Yvian slipped out of the medpod, feeling surly. There had indeed been beer on board the Recompense, but she hadn't been able to drink it. Removing her helmet had disabled her armor's MOBILITY PROTOCOL, and her stupid broken arms had flopped uselessly instead of picking up the bottle. Lissa had to put the helmet back on for her so she could get to the Medbay.

The Captain was in the pod next to her. These were Federation medpods, but they were identical to the Venturetech models on the Random Encounter. Yvian supposed a Vrrl medpod would look the same. They were all built by the Oluken, after all.

The Captain was still in rough shape. His leg was missing, his skull was fractured, and his chest had been caved in. His vitals were stable, but it would take another two days to heal the damage and grow his leg back.

Crunch, what a disaster. Yvian hadn't expected the fight against the Freedom Republic would be easy, but she'd never imagined they'd get their asses kicked that badly. Worse, they'd lost the Random Encounter. She'd spent most of a year on that ship. It was the closest thing she'd ever felt to home. Now it was gone.

Yvian sighed. She'd been out for nearly fourteen hours. The Recompense should be docked at the hideout by now. Should she get beer first, or check in with Lissa? Beer first. Definitely beer.

Lissa was on the bridge. "Good, you're here." She frowned in mild disapproval when Yvian walked in toting a case of beer. "Mark wouldn't like drinks on the bridge."

"What Mims doesn't know won't hurt him," Yvian replied. "How are you holding up?"

Lissa shrugged. "I came out without a scratch." She went back to peering into a sensor screen. "But never mind that. I found something."

Yvian popped the cap on a bottle and took a swig. Oh, Bright Lady, yes. This was what she needed. "What'd you find?"

"Take a look." Lissa gestured at her screen.

The screen showed an alarm for ships entering the sector. The alarm was active, but there were no contacts on the sensors.

"Yeah, so?" Yvian took another drink. "We've been getting false alarms on that thing for months."

"Have we?" Lissa countered. "I've run every test and diagnostic I can think of. The early alert system is in perfect working order."

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"Then why's it giving us false alarms?" Yvian flopped onto a chair.

"I don't think it is." Lissa held out her hand. Yvian handed her a beer from the case. "Do you know how the alert system works?"

"Nope." Yvian chugged the rest of her bottle and got another one.

"Mark didn't, either," Lissa told her. "The Akindi set it up before he came in and killed them all." She made a pleased sound as she imbibed. "Love this stuff. Anyway, it's a bunch of hidden drones that communicate through tight beam transmissions. Very tight beams, hard to pick up. The drones are scattered throughout the system and disguised as debris." She swigged some more. "There's fifty of them, and only the last two lead back to this asteroid. It's genius, really. No way to track all the signals here in one go. It would take days to trace. Maybe weeks."

"What's that got to do with..." Yvian waved her beer in a 'hurry it along' gesture.

"Do you know what activates the system?"

Yvian resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "I'm guessing you're going to tell me."

"Anything coming through the Gate." Lissa sounded a little smug as she typed into her console. "There's a small burst of radiation whenever an object comes through." A new image appeared on the screen.

"What's that?" Yvian stared at a still image. Blue light, roiling like clouds. "Is that the Gate?"

"Best close-up I could manage," Lissa said proudly. "The drone that took it wasn't close, so it's not as clear as I'd like, but it's enough to prove the theory."

Yvian frowned. "What theory?"

"That the alarm system's not glitching," Lissa pointed at the screen. "Look." Yvian leaned closer to the screen. She saw several small dots in the field of blue.

"Are those...?"

"Ships," her sister confirmed. "Human ships. Terran Stealth tech is amazing at hiding you from sensors, but it doesn't do a damned thing for line of sight. They've got camouflage systems, but the energy output makes them easy to track. You can hide from sensors or you can hide from eyes, but you can't do both."

"Stealth cruisers." Yvian felt tension rolling into her shoulders. "The false alarms are stealth cruisers."

"Exactly." Lissa grinned. "Damn, I'm good."

Yvian frowned at her sister. "Why are you so happy?"

"Cause I figured it out." Lissa shrugged. "None of you could have done it."

"Ok, yeah, you're smart," Yvian agreed. "But you just proved the people that are hunting us have been coming in and out of the sector for months."

"We already knew that," Lissa told her. "The Freedom Republic's been sniffing around all the unclaimed sectors. They've got no idea where we are." She held her hand out again.

Yvian grunted and handed her another bottle. A stray thought niggled at the back of her mind. "When was this picture taken?"

"Four hours ago."

"Four hours..." So about ten hours after they escaped the pirates. Yvian squinted at the dots on the screen. Nine, ten... no. There were another set of dots to the left. Twenty six. Twenty six Ronin class battlecruisers. Why would they need that many? One or two should be more than enough to search an unclaimed sector.

"Lissa..." a terrible suspicion was creeping up on Yvian. "The Encounter was destroyed, right?" She remembered the missiles, the debris. "There wasn't enough left to pull any nav data. Right?"

"No way," her sister confirmed. "All that's left of that ship is an expanding cloud of melted debris. Even I couldn't fix it." She frowned, thinking. The conclusion hit her like a shockstick. She bolted upright in her chair. "Crunch! The Symphony!"