Taking the small courier out was just routine enough that I was able to let my mind check its specs in their entirety and what I found surprised me a great deal. From the outside, it had looked like a courier but from the inside, things were a little different. My first impression, that it was based on a frigate, had been more accurate than I had imagined, it wasn’t just based on one, it could go into service as a frigate right this instant. Why, by the void, did a presumably civilian courier carry antimatter-torpedos?!

Shaking off my wonder, I engaged the autopilot, letting it take us into space. I noticed that our course was deceptively innocent, at face value, we were making a least-time approach to a jump-vector carrying us out of the system but looking at it from a tactical perspective, it just happened that we were moving against the rotation of the planet, at an angle that would slip right between two of the defensive platforms, while we were on the opposite side of the planet, relative to the main orbital base. I believe in coincidences, they happen every day, but if that was one, I was a federation marine.

“You promised me that you’d answer my questions. Right now, I’m not even sure where to begin asking questions, so why don’t you explain what is going on?” I asked, looking over to Airah, my headware making sure I wasn’t missing anything regarding flight-operation.

“Where to begin. Good question. I think I’ll try to explain what happened tonight before giving you background. But before i do that, I’ll have to apologize again. You were dragged into this because of me, because you are my friend. For that, I am sorry.” she paused, letting out a sigh.

“Saying sorry feels inadequate and you might hate me once I’m done with my explanation, but it’s the only thing I can do.” she shook her head and I noticed that she truly sounded broken up.

“Well, what happened tonight was, in a way, purely bad luck. When you told me about the events in F-347, I realised what it meant, especially with the interview you went through. You told me that another pilot told you about a conspiracy-theory regarding the Void-Guard, but I can tell you, the Guard is quite real. And the destroyed craft in F-347 was one of their scouts, which was either destroyed by Federation Security or the Tellurians, I don’t know which.” she began her explanation, leaving me a bit more confused than I had been before.

“So you are a spy of that Void Guard?” I asked, my voice grim. Had I been duped by a spy the whole time? The idea made me angry but it didn’t quite fit with what I thought I knew about Airah. We had lived together for four years, had I really been that blind? Or maybe blinded by my crush on her?

“No, I’m not a spy. At least not in my mind. You see, both my parents are part of the Void Guard but I never joined. When it became obvious that I was interested in ship-handling and space-warcraft, my parents let me make my own decision, either I could join the Guard, I could set myself up as an independent operator or I could go to Starfleet Academy. I knew about the Guard, with both my parents being part of it, I’d seen their operations for all my life. I had a reasonably good idea what it would mean to try setting myself up as independent but Starfleet? I had heard stories about them and about the War. But I had no idea what it actually meant. So I asked my parents to get me an airtight identity so I could apply to Starfleet-Academy.” she explained, rambling a bit but I let her talk. She sounded sincere, but then, I had thought I knew her.

“Starfleet Academy wasn’t quite what I had expected. From the stories, the Starfleet sounded like an organisation of excellent officers, shackled by incompetent political oversight and hampered by bureaucracy. What I found where prospective officers, all learning and yearning to be part of something greater. The Void Guard’s creed is to be the defenders of humanity in the void, unknown, unsung heroes who give their life so others don’t have to.” Airah paused for a moment, looking over to me and I noticed a sad look in her eyes.

“I thought i would be able to rise in the ranks of the Starfleet, maybe convince a few like-minded, young officers who had a bright future to strengthen the fleet from within. Make a network that, if things ever get desperate, those officers could help add the Void Guard to the Starfleet. I thought I might be able to change the Starfleet from within.” she paused, giving me a smile.

“You were supposed to be one of my most important recruits, leading the Starfighter Command. But I didn’t want to rush recruiting anyone, least of all you.” she admitted and I felt flattered even if I wondered just how honest she was. I hated that I couldn’t let myself trust the woman i had regarded as my closest friend. Hell, she still was my closest friend, I doubted I would have any friends left if word got out what I had done.

“Be that as it may. What has your knowledge about the Void Guard to do with people suddenly coming after you? Especially in a nightclub, wouldn’t it make more sense to arrest you at school, where the chances of you getting away are eliminated?” I asked, trying to make sense of things.

“Why now, of that I’m not certain. When I heard your story, I felt that I had to report it to the Guard, even if it is by now over six weeks old. Still, I felt that they needed to know that their ship wasn’t just destroyed by an accident or something. Yesterday, I used one of the ways to send a message, describing what you had seen and where more information might be found. Maybe they caught that message. Or maybe the false identity that had been set up for me came under scrutiny for some reason and failed to measure up. I simply don’t know.” she admitted and I felt a little sick to my stomach. Even if I hadn’t shot those three security officers, I would have been a traitor, even if an involuntary one.

“Why there, at the nightclub, again, I can’t be certain. The guy who approached me was a psion,” she paused for a moment and I noticed her shudder, “he managed to get his grip into my mind and suddenly, I was walking out, even if I didn’t want to. The plan might have been to turn me, to make me into a spy against the Void Guard and my parents. There are ways to break a person with psionics, break them and mold them into a new shape.” There was a tear running down her face and I could hear the sheer, primal fear in her voice. It sounded like something right out of a movie but I was almost certain that she believed what she said, and feared it a great deal. The only uncertainty was that I wasn’t sure I would be able to trust anything she said, due to a nagging feeling that I hated.

She fell silent and I let her be for a moment, trying to come to grips with her story. It felt confusing, if it was even true. At the same time, I realised that I would have to accept it, at least for now. What else was I going to do, jump out of the ship and try to swim to another planet, where I might be able to set myself up? Get back to the ground and try to turn her in, after shooting three security officers? That might have worked right after the fact but after running away, I doubted I would get any leniency. No, I had one way forward and that was in the frigate, with Airah, if that was her real name.

As soon as that thought crossed my mind, I asked, “Tell me, is Airah Zost even your real name?”, with quite a bit of anger in my voice.

“Airah is my real name.” she said, sounding a little sad, “the last name is fake, as you might have expected. My family name is Andrews.”

Before I could add any more questions, or even continue making sense of things, the communication-unit lit up and a stern voice, coming from traffic control, asked us to abort our flight-plan and head to one of the orbital stations, without further reasons given.

“That’s not good.” Airah muttered, sounding both angry and afraid. I could understand the sentiment, we had just left the atmosphere, if they wanted to intercept us, things would get hairy.

While I kept an eye on the sensors, Airah tried to talk to traffic control, spinning a story about carrying highly perishable goods that needed to get to the Langston-System as soon as possible but, judging by the tone of traffic control, they didn’t care. Or they knew what was going on and merely playing along.

Letting the autopilot continue on our path, I set the rest of the system to work, calculating different escape-routes and possible intercept-vectors, trying to figure out from where a potential attack would come and how to avoid it. Lessons from Commodore Ryker played in my mind, reminding me that standard maneuvers had a use but only if the other side didn’t know the playbook. I knew the Federation-Playbook by heart, so, if I wanted to intercept a suspicious spacecraft, coming out of a gravity well, I’d come from… there.

I realigned the sensors and, as I had expected, one of the higher orbitals was launching Starfighters, allowing them to get into position so we’d have no choice but to obey or be destroyed.

“The jig is up.” I cursed, causing Airah to look at the different readouts and she muttered her own curse.

“Can you get us out of here?” she asked, her voice a little rough.

“I will certainly try.” I muttered, feeling adrenaline flood my system. Sure, I was facing regular pilots but I doubted that the night-shift on some secondary orbital was manned by the elite-pilots of the Federation.

Knowing where they thought we’d be, knowing just how fast they could accelerate and how fast they’d dare to go in a system as cluttered as Celraph, I was hyper-focused, plotting a course to get us away. There were more Federation-forces in system but they’d have a higher response-time. The variables were flooding through my mind, some transferred to the computer, others let go as irrelevant, as I was trying to make the perfect plan. I had set myself a time-limit for my plan, once it was passed, I would execute it, whether perfect or not.

The ping I had set for myself told me that we were far enough in space to begin flying seriously, without running into one of the many low orbiting satellites. While I was certain that my plan wasn’t perfect, I knew that any second I let pass would give our interceptors a better window to get us.

“Strap in, this might get bumpy.” I told Airah, just as I pushed the main-engine to the max and used the maneuvering thrusters to add a second element, carrying us away from the filed flight-path. I silenced the alarm telling me we were breaking a few space-traffic laws but those would be our least problem, especially when the sensors told me that I had been right and the Starfighters far above us had been launched to deal with us, their previous course shifting to get a new vector. But, from what I could tell, they were underestimating me, or they just didn’t believe I would be reckless enough for what I was planning.

Our velocity was quickly climbing, each second giving us more of the potentially life-saving vector, especially as I had promised myself I wouldn’t try to murder other pilots who were just doing their jobs.

Soon, the group of four Starfighters that had launched first wasn’t the only one coming for us, even a small system-defense destroyer had started accelerating towards us, making me wonder if they simply used us as an unannounced exercise.

An alarm started blaring in the cockpit, telling everyone know that we had just passed the rated velocity of our craft and were still accelerating.

“Twitch…?” Airah asked, sounding a little bit afraid.

“Live or Die, we won’t add more murders to the tally, not today!” I replied before I had to fully focus on my task. I felt myself shift into the mode where I was the spacecraft I was flying and the spacecraft was me, where my own senses were no longer registering and even the awareness of my body was drifting away. The Starfighters sent to intercept us didn’t matter anymore, unless they were as insane as I was, they wouldn’t come close to catching us. The destroyer would fail in a similar fashion, even if it would take longer, forcing me to keep accelerating longer. Every blimp on the sensors, every pulse of the thrusters, it turned into a game of reaction and instinct, forcing me to the brink of my ability as I forced the frigate to dance through the void. Each tiny mistake, each small miscalculation cost us precious shield-strength and any real mistake would scatter our atoms across the black sky, neatly solving everything.

Finally, the navigation-computer told me that the additional hyperspace-jump I had calculated earlier was possible, even if it was pushing the safety-margins of our small craft to the limit, maybe even a little further.

“Off we go!” I shouted, mentally triggering the jump, knowing that if I had made even a tiny mistake, we’d never know it. When I was still alive a few moments later, I drew in a long breath before letting it out in a sigh.

“Are you alright?” I heard Airah asking as my awareness slowly returned to my body.

“No, not really.” I answered, the receding adrenaline-high pushing my already stressed body to a breaking point. There was a warm liquid on my face and when I reached up, I noticed that I had a nosebleed. And that I was wearing the same clothes I had worn to the club earlier, not a space-suit.

“We’ll be in hyperspace for a while. I… need some time to myself.” I told Airah before pushing the headgear away from me and walking to one of the cabins, checking the duffel bags and grabbing mine.

I had a lot of thinking to do. And sleeping. That would be the first priority.