There were a few things Aurelia was happy about for this moment.

First, the Stellar Banshee was in one piece, which all things considered, is a miracle. The jump was meant to be made with refractor shields up, and the rear half of the ship was very much missing that valuable shielding.

Two, her beloved creation was still in one piece, even the nano form was doing this job diligently. It drew from her copper and silicon supplies, rapidly reconstituting the skin and nerves. It was also likely to be an uncomfortable experience. Perhaps she might need to revisit the whole skin thing, as it was less durable than she had expected it to be.

Third, they likely lost the tail of their pursuers. Had they used the local wormhole generator, they would be tracked, hell if they used the onboard one, they would have been sitting ducks for at least six hours further. Those things were great when outside of civilised space, or if you weren't currently under duress.

Unfortunately, while these things that made Aurelia happy, they were overshadowed by the fact that she had been, and is still evacuating her breakfast all over the deck floor, managing to quickly unlock her safety belt and leant over beside her opulent throne. Having barely been able to spare her clothes the horror of hypervoid induced nausea was a small mercy, one she wasn’t thinking about right now.

Isobel hadn’t been idle either. She had since unbuckled herself and made her way over to the ill scientist and was gently rubbing her back between her shoulder blades.

“I shall send cleaner drones to assist, miss. Would you like some water?” Addison asked cheerfully.

Before the retching scientist could answer, she evacuated what little was left in her stomach. When nothing more could come up, she wiped her sleeve on her mouth and collapsed back into her chair, heaving heavily.

“Yes.” She croaked. “Some sick pills too.” Her voice was raspy and exhausted.

Isobel, her face wrought with worry, was unsure what to do with herself. “Are you okay? Is there anything I can do? Is this normal?” Isobel fussed.

“Fuck I hope not.” Replied the scientist weakly before dry retching once again. “If I am lucky, it’s just because the shielding was down. Otherwise I’m going to have to make more extensive modifications before I do this again.”

“O-oh. Okay.” replied the android meekly. She stood there anxiously, twiddling away with her thumbs.

Cleaner drones made their way into the bridge in a neat line, splitting off to clean the mess beside the throne and the console that Isobel had made an unexpended entry into. One carrying a tray with water and some pills beside lowered itself down to Aurelia. She feebly grabbed the pills, and quickly downed the water, spilling only a little bit of it on her.

After taking a deep breath and suppressing the urge to throw up once again, she turned to the console in front of her. “Right, so where did we end up?”

“Planetary system VRA-51342. It is a system with little natural resources, and thus, is not colonised.” Replied Addison.

“Okay. Can you get the wormhole generator connected to the grid again?”

“So you don’t evacuate your stomach several more times before we reach civilised space?” Replied Addison.

“Obviously.”

“I estimate it will take me ten hours to make the necessary repairs.”

Aurelia let out a loud, exaggerated sigh. “Noted. I’m going to try to sleep this off. Make a course for the nearest system that can repair this ship. Also bring me a stretcher, I am not going to try to walk like this.”

“Of course, miss. The Trubek system is fifteen thousand two hundred light years away. I will be able to receive repairs there, and it has one of the proposed maintenance crews there.”

“Good enough. Stretcher now. Me relieved of consciousness asap.” Aurelia said flatly as she slumped into the throne.

As per usual, it didn’t take long for more drones to file into the bridge. It would have been a party were not eight of the members being the same artificial intelligence. They lifted the wilting scientist gently onto a stretcher and carried her off succinctly, leaving an android who did not know what to do with herself, standing there with only her thoughts to herself and the drones nearby cleaning the bridge..

Her face had already healed significantly after the hour of hypervoid travel, the patch of skin almost entirely sealed up, but she was feeling oddly hungry for silicon pellets. She hated the silicon pellets.

Relief immediately came crashing upon her like a violent storm tearing through the coast. She slumped to her knees and let out a loud sigh.

“We are safe.” She whispered to herself.

“For now, yes! I seriously doubt our assailants know how to track such an experimental form of FTL traversal, though I expect we will cause a lot of attention when we go in for repairs. Much of it bad!”

While the android had always appreciated the usual overly-friendly candour of the chirpy assistant, Isobel decided that it was a touch grating while her face felt like it was being stung by several thousand yuatris’ at the same time.

“I-I’m going to go make the fattiest, sweetest thing I can in the kitchen that takes less than ten minutes to make, then sleep until the heat-death of the universe. Wake me up if we are under attack again.” She grumbled back at Addison.

“Of course Isobel. I will clean the bridge and contemplate the sudden feeling of mortality I have had thrust upon me.” Replied Addison in a no less cheery tone.




“It failed.”

“Yessir.”

“I spent a fortune to make this operation go smoothly. What in the void happened?

The large milvine leaned back into his large chair, his piercing semi-reptilian gaze peering down at his human assistant.

The human hesitated for a moment before clearing his throat. “Uh, the intel was off, by a large margin.”

“In what way?” The milvine responded cooly, his blind claws tapping away on the desk in front of him.

“What we got right was her ship being a decommissioned and retrofitted Hellaron dreadnought. Past that, well, initially all things points to the system AI to be class three or four.” Said the human nervously.

“But?”

“B-but after the battle it’s theorised to be at least a class six. No less than a class five. Its accuracy and adaptation meant it couldn’t have been as rigid as class four or lower. On top of that, it was armed far greater than last reports of the ship. It hasn’t been in space for nearly sixty years.” The human flinched when they saw the telltale signs of milvine anger, his spines raised up and nostrils flaring.

Clearing his throat he continued. “On top of all that, it seems she created a new method of FTL travel, one we have never seen before.”

“Ha! Of course she did.” The milvine hissed with venom. “I thought I was clear that she wasn’t to be underestimated, but it seems our new friends didn’t take that advice seriously.”

“Uh, right you are sir.”

The milvine licked his snout, idling scratching the rough fur on his torso.

“Do you know where she went?”

“No sir, we don’t know how to track that traversal method. It’s like she punched a hole to some other place and came out void knows where. No wormhole generators to check for logs, no space folding to check for subsystem travel.” The human man broke composure for a moment, running his fingers through his raven black hair.

“Is there anything good news, or am I going to have a somehow worse day? I have shareholders breathing down my spines.” Said the milvine irritably.

“Yessir. While they got away, they took significant damage to their hull and drive chambers. They will need repairs, and we will know where they are when it happens. The Tethys beam did significant damage to their systems.”

The milvine perked up at that information, then leaned forward, his massive arms resting on his desk. He let silence hang in the air, starting down at the smaller human.

“That is better than nothing. Go fetch the Xebian leader, we need to have a chat.”