‘Alright Evelyn, we’re docking in one of their bays, I don’t want them to even know you’re here. Liam and I are going to leave and collect payment. You, Cicero, and Juno will stay here on Star Fury.’ Gabriel comms. The scanners in the landing bay shouldn’t be able to penetrate Star Fury’s hull integrity, so the only way Frontier should know I’m here will be if they’re in direct contact with Sequel.

‘Understood.’

We touch down in the landing bay and I can hear Gabriel and Liam getting ready to go out in the hall, full Atmos suits. At least Gabriel is thinking ahead, he knows that there’s a good chance this could go very wrong.

I connect to Star Fury’s external transmitter and reach out to the Frontier megalith, I need to find any communications between Sequel and Frontier, that will quickly tell me how this meeting is going to go. I see that they have indeed made contact. Sequel reached out to all the operating corps in this galaxy asking about any operations on Huyto. They offered a corporate favor to those having what they wanted to entice a response. When Frontier responded that they had covert operatives stopped on Huyto, Sequel informed them of the planet-side slip and that they had a high priority target. They went on to say that if said operatives made it off planet, there is a high likelihood they are in possession of the target.

Frontier is well aware of my presence. I tap the cameras in the negotiation room where Gabriel and Liam are, and things could not be going worse. There is a barrier shield separating the room and it looks like the Frontier welcome party plans on leaving them there in the room. I reach out to the shield control but before I can turn off the barrier, I pick up audio from Gabriel telling Liam to go to the ship when they get out of the room. I’m curious as to what Gabriel has up his sleeve. He disconnects his sword hilt from his suit and ignites the blade. It is a blade unlike any I have ever seen. I zoom in on the blade, its mercury sheen reminds me of gifts I once had, gifts that were taken from me. Gabriel’s sword is a relic, interesting, I hadn’t even noticed it before. I watch Gabriel and Liam make their way down the hall, moving from camera to camera.

I get up from the chair in my room and I walk out into the hall to see Liam running up into the airlock. Gabriel is still outside waiting for something. “Juno! Start the engines and seal the airlock. Leave the ramp open, we’re about to get out of here!” Liam says.

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“Spinning up, and we’re ready to go in just a moment,” says Juno flipping switches on the array in front of her. Cicero looks up from whatever he was doing on the ship’s computer and sees me standing in the hall.

“We’re making an emergency exit!” He yells.

I’m watching the live footage from the landing bay. Gabriel takes his relic and starts a circular motion, and then nothing, the feeds go dead, and the Frontier internal network is going haywire. Gravity is gone, I am weightless standing in the hall, so I grab onto the closest rail and try to keep still. I look to my right, out the front observation window, the ship is floating inside the landing bay, micro-thrusters making slight adjustments to keep us from hitting the walls and ceiling. More astounding than the sudden lack of artificial gravity, is that the Frontier ship seems to be drifting apart. This relic of Gabriel’s is quite an instrument, I need to be careful of that.

Gabriel comes into view from where I’m standing in the hall, he walks up the ramp and into the airlock, the mag strips on his boots making a loud click with each step. When the airlock is pressurized, Star Fury’s own artificial gravity kicks on and he exits the airlock and walks up to Juno’s navigation chair. “Juno, as soon as you see an exit, take it. We need to move ASAP, set speed to max C linear.”

“Alright, will do. Do we have a destination in mind?” Juno says.

“No, not yet, just get out of reach and then we will figure out a game plan,” Gabriel says, looking calm and collected considering the situation.

The gap between the left and right sides of the ship is widening by the second, and then, Juno confirms course, and we launch forward, soon we’ll be moving millions of kilometers a second. We inside Star Fury, feel none of the effects of inertia and acceleration, one of man’s greatest feats before the creation of slip space tech.

We’ve only been moving for a few minutes when Gabriel says “Juno, slip to purgatory, don’t stop linear speed.”

With the creation of slip space tech, we suddenly could move anywhere without consequence. Purgatory is just a term meaning somewhere unfathomably far away from anywhere, somewhere indistinguishable from being nowhere at all. Consequently, it is very difficult to find anything in an endless ocean of nothing.

When we slip, the stars disappear. All evidence of anything outside this very ship disappears, no light or anything else has ever traveled as far out as we are now. Cicero stands up from his seat in the corner and voices what everyone else must be thinking. “I believe this means our professional careers are over.”