Title: Pandora's Scions

Author: NorJC

Crossover: Battlestar Galactica 2003 and the military sci-fi anthology series "The Fleet"

Contact:

Rating: T

Date began: December 14, 2013

NOTICE: THIS STORY MAY BE DISTRIBUTED FREE OF CHARGE BUT MUST NOT BE SOLD OR EXCHANGED FOR FINANCIAL RETURN IN ANY FORM.

-COPYRIGHT/DISCLAIMER NOTICE-

"Battlestar Galactica" and all related material, its characters and certain technological devices and/or references to such, from the television shows and movies, may be or are registered trademarks of, and may be or are copyrighted by Glen Larson and whatever corporation it may or may not be owned by. This story takes off from the nBSG episode "Lay Down Your Burdens" Part 1 from Season 2.

"The Fleet," "Battlestation," and the Alliance of Planets may be or are registered trademarks of, or may be or are copyrighted by Bill Fawcett & Associates and whatever corporation it may or may not be owned by. The characters in this story, though, are the author's own creation.

No studio or publisher is responsible for the content of this story. Other names and additional characters are the creation of the author who is solely responsible for them as such.

THIS STATEMENT MUST ACCOMPANY THE STORY 'PANDORA'S SCIONS' IF DISTRIBUTED. THIS STORY IS FREE OF CHARGE AND MAY NOT BE SOLD OR EXCHANGED FOR FINANCIAL RETURN IN ANY FORM.

There are several great stories from "The Fleet" series you can find online. In any search engine, type in "Grimmer Than Hell" and "David Drake"- several of his Fleet stories will pop up. You can also type in a separate search for "The Murder of Halley's Comet" and Niven's and Drake's story will pop up, as well.

The cover image for Pandora's Scions is from Irvin L. Jackson's "Ascension Chronicles" universe and was provided to me through his kind courtesy to Lil'Hawkeye. Please see more of his art at DeviantArt under darklorddc. Thank you, Mr. Jackson!

###

To punish the tribes of man for their blasphemy, Zeus bade Hephaestus to create a mortal of stunning beauty. Zeus then bade Hermes to give the mortal a deceptive heart and a lying tongue. This creation was Pandora, the first woman. Then the gods gifted to her a jar which they forbade Pandora to open. With that done, Zeus sent Pandora down to dwell among the tribes of man. – The Book of Pythia.

PROLOGUE

Fifty years ago, the planet Xanadu, formerly known as Schlein Gamma IV, had been one of many worlds that had belonged to a group of mercantile-families that had called themselves the Syndicate. Their planets were located in the hindmost sector of a stellar cluster where the families had hidden during the Dark Millennium that had arisen after the fall of humanity's first interstellar empire.

After the Dark Millennium had passed, Earth had slowly recovered the ability of interstellar flight. Several centuries later, Earth and dozens of alien societies had joined to form the Alliance of Planets, a confederation of worlds comprised of both human and non-human planets.

Seventy-five years more passed before the Syndicate, still in hiding, had considered the much larger Alliance a potential threat to its way of life. Frightened by the unfettered economic expansion of the Alliance, the Syndicate had sought to curb its galactic rival by sending proxy races to raid Alliance worlds and to sow the seeds of terror that would rip the Alliance apart. However, when their proxies had failed, the Syndicate, led by the Schlein family, had launched a hot war against the Alliance outright.

Fortunately, for the Alliance, the interstellar military and exploration service known as the Fleet had defeated the Syndicate after a quarter century-long struggle.

After the war, all of the Family worlds had been absorbed into the Alliance. Schlein Gamma IV, renamed Xanadu by the bitter victors, was situated in one of the systems on the border between the well-settled Beta Quadrant of the galaxy and the largely unexplored Gamma Quadrant. It'd been so far off the beaten path that there hadn't been any combat within parsecs of it during the Syndicate War.

Twenty years after the end of the war, the Alliance was still attempting to integrate the former Syndicate citizens into the Alliance. Even though Xanadu was a garden planet and the key to the Gamma Quadrant, no one had begun to plan any serious exploration of the unknown territory. Thus, when eight alien vessels had warped into Xanadu's system on a bearing from that unexplored area of space and launched hundreds of nuclear missiles at the planet, every person who'd manned Xanadu's untested planetary defense grid and a flotilla of light Fleet vessels stationed there nearly had a heart attack.

Fortunately, the flotilla and the defense grid had managed to destroy the missiles and several of the attacking craft before a Marine Reactionary Force company assigned to one of the flotilla's frigates boarded one of the enemy vessels and captured some of its crew.

The aliens had called themselves the Sakqua. They'd appeared to be a bizarre cross between a komodo dragon and the mythological centaur and were almost three times as strong as an Earth-born human. Months earlier, a Schlein merchant ship had entered one of the Sakquas' frontier systems and frightened the aliens out of their wits.

Eons ago, after a long struggle for survival against a rival species on their homeworld, history had taught the Sakqua the only way to ensure their race's survival against a potential competitor species was to exterminate it. So, after they'd captured the trading vessel, dissected her crew members, and studied the ship's FTL drive, they'd decided to kill every human being in the galaxy to ensure the safety of their hatchlings.

When the Fleet realized that the Sakqua had declared total war on humanity everywhere, it decided to rapidly bolster Xanadu's defenses. So the Fleet immediately dispatched one of its battlestations to protect the planet.

The Battlestation Miguel Alcubierre, named for the First Age physicist whose theories were the basis of warp drive, was so massive it created its own gravity well in space. Almost as large as Earth's moon, she had more than 300 large aperture laser cannons, dozens of missile tubes, and 24 gigantic plasma cannons, 4 on each pole and 16 along the circumference of the sphere. Designed both to provide a forward Fleet support node and an offensive or defensive platform to control an entire sector of space, the Alcubierre had a mixed crew of Fleet and civilians of 80,000 individuals. The station also carried three hundred ships, the preponderance consisting of scout and light attack craft.

Four months ago, the Fleet dispatched the Alcubierre under the command of Vice Admiral Dennis Amato to Xanadu. Amato was ordered to defend Alliance space from further incursions by the Sakqua and to prepare to conduct offensive operations in the Gamma Quadrant to force the Sakqua into a negotiated settlement. Also accompanying the Alcubierre to Xanadu were two hundred capital ships and escorts, along with the 100,000 personnel, of the 101st Battle Squadron.

Once the Alcubierre had arrived in Xanadu space, Amato sought out the enemy. He determined the best way to accomplish this goal was to use a unique task force comprised of vessels crewed by single individuals who the ships loved more than anything in the universe.

Chapter 1

Captain Denzel Adu, the 'brawn' of the brain ship DD-0204 Huntress, bolted from his chair at the sound of the collision klaxon and glared at what appeared to be a tiny craft on the main view screen. "Will it hit us?" he snapped, his flat American accent crisp and alert.

"Not if I can help it," his wife, Captain Diana Adu, muttered. "Hang on!"

As he threw himself back into his chair, she switched on the ship's magnetic drive with a single thought and arrested their vessel's forward motion while dumping energy into the inertial dampeners to protect her man from the effects of her spaceframe's rapid deceleration.

Moments later, she studied her sensor readings and sighed. "Whew! That was close!"

He stood and executed a stately bow with an intricate flourish toward the central control pillar where Diana was. She chuckled warmly both for his humor and thoughtfulness. Denzel, alone of all men, always addressed himself directly at her physical presence, regardless of the fact that he knew she could 'see' him wherever he was in the ship. Throughout their partnership then their marriage, he'd never failed to turn his head in her direction no matter where he was in relation to her. In response to his consideration for her, she always spoke to him through her central speaker although it wasn't always the most efficient way to communicate with him. "Well, my lady, I suppose that should teach me to stop wishing for some excitement to relieve our boredom!"

"You should know by now to be careful for what you wish for, love!" she drawled in her lilting British accent.

Moments ago, they'd been in the middle of their fifth day staking out the only habitable planet in this dreary system located inside a nebula approximately ten light years rimward from Xanadu. Vice Admiral Amato had wanted to keep tabs on the system to prevent the Sakqua from using it as a staging area for raids against Xanadu, so he'd assigned the Huntress to lurk and destroy targets of opportunity somewhat akin to the way attack submarines of the ancient wet navies had stalked their prey during the First Age of Humanity. However, the strange properties of the nebula's molecular cloud granted both advantages and drawbacks for the Adus. In this nebula, a destroyer could hide from almost anyone particularly if she only used her passive scanners. However, it was difficult to detect even planetary bodies inside the cloud unless you actively scanned and, in doing so, revealed yourself for all to see.

"Zel," she said, her voice controlled yet excited. "I've never seen the like! All of a sudden, it was just there! It didn't transition out of hyperspace; I detected a massive energy spike and there it was. However that craft's FTL engines work it uses a completely different drive system than our Cooper drive."

Until now, all star-faring cultures the Alliance had encountered used the Cooper drive to enter and exit hyperspace. The drive had been developed by the First Imperium and, although minor improvements had been made over several millennia, the basic drive system hadn't changed much over time.

While she ruminated on the strange craft's propulsion system, her husband studied the data her sensors had gathered on the intruder as the small craft descended from the denser regions of molecular gas toward the bleak and barely habitable world below. "Certainly is a tiny bugger," he noted. "That bird's way too puny to be a Sakqua raider according to the war book. Why it's only the size of one of our shuttles."

"Yes, she said, somewhat distractedly because she'd started to perform a low level active scan to see what they were dealing with. "My three hundred meter frame dwarves their—" Then she gasped and growled, "Bloody hell! Zel, there are humans on board that boat!" She then fell silent for a moment before she added, "Now, this is strange. My sensors can't detect any signs of deuterium on that craft. Also, it's using a pair of thrusters that emit some sort of reaction mass tied to a kind of nuclear fission power plant, though I can't make out the element their reactor is using. How come they don't use the magnetic drive system damn near everybody uses?"

"So, what are you saying, Di?"

"Maybe we've stumbled into a first contact situation."

#

Denzel's eyes opened wide at that. His wife had been a shell person in the Fleet for nearly two centuries; she'd seen plenty in her time. Once, she'd reestablished contact with an outpost that had lost touch with the rest of humanity during the Dark Millennium. However, even those folks had possessed the drive systems developed by Imperial humanity.

Now, he squinted at the enigma that had presented itself to them on their main view screen. "So why in the hell would a craft filled with humans that uses a drive system we've never seen before come to this god forsaken world?"

His wife snorted then shot back, "How would I sodding know? Maybe they were daft enough to fleece their bloody sector commander out of his credits in a bloody poker game and sent to cool their heels inside this bloody nebula, too!"

While his wife grumbled at him, Zel hid the grin that threatened to cross his face. It always made his day when he got his oh-so-proper lady riled up because the make-up sex was so damn good! If they were back in port, they'd send their twelve year old daughter Jennifer to spend the night with one of her classmates before Di would slip her consciousness into her sexy-as-hell humaniform body, don her merry widow, black stockings and patent leather 'C.F.M.' pumps, and have her wicked way with him.

During a mission, though, she'd never shirk her duty and transfer her consciousness into her biochene body. She'd always feared that doing so would leave both him and the ship vulnerable. That, Diana would never do. So absent a rousing bout of hot sex, it was better for all concerned for her to handle her frustrations by bitching at him rather than deploying the massive plasma cannons, A-Potential naval rifles, point defense lasers and thermonuclear armament her Sorceress-class destroyer frame wielded.

Now, her husband simply shrugged and rakishly cocked his right eyebrow her way. "Hey, it's not my fault that Amato's such a lousy poker player!"

"Bloody pillock," she grumbled.

He shot a surreptitious glance at her control pillar and hoped she was referring to the admiral rather than him.

As they maintained their position relative to the little ship, he noted, "They haven't reacted to us yet."

"I don't think they know we're here. Their scanners are way more primitive than ours. That's kind of the funny thing. Other than their FTL system, everything else on the craft seems like it is centuries behind our tech level."

"Should we hail them, Di?"

"I suppose so," she agreed. "But what language should we use? With their level of technology, I doubt they're equipped with a universal translator."

"Magnify the image."

She complied with his suggestion and they noticed some sort of script written inside a decal in the shape of an arrow on the craft's hull.

"Can you identify any of the characters inside that symbol, honey?"

He imagined he could see her squinting at the script rather than the actuality of her mind manipulating the ship's long range sensor cannon's zoom capability to take a look-see. "I think a few of those symbols match several in the Ancient Greek alphabet according to my databanks."

"Try to craft a message using Ancient Greek then."

"Right," she said.

Then as she attempted to contact the intruder, he stroked the week old stubble on his chin between the thumb and index finger of his right hand and mumbled lowly, "Who in the hell are these guys?"

#

"This doesn't look right," the Colonial Raptor's human pilot murmured as her boat drifted through the nebula's gases.

Lieutenant Margaret "Racetrack" Edmondson of the Battlestar Galactica glanced out her cockpit's windscreen and realized that something was very off when she didn't see any of the other Raptors of Starbuck's Caprica Search and Rescue flight nearby.

From his position beside her, her dark-skinned Electronic Countermeasures Officer (ECO), Hamish "Skulls" McCall, announced, "I've got no other contacts on DRADIS."

She glanced at him and snapped, "What?" As she awaited his response, Margaret listened quietly to the whirring of their instruments for a few moments while Hamish diddled with some of their boat's fancy electronic gear. Meanwhile, the two Colonial Marines in the back thrust their heads into the cockpit area, most likely, she mused, to find out how their frakked up excuse for a pilot got them lost in the ass-end of nowhere.

Moments later, Skulls completed the check of his instruments and grumbled. "Oh, man! We're at the wrong coordinates! I think there was some kind of glitch in the navcom firmware," he guessed. "Bottom line is, we're from hell and gone from where we're supposed to be, skipper."

At that, she sighed. Then she asked, "'Okay…um…any chance we can still catch up with them?"

Her ECO shook his head. "Not a chance. Mission rules say we head back."

Racetrack slumped in her chair. They'd executed only one jump, one frakking jump in a series of ten that was supposed to bring them all the way back to Caprica and, already, everything had gone to Hades in a hand basket. Now, if that crazy bitch Starbuck somehow defied the odds, succeeded in returning from Caprica with Anders and his resistance fighters, then found out how badly she'd frakked up, Thrace would never let her hear the end of it.

"Frak me! It was the first jump!" she whined, mostly to the universe. However, the universe definitely didn't give a frak about her situation, so complaining was just a waste of time.

"Hey, look! You gave me these coordinates!"

"Gods…" she exhaled noisily, resigned to the inevitable fate of having Starbuck on her ass about this for-frakking-ever. "Back to the barn," she grumbled.

Just then her ECO announced, "Hey, I'm picking up a large planetary body. It's frakking close!"

"Where did that come from?" she murmured. Then she snorted. Normally, one didn't 'suddenly' detect a planet, she mused. Planets tend to be pretty frakking hard to miss, considering how big they were and all.

"Hell if I know. There's so much DRADIS interference here, it didn't even register until now," he explained as he shot a look through their windscreen at the surrounding stellar gases. "Maybe this nebula we're in is frakking with our equipment."

She cocked her right eyebrow at him. That had all the markings of a lame 'CYA' explanation but decided to keep her observation to herself.

Now, as they approached the outer atmosphere of the planet, Racetrack decided to check her own sensors in case her partner was a bit off his game. However, when the data began to flow onto her screen, she blinked twice and murmured, "Hey, check this out. Atmosphere is nitrogen/oxygen, organic molecular spectra… fresh water! Hey! You know what this is? It's habitable. We may have just found a world that can support human life! Maybe we're not just a bunch of frak-ups after all!"

For a moment, Skulls grinned at her like a loon. Then something on his screen grabbed his attention. When he glanced at it, the smile on his face ran away. "Margaret," he said ominously.

Oh crap! She knew the only reason Skulls would ever use her given name during a mission was if they were well-and-truly frakked. Sighing resignedly, Racetrack snapped, "Talk to me, Skulls!"

"We've just been pegged by something I've never seen before! It ain't DRADIS; the frequency's all wrong and…" He interrupted himself momentarily, studied something on his display for a moment then shot a scared look at her. "We're receiving a transmission from something big on our six. And Track…its signal ain't Colonial in any way, shape or form."

She glanced up at the ceiling of her tiny ship and screamed to the gods, "You just love frakking with us, don't you?" Then she shot a hard look at her ECO. "It's gotta be the frakking Cylons!" she spat. Damn it, she couldn't believe their luck! The fleet hadn't seen the mechanical frakkers for months now. Even the Old Man had believed they'd ditched the bastards. Now, the genocidal machines were over the only habitable planet they'd found since Kobol. "They're probably trying to use that signal to download that virus of theirs. Well, it's time to get the frak outta here, Skulls! We'll jump and try and shake 'em before we run home to the barn," she snapped as she hunkered down behind her flight controls.

"Wait a moment," he murmured. "Their signal…it's only audio," he observed. "In fact, someone's yapping at us but I can barely understand her." Then he cried out, "Frak me!"

"What?"

"They just swept us with more energy than three Mercury-class battlestars could generate!" he exclaimed. "They've got us frakking cold!"

Racetrack's jaw dropped at that. "A big ship in high orbit around an unknown planet and it's right on our tail," she said woodenly.

"Do you think it's a basestar?" Skulls asked.

"Let's take a look," she said. Then she fired her port maneuvering thruster and their Raptor swung a full one-eighty before she halted the ship's rotation by slightly tapping her right maneuvering thruster. Now, she narrowed her eyes at the large vessel that was directly ahead of them. It appeared to be in the shape of a variety of angles and wedges, with at least three massive turrets rising from different points on its hull and a number of smaller turrets that looked like the ship had sprouted warts. "Well, one thing is certain, that vessel isn't a basestar. For one thing, it's not as big. In fact, it doesn't look like anything the toasters would build."

Skulls snorted. "You're right, skipper. In fact, that thing is so…alien, I can't make out anything on its hull I'd recognize for certain. Take those big turrets, I don't see anything like a battlestar's cannon in the openings on any of them. Another thing that ought to make your day; my scanners can't tell if that ship has nukes on board."

She blinked twice at that. That didn't sound good. "You know what? I'm thinking we should get the hell out of here, Skulls."

He stared at the other ship through their windscreen for several moments before he said, "Hold on a minute, skipper. By now, they could have lit up our asses from here to Remembrance Day yet they haven't taken the shot. Besides, they seem to be maintaining station and keeping a respectable distance from us. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to try and talk to them."

#

Skulls switched his radio over to the same frequency that had transmitted to them and said, "This is Colonial Raptor 841 hailing unidentified vessel. Come in, please."

A few seconds later, someone spoke something close to Old Caprican to them in an accent that reminded Skulls of a kind-of-hot, female version of Gaius Baltar. "841…who…are you?"

"We're Colonials…we're from the United Colonies of Kobol!" Skulls told the voice.

The voice was silent for several moments before it said, "Colonies…are you…an Imperium colony?"

"What the frak is an "Imperium?" Skulls whispered to Racetrack. His pilot simply shrugged in response. Then he transmitted, "No, we're not from any Imperium."

"This is…the ϕ.Σ. Ἄρτεμις of the Amphictyony of πλανήτης. The Amphictynony…is a…star... league of plah-nee-tees with…different races."

"Different races," Skulls repeated. Then his eyes nearly popped out of his skull. "Are they saying they're real, honest-to-gods aliens?" Holy crap! Had they just made mankind's first contact with a sentient alien life form? Racetrack then frantically waved at Skulls to have him ask the voice for confirmation of that.

"Ph-S Huntress," Skulls transmitted, "when you say 'different races,' do you mean people who aren't…human?"

The voice chuckled then said, "Some of us…are…human…some are not. On this ship, our crewmembers…are human."

Skulls couldn't believe his ears. They'd just run across other humans in the middle of nowhere!

"Holy Mother of Zeus!" Racetrack cried out. "Ask them what planet they're from," she whispered almost as if she was afraid the people on the other ship could hear her.

He nodded then opened the circuit again. "We're human, too. My skipper would like to know if you can tell us the name of your home world."

"Earth," the voice said.

Skull's eyes opened wide at that. Earth?! Did that Baltar-sounding chick say 'Earth?!'

For her part, Margaret Edmondson whooped ecstatically as she bounced for joy in her seat. "Hot damn!" she exclaimed while her ECO stared dumbly at her. "The Old Man is not going to frakking believe this!" she crowed.

#

As the Huntress maintained station several kilometers off the little craft's bow, Denzel Adu chuckled softly. "I'll be damned! They're actually speaking to us in Ancient Greek?"

Diana snorted. "I'd say more like a bastardized version of it! If I can keep them talking, the AI will construct a translation matrix that should overcome the difficulties we've been having until now."

"You know," he mused, "I don't think they could have gone far in a small craft like that. Maybe, it's a scout vessel for a much larger ship."

"I think you're right, Zel," she murmured. "Hey, they're speaking to us again," she said softly then added, "and I can understand what they're saying much better now. Here, let me switch on the cabin's speaker's so you can hear them."

"Huntress," the man in the tiny spaceship said, "this is Raptor 841, over."

"Roger, 841, please proceed," she answered.

"We must return to our mother ship, Huntress. Once we report to our leaders, we're certain they'll want to arrange a meeting with you. Would you be willing to meet us in orbit above this planet?"

"Of course, 841, we would be willing to meet you here. When do you want to meet again?"

"We will return here tomorrow at this same time."

"Acknowledged, 841. However, before you go, please be advised this sector of space is a potential war zone. A nonhumanoid lizard-like species that calls itself the Sakqua has decided to exterminate all of humanity. If they run into your vessels, they may be a danger to you. Please tell your leadership we would be willing to assist you in defense against the Sakqua."

Diana then heard a female's voice say over the radio, "I knew I was right about the universe being out to get humans!" shortly followed by the male who stated, "Huntress, we copy that. Is Earth in imminent danger from these…Sakqua?"

Her voice processor produced an unladylike snort. "Hardly," she drawled. Then she asked gently, "By the way, what is your name?"

"My call sign is Skulls," he answered.

"Hello, Skulls," she said. "My name is Diana." Then she was all business once again. "Although the Sakqua are a fairly advanced race, it is unlikely that the lizards could endanger our home world. Earth is the most heavily defended planet in the Alliance."

She heard Skulls' relieved sigh over their connection. "That's good to know, Diana. We have been looking for your people ever since the Cylons forced us to flee from our Colonies several years ago. Like the Sakqua, the Cylons want to kill every human being in the universe. So we've come both to warn you about them and to seek refuge among you."

Denzel stared directly at her control pillar and drawled, "Wow! Dennis is going to need a stiff drink when we he hears about this!"

"After listening to Skulls' story, I think I need a shot of what Dennis will be having, as well." Then she locked the lens of her control module's camera onto her husband's face and asked, "What do you think we ought to do?"

He pondered the situation for a moment before he said, "We should hypercom the Alcubierre and report to the admiral. He'll decide who should be assigned to meet with Skulls' people. Amato will probably send someone here to return with Skulls to his mother ship to open a dialogue with their leadership."

"That sounds good, Zel," she said.

As she prepared to say goodbye to the smaller craft, Denzel said, "Di, before they go, ask them about their FTL drive."

"All right, honey," she said. Then she switched on her transmitter and asked, "Skulls, how does your stardrive work? Our drive allows us to travel through hyperspace in a series of short, almost instantaneous jumps."

"Ours doesn't work like that," Skulls said. "Our system folds space, allowing our vessel to almost instantaneously jump across the folded volume of space."

"I see," she said slowly while she checked her databases for information on Skulls' peoples' FTL drive. Then when she found something directly on point in her files, the Fleet officer managed to conceal her embarrassment from the others. "So...that's why we didn't see any signs of your approach in hyperspace. You simply 'appeared' in the system."

"You've got it, Diana."

Interesting, she thought. According to the data she'd just found, during the First Age, the Imperium had developed a similar drive system known as the 'hyperlight' drive. However, the Imperium had abandoned it when the Cooper drive had proven to be more efficient and much safer. Although using hyperlight allowed you to travel long distances very quickly, if you were slightly off in your calculations or ran into a hyperspatial anomaly in the midst of your jump, you were screwed. Besides, in the era of hyperspace mines, a hyperlight drive meant certain death. If a hyperlight ship jumped into space near a planet where these types of mines were laid, the ship wouldn't be able to detect them before the mines phased out of hyperspace inside the ship's bridge or engineering section and "BOOM!"

However, even though the Imperium had stopped using hyperlight drives, that didn't mean Skulls' people hadn't come up with a solution to the problems of both anomalies and mines. So Diana said, "That's good to know, Skulls. I'm curious, though. How do you know the ship won't jump into another object that happens to be present in the target system, such as, say another vessel or station in orbit above a planet?"

"Well, to us, the jump seems instantaneous, but in reality, it isn't. Before the vessel enters the target system, the navigation computer rapidly scans the area to determine if the ship's intended destination coordinates are free and clear. If it finds an object with sufficient mass is already present at the programmed coordinates, the computer inserts a preprogrammed constant sufficient enough to move the ship away from the object depending on that object's relative displacement. The system works like a charm if you don't get cute with it. Now, if you try to do something crazy like jumping from a distant point in space to a point inside the atmosphere of a planet then it's possible the ship could jump inside a solid object like a mountain. Of course, that would destroy the ship and kill everyone inside her."

While she thought, it doesn't appear his people are aware of the hazards of hyperspace mines, what she said was, "Well, thank you for sharing that information with us, Skulls. Have a safe journey home!"

"Goodbye, Diana. We'll see you tomorrow," he said. Then he added, "I can't wait to meet you in person!" right before she and her husband witnessed a huge flash. Suddenly, the Raptor was gone leaving no trace behind that it had ever been there.

As she prepared to leave the nebula to send a communique to the Alcubierre, Diana reflected on Skulls' parting words and pondered two things. First, she wondered if Skulls was truly prepared to meet a disembodied brain who lived inside a metal alloy pillar. Then she wondered if all men were so careless with their wishes.

#

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