Author's note: Jaggerjack's name is supposed to be a reference. I now realise that I screwed up the spelling rather badly and the reference is likely unnoticable. So I tried to use a name meaningful to his appearance and/or personality, while in actual fact I just used something stupidly long and convoluted and could have just gone for jack instead. Sue me.

He will remain "Jaggerjack" for the duration of SecondConquest as a name change at this point would be confusing.

The moment Zeta had left the bar she'd made a beeline for the bouncer and retrieved her helmet.

"Plus," she muttered to her AI, "open a comms channel to Snake."

"Channel opened." She heard a ringtone in her earpiece as she pulled on her outer armour, then,

"What is it now, Zeta?"

"Snake, it's me. Hey, you remember that time I saved your life?"

She couldn't see him, but she knew he'd be rolling his eyes or facepalming.

"Ugh. Yes, I do remember that. What do you want me to do this time? Fix your armour? Get someone to sew your arm back on? Smuggle some amped weaponry in-"

"No, none of that. I need... look, I met this guy at the Black Market bar, and-"

"Wait. What?"

"It was a job, okay? Look -"

"A job, huh?" He'd be grinning now.

"Yes! A job! He thinks I'm a comms probe dealer and wants to buy three unmarked comms probes! So I need to look like I'm a comms probe dealer! Help me out here!"

"Well, that's easy enough. When do you need them? Tuesday? Monday?"

"How does six o'clock sound?"

There was a pause.

"Are you out of your fucking mind?!" he screamed.

"I'm sorry..."

"Ooooh boy," he muttered. "This is the last time I do anything for you. Do you know how hard it is to find the damn things, unmarked?"

"Well, he only wanted three unmarked probes. So get me three unmarked probes, and three normal probes. I'm only selling three, the others are to make me look the part."

"That makes it a tad easier, I guess. But, Zeta..."

"Yeah?"

"Next time I'm lying there, bleeding, leave me to die instead of putting me in a life debt, okay?"

"If you get me the probes by six, I'll save your life a second time for free. No debts at all."

"Deal. You owe me."

"Thanks, Snake."

Two short, muscular, pale skinned men and one equally short, muscular and pale skinned woman made their way through the markets of Venice 3 in absolute awe.

"This is incredible," breathed Aisling. "Brink is nothing like this…"

Venice 3 completely contrasted Brink. For these three, home was Brink, a low sprawling metropolis of cheap reactor iron lit by halogen lights, sparks from welding torches, and the occasional ray of sunlight from the distant Solbrink. Here, things weren't so much made but sold to the masses; brought in and sent out in a whirl of merchandise. Signs of every colour drew the eye in every direction, advertising "Jim's kevlar cloaks!" and "Cheap nuclear fuel!". The vivid blue horizon turned to blackest space much quicker than brink - the atmosphere was thinner here - a black that the close Solvenice pierced with a sharp ease.

Danniek moved stealthily over the rooftops, scanning for potential threats, dropping down to ground level if necessary, always behind the three.

Nothing dangerous so far.

What annoyed him most was how his work was going unnoticed. The better he stalked and observed, the less likely she'd realise he was there supporting her.

Menelaus waited inside the arrivals lounge of Alpha spaceport. He'd seen the warp signatures; recognised the Retaliator and her company in the sky and come to the spaceport as soon as possible.

The damage: he didn't know. It didn't look disastrous, but neither did it look good. Panels of armour drifted between the starships, bent and buckled from the force of the railgun fire it had sustained. Large swathes of armour had lines of molten metal drawn upon them, as if the sword of a demon had slashed through them -

Field Commander Marcus Graves rounded a corner, saw Menelaus.

"Menelaus," he smiled. "How are you?"

"Good, Sir!"

"How is the Senate?"

Menelaus's smile dropped. "Not fantastic, Sir. They're not convinced that the IMC is still a problem and are considering dropping the war taxes."

"Oh. That would be a problem."

"Indeed," agreed Menelaus. "I'm doing my best to counter them, though."

"We need to make sure the IMC can't hurt us anymore," said Graves. "They're already a thorn in our side. If we don't get rid of them now we may never have peace on the frontier."

More of the Retaliator's crew had come around the corner now, direct from the decontamination pods.

"Well," said Menelaus, "At least the city is going alright. Happiness is up 30%, the city is peaceful, everyone is paying for their war taxes - well, for now, at least - hey, how did the battle go?"

"We took some damage but nothing too serious. We haven't lost any cruisers or battleships, so that's something. But we're going to have to do a lot of repairs, and replace a lot of frigates."

"I'll see what I can do about that, Sir. We can do some basic repairs here and then send them to Kodai. That would be cheapest."

"Very well -" started Graves, before being interrupted by a woman tapping his shoulder. "Yes, Sarah?"

The woman - Sarah, huh? - thought Menelaus, was tall by most standards but just below average for a Venician. She wore the uniform of the Retaliator -

"Bish and I are off to the sandtrap for dinner," Sarah said. "We'll be at MCOR command tomorrow morning, okay?"

"Very well Sarah. I'll see you then." Graves turned back to Menelaus. "So, anyway…"

"Sarah? Sarah!"

Bish turned, scanning the arrivals lounge for Sarah.

Where on venice 3 has she gone?

He pulled his communicator out of his pocket. "Plus, are you there?"

"Affirmative, Bish. What can I do for you?"

"I want to find Sarah -" a picture of Sarah appeared on his communicator's screen - "yeah, that's her. Find me the spaceport access point - yeah, that's the one. Run an injection on it. How'd it go?"

"Injection successful."

"Good. Find me the passwords table." His eyes quickly scanned the information displayed on the screen. "Now run a SHA-16 crack on it, with hash table 43."

"Hash crack attempt in progress…

…

…

…

Completed."

Bish's eyes flicked over the results table once more. "There, that's the Admin password - oh, for fuck's sake. 'Sec0ndConkw3st'. I could have guessed that. Okay, log into the Admin terminal with username 'Bishisaretard' and password 'Sec0ndConkw3st'."

"Login successful."

"Y'know, it's ironic that that's their admin username. Anyway, dodge the booby traps they've got set up and get me the camera feeds of the spaceport and a Spectre."

"Success. Streaming camera feeds now."

"Analyse the feeds for someone matching Sarah's picture."

"Three matches found."

"Camera designations?"

"4_Baggage_Claim_c3, 4_Baggage_Claim_c8, 4_Baggage_Claim_c9."

"Baggage claim 4, huh? Alright, thanks plus. Send the Spectre over to baggage claim 4, okay?"

"Sending Spectre."

Bish hit the sleep button on his communicator and began making his way to Baggage Claim 4 to find that it was crowded with people. He activated his communicator again.

"Where was she again?"

"Right behind you, silly," laughed Sarah. "Hey, Bish. How'd you like the drop?"

He shuddered with memory, raised an eyebrow. "I can't belive you enjoy that kind of stuff."

"I know, it's fun, right?" she grinned, eyes sparkling.

"Well…"

"Anyway, I've got us a booking at the Sandtrap for 7 tonight. Sound good?"

He sighed. "Better than another ride in a shuttle…"

"Aww, ya big wuss."

Bish rolled his eyes, turned to see her smiling at him, gazed into her brown eyes with curiosity and admiration and wonder...

His phone vibrated.

"What is it?"

"Your spectre is here," said Plus.

"Oh, right. Uhh, tell it to get our bags." He turned back to Sarah. "So, where do you want to go beforehand?

"Left or right?" asked Nathan.

They'd left one of the market squares and walked down what had seemed to be some sort of housing district, past houses of golden clay, reddish-silver nuclear iron and shining aluminium. Clothes hung limp from the clotheslines, moisture evaporating from the fabric with ease in the thin atmosphere while Solvenice began its descent below the horizon. The markets would begin to close soon - the temperature would drop from scorching hot to shiveringly cold the moment Solvenice's glow ceased.

"We've got about an hour before we need to get back to Samel's," mused Nathan. "So, we've got 30 minutes to take a look around here."

"I know, I know."

Aisling surveyed the roads. The road left seemed to lead through more houses, while the right looked as if it headed toward a supermarket of sorts, and - was that a bar?

"Let's go right," chose Aisling.

"We've got a problem," Ashley Stone muttered to herself from the comfort of her bunk. "We're going to have to hack into Kodai's ships somehow. And we still don't know anything about the type of AI they use… Overwatch, open a comms channel to team A."

Her tablet displayed; "channel opening."

"Oi, team A," said Stone. "Anyone there?"

"Copy, Stone," replied team A's pilot Misha.

"I need you and your team to find me the best hacker on Venice, kidnap them, and bring them to me."

"We'll do our best, Mission Specialist. Misha out."

The bar was, on closer inspection, a restaurant named "The Sandtrap". Eight of the hovering vehicles they'd seen earlier sat parked in the area in front, but there was room for many more. Aisling peered through the windows, saw the tables arranged around some sort of volcano-shaped feature in the centre of the restaurant. Three people sat on barstools in front of the bar, each drinking some kind of brown liquid from tall glass cups.

"The Sandtrap," said Aisling, looking up at the bar. "Seems interesting enough."

"We don't even have any credits," mumbled Philip.

"Doesn't mean we can't take a look inside," countered Nathan. "C'mon!"

(Author's note: I'm going to try and write this scene without adding any more named characters; wish me luck!)

He pushed open the Sandtrap's front door.

"Welcome to the Sandtrap!" called the bartender. One of the people on the barstools turned to look at Nathan, Aisling and Philip. "What can we do for you?"

"Nothing much, sorry," apologised Nathan. "We're just looking around town."

The bartender smiled. "Well, 'Sandtrap's the place to be on a Saturday evening. Good food, good beer," - the three people on the barstools each raised their glasses at the mention of their poison - "good company - and we don't charge too much, either. Come on down, okay?"

"We'll see what we can do," laughed Aisling. "Is there a menu?"

"Absolutely," said the bartender. "See the black thing on the wall?"

"Yeah?"

"Slap your communicator on that; you should see the menu pop up on the screen."

"Oh, wow, thanks!"

"No problem. I see you guys are out of town, huh?"

"Yeah, you could say that."

"Well, Venice 3's a nice place. For now." The bartender sighed. "It could be a lot better."

"How so?" asked Aisling.

"Well, I should be happy. The Senate's trying to push for less war taxes but the Militia keep putting the pressure on. It's that bastard Styx Menelaus." He spat the name.

"Eh-?"

"Well, y'know how the Militia want the IMC off outpost 207?"

"Yeah..?"

"Well, they need money to repair their ships and to buy tritium with. So, where do you think the money comes from? The taxpayer. How do you think they get the taxpayer to cough up the money? With their inside man Menelaus, who somehow managed to push a war taxes bill past the rest of the Senate under their noses. How do you think he enforces the damn bill? His pals in the Militia own all the biggest starships and wield the biggest guns on the planet, bar the orbital railgun defences." The bartender laughed. "But we'll be fine once the Senate cancels the bill. It's about damn time, too."

"So nobody likes the Militia?"

"Well, some of us do. Mostly the people who lost stuff from them. Like Styx Menelaus. The rest of us? They can stay on outpost 207, as long as they don't start screwing with us again. That's all I care about."

"Oh."

Aisling's communicator vibrated.

"Yeah, what is it?"

"It's Jaggerjack. We've got the fuel and oxidiser back at Samel's. Come on back as soon as possible. Jaggerjack out."

She turned to Nathan.

"Damn, we have to go."

"Hopefully we'll see you around sometime soon!" called the Bartender.