If nothing else, the Staff Meeting made the last two hours on the station very busy ones. Cold starting a ship that had been sitting as long as theirs had was a long and complex process. One that, thankfully, nobody got the privilege of going through very often in their lives.

But while that kept Paladin and Willa busy on the bridge, and at times forced Teagan to multi task for all she was worth while she continued her search for bugs, the others were busy trying to fill out their weapons and equipment and medications lists with everything they could find on the station. In the end they had enough to do what they had to do, but not everything they would have liked. And some of the stuff was -- well, less than impressive.

The combat environmental suits were run of the mill at best; the vac suits however, were state of the art. (What else would you expect on a space station that mined asteroids?) The speeder didn't run, but after looking at it, Teagan seemed to think the owner's ignorance was probably more to blame than the vehicle itself. The gcarrier stank like sweaty miners and was the civilian model, not the armed and armored military version. The air raft was well used but seemed to be in good shape. They only managed to find a half dozen TIES pads, and they were old and worn, but they did pass their self tests. And Morgan just got laughed at when he asked if they had a VRF gun. That kind of heavy military hardware would have to be found elsewhere. There was no point in even bothering with asking for state of the art Legionnaire equipment like ILES sleeves or ABDs.

The need for non-violent means of interrogation sent Leeda and Qamala off to the pharmacy and chemistry lab where she was able to scrape up at least a basic list of drugs for the purpose. Advance designer synthetics she'd have to purchase elsewhere. Obviously mining stations had little need to do sophisticated interrogations.

While they were stowing their gear in the increasingly crowded cargo bay their personal gear arrived on a freight pallet. Lacking time to do anything else, it got piled into one of the rooms to be stowed later. There just wasn't time to sort through it all now.

For one thing, Teagan and Jacob's check through the ship found not a bug, but a tracer. It looked as though it had been there for about as long as the ship had been mothballed, but everybody knew that could have been a trick. So with Teagan's help Jacob turned the tracer into a tracer itself. Any ship looking for the unit, if and when it went active, would immediately have its signal sent through the RDF processor. They'd at least have as much information about who was hunting them as the hunter itself did. Sauce with the goose.

It was nearly midnight by the time everything was stowed, loaded, checked out, and all the boards on the ship showed green. They'd been up for over fifteen hours, and had been working on the ship or in combat for most of it. The fuel browsers pulled away and headed back to the barn, the hanger bay doors were opened up, and the exit lights were flashing. Paladin closed the cargo ramp and brought the main engines online for real, then engaged the grav plates. The low thunder of the engines and growl of the grav plates pulsed through the ship like lungs taking their first long breath. Then she shuddered as for the first time in a decade she came free of her landing gear. Paladin flipped the switch to raise the gear, then carefully backed her out of her bay. The sound of the gear coming up was clearly audible, even over the engines and the gravitic generator, an audible testimony to just how small their little ship really was.

As she hit the tarmac and rotated toward the launch bay doors the heads-up display automatically switched to launch/land mode and the landing lights and `target box' were clearly visible. The center line flashed its line down the center out of the station. "You are cleared for launch," came a computer automated voice over the comm system. "You are cleared for launch." Paladin caressed the throttle and they coasted down the taxiway and, in just a few seconds they were out in space, the station looming large above them.

Paladin had opted for the co-chair for this flight because of his arm, and his sensor array immediately came alive with all the drivel of a populated area of space. Some fifteen hundred EMS signals were out there, and not one matched a military frequency. Ninety nine percent, in fact, were various types of public and commercial traffic: Radio and video stations, standard short range comms between minors and ships or supervisor stations. That sort of thing. The granar was a useless mess -- it always was in an asteroid field. That's what made them so valuable tactically.

Visually, as it was nearly midnight, other traffic around the station was blessedly light, considering neither Paladin nor Willa knew how this ship was going to handle. Six gcarriers were headed from the planetoid the station was orbiting back to the station. Other than that, and the six thousand rocks nearby, they appeared to be alone.

"Okay, we're in the middle of a rock garden," Paladin observed drly. He flipped the radar from standby to active at a hundred thousand kilometers range. While he was at it he adjusted the passive EMS sensors so they'd know if anybody pinged them, and set the targeting system to defense. "Now, anybody else playing in our sand box?" He murmured as he began a visual scan of their surroundings with the passive IR.

"Huzzah," Lawrence cheered sedately with a raise of his glass from where he stood by the entrance to the bridge. He'd reduced himself to shirt sleeves for the preparations, not wanting to give the harridan another chance to ruin his jacket. The cobalt blue sleeves were themselves rolled up, and he'd put on a more causal set of black slacks.

"Well done. Now, if you will excuse me, I will be tending to the organization of my living space. Good piloting, scanning, n'stuff." With that, he turned and retreated to the second door on the left, the room adjacent to the lounge.

Once there and alone, Lawrence looked about the small space and all traces of lightness and humor evaporated from his face. He sighed and walked to the bunk, where his single large travel bag sat. He unzipped it and pulled out a rolled-up white towel. It was plush and his fingers sank into it as he unrolled it, revealing a bottle of vodka wrapped inside. He placed both towel and bottle on the bed next to the bag and repeated the process with another roll, and then another, and then another.

Just the essentials he'd told himself the night he ran from his father's mansion to escape from a pair of broken legs. Lawrence sat down in the small chair and assessed his things: four bottles of very good vodka, four high-end large towels, seven pairs of silk boxers, two changes of clothes, his tuxedo, a half carton of good smokes, the gauss gun he'd filched from Murmamajama's (the slave-cops were so predictably boring), and a small bag of computer chips that allegedly held enough cigarettes and booze for him to open a small social concern.

Adding to that list were his personal effects, his PDA, wallet, and so on. But beyond that, he was on his own.

Willa couldn’t believe the amount of power this ship had. The slightest touch and it jumped forward like a racer off the line. It would take a carful touch. She gently pushed the stick forward, watching the ephemeris. Heading perpendicular to the orbital plane of the asteroid belt, she carefully slid around any rocks and debris in their path. From habit she occasionally looked for any objects heading their way. “Paladin, can you send an encoded message to Senator Anastius telling him we are on our way to the Laqueus system? Let’s try and keep anyone listening for us on their toes.”

"Laquesus?" He blinked. "That's up near the border with the Ackálian Empire." He flipped the transmitter over and punched the button. "Regillus Station this is ISS Audacity. Inform the boss we're away and on route to Laquesus."

"ISS Audacity, Regillus Station," came a female voice back over the speakers. "Understood. Good hunting Audacity. Provide a meson targeting track when you're on location. Regillus Station out."

As the ship took off, Jacob sat in his chair. He wished there was a way to see outside the ship. The thought of watching space fly by was fascinating for him. Maybe he could talk Paladin into some bridge time later. Maybe even piloting lessons. Assuming the bad guys didn't blow them into atoms first.

It took only fifteen minutes to clear the asteroid field -- but even at 3-gees there were tense moments, in part because it was a new ship, and in part because this particular asteroid field was extremely dense -- or they'd picked a very dense place to pass through the field.

As Willa brought the ship around and pointed to where the navcom said Laquesus was supposed to be, Paladin discovered they had company. The radar had found a target that wasn't moving like a rock.

Teagan sat in her chair on the bridge a thin strand extending from behind her ear, and ending in the jack port on the control panel. Her eyes had a glassy look as she monitored the ships systems, looking for any hiccups on their first take off.

"Well, well, well, not so sneaky after all. Bearing 90 degrees at 1 o'clock," he told her, already moving to point a set of cameras at the target. "You want it on the canopy so we can all snoop?"

“Let’s bring it up quick and get some info on it, I want to get out of here as soon as possible. Do you have a course and heading on it yet?” Willa looked up at the 3D image above her and spotted the contact Paladin was talking about. Then back down at the controls pushing the throttle forward to gain some speed in the direction she had already set.

Morgan felt the force of the launch, and tensed his body against it. Once he felt the world below stop pulling on him, he relaxed. He was in space and he felt at home. He walked out of this room and ventured to the bridge. He listened to Willa's misdirection and smiled, Good thinking.

"Captain." Morgan said to Paladin, "Where do you want me? I can assist Jacob or Teagan; I could run Ops for one of you if you wanted to rest for second watch -- or I could rest for second watch." He'd only served one captain -- and she had worked him on almost every position on the ship. He had no idea what Paladin would be like.

"Hello," Paladin murmured switching the view screen to the camera's he'd just focused on their target. It was a corsair. "Any bets that that's Ekhart's ship -- or one of them, anyway?"

"Morgan, grab Jacob and load the sand caster. Put a rack of chaff packs in one missile launcher and a weasels in the other. And hope like hell these guys continue to think slow!"

“I’d bet my life on it, but I’d really rather not. I think it’s time to ditch this popsicle joint. Pull up the nav area for the next two star systems towards Laqueus, and then next 3 systems downhill from there, please.” Willa jumped to warp 4 in the direction they were headed.

"Hmm..." Paladin set the navcom to chewing on the question. "Well, first in line would be Ælyr at 2 parsecs -- 149 and a half days away at present velocity. That's an inhabited system -- by scum bags, it sounds like. That could be useful. Next is Cylysis, another 2 parsecs. And then Montseye, 1.3 parsecs beyond that. All in all that's only 1 parsec south from Sellex. Not much down the hill, but some, and it's a 270 degree spiral. That should help."

Nodding thoughtfully Willa’s eyes searched the ephemeris to see if they were being followed.

Morgan didn't need to be told twice. "Jacob, meet me in the cargo bay -- for weapons load." He said as he scurried through the ships bulkheads and opened iris' like he had done so all his life. When he arrived in the cargo area, he quickly began to prep the area waiting for his crew mate to arrive.

At Willa's caress of the stick Audacious's head came around, pointing her toward Ælyr. As she engaged the warp field generators, the familiar high pitch whine of the power plant's wound up to a scream. A blue halo appeared at the edges of the canopy from the brilliance of the generators, then the whole ship felt like it bucked, rippling forward in sections. The stars were suddenly racing toward them in streaks. Then space itself collapsed right on top of the ship, as though the whole thing had become a piece of paper that they just flew right through. Then long streaking lines of light that seemed to begin from behind them, where they couldn't see, crawled away from the ship, forming a tunnel of light streaks in front of them.

The ear splitting scream of the power plants was unbearably loud back in sick bay, then it quieted down softening into a high pitched whine that pulsed with every tiny rippled or pock mark in the natural gravity field of space as the ship settled out at warp 4. At engineering Jack suddenly found she had her hands full. They were in warp, but just barely. If there was such a thing as being screamed at by a computer, she was experiencing the closest thing too. Over-ride systems had kicked in automatically when warp generation started, forcing control systems into a pirouette of antics to instantly come up with a set of parameters that wouldn't send one half of the ship off at warp 20 while the other was stuck at the requested warp 4. At the moment everything was contained -- but the program was on the verge of panic tying to keep things under control.

Teagan winced as she felt the ship protesting, it's screams grated on her as she worked patiently to satiate the gigantic beast. While the pilots went about their business, the crew chief could be heard humming lightly, although she was completely unaware of the sounds that were escaping her lips. Her concentration was completely focused on Audacity as it bucked rebelliously for control. She continued to slide her way through the various ships systems, tweaking things here and there until they finally came under her control.

Meanwhile, as yet unaware that one of them had nearly beaten the other to Ælyr, Paladin and Willa were looking at the granar display, which Paladin had already put up on canopy. At first things looked normal. Then a bright dot appeared. The classic first mark of a ship entering warp. The dot blipped once then started forming a line. It was moving fast. Very fast. It took less than twenty seconds for even the computer to come up with the plot. Paladin had thumb nailed it five seconds before the computer gave the answer.

"Warp 8, and I'll bet it's going to Ælyr," he reasoned.

Close. The computer agreed with the course, but determined the velocity to be warp 8.7. It was ahead of them and slightly above, at about 2 o'clock, and pulling away.

As soon as they had the information on the other ship Willa dropped the Audacious out of warp, and turned her downhill. “Let’s zoom in, see what’s in front of us here.” she said to Paladin, then quickly set the velocity to warp 9, and punched the button, hoping the ship would still hold together at over double the speed while her finger rested on the button ready to drop out at the first sign of the slightest bit of trouble.

As the Audacity pulled out of Warp, Teagan was pleased to see that it did so without any additional malfunctions. She was about ready to explain to Paladin and Willa that they were experiencing some callibration issues from the ship settling, but as she was gathering the data to do so, the co-Pilot pushed the ship into warp 9. "MMMmmmmmmm" The ship began buckling again, but this time it's roar was maddening, the crew chief's humm of concentration varied in intensity as she continued to try to fight the Audacity's temper back into check.

Qamala paused in her work with Leeda to extract a modest living space for both of them in the MedBay, shuddering in what might well have been fear as the ship twisted and writhed like a living thing during the jump into warp. The Audacious felt flimsy, somehow, compared to the private yacht which had brought her to the star station. It creaked, and groaned. It was deafeningly loud at times, and merely too loud the rest of the time. She placed one slim hand upon a bulkhead, willing some of her own strength into the fabric of the ship's metal. that it might bring them safely to their destination. Vacuum was notoriously unforgiving of weakness.

Another arrow fired, Paulos, and I'm chasing after it as daftly as any I ever fired on Eden's safer shores. I've been gone less than six months, but already it feels like years. I haven't been held or cuddled in so long I've nearly forgotten what it feels like except that I yearn for it so intensely... I'm on a ship with an assortment of humans and I don't know if they're representative of the race or not, but they all seem so fragile... I just want to hold them and protect them and tell them it's going to be all right, not that they'd believe me... and not that I can protect them, really. No more than they can protect me.

The response was fleeting, tenuous, and yet to Qamala somehow very real: It is as it must be; you've done well. And then that anchor that was Paulos was once again gone.

With a soft sigh, she flicked a smile in answer to Leeda's querying mental touch, then resumed finding ways to make her new "belongings" inobtrusive in her friend's office. This universe can be such a lonely place...

On the bridge, Paladin chuckled as their shadow reappeared. "Gee, you don't think he's interested in following us, do you?"

With sarcasm dripping from her voice Willa replied, “No, he must be trying to stop us for directions.”

Over at the engineering station things were in a near panic again. Jack hadn't even had time to get things under control at warp 4, and now they were at warp 9. Alarms were going off on every system that had anything to do with power generation and the warp naceles. Back-up programs and fail safes were kicking in everywhere. Under the circumstances, the only saving grace to the whole catastrophe was that, whoever had written the safety software seemed to consider keeping the ship in warp as a priority only slightly lower than that of saving the ship itself. In other words, only if the ship would be destroyed by staying in warp would the system automatically drop the field. And even then, Teagan could over-ride it, of course.

As things stood now, automatic warp drop was immanent unless Jack did something, and did it quickly.

Meanwhile, in `the front office chairs', it took a full five minutes for Paladin to come up with a course and velocity for their target. Mostly because, on their current course, the target was nearly in their baffles.

"Looks like warp 8.7 is the best they can do," Paladin reported. "They tipped their hand right out of the gate. In 24 hours they're going to have a hard time tracking us; in 48 we're history unless they find a way to coax more out of that old boat."

“Good,” Willa nodded, “we are going to have to be extremely vigilant for the next couple of days. Have you flown through uncharted space before?”

"Once or twice," the pilot admitted modestly. "More often in space officially uncharted than really uncharted. Really uncharted space can ruin an airman's appetite, let me tell you," he grinned at Willa. "Should we tell them?" He nodded back toward the living quarters. "Nobody should die a sudden death without knowing why."

Willa chuckled, “Morgan will need to know, but no sense getting the rest of the crew worked up over it. We’re in space, we could die at any moment for any number of reasons. Let’s reassess our speed in 30 hours. I think we can push it up to warp 9.5 or even 10, I don’t want to tip our hand, but I’d like to get back on track.”

Despite the odd stares that Teagan was getting from the others on the bridge, she continued to be lost in her mind for control of the ship. In the end, the Audacity relented to her, as she stroked and tweaked the systems that had settled during it's too long slumber. As Willa looked at her control panel she could see that the ship had somehow increased it's speed even further, to Warp 9.1. The crew chief's odd humming had fallen into a content pur about the same time the ship pushed beyond the co-Pilot's request for speed. A slight smile lingered on the brunet's lips as she accused the ship of being a, "show off", in a light tone.

"We seem to be experiencing some calibration issues related to how long the Audacity has been dormant. ...it would be a good idea to ease her into things whenever possible. She's rather temperamental at the moment." Teagan's tone was flat as she turned in her chair to address Paladin and Willa.

Paladin looked at the velocity scale, then to Teagan, then to Willa. "You speed us up?" He asked Willa. "Or did you do something?" He looked at Jack. "She's quieter now. Must have been you."

Teagan tilted her head a bit to the side as she processed his question. "She was protesting, but for now she's going to be ok. It's just going to take us a while to get to know each other." Her brown eyes were as serious as her tone as she explained to Paladin what the problem was. It seemed as if she gave the ship more personality traits than she herself posessed.

Decreasing the speed back to 9 Willa said, “Great job Teagan, we’ll try not jump so quickly from now on, or at least till you tell us we can.”

Morgan activated his communicator, "Loaded as requested, Captain." "We was slower than we should have been -- but that's something we can run practice rounds on once we all get up to speed." Morgan's sense of discipline was weird, but weapon and crew readiness was one of the things he felt was important. Especially with a small crew -- and especially when they were likely to be out gunned as well.

He looked over to Jacob, "We need to figure out how to shave about 20 seconds off of that time. I've got an extra set of mag-boots that you can run in -- if you like." Truthfully, he didn't like any member of his crew being out of shape and Jacob was like a walking mound of blubber. Still, it was better to start off nice and then move to mean -- once you get mean, it's very hard to bring that back to nice. He would give Jacob a chance to figure all this out for himself.

Jacob looked puzzled. "Are mag boots going to make me run faster?" He was a little out of breath from the running back and forth and felt stupid. He hadn't had any idea how to load the tubes and had made plenty of dumb mistakes. "I'm sorry I was so slow, I've never done anything like that before. Assuming it becomes one of my jobs, I should get faster once I know what to do." He rubbed his thumb, surreptitiously where he had smashed it with one of the sand caster loads. He was leaving a lot of skin around today.

Morgan smiled and clapped Jacob on the arm, "It'll be alright. You wear those boots to make it harder to run -- and when you take them off -- you run fast..."

"Good job Morgan," Paladin's voice cut in on their conversation. "We got lucky this time. Willa's bait and switch worked, and thanks to Teagan we're turning warp 9 plus and riding smoothly. But let's get up to speed on load outs as soon as we can. We won't be wanting to bet on luck favoring us next time." Then he thought about their situation. "Oh, and Morgan, no need to alarm the 'lubbers, but for the next 48 hours at least we'll be warping through uncharted space. Keep your rabbit's foot warm."

Morgan nodded, and looked over to Jacob but his face wasn't registering surprise. "Understood and we'll be better next time, sir." He said, as if replying to a rebuke. He turned his comm to "inactive" and then looked back to Jacob; all traces of trouble were gone from his face. "Yeah - we'll get faster." He said smiling to Jacob.

"We have two days of time to get crap straight. What can I help you do?" He asked nicely.

Jacob shrugged. He wasn't sure what to make of Morgan, but the guy seemed nice enough. "I've got to get to work making up a test bed to sort out the details on the security system. Pretty much a one man job. Once I know how things are set up, we can decide if we want to turn the system on and use it, or scrap it and work up one of our own." Jacob smiled slightly at the thought of the work ahead. This was the sort of thing he lived for. Still, apparently there were other duties he now had on the ship. He should probably see to that first.

"Do you want to run through the loading process again? Just to get me more practice. Can we afford to unload them and reload them now that we're safe?" It wasn't that he wanted to do more work, although the loading and unloading wasn't that hard, but he wanted to be good at whatever he needed to do. Someday his life might depend on it.

Morgan nodded, "We can at least get this part of it down." He said. "But, I don't want to keep you from your security duties. So much to do -- so little time." He said. "If you can spare 10 minutes, we'll see how many times we can get these things loaded." He began to pull the rounds back out of the launchers. He was impressed with Jacob's willingness to learn and improve himself.

"Sounds good to me. The security stuff isn't too big a deal. The ship is safe enough to fly right now." While he spoke, Jacob lended his considerable strength to unloading the launchers again.

Willa looked over at Paladin and said, “I think we should head to the navel station near the Twins before we head in there. Get a few more supplies and a bit more fuel. I may be able to get us some better gear, and maybe even some info on what has been happening in the area. Whatcha think?”

"That makes sense," he agreed. "It'll also give Jack here a bit more time to work the kinks out of things before things get dicey."