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One Last Run

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The cramped cockit barely has enough room for the pilot's bench and second officer's station behind, every square of space inch filled with monitors, switches and system telltales. The glassteel canopy provides minimal headroom, the long slender bubble providing an excellent view of the surrounding space. A holographic heads up display provides navigational information while the console signals add faint rainbow reflections. With a shattering of silver starbursts, the spindrive field collapses, returning the ship to normal space. Local Space: Bright Tasker System: Phyrria

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Knowing it's probably going to get him killed, Jeff Ryan sets off on a mission to gather what info he can on the Fleet about to be launched against the known worlds.

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2007.09

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One Last Run

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The cramped cockit barely has enough room for the pilot's bench and second officer's station behind, every square of space inch filled with monitors, switches and system telltales. The glassteel canopy provides minimal headroom, the long slender bubble providing an excellent view of the surrounding space. A holographic heads up display provides navigational information while the console signals add faint rainbow reflections. With a shattering of silver starbursts, the spindrive field collapses, returning the ship to normal space. Local Space: Bright Tasker System: Phyrria Phyrria Local Space ZMO - The huge blue giant of Bright Tasker dominates this sector of space, the system's sun a large star slowly expanding from giant to supergiant. A single planet orbits the large star, tracing a lonely ellipse beneath its hot sapphire light. The starlanes outsystem from Phyrria are quiet and empty, with no other traffic. Insystem there is heavy chatter on the commlines, and the hints of activity in the planet's orbit. A streak of crimson strikes across the darkness like a fiery lightning bolt, ending in a scattering of silver starbursts, leaving only the NLM Saviour's Haste in its wake. "Kitty, engage the ECM, bring up the shields and start scanning," says Ryan the second the silver starbursts subside. The lunite is already on his engines trying to move the ship as fast as possible from their entry point. "They'll probably have detected that, let's make it as difficult as possible to find us." Having jumped in outsystem the Haste isn't working her way insystem, instead Jeff is keeping the ship at the same distance from the planet for now, just working away from her entry point. There's an absentminded sort of purring from the speakers, then, "Done, Ace," from the resident AI. Seems it's wasted no time finding a nickname. Jeff Ryan growls at the nickname, but he's concentrating on his flying, "Nothing out here I should be worried about?" Unfortunately, the arrival is detected. The Haste's sensors ping as another ship locks onto Ryan's vessel. It comes within visual range soon enough. The hostile doesn't seem to be one of the Erector set-style vessels normally associated with the Phyrrian fleet. Instead, it's a spindly, needle-nosed craft - a sort of scout bearing purple Odarite markings. Slowly, it closes on the intruder. "Ye mean like that ship therre?" mews the cat, helpfully highlighting said ping on the screen. "Hey, that's kinda interrrestin'. Wrrrong solarr system forr that ship, aye?" "Remind me to have a word with our engineers when I get home," grumbles Ryan as he spins the ship round, heading for the scout. "Raven's already told me they were working together, I didn't know how closely until now." "Wrrit down, Ace," chirps the AI. "I'll just give ye a list when ye leave, then." The voice that comes over the comms as the scout vessel slows its approach is a clicky Odarite version of Terran Standard: "Unkidenktifkied vkesskel, thkis iks Phyrrkian spkace. Dekpart akt onkce." "Ah, shutup," says the lunite as he opens fire. To the AI, "So much for making this quiet eh?" "Ye want me t'sing at him too, serr?" offers the Sidhe cheerfully. "Incidentally, wherre's Minnesota? I dinna have it on my charrts." The Odarite vessel takes two shots through its shields, squarely into the hull. Ruptured, the vessel explodes into so much useless wreckage. And then the Haste's sensors ping again as they detect three stealthed vessels - this time of the menacing Phyrrian variety, large and forboding - materializing to fore, starboard, and aft. Fully armed. Fully shielded. Closing on the Haste. The momentary glee at the explosion of the odarite is lost as Jeff glances at his screen, there's a long sigh as the Haste's already fast engines boot to maximum, "Let's show these machines some fancy maneuvers, no?" And he's off, trying to lose them as he makes towards the homeworld, "Second we have them behind us, launch the first probe. I'm not leaving with nothing." Serious with mechanical speed, the AI responds with an, "Aye, serr! How much distance y'want?" The problem with trying to leave the other three behind is that there are two more dead ahead, between Haste and the planet. Weapons are locked on the Haste by all the vessels. The Haste might be fast, the Haste might be piloted by one of the best damned pilots in the galaxy, but five against one? The Haste is weaving between the ships that have appeared in her path to Ryan's target. The phyrrian homeworld. Shots strafe across the Dasher II as he makes it through the blockade, but it's not enough. All weapons were locked and few miss their mark. Within the cabin of the doomed starship, Ryan yells his last order at the Sidhe as the ship start to break up, "Transmit recording since we jumped in!" No doubt, Ryan's moves are admirable, slickly dodging between the Phyrrian vessels on a course for the homeworld. But these are *Phyrrians*: Precise, mechanical, with no margin of error and no desire to let ANYTHING get shot at their homeworld again. They open fire on the Haste, shredding through the shields and cutting into the ship's hull. The Sidhe gets off the final databurst back to less hostile worlds just before the reactor erupts and tears the Haste into a million tiny pieces that roil in the cold vacuum for several moments and then darken into a slow drifting debris field.