Admiral Pierce, wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, calmly walked into Republic Fleet HQ.

"Good evening, Admiral," a heavily decorated woman with silver-tinged black hair said as she rose from her desk. "What brings you in at this hour?"

"Funny, chief," the admiral replied with a chuckle. "So what the fuck happened?"

"We got hit."

"That much I know," the admiral laughed. "Any good info yet?"

"Only what you were emailed," she said. "Three hours ago, the Tartarus Correctional Facility was attacked, and two prisoners were successfully extracted. Some people in power armor and who knew how to use it just walked in, cut their way to the cell, and then just walked out."

"And what isn't in the email?" the admiral asked. "What's the word from the chief's mess?"

The chief sighed.

"Well," she said after a few seconds, "It was Colonel Wintersmith. That much is obvious."

"Colonel Wintersmith?" the admiral asked, raising an eyebrow.

The chief met his gaze without a flinch.

"Yes, sir," she replied. "Colonel Wintersmith."

The admiral smiled and nodded.

"I agree with you, by the way," the admiral said after a few moments. "It's good to know where you stand, Chief Larkspur."

The chief just smiled politely in reply, but her eyes were burning.

"How many people share your opinion of that 'traitor'?"

"Enough, sir," she replied, "should it come to that."

"Let's hope it doesn't," he said quietly. "What else do we know?"

"They are still 'analyzing the data', but Petty Officer Hadid was standing watch when it happened, and he's about as good a sensor operator as has ever drawn a breath. He managed to get one of our 'headlights' launched and facing the right side of Tartarus before they jumped."

"Outstanding!"

"The strike team consisted of only four individuals," the chief said with just a little pride in her voice. "Two individuals in light armor and the two Marine Raiders. The two people in light combat armor left first. The funny thing is that one of them was tiny, and the other was huge."

"Funny."

"Both were very skilled at zero-g and just kicked off the side of Tartarus without using thrusters and then 'disappeared' as they entered a very well cloaked ship. The marines, carrying two rescue pouches, left shortly later. The pouches also 'disappeared', but the marines didn't. They tethered themselves to the sides of the craft shortly before the ship jumped… Sir, It was a Reaper."

"What?!?"

"They are saying that it's impossible, but if Hadid says it was a Reaper, then it was a Reaper. According to him, the distance between the two marines and the estimated mass of the ship is damn near a perfect match. He also says that he couldn't hit it with a tight beam. There is only one ship that he has ever failed to hit before. It was a Reaper during a war game. In fact," she said with a wry smile. "It was the one that 'destroyed' this facility. Remember that?"

"Painfully," the admiral laughed. "One suicide jockey completely made fools of all of u-"

The admiral's face froze as the chief looked at him meaningfully.

"Oh shit..." he said as a terrible realization started to take hold. "She was one of the ones who went rogue after the war, wasn't she?"

"Yes, sir," the chief replied.

***

Shelia stood in the cargo bay of the Paper Tiger, sipping a beer as the airlock opened.

Eno barged through the opening dragging a floating and motionless vacuum rescue pouch, and tore past her at a sprint.

That would be Ms. Mongrave, Sheila thought with another sip. Eno had reported that she had sustained "significant barotrauma" due to explosive decompression.

He also said that she would live, which was a good thing. She would debrief him later.

Jessie scooched backwards through the airlock next, dragging a floating quantum supercomputer behind her.

"Hey!" Bunny exclaimed as she collided with the hatch, "Watch it!"

"I hardly bumped you! Quit bitching." Jessie replied and then turned to Shelia. "We managed to grab a lot of files! Oh, and we shut off the nuke."

"Good to hear," Sheila smiled.

As the airlock on the opposite side started to cycle to let in the marines, a very sullen frog-girl in a rumpled pink gown stomped in, arms crossed.

"Nice to see you again," Sheila chuckled.

"There is absolutely no pooping way they are going to think I wasn't behind this," Sheloran grumbled. "Why couldn't you just leave me alone?"

"Because," Sheila said as she handed her a beer, "we know something that you don't."

***

"...so, basically, you are fucked!" Jessie chirped happily a short while later as everyone, except for Eno, was assembled in the galley.

"But Pam said..." Sheloran squeaked helplessly.

"You mean this Pam?" Jessie replied as she handed Sheloran a tablet.

"Yes, that's her," Sheloran replied.

"That would be Pamela Greer," Jessie smirked. "You might not recognize the name, but everyone else here does, that's for damn sure."

There was a chorus of angry mutters as everyone nodded.

"She's a real piece of work," Sheila said as she popped open another beer. "She used to be a licensed therapist specializing in 'at risk' teens and young adults. Well, somewhere along the line, she decided it would be fun to take up being a cult leader as a hobby. Everything they said you did, she did, and worse. She didn't just kill people. She ruined them, irreparably destroyed them. Eventually, she decided to monetize her 'fun' and started offering the ultimate in disposable assassins, completely broken sex-slaves, you name it. You could even give her the person you wanted 'adjusted', and she could completely reprogram them into whatever you wanted them to be, some real fucked up Flowers in the Attic level shit. She eventually got caught but not after over a hundred people were destroyed for life. In prison, she played the same games, and after a few people wound up dead, she was supposed to be welded in, sent to Nirvana, but thanks to our friends at Cerberus, she was sent to Tartarus instead where she joined their program and plays her fucked-up little games for them, including leading innocent frog-girls right into their jaws."

"So she was never a profiler?" Sheloran asked in a small voice.

"Nope," Sheila replied. "She was caught by a profiler. They saw her on a fluff news segment where she was getting an award. Apparently, the girl she was standing beside flinched when she touched her or something like that. It set the profiler's teeth on edge, they started digging, and they wouldn't stop even when their job was threatened. Eventually, they got her. Too bad it wasn't before that poor kid 'committed suicide'."

The news stories and court records popped up on Sheloran's tablet.

Sheloran felt sick. She had been lied to and would have followed Pam right into the residential levels where the Prophet only knows what would have happened to her. It was too much.

Sheloran buried her head in her hands and started to weep.

***

After Eno stabilized Helen and had her safely in one of their medical pods, it was Sheloran's turn.

"If you keep scanning me like that," she grumbled as she glared at him, "You are going to have to buy me dinner."

"This is incredible!" Eno exclaimed in astonishment. "There is absolutely no damage whatsoever!"

"Well, we Plath aren't much," Sheloran said, "but we are tough."

"Tough doesn't even come close," Eno said, still looking at his medical scanner in disbelief. "You were subjected to about as explosive decompression as you can get and not even a bruise!"

"Well, my stomach feels a little funny but- Eeek!" she yelped as a colossal human lunged towards her abdomen, the scanner stopping just inches away.

"Well, I'm not an expert on Plath biology," he said after a few moments, but nothing seems overly inflamed or damaged. "Bunny," he said, looking upward, "how do these scans compare to the data we have on these guys."

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"Every organ is within eight percent of average," Bunny's voice replied, "well within normal variance for their species, and thanks to Cerberus, we have some incredibly detailed scans of Sheloran from the past few days. Everything looks exactly the same aside from some minor inflammation of the throat and some discoloration of the internal fringes of her gills."

Eno started to move the scanner towards Sheloran's gill slits.

Sheloran hissed and batted the scanner away.

"Are you trying to look in my gills," she said indignantly as she clapped her hands over the slits.

"I was only trying to-"

"That's private!" she squeaked, very embarrassed, only to see huge, very detailed, full-color images of her inner gill fringes floating in front of a large holo monitor.

"Eeep!" she squeaked, leaping in front of the display, splaying out her dress in an attempt to block the screen.

Eno immediately made the image disappear.

"Sorry!" he blurted. "I had no idea! Sorry!"

"Holy shit!" Bunny laughed. "You're blushing so hard it's actually visible, Eno!"

"This isn't funny, Bunny!" Eno snapped. "Go and bother Jessie or something."

"You got it, blush-boy!" Bunny laughed and terminated the conversation with her trademark "click".

Moments later, both Eno and Sheloran winced as Jessie's high-pitched giggling could be heard echoing down the corridor.

***

About the same time Eno unintentionally "upskirted" Sheloran, Craxina was standing forlornly in the parking lot of The Drop of Oil staring at thousands of credits worth of goods.

Damn the Terrans and their efficiency.

When she said to get her the stuff "as soon as possible", she assumed that meant in a day or two…

Not just a few hours! Dammit!

It turns out when a Terran invokes the magic words "as soon as possible", they mean it! Here, "now" means "right fucking now!" not "eh, probably tomorrow or the next day" like it did back home.

She barely had time to get here before the spaceship, yes spaceship, landed and started unloading. It turns out that orbital delivery was free on an order this large, but orbital restocking?

Not free. Not free at all. It was the exact opposite of free!

So, now here she sat, on thousands of dollars of easily portable goods, in the middle of a darkened parking lot, in one of the worst parts of town, just her and her little blaster.

She whimpered and pulled out her phone again, and reflexively started to call Sheloran.

She caught herself and whimpered again.

She caught some movement out of the corner of her eye. There were a couple of xenos just standing there across the street, watching her.

This was almost every single credit she had. If they took it, there wasn't enough to buy replacements. They would be done, unable to work until the whole argument with the insurance was settled and, according to Baxlon, there was a problem there. He tried to explain it, but all she got is that they didn't want to pay.

Well, that and the fact that they actually pissed Baxlon off. He said that he was no longer playing nice and we would get "every penny and then some", but that it might take some time.

She looked up from her phone. Those guys were still there. Poop.

She looked down into her little purse at the blaster inside. She didn't even know how to use it.

Well, no time like the present, she thought to herself as she took a deep if a bit squeaky, breath and hopped down from her perch on one of the crates.

She picked up a piece of rubble and set it against one of the charred cinder block walls of what was once "home", walked back several yards, pulled out the blaster…

And started to aim at it.

***

Officer Perkins leaned against the side of her armored police cruiser as she refilled her travel mug from a large steel thermos.

"I'm just saying that we should have given her a medal, not locked her up," she said as she took a sip.

Officer Xeenan, one of the few xenos in the precinct, looked at her in horror.

"How can you say that?" he gasped, his antennae twitching with agitation. "She murdered those Threen!"

"Careful, Xee," she chuckled, "She killed those assholes. 'Murder' isn't our decision to make."

"Semantics," the Vexa replied. "She calmly walked in there and slaughtered them."

"And did in one morning what we weren't able to do for years," Officer Perkins said as she adjusted her helmet. "We should have given her a parade and a steak dinner, not a shuttle to Tartarus."

Xeenan cocked his head. He knew things would be "different" here in the Republic but to hear his fellow officers openly applauding wholesale murder… correction: homicide, not murder…

It was a bit much.

"While I do agree that the Harkeen were a menace that we struggled to contain," he said carefully, "there are laws and codes that must be abided by in order for society to function, to even exist."

"And what did all of those laws and codes do for the people of Free Port, eh?" Perkins replied. "What did they do for that poor little garthra or that little pink thing… or the dozens before them?"

Xeenan snorted with frustration. It was always the same "discussion" time and time again. How the Republic did not collapse into total barbarism and anarchy was a constant mystery to him.

"You know what did do something for them?" Perkins continued, "Sheloran. She took care of business, Terran style! Fuck, she's a better Terran than most Terrans."

"She wouldn't have had to 'take care of business', as you put it if she wasn't involved in a gang-war with the Harkeen in the first place! Are you familiar with that Plath? She's a dangerous fugitive from the Federation who left a trail of-"

"Shhh!" Perkins hissed, almost shoving her mailed palm into his face. "Hear that?"

"Your sense of hearing is much-"

"Blaster," Perkins said matter of factly. "More blasters."

Xeenan stiffened in alarm. He was afraid of this. With the Harkeen gone, there was a power vacuum on the streets. It was only a matter of time before someone made a power play.

"Car, start," Perkins said as the cruiser sprang to life and the doors opened.

***

Craxina loaded another power cell with a frustrated little huff.

Why couldn't she hit it?

Sheloran made it seem so easy when she played one of her simulators.

Zap… Dammit… Zap… Dammit… Zap…

She lowered the pistol and looked skyward.

This was hard!

At least her little impromptu target practice ran off the lurkers. She looked around to make sure they were still gone.

They were.

She took a determined little breath and raised the pistol again. Before she could fire, she was interrupted by a little "whoop" from a siren.

She spun around in alarm to see a police cruiser sitting in the parking lot behind her. She lowered the pistol as a human female and a… Vexa? got out.

"Evening," the human said as they approached.

"Um… hi?" Craxina replied nervously.

"Doing a little target practice?" the human police officer said as she walked up.

"Is there a problem, officer?" Craxina asked, whipping out her innocent voice and big eyes.

"Citiz-… Sophont," Officer Xeenan said in an official tone, "you are discharging an energy weapon in a public area. That is a misdemeanor under the Republic Legal Code."

"But, this isn't a public area," Craxina replied with a childish whine, "This is private property."

"Yeah," Officer Perkins said in a friendly, lazy voice. "But it isn't 'inside' either. It counts. Besides, this isn't a licensed range, which under this city's municipal code, a bit of a no-no."

"I… I didn't know..."

"You have a decent enough setup going on here, and blasters don't ricochet, so you aren't truly being a hazard, but stop it. You've already generated two calls to the station," Perkins said as she looked at a scanner.

"You're going to have to come with us," Officer Xeenan said stiffly.

"Oh, don't mind him," Perkins smiled. "He's new."

Xeenan's antennae flicked angrily.

"She committed a crime, and she needs to be-"

"Xee," Perkins said as she facepalmed. "Look around. What do you see?"

"A criminal discharging a blaster in a public area in a most unsafe-"

"And?"

"… a burned-out building," Xee answered.

"And?"

"...some crates."

"Exactly," Perkins smiled. "And what, exactly, do you think will be missing five minutes after we start driving this nice little… what are you exactly?"

"A Careel," Craxina said hopefully.

"This nice little Careel, who wasn't actually doing anything that dangerous to the station?"

"The crates?" Officer Xeenan replied.

"Correct," Officer Perkins said with an indulgent smile. "We waste a good hour or more hauling in this Careel, who wasn't doing anything that bad, only to have to come right back out here and fill out a report on a crime that we helped cause… Not exactly my idea of a good night… The whole time taking ourselves out of action where we could have prevented a real crime."

"But she broke the law!"

"And we officially have discretion when it comes up to class 2 misdemeanors. That means we deal with them as we see fit, and I don't see any reason to do anything more than 'log and walk' on this one," Officer Perkins said as she pulled out a tablet and flicked her finger across the screen.

"Location, Drop of Oil parking lot," she said. "Encountered a Careel named… what's your name?"

"Craxina," she replied with a huge smile.

"Named Craxina, who was discharging a blaster in the parking lot in a safe manner. It was being discharged into a wall sturdy enough to prevent penetration, and there was no chance of the bolts traveling outside of the immediate area. The Careel was informed that she was in violation of the law, and she agreed..."

Officer Perkins looked at Craxina with her "policeman's face", and Craxina nodded emphatically with huge eyes.

"to cease firing her weapon and carry her fluffy little ass to a range instead… file report..."

The tablet beeped.

She turned to Officer Xeenan.

"See, everything has been done in accordance with all of those regulations you are so fond of."

Officer Xeenan bristled.

"The entire Free Port is dangerously unstable," he said angrily, "and you are just going to let this xeno go with a weapon?"

"Yeah, that is a problem," Officer Perkins replied. "Thanks for reminding me."

She turned to Craxina and held out her hand.

"Let me see that thing."

Craxina dutifully handed Officer Perkins her weapon.

"Hmm..." Perkins said as she scanned the blaster. "I knew it," she said disdainfully. "Now this I do have a problem with."

"Is it a burner?" Officer Xeenan asked.

"Yeah," Perkins replied grimly, "And a cheap piece of shit one too…."

Officer Perkins looked at Craxina sternly.

"What is it with you fucking Feds and this gacha machine shit?"

"I'm an Imperial subject!" Craxina hissed with surprising venom.

"Could have fooled me," Perkins said as she handed Craxina her blaster, much to Officer Xeenan's displeasure.

"Ex-fucking-cuse me?!?" Craxina squeak-snarled.

"If you are an Imperial," Perkins replied, "carry an Imperial weapon. If you can't handle Terran recoil, get yourself an Imperial pulse weapon or a razor pistol. This Fed trash is worse than worthless. Carry yourself over to Selms Arsenal here in the Free Port or Volun-Haral's boutique in town if you want to embrace the Empress, but please, for the love of God, don't carry this Fed garbage. Seriously, it won't even scuff our armor. Now a Kresk pulse pistol or a Shai-Ghk Razorthorn? Those will punch a hole right through anything the Harkeen will be wearing."

"Ok!" Craxina exclaimed.

"Now before I go," Perkins said with a smile, "I couldn't help but notice you were holding that pistol wrong..."

***

A little later, across the solar system, Gloria lounged in a small bedroom sipping coffee and looking at a tablet.

Jessie and Bunny had certainly come across with the data. There were lists of ships, stations, planetary bases, and more.

Even Gloria was impressed. The sheer volume of data they were able to produce in such a short period of time was amazing, even for them. According to Bunny, they had "friends" help. Gloria suspected that it was more of those weird "not alive" programs like Bunny and Daemon. Apparently, they were on their side.

It didn't really matter, though. All that mattered to Gloria was targets and targets she had, lots of them.

She smiled as her eyes flickered with anticipation for almost an entire second before glazing over.

She glanced up as there was a quiet knock at the door.

"Come in."

The door opened to reveal a grease-stained and somewhat weary-looking Harval standing there.

"Ma'am," he said with a smile. "Your weapons package has been reinstalled and has been loaded as per your specifications."

Gloria smiled.

"Finally," she replied, her eyes igniting, "Now the fun begins."