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Upon seeing the first "Turned" Cha'llx's mind was taken back in time to numerous past lives spanning hundreds of years. Lives spent combatting these foes that the new Starcrusher was now facing, after years of hard won peace. It was only his priestly training that allowed him to stay aware in this flood of memories and information as the whole of the Allmind flooded into him. He felt his individual identity begin to be stripped away by the sheer force of that torrent, but every member of the clergy was trained in the rigors of mind control and meditation even though no one in generations had been "gifted" with the attention of the Allmind, and it was viewed more as a mythical state even amongst the most literal of the priesthood. LLx was not just a Cardinal though, he was also a Cha', a General, and as a Cha' he had devoted himself to all of his training no matter how esoteric or useless it may have been. So it was with the practiced will of a skilled meditator that he allowed the flood to pour through him rather than trying to fight them or grasp at them. As a leaf on the wind or a tiny bubble in the rapids of a great river, the entity designated as Cardinal Cha'llx Starcrusher experienced the scene slightly removed as his body and mind acted with the will of the People. Using Cha'llx's Relic Radio Implant orders assaulted the communicators of the away team.

"HEED EXEMPLAR'S ORDERS, SET ALL WEAPONS TO VIOLET, AND DON'T TRUST A ZORIAN THAT HAS BEEN SHOT. ONLY WHEN THEY ARE DUSTED CAN THEY BE ASSURED TO BE DEFEATED. NO ONE IS TO ENGAGE IN A ZORIAN IN HAND TO HAND COMBAT OTHER THAN EXEMPLAR. KNOW THAT IF YOU ARE COMPROMISED IN THIS ENGAGEMENT YOUR LIFE IS FORFEIT BUT YOUR SOUL WILL BE SAVED. ESCAPE BACK TO VESSEL DESIGNATION RANGER 3 POSTHASTE. DON'T SUFFER A ZORIAN TO EXIST AS YOU MAKE YOUR RETREAT, AND DON'T ALLOW YOUR PARTNER TO FALL TO THE PREY OF THE VOIDMIND."

His body dropped down into a crouch as he spun Stinger around to fire a Violet beam at the "Turned" behind them, (http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4129329/ 5 sux to fire at the enemy behind us) as his Bio-organic armor sprouted spines and two vine-like tentacles shot out at "Turned" that was visible and wrapped around it's neck. (http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4129335/ 8 sux to grapple the other Zorian with tentacles). The moment the shot was fired, Stinger was spun around Violet Naginata blade held in 2 hands and set to charge Cha'llx leapt into the air and allowed his armor to pull him into the Zorian as a strange charge/pouncing action...

(Edit: I thought NeoFiber attuned gave me an extra die for weave rolls. It doesn't it reduces the diff by 1/dot. So my diff is 4 for the tentacles not 7 and I still get 13 dice...so that is 11-12 sux depending on how 10's work. My armor is pissed!)

Faster than I expected, but not fast enough. Exemplar met the creature's charge, slipping into a lunging knuckle spike attack aimed at her opponents torso, hoping to avoid the creature's strike in the process.

[So, not sure why, but this has been eating part of my posts. I had a bunch of rules stuff down here, and when i posted it all disappeared.

My initial question asked whether we are getting a free dodge pool or not, because if not people have to allocate split actions and account for those mods. That can be difficult due to the way posting works.
my rolls are lost to the internet now, but they were 3 to dodge and 4 (w/will) to hit, if we are using the free dodge and 5 to dodge and 8 (w/will) to hit if we are splitting dice pools (and yes, I know that it should have been opposite that, IC dice hate odds though). ]

The Zorian Commando was startled at the speed with which Exemplar responded, and failed to dodge adequately.

[http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4143685/ 5 sux to dodge, damage? And yes, each character gets a free dodge each turn.]

************

[Paul, your post expresses a dice difficulty of 4, rather than 7. Difficulty in this system is required successes instead of increased dice goals, and as the shot you are making has no added difficulty, the reduction in difficulty plays no part. 8 sux is the correct number. The increased difficulty from attacking multiple targets would play a part, and would be reduced away by your neofiber and knack.]


The Turned behind Challx nearly leapt to safety, but caught a violet beam at an extremity, and landed in dust. The other two saw the tentacles coming, but weren't quite fast enough, and became grappled.

[http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4143697/ 4 sux each. Not good enough.]

Seeing her opening as the creature's body tipped forward slightly, Exemplar pressed in with a flurry of blows, finishing with a brutal hammer fist to the zorian's clavicle as she deflected its blows.

[round 2: 6 sux to attack, 3 to dodge, 6(5)+sux dmg
http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4149897/
http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4149899/

dmg in this system requires you subtract their soak from the pool prior to the dmg roll, auto successes subtract before rolled dmg. This is actually a good thing, as it speeds up posting, since you will be able to figure excess successes and dmg after soak, then roll yourself before posting, eliminating another player post and streamlining the posting process.]

[due to low activity levels, including on my part, I'm going to push us through this fight and try to get this game going again. If you still want to play this game, then please play it. If you are on my list of people that are playing this game and are not playing it or do not plan to continue playing it, please let me know.]

Exemplar exchanged blow and blow with the Zorian commando, vaguely aware of Danagher behind her gurgling and crying in a melee of some kind. Exemplar caught the vampire off guard, wrapped her arm around the creature's neck, broke it twice, picked up the creature, and threw it bodily into a console, which broke under the force. The Zorian commando fell limp to the ground.

A violet beam lanced past Exemplar's head. Danagher was down, gagging and holding a vicious neck wound closed, while his weapon had been taken by one of the Turned. The other was swirling in the air conditioning, rendered into a fine white powder by a lucky shot from Danagher.

The hungry Turned angled the weapon towards Exemplar again, but did not fire. It's eyes glowing red and fangs extended, it slowly approached, clearly attempting to intimidate Exemplar enough to run, and then it'd have it's chance. The idea percolated through Exemplar's head that using a weapon like violet beams wasn't on the Zorian menu, since it was Exemplar's blood they wanted.

Motion caught her attention. The commando slowly rose, her wounds sealing and her neck popping back into place. With an ancient and exotic accent, the Zorian spoke.

"We have waited in the darkness for too long without fresh blood. You, you are new to us. We will add your power to ours, your diversity to ours, you will join the clan. These others are chattel. YOU will be a general at the side of our queen, Vixa the Undying. YOU will command the horde, composed of those like me, and the chattel, to retake what was once ours. YOU have come to here, to the grave of the universe, to be reborn. Submit to me, and Vixa will turn you herself. All this fighting has made me hungry, decide now!"

*********

Cha'llx was aware that his tentacle protrusions were wringing the unlife out of the turned, crushing their bodies, and smashing them against a bulkhead, whereupon they crumbled to dust. The commando on the other hand, flickered between shadows, evading the careful shots from his Glaive weapon.

Corporal Jylal attempted to suppress the incredibly evasive creature, but succeeded only in blackening the floor, bulkheads, and other surfaces, and then dove into the access chute. She called out behind her to Cha'llx, her panic and fear palpable.

"Chief, we are LEAVING!"

She scrambled down the chute to the lower level, to find the airlock door standing open.

********

The gantry was, in reality, a scarce thirty meters in length. To Major Rahbi Levay, an educated Aolan who knew that her race had been enslaved to the Zorians for thousands of years, and were custom bred for use as blood dolls, slaves, servants, and worse, those thirty meters may as well have been thirty kilometers. Dragging her fallen comrade with one arm and laying down suppressing fire with the other, the damage to her battlesuit couldn't have been more inconvenient.

Her helmet was partly smashed in, and her left pauldron had been ripped clean off. The Zorians were stronger and faster than even the legends and histories had suggested. Panic followed a burning feeling in her veins, leading from the bite she had sustained to her very mind.

Her rainbow beam cannon lay smashed to pieces back on Ranger 2, an emergency scram the only thing saving her and Kuglom from lethal radiations from the on board reactor. Her foresight in carrying a secondary was the only thing keeping her from rejoining her ancestors in thrall to the vampire.

Blast after blast chased the scurrying Zorians out of the mouth of the gantry, each shot more difficult than the last, as her stamina wore thin, her strength grew weak, and as blood filled the left arm of her battlesuit, pouring out of a grievous wound. A flash lit up one of them, her Primary beam setting him alight, killing the undead bastard.

Her strength gave out from underneath her, and she collapsed onto her back. Her battlesuit helped her to sit up, but her aim was shot, and the remaining Zorian took advantage of the temporary lull to make it's move.

In a nightmare moment the creature was upon her, it's impossibly strong grip crushing against her firing arm. Her helmet was ripped free and cast away, clattering against the wall. The Zorian commando, perhaps thousands of years old, bore a physical resemblance to her own kind, and here, face to face, fang to fang, Rahbi felt panic once again.

"You will rejoin the fold, lost one. You will serve ME now!"

The creature reared back, bared it's fangs, and wrenched her head to the side, exposing her neck. A fury of violet slashed the creature to dust, covering Levay in white powdery relief.

"Major! It's the Major!"

The marines were here. Two of them broke cover and made their way to her, dragging her back to the mouth of the gantry, Kuglom still in tow.

"Vitals are weak, she's in shock. MEDIC!"

Wouyo, the combat medic in the small team sent with Ranger 3, stormed into the gantry-lock and started diagnostics. Levay gasped for breath and faded in an out of lucidity, the blood loss taking a dark toll on her.

"I can't work through this battle suit. It's fucked up enough that the onboard medical unit isn't helping. Let's pop it."

"I've got corporal Kuglom here as well. He's...He's not doing so well, doc, I don't think..."

"Private, when I need you to think for me, I'll be wearing a toe tag. You and you, get her out of this armor, get a stretcher, and move her to the mess hall."

Wouyo moved over to Kuglom. His pupils were rapidly dilating and contracting, and dark veins were visible in his face.

"Give me your tactical scanner."

Without thinking twice, one of the marines rebuilding the small bunker tossed over his tactical scanner. Wouyo clicked it on and carefully waved it over Kuglom's body. It's readout gave him reason to scowl. Wouyo opened his kit and withdrew a large vacutainer. He cleaned up Kuglom's right antecubital fossa and withdrew a large amount of blood into the device. Once the vacuum had finished it's draw, he closed the safety device, and sealed the container in an armored bio-hazard container, which he then stowed in a cargo pocket.

"Sidearm."

The other marines knew what was coming. They knew Kuglom, and they knew he was a good marine. He didn't deserve this. The requested weapon was produced promptly.

Wouyo looked deep into Kuglom's wildly changing eyes, and felt that he detected a look of recognition, or understanding, admixed with a dark predator somewhere in the serpentine depths, rapidly escaping a metaphysical prison. Wouyo popped Kuglom's dogtags off of his necklace, flipped the weapon to violet, and disintegrated him.

"Doc, we've got the major situated. KROM there's a lot of blood in there, you'd better get in there."

Wouyo would hopefully have time in the coming months to consider the events that had just taken place, his decisions, and come to terms with regret and guilt. For now, he had another patient, this one perhaps not beyond saving. Without returning either the tactical scanner or sidearm, he rushed to the mess hall.

Major Levay had been divorced of her armor, now only wearing blood soaked battle dress and bandages. The two privates detailed to get her out of the armor were applying pressure to her shoulder wound, as their training dictated. Wouyo joined them at the table and resumed his assessment of her condition.

"I need the crash set. Bring me everything. Do we have transmat? Is it in range to the Endeavor? The major would be better treated in sick bay."

Heads shook now. Wouyo dug deep for the grit and clear thinking he would need to be equal to this task. While experienced, he had little direct knowledge of the carnage of battle, let alone battlesuit troopers beaten to a pulp.

The force of having a part of her armor ripped off and her shoulder fed upon had compromised a major artery, and caused a large amount of tissue damage besides. Beyond this one wound, several others, blunt traumas, had resulted from the sheer potence of the vampiric physical strikes against her body armor, while she had attempted to shield Kuglom from their assaults. Wouyo took over the largest wound carefully, and hazarded a glance beneath the compress.

"I need a tissue stabilizer and IV access. Which of you has combat life-saver training?"

Private Danton jumped into action, and withdrew the requested items from the rapidly accruing collection of medial equipment. He struggled at first to get access to her veins, but was ultimately successful.

"IV access, Doc."

Wouyo stole a glance at the Major's dog tags. She was older than he would have believed. Her race's apparent physical youth was something he hoped was more than skin deep, as normally a 63 year old woman would be unlikely to survive an injury such as this, but if the Major was physiologically 25, as she appeared to be, then combined with her fitness, she would have a good chance of returning to 100%.

"She had blood type X 21a sigma 3. Transfuse wide open."

The medical cornocopia machine produced the required synthetic blood substitute almost as fast as Danton could pipe it into the major. The added blood volume, clotting factors, and nutrients brought an improvement in her color in mere moments. With the tissue stabilizer, Wouyo began injecting healing micromachines into her open wound, with each injection a harsh 'clunk' shocked the Major, but the blood loss slowed. The other attending marine, Corporal Vahpo, slowly took a few steps back, and readied his weapon.

"Doc, how are we gonna know if she changes...she already has fangs...her eyes already glow red like theirs do...how are we gonna know!?"

"Get out."

Wouyo didn't have an answer, but the tactical scanner was still negative for Z-waves, so he would keep working on his patient until she either started showing Z-waves, the changes Kuglom underwent, or became stable.

The latter condition seemed to be coming into reality, as the Major's vitals stabilized, her blood volume returned to normal, and as she opened her eyes and looked around, began acting normally. Wouyo was surprised at how readily she had responded to the micromachines, and privately wondered if her body had been conditioned for something like that. He was unaware of such preparations.

"I'm...I'm ok. I'm with it. Did Kuglom make it?"

While conscious and able to speak, her color and slow movements betrayed the frailty of her condition. Wouyo would continue to transfuse and control bleeding as he was available, and took note of the timer on the tissue stabilizer;medical micromachines would only last a few minutes, and once they wore out the damage could overtake her again and he would be back where he started.

"Don't worry about that for now, Major. You're safe."

"Casualty coming in!"

Vahpo hobbled in supporting Corporal Jylal, who was in turn bleeding freely from several wounds. Vahpo and Danton heaved her up onto the next table, and started stripping her armor from her.

"I fell. It's mostly from the fall. The Chief, the Ensign, are they back yet? They didn't pass me in the gantry...agghgh. One of those fuckers bit me before you guys drilled it down over the major. Any word on the Chief?"

The removal of her breastplate had revealed a rather nasty raking bite across her ribs, or was it a claw? Hard to tell. Wouyo didn't answer about the chief, as he didn't know either way, but he did begin his assessment of the corporal, her wounds presumed to be capable of Turning her until proved otherwise.

*********

Chief Cha'llx was alone on the middle deck of Ranger 2 chasing shadows. Cybertentacles withdrawn, he carefully paced from shadow to shadow, trying to predict where the next strike would come from. A hissing sound moved in and out of his perceptions, and the darkness seemed to loom closer and closer.

The spire of the queen's palace extended below him, as he stood in the throne chamber at the top, overlooking a world hived over. He turned suddenly, detecting motion, and spotted a queen, a young queen, slowly moving towards him.

"You are the greatest of us. For your courage, and your foresight in challenging our ways, I will be YOUR consort, Cha'llx, you and I will lead this world and our people...together."

Cha'llx's guard came down reflexively at the sight of a queen, and at her words. She stepped a little closer.

"You have worked so hard. Join with me, and our offspring will populate a thousand worlds."

His stance softened slightly and his weapon's energy blade withdrew with a silencing hiss. She stepped closer still.

"I have been waiting for you, for one such as you. Nobody is wiser, nobody is stronger. Nobody deserves to be KING of our people, nobody but you."

Cha'llx took a step forward, something akin to tears forming in his eyes and heart. Wasn't this what he wanted? His BODS retracted and converted into a uniform showing his ranks and insignia.

"What you did was brave, but do you have the courage to do this? Are you strong enough to take me as yours, and rule our people? We have gone astray, and only you can lead us..."

Cha'llx took the young queen in his embrace, mandible approaching mandible, ready to claim his rightful place as King of the Allhive.

STARCRUSHER analysis complete. Asynchronous sensorum detected. Aberrant input isolated. Anomalous perceptions overridden.

Cha'llx held the Zorian commando in his arms, whose fangs were bared and mere inches from his neck. He raised a hand to caress the Zorian's face, but instead gripped it by the chin, ignited Stinger, and separated it's head in one deft slice. The balance of the Zorian crumbled to dust, as the facial expression upon the head twisted in a silent scream, warped, and then crumbled as well. Cha'llx's BODS returned to armor form.

"Deck 2 secure."


**********

Exemplar stood before a Commando of the Zorian Horde, challenged by an offer of recognition and power, rather than mere violence. At first she didn't know what to do. It was of course a tempting offer, but wasn't she here to fight villains such as this? And after all, wasn't Scar like...a total disappointment? Remembering her confrontation with Scar, and realizing that in this fight, she was the hero, and this was the villain, ALL HER OWN, definitely not shared this time, she began to glow again.

A look of horror spread across the Zorian's face as Exemplar lit up slightly, illuminating the dark chambers aboard Ranger 2. Large burns formed across her skin, which she attempted to shield as she cowered into the corner. With a flash of dust and ash, the Turned behind Exemplar was eliminated without ceremony. Emboldened by this display, Exemplar slowly approached her foe, who screamed in terror and agony the likes of which she had only inflicted on others. Exemplar found herself in this moment of power and righteousness, and called upon the inspiration that Captain Stirling placed in her to find the right words for the moment.

"We came to Strive for the greater good, not to submit to darkness.

We came to Seek knowledge and peace, not to lead your misbegotten demons to war.

We came to Find those who called for help, not to pander to your whims or aid a dead empire in rising again.

Whatever your dark queen has in mind for us, she will find that we came to triumph, NOT TO YIELD."

And with this last, the glow coming from Exemplar brightened to fill the room, and burned the Commando to ash in a cacophany of screams.

Exemplar took a few deep breaths, unsure of exactly what had just happened, but then found herself again, her glow extinguished, and clicked on her radio.

"Deck 1 secure."

Cha'llx had to take a moment to collect his wits. Thank you mighty Ancestor for protecting me from the ploys of our foe. It was then that he began replaying the Comms broadcast to himself. Deck 2 secured, Deck 1 secured...

"Team 3 is your deck secured? Team 3 come in. Ensign Exemplar convene on Team 3's position and check on their status! I am deactivating the missiles now."

The cybernetically integrated warrior continued to scan Comms frequencies while he made his way to the controls console and began disarming and recalling the deployed armament.

Cha'llx's words were enough to bring Exemplar out of the reverie she had fallen into briefly. The flash of power was like nothing she'd felt before, and the words more eloquent than she imagined herself ever using, but there would be time later to go over what had happened. Unless they didn't make it off this ship of course, and standing around thinking about things wasn't doing much to ensure anyone's survival.

"On my way," was her only communication to the rest of the crew before heading to deck 3.

The radio silence from team 3 was ominous, but not nearly as much as the bloody state of affairs on deck 3. Kuglom had done his share of bleeding before being dragged through the gantry, as had the major.

Exemplar and Cha'llx converged on deck 3 at roughly the same time, and together discovered an absence of Zorians or Z-waves. The obvious signs of melee were everywhere, and the pieces of the Major's battlesuit that had been ripped off represented the forces at play in said combat.

The trail of blood led past several piles of dust suggestive of disintigrated zorians, as well as one brought down by primary beams. It then led into the gantry and through it, to the makeshift bunker beyond the gantry-lock.

"It's them! It's Exemplar and the Chief!"

The marines called out in relief and excitement. The immediate threat the Zorian's had posed seemed to have passed.

Realizing everyone was alive, the decks cleared, and the time limit she had set fast approaching, Exemplar called to the Ranger waiting to destroy them. "Ranger, stand down. Decks are cleared. Prepare decontamination protocols on the ship for all of us, tractor the ship, and lets get back home." Yes, home. This was where she belonged now.

"Danagher and Kuglom both, Major Levay is touch and go but if we can get her back to Endeavor, I think she'll make it. Jylal is worse for wear but not in critical condition as far as I can tell."

It took Exemplar a moment to realize that not only was Wouyo reporting to her, but that he was reporting casualties.

The gantry retracted slowly, as though there were no hurry going on, and the marines cleared up the bunker in silence, occasionally glancing at the odd stain on the deck to their left where Wouyo had disintegrated Kuglom.

Cha'llx moved slowly, as though immersed in mud, as the consequences of the strange vision played back through his mind a few times. That was close. The mission wasn't even a day old yet, by his reckoning, and he had been inches from turning into a Zorian.

The general comms circuit crackled on.

"Ranger 2, assault teams, and casualties are decontaminated. Ranger 2 is secured and ready to 'tandem' back to hangar."

Gloire, soaked with sweat and clammy with nausea, turned to watch as Exemplar and Cha'llx filed into the bridge and assumed their posts. She cast a forlorn glance at the position the Major had occupied on the way in, the toll of the mission weighing in on her already strained psyche.

"Ranger 3 standing by. Exemplar has the Bridge."

Exemplar glanced across the bridge noting that all the sensor sweeps and readouts showed normal. The absence of the Major was like a cold spot in the room, an unwelcome draft blowing in. She would have reminded Exemplar that it was her bridge and her command or something else, with that playful peppy way of hers, but instead she was clinging to life in the mess hall, barely held together by medical micro-machines and gallons of synthetic blood substitute.

Ranger 2 fell into a following mode, slaving it's controls to the pilot station of Ranger 3. It would be able to maneuver and dock and go to warp, but no combat maneuvers would be within the capacity of the AI directing it.

"No response from Endeavor, Ensign."

And with that, Gloire and the rest of the crew looked to Exemplar, again, for direction.

"Get us back to the Endeavor. We've got wounded, and without the doctor they may not make it. If they don't want us to dock or if something's happened, we'll deal with that when we get there." An afterthought, but an important one: "And good job everyone. Good job."

Captain Harold Stirling rose from his command chair, and to the occasion. The pensive Grimlackian on the viewscreen had waited long enough, and with the brave Commander Keen in sick bay, wounded while performing just such a derring do, the choice was so simple as to not be one.

"I will accompany Graklor, and I agree, we should use both plans. We will need all the power we can get to create the local shield, and to make it strong enough to resist the blast."

Stirling shot a glance at the countdown above the view screen. 23:11.

"Chief Ignak, how long will this procedure take?"

The grimlackian could be seen to perform a few quick calculations.

"Not long. Not long at all. We should know within a few minutes if shutting off the power is actually doing anything worthwhile. Graklor has already left for the emitter array with his team, they will prepare things internally. I suggest, however, that you make securing and transporting the weapon your current task. It is quite heavy, and preparing it once outside may take a while. I wouldn't put it off to the last minute, is what I'm trying to get across."

Stirling grimaced.

"No no, I get your point, no need to re-iterate. We wouldn't want to have some desperate count-down with thousands of lives on the line and us out there trying to cross the wires just right. We'll do it now, not later. I'm on my way to the Armory to secure the weapon. Bridge out"

The connection terminated, and the bridge crew looked to Stirling in anticipation of further instructions. Instead he clicked on the comms to Colonel Adar.

"Colonel Adar, this is Captain Stirling. Dispatch a detail to the Armory immediately. Please include at least two battlesuit troopers."

"Roger that Captain."

"Stirling out."

He glanced at his command chair, hard won and only his for a few hours, now to be left unattended. He was loathe to walk out of the bridge he had so recently reclaimed, but such was the calling of the moment. Antimatter super-weapons were not to be released lightly, and certainly not to be modified and detonated at the hull without his direct supervision. It hardly needed to be the case that it could only realistically be him to do it, he was nervous enough allowing it to happen at all, let alone under another's gaze. Yes, he trusted his officers, but this was a potentially catastrophic situation, he wouldn't have just delegated such responsibility. In the event of failure, it needed to have been his hand at the trigger, as it would be his head on the chopping block.

"Ensign Mukinna, you have the bridge."

And with that, Stirling left.

*************

"Just go ahead and do what you think can help. I want to know more about what's going on in Ranger 2." The captain had said.

Jezial stood in wonderment, gazing at the ship that was supposed to be hers, and the others nearby. The rude lady in the main hangar had directed her down here, to the auxiliary hangar, where "any bullshit civilian craft might be." These craft were not "bullshit."

HER vessel, oddly named "Cassandra" was...purple. Not some subtle "nearly navy or black" purple, but bright damned purple, nearly mauve. It was transport sized, and was clearly a custom job made by her people.

The OTHER vessels on the auxiliary deck, which she assumed were those being referred to as 'bullshit civilian craft,' included at least ten state of the art or next generation fighter craft and gunships. A nerdy part of her went weak as she spotted a Fer de Lance model Omega, a ship so far from market readiness as to be considered a rumor, but there it was, capable of making high-relativity turns, armed with omnidirectional primary beams, protected with never-before-produced absorptive shielding, equipped with never-before-produced auto-transmat maneuvering, and countless other technological miracles largely assumed to be speculative.

Further down the line was a vessel which appeared basically like the blade of a double-edged knife, which she recognized as a Bassilon psi-craft, capable of responding to latent or active psi-waves, pushing it's responsiveness beyond those provided by even the highest hard-technology. The ship itself would be psychically active, and would have a semblance of personality and intelligence.

She ventured away from her craft to stroll through the hangar, as though it were a high end showroom and she there to shop. She spotted two more Fer de Lance Omegas, though with different markings, and finally what she assumed to be the piece-de-resistance, a Grimlackian Umbracraft.

The Umbracraft recalled the long lost technologies of hyperspace to draw in forces from beyond our dimension and unrelated to interactions within it. Poorly understood even by the Grimlackian engineers who built it, and based on designs derived from archeological digs from civilizations known to have interacted with hyperspace, the Umbracraft was not produced in any substantial numbers, was highly sought after, and could turn in ways that would make any sane physicist blush. It could transfer inertia to and withdraw inertia from a poorly understood and inaccessible dimension which was once the basis of planet annihilating weapons and mega-scale engineering technologies lost aeons in the past. It had a decent paint job, considering.

At last Jezial finished her self directed tour of the auxiliary hangar and it's resident 'bullshit civilian craft' and deigned to board her own Cassandra. A quick automated psi-print let her inside, a nice security measure considering the recent factors in the ship's population she had learned of, and the ramp led her to a central lounge. This area would normally be for hanging out, meditating, projecting into distant places, and just generally having a good time. It was fully stocked with exciting and probably frowned upon libations and other forms of contraband her people enjoyed upon occasion.

Fore of the lounge was the cockpit, a lavish chamber which was to be her canvas against which she would paint dazzling displays of aerobatic maneuverability and daring which would win her...something out of place caught her eye among the traditionally spartan controls, which concerned her immediately. She darted from the bridge in a panic, heading for the engine room, where her fears were confirmed.

The Umbracraft, however maneuverable and potentially well armed, was not, in fact, the piece-de-resistance she thought it was. No, not on this mission. Anywhere in the known universe it would have been, but here, now, her craft outmatched it. Cassandra was the most valuable thing on board the Endeavor, and would have to be protected from theft or sabotage, or would have to be destroyed, for Cassandra had something everyone on board would want, sooner or later, that with certainty was not present on any of the other vessels, fancy civilian craft or not.

Cassandra had Superwarp.

***********************

"Nice and easy, set it down right there, nicely done."

Captain Stirling directed the battlesuit troopers via commlink, and privately admired the way he had circumvented what had seemed to be a stumbling block in their plan.

"Ok. Sergeant Pierce, take your team to the perimeter of the array, and stand watch. I don't expect any trouble, but we don't actually know where Jaxon Mars went, and this would be the perfect time and place for him to interfere, and we can't have that."

"Roger that, sir."

The marines fanned out in a defensive perimeter around the Array, watchful for any signs of movement. Stirling shifted in his space armor, the fitted suit didn't quite fit right, he seemed to have gained or lost weight, or moved it, or something, during cryostasis, and now it didn't fit quite right. It worked fine, it was just a little broad in the shoulders and was awkward. He would get it adjusted or get used to it later.

The panel came free, as the instructions he had displayed in his helmet indicated it would. Graklor began his part, working at the base of the weapon, fixing it in place. The motion of the Endeavor was slight, but enough that a change in geometry could occur before detonation, and mess things up. The forces at play here were titanic, a slight mis-calculation could kill them all.

Stirling worked slowly and carefully, double checking each adjustment, each code entry, each bypass, each time. He had the advantage of time, for now, and while he didn't plan to lose it, he did plan to use it. A mis-fire or dud would be terrible, as these things couldn't quite be disposed of easily. This weapon was a match for the Endeavor. The damage would not be total, but this close, on the hull itself, the ship would be savaged. Two or three of these would be enough to cripple Endeavor, a half dozen would be a total loss.

His timer read 21:09 when he finished his preparations. It had taken just over an hour from the time he had accepted the task to now. A lot weighed on his mind, Ranger 2 and 3, out there somewhere doing who knows what, Jezial wandering the ship in search of her personal craft, which he didn't exactly approve of but at this point anything was fair game, and now he and Graklor had armed an enormous capital buster ON THE HULL of his ship. Well, not quite.

Stirling's comm unit crackled on.

"This is Ignak. The preparations have been prepared for our side. Are your preparations prepared?"

Stirling saw Graklor roll his eyes. There was something odd about Ignak, even to his own people.

"We're almost ready Ignak, stand by."

Remote detonator in place and in hand, Stirling thought through the entire procedure, verifying that everything had been done and was ready. Satisfied that it had gone precisely as planned, he punched in the arming code. The machine accepted his code, and indicated that it was armed. He swallowed hard. There was a LOT Of antimatter, ready to react, right in front of him. This was not the time to be timid.

Stirling and Graklor walked slowly away from the warhead, needed to leave the array before sealing it in the shielding.

"Captain, this is Ignak speaking to you again. I am prepared to divert all power away from life support to create the shield, but I have discovered that it may not be possible to reverse that process. You see, the blast will drain a large amount of power in the shield, and we would not regain all that we spent if that were so. Once we turn off life support, it will require more power to re-activate it than we will have available. We could probably get the air scrubbers back on in certain decks, but not everywhere. I'm trying to explain that this is a one way trip."

Stirling knew that this was a one way trip when he signed up.

"Roger that, Ignak. We're ready over here, go ahead."

"That guy is so weird. On my planet, he is from an aboriginal group. They live out in the wilderness and paint their bodies and dance around fires. He made it into some kind of 'civilize the natives' program, and turned out to be electrokinetic. He can speak to "machine spirits" or whatever. I don't trust his powers, and I don't trust him."

Stirling thought about this confession. He knew Ignak's file forwards and backwards, and trusted the odd man, in spite of his mannerisms and weirdness.

"If you don't trust Ignak, why are you out here with me and this bomb?"

Graklor thought a moment.

"I trust you."

The frank nature of his comment left Stirling speechless. Stirling crossed over the border of the array. The marine standing snapped a salute.

Graklor pointed into the distance, above.

"There! The superwarp stage!"

All eyes turned up. There it was, floating along, still intact. It had promised to destroy itself safely almost a full day ago. Perhaps it could still be...

The stage lit up and seemed to stretch impossibly into the distance, before collapsing into a rift in time and space. It had just made a superwarp jump, in the direction they were supposed to travel in, unmanned. A roiling cloud of anti-debris and nega-matter, disturbed by the jump, rushed towards endeavor.

"Wha?!"

The marine, panicked, lost his footing. Stirling helped him back to his feet.

"Captain, I have made the transfer of power. Life support is now down, system wide. The crew are gathered in the environment module. The shield should be starting up any second. Get everyone clear of the array."

Ignak's report droned in Stirling's ear as the cloud of exotic matters rushed towards him. There was nowhere to seek cover, nowhere to run. It was moving at unthinkable speeds and was composed of unknowable materials.

The cloud struck Endeavor a few hundred feet from the array, at least that's where it struck first. The largest particles, each the size of a pea or larger, struck like meteors, chipping at the hull, creating superficial damage only visible at arms length. The could roiled towards them fast enough to be unavoidable and slow enough to give them time to realize that, while it posed no real threat the armor of the Endeavor, it posed a very real threat to them.

The cloud blinded Stirling, and the lance of hot nega-matter that struck a hole clean through his left leg filled him with blinding pain and barely suppressed panic. His reflexes from a lifetime in space operations kicked in. Despite being momentarily blinded by dust, he lowered himself slowly onto his right knee, and clamped down on the breach with either hand, pressing firmly. The suit's emergency diagnostics indicated stable pressure, and were trying to re-pressurize. He kept the pressure on now, knowing that this was when most people lost their grip. The medical diagnostics showed that the injury was a through-and-through in muscle and skin, a lucky break if there was one to be had here; the injury, though painful, was not life threatening.

The dust cloud passed. Stirling tried to take in the situation.

The marine, whose name he had not yet learned, was dead. A piece of debris had done to his helmet what one had done to Stirling's leg, and the inside of the marine's helmet, what of it was left, was red.

The remote detonator was destroyed, and floating uselessly on the hull in front of him.

The shield was up.

Graklor was on the other side of the shield.

Somewhere in his mind, Stirling was aware of several voices shouting information or demands for information at him. The crew inside, cowering together in the habitat module, the bridge officers, blind without sensors, and at a loss for what had just happened, Ignak, attempting to explain something about what was going on, the marine detail, taking in casualties, Sergeant Pierce, running towards him at full tilt to help secure his vac-suit breach, but the only voice he could hear clearly, or cared to hear clearly, was that of Graklor.

"Captain, it has been an honor to serve with you."

With nothing more than that, Graklor turned away and made the seemingly endless walk back to the warhead.

Stirling had little sense of time. Alarms in his helmet indicated rapid pressure loss, as his hands, once holding the tear closed, now pounded uselessly against the shield, amid screams, his own, of denial at what was and what must be happening.

Huge, powered hands grabbed him and pulled him away as Sergeant Pierce attempted to get him back under control, the other two surviving marines clamped patches onto his space armor, closing the breach and saving his life, all against his will and in spite of his frothing mad, teary eyed refusals.

Seemingly distant, Stirling caught sight of Graklor solemnly giving a salute. A message of importance was ignored by Stirling, and while the three marines shielded themselves from the blast and averted their eyes, the still desperate Stirling had the image of the saluting Grimlackian seared into his memory as the warhead detonated.

The power came alive throughout the ship.

The terrified crew, huddled in the environment module, gave three cheers for Captain Stirling.

The reactor thrummed to life, giving the anxiously waiting engineering crew ample cause for celebration, with the stoic Ignak allowing himself a sigh of relief.

Crew members throughout the ship jumped to their workstations, now having the full power of the Endeavor at their disposal.

The main hangar bay leapt to life, Lieutenant Commander Bri mobilizing Cad squadron to immediately launch and form up on the Endeavor, in case Ranger 3 failed in it's mission and Ranger 2 came back for revenge.

The bridge screens came back to life, now filled with functioning systems and main power.

The three marines tending to their captain helped him to his feet. Though victorious, he felt defeated, empty, and hollow inside. Tears started to dry on his face, and he reflexively tried to wipe them away, only to pat uselessly at his helmet.

"I'm with it. I'm ok."

He waved off his men. The walk back to the airlock seemed to take forever, giving him plenty of time to count the number that were being carried back by the battlesuit trooper. 7 casualties, not including Graklor, who had no remains.

"Captain, it's been an honor to serve with you."

The repeat of Graklor's last words was accompanied by a salute, from Raith Pierce, Sergeant of Ghost Squadron, the battle suit troopers. Stirling met his gaze, and saw that his face was in a similar state to his own. He returned the salute.

"Captain, this is Ignak. All systems normal here in Engineering. The damage to the array is significant, but with full power available, we should be able to repair it in short order."


********

Ranger 3 dropped out of warp within hailing range of Endeavor.

"Ensign, my sensors showed a brief Superwarp signature, and then another antimatter shockwave, but no blast. It would have to have been huge, the size of those capital busters we saw before, but there's Endeavor and...and the power is up! I see shield signiatures, and the weapons are online. The captain did it, but how?"

With a nod from Exemplar, Gloire began hailing the Endeavor. Both anticipated that this day was about to get longer, with the content of their reports. No messages had gotten through to Endeavor since the Zorians were discovered, and with the boarding pod still attached to Ranger 2, any precautions the captain wanted to take would be reasonable, no matter how extreme.

*************

Stirling fell into a trance as he was brought into the ship, freed from his armor, rushed to sick bay, patched up, and rushed back to the bridge.

The cheers he received as he returned to his command chair were poorly received. He noted an incoming hail from Ranger 3 that had yet to be answered. He slumped back into his chair, physically and emotionally exhausted by his ordeal, but in some way relieved. The timer above the view screen was frozen at 20:26. The image of Graklor as the warhead detonated flashed in his mind again. Victory, however sweet, was bitter today.

Jezial's first thought was that only Captain Stirling should ever be told that her ship had superwarp.

Jezail's second thought was that no one should ever, ever, EVER be told that her ship had superwarp.

Both of these thoughts drifted off as she focused on prepping the ship for flight and determining the best astrocourse to attain proximity to Ranger 2, but stay out of the way of Ranger 3 and all passing debris.

As she pulled out of the hanger bay, the shock of the sudden disappearance of the, apparently intact, superwarp stage left her shocked. She programmed in the direction the stage had departed from and a small portion of her consciousness was kept focused in that direction.

Cassandra was rocked by the simultaneous waves of triumph and terror emanating from the being aboard Ranger 3 and the Endeavor. Though she wasn't adept enough to glean the causes in either case, clearly everyone was dealing with a great deal of stress.

It took a few moments, and a brief distraction with an odd swirling cloud of space gas, before Jezial was able to clear the Endeavor and Comm Ranger 3.

"Ranger 3, this is...well...this is Jezial, a civilian contractor." She briefly thought through discussing their shock, terror and loss, but had often found that directly bringing up the emotions of others had only ever irritated or enraged them. "My ship, Cassandra, and I are out to help determine the status of Ranger 2, which you clearly have under control." She let her thoughts drift over to the other ship while she continued speaking, "Do you require any assistance?"

Weird, but not much isn't right now. A quick check of systems revealed that they didn't really need any direct assistance, but they were extremely vulnerable at the moment, and there was no certainty that the Endeavor was in a position to protect them. "Jez- uh, Jezial. You think you could range out a bit, cover us while we're in the middle of the tow and docking? I plan to give my report remotely, and stay out after we drop off the wounded, assuming the captain approves. Then, if you're interested, we could scout out further."

Gloire blinked at the sight of Jezial's ship. Twice.

"Exemplar, I've got a scan up on the civilian ship. It is NOT armed, and it IS purple. It is....very purple. Why is it here?"