Now what? I only had a couple minutes before that frigate would be in range to open fire on the shuttle. I thought fast and hard. Mars was just too far away for us to be in range to communicate with Taimia before this ship caught up with us. The suit’s index of abilities was expansive, I’d only skimmed the surface of it so far. I frantically ran search after search for heavy weapons of one type or another but I hadn’t used the armory to fully update the suit with everything it could do. I wasn’t even sure I could use it all at once, but I need something now, something big. And then it hit me. I needed to stall the frigate long enough for the Tempest to show up and rescue us. To stall, one defended or distracted, they didn’t attack.

I had scanned Aaron’s shield generator, so I quickly accessed the file and I was dismayed at what I found. The suit was incapable of producing a spherical energy shield large enough to encapsulate the shuttle. All it could do is create a barrier along the outer surface of my shield. It would let me deflect some ranged attacks, but it would be too small to deflect ship mounted weaponry. After more searching through the index I found that I was actually capable of extending the shield to a rather generous size. It wouldn’t cover the shuttle completely, not even by half; but, I just might take a page out of Aaron’s book.

This plan was also assuming that the Tempest could take on a military frigate by itself. I was pretty sure it could, but there was a chance things would end very badly.

The shuttle was under constant acceleration from its engines so I had to do this very carefully. I reduced the strength of the magnets holding my feet to the deck and allowed the grappling hook to spool out. As a result I slowly slid back along the hull. When I was at the rear, just above the engines, I stopped myself from sliding and gripped one of the fins along the top with my left hand. I gave it a push and found it would hold me so I held it tight and released my grappling hook. Prepared for the shift in angular pressure, the forces didn’t yank me off the ship.

I re-secured the grappling hook near the base of the fin on the other side of me and held onto it with my right hand, released my left and spiraled out the shield. I held the shield over my head and it grew to twice times my height while still holding a round shape. Energy visibly crackled along the surface and I breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t invisible. It would make this next part much easier.

I used the hud in my armor to hail the frigate. As the call rang I closed my eyes and prayed they would answer.

There was a beep and then I heard a deep baritone voice, “This is Captain Dennis Metzen of the Starforce Ship Myanmar. Who am I speaking to?”

I opened my eyes to see a muscled, clean shaven man with a head of short curly black hair and a rigid posture. I considered my words because I could tell this captain, and his ship, were out of the loop. He had no idea why he was chasing us, only that he’d been ordered to. “If you value your ship and the lives of your crew, do not fire on my shuttle.”

Emotions danced across his face and I could see that he was an intelligent man, I’d have to play my cards just right to make this bluff work. “Who are you?” he repeated.

“My name is Jon.” I said

“Why did you attack Tosh Station on Deimos?”

I waited before answering, taking every second I could to drag out this exchange. “I didn’t, I rescued someone.”

“The report that I received is that two individuals, a male and a female, infiltrated the moon base, killed guards, stole technology and escaped on this shuttle. My orders are to destroy you if I cannot capture you. So I will ask this only once, surrender, or I will be forced to destroy you.”

The look on his face suggested he sincerely didn’t want to kill us. “You were lied to.” I said. “And if you attack us, you will be destroying yourself.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, squinting his eyes.

“Look, I don’t want to kill you or any of your crew. But, you can see my shield with your sensors can’t you?” he nodded and I continued. “It is capable of reflecting any type of energy weapon, including plasma. And besides, like I said, you’ve been lied to.”

“What do you mean lied to? My orders were authentic.”

“You can’t seriously sit there and tell me that this whole situation doesn’t seem a little fishy to you? I mean, look at me, anchored to the top of a shuttle, carrying a ginormous shield capable of reflecting ship based weapons and running from a black flag, bio-genetic research station that does experiments on humans.” He squinted his eyes at me again, clearly lost in thought. This conversation was coming across as awkward and weird, but that was fine, I just needed to buy time.

He leaned forward and said “Gunnery, target that man and fire a very small burst of gunfire.”

My eyes shot wide open and I lowered the shield into place, praying it would at minimum block the shots. Three orange-yellow bolts of energy quickly crossed the gap, struck my shield and ricochet off back at the frigate; Its armor absorbed the few energy bolts without trouble. I was floored by the exchange and tried to school my face as though I was expecting exactly that to happen. “I told you, your weapons won’t work, everything you can dish out will get sent right back at you.”

My visor told me a very different story. Reflecting just those three shots had drained nearly seventy percent of the shield’s power. I couldn’t even repeat it. I looked back from the HUD to the Captain and found the man studying my face. “This is your last chance, surrender. Once you’re on board my ship, I give you my word, we’ll talk about what did and didn’t happen before I make my decision what to do with you and your friend.”

I pondered his words for a bit. A month ago I would have agreed to surrender. I knew there were good people in the Starforce, but everything that had happened up to now, even the things that Bruiser and Madison had told me, showed me that good people, were few and far between. “I’m sorry Captain, I can’t take that risk. I have no interest in being experimented on or dissected. I saw what was being done in there.”

Something popped up on my visor and I stopped speaking, it was a small text message from the Tempest. “On my way.” is all it said

The Captain looked disappointed. “I can understand where you’re coming from, and I sympathize. I am fairly certain your fears are based on conspiracy theories, but I give you my word that I’ll look into this. Unfortunately, I must follow orders. Goodbye Jon. Helm, ram them.” The call dropped and the image of the Captain disappeared. My eyes shot wide at the exchange. The frigate's engine plume expanded and started to close on us rapidly. I turned around just in time to see the Tempest appear out of nowhere as it dropped out of warp.

Looking back to the frigate, It had begun to slow and started doing evasive maneuvers as plasma crossed the gap from the Tempest. I opened coms to the Tempest quickly. “Taimia, try not to destroy them, just disable them if you can.”

“Unwise, It will take too long to properly disable them. I am detecting four larger vessels in route, they will be here within the next fifteen minutes. While I have enough of a charge to jump from within the system, I still need to clear Mars’ gravity well and spin up the drive.”

Captain Metzen had seemed honest and sincere, I didn’t want to hurt him or his crew but Taimia was right, we just didn’t have time. There was also no telling if he’d been lying to me the whole time. “Okay”, I said to Taimia, “Just do your best to minimize the damage”. Said as she turned the shuttle around remotely, aiming us directly away from mars.

By now the two ships were fully engaged in a fight. The tempest clearly outmatched the frigate. Though smaller, it was faster, more nimble and packed more firepower. White plasma rained down on the frigate at a steady rate from all four of the Tempest’s turrets as it circled; blackening and burning holes through the ship’s hull. I could see multiple spots where it was venting atmosphere.

Gunfire from the frigate was just getting absorbed by the Tempest and the two torpedoes that the Myanmar managed to fire were destroyed by twin bolts of lightning that arced off the Tempest’s hull. Taimia made an abrupt pivot, bringing her nose to bear on the frigate and released two Mag-Rails. The blue coils of light entered the side of the larger ship just in front of the rear section and a conical blast of fragmentation blew off the entire rear section of the frigate. They were burning and venting in many places, but some would survive, I hoped.

The Tempest swung around and the bay door opened. It matched speeds with us and scooped us up without slowing furthur. I closed my shield and ducked to clear the opening as we were swallowed whole, like a frog swallowing a fly. The magnetic restraints and gravity activated inside the cargo hanger locking us in place. I hopped down from the shuttle to wait for Madison. After the bay doors closed and the room filled with atmosphere I retracted my armor and opened the shuttle door.

Madison immediately leapt out, tackling me to the floor. Stradling me, she grabbed me by the chin with one hand while putting a finger in my face. “Don’t you ever do that again. You hear me, you, you, disgustingly heroic idiot.” She let go of my chin and collapsed on top of me.

She had her head pressed to the floor right next to mine and I could feel her shaking. Wrapping my arms around her I pulled her tightly against me. “Madison, I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know what I would do if I lost you.” She pushed herself up and her eyes were red, puffy and shimmering with unshed tears. “You make me different. I mean, when I’m with you, I’m different. I’m who I want to be.” she clearly was having a hard time explaining how she felt. I reached up and held her hand. She looked down at it and sniffled; then looked back up to me and immediately used her other hand to slap me hard on the chest. I grunted. “You big dummy. I need you.” And with that she stood and walked away wiping her eyes with one hand.

Madison and I had been growing closer, that was for sure; but, it was a revelation to me that she had grown this attached. “This is when you’re supposed to follow me.” she said from the otherside of the cargo hanger. I snapped my head over to look at her and she was standing next to the lift door waiting for me so I quickly climbed to my feet and jogged over to her. Together we rode the lift up to the bridge and I decided I would take some time to really sit down and think about Madison and my feelings for her when I had some free time.

Once on the bridge Taimia instructed us to strap in. “Where should we jump?” she asked, as she decelerated the ship and came to a stop.

Remembering the translation that Christian had given me I said “Gliese six four nine”

The tempest rotated in space and came to a stop as the warp drives spun up to jump. A few minutes passed before an alarm went off. On one of the screens to my right I could see a Starforce ship and it was opening fire on us from its maximum range. A torpedo cut across space with incredible speed headed right for us. I knew the defenses were down because of the jump and there was no way Taimia would be able to get them back up in time. Then it hit.

That sensation of being inside out and giant and small all at once and I knew we’d made the jump. Space returned to normal for a few seconds before the ship rocked with several back to back explosions. “How bad is it?” I asked Taimia.

“Analyzing, one moment. It appears that the torpedo detonated during the jump without actually hitting us. We have arrived in the Gliese six four nine system but the explosion overloaded the capacitor chain for the jump regulators and the starboard secondary warp engine is destroyed. We should be able to travel at warp, but we will need significant repair time if we are going to make any more jumps.”

“Are we going to need a dry dock? Or can you manufacture the parts and tools we will need?” I asked.

“I can but we will need to land, entire sections of the hull will need to be replaced over the starboard warp reactor. The fourth planet in this system has a breathable atmosphere and suitable gravity.”

“Take us down there.” I shrugged and turned to Madison, “I guess you and I will get to learn how to be engineers now too.” She nodded back but didn't look thrilled at the prospect. “Wait, we just jumped into the system, the sensor’s area wouldn’t have had the time to expand to the goldilocks zone of a system for a star of this size yet. How do you know there is a habitable planet?”

“It is recorded in my database.” She said

“Anything else?” I asked,

“Strangely, no. Most Stars and planets in my records have very detailed annotations. Even the other planets in this system show more than size, composition and atmosphere. But that is all I have for the fourth planet. I’ll start scanning the planet once we get closer.”

I looked over to Madison and she seemed to share my unease. Nearly an hour later we were in orbit of a brown planet spotted with water and clouds. “The atmosphere is thin, but breathable. I don’t recommend you exert yourself without the suit's respirator or it might cause you to hyperventilate.” There was a beep and she continued. “I am also picking up a very faint repeating message. It is Aegis in origin.”

“What does it say?” I asked with excitement.

“It’s just a set of landing coordinates. But it is on a frequency used exclusively by Aegis.”

“Take us down there Taimia, but be ready for anything. It’s always possible this is some kind of trap.”

“I will be careful.” she said. The atmosphere was not as thick as the last planet which made the ride to the surface much smoother, but it was still filled with violent turbulence and fire, lots of fire. I noticed as we slowed to land that we were at a slight angle but Taimia set us down picture perfect. “Engines off. I am detecting three individuals on foot heading for the ship.”

On the screen I could see three armored figures climbing across rocks and headed for us. None were holding weapons and I didn’t see any strapped on either. “I’ll check it out. I stood and ran to the lift. Madison was right behind me. And we soon found ourselves at the top of the open bay door looking down at two men and a woman. All three wore Templar armor like mine, except the armor for all three was battered and broken with scorch marks along much of the surface.