"Gah!"

Koosk was slumped forward in his seat, muzzle tucked in tight against his chest, both paws squeezing at his helmet. It felt like his head was trying to split open.

The other lizard beside him, Rio, grunted as well, shaking his head. "Oog... Rough jump." Quiet for a moment. "Koosk? Koosk, are you okay?"

A squawk sounded over the intercom speaker overhead, echoed by the earpieces worn by both crew members. It was the captain's voice. "Primary check green, situation appears clear. Stand-down from jump."

Koosk laid his head back in the chair, panting slightly. "Ung... Yeah... Yeah, I'm okay." His paw shook as he reached to one of his flight-suits pockets, pulling out a yellow case. He had to work at steadying his paws to open it, slipping out a single pill. "Just... Just a little jump-fried."

He clawed at his muzzle-plate, then pulled it away, shakily downing the pill.

"Sure you're okay?" Rio asked, as he started to unbuckle himself.

"Yeah, I'm sure..." He slipped off his helmet, which slowly floated away. "Had a bad jump a while back, still a bit hyper-sensitive."

"Ouch. What happened?"

Koosk took a deep breath, then slowly let it out. His head was still pounding, probably would for a half hour or so, until the pill kicked in. "Bad jump during training. Fucking computer... glitched three milliseconds before jump, apparently. Dropped a decimal point or something. When we got in-system, we skip-jumped a good dozen light-seconds. Lost a reactor, the primary computer core... Bunch of sensitive electronics. Thirteen trainees were in a coma for the whole trip home, me included."

"Damn... Not good at all. Can't say I'm surprised, though."

Koosk grunted slightly.

"With how things are going..." Rio paused, sighing slightly. "Almost all our ships are obsolete, shot-up, or scavenged, and non-combat ships are even worse, including training ships. We're in bad shape overall. Talisin here is one of the few ships that can be called an "uplift" ship, built from scratch instead of scrap and derelicts."

Koosk nodded. The aching was clearing just a little, enough that he could concentrate a little more. "Well... If I had to be on any ship, guess it's good I got this one."

"Oh yeah, definitely. We're the best ship in the fleet. And don't let anyone tell you different!" He grinned, turning to look over his displays, running over the post-jump checklist. "And don't worry, you should do just fine."

Another squawk. "Prepare to resume thrust, 15 meters. Five minutes."

"Everyone here? Good, settle down."

The large wolf looked over the table, glancing quickly over the faces that were there. This was John, or Trell, or Captain Johnathan Trell if one was being formal, which John made a point of being as infrequently as absolutely possible. He seemed to be rather quiet, but he still had quite a presence, and when he spoke, everyone listened. Koosk had seen this within moments of first meeting him, and it was one of the best signs about his assignment; The crew liked and respected him.

The worst sign of his assignment to this ship was the mission. That was the subject that the captain had gathered the top officers and staff for. Vell, a smallish otter, was in charge of sensor ops, detection and identification, along with her assistant Terry, a stoat. The helmsman was Twan, a rather wiry orange-furred cat. Then there was Jan, the first mate, a small, big-eared fox of which the specific species name Koosk had forgotten already. The final person was Barry, a somewhat large badger and head engineer.

The projector at the center of the table wired as it started up, flickering a dim picture onto the wall behind where John stood. The lights dimmed a moment later to show the image clearly.

"This is the Artemis Moon... And as you all know, our target."

It was a ship, like any other ship. Just a large cylindrical object, domed at each end, with a ring-like protrusion near the rear where the reactors vented the superheated reaction mass for propulsion. A huge hangar-like door was set above that, and several "small" (Only a couple meters at most) oval doors were near the edges of the front dome. Unimaginative dark-gray paint job. It was a very normal ship, much like Talisin, with one significant difference.

It was a beast. An image of Talisin was placed beside it for comparison, dwarfed by the massive warship. The whole ship could most likely fit through those hangar doors.

"Artemis Moon. Artemis-class heavy missile cruiser. 240 meters in length from bow to stern, mass of 651,000 tons."

He leaned against the back of a chair, looking down at a little mini-computer display atop the table, matter-of-factly reading off the statistics. "Roughly 8000 kilometer-seconds of fuel at full-status. Capable of acceleration of just over crew tolerance forward, roughly 22.8 gee at emergency thrust. Reverse acceleration is rather low, only 4.3 gee. Structure is rated for 18 gee emergency and 3 gee sustained. Twelve quad-35mm gatling point-defence systems. Internal loading space for 48 missiles for standard duty, or up to 96 when not carrying a Marine Expeditionary Unit. Four 355 megawatt high-energy lasers with an estimated 0.01 second-of-angle dispersion, for ground bombardment and close-in work. Active and passive sensors capable of unknown strength, assumed approximately 20 AU range. 382mm titanium/steel composite armor encasing the entire crew area, with double-thickness reinforcing plates at the base of both sensor arrays, and between the fuel tanks and crew areas."

The room was entirely silent.

The captain stared silently at the little computer display for a few moments, breathing a slow sigh. "Basically, the most brutally lethal individual machine ever built. And we're here to destroy it. Retribution for Dachen."

Everyone knew what he meant by that. The Artemis Moon had skip-jumped through the thinly-stretched defenses to an undefended system considered too far away and of too little importance to ever become a military target. The devastation in the Dachen colony was unbelievable. There was no chance to stop it, and by the time the first military ships reached the colony three weeks later, all trace of infrastructure and development were as good as gone. It had been almost three months now since that event, and rescue and relief work was still being conducted.

"I assume," Rio said quietly, "That there must be some good news here? Something has to be up for HQ to scramble a single corvette to tackle a heavy battlecruiser. Right?"

Johnathan nodded. "Yes, but not as much as I would like. The Artemis Moon is currently in this system to rearm. Intel has discovered that the rearming shipment will not be jumping in-system for another 3 weeks, by which time we should be gone. The only ships in the system right now are the Artemis Moon and a frigate, the Darryl Ross, which should be offloading its own missiles to the Artemis Moon right now. Normally it would be a juicy enough of an opportunity to strike the limited shipyard facility in this system, but it also means that our lone ship has half-again the payload of that heavy battlecruiser. For once we have speed -and- firepower on our side."

Rio sat back in his chair, pausing a moment. "And what if the "intel" is wrong, and we're facing a fully-loaded ship?"

"We've got the best ship, pilot, and gunner in the fleet. If that's the case, we can only hope that's enough to get us out. Headquarters had to take the chance risking us to take out that monstrosity."

He sighed slightly, then shook his head. "Anyway.. That's the situation. We'll be accelerating at this rate for a full 108 hours, then I want this ship to be as dim as possible. I don't want that ship to know we're coming for as long as possible. Rio? What would you suggest for ordinance?"

"How many missiles are we going to be facing?"

"The Darryl Ross is just a frigate, not exactly a front-line ship, so 8 if it was fully loaded. The Artemis Moon was reported to have rippled off all 48 missiles in the engagement over Fen's Stand just 4 weeks ago, mostly defensively, and since it was an obvious attempt to try and seize the planet, I'd say it's reasonable it was carrying troops and vehicles instead of extra ordinance. It will have just arrived at the shipyard about now, give or take twelve hours."

Rio shrugged slightly. "Ah... Well, since we're just going after Artemis, I'd say six missiles tasked to it, about five second dispersion, with one more 60 seconds behind the tail of that group, tasked to self-prioritize based on the situation.. Keep the other five in reserve for defensive purposes, and launch four of them immediately if we detect an offensive track."

"Sounds good. And you, Koosk? I hope you've been able to familiarize yourself with everything so far?"

Koosk nodded, feeling a little uneasy. "Yes... I've been working over all the weapon systems the whole time before jump, Rio helped me out a lot with it, so I'm fairly confident with them now. We were going to run some simulations later, just to make sure, and he was going to show me the rest of the ship and systems after that."

"He's learning pretty quick," Rio added. "If he does as well in the simulations as he does learning the systems, we'll be just fine.

"Good. Now then, Vell..." The otter perked up a little as her name was called. "I want you and your crew to keep scanning with thermal and computer visual-pattern searches, priority on the second planet and associated shipyard. I want you to contact me the -moment- you see anything."

She nodded.

"And..." Johnathan looked around the table again. "...And I guess that's it for now. Very well, dismissed. Koosk?"

Koosk was already up, and looked back questioningly as the rest of the staff started to file out. "Sir?"

Johnathan set down the little computer display as he walked slowly over to Koosk. "I heard you've been having rough jumps. How's your head?"

He smiled a little, weakly. "Ehh... I'll live. Got meds for it. I'll be a bit sensitive for a few months still, but I'll get better eventually."

"Yeah, I'll bet. Just don't take them before an engagement, it wouldn't do for our gunner's mate to be out before the fight." He smiled, sitting on the edge of the table. "But the main concern, of course, is how well you'll do. You seem to have impressed Rio. Coming from him, that was pretty high praise for someone who hasn't even run through the simulations."

"He... Yeah, I'm trying my best. The systems here aren't too different from the ones I was trained on, and Rio's helped out a lot on any of the differences."

"Good, good... And how are you two getting along? Rio's very picky about who he works with, so I'm guessing it's pretty good if he hasn't had anything to say to me about it. If you two work together well, it should be quite the team. He's very stable in adversity, probably the best gunnery chief in the fleet, and having another good gunner would help greatly." Another smile.

Koosk nodded, smiling a bit himself. "Yeah. He was pretty quiet at first, he... He almost seemed nervous, to be honest. He seems to have become more open as time's gone by, though, it's good to see, and it's helped out a lot with training and the like."

"Yeah, he's been rather quiet lately..." Johnathan looked down, thoughtfully.

"I thought it was just me, at first, until I saw him in the mess a couple times. Then I thought that was just the way he is, until he started to... I don't know, warm up? In any case, he's gotten a lot livelier, and like I said, that's helped out a lot."

He paused, looking curiously at the captain. "Uh.... Please excuse me if I'm prying, sir, but... Something seems to be up with him. Do you know what's going on?"

Johnathan stayed still for a moment, looking lost in thought for a few moments, then nodded just slightly. Slowly he stood. "Yes." He gave Koosk a pat on the shoulder. "Anyway, your shift's over, you should get some rest, then get together with Rio to run some sims. Dismissed."

Koosk watched silently as the captain walked slowly out. "That was odd," he thought to himself, then sighed, shaking his head. "Now what did I do this time?"

THUMP THUMP!

"Rise and shine, it's time for duty!"

Koosk groaned slightly, rolling over in the confines of his "bunk-tube", grumbling only half-coherently, "I swear, this had better be one of those raze-the-new-guy stunts, 'cause I have NOT gotten enough sleep yet..."

Rio's voice spoke up again, rather muffled through the half-sealed pressure hatch. "No such luck, buddy. You've been out cold for almost 13 hours, and you're already booked for the sims!"

Koosk could hear him chuckling. "That's not-" He looked back at the tiny display, then squinted through the sleepy haze in his eyes... Then snapped taunt as the numbers came into focus correctly. "Shit!" He'd already slept in two hours past the start of his duty shift.

He scrambled to get changed in the tiny confines of the tube, barely enough room in it, between the bunk, bedding, and him, for him to turn around. He was just barely finished when Rio popped the pressure hatch open, earning a startled yell in return.

"Heh... You know, this thing's not going to do you any good if you don't seal it. If it's going to be cramped, might as well get the safety from it."

Koosk grunted, pulling himself to the hatch. The thing was easy enough to get in and out of in zero gee, but it was yet another thing that was that much harder at one and a half. "Yeah, yeah. Who the hell designed these damn things?"

Rio grinned, grabbing Koosk's arm and helping him out a little more gracefully than he would have managed on his own. "Some mammal with a much more flexible tail than our own."

"I bet." Koosk finally got himself back on the ground again, starting to feel a little more awake, though the gravity was decidedly not helping matters. "Oof... I feel like I could have slept another thirteen, too."

"Yeah, I bet you would, too. I'm the same way, when I go to sleep, there ain't anything that's going to get me up early."

"Yeah..." He rubbed at his eyes, blinking a bit.

"Oh, almost forgot to tell you... Your duty shift today is pretty much dropped. Cap'n just wants me to run you once or twice through the sims, then you get the day off. Take it easy, get to know the crew a bit more, the usual. Soon as I'm done with the system tests and updates today, John wants me to run you through the rest of the ship. You've been focusing on the gunnery aspects so far, but we figure it'd be good to familiarize you with the rest of the ship, too."

Koosk slowly stretched, yawning loudly, then slumped slightly. "Well, we'd better get started, then."

"Good," Rio replied with a grin, giving him a friendly slap on the shoulder. "Let's see how well you do!"

"Impact, Intercept on Vampire Two!"

"Track kill confirmed," Koosk snapped out, hitting several buttons in quick succession, data flickering across the screen as he changed weapon taskings, velocity plots, etcetera. "Target destroyed, no-mass." The missiles had impacted with such force -- two 220-ton vehicles traveling at a relative velocity of almost one tenth the speed of light -- that the largest fragment of either missile was most likely individual molecules. The majority of each had been transformed straight to plasma upon impact. "No-mass" meant that the destruction was so complete that the sensors couldn't detect any remains of either missile. Or at least, so the simulation determined.

The headset crackled in his ear. "Vampire One, range, 31.2 ls, velocity 0.092 c. Intercept in 340 seconds!"

"Helm, gunnery, commence defensive run, final five," Koosk said, keying up a velocity plot. The moment the acceleration leveled off at 3 gees, he called out again. "Firing defensive screen!"

He pressed the button, and the three guns that could see in proper direction started the fire pattern he had just finished laying in. The acceleration was to force the missile to accelerate as well, hopefully narrowing down the path it could travel to intercept the ship. The simulated guns were now firing across this path, laying out a scattered cloud of projectiles for it to travel through. Ten seconds later, they ceased firing, having sent over ten thousand simulated rounds down-range.

Koosk moved his hand to a trackball, switching his control over to the single laser turret as he spoke into the radio microphone again. "Screen fire done, starting defensive fire."

While the laser was incredibly accurate, easily able to hit a target the size of that missile at a range of a light second or two, it was not capable of the quick precision aiming of the point-defence guns. The precision mirror array had to be aligned precisely, so it was almost impossible to track a target moving that much. It was more a desperation attempt than anything else, but sometimes luck worked out.

He wheeled the laser onto the general path of the missile, selected it, then started adjusting the computer's aim. As it zeroed in, he flipped the fire control from "non" to "auth," giving the computer authorization to fire the weapon when it decided it would be most likely to hit. A moment later the laser fired; A miss. There wasn't any flash of light or anything, and the simulator didn't even make the sharp hum of the weapon discharging. All they knew was that the computer registered it as a miss, and there was no detectable effect on the missile.

About twenty seconds later the "ready" light lit green again, the power cells charged for another shot. Koosk tracked the cursor a little to the side of the missile, leading it a bit, then locked the aimpoint. A second later the missile passed the point, and the laser discharged again. Again, nothing.

Time and distance was rapidly ticking down on his screen as he continued to try and swat that missile out of the sky. Another shot missed, then another. Then a hit! But there wasn't enough of a thermal return; While they couldn't see the beam itself, with nothing to refract the light, they could see a pulse of heat when it hit something, and the flash of heat was too small to be anything but a grazing blow.

Ninety seconds. While the laser was charging for another shot, Koosk hit a few other controls. "ECM on, decoy away." A warning light came on, and he immediately called out, "Con, gunnery! Failure warning on pulse jammer!" Of course they had to throw some sort of twist into the simulation. That jammer was one of the final and more useful defensive items on the ship.

He quickly returned to the laser, checking up on it just a moment before the computer fired. The missile was coming in on a slightly erratic path, randomly adjusting its acceleration by a few meter-seconds off of its trajectory, and making it incredibly hard to hit with such a precision weapon. At this range, the only hope was to score a hit on the sensors, burn them out. Only the last shot would have any chance at serious damage, and even then it would be at almost one light-second of range, and a hard target to hit.

Fifty seconds. The laser fired again, and Koosk immediately slapped the button to fire another decoy. Still too far out to see if the missile had taken the bait and gone after one of the decoys. Both the decoys and the ship would look like flares in the sensors of the missile, against the cold, dark background of space.

Thirty seconds, the laser fired again. It couldn't have missed my more than a few meters that time. The missile was growing increasingly large in the sights, twisting a little back and forth as it zigzagged its way closer. He scrolled the aimpoint back and forth, trying to keep near where it would be most likely to adjust next. It was starting to run out of maneuver room, if it zigzagged too late in its flight, it would be unable to adjust enough to hit the ship.

Ten seconds. The computer paused for a few moments, then fired again on Koosk's aim-point, and a second later the missile appeared to turn right into it, immediately followed by a bright flash. "Con, gunnery, hit! Inside guns!" He fired off another decoy, then pushed himself down into the chair. The laser wouldn't recharge before it got here, and there was too little time to tell if they had disabled it.

At 5 seconds, the counter at the bottom of the screen shot upward, as Twan started final defensive maneuvers. The missile seemed to wobble a little, then turn -- then seemed to detonate in a brilliant flash. "Kill!" Koosk said, as the screen twisted around, tracking the debris of the missile as it passed harmlessly almost a kilometer away. It had struck one of the defensive screen's rounds, the combined kinetic energy ripping the missile into shreds.

The headset crackled again. "Confirmed. Vampire One is dead. Heavy fragmentation, ship cleared."

"Well, well," Rio mused, leaning against the back of Koosk's chair. "Looks like we live to see another day. Very good! Secure from simulation."

Koosk pressed a button at each display, clearing them, then flipping a toggle switch in place. "Master arm safe."

The other stations started calling out as they also secured from the simulation, while Koosk unstrapped himself from his seat. "I don't know if I could have done as well if it were real, though. Those high-gee maneuvers would have made it hard to do anything by myself, and losing the pulse jammer with such little warning..."

"You did good enough for a sim, at least," Rio replied. "You should do just fine. Twan makes some really screwball maneuvers sometime, but you'll learn how to work with it."

Koosk slowly stood and stretched, feeling a little stiff after a couple hours of simulations. "I hope so. One and a half gee is awkward enough for me..."

There was a muffled *clunk* as some machinery engaged, then a rumbling whir as the heavily armored pressure door separating the gunnery compartment from the main bridge station opened. The bridge was the only section of the ship that actually had any appreciable level of armor protection. Nestled in the middle of the ship, along its axis and right at its center-of-mass, it was designed to be one of the safest parts of the ship. In relation to the power of the weapons that would be employed against a ship like this, though, it really didn't matter how much armor was between you and the one who wanted to cause you harm. Even a grain of sand could punch through that armor, with relative speeds being as high as they would be. At least it gave the impression of safety, and that was probably what mattered more.

The captain looked over as they both ducked under the still-raising pressure door and entered the central area of the bridge, the control room, or "con" as it was generally known. He nodded slightly. "Good runs, there. You did pretty good for being new to the ship, that's for sure."

Koosk smiled weakly. "I hope that's good enough, sir. For my first combat flight, it looks like they picked about the hardest one they could find."

"Either that, or you get stuck in some back-water patrol and don't get to do anything until you find yourself in an ambush. The military isn't the best occupational choice if one's looking for something easy and risk-free."

Koosk looked up, feeling even more awkward. He could have worded that better. "Well, no, I-"

John held up a paw, letting out a slight chuckle. "Ahh, don't take that the wrong way, Koosk. Simple fact of the matter is, we needed a new gunner's mate. You were the only one in-system and available. We could either take you, or go out with a reduced staff, and when the gunnery crew is one of the few things between this ship and a hostile ship, I'll be damned if I'm going to go out weakened like that."

"I... I hope I do good enough for you, then, sir."

"Oh, you should do just fine. Don't worry too much about it. I may be biased, but Rio is the best gunnery chief in the fleet in my opinion, so you're already starting out ahead. All you have to do is do your job competently, and we'll be just fine."

Koosk smiled a little, looking to Rio, then back to the captain. "Well then, I hope I do well enough for him."

John smirked a little, as if trying not to smile too much, pausing a moment before replying. "Me too. In addition to probably being the best gunner in the fleet, he IS definitely the pickiest. The fact that he hasn't came to me sometime during this mission to complain about you speaks just as much for your ability as these sims do. Trust me, you'll do just fine."

Rio chuckled from where he was leaning against the reinforced wall, arms crossed. "Ahh, so I'm a little picky. Can you really blame me?"

"Considering your skill, no. Just make sure that you're only being picky about the things that truly matter to the ship and crew."

Rio grinned rather deviously at that. "Aye-aye, sir..." He looked over to Koosk with the same grin, motioning for him to follow. "C'mon, time for a tour."

Koosk stepped into the lift as Rio tapped one of the buttons to go to a different deck. "So anyway, since I'm supposed to teach you as much about the ship as I can in the next few hours, how much do you already know about it so far?"

"Um... Okay..." Koosk shook his head a little. "About the ship, well, not a whole lot. Talisin, corvette-size ship, with a full compliment of 24 crew and 12 drone missiles, one 212 megawatt high-energy laser, and four quad 35mm gatling point-defence guns with a total of 24000 rounds of ammunition. And I know the basic deck layout. And of course, that it seems to have an insane acceleration both forward and backward, to judge from those sims. Basically, just what I'd learn from that gunnery station, and the mess."

"Well, well, we've got a bit of work to do..."

The lift came to a halt, and Koosk followed Rio out. "First off... Talisin isn't strictly a corvette by the standard terms," Rio started, as they walked down the hallway. "We generally say it as it's a "heavy" corvette. Pretty much, we're up-sized in a few departments. An extra reactor, bringing us up to four, reinforced structure and thrust chambers to handle the increased stress, and expansions to increase the size of our rotary launchers from four missiles each, to six missiles each, bringing us up to twelve. Plus an extra deck to expand our size, giving us the room to fit everything in."

"Ah, I see. Yeah, a fourth drive reactor would definitely explain the acceleration I saw there in the sim. We must look like a signal flare to any thermal sensors out there when we're doing that, though."

"Oh, sure, but when we're being shot at it's not really important to be stealthy any more. For normal operation, we're fitted with very up-to-date thermal shielding and cloaking, so that we're actually dimmer than the typical corvette, just so long as we're not laying on the thrust. Vented plasma is hard to hide from thermals, no matter how far away it is."

Koosk chuckled a little. "Yeah, might as well just broadcast our position over the radio. At least low-level thrusts like this shouldn't light us up too much."

"Nah, not at this range..." Rio tapped the button next to the heavy-looking pressure doors, which opened with a loud whirring hum. "We shouldn't have to worry about going silent for another day, day and a half." The doors clanked and latched shut behind them with a thunk, and the next set opened.

"Then again," Rio continued, "The Artemis Moon is a huge ship. They must have a huge sensor array on a craft that size, so who knows? Well, anyway..." He motioned around the large, multi-deck room. "Here we are, the whole core and purpose of the ship, the missiles it was built to deliver. Welcome to missile bay alpha."

The room was like a miniature cylindrical hangar, the majority of which was filled by six huge missiles set in a circle, and mounted in a rotating rack. Overall, it spanned four decks vertically, about 11 meters, with hardly any clearance between the ends of each missile and the adjacent decks.

Rio was grinning as he looked around, then turned back to Koosk. "This is the most important part of the ship when it comes down to fighting. The-"

"Rio!"

They both looked up to see a coverall-clad ferret hop off of the catwalk alongside the array of missiles, to make a very ungraceful four-point landing and end up sitting sideways on the catwalk they were on. "Shit," he cursed, pushing himself up.

Rio let out a laugh as he took the ferret's arm, helping him up. "God Fen, I swear, you're going to break your legs one of these days! Maybe your neck if you keep it up in a gee and a half."

The ferret -- Fen -- grinned, stretching his legs a bit and rubbing along his thigh. "Ahh, I'm doing good so far, don't see why my luck would change now! Oh, hey!" He looked over to Koosk, then back to Rio. "So hey, this your new gunner's mate? Koosk, right?"

Koosk nodded as Rio replied, "Yep, that's him. I'm showing him around the ship right now, thought I'd start off with the missile bay."

"Good place to start!" Fen held out his paw to Koosk. "Glad to meet ya, gunner's mate Koosk. My names Fen, chief weapon systems engineer. I'm the guy that keeps your missiles shooting straight."

Koosk nodded again, smiling a bit. "Good to meet you."

Fen looked back to Rio. "Well, don't let me get in the way of your tour. Err..." He paused, thinking as a somewhat devious-looking grin came across his face. "So, Rio, how -is- the new gunner's mate doing for ya? Did the captain set you up with someone good, hmm?"

Rio looked a little confused at first. "Well, yeah, he's doing pretty good. I'm sure you heard the results of the sims we ran, didn't-"

"No, no," Fen interrupted, with a chuckle, then leaned in a bit. "I mean, you know... Er-"

"Fen," Rio replied sharply yet quietly, with a very annoyed glare Koosk hadn't seen from him before.

The ferret laughed as he walked backwards. "Ahh, I was right! Hehe! Ahh, but don't let me stop your tour, I'm sure You've got plenty to do, and I know I do!"

With that, he turned and hurried off, still chuckling while Rio watched, smirking a bit.

"What... What was that about?" Koosk asked quietly, looking worryingly at Rio.

"Oh..." Rio let out a single, halfhearted chuckle. "General nosiness..."

"Uh..."

Rio shrugged a bit, then smiled again, if just a little. "On a ship like this, people are always curious -- nosy, about what all is going on. Everyone wants to find out everyone else's story, everything about them. Little else to do..."

"I see..." Koosk looked up at one of the missiles, pausing, then back to Rio. "So... When do I find out yours?"

Rio looked at him curiously. "Your story," Koosk continued.

"Ah, err..." Rio looked down, pausing for a moment, then looked up smiling again. "Ahh, not yet. Not that easy, at least. Sometime after we've fought together, we'll swap stories, how's that? Anyway, shall we finish with the 'tour?'"

Koosk shrugged. "Sure..."

Rio placed his paw on the missile, dwarfed beside the huge object. "This is a FS Mark IV D autonomous tactical drone missile, the latest and greatest. It's got the standard Mark IV reactor and engine," Rio's paw moved aside the thrust vents, pointing to the rough location where the parts were located, "With the main high-pressure tank aft of that. Just in front of the reactor, after an armor divider, is the computer core. The D models have a brand new advanced neural-net AI, with much improved tactical ability over earlier control systems."

He pointed to the top now. "The tip contains the full array of sensors, variable radar/ladar and full-range EM passive sensors. They don't have much range because of their size, so they're pretty much blind until a few hours from intercept. Then jacket the computer core and reactor in a few dozen tons of armor-grade steel, cover the whole thing in an advanced laminate composite shell, and you've got the full deal. Ten meters long, three meters wide, and 220 tons. Hit a ship with this and it'll be dead so quick they won't even know they got hit."

The entire rest of the day -- day being relative only to the clocks, naturally -- was taken up wandering the whole ship. Rio showed him to the engine room, introducing him there, and showing him the huge reactors. The forward sensor dome, with the massive sensors that were all silently scanning the space ahead of them. Rio even showed him to the stowed point-defence turret, the cryogenic cooling system covering the rotary barrels giving it a deceptively sleek look that belied their rather brutal lethality -- so long as one cared to be close enough to use it.

Rio was right. There really wasn't much else to do.

"Last meal under gravity," the wolf said, as he set his tray down opposite of Koosk, taking a seat. "Take your time to enjoy it, you'll be eating your meals from a vacuum-sealed bag for the next couple weeks after this."

Koosk grunted slightly as he looked up, though smiling a bit. "Yeah, no kidding, Dennis. Zero-gee food make even boot-camp rations seem good by comparison..."

He laughed. "No kidding!" He took a bite and leaned forward, still chuckling a bit. "But apart from that, I don't mind zero-gee a bit. Certainly better than this one-and-a-half junk. It's uncomfortable to sleep in, much less DO anything."

"Heh, yeah... But I guess we have to get to the action quick."

"No better way to get you accustomed to the ship and crew, I guess. Going through a fight with everyone else tends to do a good job of breaking in the newbies." He took another bite, then motioned toward Koosk with the fork. "Speaking of which, how're things going for you? Used to the ship yet, things going well with the crew?"

Koosk nodded a little. "Oh, pretty good, yeah. No problems yet, and it looks like it's a great crew, I seem to be fitting in well enough so far."

"Yeah you do, heh... And how about you and Rio? Everything fine between you two?"

"Well, yeah, I-..." Koosk stopped, fork in mid-air. then dropped it onto his plate with a much louder clatter than he had expected. Damn higher-than-normal gravity was harder to get used to than he thought. "Okay, what?"

"Hmm?" Dennis asked, looking down to take another bite.

"What? What is it? It seems like every single person I've talked to has asked that same question. I don't think I've gone through a single conversation without it coming up. It's like I'm the only one who doesn't know something, and it's driving me nuts!" He stared across the table. "...Well, what is it, am I right?"

Dennis paused for a moment, fork halfway up. "...Well. Yeah, kinda..."

"Then what's up? Is there just something everyone doesn't want me to know?"

The wolf's head snapped up. "Oh, hell no. I'm not going to get myself mixed up in this, you two sort it out yourself."

"Rio?"

Dennis stuttered, then stopped, looking down for a moment, then back up to Koosk. "Look, I really don't want to get involved with this, and I definitely don't want to go cause problems for Rio. I..." He stopped, then grumbled as he looked down at his food again, muttering. "Damnit..."

Koosk looked back at him, flatly. "What?"

"Um..." He glanced over his shoulder, then sighed as he turned back, speaking in a hushed whisper. "Okay, but you don't tell ANYONE, especially not Rio, okay?"

He nodded. "Okay..."

Dennis sighed slightly, looking down yet again. "Well... First off, everyone is concerned about how things will work out between you two. See, there's a good chance that something could come up that would make it difficult for you two to work together, and nobody wants that, especially in the gunnery crew. Um..."

He paused, fiddling a little with his fork. "And, well... I dunno, I'm just worried about what he might do and how you might take it. See, we've all known him for quite a while, and we've seen how he's been behaving lately. First we were thinking he wasn't going to want to work with you. But... I think he's interested in you..."

Koosk blinked, looking at him for a moment as the wolf turned back to eating, looking rather uneasy. "...I take it you don't mean 'interested' in the professional aspect, do you?"

Dennis shook his head a little.

"Huh..." Koosk paused, then leaned forward again as he spiked a bit more of his salad on the fork. "I guess I can see that, now. That would explain some of it, but..." He stopped again, giving the wolf an incredulous look. "Really?"

"Rio?"

Rio turned from the spread of papers he had laid out on the floor of their compartment, sitting up a bit to look over his shoulder at Koosk, who was leaning across the open hatch of his bunk-tube. "Hmm? Yeah, what's up?" he asked as he looked back down at the papers, charts, and typed in a number on the calculator set beside them.

"Am I the only one on this ship that didn't know?"

Rio's head snapped up and he froze for just a moment, then turned again to look up at Koosk. "...Know?"

Koosk nodded just slightly, suddenly realizing just how uneasy this was. "About you. And about why you've been acting different ever since I got here."

"Oh," he replied quietly.

Koosk waited a few moments, looking down at him, then shrugged. "Eh, never-mind. It's not a big deal, I just thought it was a little odd."

"It's not?" Rio asked, quietly.

"Not what? A big deal?" Koosk pushed the hatch closed and sat down across from Rio, leaning back against the wall. "No, it's not. It's somewhat flattering, I suppose."

Rio cocked his head a little to the side, looking at him curiously. "Hmm..."

"I don't know why everyone's making a big deal of it, really. I was starting to think something really bad was up." Koosk shrugged again. "I have to admit, it is kinda annoying to have everyone on the ship asking how things are going between the two of us. Not exactly a good way to answer that."

"Oh, I'll just tell them that you know, and that you don't have any problem with it, and... Well, I'm assuming you're not interested."

"No. Well..." He paused, leaning his head back against the wall. "I don't know. Never really gave it any thought."

"Oh?"

Koosk noted the hopeful sound of that reply, even as much as Rio was trying to not sound that way. He stood and left, not replying.

"Con, SPIKE!"

Koosk caught a sudden jerk of motion to his side as Rio's head snapped up to look at the display. He quickly turned himself around and grabbed the back of his chair, flipping around in the weightlessness to start settling into it. The dull gray circle was almost perfectly centered on the area of the second planet and its spaceyard, analysis data already flickering into place beside it. There were already the sounds of scuffling and muttered curses from the other sections of the bridge as attention was focused on the new contact.

"Source, EM pulse, very strong signal on fore and outboard array!"

The intercom speakers crackled, echoed in Koosk's headset, as Johnathan's voice boomed out over it. "General quarters! Command staff to stations, rig for maneuvers! Reel in the outboard!"

Rio's paw slammed down on a button beside his console, the thick pressure door hummed loudly and slammed into place.

"Gunnery secure!"

Other stations called out secure as they all sealed off. Elsewhere on the ship, the crew was going through the initial steps of preparing for maneuvers, securing any loose objects.

"Engineering, pre-start all reactors, prepare for full power! Gunnery, start your plots for immediate defensive action!"

"Con, gunnery," Rio barked out, "Affirmative! Birds warming, RTL in three mike!" Three minutes until the missiles were Ready To Launch.

The circle on the screen flashed to a white dot.

"Con, sensors! Spike, same source! Definitely ladar, they know we're here."

The captain's voice came over the coms again. "Sensors, con. Localize source!"

Rio and Koosk were both running through triangulation data, intercept tracks. Speeds and formulas. Rio flipped the point defence switches from stowed to standby mode, a hum coming in response as the hatches opened, the turrets deploying with a slight, muffled thump. As he reached to hit in the data, Koosk stopped suddenly, looking questioningly at the display.

"That can't be right," Rio muttered, still typing in data. He saw the same thing.

"Con?" Vell sounded rather unsure now. Something was not right. "...I don't know what's up, but unless we've got a problem with the number-one outboard, that signal is not local..."

"What's your range?"

"I'm... I'm showing 40.11 AU."

"WHAT?"

Five and a half light-hours. And the direction...

"It's coming from orbit of the planet," Koosk muttered into the boom-mike of his headset, not even thinking of it.

"What... What the hell is giving out a signal that strong?"

Vell's voice came on again. "Could be a PDA, but there isn't supposed to be one here... They couldn't have mounted that powerful of an array on the Artemis Moon, could they?"

The line was quiet a moment, just the hum of the computers filling the background. "Twelve hours since we ceased acceleration," Johnathan said, much quieter than usual. "Damn..." The intercom was silent for what seemed a very long time. "They saw us on passive... They could see us on passive from all the way out here, and when they lost sight of our signature, they pinged us to make sure."

Rio leaned back in his chair, heaving a sigh, and slowly shook his head, muttering to himself.

A few moments passed, then the intercom clicked again. "Any other sources?"

"Negative. No other source of contact, I've got dead space from here as far as we can see."

Another pause. "Stand down from alert, resume duties."

Rio was already pushing himself up out of the chair by the time the pressure door clunked open again, grumbling under his breath. "Well this is going to be fun..."

Koosk reached out hesitantly, breathing heavily as he started to slowly flip the switches back, standing down the systems from alert. His paw was shaking.

Johnathan floated silently at the end of the table, eyes closed, as the rest of the bridge crew looked around nervously. They were rattled, Koosk could see. And so was he, even moreso with how nervous the rest of the crew, the combat-experienced crew, had gotten. Though it all found its way back to the captain. Watching him think silently and gravely like that had edged up the seriousness in all of them. And he knew it.

"...40 AU... We normally don't see a ship until a fifth of that. Maybe a quarter." He sighed, eyes opening as he took hold of the back of his seat and guided himself into it. "Well, it doesn't matter, in any case. We knew they'd probably see us around optimal launch distance, at least, so the only thing we've lost is a day or so. This'll be different."

"We normally have to rely on stealth, so we can launch without warning, force them defensive. We don't have to worry about that, though. They know they aren't anywhere near full capacity..." He paused. "And they probably got a good analysis from ladar. Expecting a normal corvette, they'd expect 8 missiles, same as them. They're in defensive, and a lot slower than us, they can't risk an offensive-dedicated salvo, even a solo, since they'll expect us to lob everything on them... But we'll still have any re-tasks that don't intercept their target and can still find us."

He lifted up the table-edge to access the terminal there, already starting to work on something.

Rio pushed off of a chair, floating across the table before he grabbed the top of another, arresting his flight. "What do we do?"

"We give them exactly what they expect," Johnathan replied, without even looking up. He typed in a little more, then looked up. "We'll salvo all 8 birds, as they undoubtedly expect, and immediately turn to begin escape maneuvers. I don't want to stick around, so we'll use a lot of fuel. Between that and our reserved emergency supply, we'll have a long trip once we get to Fierna."

"Better a long trip than no trip at all."

"Too true. Which is why we only give them what they expect, and don't surprise them with more. Don't want them to start thinking any more than they have to..." He fiddled with a bit on the computer, adjusting something. "Okay. We commence salvo in two hours. Six on the Artemis Moon, one each on the frigate and station. I want number seven and eight in the salvo on the secondary targets. 15 second spread, with a break of 60 seconds between six and seven. Both seven and eight will be tasked to adjust to the Artemis Moon if it is not destroyed by the previous missiles, and if they are capable..."

He paused again, then looked up. "Rio. Does that sound good?"

Rio just nodded.

"Good. The good thing is, this little turn works both ways. Not only do they know we're here, but we know they're there. And they're not going anywhere yet. Our birds should be going quite fast by the time they reach their targets, it'll be hard for them to do any defensive work." He looked around. "So... Let's get to work. Firing starts in two hours."

Koosk could hear the thrumming of the engine tests, even from the armored bridge.

"All tasked munitions are green, sir."

The speaker crackled slightly next to his ear. "Affirmative. Final checks!"

"Sensors, contact good, all systems good."

"Gunnery, salvo good, datalink good, checks good. We're ready."

Koosk looked over the data one last time, checking to make sure everything was tasked just right, and fed properly to the missiles AI core.

"Commence salvo."

"Aye sir, commencing salvo. Fire one!"

There was a thunk, followed by a loud, roaring hiss that abruptly cut off after just a moment, and an inverted V appeared on his display.

"One is away, linkup good. Spacing now."

The tic-mark next to the inverted V turned, as did the bar tracing through the V, showing it was turning perpendicular to the ships motion. There was a slight flicker as its engines vented a tiny bit of working mass, the super-heated, high-pressure plasma exhaust, then almost immediately stopped as the V darted across the screen at some 10 meters a second, already turning to line up with its target again. Missiles had to be spaced away from the craft's flight path when they launched, else that high-velocity plasma would strike the ship that just launched it, like the largest cutting torch ever made.

"One is spaced, engaging... Now."

The V flickered, then glowed bright as the engines vented at full force, and it again darted across his screen again as it rapidly accelerated away. Within just ten seconds its relative speed was already a kilometer a second compared to Talisin, and it would continue to accelerate for a long time.

"One running fine. Firing two!"

The process ran through 8 times. Firing a missile, spacing it out, engaging, confirming, and doing it again. By the end, there were 8 little inverted Vs on the tactical display, arcing out slightly like spokes as they followed the slowly curving red plot-lines, leading all the way to the white dot in orbit over the second planet.

Without a doubt, that white dot - the Artemis Moon - saw the whole thing. A dim, perhaps undetectable flicker from the spacing, then a sudden flare as the missile accelerated. Then another. And another. And yet more. The commander was undoubtedly setting his crew upon the task of determining how to deal with the 8 tracks now coming toward them. 8 offensive missiles versus 8 defensive missiles were not good odds. Normally, the missiles had a success rate of 30-50% for defensive screening, and at those odds, the Artemis Moon was already dead. And the captain surely knew it, but his ship was still capable. They could lay down a defensive screen thicker than almost any other ship, and enough lasers to have at least a fair chance of stabbing an incoming missile out of existence. But it was also big, and slow.

As his ship started to prepare for the maneuvers that would come over it, still several days away, they also saw a ninth flare, as the attacking corvette turned to an escape course. They didn't want to be anywhere near where the defensive missiles might see them.

"And now comes the waiting. About 3 days until they reach their target, long ranged shot, another week or so after that until we jump again."

Koosk looked over. "Three days of waiting to see what all is going to get shot at us. Great."

He pulled firmly on the strap, cinching the legging in place, and tucking the flap in upon itself. The crew was in combat-ready stance, and that meant being ready for maneuvers in only moments from any time. Normally, everyone wore "slick" suits, light air-tight setups that would keep a person safe from the vacuum of space, assuming they got a helmet on in time, but now everyone wore them completely closed up, gloves and all. On-station crew were now required to go further, wearing heavier flight suits over this, also vacuum-capable, and fitted with a complete gee-suit setup in the padding. For a ship that may undergo continuous acceleration approaching nine times the force of gravity during defensive maneuvers, and sudden "hits" of up to twice that, it was vital. So were the health monitoring bundle set along the side of the abdomen, monitoring each crew's vital signs and feeding this data to the computer. This had multiple uses, from letting the computer compute how much force each member could handle at any moment (And feeding this to the pilot, who would use this as an important gauge to judge how much maneuvering may be applied), to assigning triage in the case of injuries.

It was already three days since launch, and the crew was getting ready for trouble. The offensive and defensive salvos had crossed just less than a day ago, with the Artemis Moon launching just 8 missiles, as had been expected. Three flashes had given away the death of three of the attacking missiles, and their intercepting counterparts, and now five missiles hurtled each way, one group closing on the Artemis Moon, the other on Talisin.

The crew was getting ready to fight for their life.

Everyone was focused on the sensor screens, waiting. The Artemis Moon had maneuvered to use the planet as a shield, putting it outside the maneuverability of two of the missiles. The five missiles retasked independently, those two taking on the secondary targets instead, leaving 3 missiles were tasked to the Artemis Moon.

Numbers ticked down as the inverted Vs tracked toward their target, gray markers pointing to the point-defense fire of the target dozens of AUs away. And they weren't let down. As one of the numbers quickly flicked past zero, there was a bright flare-mark, and the red circle dimmed, a gray circle spreading out. The assembled crew cheered out all at once; The very first missile had hit. The Artemis Moon was no more than flash-fried plasma and strewn chunks of metal. The flash from the collision revealed that the missile impacted with a force equal to a 22 gigaton nuclear yield. There was nothing left.

Two more flashes followed later. One on the escort, one on the orbiting station and shipyard. The mission was a success.

Now they just had to live to tell about it.

"Gunnery, what's your status?"

"Almost ready," Koosk replied into the boom mike, the little radio-headset now nestled under the thick but light armored EVA helmet. "Intercept plots are laid in and uploaded, just waiting for the birds to warm up."

"Which they just finished," Rio added, as the last of the four weapon status displays' "ready/arm" light changed to a steady green. "Ready to fire."

After the maneuvering to attack the incoming missiles, the "overshoots" (Defensive missiles which had missed their mark and re-tasked to attacking the opposing launch ship) were split into two rough groups. The first, of three missiles, was just over an hour closer than the second, and spread across a 5 minute period. This one was first priority, and was getting all four of the remaining missiles tasked to it as priority targets. Fortunately, with the incoming missiles spread out in two groups, any overshoots on the first group could re-task to the second. But with five missiles coming in and only four going out, and with the relatively low counter-fire success, the odds of stopping them all was low. Too low for Koosk, or any of the rest of the crew, to dwell on.

"Okay, good. Final checks!"

"Sensors, contacts good, all systems good."

Rio's eyes darted over the screens again. "Gunnery, salvo good, datalink good, checks good."

"Good. Commence salvo."

"Commencing salvo. Fire one!"

The ship shuddered slightly with the now familiar thunk and hiss of the weapon being ejected out of the tube, and the inverted V of a newly launched missile flicked into existence in the middle of the screen. Soon the other three appeared and started tracking across the screen until they were all positioned over the Vs of the incoming missiles. All that remained was the wait.

"Okay, we're at T minus seven three mike until intercept," Johnathan said over the intercom, sounding much more brief and to-the-point than usual. "I want complete lock-down by T minus three zero mike. Anything you need to do away from your station, get it done now."

The time went surprisingly quick. Koosk and Rio spent most of it checking plots and weapon status... Though Rio did most of it. It was hard to concentrate, Koosk was trying his best, but it was nerve-wracking. An hour of waiting and double checking, while the inevitable loomed larger and larger, the numbers coldly marching toward zero on the display in front of him.

Until hardly 15 minutes before intercept, and two of the Vs, one inverted and one not, went dark red, one set of numbers freezing as two light gray circles slowly spread from where they had met, another set of numbers slowly tracking as the circles slowly turned darker. The circles marked the fragmentation danger area from a high-energy impact.

"Con, sensors! Vampire 1-2 is dead!"

Koosk could barely hear a couple crew shout out happily through the heavy metal bulkheads around the sealed-off station. He smiled slightly, though somewhat grimly, his eyes affixed to the remaining incoming missiles.

A moment later another pair turned dark.

"And Vampire 1-1. Two hits!"

Koosk checked the display. Launch number two had already passed the first grouping, leaving one more to attempt intercept. His eyes locked on the numbers as they counted down, quickly changing display modes to display the absolute distance between the two missiles, catching it just as the numbers quickly hurtled down toward zero...

And then started climbing again.

"Shit," Rio muttered into the mike.

"Con, sensors. Vampire 1-3 is inside the interceptor screen and on course. Intercept in 15 mike."

Koosk let out a slow sigh, clearing the distance-to link as he flipped his displays over to point-defence mode. This was about to get messy.

"Warm 'em up."

Koosk nodded as he flipped the four switches in series, from "stowed" to "armed." With each switch, there was a slight reverberation through the ship as the pressure doors for the point-defence mounts slid open, followed by the quiet hum as the four sets of barrels started to spin. As they deployed, he started running them through their final checks, traversing each quad mount its full range of motion, cycling through each of their independent backup sensors, and finally test-firing a single round for each of the four gatling systems on each turret. He did one last glance over the peripheral systems, making sure the cryonics and power systems were all checking out...

"All guns show green. Ready."

"Gunnery ready," Rio echoed.

Johnathan's voice boomed over the ship-wide intercom. "Final warning, preparing for combat thrust, all personnel secure for full thrust!"

Koosk listened to the voices over the intercom, not quite hearing what was being said, just the overall tone. He strummed his claw-tips nervously on the arm-rest, having to do -something-. He couldn't sit still, not now. Rio slid the visor of his helmet down and locked it in place.

Time was ticking down quickly on the display, much quicker than he was ready for. Quickly he tugged on each of the straps securing him to the heavy chair before setting his arms onto the rest, clicking each of the restraint clips into place... It seemed odd to have to lock himself down so securely, but when the ship could suddenly jerk around at 10 gees of force in any direction, it was necessary. If the computer-controlled restraints weren't there, the force could very well rip his limbs off. Even the thought of going through such forces -with- these systems in place was unnerving.

He snapped the muzzle-piece of his helmet into place, then slid the visor closed, locking himself in with a dull click, his breath echoing in his ears.

The command to start defensive action didn't even click until he was jerked to the side in his seat, the ship spinning one way before its rotation slammed to a stop, then was immediately flattened into his seat. The display above him showed their acceleration at just shy of 100 meters, almost ten times the force of gravity.

"Vampire 1-3, range, 43 ls, velocity 0.098 c. Intercept in 440 seconds!" Vell's voice was shaky under the heavy gravity.

Koosk dug his fingers into the arm rest, waiting for the world to stop so that he could do something, instead of being pinned down like this. He could barely hear Rio speaking. "Helm, gunnery, defensive run at T minus 350, twenty meters, final ten!"

The wait seemed too long. The screens infront of him blurred as he heard a rushing sound in his ears. He squinted hard, trying to make out the timer infront of him. The gee-suit was squeezing tight, making it almost impossible for him to draw a breath, and a steady, rhythmic beeping started sounding in his ear, a medic-alert warning indicating potentially hazardous readings. Was it Rio? Was it HIM?

He started feeling a pounding in his head as his vision and hearing started to clear, restraints relaxing. He gulped in the air. He'd almost blacked out, not a good time for it. But that was, of course, why they had TWO gunnery officers.

Back to two gees. He heard Rio's voice come across the headset. "Firing defensive screen now."

Nothing happened for a moment, then he could hear the deep thrumming hum as the 35 millimeter gattlings opened fire, spewing a stream of projectiles toward the incoming missile. Koosk blinked once, then quickly leaned forward against the restraints, hand reaching up to the panel ready to act.

The guns stopped about ten seconds after they started, and Rio spoke again. "Screen fire done, commencing defensive fire." He looked over to Koosk. "Koosk, you handle countermeasures, 150, 50, and 10."

Koosk nodded, still looking at his screen. The missile was accelerating to adjust to the Talisin's acceleration, flying in unerringly. He glanced over to Rio's screen, watching him aiming the laser. It wasn't "dodging" much at this range, since it was too far to really do any damage. The first two shots registered as hits, but barely had any thermal return. At most, they might have confused the sensors for a moment.

Once it hit 20 light-seconds range, it started maneuvering more, zigging and zagging. Way too difficult to have a good chance of hitting, but Rio still tried, tracking the aimpoint back and forth across the lead envelope and firing manually. None of the next few even came close; The lead envelope, where the missile was most likely to be 20 seconds later, was effectively over fifteen square kilometers, and hitting an object hardly some 30 square meters in that large of a field would be a matter of pure luck.

The tracking counter hit 150 seconds. "ECM on," Koosk said, then added, "Decoy away." There was a soft "thunk" as a decoy drone was deployed out the side of the ship. It was a small craft, hardly over two hundred kilograms, but with packed with emitters to give it a very similar sensor profile as the Talisin.

The laser fired a few more times. Still missing, but the lead envelope was quickly shrinking. Koosk fired another decoy at fifty seconds, giving the missile three objects to track, then switched his primary control over to the pulse jammer. The jammer focused through a lens turret just aft of the laser's lens turret, and worked much the same as a laser; But instead of firing a short, tight, high-energy pulse of laser light, the pulse jammer fired a pulse of wide-spectrum electromagnetic radiation, to try and overwhelm an incoming missile's sensors, to blind them, even if only temporarily.

Koosk was now aiming with a system just like Rio was using to aim the laser, but with the pulse jammer's wider dispersion, it should be a little easier to hit with. And it could fire repeatedly during the final 20 seconds.

At twenty seconds, he depressed the fire button, holding it down as he slowly tracked the aimpoint across the missile's flight-path. The reticule flickered red each time it fired, a couple seconds apart, but the missile was moving too erratically.

"Inside guns!" Rio said, through the radio.

Koosk kept glancing down at the timer. Out of time. He hit the decoy release again, another sacrificial drone dropping from the side of the ship, taking another blast with the pulse jammer, before being slammed down into his seat, the restraints cinching down tight.

He squinted and grunted out loudly, keeping his eye fixed on the screen. He kept his finger pressed against the fire button on his seat's armrest, the pulse jammer desperately trying to adjust its aim quick enough to keep aimed at the missile. He couldn't tell how close they were getting to hitting, couldn't really tell anything about it until there was a flash as the missile struck one of the point-defence rounds.

Followed a second later by a bone-jarring slam. The ship seemed to jerk to the side, throwing him against the restraints, the lights blinking several times, half his displays gone. He barely caught Rio's almost panic-stricken look as the chief gunner's head snapped over to look at him.

"Fuck!" someone blurted out over the intercom through the crackling sound, immediately cut off by the Captain.

"Report!"

"Con, sensors!" Vell's voice came in a little stronger, the static in the line quickly dying down, but her voice was desperate. "We've lost all forward sensors! We caught a fragment from the missile when it was hit, looks like we took at least one, in the forward array!"

Koosk noticed then that he was still pushed slightly to the side of his seat; The ship was spinning.

"Helm, stop this spin! All stations, assess damage!"

Koosk's paw shuddered as he reached toward the panel, then paused, then reached again, taking control of the point-defence turrets and slewing them all to fore, the displays switching to the enhanced cameras in each one, the displays flicking as they changed magnification. The ship's spin slowed steadily.

"Con, helm! I stopped the spin, but it's starting up again. We're venting!"

"Shit!" Koosk said as the cameras all hit 1x magnification. "Con, gunnery, we're venting fuel!" The camera showed a slow stream of water -- fuel -- pouring out from the hull. On the opposite side, there was a large hole, at least a meter wide, torn in the hull. The water flowing quickly out of that almost immediately stopped as that cell went dry. "Looks like it entered in tank forward-one, and exited... Around forward-three."

"Barry!"

There was a pause, then a click as the badger's voice came over the intercom. "Engineering here."

"We took a hit through a couple fuel tanks, find out which ones are leaking and take care of the problem. We're holding zero-thrust for now, so go EVA if you need to. Also, check all the other systems, we lost forward sensors. And you've only got forty minutes to get it all done and secured for thrust!"

Koosk sat back in the seat, trying to sit still. It wasn't working.

It turned out there were two hits. One had hit in the far forward fuel cell, punching right through three decks worth of tanks, and exited the other side. The impact had flash-boiled over half the water in those cells (Which, like all the others, were mostly empty by now) and ruptured adjacent ones. By the time it exited, the small fragment had expanded into more than a 50-centimeter wide spray of star-hot plasma, carrying over 100 kilos of the ship's structure and tanks with it. The second had hit just two meters further forward, on the forward dome. The energetic flash of a fragment traveling at almost thirty thousand kilometers per second had fried every single one of the hyper-sensitive sensors in the compartment, then tore through the access tube reaching up between the fuel cells, through two decks of tanks, and out the side of the ship just in front of the other hit. Fortunately, they had lost less than a fifth of their remaining fuel, and they wouldn't need the forward sensors for the return trip... But the Talisin would be spending some time in repairs before it launched again.

"Koosk?"

He looked over to Rio, still breathing a little unsteadily as he floated over his chair. "Y-yeah?"

"Are you okay?"

Koosk paused, looking over to him. "I... Guess so. What about you?" The one thing he'd always heard from the rest of the crew was how steady he was under stress, but he seemed almost as shaken as Koosk was.

Rio grunted slightly. "Yeah, I think so..."

Koosk reached down, grabbing the back of his chair, slowly turning himself in the air. "You don't seem any more steady than I do right now, Rio..."

Rio sighed, then nodded slightly. "Yeah..." He grabbed ahold of one of the straps and pulled himself down, nestling into the seat. "We... Took a hit last mission, too. Happened almost the exact same."

"Oh." He nodded slightly, then pushed off lightly from his chair, gliding slowly over to the other lizard. "Bit too much having it happen twice in a row?"

"More than that," Rio replied, rather weak sounding. "It... Well, did you ever wonder why you got assigned to this ship?"

"You... You needed a new gunner's mate, right?"

He nodded slightly in reply, silent. Then it caught. Koosk looked over to his chair.

Rio sighed slightly. "The fragment entered almost head-on, just to the right of the top display console. It traveled down, straight through the center of the chair. I... The heat of the impact scorched the side of my helmet and my flight suit, and I had second-degree burns along my tail and right arm, almost lost vision in my right eye... I was lucky, though, the heat hadn't entirely destroyed my suit, and it managed to reseal before I lost too much air. He... He was killed instantly. There wasn't much left..."

"Oh..."

"He was my mate..."

"Oh," Koosk replied, surprised. Now this was even more awkward. He reached down, placing his paw on Rio's shoulder, patting it once, then giving a soft squeeze. There was a silence, but then he saw Rio smile, ever so slightly.

Then he leaned over, placing a soft kiss atop Rio's head. Rio twitched slightly, then turned to look at Koosk with a surprised expression, as he floated backwards towards his own chair. Koosk just smiled slightly, pushing Rio's helmet back toward him. "Better get ready."

Rio stared at him for a few moments as he settled himself into his seat... Then smiled a little as well, slipping his helmet on. Koosk could swear he heard him chuckle slightly.

Koosk slipped on the harness, securing himself, tightening the straps... He paused halfway through, letting go of the strap as he looked down at his hand. He wasn't shaking any more.

The laser hummed sharply as it discharged, just before Rio called out, "Thirty seconds!"

One of the incoming missiles had been hit by the defensive salvo, but the other was still coming quick. Koosk was keeping his eye on it, watching it jerking back and forth. A few seconds later he started firing the pulse jammer again. A couple shots came close, but not square enough to have any effect.

The laser fired a final time. "Grazing hit," Rio said, sounding rather calm.

Koosk barely noticed the time, deploying the final decoy just before the restraints cinched down and he was shoved into the seat under the heavy acceleration. He grunted as he shakily adjusted the aimpoint with his arm-rest's trackball, still firing. Then he saw the missile jerk, accelerating straight for a moment. He hit it! He hit the fire button again and held it, firing another pulse into the missile. It jerked again as it sensed the pulse of energy, then swerved as every single sensor fried.

He yelled out shakily, "Helm! Reverse!"

A moment later he was thrown up against the straps, a loud rushing growing in his ears, starting to red-out; Then it suddenly stopped as the screen's view swung slightly and the blind missile passed by some two hundred meters infront of them. The loud thrumming of the engines quickly died down to a bare hum.

Koosk sighed deeply as he caught his breath, his head settling back into the padded chair, then let out a laugh. It suddenly felt much better just to still be there.

He felt Rio's paw on his arm and looked over. The visor was up, and he could tell from his eyes he was grinning.

"Not bad for your first time," Rio said, sounding as good as Koosk felt.

He set his head back against the rest, eyes fixed on Rio, and grinned as well.