Sam desperately worked to decipher more of the craft's strange alien computer language, even as the enemy vessel fired again. Her small fighter automatically fired its attitude thrusters, kicking its nose angle up and to the right before activating its overdrive. The g-forces shoved Sam backward into the pilot's seat and she fought blackout with every bit of strength she could muster. Through the confusion, the fighter's computer declared dire warnings in a language she could not hope to understand.

[i]"Great,"[/i] Sam grumbled internally. [i]"Even more party crashers."[/i]

Her laptop automatically switched windows to display new information. Her impromptu diagnostic program had identified more of the ship's systems; this time, describing a type of energy field projector which promised unfathomable speeds if engaged. With her shields failing and demands for surrender inbound, she found little other choice than to highlight the code and click 'enter'.

[center] [i]Undisclosed Location, Two Weeks Prior...[/i] [/center]

Life had not offered Samantha Cole the same options as others. From an early age, she'd been granted access to a level of critical thinking and problem solving others could only envy. But that talent had come with a price, as all things did. This was how she found herself on the streets of New York, selling her skills to anyone who would pay. At least she had been able to set up shop in this abandoned warehouse. Here, she could proceed with her experiments without interruption, though also unaided.

That thought would have been less prominent in her mind, had she not just escaped from the clutches of a mob boss. Instead, it turned the corners of her mouth downward into a sullen scowl. Sam dropped the circuit board on her workbench and gently, with the deliberate care of someone trying very hard not to throw things, replaced her soldering iron into its ESD-safe cradle. The board was, of course, ruined. She'd overheated the MCU and damaged several of the traces connecting it to the backing.

[i]"Another trip to the scrapyard,"[/i] she sighed.

This project had been foremost on her mind since her capture by Don Antonio Mantovani, the head of the local mafia. It was under his captivity that Sam had done some of her best work, though motivated by fear of death...or worse. She had to credit him with that much: He had gotten her to produce results. That thought lingered in her mind for a moment as she went back to the primary assembly. How could she praise her enemy?

[i]"Sun Tzu did..."[/i] said the voice of her subconscious. She answered with a crude remark about it having been four millennia since his opinion mattered and went back to the controls. Without that new board, she would have to monitor the output of the device and adjust the controls manually, but it was still possible to get to a tangible result. However, just as she started up the test run, the lights in the facility died.

"Shit." Sam whispered, after the initial moment of indecision, brought on by surprise, faded. She slammed her laptop shut, pulled its wires free of its ports, and stuffed it into her messenger bag, then swept the device and its associated components into a beaten-up duffel bag. There was no way he could have followed her here, and yet...

Sam hit the switch on an old citizens' band radio she'd scrounged months ago. With its modifications, the device was set to broadcast a primary jamming signal to the local cell towers, by way of a back door into their computer systems. The signal propagated outward, using the full strength of every tower in the network, jamming all the local law enforcement bands with elevator music. There was no way they'd get her into a cage again.

She hiked up her hood around her head and clicked a button near the neckline. An array of infrared LEDs lining the outside edge of the hood flooded the area in front of her with IR light; invisible to the human eye, but quite useful to the LCD screen she used to navigate the darkness. Within seconds, she was out the back door and on her way through the alley. The thought of having to burn yet another base of operations hung heavy on her mind, but there was no choice: She had to remain free. Once outside the given range of her cell phone, a small relay opened inside the power system at the warehouse, allowing a thin piece of foil to bridge the gaps of the main power terminal for the entire facility. The foil, carefully calibrated to vaporize on contact, allowed for the generation of a stable plasma arc, sparking a fire which would tear through the building in minutes.

"Not again," she grated through clenched teeth.

[center] [i]Present Day, Faiza System, 10:18am...[/i] [/center]

Sam came to with the sensation of slamming against a wall. Upon a brief examination of her surroundings, she determined that she was still securely fastened into the pilot's seat of the small fighter craft she'd stolen from her most recent would-be captors. Her laptop, still jury-rigged to the ship's computer, displayed warnings in several windows while the automated system blared out more alien gibberish. The smell of smoke brought new worries to mind, even as the blue-and-green marble of an alien world spiraled ever closer to her main viewscreen.

"Guess it worked," she murmured, flinching as the navigational control panel exploded in a shower of sparks. She blinked twice and added: "Emphasis on the past-tense..."

"Kanta," the computer announced nonchalantly. "Kanta, Orai."

"Yeah, I [i]get[/i] it!" she shouted at the computer. "Now I know how to say 'we're screwed' in [i]two[/i] languages!"

She strained against the five-point harness to reach her laptop, managing only a two-finger grip. Apparently, whatever FTL drive this ship possessed had jostled every loose component in the cabin as a result of its use. She managed to get it back into her lap after a brief struggle and began sifting through the data, desperately trying to determine which system would avoid a catastrophic crash. She managed to narrow it down to four choices before blacking out from the acceleration caused by the planet's gravity.

To the inhabitants of Fazia, it could have been just another meteorite -perhaps a bit bigger than the norm, but nothing to panic over. Sam's craft left a plume of superheated atmospheric gasses behind it as it plunged toward the surface; its ultimate destination a heavily wooded area, far from anything one might consider "civilization".