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Corwin:

Rose took a quick glance into the aft cargo hold and didn't like what she saw. However, it did give her an idea for a distraction. Two minutes later, from the safety of a nearby empty locker, she heard the explosion. A wicked grin crossed her face. "That should bring them running she thought."

Footsteps echoed, at least two different sets. "Time to move," she thought. While stealth was her biggest ally, speed was essential too, so she moved as quickly as possible towards the control room. As expected, the door was wide open; this was almost too easy. Slipping inside, she could see that only the pilots command chair was occupied. He didn't even feel the stinger in his neck.

Rose sealed the door and stole a peek at the unconscious pilot. Pity there was nothing handy to tie him up, but the drug should keep him out for at least a couple of hours. Plenty of time for her to fly this crate to someplace safe. Better check out the ship's location and get moving. The sudden concussion knocked her to her feet. WHAT? Were they under attack? Alarms were ringing everywhere and she felt like she was about to pass out. No, it couldn't end this way!!

Lintra:

Grant suddenly felt sick - the kind where your stomach just drops out. "Okay now Grant old man, think clearly here." Grant starts pacing back and forth, ticking points off his fingers, "What are the options? One - The stinking stuff blew. Bad. Verrrry Bad. I've never really thought of myself as a mass murderer. Two - Someone else has found the stuff and disabled my com link. Bad, because now my bargaining chip is gone, good, 'cuz now *I * don't need to dispose of it. Three - some one tinkered with this can and programmed it to fool me. This, too, is very, very bad. It would mean that I really don't understand the rules of this game".

"Anyway, in all three cases I've gotta keep moving. The question is just where?" Grant plops himself into the command chair and reaches for the command panel, just as he's about to punch in a completely random course change he gets an idea, and acts on it.

Time passes.

Grant's ship materializes a short distance from Hexalon 4, way inside the 'safe' limits. Just at that point, every alarm in the ship fires off and the little ship is tossed about like a cork floating at sea during a hurricane.

"Damn spontaneous ideas! When will I ever learn to just stick with the program", cries out Grant as he struggles to make sense out of all the information shouting at him. "HA!" as he gets the ship under control. "Ohhhh. Bad. Really bad mojo man. Very bad." This as he realizes that Hexalon 4 is now in the process of becoming the Hexalon asteroid belt - "Not good." He punches some more buttons, "Double HA!" as he gets the klaxons to stop going off.

Then he looks at the new proto belt, "SHIT! I knew that stuff was bad, but wow." A grim smile crosses his face, "If I was the business type, I'd say this looks like a great spot to set up a mining operation." Grinning at his own wit he almost misses the "Ding" that he'd programmed to replace the klaxon.

"NOW what?" Grant swings the command chair around and notices the tactical combat display has nearly two dozen incoming hostiles, each trailing a few neutrals behind it. A little confused at first, then "Oh yeah, the prexNet ships. Looks like they got a story after all." Grant chuckles until he notices the hostiles are all making a beeline towards him. He flicks on the combat audio output. "10 lock ons successful, 8 broken. Hostile weapons charging to full capacity. Estimated time to contact 95.7 seconds. Orders?"

CM:

Grant looked at the massive destruction once more. Then as he glanced at the neurodecoder in his wrist, the bright orange color told him he would have had hours to move the stuff. Plenty of time. No one had to die. He didn't cause this. But why did it explode? In the nanosecond it took to let these thoughts form, they were gone. The Ding was calling him back.

"Damn! This is getting out to control!"
Grant slipped a disk into the computer console. Hitting a few switches, he then jammed his thumb into the hyper speed activation button.

'Negative. Navigational mapping indicates a 10% chance of encountering foreign objects during hyper speed jump. Recommend adjustment in coordinates.' It felt to Grant like the computer was talking in slow motion.

"I don't care you stupid machine, just get my ass out of here NOW!"
Grant hit the master control override and then slammed his fist into the hyper speed switch.

'Estimated time of contact 1.09 seconds. Evasive actions recommended.'

Rose felt a second jolt right on the heels of the first explosion. This one knocked her off her feet, and as she falls she hits her head against the copilot seat and is out cold.

A small flash along the seams of the cockpit door gives way to yet another small explosion, and the sudden absence of the cockpit door.

Stepping through the smoke is a figure in complete space-walk gear. He looks at the crumpled bodies on the floor, grabs Rose in one motion and heads for the cargo bay. Just as he reaches the door, the copilot moves slowly around the corner. The copilot fires one shot and falls out of sight. At that same moment a transporter is activated, leaving only a mist effect where Rose was once being held.

"Is she hurt? If she is we may as well dump her now. Grant will kill us."
"No, but he got her with a dart. She will be out for a while. Where are we meeting Grant?"
"Somewhere near Hexalon 4. He has the coordinates encrypted on this disk. I'm suppose to use it at 22:00 if we don't get a message from him before that."
"He better have the goods he promised. Or I WILL take it out of HER skin."

Badger:

Vital moments ticked by while Grant caught like a rabbit in oncoming headlights chewed on his knuckle, for the moment unable to break the mental cycle he was locked into.

"Impact 50 seconds." announced the steely calm voice of the computer. "Advise evasive action."

Suddenly shaken out of his mind lock, Grant yelled at his unseen computer co pilot. "Calculate optimum escape vector and engage light drive!" He demanded.

"Working" confirmed the computer. "Impact 40 seconds."

"Fine!" Snapped Grant. "A little less countdown if you please and a little more escaping!"

"Impact 30 seconds"

"I'll just be strapping myself in then? Proceed with escape when ready!"

"Impact 20 seconds"

"Don't worry about impressing me with a last minute escape computer, feel free to do it now."

"Impact 10 seconds...... Advise immediate use of escape pod."

"Your Life flashes before your eyes," would probably have been the idiom best suited to the moment. But as the final ten seconds ticked agonizingly away, Grant just had time to contemplate the relative foolishness of selling your escape pod to raise a gambling stake, before the blaring klaxons and flaring neon warning lights finally resolved themselves into one raging tempest in his mind and he blindly threw himself to the floor of the cockpit with his hands closed protectively over his head thinking "Assume crash positions!" Then.............................. nothing!

Eternal moments stretched out before Grant realized that the wheezing sound he could hear was his own frenzied breathing and the question he had to ask himself was why could he hear it, why was he alive?

Standing shakily he turned toward the control panel. "Computer!" he barked. "Raise forward view shield!"

The plexi-steel shield which had snapped automatically down upon the ships arrival in the maelstrom to protect the delicate bubble of atmosphere that was the cockpit, slowly slid up and Grant peered through the airless void toward the Hexalon system, intact and for the moment at least safe.

"Secondary Impact in two seconds" announced the computer. "Tracking multiple inbound threats."

Grant stared out of the view screen perplexed. There was nothing there, no debris, no meteor showers, no hostile ships.... Nothing!

"Escape vector plotted," interrupted the computer. "Request order confirmation."

Grant smiled despite himself. In the event that the threat had been real the computer would have managed to save his skin approximately 40 seconds after he had been reduced to his component atoms. But there was no threat was there..... why?

Desperately he tried to re-run in his memory an astronavigation and computer physics course that for the most part he hadn't bothered attending, hoping against hope that something might fall into place. Then unexpectedly his mind paused in its frenzied rush at a beacon of
interest... "Sensor Mirage?" he thought. Surely it couldn't be, that was only theoretical based on as yet un-deciphered alien technology....yet, what else could it be? Certainly his ship even now perceived a non-existent threat.

But who would have access to that kind of technology and who would be wealthy enough to implement it?

"Computer!" Grant snapped. "Discontinue plotting escape maneuver and reboot sensor system!"

Somebody or something didn't want him here, didn't want him in the Hexalon system and didn't want him near the "Horizon Satellite." Somebody or something had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure he didn't come near and whoever it was, they didn't know him too well did they!

Vaticide:

Rose awoke with a start, her flight suit sticking to her sweaty skin. She thought the was waking up from a particularly nasty dream, when she remembered that she was living through possibly the worst day she's had in at least a week. That, and her right butt-cheek was really sore for some reason. She groggily rolled onto her side to stop the pain and saw the culprit dart laying discarded on the floor.

She couldn't believe it, kidnapped again when she had finally gotten control of the situation with her previous kidnappers! She was going to make these guys pay for that, and especially pay for the dart she thought they had shot her with as well. She'd had quite enough of that today, thanks!

Rose looked around the ship.

"Hmm... looks like Falcon class... early mark 4, maybe 5. Some common arms smugglers kidnapped me from a spook transport? I guess I wasn't valuable enough cargo to warrant an escort."

...

Further up the ship, in the cockpit, the two men waited.

"Nothing from Grant yet? This is where the disk said to wait, right?"

"You heard it, I heard it, the computer entered it. It isn't like Grant to be this late."

"What do you want to do?"

"I say we give him another thirty minutes before we dump the broad and high-tail it. This feels too much like a setup."

"We could always sell her to the Meejors, I heard they are paying good money for slaves these days..."

"What are you, some kind of barbarian? Slavery is immoral and wrong. We'll just jettison her like a civilized person. Not to mention the Meejors would be just as likely to take us as slaves too. Why buy one for the price of one when you can get three for the price of none?"

"Hey, you know I'm no good at math!"

...

"Computer, query for logical links to 'Horizon Satellite'."

Grant looked down at the computer screen and noticed the time, 24:00.

"Hmm... I'd better get over to the rendezvous; I don't want them getting antsy. I just wish I was able to have gotten some of my men here to make sure I had a material advantage..."

Grant looked up from his computer, immediately becoming pale.

"HOLY SHIT! Not good, this is NOT GOOD..."

Grant stared out the front of his cockpit into the barrel of a cannon. Not just a cannon like on Grant's ship, large enough to blow a fist-sized hole into your average transport hull, but a cannon large enough for Grant to fly his ship in, do a couple donuts, and come back out again without ever touching one of the sides. Grant had never heard of a cannon this large, let alone seen one, and the ship was completely unlike any ship Grant had ever seen-- and Grant had seen every type of ship. It wasn't the largest ship he'd seen, but the damn thing was mostly gun, all aimed right at Grant.

"Follow us and do not deviate." Chimed Grant's computer in its familiar voice.

"What the...?" Grant punched the cancel button on the nav computer to no effect.

"New coordinates accepted. Manual controls overridden." Instructed his computer.

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