The K-21 was of the Grimwold class destroyer from the Alliance yards at Biscane. Under optimal conditions it had a crew of 120 spacers plus officers ands supernumeraries. Sabatine had to handle it with a prize crew of twenty. It had taken the entire rigging crew of the Vickie nearly two days to put the battered rigging into something of a workable condition. Fortunately the rig had been mostly down when the plasma cannons had hammered the vessel, but there had still been half a dozen masts that were welded to the hull, and everything from A through D had been sheared away. The partial jury rig they had assembled would have made their sailing instructors in the academy physically sick. The roll alone meant they had to re-enter sidereal space every twelve hours to perform a manual correction and recalculation. They made three stops on the voyage to Herculaneum. Each time the Vickie was waiting for them, much handier with its full sails and larger crew. Each time Sabatine transmitted a quick report of their progress. It made for dismal reading about it didn't quite do justice to the reality of being woken every hour or so to deal with some new problem with the rig, or to help the three techs assigned to the power room nurse the plant along. It was one of those thankless jobs that seemed to make up the bulk of RCN life. It didn't win any glory, nor would it garner any renown. The best Sabatine could hope for was that an admiral reading the report would grunt with approval before moving on to his next task. In the spacer's bars however, the tale of grueling endurance would be told and exaggerated. Spacers would say things like, that bitch never gave us a moment's rest, or everytime we turned around there she was. It would sound like complaints, but there would be an undertone of respect. Spacefaring life, and the RCN in particular, was too dangerous a place for officers to survive on rank alone. You needed your crew to respect you, and the only way to do that was to be in the same hard places they were.

“Transition,” Sabatine announced and immediately felt her teeth bore up into her brain as they dropped back into real space. She was sitting alone on the bridge of K-21, the rest of the prize crew either on the hull or in the engine room. The only other person onboard who could operate the astrogation computer was Shapti, an able spacer who was striking for a sailing master’s warrant, but she was grabbing a few hours sleep in the captains cabin across the corridor. Opinions varied on whether sleeping through a transition made it better or worse, but if you got tired enough your body would make that decision for you.

“K-21 break, break, break!” Kaiden’s voice broke into the comm circuit. Sabatine sat up feeling like she had been doused in cold water. She nosed the ship sharply downwards towards the ecliptic, high drive motors flairing to life with a buzz.

“Vickie this is K-2…” she began, trying to puzzle out what was going on from the PPI. Everything looked normal. The RCS Hamptor, an aging destroyer was on picket just outside the minefield and. There were missile tracks streaking between the Hamptor an the Vickie.

“Herculaneum is in the hands of the Alliance. Disengage and run for point Delta 3 Seven.”

Nothing made sense. How could a major fleet base be in the hands of the Alliance? How had they captured the Hamptor? Why was Kaiden still here if the base was in hostile hands? The last point clicked into place. He had waited for her, slugging it out with the destroyer to warn her before she drifted into range of the minefield.

“AFS K-21, engage Cinnibar vessel Victory at once,” her comm panel blurted. Sabatine stared at it for a moment. Of course the Alliance didn’t know that K-21 had been captured. They would figure that out in a few moments though, once they realized she wasn’t responding to their coded IFF.

“Acknowledged control,” she responded, trying to mimic the nasal Plesance accent she associated with the Alliance. There was no way she could fight the ship with only twenty spacers aboard. The only option was to run as Kaiden had ordered. Shapti burst through the door looking alarmed. Sabatine made a quick gesture to one of the jump seats, her other hand bringing up an attack board.

“Signal the Vickie on microwave and acknowledge,” she snapped, unable to split her attention to a third task while she handled maneuver and the attack board, modifying the preset attack plan as quickly as she was able. The Hamptor was already closing on the Vickie, its four tubes launching another salvo. It was going to make it very difficult for Kaiden to safely transition.

“Launching one,” Sabatine announced with what she hoped was appropriate sangfor. The ship jolted as super heated steam shoved the missiles out of their tubes and clear of the hull a moment before their high drives ignited, streaking them off down range as blue lines on Sabatine’s attack board. 

“Launching two.”

The comms board crackled angrily to life. Shapti should have caught the comms but having no idea what was going on simply let it pass through to Sabatine with an alarmed look.

“K-21 what the hell are you playing at those missiles…” she dumped the link, too busy to give it any thought. As the commander of the Hamptor correctly noted, the missiles she had fired were not aimed at the Vickie. They were aimed at the point Sabatine calculated the Hamptor would be at when the missiles arrived, a staggered area between the hostile destroyer and the Cinnabar corvette. Three were aimed slightly ahead, another aimed slightly behind in case the destroyer opted to brake. She pulled up the astrogation display and cut the high drives, allowing the charge on the ship to zero out. There was no time to actually plot a course anywhere, besides off the top of her head she had no idea where Delta-3-7 might be.

“Launching, three…. Four.” Sabatine reported mechanically. There was the dull rumble of the missle tracks as the ship began to crank fresh ordnance into the four missile tubes. She dumped the attack board. She wasn’t going to wait around for the minute and a half it would take for the next salvo to be ready.

“Vickie, K-21 withdrawing as ordered,” she broadcast and punched the insertion button with her thumb. The destroyer shuddered back into the safety of the matrix, leaving Sabatine drenched in cold sweat with her heart pounding in her throat.