"Captain." Taimia’s voice was urgent and my eyes fluttered open.

"What is it?." I asked sitting up. Shade stirred next to me.

"I am detecting a ship on approach. It's closing on us at an extremely fast velocity," she said.

I jumped out of the bed and put on my clothes from the day before. "It's Steiner." Shade said worriedly. She was sitting on the edge of the bed sliding her feet into her shoes.

"We will not be able to outrun him," Taimia said. "What would you like to do?"

I considered it for a moment. He wants Shade back, and he's going to demand I return her. After talking with General Ford about the man it was clear the only way out of this is through violence. I'd have to kill again. I took a deep breath and said "Taimia all stop, turn us around so our forward weapons can track him easily. Prepare the ship for a fight. How long until intercept?"

"Approximately three minutes. We will be in position in time." She said

Shade and I left my quarters and were standing on the bridge less than a minute later. I looked over to the raven haired girl standing next to me. "You know his ship, what does he like to fight with?"

"Cannons are useless, he's really nimble and dodges them very well. He only uses missile pods as weapons. They are armor piercing and designed to penetrate the hull before exploding, and he carries several hundred missiles between twelve different firing pods."

"Taimia, what do you think?"

"I believe the Mag-Rails will be most effective against him." She said

"I trust your decision, Taimia. Open a channel to Brigand's Hold. I want to talk to Bruiser." After I heard the tone I said, “This is Captain Jonathan Kaine aboard the Tempest. 'I have an emergency and I need to speak to Bruiser immediately."

After about forty-five seconds Bruiser's face appeared on one of the side screens. It was apparent he had been asleep and wasn't wearing a shirt as the tops of his shoulders were bare. "Jon? What's going on?"

"Your boys about to make a huge mistake. Steiner is coming after me and he'll be in range within the next minute." Before I could say anything more, there was a bright flash along the side of the Steiner ship and something broke off, speeding towards us. It swung wide as if he targeted one of the wings but while it was still a hundred yards away from the Tempest a bright flash of lightning lanced out from the hull and struck the missile.

A massive fireball bloomed at the point of impact and the Tempest rocked gently from the concussion. The bolt of lightning lingered for a couple seconds, bouncing around and illuminating the inside of the fireball as it vaporized all the potential shrapnel. It was a deadly beautiful sight to watch.

"Captain, we're being hailed." Taimia said.

"Add him to the call." I instructed

Steiner's face appeared above Bruiser's and the big man looked taken aback. "Steiner, what's the meaning of this?"

"He took Shade." Steiner replied with a sneer.

"Fuck you!" Shade screamed at him. "He didn't take me, I snuck on board trying to get away from you."

His face flushed red and he held up a small silver box. He waited a second just to build gruesome anticipation and pressed a button on the device. Shade immediately began to convulse and scream with pain. When I saw her collapse I managed to catch her and I laid her down as gently as I could. At the same time Steiner spoke up. "You're mine bitch. I bought you fair and square."

"Stop it," I yelled at him while kneeling over her.

To my surprise, she stopped screaming and I looked back up at the monitor. Steiner had released the button and was staring at me. "Give her back to me or I will destroy that ship and everyone on it."

"Steiner, I have clients on that ship." Bruiser said

"I don't give a fuck." He said with enough force that it made his spiked mohawk quiver. "Your interceptors might be able to stop one of my missiles, but they can't stop sixty-four all at once."

"He'll do it." Shade whispered up to me weakly. "His favorite thing in the universe is to unload missile swarms."

Shade started to scream and convulse again. "Shut up. Now give her back to me or you're dead, and don't be thinking for one second that relic is a match for my ship. Bruiser's already installed the modern Fajani shield generator." While holding the button down he slowly rotated a dial on the box in his hands and Shade's screams got louder and she began to thrash even harder on the ground.

I made the decision, "Taimia, fire." Four things happened simultaneously. Shade stopped screaming, Steiner's face vanished from the screen, a thin blue trail of fading light now connected the Tempest to Steiner's cockpit, and a transparent sphere encompassed his ship for a moment before flickering out. Bruiser wasn't able to see what happened but his jaw fell open when he realized why Steiner must have dropped out of the call. Just then, a small explosion went off somewhere in Steiner's ship. It punctured the hull and the escaping atmosphere ignited, pushing his ship into a lazy spiral. I saw the danger almost too late; the fire was spewing out of the ship and flowing across one of the missile pods.

"Taimia, get us out of here, quickly." Wing RCS thrusters fired to reorient the ship and once we were facing away the main engines fired, pushing us into a prewarp acceleration. As we raced away, I could see behind us on the monitor and the missile pod exploded. It started a chain reaction with the other pods and the damage they caused was sufficient to breach the warp core. The fiery explosions of the ship vanished as a spherical shockwave erupted from the wreckage, pulverizing it into subatomic particles instantly and erasing it from the universe. It was moving faster than us, but Taimia managed to push us into warp a few seconds before the Tempest would have been destroyed. Once at warp we were able to outrun the shockwave.

Stolen novel; please report.

I helped Shade to her feet, then turned to confront Bruiser. "I hope this isn't going to create a problem between us." I said to him apprehensively.

His face flashed through several emotions before settling on resignation. "No Jon. This hurts, but it was ultimately Steiner's fault. If he had destroyed your ship I'd have killed him myself when he got back here. Can his ship be salvaged? That shield generator is priceless."

"I'm afraid not. The core breached." I said

"Damn. I hope the one arriving on the Albatross actually works." He took a long shuddering deep breath and wiped a hand across his face." Look, just get those colonists home and you and I are square."

I nodded to him and the screen went blank as he ended the call.

"Should I resume course Captain?" Taimia asked

"Yes please." I replied, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath to pass the moment.

"I don't believe it, he's dead. I'm free." Shade said with a look of utter astonishment on her face. She was leaning with her back against the console to my left and I turned to her.

"Now what?" I asked her.

"I don't know. I guess I never really thought about what I'd do after I got away from him." She answered

"Taimia, how long until we jump?" I asked the AI.

"We should be in position to jump in an hour and thirty-two minutes." Taimia said

"I need to check the hold and make sure the Arahnka are okay. Tell ya what, meet me on top deck and we'll talk over breakfast." I said, holding my hand out to Shade.

She looked up to me and smiled. It was the first time I'd seen her smile and it was beautiful. She took my hand and I walked with her in silence to the lifts. We separated, she went up and I went down.

The Tempest really was a marvel. It turned out, the Arahnka never even knew we'd stopped or had a fight. So after telling Crizah'domn that I expected to jump in a little over an hour I made my way up to the top deck. Shade was sitting at the center bar and gave me a small smile when she saw me. "What do you feel like eating?" I asked as I stepped behind the bar.

"I don't care. I'll eat anything." She said

I stared at her a moment, considering. 2 weeks ago I would never have pictured myself where I was. It had been one hell of a roller-coaster. As I looked into her eyes I could imagine what I must look like. A lucky kid in the wrong place at the right time, just the right combination of righteous and innocent. Not rich or spoiled but privileged all the same. I'd had the freedom to grow without hardship as a child, yes I lost my parents but I'd never known a night of hunger or the fear of being robbed. Or raped.

My innocence and with it my naivety, it was a luxury I just couldn't afford. Aaron had tried to warn me, but it had been hard to believe him. People couldn't really just be evil on the inside could they? I thought about Steiner and my question was immediately answered. Bruiser is kind and offered me refuge yet runs a station that legalizes slavery. He also helped me see the hypocrisy of the righteous Starforce. Out here, there is no black and white, no good and evil. Everyone and everything is a little of both. But that's not just out here I guess, that's life.

I had to be real with myself, even Shade was trying to use me, at least last night she was. And I honestly shouldn't rule out that she still might.

"Jon? Are you ok?" Shade asked, waving a hand in front of my eyes.

I snapped back to myself with a jerk. "Huh? What?" My eyes were burning and I blinked them rapidly.

"You've been staring at me without blinking for a couple minutes. Are you ok?"

"I'm sorry Shade." I took a step back and tuned to the replicator. "How about some crepes?" I asked, and before I got a response I said, "Taimia if you would please?" I reached in and pulled out a plate heaped with at least two dozen crepes of various flavors.

"What's a crepe?" She asked

At the same time I said "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable." We both paused and smiled.

"Madison." She said in the quiet. When I looked up confused she said, "My name, It's Madison Brightwood."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"It was Steiner that started calling me that because of my powers."

I realized I was still holding the plate and set it down on the counter before going back for drinks. "What are your powers?" I asked over my shoulder.

"Well, I have a few. I use shadow magic."

"Wait, magic? Like wizards and dragons? That kind of magic?" I asked, returning with two tall glasses of fresh cold apple juice. Setting them down I rounded the counter and sat down beside her.

"You can call it what you like. Maybe there is a scientific explanation, but I haven't found it yet. At any rate, I can bend light around me so that I become invisible. I can create minor illusions and I can conjure orbs of energy and kinda program them to do all kinds of stuff."

"Like torture people?" I asked flatly.

"Sorry about that." She said, chagrined. "I never would have guessed you were related to James Malaki."

"Why does that matter?" I asked with genuine curiosity.

"My mother was a Seraphim. Wait, you said you don't know what a Seraphim is?" After I nodded she squinted her eyes in thought while looking up at the ceiling dome. "I'm afraid I don't know everything, I only remember stories my mother used to tell me when I was very young."

"Long ago, hundreds of years, James Malaki created starship technology that was centuries more advanced than what existed at the time. He went on an exploratory voyage around the local cluster of stars and met several of the races. One race he met was wiped out by something alien and deadly that he called the Skree. So he forged an alliance between all of the races. Fast forward a hundred years and there is some kind of strife between him and the alliance, so he left it all behind and took a lot of his technology with him, leaving only the bare bones behind."

"The stories my mother told me said that James was determined to prevent the Skree from destroying any more inhabited systems. So he put together a new alliance from all the races. But instead of being an advisor like he was with the previous alliance, here he would be the commander; and this alliance became an army that he would use like a weapon to defend the homeworlds. The army was called Aegis."

"The Seraphim act as generals, squad leaders or special agents and they all have magical abilities of some type. Turns out it's hereditary and specially carried on the set of genes, related to gender which is why the Seraphim are all female." She shrugged, "I'm not sure exactly how that works. But each has a unique set of powers they pass down with slight mutations with each generation." She picked up one of the crepes and looked it over before taking a bite. She moaned as her eyes rolled into the back of her head.

"They're good right?" I took a bite of one too, strawberries exploded onto my tongue and the taste was divine. "Taimia, you are the best chef in the galaxy."

"I only prepare what meals I have preprogrammed. But I do appreciate the praise." With a hint of a smile. As an A.I., I would have expected her voice, and Zeveriah's for that matter, to be flat and monotone. But It was just the opposite. She had a lot of inflection and I swear I could even discern emotions from her voice. I would have to ask her about it, but the food was just too damn good to stop eating.

Before I knew it the plate was empty. I smiled at Madison when she leaned back in the chair and rested a hand on her stomach. She caught me looking and laughed. "I don't think I've ever felt so stuffed." She said with that crooked smile.

"Ten minutes to jump." Taimia said over the shipwide coms.

"Com'n, let's get to the bridge."