At this point it seemed that ShiZhen had calmed down a bit, so to Rebecca's knocking she asked, "I-is Marco still there?"

[hr]

As Alice approached Rana, her eyes narrowed, judging her for a moment before relaxing, glad the other girl had agreed with her current course of action.

"That's insane!" Marco cried out in incredulity.  He looked over at Leonard and felt the boy's hand in his own, trembling.  "We barely made it out of the base alive, we don't have the strength to face their full force!  We need to stop for a moment and think!"  While Marco wasn't usually the voice of reason, he felt this decision would kill them all.

"What would you suggest we do?" Rana asked in a cold, condescending tone.

"Contact Humanity!" Marco cried.

"The Project was secret, but someone must have given it away," Rana continued, "Who do you think might have done so?  Can we trust that individual isn't somewhere in the upper echelons of the Empire waiting to pounce on us?  To go back to the Empire is what they're expecting us to do."

"I am conflicted," Stella interrupted.  "There is not a proper chain of command for me to defer to when obeying your decisions as none of you have been ranked yet."

"Th-that's right," Marco said, realizing something, "I'm older than her, and I'm the son...I'm the son of...one of the researchers on the project..." He hoped that would amount to something.

Rana shot an glare of rage and disdain at Marco and then fixed her gaze at Stella.  Rana's red eyes flashed for a moment as the ship wobbled suddenly, lights and monitors flickering as Stella gave a reaction as if of physical pain.

"You will obey. ME. Ship." Rana said forcefully, having used her cybernetic ability to hack into electronics to threaten the Arcana Fantasia.