In a flash of pale blue light the Viking IV appeared in the space around Pulsar J2029+45 and began its sensor sweep. The diminutive size of the craft belied its true purpose. The Apex were on the hunt.

Emma’s senses were on high alert. Almost anything could happen when you made a blind leap to a new star. She looked over the readings to make sure radiation levels were within tolerance and there were no unexpected surprises. She and Viky had a run in with a black hole last week and they barely got away in one piece.

Everything was in the green so she began her scan. With their ingress point of 40 AU from the star, the light they were receiving from it was a little over five and a half hours old. While at this range everything was tactically, “old news,” it was the safest way to avoid jumping into a Krador swarm or some other immediate calamity.

She saw from this distance that other than the pulsar the only potentially interesting thing in the system was a large terrestrial world with a dense ring encircling it. The huge plane of the rung was held in place by the gravitational pull of a series of shepherd moons. The belt was composed primarily of rock, but had significant levels of water ice as well. Astronomically Emma was sure it would be fascinating to the right science-minded individual, but she and Viky were looking for something else.

“Well Viky, you know I have been looking forward to this one all day. It’s our first Pulsar,” Emma said as she studied the steady procession of information scrolling across the screens. Examining the readouts she nodded her head slightly and said, “This could be something. Let’s go in for a closer look.”

Her mind went momentarily to her time in training when Captain Stafford first explained Standard Approach Procedure to her group of pilots. He was a bookish, overweight man that had clearly joined up on strength of intelligence over physique.

“The speed of light is your friend!” he would say regularly.

His formulation for superluminal approach speeds had become standard procedure for scouts like her.

He would explain, “Every known sensor has at its core a reliance on the speed of light. With FTL micro-jumps, you can outrun the light from a previous transit. Think about what that means! You can approach a target with perfect stealth and gather better, more specific, and more recent information with every jump closer you make. You could in theory spend hours studying them while they won’t even know you are there. When you have gotten what you came for your scout ships are able to charge your FTL drives and jump out before your targets become wise to your presence!”

In alignment with this insight, the standard operating procedure was to start a system approach at extreme range and slowly work your way in to potential targets.

Seeing no indicators of activity, she keyed the next jump point to just under 1 AU away from the planet.

Her voice filled the quiet of the cockpit as she said, “I’m going to do you one better Stafford. Watch this…”

Emma set her jump to locate her and Viky on a direct line from the planet to the star. She timed it so she would come out just as the pulse from the neutron star was passing by. If anyone was watching, the Pulsar’s beacon from the passing hotspot would saturate their sensors. The FTL flash would be completely washed out.

With a pale blue burst of light the jump hurled them deeper into the system. The large terrestrial world was now a pale red dot in the viewport. She smiled as she looked at her readouts. She had pulled it off. If anyone was there, they wouldn’t see her.

Emma keyed the sensor controls to collect data from the planet. The familiar hum of the capacitor bank energizing entered the background noise of the cockpit.

As the sensors reestablished their focus on the planet, she laughed softly to herself and asked, “Hey Viky, is it still as impressive if there are no poppers out there to see how great I am?”

Viky’s silence was her only reply.

“Oof, tough crowd,” Emma muttered as she continued keying her screens.

The background radiation of the system was making the sensors twitchy. Tweaking them she grumbled, “Ok, back to work. Maybe we’ll get lucky today and find some bugs.”

The fleet had been looking for the Krador home system for a little over six months. In that time, the insectoid raids and invasions had been all but halted as human fast response fleets intercepted and destroyed them. The other races had hailed these results a victory and for good reason. The Apex, as Humans were now being called, had saved billions of lives.

Despite the consistently one-sided conflicts always turning up in their favor, the people of Earth remained unsatisfied. Everyone understood the deployments to be purely reactive. Though the galaxy celebrated, humanity knew better. They understood the nature of predators in a way none of the others could. To truly eliminate the threat of the Krador, they needed to find and eliminate the source.

The search started with high pressure terrestrial worlds and expanded out from there. So far they had only found isolated ships or small raiding fleets. There had been no leads yet to finding what intelligence was referring to as the, “Nest.” In frustration, humanity decided it was time to take extraordinary measures to discover the headwaters of this plague species.

A global initiative was adopted to train new pilots and make new Long-Range Reconnaissance Craft (LRRC’s) by the thousands. Emma had volunteered early to join the Space Corps Scouting Force. After extensive psychological evaluations, she was cleared to begin her training.

Emma was born in Ribe in western Denmark. She had two siblings; one younger brother, Erik, and a baby sister Sophia. A little fewer than nine thousand people called her town home. When the news of the Broda massacre of Oom Three came in, hundreds flocked to the ancient church of Ribe Domkirke to pray and seek companionship with others in the sorrowful time. After strong denunciation of the Krador by the Bishop, she decided she had to do something. The next day she signed up for the Space Corps and soon had her post with Viky. The two had not spent a day apart since.

Viky was born in the Mars 2 orbital shipyard. Her siblings numbered nearly ten thousand and that number kept getting larger every day. She was one of a new class of LRRC’s capable of extended scouting missions.

To the uninformed observer the Viking IV or, “Viky,” was just one of thousands of a new production line ships. They were designed to jump into unknown conditions and conduct surveys where the most recent information available was observations from long range survey telescopes. While helpful for navigation, the level of intelligence on unexplored systems was hundreds, if not tens of thousands, of years old in most cases.

With such vague operational parameters to work from, the designers put the lives of the pilots as top priority. They constructed the ships with significant radiation shielding, a heavily reinforced structure, state of the art sensors (even for a military craft), and perhaps most importantly a fast recharge FTL capacitor. Twice in the past five months these systems helped Viky get Emma out of situations that would have been impossible in another ship.

The first close call happened when they jumped into a system bathed in lethal radiation from a nearby gamma burst. Viky shielded Emma from the lethal bombardment. Thanks to the rapid charging FTL drive they were able to get away before Emma got a significant dose. The second time they left FTL too close to a newly formed black hole. Viki’s structural integrity held and her powerful engines kept her from being pulled in while the jump capacitors recharged. The only thing Viky lacked was combat capability. According to Emma it was because Viky was, “An explorer, not a fighter.”

The Viking IV had no shields or even a point defense array. The lack of defensive capabilities was due to the ideological belief that scouts should be discouraged from direct confrontation. Backing this was the practical reality of combat systems being expensive to maintain.

All that is to say, Viky was Emma’s partner.

Most races in the galaxy considered it unusual that humans bonded so quickly with other beings. None of them objected of course, because it was this unusual trait that led the terrifying deathworlders to take up arms on behalf of the Broda. They started their war on the Krador because of this quirk.

It was still, however, considered highly curious that humans bonded with non-sentient creatures or even inanimate objects like ships. Emma was no exception to this. As far as she was concerned, Viky was one of a kind. Emma knew every system, seal, and panel on her celestial comrade. They had been on a first name basis after their first week in space together six months ago.

Finally tuning the sensors to account for the radiation in the system, the planet resolved on the viewscreen. It looked like a large pale Mars. The dense rings were beautiful to observe, but Emma knew they promised calamity to any foolhardy enough to enter the churning maelstrom of rock and ice.

She keyed her panel and again scanned for the telltale indicators of Krador activity. The best she could do at this distance was to get a general look at planet and its little system of shepherd moons guiding the ring. There were no readings that interested her from this side of the planet.

“Well,” Emma said in a speculative tone, “It seems like we’ll have to get a look from different angles around this guy to rule out any Popper presence. I’ll let you build up a solid charge again then we’ll get moving.”

She was enjoying the relaxed pace this system recon was affording. Usually she was on the clock as soon as the jump to one AU was made. At that range it only takes a little over 8 minutes for the light from a jump to reach a potential target. That meant normally she had a limited timeframe to make the remaining jumps in toward the target, collect the necessary data, and jump out. With her FTL flashes being masked by the Pulsar bursts, she could allow her capacitor reserves to fully recharge between activations. She was probably being paranoid but she wasn’t in a hurry. She only had one system to survey after this one and then it was one last jump to get back to her mothership, the Redeemer, at the end of the day.

The indicators lit up showing the capacitor was fully charged. Noting it with satisfaction, Emma said, “Let’s get a move on lazy bolts,” and keyed another jump timed with the pulsar burst.

As her eyes adjusted to the dark of space after emerging from her jump she looked over her readings and noted her position with satisfaction. Smiling, she said, “Look at that jump. Perfect timing. We are so, so good.”

She was about 20 Light Seconds (just under 6 million Kilometers or 3.7 million miles) out from the planet. She looked at her readouts and keyed her screen to optical while muttering to herself, “Let’s see what you look like Big Red.”

She was met with the image of a planet wearing a glittering tiara.

The pulsar behind her spun on its axis a little over one rotation per second. Every time it did, it sent out a beam of photons and other radiation like a galactic lighthouse. As the ray washed over the planet it would illuminate the ice in the rings. Every second the rings sparkled in dazzling and rhythmic celestial dance.

She looked in awe at the display for a moment before breaking through the soft noises of the cockpit with a sudden and boisterous, “Wow!”

After gaping at the steadily flashing image for a handful of seconds she regained her wits. Pulling her attention away from the image on her screen she resigned to get back to work. She balanced the power systems to standard thrust and diverted the remainder of the output to charge the jump drive.

Viky sped in an extremely long-range orbit around the planet. As they conducted their survey the readings showed an all too familiar lack of life signs. It was the same disappointing story almost every day for six months.

The only time she found a Krador ship it was nearly out of power. The after-incident report confirmed most of the Krador on board had already died of starvation. Emma had grown to expect the boredom and familiarity of routine in her six long months of scouting. She would return to base today like so many others with nothing to show for her time but a survey of a previously unexplored system. At least this one had a great view.

She was jolted out of the monotonous routine when an indicator started blinking. It was alerting her to a potential anomaly. Looking over the constant scroll of information, she saw something promising. There was some kind of abnormal reading just on the horizon of the planet. She decided to move in for a closer look.

Her fingers flitted over the controls in practiced efficiency. She had done this a hundred times by now in her months of space exploration. As the sensors narrowed their focus to the area in question, her screen displayed the horizon of the planet. Slowly, one of the moons came around the planet into view. She brought the optical sensors to full aperture to collect as much light as possible to increase resolution. As the image became clearer her heart began to race.

She whispered in a shaky voice of equal parts excitement and fear, “Oh Viky, I think we hit the jackpot.”

What looked like a cloudy haze filled the space surrounding one of the shepherd moons. As they got closer it resolved into countless Krador ships. At least thirty Hiveships and likely hundreds of hunters floated in formation above the moon in organized rows of waiting genocide. As she continued to stare transfixed at her discovery, she saw another Hiveship launch out of the moon.

There were thousands of smaller craft she had never seen before steaming in and or of the asteroid belt. They were creating a circuit between it and the moon. It looked like an elaborate mining operation.

The small sphere of the moon had a discolored and uneven look that made her curious. As the image got sharper, she saw distinct forms take shape on the surface. Mountains maybe? Mining pits? What was she looking at?

Realization struck her like a lightning bolt as she whispered, “That’s no moon. That’s the Nest.”

As soon as the words escaped her lips, her eyes reflexively snapped shut as the cockpit was filled with pale blue light. When she opened them again all she could see through her viewport was the underside of a Krador Hiveship.

“LORT!” she blurted in her childhood tongue as she pegged the throttle to full and commanded Viky into a tight turn.

A cloud of spines raced past her ship as the Krador attempted to skewer her tiny craft. Hiveships had the ability to unleash a devastating barrage of the wicked projectiles and this one wasn’t holding anything back. A massive wall of wicked spines erupted out of the nightmare ship as she pegged the throttle and sank into her harness.

“NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!” she screamed as she jerked and rolled the ship in an attempt to evade the spears of certain death.

One of the leading spines glanced off the top off Viky and spun off into space. Emma knew she didn’t have long until one of them hit home.

“We have to get out of here!” she said in a raised voice as she focused through the threatening hysteria.

Keying the controls for a micro-jump she turned in the first available direction away from the planet and engaged the drive. Pale blue light flashed in space and the massive barrage of Krador spines found only empty void where the Viking IV had just been.

She looked at her readings and found she was about 25 LS away from the Hiveship.

Reviewing the previous few seconds on the flight recorder her fear turned to disbelief and anger as she steamed, “What the heck!?! That popper freakshow launched enough spines to take out a capital ship!”

Gathering herself, she engaged full burn in a randomly chosen direction and sank back into her harness as the G-force of Viky’s impressive thrust attempted to crush her.

Straining against her own multiplied weight she reached out to the controls and activated the Quantum Entanglement Communicator (QE-COM). It was an energy hog for a ship this small and its use significantly slowed the FTL capacitor recharge rate. Protocol required she keep it on in combat to give the fleet real-time analysis of the situation. With engines at full power and the QE-COM active her reduced ability to quickly jump was going to make things interesting.

Captain Connelly’s face came up on the screen as the QE-COM routed her through the network. He took one look at her G-force strained face on his screen and asked, “Viking IV, Emma, are you ok? What’s happening?”

Slowed by the massive force pushing against her, she keyed the data channel to send flight and sensor logs. It would give her Heavy Cruiser home, Redeemer, real time data on her life signs and the systems on her ship.

With a crushed voice punctuated by strained breaths she got out, “I…found it…Captain. I...found…Nest! Under…attack. In…Combat. Look…data!”

Connolly looked off screen for a moment and said, “We are receiving Viking IV. Keep the data channel open. We are on our way.”

Just then a second Hiveship emerged from a pale blue flash quickly succeeded by five hunting vessels. twenty five kilometers behind her. She looked at the elapsed time from her jump and saw it was only 27 seconds ago. They were quick to find her. They were also displaying the uncanny accuracy of Krador FTL jumps.

She was sure another jump would be imminent. Hunters could recharge their FTL drives much faster than the Hiveships. There had been a section in her training about how quickly they did so, but it was not readily coming to mind as all her attention was directed toward remaining conscious.

Her breathing got more erratic and she started to black out as her heart struggled in vain to move the blood around her body.

A text flashed across her HUD from the Redeemer, “PILOT ASSISTANCE AUTHORIZED. POWERING DOWN ENGINE AND PREPARING TO JUMP. REDIRECT SHIP.”

They would find no argument from her. The engine powered down and a wave of relief washed over her as her organs stopped being pressed against her bones. She gasped in a few breaths of air and saw that Viky was already prepping for the jump. Connelly had activated remote assistance protocols for her. That meant now she had a team of specialists riding shotgun watching every system and medical reading. They could in theory fly the ship themselves if anything happened to her, but she still had override control.

She looked at her power levels and saw she was getting close to another jump. Just then she remembered a conversation she once had with her Krador technology instructor and got an idea. She quickly typed a message to the team aboard the Redeemer. Just before she initiated transit, six more pale blue flashes appeared in the space in front of her. Four hunters and two Hiveships were visible for a moment before she redirected Viki and initiated another micro-jump.

This one put her 19 LS away from her previous location. She had just a handful of seconds before they would find her again. Viky’s capacitors were almost completely drained. If she were lucky she would have maybe 22 or 23 seconds. She chose a direction and spurred the engines to get away from her current position.

The oppressive force of the thrust once more pressed her into her harness and a message from the team on the Redeemer scrolled across her HUD, “HIVESHIP-01 FTL CAPABLE IN 28 SECONDS. JUMP COOERDINATES LOADED.”

All her systems powered down to charge the jump drive and she waited. Right on schedule, two more Hunters jumped to where she last transited to. They were much closer than the first time she was pursued after a jump, but she couldn’t afford to use the engine power to get more distance.

After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, the text flashed across her HUD, “JUMP IN 5…4…3…2…1”

Emma engaged Viki’s jump drive and ended up less than 1 LS away from the first hiveship she encountered. She watched on her scanners as it turned toward her. Still too far to get a shot, it had to jump if it was going to do anything.

Pale blue light bathed her cockpit as she again found herself directly under the first Krador hiveship.

A smile creased Emma’s lips as she engaged Viki’s engines and careened around the insectoid terror craft.

Months Earlier:

Emma was exiting her Krador Technology class after talking with some of the other pilots and saw the instructor a little ways off. As she ran to catch up with him she called out, “Doctor Sprenger! Doctor Sprenger, a moment please?”

Turning to her, the older gentleman raised bushy eyebrows and responded, “Yes, um, Miss Nielsen isn’t it? What can I do for you?”

Emma caught up to him and catching her breath asked, “I was curious about something you mentioned in class today. When you said the Krador were irresponsible in their choice of weaponry, what exactly did you mean?”

They began walking together after she caught up to him and he explained, “Ah, well, you see the Krador fire those large spikes everywhere, you see?”

Emma looked at him with an expression that showed she was waiting for the point and said, “Yes, they can do quite a lot of damage.”

Sprenger turned his head toward as he walked her and said, “It’s damned irresponsible! In space those things will just keep going and going! Who knows where they will end up in a few thousand years or so.”

Emma continued walking next to him in silence for a moment and finally said, “But, space is really, really big. Like, absolutely huge, you know? What are the chances of one of those spikes ever coming in contact with another ship, or anything really, ever?”

The elderly man stopped and looked up and into the distance speculatively for a moment and then said, “Well, I suppose statistically you are correct. It’s just…”

Emma waited for him to speak for a moment and then prodded, “Yes?”

He snapped his eyes back to looking at her and with a mildly disapproving look said, “It’s just the principle of the thing, you know?”

The conversation took a turn to other subjects after that and once they had walked a little farther Emma excused herself and went to her next class.

Present:

“It looks like he was right after all,” Emma muttered as she circled around the Krador hiveship.

Looking at the ship attempting to orient itself toward her to fire another volley of spines, Emma said, “I think we want to be on this side, don’t you Viky?”

Just then out of the void a cloud of spines careened into the back of the giant ship. Decompressions and eruptions exploded out as it shuddered under the onslaught. The engines were quickly reduced to scrap and the hulk began a slow spiraling fall through the void. A few moments later cracks appeared in the hull. The crippled vessel broke apart releasing streams of Krador in a fireless explosion as the high atmospheric pressure inside forced its way out.

With help from the crew on the Redeemer, Emma had maneuvered the Krador ship into the line of fire of its own previously launched projectiles.

“Looks like they couldn’t handle the pressure,” Emma said through a smile.

A list of jump coordinates and jump times began filling her screen. It was a series of micro-jumps directing her away from the planet toward the pulsar. She was slightly unnerved at the header that read, “YOU ARE ORDERED BY CAPTAIN CONNOLLY TO FOLLOW THIS JUMP PATH AND TIMING.”

It took almost half a minute to recharge the jump drive to begin the ordered series of jumps assigned to her. Just before she began the jump sequence, hundreds of ships filled the space around here. It was the entire armada of Krador ships from around the Nest. It was then she realized what destroying the Hiveship had done. She had kicked the proverbial beehive. The Krador were angry. They wanted her dead.

She felt pure unadulterated terror. Her eyes went wide for two heartbeats before they were flooded with pale blue light as Viky whisked her away.

The pulsing of the star flashed its light into the cockpit with the regularity of an atomic clock as her eyes adjusted to space again.

She grumbled, “They really should have designed an auto dimming system or something in these helmets.”

Once she got her bearings with the instruments she noted with disapproval that the timing of her jump was not coordinated to the pulses of the star. That meant the Krador behind her would know exactly where she jumped to in a few seconds. It was also a very short jump, which meant she would most likely have to evade her pursuers until the next one. Someone aboard the Redeemer was going to get a piece of her mind when she got back.

Ten seconds before the next jump, twenty Hunters jumped into her space. They would be unable to reach her before her next jump, but just barely.

The third transit happened to fall into one of the pulses from the star and had a relatively long wait. The capacitor hummed as it charged and Emma got her first moment to examine the schedule of jumps ahead of her.

“Amateurs!” she seethed, “With this jump schedule I am a dead woman! Look at this Viky. They want me to jump to 2 AU with micro jumps the whole way, giving the poppers time to trace my jumps and intercept me! Who did they have putting this together? A trained chicken? I could wait a little longer and make the jump all the way there from where we are now!”

Just then the indicator flashed showing it was almost time for the next jump.

She considered disregarding the foolish jump plan. It was recklessly unsafe and against everything she was taught by her instructors. She decided stupid orders were not something she wanted to risk her life over. They could Court-Martial her, but at least she would be alive.

She reached out to her panel to override the jump plan and her eyes fell on the text at the top, “YOU ARE ORDERED BY CAPTAIN CONNOLLY TO FOLLOW THIS JUMP PATH AND TIMING.”

Her hand paused above the override.

She slowly drew her hand back and with a sigh said, “But, orders are orders, right Viky? It’s what we signed up for I suppose. Connelly is a good man. I should trust him. Maybe he knows what he is doing.”

Her next two jumps went off without incident. The Krador began getting closer and closer in their pursuit after that. She only had three now, only three until this idiotic schedule was done. Again, they weren’t smart enough to time it with the pulses so her position was exposed.

After the second to last jump what she found made her gasp. Three Krador hunters were waiting for her. Just like she feared, they extrapolated her transit destination from the previous jumps and got ahead of her.

She pitched Viky to the left and engaged half thrust. The capacitor was running low. She had to divert more power away from the engines to make sure there would be enough for the last jump.

The Hunters fired spike after murderous spike at her. Their shots were getting closer. She knew it was only a matter of time before one of them got lucky and put one through her Cockpit.

A spine glanced off the port side of the craft and knocked Emma to the side. She was rattled by the impact and lost her focus. As she was reorienting herself, the ship was slammed violently downward and everything went black.

The sound of alarms was the first thing she perceived as consciousness slowly pulled her back into the waking world. The noises seemed as if they were approaching her from a great distance and slowly getting louder. Her ears were ringing. Nothing was making sense. Opening her eyes, she saw the cockpit was filled with smoke from a small electrical fire in the left control panel.

She reached behind her and took the fire extinguisher. Turning it on the smoldering panel she doused the flames. Out the window the stars circled lazily. She realized then that she was in freefall. That meant the engine was not firing. If the engine was not active then…

The sickening realization that Viky had taken a direct hit finally resolved in her addled mind.

A fresh dose of adrenaline surged through her and she started taking stock of her readouts. The engine was offline. The QE-COM had been damaged as well. Neither of these troubled her as much as what she saw next. The power core had been damaged and was losing stability. Viky and Emma were in serious trouble.

Thoughts raced through Emma’s mind as Viky gently spun on an aimless course through space. Through the cockpit glass short windows of time to allowed Emma to see the three hunters as the crippled scout tumbled through space. One of them broke off from the others and headed toward her. It was getting closer but strangely it was not firing.

“Why aren’t they shooting at us? Why aren’t they finishing us off?” Emma asked into her helmet as she processed what she was seeing.

After a moment she understood. They wanted to eat her.

A primal fear dormant in the human psyche for centuries erupted into vivid hues as the thought of becoming dinner for a dozen or so space bugs threatened to eclipse her rational mind. It was answered by an equally ancient response to that demanded one thing and one thing only: RUN!

Forcing her way past these emotions she reached for something to focus on. The mission, her mind could focus on that. She leaned forward to get a better look at the displays through the smoke.

How long had she been out she wondered? Was it possible to make the last jump on schedule? Was Viky even able to make a jump? How long did she have before the core overloaded?

She quickly discovered she had only been out about 10-15 seconds. She still had 25 left to make the final jump. The FTL drive was miraculously still operational. Checking the capacitor, she found a major problem. It needed more time to charge than she had before the jump had to be made. The damaged power core was not providing enough energy.

She looked up and saw the Krador Hunter was almost on top of them.

Engaging the core safety override, she boosted the power output to the capacitor and said, “Come on girl, don’t let me down now after all we’ve been through.”

The extra strain on the already unstable power system triggered multiple panels to begin flashing, “CORE BREACH IMMINENT!”

The capacitor was almost ready. Just a few more seconds until the jump.

Krador docking claws reached toward Viky. As the cruel appendage was closing around her the attitude thrusters fired. Viky stabilized, pointed toward the pulsar, and disappeared into a flash of FTL light.

As soon as Vicky emerged from her jump Emma triggered the eject. With a rush of atmosphere and smoke she was blown into space. Using the She suit thrusters to orient herself, she turned to see her companion. Viky was missing a wing and a Krador spike was pierced completely through her. With so much damage it was a miracle Viky had made the last jump.

In microgravity your tears don’t fall from your eyes. In Emma’s case this was a mercy.

The heartbreaking image of her crippled ship blurred as she said, “Goodbye my friend. Thank you for not giving up on me.”

With that, Viky’s core ruptured and her old friend showered her in one final flash of light.

Emma hung limply in the deep void for a few seconds before a voice over her suit com startled her. It was Fleet Admiral Shoji’s voice.

Quietly he said, “Damned fine work Lieutenant. We thought we lost you there. Your work here is done. We will send someone to pick you up shortly but in the meantime, enjoy the show.”

She squeezed the tears from her eyes shook her head to clear the tears out of her eyes. Keying the thrusters to spin around, what she saw made everything from the last few minutes make sense.

The First Fleet was arrayed in battle formation in front of her. Each rhythmic burst of light from the star brought a new capital ship to join the massive formation.

She turned and saw five pale blue FTL transits as four Hunters and a Hive ship jumped to where they thought they would find Emma. Timed to the Pulsar, they each exploded as they were caught completely unaware by FTL Torpedoes.

With the destruction of the first wave masked by the star, none of the Krador ships had any indication they were jumping into an ambush. The remainder of the enraged Krador armada arrived over the next eight minutes. The coordinated First Fleet torpedo barrage caught each in shattering white flashes of kinetic impact as the torpedoes ripped them apart.

Emma’s face was illuminated by the destruction of the last ship as it was obliterated in a brilliant white explosion before being plunged into relative darkness. It struck her how peaceful everything had become again so soon after such an apocalyptic display. She activated the thrusters and fully turned to look at the fleet. As she did so, the one second pulses of light from the star soon reestablished the steady rhythm of the system.

In eight minutes more Krador were destroyed than in the entirety of the war up to that point.

In eight hours Marines had been deployed to capture the Nest.

In eight days the Krador War was over.

Epilogue:

First Lieutenant Emma Nielsen was the only pilot ever credited with the destruction of a capital ship while piloting an LRRC-Mk.1 Scout. Her use of superluminal combat tactics made its way into all future textbooks on the subject.

In times of peace, the distinctive ring system became a popular destination for tourist cruises due to its amazing natural beauty. As its discoverer, and against her protestations, the system drew its official name from Lieutenant Nielsen.

History would remember ‘The Battle of the Emma’s Crown’ as the first military use of a pulsar to hide the FTL ingress of a ship. This tactic was soon taught in the academy to all aspiring ship commanders. It was from that point on referred to as the Nielsen Maneuver.

For Emma’s part, she always remembered how her faithful little ship never failed to keep her safe. As a bona fide war hero, she was paraded around the galaxy to tell of her exploits to mesmerized crowds.

She soon became quite accomplished as a public speaker, but longed to go back to the quiet of the cockpit. She was granted this after two short months and rarely spoke of her exploits again.

In the rare times she did give in to the requests for stories, she talked about her true friend Viky, and how the ship gave everything she had to save Emma that day. The obvious sense of loss it invoked in the Lieutenant, and the pride she displayed in her old companion, always graced the face of anyone who listened with a smile and a tear.