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The Undervilde task force had breached realspace like a pod of orcas surfacing for air. Venomspite gave an order, Katlan relayed it and the ships that had peeled away from the group created their own formation. Weapons free was the sensation she got from Venomspite's mind. From within the Opal's belly, the Deymarii_reacted to the cruiser's prompt and started running interference on the Thymion warships, scattering electronic chatter in the faces on all bands. The Thymion carrier set loose a full group of starfighters, each one A.I controlled. Rosemary watched in mounting horror as the _Opal_tagged them all, displaying them on the TacNet as a swarm of red dots that started converging the approaching Undervilde forces like a swarm of angry hornets. And then the swarm of red scattered like a shotgun blast on a forcefield, the _Deymarii cutting off the starfighter drones' connection with their carrier. A second later, the dreadnought, flanked by its two cruisers, turned towards the threat, realising that their starfighters had been rendered useless and were vanishing one at a time, being picked off by an enemy that was too small to see through the Tenglaari corvette's interference.

Rosemary's jaw dropped when the dreadnought disappeared from the sensors. She looked up, staring in amazement as the flash of green fire boiled itself out, the last of the Thymion dreadnought's ammunition and other flammables cooking off. The Undervilde cruiser that had destroyed it turned away from the expanding cloud of debris and gasses, accompanied by her corvette gunships. They came about to converge on a confused Thymion cruiser, an Undervilde destroyer and cruiser coming in from below. The two enemy cruisers, blinded by the Deymarii's expanding ECMs, lost sight of each other and their carrier, which came to a full stop, its navigational and sensors system too confused to press on blindly. The three remaining ships had been neatly isolated from one another, their guard torn down as they were left to fumble in the dark thanks to the Deymarii. The cruisers disappeared, one after the other and then the carrier, too, all of them consumed by that green fire and left as expanding clouds of gasses and debris. Without their carrier, the starfighter drones were easy pickings. At the end of those tense twenty minutes, all that was left was molten slag and fragments of hull. Rosemary turned to Venomspite as he communicated calmly with his crew in his own tongue. The Undervilde ships that had broken off to launch the assault were returning to them and the Deymarii fell silent once more.

''They didn't see us...'' Rosemary uttered, her heart pounding in her chest. The captured dreadnought hadn't fired a shot. The cruisers hadn't known there was a threat present until the carrier launched its fighters.

Venomspite glanced at her as the bridge dimmed, the mist and witchlights returning as they slipped silently back into the forbidding depths of voidspace, their next quarry in sight, ''Why would they? Who, besides us, would expect a hostile force to jump out of an anomaly at them?''

Rosemary looked at her sensors readouts. The small window in the top right corner of that particular screen lit up again now that Trillian had silenced his ship. In another small window beneath it, was an entirely different set of readings, familiar and horrifying. The Undervilde task force had surfaced inside an anomaly, a small patch of space knotted up by the Temlesarian's rampage. There wasn't even a hint of turbulence to make the Opal shiver. She leaned back in her chair, her mind churning as the task force sailed through a passage buried deep within un-reality.

An hour later, the task force reemerged, sliding out of the fringes of another anomaly in a wash of exotic particles, the resulting gravitic disturbances swallowing the nearby squadron of corvettes and frigates along with their resupply freighters. 28 small ships and their crews swallowed by wild gravity and torn asunder like damp paper in a hurricane. Those ships that were left reasonably intact after they had been thrown clear of the FTL turbulence were left to drift on a ballistic course, their crews suffocating as their stolen ships trailed debris and precious gasses.

The four carriers that were re-fuelling at the local space station belched out their full fighter compliments in response to the atrocities performed against them by the alien invaders. The starfighters spread out in a chaotic blossom as their connection to their mother ships were severed by ECMs. Undervilde starfighters arrowed into the black and started mopping up the meandering drones whilst a pair of destroyers, two corvettes and two frigates accompanied a pair of cruisers to see to the carriers. The station was disabled, the Opal hammering at its point-defences and main guns with its gauss cannons, backed up by a pair of corvettes. The station's weaponry and comms were destroyed, the Opal's shields soaking up the station's numerous attacks as Venomspite ordered the captains of his corvettes to break the docking arms the station had extended. Meanwhile, the four docked carriers were concentrating on the other Undervilde ships, effectively leaving the station to defend itself as they tried in vain to bag a kill. They only succeeded in mauling a destroyer which promptly vanished back into voidspace, a gaping wound in her flank.

Vortex cannons tore chunks out of the Thymion carriers, disruptor PDCs removed their slugs, torpedos and plasma shots from existence and Undervilde missiles consumed each carrier in bright, green tinted fire. The task force then reformed and disappeared back into voidspace, leaving the shattered husks attached to the reeling station, surrounded by dead starfighter drones.

''Status update on the Moa-Shinn.'' Venomspite demanded once they were back within the safety of voidspace.

''Captain Ashenvilde is reporting decompression on decks eighteen through twenty-one. Seventeen casualties, no deaths as of yet. Those Tem bastards scored a hit on Moa's aft-most rimward missile battery. She lost three PDCs, too. Ashenvilde says they can resurface and rejoin the party in seven hours.'' Katlan said, his eyes glued to his main screen as he read off the text only message.

Venomspite nodded, satisfied that none of his people had died. He switched to Basic again for Rosemary's benefit, ''What's the tally, Maya?''

She studied her readouts, her lips pressing into a thin line. A small smile tilted the corners of her mouth upwards slightly, ''Twenty-eight small fry, one dreadnought, two cruisers, five carriers, lots of drones and we've managed to disable a space station.''

Rosemary looked around at the bridge crew, feeling giddy with adrenaline. They all looked so calm, somewhat satisfied with the current outcome of things. But there was still much to be done, so many dangers to be navigated as they travelled deeper into the torn carcass of the Thymion Empire. Yet she couldn't help but feel excitement. The last four hours had seen Undervilde bite a chunk out of the Temlesarian's collective ass. So much damage had been done in such a short amount of time. She checked her personal chrono and matched it up to the Opal's. The ship was running both realtime and Thymion time chronometers. In Thymion, just over four hours had passed. In realspace, the place beyond the temporal chaos of her home, it had been a matter of minutes since they had left the Thymion Void and surfaced inside the Empire proper. It was mind boggling just how much damage Venomspite and his other captains had done in a few hours. She was thinking through all of this when a another call went out; two dreadnoughts, two carriers and a pair of faint hotspots that the lead Undervilde frigate was detecting was in the vicinity.

The Undervilde task force had been sailing through voidspace at best speed, on a gently curving vector that would lead them right across the path of another known flight path. For a brief moment, Rosemary wondered just how time worked within voidspace, how the temporal changes affected the passage of time if it even did so at all. Her thoughts were derailed when Venomspite gave an order and the entire task force surfaced in realspace in a corona of exotic particles, vortex cannons eating into the golden armour of the lead dreadnought even as they fired back blindly, desperately trying to fend off the ships that were tearing their hulls apart.

''They saw us coming.'' Furromoore said blandly in her own tongue.

''Word's no doubt spread like wildfire after the station got hit.'' Venomspite replied amiably as he listened to the barely perceptible distant clicks and purrs of disruptor and vortex cannon discharges.

The lead frigate coordinated with its sister ships and the area was flooded with tachyons, the unavoidable particles bouncing off of everything they came into contact with. The Deymarii immediately seized the moment and painted the two stealthed ships with enough sensor bands to heat them up so that everyone could see them in realtime, not just the seconds old report from the massive tachyon burst that had lit up the ruined star system they had sailed into. The stealthed destroyers, startled by their sudden discovery and not knowing exactly what to do about it, veered away from their group, one of them darting below the shuddering belly of the lead dreadnought as it writhed in its death throes. The destroyer got caught up in the crossfire, vaped by the giant, planet killing gauss cannon that pivoted wildly beneath it. An Undervilde dreadnought was clipped by a stray round from the gauss cannon and two of its six sublight drives were left in ruins. The offended dreadnought turned everything it had on the struggling Thymion ship and the golden armour started to ripple with the heat of disruptor PDCs that defended the eight arcane missiles that homed in on the big ship. The captured Thymion dreadnought ballooned, the trailing armour piercing missiles hammering through the golden armour their forerunners had softened up with ease.

Green fire erupted from vents, tears and holes and the dreadnought was left drifting, a deformed, shattered husk of its former self, escape pods firing off into the black. Two Undervilde cruisers and a quartet of destroyers hounded the remaining dreadnought at the rear of the Temlesarian formation, battering it into a pulp with their own gauss cannons, PDCs and vortex cannons. It was left venting its atmosphere into space, Temlesarians tumbling through the numerous breaches to die. Those that had found refuge deep inside the ship would soon die off, just as surely as their shipmates who were drifting, unaided, through the black would. The dreadnought's running lights flickered, dimmed then shut off as it finally lost what was left of its power. Its guns fell silent and its drives cooled. The ship was dead, leaving a lone stealth destroyer to defend the two carriers that were languishing under the Deymarii's electronic onslaught. Blossoms of fire marked the many deaths of starfighter drones, some succumbing to the Undervilde starfighters, others getting caught out by frigates and corvettes, whilst more still were simply caught in the crossfire. The carriers died, one after the other in roiling fireballs and the stealthed destroyer hastily disappeared in a wash of Rift static.

Satisfied the group were dead, the Undervilde forces dove back into voidspace to affect repairs and take stock of ordinance and crew.

''Yujaan Isten is trying to repair the damage done to her sublight drives, Captain.'' Katlan announced once things had settled.

''Do they need any spares?'' Venomspite queried.

Katlan relayed the message then shook his head, ''Captain Isten say that she has all the spares she needs. Her fabricators are still fully operational and Ashenvilde has his own fabricators up and running to help her out.'' Katlan turned to look at Venomspite, ''Yujaan's lost some acceleration, but nothing more. She can still throw her weight around.''

''Excellent. What about the Moa-Shinn?''

''Making good progress on repairs. Ashenvilde's saying give him another two hours and he'll be back in the game.''

''Let's give it six hours before we resurface.'' Venomspite said. He called those who were on second watch to take over from first, so that they could all take a break and get something to eat before moving on to the next targets.

Rosemary sat in the darkened wardroom, a half eaten sandwich sitting forgotten before her. She stared at the holotech map that floated in the air a few inches above the centre of the table. It was the constantly updating tactical map of Thymion and three clusters of red dots had already been marked as eliminated, each dot appearing as a little red X. The map was now showing a dreadnought, a cruiser and a pair of destroyers heading off in investigation of the space station that they'd hit some hours before. Venomspite had dispatched a pair of cruisers and a quartet of gun corvettes to intercept them. No. Ambush them she corrected herself, quietly horrified. She watched the map in silence, waiting for the next update. She had no idea where Undervilde's probes were or how they were getting their information, but so far, it had all proved to be airtight. She started thinking about the Caliban and made a mental tally of her own of the ships destroyed. There were five dreadnoughts, their numbers now reduced to two. One was loitering close to the ruined space station, investigating what had happened and the other was on the far side of Thymion itself, flanked by two cruisers, a destroyer ahead of it and a destroyer to its rear. A trail of captured freighters - represented as blue dots - trailed behind like a comet tail laden with supplies.

One of those two dreadnoughts had to be the Caliban. Venomspite had promised her that she could attempt a boarding to retake the ship. She balled her hands into fists on the tabletop as her mind churned through the possibilities of which ship was which. A cold pit opened up in her stomach as the dots near the space station winked out of existence, one after the other. The Opal dutifully logged the ships as destroyed. She waited for what seemed like an eternity, her gaze fixed, unblinking, to the holotac until the annotations came up, marking the dreadnoughts' and her escorts' graves on the map. Thymion Grace. Rosemary sighed in relief. There was now one captured dreadnought left. The Caliban, with her two cruisers and two destroyers. She found herself suddenly uninterested in the names of the ships surrounding her dreadnought. Their names were suddenly superfluous, at least until she regained control of the Caliban and wiped its Temlesarian crew out. Let Undervilde have the other ships. That dreadnought was hers.

Her knuckles cracked painfully and her jaw started to ache. She hadn't realised that she'd been grinding her teeth and clenching her fists as she thought about seizing her ship, fantasizing about the terrible things she wanted to do to each Temlesarian on board. She sighed, leaned back in her chair. Such violent thoughts were not who she truly was. She placed her hands gently across her stomach and felt the reassuring pressure of a tiny foot kicking out.

''The captain has ordered you to get some sleep.'' Darkblade said.

Startled, she rose from her chair with a yelp. She had completely forgotten that he was in the room with her. Venomspite had been meant to join her, but he was currently holding conference in CIC with his other captains, leaving her alone with her thoughts. A small portion of her wanted Trillian to be up in the wardroom with her, just for company's sake and a little bit of conversation, but she found that being around him for too long made her feel uneasy. His demeanor was vastly different from when she had first met him on the Watchful Eye and she had a sneaking suspicion that he was struggling far more than he let on.

''A quick nap would be a good idea.'' Rosemary said softly, offering up a quick bow to Darkblade. He shut off the holotac and escorted her to her quarters. A few minutes after he had taken up post outside her door, a steward came by and dropped off a tray of cold meats and fresh bread.

~~~~~~

''We're right on top of them, Captain.'' Lieutenant Faestar said from navigation.

''Hold position. No one is to attack the dreadnought. Cruisers and destroyers only.'' Venomspite replied.

''Some of those freighters are armed as well as a warship, Sir.'' Ensign Fletcher said from sensors.

''If any of those freighters has the spine to open up, remove them from history.''

''Aye captain, tagging freighters as neutral until further notice.'' Fletcher said.

The huddled tail of thirty freighters were highlighted in green. The Caliban's icon was highlighted in red with a golden halo around it. Rosemary had no idea what had just been said, but she prayed that Venomspite would leave the Caliban be. Undervilde hadn't been kind to the captured ships so far. And why would they be? The Temlesarians were not only causing trouble within Thymion space, but they were also expanding beyond the Thymion Void and threatening the alien worlds beyond.

Venomspite had said it himself, that the Temlesarians had pushed their luck and their presence would no longer be tolerated. If the Temlesarians wanted trouble, then that was what they got. And they were getting it in spades.

Whilst in voidspace, the Undervilde task force was untouchable and undetectable. And when they resurfaced into realspace, the void elve's ships proved to be surprisingly tough, their dreadnoughts and cruisers able to withstand a beating from a Thymion dreadnought. The Deymarii had proven just what a sensor corvette was capable of doing in the right hands, even whilst locked away inside a cruiser's belly.

The fact that Undervilde could destroy a ship without firing a single shot sent a chill shiver up her spine. They could simply use the turbulence of emerging into realspace to disable and even destroy a ship in a cacophony of exotic particles and temporal forces. She watched her tac monitor, fascinated and apprehensive as the task force split up into two. Two dreadnoughts flanked the Temlesarian formation in a move that was designed to seperate the Caliban's escorting cruisers from her. Two cruisers, one of which being the _Opal_were set up to land straight on top of the destroyers displacing them with enough violence to shatter them. Eight corvettes and eight frigates were in position to form a protective sphere of firepower around the warring ships, cutting off the freighters from the Temlesarian formation. The rest of the Undervilde ships would deal with the freighters, forcing them into a surrender or simply destroying them if they got too cocky.

Venomspite handed Rosemary a slim data crystal. Her heart pounded in her chest, the first tricklings of adrenaline seeping into her bloodstream.

''The moment I give the order for my ships to drop into realspace, you rift across to the Caliban. You have thirty minutes maximum to get control of that ship. If it shoots at us, we will shoot back.'' He held up a hand when she opened her mouth to protest, ''We will take out the guns if necessary. That crystal contains all the data we have up until ten minutes ago. As promised, it has all the locations of every anomaly in this sector, including those that have either rendered themselves inert or vanished. It's a standard crystal so it will work with your systems.''

''Vanished?'' She asked, puzzled as she took the crystal. It was ice cold in her palm and had a reassuring weight to it. She tucked it away for safekeeping.

Venomspite gave a slight nod. ''Our probes have detected the loss of a significant amount of anomalies in the area of your core world. There's also a sizeable fleet of ships in a defensive pattern around the planet. None of them match anything produced by Thymion and since those ships have done nothing but sit and watch, they are tagged as neutral until they state otherwise. I'd also like to point out that there is a Thymion ship in the area that I believe is still under Thymion control. The Moa-Shinn and Deymarii have both been watching it with some interest as it cloaks and de-cloaks. It seems to be tracking us down.''

Rosemary's mild puzzlement turned into full confusion. To her knowledge, all of the Empire's ships and space stations had been seized by the Temlesarian forces. She wanted to reach out with her mind, to psychically search for this ship, but being in voidspace nixed that idea. If she felt awful sitting in the darkness of the place, there was no way she wanted to risk her psyche coming into contact with the forces that the Undervilde ships dwelled in. The very thought of what lay beyond the Opal's hull made her twitchy.

''What's the name of the ship that's following us?'' She asked.

''We don't know. There's no ID beacon broadcasting. Whoever it is, they're running dark.'' Venomspite replied, his intense gaze flickering from monitor to monitor, the amethyst glow of the screens lending his black skin an eerie glow in the dim lighting incurred by voidspace.

She sat back in her chair. She'd have to see to that once they hit realspace again and after she had regained control of the Caliban. Venomspite opened the comm line that networked the task force and gave the order. Rosemary braced herself, gathering her power about her, seeking out the Caliban with her mind as the ships burst into realspace, their sudden reemergence sending shockwaves radiating outwards, shoving the captured ships apart and mortally wounding two captured destroyers in the process. Startled and damaged, the Temlesarians opened up on the Undervilde forces. Undervilde replied in kind and after a brief, frantic exchange of firepower, the _Caliban_found itself isolated with four less warships in its group and sixteen less freighters at its back, with more being picked off. Rosemary disappeared in a flurry of flame and sparks just as the unknown ship de-cloaked off the Thymion dreadnought's rimward bow, its weapons hot and trained on the nearest Undervilde ship. The _Deymarii_responded to the cloaked ship's disruptive chatter, clearing the bandwidths of the Undervilde fleet of Thymion noise, keeping them all in contact.

~~~~~~

Rosemary appeared, not in the engine room, but in a storage room not far from it. Swearing, she focused a flame in her paw and summoned the only weapon she had ever known; her rapier. It gleamed in the cargo hold lights. The door opened suddenly as a guard came in, barely more than a ragged worker with a gun. Something inside her snapped and in a flash of golden metal and a splash of purple blood he lay in two pieces on the floor.

Rosemary ran down the hall, her blade dancing as she killed everything in her way. Nothing survived contact with her. As she reached the engine room, she kicked the door open, ripping it from its mounts as she roared in rage. Her flames surged forth, flooding the halls and compartments of the engineering deck. In the mere seconds it took to unleash that blast, she had snuffed out a thousand lives. Moving to the central engineering panel, she sealed the area with blast doors. Locking down the console was easy. Locking the Tems out of the rest of the computers was proving hard. They were learning and had already set up a bypass. She had no choice. She punched up the comms and ordered the elves to get away from her ship. Then she triggered an emergency window breach.

Every one of the 300 windows on the _Caliban_suddenly blew out, sending shards of solid crystal nine inches thick blasting out in many directions. The end result gave her a sick satisfaction. Fifty thousand Tems were hurled into the void. Those that were not were left with no atmosphere, suffocating in the vacuum. She only waited a couple minutes before she recalibrated the computer systems and started the psychic link. She was unhappy about killing, but the Temlasarians were a threat to all life. As she closed the emergency bulkheads and blast shields, she moved to the door. Once pressure was restored, she ran through the halls, reaching out psychically and connecting to her ship. Lifts opened, internal defenses came online. External weapons powered up. By the time she reached the bridge, the systems were ready.

Sitting in her chair, she pulled an ear piece from under her arm rest. Sliding it in, she immediately linked her wetware into the ship. The moment she did, she sent a signal to Venomspite to clear out and let her handle the remaining ships that were now converging on the group in response to the loss of their comrades. Her eyes danced over the dozens of readouts and she beamed Trillian her operating frequency so he could contact her if needed. After that, a sadistic look covered her face as she announced to the ships in the area that Rosemary Wolfen was in command of the Caliban once more and that reckoning was at hand. Her fingers danced over her holo console as she dropped the crystal given to her in place. The reader was already uploading the data as she brought targeting online, ordering the _Caliban_to reposition itself within the protective sphere of Undervilde ships so she could get a better lock on the incoming enemy vessels.

She gave no one any time as her ship's gauss cannons targeted and lit up the Thymion destroyer that had strayed off its lonesome path to investigate. She was not even aware that she was screaming obscenities into the transmissions as she emptied three cannons into the ship repeatedly. The rounds were made from the same alloy as the ship's outer armor, but compressed to be far more dense and hurled at almost the speed of light. She punched holes completely through the destroyer before they even knew they had lost the_Caliban_. Her plasma cannons were already targeting the fighters swarming in from her aft and spraying a dozen blasts a second in a wide pattern.

All the while, the corvette that had de-cloaked was blasting out music across every accessible frequency possible. Thousands of signals were targeted by the VHF music that blasted across space, desperately wrestling with the noise and sensors manipulations of the Deymarii as the Tenglaari ship denied the Thymion sensors corvette anymore access to the Undervilde task force. As it did, the ship was tagging every ship other than the Caliban as a target and making no effort to hide it either. It turned one gun toward the Opal_and lit her up with a stream of mild, harmless radiation. While it caused no damage to living tissue, it's design was to make electronics scream in agony. It was trying to force the _Opal to back off without firing a shot, but the Deymarii_continued to respond in kind to the hostilities, making it difficult for the unidentified corvette's electronic warfare chatter to do its job. When the _Opal's own EMCs came online, the Thymion corvette was drowned out, its vain efforts rendered useless. The Opal got a target lock on the new corvette with a missile battery and a quartet of vortex cannons.

Over kill, but Venomspite was an unforgiving man with no affinity for games. If the corvette opened fire, it and its crew would be turned into an expanding cloud of slag and vapour in short order.