I met one of my readers IRL. The level of encouragement was so damn high, I pulled 3000 words out of my ass for this chapter. Enjoy.

Also, I now have a proof reader.

Mahz, you da real mvp.

The sun rose over the horizon on the Shikinami's third day around Solvenice to find that the markets had already opened without it. It began to warm the small planet, heating the air back to its usual sweltering temperature.

Then the unusual happened - five unfathomably large warp signatures blinded every single person looking to the sky.

This wasn't a single ship. This was a fleet warping in at medium to low speed, darkening the sun as it did. The fleet was still a few hours away at the least - but it still scared the living shit out of Sophia, knowing that such an enormous force would soon arrive at Solvenice.

The brightness of a warp signature was proportional to the brightness of the engines propelling the warp drive and amount of time the light from said engines had to condense due to the warp drives. The size of the flashes were dependant on the cross-sectional area of the space that the warp drives condensed in front of it. The duration of the warp signature depended on the amount of time the engines had been burning for.

A shuttle's small warp drive would condense space in a thin tunnel in front of it, a tunnel of radius only just wider than the shuttle itself. The size of its' warp signature would therefore be only just larger than the shuttle itself, the brightness and duration of the signature gave away the duration of the shuttle's trip and the power of its' warp drive. Similarly, a battleship or logistics cruiser's warp drives would give off a thick, wide warp signature.

These warp signatures weren't just wide. The multiple flashes within each indicated that there were around four cruisers, another four logistics cruisers, some kind of battleship and a veritable swarm of destroyers, frigates and corvettes.

"Sophia!"

George grabbed her hand, pulling her back into reality.

She dragged her dulled eyes away from the sky. "What is it?"

"We've got to get you out of here. Come with me, I'm sending you straight up to the Shikinami."

Alarms blared through the Shikinami's bridge.

"What the hell is that?" asked Soryuu. "And why the hell didn't we get a warning about it?"

"Short range jump, Captain," answered Johnson. "Nobody knew they were coming before now. They jumped in from just past Solvenice."

"Sheit. Are they hostiles?"

"Well, it's not going to be friendlies, is it?" the signature analyst said sarcastically.

"That's no way to speak to your superior," said Tactician Johnson.

Soryuu sighed, internally chastised herself for being so idiotic. "No, he's right. That's got to be a Militia fleet."

"The question is," mused Roberts, "where have they been? And why are they coming here?"

"Receiving evac requests for one of the civilians on the ground," called the communications technician.

Soryuu looked awkwardly at Roberts. "What do you think, captain? We kinda need her on the ground."

"Vice Captain," Roberts corrected with a smile. "And there's no question about it. We are the IMC, we protect our civilian crew at all costs or we lose our reputation."

"But…"

"You are the captain, Nina, and it's your choice to make. But keep in mind the consequences that would arise, should this civilain on the ground be harmed."

Soryuu nodded. "Yes, yes. Very well. Ashley!"

"Yes, Captain?"

"Prepare a ship for Sophia to come to us and change team E's plan. Also, I want an evac solution ready for all the remaining civilian crew of this ship. How many do we have aboard?"

"A few - a hundred or so?"

"We need a way to get them to safety if anything goes wrong. I want you to find a way to evac our crew if we're targeted by the enemy fleet. Okay?"

Stone sighed. "Yes, Captain."

Stone returned to her quarters within the centrifuge. She appreciated the 'gravity' the spinning cylinder gave, but that didn't stop her from angrily kicking the wall. I'm the only bloody mission specialist aboard the whole damn ship and that bitch wants me to do everything! Who does she think I am, superman?

She'd been planning to enjoy herself for three days now, the pressure and desire building up inside her, and just as she thought she might get some time to herself bloody Soryuu gave her more work to do. She lay back on her bed, snuggled up under the covers, and grabbed her tablet.

"Overwatch, get me the coordinator."

A program appeared on the display in front of her.

"Now, who knows how to install an AI?" asked Samel. He was presented with three blank faces.

"Oh, come on. You claim to be engineers?"

"In our defence, we only ever… well, made the things that were ordered," explained Nathan. "Installing AI's and operating systems was always done by someone else."

"Yeah," said Aisling, backing him up. "For some reason the rich guys like to watch their fancy new Cadrillac boot up for the first time."

"Cadillac," mumbled Philip.

Samel sighed. "Alright then, let me show you how it's done.

He pulled the manual release lever on the side of the shuttle and a loading ramp dropped down underneath the shuttle.

"All aboard!"

(Author's note: The following description uses 'up', 'down', etcetera. 'Up' and 'down' are relative in space. Here, 'down' means towards the rearmost engines and 'up' means 'the end that points towards where you're trying to go for the first half of your journey' – keeping in mind that the shuttle has to turn around halfway to decelerate. It may help to imagine the shuttle on a launch pad, with its rockets downwards.)

The shuttle, like all starships, was built like a skyscraper. The thrust from the shuttle's engines accelerate the starship forward, producing a gravity-like effect that seems to pull the occupants of the shuttle down (Author's note: towards the engines). Keeping this gravitational effect in mind, Samel, Aisling, Nathan and Philip had made the crewing area two floors tall, with ladders connecting each. These two floors were filled with power ports to supply electricity from the reactor to the 20 cryo pods that the mechanics aboard the Shikinami would install and the 20 crew members aboard would ride to Carlyle in.

Directly above the two floors were the internal computers, computer terminals and the nuclear reactor. A pilot could control the shuttle from the room above them, accessible via a small ladder.

Just below the two floors was the cheapest jump drive they could get their hands on. The Shikinami was going to replace the jump drive, anyway, as well as the engines, so the mechanics, much to Samels' surprise, had insisted upon purchasing a civilian in-atmosphere jump drive, capable of no more than x4 spatial compression.

Around the warp drive was an empty cavern – another thing that baffled Samel. He didn't know that it was to be used to store Jenni's Stryder–class titan, ready for deployment when the shuttle dropped into orbit around Carlyle.

Beside the two floors of crewing space were two of the mass drivers on hinges just off the hull of the shuttle. They'd rotate depending on the shuttle's needs – towards a celestial body, for vertical take-offs and hovering, or 'downward' towards the other two thrusters – located at the very rear of the ship just behind the titan storage space – to assist them.

Currently the shuttle was lying sideways, engines pointed toward the ground (Author's note: and thus, not directly towards the rear of the shuttle. The four mass drivers are pointed 'down' relative to Venice 3 and sideways relative to the shuttle.), ready to hover upwards and then launch – if it had an AI installed that could pilot it.

Samel lead them through the shuttle they'd built over the last three days to the computers in the highest floor, across tilted walls and through sideways staircases.

"Well, this is the computer," said Samel. "Who's got the AI?"

Philip handed him a small tube filled with a clear liquid that the Shikinami had dropped to them the previous night. Samel inserted said tube into a suitably-sized port in the computer console.

"Everyone holding on tight?"

"What?!" cried Philip.

"Nah, just messing with you." Samel flicked open a protective case to reveal a switch.

"Master computer power, hence the protective case. Gotta make sure it's not bumped."

He flipped the switch and the display flickered blue.

"There we go," Samel murmured. "She's trying to boot now… but she doesn't have anything installed, does she?" He turned to the three behind him. "Watch this," he said. "First you wait for it to load it's interface drivers - look, it's done with that - and then you say the magic words." He turned back to the computer. "Computer, boot from DNA Mass Storage drive 1."

The computer displayed; "booting from DNA drive 1. DNA Mass Storage drive 1 online. DNAMS tube detected. Reading nucleotides."

The tube bubbled softly as enzymes within the liquid began to read the DNA floating inside, literally using the DNA like a hard drive.

"And... there we go," said Samel proudly. "The DNA in the tube'll be read by the DNAMS and installed on the ol' quantum computer here."

The computer displayed, "Writing to internal DNAMS storage: 37% complete. 43% complete."

"It's bloody quick," Nathan commented. "And that's a whole AI?"

"DNA storage is bloody quick; and you guys are using an outdated AI. Hell, I'm surprised it's taking this long," replied Samel.

"Our AI is outdated?"

"Well. I mean, I'm a shuttle man, so I'm not the right person to ask. There's nothing wrong with the Overwatch system - well, aside from the lack of a vocal output module. It's old IMC tech, but it still works wonderfully. Most other AI's are built off Overwatch code. It's just… old, y'know?"

"What are people using nowadays?"

"Well, someone found a leak of the IMC's Spyglass AI, so some people are trying that out. It's pretty difficult to install, though, cos the bloody thing has the desire to serve the IMC ingrained deep within its goals cache."

The computer displayed, "Writing to internal DNAMS storage: competed. Installing AI. 10% completed. 54% completed. 99% completed. 99% completed. 99% completed. Installation completed. The computer will now reboot."

The display flickered black, then blue, then displayed the Overwatch logo - an O, with an iris in the centre of it, followed by the letters verwatch.

The computer displayed, "Overwatch AI online. Detecting that this is this Overwatch unit's first time online. Scanning for interface devices… installing drivers for interface devices… complete. You can now speak to this Overwatch unit."

"Overwatch," said Samel, "run a full scan for all connected devices. Find reactors, chemical thrusters, warp drives, everything. When you're done, install drivers for them all. Then call my communicator.

The computer displayed, "Acknowledged. Scanning… 1% complete."

"Alright!" smiled Samel. "We're done here - Overwatch'll finish automatically. So, time to start on the second shuttle, right? You said you needed three?"

Aisling groaned.

Zeta stalked the fifth man over the rooftops. She didn't know why her client was interested in him - apparently he'd purchased a carbine from someone, which wasn't that illegal - but she was interested. This man could leap from rooftop to rooftop almost as fast as she could. And he definitely wasn't a PI trailing them like she was - every time he spoke into his communicator, one of the four men on the ground would raise a hand to their own communicator and say a few words. No, this man was protecting them.

Probably from people like me, she thought.

She recognised the buildings nearby, realised that they were headed for one of the more dodgy parts of town.

Zeta frowned. This had been getting exciting. Don't tell me they're here for whores and moonshine.

She knew the lengths some men took to get away from their wives. It wasn't uncommon for wives to hire private investigators to tail their husbands if they were worried about being cheated on. Hell, I've been hired for that a few times. And it wouldn't be uncommon for cheating husbands to find some other cheating husbands online, split the cost of their own PI and tell them to look out for other PI's.

Now they were in the red-light district and despite her cloaking device Zeta still felt out of place. The fifth man was nowhere to be seen, likely hiding somewhere in the shadows, on the lookout for people like Zeta.

Her cloaking device couldn't last forever. She felt her suit being to heat up. Time for a change of plan. She ducked into a building with an XXX sign above the entrance, found a bathroom that wasn't too filthy. Removed her helmet and unzipped the front of her armour a little, exposing a hint of cleavage. When in whoreland, look like a whore.

She found the original four men in front of her, spotted the fifth lurking in a corner, cooling his cloaking device. Sauntered straight past without him even noticing.

And then the interesting part happened. The four men ducked down an alleyway, and were now moving away from the red-light district. She slunk away from the alley entrance, pounced on a man wearing a black trenchcoat, pushed him into a nook a few metres away.

"What have you got under there, darling?" she purred.

"Uhh..." the man mumbled as a stupid smile began to spread across his face.

The edge of her electric katana pushed up against his neck, indicating that she was not in fact referencing the organ in his undergarments but rather the bags he had concealed under his coat. He stopped grinning abruptly.

"Please don't hurt me!" he squeaked. "I've got some psychdust! You can take it all!"

"I appreciate the gesture, but I only need one."

She tore a bag from his grasp, sheathed her katana, ripped open the bag and scattered the contents of the flour-like powder near the entrance of the alleyway before donning her helmet once again, slinking into the shadows nearby. The fifth man's cloaking device might hide his body and heat signature – but it wouldn't let him phase through the faint cloud of psychedelics that hovered by the alleyway entrance.

A minute later, the dust was disturbed by something invisible. A cat-like grin crept across her face. She activated her own cloaking device and began to follow the phantom - its every move given away by the powdered drugs that trailed off its body.

They were headed toward the black market.

"Get her to the emergency room, now!" roared a nurse. "She's losing blood!"

"ID?" asked a medic, soaring through the Shikinami's titan hangar with a low-g stretcher in one hand.

"Samantha Roarke! Civilian field engineer, born on Brink. Blood type B!"

"What did she do?" the medic asked as the nurse helped him strap Samantha into the stretcher and attach a low-concentrate stim drip. Her eyes flew open as a surge of adrenaline flooded her veins, hormones forcing her bone marrow to double its blood production. The medic and the nurse seemed to be moving in slow motion.

A dull pain throbbed through her leg and she remembered what had happened. The stryder's connection to its calf hydraulics had been defective, and she'd applied a voltage to the wrong node of the motor drivers…

She sunk into darkness.

"Alert from the medical bay, Ms. Stone," Overwatch displayed on Ashley's screen.

"Ugh." She rolled her eyes. "What is it now?"

"Field engineer Samantha Roarke has been seriously injured in an accident and will be unable to participate in her mission to Carlyle."

Stone blinked.

"Oh, for fucks' sake."

Just as she was stepping aboard the ground to orbital shuttle in Alpha's spaceport, Sophia's communicator buzzed.

"Yeah?"

"How would you like to go to Carlyle?" asked the voice of Ashley Stone.

Sophia thought for a moment.

You left Helios to explore, not to sit on a ship in perfect safety, said the devil on her shoulder.

You could actually die at Carlyle, countered the angel.

You could 'actually die' anywhere on the frontier, smirked the devil. Now that the Militia have control, anyway. And you're not exactly inconspicuous on a ship three and a half kilometres long.

You're the true heir to Hammond Robotics! You have a duty to-

The devil scoffed. A duty? Your father practically disowned you, Soph! Why should you care about him – or anyone else, for that matter! Go and see the world!

She could hear George speaking in her ear. We've got to get you out of here.

He wanted you to be safe, Sophia! Her angel pleaded. Just... stay aboard the Shikinami! Stay safe! You won't see any more of the world if you're dead!"

What is living without the possibility of dying? Countered her devil.

And then the second angel showed up, took her seat beside the devil. I'm not agreeing with his arguments, Soph, but these people need your help.

And it's not her job to help them! Cried the second devil, who put his arm around the first angel. It's not your problem! Screw these guys! Someone else can go to Carlyle.

You wouldn't want to tarnish your hands with the sin of stealing, would you? The first angel said hopefully while trying to shrug the second devil's arm off.

It doesn't matter! Cried the first devil. She's stealing from a frontier fuel station; they're probably in kahoots with the Militia!

She's doing it for the peace of the frontier! Cried the second angel.

Fuck it, Sophia thought. I'm on the frontier here. Fuck Dad, fuck Mum, fuck Hammond fucking robotics. I'm going to go steal some fuel from Carlyle. These people are my family now, and they need my help.

"Yeah, why not," coolly replied Sophia. "Why do you need me?"

"The field engineer we had enlisted on the team had an accident with a Titan and can't go any more. We were worried that it would be just Bonerhead, till we heard you could do it."

"Well, hook me up. When do we leave?"

"In 14 hours. Team D just finished making the first of our shuttles."

"Then I'll see you soon for some kind of briefing?"

"Yeah. Thanks a million, Sophia."