Over a century ago, immediately prior to the Battle of Terra...

P-64E Ferret 100
The Milky Way Galaxy
The Paghk System, Jr’iss Quadrant, Hari Sector
DEC 7 2668/2668.341; 0705 Hours (CST)

“Hunter, break off, break off!"

Ian switched off his visual and audio back to the light smuggler stealth craft Bannockburn. The order to abandon Paladin was simply too hard to stomach. The wave of Kilrathi fighters was now less than five thousand klicks off and closing in fast, their maneuvering scoops popped wide open to break after the high speed run in from the cruiser that had launched them. There was a slim chance that he might be able to pop off the two fighters on the forward left edge of their sweep, thereby punching a hole through for Paladin to follow.

He could imagine that Paladin was swearing a blue streak at the moment, but to hell with him if he didn’t want to be saved.

Ian turned his jump-equipped Ferret in towards the approaching fighters, toggled up his IFF missiles, and dumped them off in a long range spread to stir things up. The missiles leaped forward and several of the approaching Kilrathi fighters pulled into sharp turns. As soon as the tail of the nearest one was exposed, Hunter fired off an infrared tracker which instantly locked on to the fighter’s engines which were glowing white hot from the high speed approach. The missile slammed up the exhaust nozzle of the fighter and detonated.

First kill of the new war, he thought grimly.

Within seconds the fight was on, several Dralthi fighters peeling off to swing in on Hunter, while the forward edge of the strike, six Grikath fighters, pushed straight on towards Bannockburn. Paladin let loose with his remaining salvo of flechettes and then toggled off a battery of IFFs from his gatling mount missile launcher. Space was a mad confusion of explosions and Ian pulled a tight turn to try and shake off an incoming infra tracker, firing off a flare, which the missile went for, detonating silently a kilometer behind him.

A Grikath shot directly across his starboard bow and with a perfectly timed deflection, Ian nailed him solidly amidships and turned inside of the Cat, firing three more rapid mass driver rounds into the Grikath, which blew apart.

He spared a quick glance at his tactical display and saw that the Kilrathi cruisers were spread out into an open sweep, coming up behind the wave of fighters in case there was anything still to be finished off. Behind them more than a dozen patrol craft and a light frigate were coming in as a second wave, while from the other direction half a dozen patrol corvettes were closing, pushing Bannockburn into the trap. A wave of fast moving fighters was moving ahead, above, and below to close the trap.

With a sickening finality he realized the futility of the gesture he had just offered. The game was up. He switched back on to Paladin’s channel.

"Not looking good, buddy."

"Hunter, break free, make the run, I’ll provide support."

"Like hell, they’re on me, now run for it and get that damn information out, otherwise this whole thing is useless."

"Hunter, damn it, get the hell..."

"I think it’s the other way around, buddy, I’ll cover you, now run for it. When you get to the Vacuum Breathers, buddy, lift the first round for me."

"Hunter!"

He punched ahead of Bannockburn, moving to break up the forward screen so Paladin could slip through.

A spread of half a dozen missiles leaped forward from the next Kilrathi attack group, the new IFF and radar trackers. Ian swallowed hard and keyed up his own transponder to draw the missiles in.

The warbling tone in Ian’s headset clicked to a steady hum, increasing in pitch. The incoming were all locked on to his ship. He pulled up hard, leading the missiles away from Bannockburn.

"Pop out, Ian!" Paladin shouted, and then there was another voice on the comm.

"Green Two, Green Two, this is Green One, strike on the way."

Ian started to reach down to pull the ejector D ring when he saw a fighter lining up to hit Bannockburn from above. He dropped the ring, lined up on the target, and toggled off the one missile strapped beneath his finger. Even as it streaked away he knew the game had finally caught up with him at last. He bit down hard on his cigar and closed his eyes.

Six Kilrathi IFFs impacted across the stern of Ian "Hunter" St. John’s Ferret.

Planet Rawsh; Hylliard Province
The Kilrah System, Kur’u’Khag Quadrant, Kilrah Sector
NOV 6 2819/2819.310; 0601 Hours (GFST)

NAME : Captain St. John, Ian [ KIA ]
SERIAL NUMBER : C24553
CALLSIGN : Hunter
ALIGNMENT : Form. enlisted in the Terran Confederation Space Force, 36th Tactical Fighter Wing
BORN : 2627.254 in Brisbane, Australia, Planet Earth
DECEASED : 2668.341; Killed during reconnaissance op in Free Corps for form. Free Republic of Landreich, Hari Sector
LAST KNOWN POSTING : Errant-class Merchantman TCS Bannockburn (unofficial); CVS-65 TCS Concordia (official)
PREVIOUS POSTINGS : CV-07 TCS Tiger’s Claw, CV-08 TCS Austin, CVS-65 TCS Concordia

"EEG readout?"

"Brain functions reading normal. It looks like... make a note. Patient regained consciousness at 0605 Hours."

"Nothing personal, but you two better leave. We don’t want to alarm him, and you know where he’s coming from."

"As you wish."

"Captain St. John... Captain St. John..."

Captain Ian "Hunter" St. John awakened to see a blurry figure turn away from a holographic display screen. He looked down at himself as his features gradually came into focus, finding himself strapped to a table, wires running in and out of his skin and tubes pumping fluids into the veins in his arms. He wasn’t in any pain, but his senses felt dull, an inherent grogginess about him that he guessed was the result of his blacking out in space.

"I’m awake... I’m awake," he choked out. His throat felt awkward somehow, but didn’t hurt.

I knew I should have ejected sooner, Hunter mentally scolded himself. Piece of shrapnel or two from my P.O.S. Ferret probably smacked me a good one upside my head... knocked my ass out cold...

"Good afternoon, Captain. I’m Doctor Pamela Darmin. The staff here... ah, thought you would like these when you woke up." She handed him a box after freeing one of his arms of the straps.

"G’day..." He ripped the plastic off his box of Crown Royal cigars with his one free hand, plucking out a fat one and popping it between his lips. "Got... a light?"

"I’d ask you not to spoke that in here, but I’m sure I can make an exception in your case." She held up an oldstyle zippo lighter, lighting Hunter’s cigar.

Hunter took a few stress-relieving puffs, then began to think... began to remember. "The Bannockburn... Paladin... they were successful?" he asked, a sudden sense of urgency creeping over him. "The Tarawa... Captain Bondarevsky... they got the footage of the Kilrathi supercarriers?" The medic gave him a strange look, as if trying to decide just what to say. "The armistice... Confed broke it off and kicked the holy hell out of the Cats, right? Tolwyn was counting on us."

"Yes, Captain St. John, your mission was a success, if that will put your mind at ease—"

"No, that will not put my mind at ease. What day is it? How long was I out there?"

"That’s just the thing, Captain St. John... you see, you were out there quite a while..."

"How long could it have possibly been? C’mon, lady."

"This will come as something of a shock, I know," the medic calmly replied. "One hundred fifty years, three hundred thirty-four days. It’s the year 2819."

Hunter remained still for several moment, considered the medic’s words. Then he laughed. "Oh, I see. Play a joke on poor old St. John... yes, yes, I was floating around out there for two centuries until you guys happened upon me. Okay, joke’s over. Who put you up to this? It was Taggart, wasn’t it? The old Mother Hen himself, no doubt..." He chuckled over his private joke from the Tiger’s Claw.

"I am telling you the truth, Captain." She sighed. "You ejected from your Ferret in December 7th of the year 2668."

"Boy, those cost cutbacks must have really hit the local SAR hard..."

"I am being serious, Captain. You were left for dead by your wingmate, one Brigadier General James Taggart, in the Paghk System of the Hari Sector because... well, to put it bluntly, you were."

"Eh?"

"Your ejection pod was destroyed upon ejection. Your spacesuit was cracked, ruptured, and cut in various places. You were exposed to vacuum and sent drifting into an asteroid belt halfway across the sector, where you spent the last century and a half, but your body was preserved. Two days ago your body was located by a deep space mining rig crew... lucky they noticed you when they did... you were about to be processed and burned. Lucky you ended up in that asteroid belt as well... otherwise you would be floating out beyond the Galactic Rim by now." She sighed. "You were taken here, planetside, where we were able to successfully rehydrate and resuscitate you. Additionally, your circulatory system had to be replaced along with your heart."

"Uh-huh. Bet I still look pretty good for being a hundred and ninety-two years old, eh?" He harrumphed. "Hey, I think I read about this somewhere... yeah, that 3001 novel. That astronaut guy, Frank Poole, wakes up in the year 3001 and these doctors give ’im this same rap. I guess you read it, too, huh? C’mon, lady, the joke’s over. Stop playing me for a wanker, I’ve got a war to win... if I’m not too late."

"Perhaps... perhaps you should see this." She sighed and kindly handed Hunter a PAD already linked into the Federation Archives.

"All right. I’ll bite." He took it and began going over the initial dates and events. The medic left him to it, telling him she’d be back in a few minutes.

He had looked it over for a half hour by the time the medic returned.

"‘The Battle of Terra’... my god, the Cats nuked Earth. They nuked it with the help of those supercarriers Paladin and I saw... ‘Hakagas,’ you call them..." Hunter solemnly looked up briefly from the 2668 files. "Damned unbelievable is what it is. But it’s just reading material, isn’t it? Ah, isn’t it...?"

It gets a little worse than that, the medic wanted to say. "Did you read past that?"

"Naw... stopped after the Project Goliath entries, then went back. Still readin’ and rereadin’ the part in 2669 where Blair and his pilots—even Maniac—drop that T-bomb on Kilrah in those cloaking ‘Excaliburs’ of theirs. Bloomin’ poetry is what it is. Bloomin’ poetry."

"The Black Lance incident?"

He keyed it up, finding it after he breezed back over the Secession War headers and entries from 2674-2679, spending a couple minutes looking over the 2672-2673 files. "Admiral Tolwyn? No way... not in a hundred million years..."

Before going on, he stopped to look up an old friend of his.

"Kirha..." Hunter winced, looking down, his thoughts going out to the Kilrathi honor-bound to him that defected along with Ralgha nar Hhallas. "The poor furry bugger committed Zu’kara after he’d heard I died... just a year before the Concordia went down on Vespus... and Hobbes went turncoat..."

Kirha hrai Hunter nar Aussie, the poor Cat had once called himself...

"You know, if this really is some kind of joke, it’s getting pretty sick."

The medic remained serious, her features sympathetic but otherwise neutral. "I assure you, Captain, this is no joke."

After briefly looking up K’Kai’s exploits as a leader on Firekka, he went ahead, looking past the long Cynium Campaign up to the 2681-2683 files on the Nephilim War. Early on he read of the apparent death of Commodore Christopher Blair. He hadn’t spent much time with Blair aside from their time on the Claw during the Vega Campaign, Operation Thor’s Hammer, and the Firekka Campaign. He really only remembered him as something of a vagabond at playing cards who was a decent wingman, though the archives seemed to illustrate and glorify the man as an unequaled war hero. Then he came to the part in 2684 where Blair came out of hiding, joined the Firekkan Commonwealth, lost his ship, disappeared for a year, came back insane, and waged a war on the Confederation he paid for with his life.

"Perhaps you should skip to the next century..."

Hunter nodded and brought up the index, moving past the civil war with the Landreich and the brief Mantu Incursion to the year 2701 and beyond. He keyed through the files on the Galactic Civil War II, the Scatterbelt Wars, then finally coming to... "The Steltek War?" Blair had apparently not died at all. According to the PAD, he’d apparently only been put into cryofreeze by the Black Projects Division in 2685, his mental state alleviated in stasis, then awakened in 2793 to fly in the first engagement of the Steltek War as a general in the Space Force. He went into hiding again, coming back later that year to participate in the second leg of the "Steltek" War, a war that cost... "Earth... Earth is gone?" Unless it was all some sick joke, Australia, his ranch outside Sydney... all of it was destroyed.

"I’m afraid so, Captain."

At least his family and those he knew from his time—probably their grandkids, too—would have already lived their full lives by 2795. He read on, shoving his shock aside. It got worse. After the Ceti Imperium showed up and turned the tide against the Steltek, nearly the entire galaxy signed the Treaty of New Constantinople, declaring a United Galactic Federation. "There’s... no more Confederation?"

"The Terran Confederation ceased to exist on June 24th, 2795, when the United Galactic Federation was born. So did the Fourth Kilrathi Imperium, Free Republic of Landreich, Republic of An—"

"Those... those are Cats! I’m surrounded by bloomin’ Cats!" Hunter exclaimed, straining against his straps as he saw a pair of Kilrathi in medical fatigues walking down the corridor through the open door.

"As I said, the Fourth Kilrathi Imperium became part of the Federation as well," she explained. "This medical facility itself is located in the Kilrah System, the planet Rawsh. They’re as much a part of the Federation as you or I are, you see."

"I never signed onto any goddamned ‘Federation,’" Hunter spat. "What, have I beamed onto Star Trek now?"

"Your rank and commission are transferred by default into the Galactic Federation Space Force active reserves, the same with all of the former Confederation Space Force personnel. Unless you wish to retire...?"

"I didn’t say that..." Hunter cocked an eyebrow. "Commodore Blair... he is still alive?"

"Senator Blair is alive and well, currently the appointed Master of the Great Assembly on New Constantinople Starbase."

"Then that’s where I’m off to, and that’s who I’m going to see."

"Captain, I’m sure the Senator is a very busy man a—"

"Somehow—call me crazy—I think he can fit me into his busy schedule," he pressed, a smile on his face as he took another puff from his cigar, flicking ashes on the floor. "Well, what can you give me? A cheap fighter, a transport, shuttle, what?"

"I’ll see you are booked passage on a standard transport going to Gemini... just as soon as we release you."

"But—"

"Just as soon as we release you," the medic repeated. "And not a minute sooner."

Hunter groaned, letting himself lean back.

Planet Vukar Tag; GF Naval Space Force Academy, Dormitory Theta-Alpha
The Vukar Tag System, K’vd Tag Quadrant, Vukar Tag Sector
1630 Hours (GFST)

"I do declare us, the eighth class of the Galactic Federation Naval Space Academy and Flight School... graduated!"

With that, Cadet Jalin "Riceburner" Bronson broke his bottle of Gold Schläger over the dorm room’s wall, the glass and cinnamon schnapps inside spraying everywhere. He then took his open can of Coors and poured it over his own head, soaking his hair.

"A toast, to the three years of living hell we walked away from!" chimed Cadet Zeke McClendon, raising his mug of frothy beer.

"School’s out!"

All the cadets in the room—the Class of 2819—rose their own mugs high, then drank deeply, most of them finishing their entire mugs in one swig. They all hooted and hollered incoherent, enthusiastic cries afterward.

"Okay, who wants to crack open the keg?"

Twenty year-old Cadet Shannon Blair suddenly coughed, dropping her mug as she choked on her mixed beer, unable to swallow it all down at once.

"Hah!" Cadet Bronson exclaimed, pointing a finger at Blair. "Hey, look, folks, we got us a lightweight! Aw, is the daughter of the big, mean ‘Heart of the Tiger’ himself feeling a tad timid? You need some help with that, sweetheart?"

Her hated rival. It wasn’t even friendly competition they had shared in their time flying together.

Shannon cleared her throat, regained her composure, and wiped her mouth. "Go fuck yourself, Bronson," she snarled, brushing a loose strand of her long black hair behind her ear.

"Oh-ho!" Bronson clapped her on the back, laughing. "That’s the spirit, girl!"

The festivities continued, the unruly gathering of cadets getting more intoxicated by the minute, many of them already lying face-down in pools of their own vomit; others, mostly couples, taking the party to private rooms. Finding her way to a reasonably comfortable sofa, Blair took a seat and pulled out her personal PAD. Keying it on, she looked back at the E-mail she had received the previous day from her mother.

TO: Cadet Shannon Blair, Galactic Federation Naval Space Academy
(sblair@gfn.academy.com)

FROM: Admiral Julianna Blair, Commander Seventeenth Fleet, Covenant System
(jkincaid@gfn.covenant.stbse.com)

SUBJ: Congratulations, honey!

You’ve come a long way, Shannon, and I’m thrilled to see you get through the Federation Academy. You did it all yourself, and now you have a very promising career in the Space Force to look forward to. I just hope it will be a career spent in a continuing era of peacetime, though unfortunately that seldom seems to be the way of things.

I know your father is as proud of you as I am... but he is so busy these days he sometimes doesn’t even have time for his own wife. I’ll always be looking out for you, and I’ll always be there.

Don’t party too hard, you hear? I was young once, too.

Fleet Admiral Julianna D. Blair, CO Seventeenth Fleet

Cadet Blair tucked her PAD away and started working on her mug of beer again, pushing aside any thought of her parents. She was gossiping with her friend, Cadet Kathleen DuMaar, when Bronson answered the door chime.

"Looks like you have a visitor, Blair..." Cadet Bronson wrinkled his pug nose, then staggered away from the door drunkenly as he opened it.

A lone man in a dark leather longcoat and shoulder-length black/brown hair stood in the doorway, a bouquet of flowers in his hand.

"Jerri!" Shannon exclaimed.

"Heya, kiddo," Jarek Ricaud spoke, smiling as he stepped in. The cadets cleared aside, unsure what to make of the stranger. "Didn’t expect to see me here, did you?"

"No, I didn’t, but it’s nice to see a friendly face. Especially yours." Shannon took the bouquet and hugged her childhood friend. "Just what the hell are you doing here, anyway? You dropped out of the Academy two years ago."

"Yeah, I know. I just figured I’d pay you my respects, y’know?" Jarek shrugged.

"Aw, you came all the way from the Tri-System just to see ’lil old me?"

"Well, hey, my father also bought me my own pleasure yacht for my twenty-third birthday... thought you might like to ditch these losers and go on a little tour of the Galactic Rim."

"Is Daddy Vell still spoiling his only child?" Shannon smiled, giggling. Unexpectedly she pounced on him, kissing his cheeks feverishly. "Oh, Jarek..."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa... nice to see you, too." Jarek backed off, gently pushing her away with a smile. "You’re, ah, kinda drunk, aren’t you?"

"Me?" Shannon looked wounded, shooting him an innocent look, then looking back at her now-empty mug. She dropped it. "Nooo..." Then, for no particular reason at all, she burst into hysterics, laughing uncontrollably.

"Ho-kay..."

Shannon bit her lip, eying Jarek curiously. "But... um, sure, Jerri, I’d love to go on a tour."

Jarek took her hand and was already turning around. "I thought so. C’mon, let’s hit the road then, kiddo."

New Constantinople Starbase; Hall of the Great Assembly
The New Constantinople System, Potter Quadrant, Gemini Sector
1910 Hours (GFST)

In the Hall of the Senate’s Great Assembly on New Constantinople, one by one the senators heard the commentary from the disgruntled speakers that would come forth to speak their piece.

The first was, as expected, a Kilrathi space marshal of the Kilrah Sector, who professed his disapproval in setting up the countermeasures that would be completed by next year to prevent unapproved extra-galactic S-Fold travel by those in the galaxy.

Then there was a space marshal of the Andorra Sector. He brought up the Secession War of two centuries ago, stating that it was people’s right to leave the galaxy if they so choose, and not need a Federation stamp of approval to do so.

Then came the Firekkan ambassador from the Epsilon Sector, who delivered essentially the same message as the first two, though he added the until-then unspoken feeling hanging in the air—the Galactic Federation was not working. Yet all spoke of their faith in the Galactic Federation, originally great at its conception, though now was fading fast. Federation taxes and military power regulations were mentioned as nuisances to at least the Kilrathi and Border Worlders, nuisances not present when they were not under the Galactic Federation banner. The senators—among them seventy four-year old Senator Christopher Blair, Assembly Master—spoke in defense of the Galactic Federation, but knew from the beginning there was no way to change the speakers’ minds.

Senator Blair wearily rested his gavel as the speakers and audience filed out. Security kept the press from swooping down on him and his fellow senators, but they still tried.

Rubbing his eyes, he let out a deep sigh, and started out of the Hall, walking behind the curtains to the main corridor.

To think, Blair thought to himself as he walked, I once questioned Paladin for selling himself out to the bureaucrats...

He knew the truth, however—he was an aging pilot at heart who knew he had lost his edge. Rather than try to cheat time, something he had done throughout his entire life, he decided to fall back into a role where he could be of the most use to the newborn Galactic Federation. He was already a living legend—he had nothing more to prove in the cockpit, not that he ever did.

"Shannon..." he whispered, stopping as he got to the door of his private quarters.

His daughter had graduated just yesterday from the Academy, and he hadn’t even written her. With a civil war threatening to erupt at any given moment—a fact the Senate was doing their damnedest to conceal from the public’s prying eyes—he had slim to no time to himself anymore, something he deeply regretted.

"I’ll make it up to you, Shannon," he promised her aloud, opening the door. "Somehow..."

RIS Lancelot; Cockpit
The Spinward Galactic Rim
The Newburry System, Kruger Quadrant, Leo Minor Sector
2330 Hours (GFST)

The sleek Ricaud Industries pleasure yacht Lancelot cut through nebulaeewn deep space on cruise control at a sustained, non-afterburner velocity of 4,500 KPS. The last auto-jump point on their jump route across the M’shrak, Kilrah, and Vukar Tag sectors had taken them here, to the very edge of the Milky Way. The pinpricks of stars were thin here, the only ones visible being the stars behind and the stars of the distant galaxies millions of light years beyond. Aside from whatever pirate or privateering activity may or may not have been operating out of the system, Lancelot was alone, too, the nearest outpost being an unmanned sensorary starpost 900,000 klicks out.

Jarek Ricaud pushed his control chair away from the navcomputer in the cockpit, peering over attentively at his passenger. "So what’s it like, Shannon... you know... being the daughter of the penultimate war hero himself?"

"What?" Shannon snapped to focus, putting down her cup of Arakh tea—a Kilrathi home recipe for sobering up, which is what she had spent the last few hours of the trip trying to do. It was bitter stuff, but it beat the injection of the stuff unaffectionately named by disgruntled flyers who would report for duty drunk and were busted by the MPs the "Green Goop."

"What’s it like being Blair’s kid? You get teased a lot?"

"Teased? Oh, constantly. Sucks."

"You got some kinda callsign? A ‘cockpit alias,’ as it were? All you Space Forcers gotta have one, right?"

"Yeah." Shannon gave him a resolute look of mixed feelings. "Maverick."

Jarek gave a laugh. "Hey, that’s your old man’s..."

"I don’t think he’s using it anymore. Besides, he wanted me to use it."

He studied her for a few moments with a measured gaze, watching her as she stared out the viewports, her eyes lose in the vibrant hues of the nebulae the Lancelot was presently passing through. "You’re a lot like your dad, aren’t you?"

Shannon gave a look. "That’s what my mom thinks... maybe she’s right." She grunted. "I got her looks and my dad’s persona. Great mix."

"And just how is your mom?"

"She’s fine... sent me an E-mail yesterday. Still pissed at my dad."

"Wish I still had a mom..." Jarek looked away for a moment. "There are times, Shannon... times when I can’t even remember her face."

Shannon put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "It’s okay, Jerri." Jarek’s mother, Melissa Kathryn Banks, died when he was a toddler from the incurable SOD disease, a terminal ailment passed down through her family. He never talked about it much, not even when they were teenagers or younger still, and it was odd for him to bring it up at all.

"So where are you going now?" he asked, wanting to change the subject. "Now that you’re graduated and all that crap. Some hot assignment, I should expect."

"I’m being posted to one of the GFS Maelstrom’s flight wings in the Enigma Sector," she answered half-heartedly. "Fifth Fleet of the Armada. It’s an Acheron-class omnicarrier... another reason I was teased so much by the other cadets."

"I’ll bet it was... that’s a hell of a ship. I’ve read the specs—18,750 meters, synthetic Cynium power core... six flight wings and 675 fighters in its complement, right? Puts the omnicarriers of the yesteryear to shame, even if there’s only five omnis altogether."

"Well, it’s more because the cadets figure my dad pulled strings with his influence to get me posted there... but it’s not. I got the posting because I graduated top in my class, both in the Academy and Flight School. It came so easy to me..."

"The ‘Heart of the Tiger’ must be beatin’ away in you, kiddo," he joked. "Or maybe it’s that so-called Pilgrim blood the old man passed onto you."

"Maybe," she conceded. "But I’m my own person. I don’t need or want any crutches... you know what I mean?"

"Yeah... I know."

Shannon finished her cup of Arakh tea and put it down. "What about you, Jerri? Last I checked you dropped out of the Academy—what are you going to do now?"

"My dad’ll always have work for me... Ricaud Industries is quite the corporate empire, much more powerful that it had been when my grandfather ran the original corporation. Someday I’ll inherit it all, whether I like it or not."

"You don’t have to follow in your dad’s footsteps, you know," Shannon reminded him. "Do what you want to do because you want to do it... not because Daddy Vell Ricaud II says it’s what’s best for you."

"Maybe... bu—" Jarek broke off, his attention suddenly brought back to his navcomputer as a klaxon suddenly sounded on and off. "Whoa... we got something on scanners... looks like—"

The Lancelot shuddered violently, the cup Shannon had put on a rail shaking off and breaking on the floor. Just as soon as it had hit them, the tremors ceased.

Shannon leapt up from her seat and went to Jarek’s side. "What the hell was that?"

Jarek busily tried to find the answer. "I don’t know... some kind of stellar shockwave... maybe it’s our proximity to the Galactic Barrier out here on the rim... electromagnetic storms, maybe..."

"You sure?"

"No... that was a proximity alarm we just heard. Could be something is..." Jarek shook his head, then shrugged helplessly. "No, I don’t know. But I want to be sure." His fingers danced over the instrument panels and consoles. "I’m doing a system-wide sensor sweep... if something just passed us, we’re going to see it on our MFDs. Don’t worry—it’s probably nothing."

Shannon settled uneasily back in her seat, jarred by the sudden experience. "I have a bad feeling about this, Jerri."

Jarek looked back at her, exchanging a mutually understood look of worry.