The bugs surged into the narrow hallway, clambering and skittering over each other, anxious to reach the Terrans guarding Engineering.

The Terrans, led by Admiral Stonefist, fell back. This second wave was more intense than the first. It didn't seem possible, but the bugs seemed even less careful than before. They flung their bodies into the blaster bolts the Terrans fired into their midst, as though every dead body were a victory.

Unfortunately, it seemed to be working. Ammunition was running low. The security men were picking their shots rather than spraying, and handing around extra magazines. They'd been pushed all the way back to the entrance of Engineering.

"This is the line!" Admiral Stonefist yelled. He fired into the mass of bugs. "They cannot get further than this! Hold!"

The desperate Terrans tried their best to comply. The unending surge of bugflesh continued to advance, pushing closer and closer to Engineering, bodies falling in droves. The piles of the dead slowed the bugs down as much as the blaster fire did. Admiral Stonefist gritted his teeth. He ran through his last magazine, drew his sidearm. He fired into the mass.

Then he heard the most beautiful sound of his life.

In the distance, he heard a faint "Ooh-rah!" and the mechanical hum of a rotary minigun spinning up.

A broad smile split Grimthorn's face. The hum became an angry, clanking buzz, and the bugs' advance faltered as the turned back toward the sound. The buzzing drew closer.

The bugs melted away from Engineering to face the threat to their rear. Suddenly the roaring buzz clarified, and a wall of bullets tore into the wave of bugs at 50 rounds per second. The minigun shredded the Insectoids. Many of them were simply vaporized, chips of chitin filling the air from the overwhelming destruction.

The security men cheered as the Marines stomped around the corner, atomizing the last of the bugs.

They were thick, heavily muscled, and carrying an outrageous amount of ordnance. The Marine in the lead carried an Alaz minigun, spraying the bugs down thoroughly with fire and death. Following him were Marines carrying heavy blaster rifles, keeping his flanks and rear clear.

Once the bugs were cleared, Admiral Stonefist stood up tall and saluted the Marine in the lead.

"Admiral Stonefist, of the Ninth Fleet. Pleasure to have you on board."

The Marine lowered his minigun and saluted back.

"Sergeant Charr of the Third Division. Heard you were having trouble with an infestation."

"You know how it is. You forget to wash the dishes a couple times, and suddenly you're up to your knees in roaches." Grimthorn looked at piles of dead insectoids filling the hall. "Mighty glad to see you and your men, Sergeant."

"Honor to be here, sir."

"What's the sitrep?"

"The fleet engaged the fighters. They cleared a lot of them, but many escaped through a jumphole."

"Taking a fighter through jumpspace? With no buffers?" Grimthorn grimaced. "I think I'd rather get shot."

Sergeant Charr nodded.

"Captain Lanith sent some gunboats to chase them down."

"Good thinking. Every bug we shoot today is one less we'll have to shoot tomorrow."

"We've secured a landing zone on the Star Deck. Even if there are still a few bugs out there, they won't be boarding the Ophir. We're sweeping the ship, looking for stragglers. But so far, it looks like this was the main force."

"Very good. Watch for survivors, there are a lot of civilians on board. Keep me apprised. I'll wrap up here and catch a shuttle back to the Swordheart. I need a shower like I never have before. You fellows have fun with the bugs."

"Yes, sir." Sergeant Charr turned to his men. "Let's bust some more bugs!" The Marines marched away quickly, anxious not to miss out on any shooting.

Admiral Stonefist stayed just long enough to help direct medics and cleanup crews, then detached himself and went back to the Star Deck.

The Marine engineers had already turned the Star Deck into landing bay. Quick-set spacecrete had been formed in a rough but airtight box on the Star Deck so that it was usable without thinsuits. It was dark grey, with a rough surface, and the walls were only straight on average. It was as ugly as the dome had been beautiful.

Admiral Stonefist flagged down a shuttle pilot.

"Pilot! Is your shuttle available?"

"Pilot Dabrini, sir," she said, saluting. "Yes, sir. You looking for passage back to the Swordheart?"

"Yes. Have you seen my Assistant, Kinnit? She's a Kobold, about so tall?"

"No sir, no one of that description around here."

"Thank you, Pilot. I'll be back shortly."

He stepped away and saw Captain Prower, civilian Captain of the Ophir.

"Captain," he said. "Good to see you made it out in one piece. Everything okay on the bridge?"

"As well as can be expected." Her tone was slightly icy. "I thank you for your assistance, Admiral. For saving us. But if it's all the same, I hope to never see you on my ship again."

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"That's reasonable," he said. Prower spun and stalked away.

Grimthorn sighed. He pulled out his scanner and tried to contact Kinnit, but his scanner pulsed mindlessly. She didn't answer. He frowned.

Where had she gotten off to?

He wandered around the Star Deck for a minute, thinking. By chance, he clunked his wrist against one of the rough walls. He glanced down in surprise.

"That's right-- the A/V wrist units the security men gave us." He popped it on and dialed around, getting familiar with the interface. He set it to view the Star Deck cameras and rolled back to the time they'd gotten separated. Then he let the footage play, watching her shoot the bug, then cycle through the airlock in Exit A.

He stood in an out-of-the-way place, watching the small screen on his wrist. He poked it from time to time, switching cameras to keep up with her movement.

He watched for long minutes, his face growing darker. He started unconsciously moving toward Exit A. Then he stopped and stood stock still. A look of horror crept over his face. He turned and bolted for the shuttle.

"Get me onboard the Swordheart, ASAP!" he yelled. He pulled out his scanner and yelled into it. "Get me Captain Lanith on the horn immediately! We have to stop those gunboats!"

----------------------------------------

Kinnit woke slowly. Everything was black, and everything hurt. She couldn't move. Her wrists and ankles were tightly bound, and she was folded up in some kind of tight space, lying on her side. Steel bars pressed into her knees and back, keeping her cramped in an odd pose.

Her head was covered with some kind of cloth sack, blocking out all light. It stank of bug. She struggled not to throw up. The thought of having a bag full of vomit tied around her head did not help her get control of her stomach. She closed her eyes and breathed slowly through her mouth, slowly regaining uncertain control.

She tried not to move, tried not to give away that she'd woken up. She could hear the high whine of a small engine, and the quiet chittering of an Insectoid.

As her head began to clear and the urgent clenching of her stomach subsided, she tried to think through the situation.

Clearly, she'd been captured by the Oryndrax. The sound of the engine was that of a fighter-- she'd probably been crammed in one of the Vylar fighters.

Where would they be taking her? Fighters were short-range. There was nowhere in the Mebrin sector they could hope to get to that would be safe once the Ninth Fleet showed up.

Which meant they had to be headed for a jumphole.

She clenched her teeth.

Fighters weren't made to travel the jumpholes. They could do it; jumpholes were just holes in the spacetime continuum, but the trip was liable to be rough. Jumpspace was bad enough on board a big ship with jumpspace buffers, inertial dampers, and all the creature comforts that modern science could provide. Fighters had approximately none of that.

She tried to cling to the hope that they'd already completed the jump while she was unconscious. But she knew that was foolish optimism.

They flew on for an indeterminate amount of time. Her body ached abominably, and the tight position she was crammed into made her muscles cramp violently. Sweat poured off her face, soaking the bag. She was beginning to wish that the fighter would come apart, just so she could stretch out for one glorious moment before her lungs popped.

Then they tipped into the jumphole.

If she'd had the mental bandwidth to think about it earlier, she'd have assumed that traveling jumpspace without sight would have been slightly better. But it wasn't. The dimensions she was used to turned inside out. Time vanished. The pain that wracked her body distorted. How could her knees hurt when the concept of knees, or body, or pain didn't exist? When the very concept of things being connected or contiguous was incomprehensible, when space and distance itself was meaningless? She was as big as a galaxy, small as a quark, and every perception and and thought was inverted, spindled, and wrong.

Her sole comfort was the frantic chittering from her Insectoid pilot. The Oryndrax didn't seem to like jumpspace any more than she did.

She would have screamed, if it were something that could even be done in jumpspace.

When they finally emerged from jumpspace, she was sobbing. She didn't even care if the bug knew she was awake.

The fighter carried on flying for another twenty minutes. She moaned in pain, no longer able to contain herself. There was another torturous trip through jumpspace, and then the clanking sounds of the fighter docking on a larger ship.

A hiss, some chittering from multiple individuals, and then she was blessedly pulled out of the fighter. Still bound, she was dumped unceremoniously on a steel deck. She writhed as her stiffened joints unwound. Pain had wracked her when she was held still, and more pain wracked her now that she could move.

Why were bodies like that?

More chittering, then she was dragged away.

There was confusion for a while about what was going on. There was another jumphole, but much more tolerable now that they were on a larger ship. She was transferred to a shuttle, then onto another ship, then two more jumphole traversals.

The whole time she fought with her stomach, to keep from wearing her last meal. The bag over her head still reeked of bug, wherever she was.

At last she seemed to have arrived at her destination. She was left in a room alone for a while, then she heard footsteps. Not the skittering of bugs, but the solid, slow footfalls of a heavy man.

"Finally," said a voice she didn't recognize. "The source of all our troubles." A heavy foot crashed into her midsection, driving a cry out of her. She gasped, trying to get her breath back. "Now instead of being trouble, you will have trouble. I'll go get your room ready."

The footsteps faded away while Kinnit tried to get her breath back.

She tried to calm herself, to think through her situation, but she was shot through with terror. She struggled to regain tenuous control of her thoughts as she lay on the floor, bound and blind. She reached out with her senses for any comfort she could find.

The floor was slightly softer here-- instead of bare steel, it felt like industrial carpet. That was one nice thing. And despite the circumstances, she still found the thrumming of the ship's engines comforting, the familiar vibration that ran through every surface.

In fact, it was a little too comforting.

The carpet, the specific frequency of the engine... she realized was on an Imperial ship.

Her stomach flip-flopped with elation and terror. She wasn't trapped on an Oryndrax vessel, but she was in the hands of a perpetrator of the filthiest crime she could imagine: military treason against the Imperium.

She struggled against her bonds, fury rising in her. Whoever was working with the bugs had her at their mercy. And that thought was worse than everything that had happened so far.

The footsteps returned.

"Your room is ready," the voice said. Then pain exploded across her head. It was so sudden and unexpected that it took her a moment to realize she'd been kicked in the face. She tried to roll away, but another kick blossomed pain in her back. She cried out in agony as she rolled around on the floor, trying to escape the vicious beating.

"That's for making us kill Captain Caltrel," the voice hissed. "You could have coasted. You could have left things alone. You could have just let your stupid Admiral keep floundering, but no. You wanted to be so... thorough."

Fists joined the feet in ladling out suffering. She screamed, she cried, blind and weeping as the relentless beating continued.

Finally the attack stopped. The man breathed heavily while Kinnit sobbed. After a minute, he grabbed her tail and dragged her to another room.

She heard the door slide shut, then her hood was roughly yanked off. She flinched from the light. A carelessly wielded knife sawed through her bonds, nicking her repeatedly.

Once her eyes had adjusted a little, she looked up into the fierce eyes of a man she didn't recognize. The knife was still in his hand, and his gaze was calculating, hateful. As though he were considering how much he could get away with.

Shaking his head, he closed up the knife, and shoved her into a tiny gap between two storage areas. She heard the high buzz of power screwdriver sealing the panel behind her.

All she could do was lay on the floor and weep.