remotely from here by Fellu. We don't know how badly your systems have been compromised and the less we rely on them the better. The drones will be in action in minutes, do not try to stop us."
Shivia terminated the connection.
"Raven," she said, "How many drones can you round up for us?"
"There are five drones on the surface of the asteroid on routine patrol."
"That will be ample," Shivia said, "Designate a lead drone and turn over operations to Fellu at her station."
"But I've never piloted a drone," Fellu said.
"It is all automated," Shivia chided her, "Just tell it where to go, and if it asks for authorization to shoot, you say yes."
Fellu looked aghast.
"Can you handle that?" Shivia asked her.
Fellu nodded weakly. Holographic screens and touch surfaces started to appear in the air around her. The largest of the screens said a friendly hello and promised to have her piloting her drone in under five minutes. Fellu gulped.
Shivia at last turned her attention to the Raven's main screen, the largest screen, directly above the bridge main window. It showed the alien spaceship, its shields glittering as it sustained heavy fire. Shivia was surprised, but pleased, to see that the Drifter ship wasn't returning fire.
"What is going on?" she said to herself.
***
Mortigan was wondering what was going on too. He was a technician, in charge of environment systems on the Cutlass. The Cutlass was a corvette assigned to hold position near the Seat of Reason, in case the enemy spaceship decided to attack it. Nobody thought this was a likely outcome and the Cutlass and all ship's crew were fully expecting to sit out the action without being involved in any way. In fact, instead of a tense space battle, things were very much normal aboard ship.
Mortigan wasn't at all surprised to have to deal with a shuttle from the space station below.
He watched it cycle through the docking bay airlock, the only docking bay on the Cutlass, and was pleased that the automated systems worked perfectly. It was a slightly unusual shuttle, not one of the designs used by the battle group Cutlass was usually assigned to, and that could sometimes cause problems, but the bay systems seemed to be adjusting smoothly. It all looked so smooth, as he watched absently on a monitor, that he was surprised to be contacted by the shuttle, complaining of a malfunction. A coolant hose wasn't attaching properly, they said.
“That seems unlikely,” Mortigan mumbled, “Coolant is one of the simplest systems in the bay.”
He went on down to the docking bay, putting on an environment suit as he went. He cycled through the interior airlock and walked up to the shuttle. The crew were still inside. They hadn't even bothered to come out and do a manual inspection.
“Typical,” Mortigan grunted.
He suspected that the hose had attached, but their systems hadn't recognized it.
"Hello in there," he hailed the shuttle.
He was standing within a few meters of the little spaceship and he thought he could see movement in the cockpit.
"Hello," he said, again.
Again there was no answer. He took a couple of steps to get closer, and squinted through the bridge windows, definitely there was movement. If their communications were out, the shuttle might have worse trouble than Mortigan had thought.
"Just extend the access ramp," Mortigan yelled into his communicator, "If you can hear me."
The shuttle's cargo bay doors opened and an access ramp extended. Mortigan walked up, directly into a cargo hold. The lighting seemed to be faulty, so he sent a handshake to the computer running the little spaceship and a request for schematics so he could go to the nearest systems hub and run some diagnostics. Nothing came back.
"I guess I'll just have to poke around until I find something," he mumbled to himself.
He operated some controls on the wrist of his environment suit, to deploy a flashlight from his backpack. It was mounted on a snake-like arm of articulated metal and was programmed with a simple routine to point where his eyes were looking. The faceplate of his environment suit monitored the position of his eyes and provided the information to the flashlight. Once deployed, it switched on and projected quite a powerful beam of light.
Mortigan couldn’t quite work out what he was looking at to begin with. He had been expecting an empty hold, and was trying to decide where a good place to start looking for a system node would be, near the door, or further away, so he wasn't at all prepared for what he actually saw. He saw teeth, he saw claws, he saw horrible gray skin, patches of it the color of deck plating, and he saw technology, grafted messily among the flesh. It was the last thing he saw.
***
Altia had almost reached Knave when she was driven back by the intensity of fire coming from the hostiles. Jay was being driven inexorably back too, just like her. As she was forced to seek cover behind a section of mangled docking bay door, she saw Knave snatched and dragged up the ramp into the gunship. With two members of the team dragging Knave and not firing, Altia and Jay were able to emerge again, hitting the two remaining Tarazet marines that had been left to guard the ramp and were now also about to embark the gunship. Block gun fire sent them to the floor of the bay, smoking holes in their armor. Altia saw a set of small vanes deploy around the grav engine plates, the heat sinks. She immediately knew what it meant, the gunship was about to take off, whether the ramp was still deployed or not. She ran forward, yelling as she went.
"Come on, Jay," she yelled, "We have to get to Knave before that ramp retracts."
Everything was moving extremely slowly, or so it seemed to her, an effect of the time dilation provided by her super-advanced armor, but her advantage in speed was mostly reflexes. It wasn't much use in a foot race. Altia ran as hard as she could, realizing that the armor she was wearing didn't have actuators and wasn't helping her at all. Perhaps the original wearers were so strong that they didn't need the help, but Altia with her human muscles was never going to catch the gunship. It was already clearing the airlock before Altia had run half way across the docking bay. The realization dawned on her that there was just no way she was going to make it, the distance between her and the gunship just kept on opening up, and worse, the nose turret was slowly tracking to point at her as the gunship backed out.
She felt an impact in her side, as Jay shoved her down to the floor of the bay. The shot from the massive mass driver in the gunship nose tore over their heads and gouged a huge divot of metal out of the bay wall.
"Roll," came a mental command.
She was vaguely aware that it didn't originate in her own mind, but came from the AI brain of Jay but she was past caring about such feats of magic. She just rolled to the side, scrambled to her feet and ran for some cover.
"Powers," she cursed, "We lost him."
"No we didn't," Jay said, "Yort, transport him out of there."
"Attempting transport now," came Yort's voice.
"Attempting?" Altia said, as her armor folded away.
She watched dispassionately as Jay's armor underwent the same transformation. The panels of armor split apart and folded one after another until nothing was left but a small hexagonal badge on his chest. Time suddenly sped up, what had seemed glacial was now racing like a heartbeat.
"The target vessel is moving too unpredictably to achieve a successful teleportation. It is also accelerating fast and will soon be out of range," Yort said.
"Chase it, disable its engines," Altia yelled, "Make the teleport."
"I am not authorized for fire control," Yort reminded them, "One of the crew will be required on the bridge for those duties. Also, attempting to shadow the gunship will mean we will be flying predictably, and this will expose us to increased enemy fire, the damage we sustain will be considerably worse."
"I'm on the way to the bridge," Altia said, "Somebody has to do some shooting around here."
As Altia ran for the bridge she was almost thrown from her feet a couple of times. Yort hadn't been kidding when he said they would be exposed to more damage by chasing the gunship. Altia reviewed what she had learned about the Galaxy Dog's weaponry. They had spent numerous hours in asteroid fields, firing weapon spreads and experimenting with different armaments. She knew the bigger guns on board would reduce the gunship to a small cloud of debris in a single shot, which would not be great for a successful teleport. She needed something with pinpoint accuracy, with enough punch to stop the gunship but not so much that it was reduced to a cloud of exotic particles.
"The needle guns," she muttered, as she came round the corner onto the bridge and vaulted into her command position. She settled into the acceleration couch on its pedestal, surrounded by her monitors and control surfaces.
***
The Galaxy Dog was flying too predictable a flight path, matching as best it could the movements of the gunship. It was taking a horrendous amount of incoming fire, entire surfaces were becoming denuded of armor, the raw structure of the spaceship exposed. Yort was flying the Galaxy Dog efficiently and well, turning damaged areas away from the worst fire, concentrating shields above bare patches, but it couldn’t go on for long, they would soon run out of luck and be hit square by an energy beam or a rod of accelerated mass that couldn't be deflected or dissipated enough, and they would be undone.
"Come on, Altia," Jay yelled, as he ran onto the bridge, “shoot.”
Altia fired the needle guns again and again, tearing away heat sinks and communications arrays from around the engines of the gunship, but not disabling the drives.
"Almost," Altia said.
The bridge shook as they took more incoming fire, but Altia tried her best to ignore it, to concentrate on her prey, to line up her next shot.
"Gotcha," Altia said, as she saw the shot tear into the small spaceship's thrusters. Their shields powerless to stop them. The gunship was left floating predictably, unable to jink and swerve.
"Teleport lock achieved," Yort said, "Transferring. Knave is aboard ship."
They felt a lurch as the Galaxy Dog was able to resume its own unpredictable flight
Altia jumped from her position and ran through the corridors to the teleportation chamber. Knave was slumped on the floor. She ran to him and checked his pulse, found it still beating, but he didn't look good. His face was swollen, his eyes blackened and there were cuts on his arms. They looked fresh, she guessed the marines on the gunship had been trying to cut his armor away, and if they had marked his flesh they had obviously being using powerful lasers. Knave opened his bruised eyes.
"Welcome to the land of the living," Altia said.
"Nice to be back," Knave murmured weakly.
"Let's get you to sick bay," Altia said, gently, "Though I'm not sure where it is yet. You'll be the first customer."
"No thanks. I'm not sleeping while the ship gets blown up by the cursed Tarazet Deep Space Fleet."
Knave struggled to his feet and headed for the bridge. Altia accompanied him, making sure to stay close in case he stumbled. Altia reached the bridge first and climbed back into her acceleration couch. She took over the big guns and left the medium armament to Jay.
***
On her monitor, Shivia watched, transfixed. She saw the interior of the gunship, a team of marines and the center of the screen was empty. The insectile armor was gone. It had blurred, shimmered and now it just wasn't there anymore.
"Teleportation," she whispered, "Was that teleportation? That is absolutely impossible. Raven, get me the admiral. We must have that ship, at all costs."
***
Back on Galaxy Dog the sheer numbers of the enemy was starting to tell.
"There's no way through," Jay said, "There are just too many of them."
"We're taking a lot of damage," Altia said.
Knave came onto the bridge, clambering slowly up into his tall chair.
"We keep fighting," he said, "Something will pop loose. It always does. We just have to keep fighting and keep our eyes open."
"Well," Altia said, "if you're fit for duty, you might as well make yourself useful. Power up the needle guns and see if you can take out some of the smaller hostiles."
"I'm on it," Knave growled.
There were a number of smaller hostiles, Knave saw, all nestled within the minimum range of the big guns, where Altia couldn't target them with the main armament, and even Jay on the medium guns couldn't reach. They were staying close, like a shoal of fish, and taking any opportunity they could, when Galaxy Dog's shields fell, to pepper the flanks of the bronze warship with fire. Usually they mistimed it, but they were doing real damage when they got the timing right.
"We'll have to do something about that," Knave said, and splayed his fingers out across the hieroglyphs of his fire control console.
He only understood the bare bones of the system, little more than which hieroglyph was target and which was fire, but it was enough. He touched the targeting hieroglyph and felt a force like a monkey's fist grab his brain and squeeze. The pressure was connected to a strange alien symbol that appeared in front of his eyes, strange but recognizable as cross hairs. He used a combination of thought and twitching movements of his fingers to center the alien gun sights of his needle weapons on one of the spaceships of the Tarazet fleet and then he pressed the trigger button.
On the flanks of Galaxy Dog, a battery of small turrets emerged from their bays and waved left and right, up and down, as they followed Knave's commands. Then, as the target was acquired, streamers of wafer thin metal were projected at the target. Their impact force was almost pure velocity, and they tore at the target spaceship like a hailstorm.
The target was a gunboat, probably with a crew of four or five, if it even had a crew, Knave hoped it didn't. He hated Tarazet, but not the people actually doing the fighting, people like him. The hailstorm of metal needles tore the spaceship in half, smashing the two parts away in different directions and creating a cloud of debris. It was a small victory, just a drop in the ocean in comparison to the forces they were facing. Knave glanced at a tactical display, looking for the next target, and noticed something strange, near the Seat of Reason.
"Do you see that?" he said.
"See what?" Altia and Jay said in unison.
"There," Knave said, "That spaceship is out of position."
"How do you know?" Jay asked suspiciously.
"Trust me," Knave said, "I've seen enough near orbit deployments to know what they look like. The vessels in orbit don't usually bunch up like that. It's putting too many eggs in one basket, means you can lose two ships to ground-based cannon, instead of one."
"I think you're right," Altia said, "And by bunching up, they have left a gap. There are fewer spaceships in the cordon at that point there. We'll only get one chance to try and break through their lines. We may as well make our attempt there. Put a long range scanner view of the spaceship on main screen, Yort."
The spaceship that was out of position appeared in the view screen, and something was clearly wrong. Its thrusters were lighting erratically as it followed a complex course.
"I can see the name," Knave said, "Cutlass."
"All right, let's make a heading for the Cutlass. Did you hear that, Yort?" Jay said.
"Computing route," Yort answered.
"If we have to ram the Cutlass," Knave said, "Is that a course you can follow, Yort?"
"That would be offensive maneuvering," Yort said, "I would expect that the maneuver would fail, based on my design and programming, possibly without warning and at an inopportune moment."
"I was thinking that might be the case," Knave said, "Transfer manual control of navigation to me."
"Are you nuts?" Altia asked.
Knave took control of navigation and was immediately assailed by what seemed to be a sea of numbers vectors and symbols, all exploding inside his mind. He pulled his hands from helm control and grabbed his head. It felt like he had hit it on a low metal ceiling.
"Yowch," he grunted, "What in the powers was that?"
"That was the helm control interface," Yort told him, "Your mind failed to... erm... encompass it."
"I was never any good at encompassing," Knave groaned, holding his head, "Can you simplify it a little, so it will fit in my noggin?"
"Computing," Yort said, "a simpler interface has now been designed, it will select for you as default-"
"Thank you," Knave interrupted and forced his hands back down on the helm controls.
He felt another flood of information, but this time it was manageable. A sphere appeared in his mind's eye, with the Galaxy Dog at the center. The enemy were arrayed all around and they were closing in. With the distance between the enemy spaceships closing all the time, the anomalous position of Cutlass was even more obvious. Knave could see an escape route. He stared at it and saw that the symbol for the Galaxy Dog was now moving toward it.
"I can feel you in my mind," Altia said, "I can see what you see. More telepathy, more magic."
"I'm in here too," Jay said, "And my guess would be a sophisticated neural network, with non-local components."
"That's just a fancy way of saying magic," Altia said, "I'm talking with you, but I'm not moving my mouth. This is magic."
"Whatever," Jay said, "See these two spaceships."
Two spaceships lit up in the tactical display they all now had in their mind's eye.
"I see them," Altia said.
"It looks like they're trying to close our gap," Knave said.
"So," Jay said, "We have to kill them before they do. Altia, you take the big one, and I'll take the other one."
"No," Altia said, "We should concentrate our fire, take out one spaceship at a time. Our shields are low and armor compromised. We have to reduce the fire we are taking as quickly as possible."
"Okay," Jay said, "Just start shooting."
Knave watched the icons slowly dance, the Galaxy Dog nearing the gap, while the enemy repositioned to close it. There were innumerable lines tracing from Galaxy Dog to one of the enemies - the target picked out by Altia - but there were many more coming the other way. Knave concentrated on some of the most worrying clumps of incoming missiles and Galaxy Dog started to dance, trying its best to move its massive bulk out of the way of the incoming fire. Trying not to be at the positions likely selected by enemy targeting computers.
"We're taking less damage," Altia gasped.
"Thanks to my fancy flying," Knave whooped.
"Yes," Yort said, "Your instincts are a valuable randomizing factor to add into our evasion routines. You must keep focused, keep concentrating on reaching your target location and evading enemy fire."
"No problem," Knave said, "Will do."
The Cutlass wasn't even firing any more, which was good because, if it had been, they might already have been dead. They were closing in on the gap, but there were still two adversaries firing from close range. The Galaxy Dog icon started flashing red.
"I'm not exactly sure what that means," Knave said, "but I'm pretty sure it's not good."
"I can read those warning symbols," Altia said, "And, trust me, they're not."
"We are at vanishingly close range now," Altia said, "I'm slaving the needle guns to the other weapons."
"And I'm gonna open a window and throw my shoe at it," Jay said.
Knave saw the enemy icon go red and start flashing, and, as he watched it, the icon unpacked and he was treated to a camera view of the spaceship splitting at the guts and losing armor like a lizard shedding its skin. The lights across the hull flickered and died, as did the guns.
"Our goal isn't to destroy it, just silence its guns," Altia said.
"Of course," Knave said, “Nobody has anything against the poor souls on board.”
"Okay," Jay said, "Switch targets to the other one"
The impacts that had been exploding and detonating across the huge slabs of armor of the spaceship in the view screen stopped as the Galaxy Dog's guns moved on to new targets. The Tarazet Navy spaceship was left hanging in space, dark. Knave stared at it.
"Snap out of it," Altia yelled, "We'll have your hole clear in a jiffy, Knave, and we're going to need you to fly through it."
The other spaceship went dark, and Knave accelerated for the gap in the cordon that had been torn open. There was no need for fancy evasive flying any more, just a straight run until they got the jump to warp travel calculated. Knave watched the Cutlass as they left it behind. He wondered what had happened, a helm malfunction, or engine problem perhaps, but then he saw it move towards its nearest neighbor.
"We're through the wall of spaceships," Altia yelled, "Pedal to the metal, Knave. Get us out of here. This was a bad idea. I'm so sorry. I really didn't believe Shivia would try to kill us."
"People," Jay muttered, darkly.
"You live and learn," Knave said, "And it was your shooting that extricated us from this trap. Some fancy shooting."
The stars visible on the view screen were paralaxing so fast they looked like fireflies.
"Warp speed achieved," Yort said.
"How is the damage?" Jay asked.
The icon representing Galaxy Dog in their tactical display was still flashing red.
"Damage levels are critical," Yort said, "We can not survive another battle. We must find somewhere safe to effect repairs."
"Then, let's go find a place to hole up," Knave said, "Yort, can you take over helm. Just put as much distance as you can between us and any pursuers."
"Helm is now under my control," Yort said.
They all three relaxed away from their stations. Getting stiffly up from their acceleration couches. Knave was in the worst shape, almost stumbling as he descended from his platform, but they were all beat up.
***
"Chase them," Shivia yelled.
"But there is a problem with the Cutlass, " the admiral said.
"I don't care," Shivia said, "We have to secure that spaceship. If there is even a chance that it drops out of warp, we have to be there to take it as our prize."
"It was severely damaged," the admiral conceded, then he turned to his second in command, "Give the order, commander. Pursue the target. Into warp space."
The entire Tarazet fleet accelerated along the same vector as their target. If the spaceship maintained its top speed, they would surely lose it, but if it faltered, they would overhaul it and capture it.
It seemed at first that the entire fleet had followed their prey, but, in fact, three spaceships had been left behind. The Cutlass and the two dark spaceships. Shuttles emerged from Cutlass, searching the remains for survivors, and even non-survivors, as long as there was sufficient remaining of them. The Cutlass waited for their shuttles to return, and once the scavengers had finished picking clean the bones of the two wrecks, they returned to their mother ship, and Cutlass then accelerated away at warp speed.