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Intro to the Cassium Fol

The warmth of an afternoon sun soaking through the fur of your cheeks, a breeze scented of wild flora dancing just out of reach that tickles your nose, or the sounds of your family around you; Any of these would remind you of home. Cami as well basked in these senses, a dull mechanical thud with an undertone of the low constant rumble from a forth generation thorium isotope reactor. Her whiskers drifted about the cool crisp filtered and controlled air of the hanger bay while the soft glow of deck lighting bathed everything in a sterile uniform brilliance.

Home was her ship, the Cassium Fol. It was a small transport/cargo hauler without many luxuries, but it was just perfect. Cami was a Murine seed, that is, an anthropomorphic mouse. Her species was one of countless others all spawned an age ago who took to the vast void of worlds to start anew. Mice weren't all that common out among the stars, a timid nature didn't thrive in the wild frontiers. But, Cami was never one to back away from the vastness that opened to her gaze with every launch past the outer reaches of atmosphere.

One thing stood between her and another run amongst the stars, A quick entry on her terminal to log a flight path and to confirm her cargo. The Cassium Fol was a converted assault shuttle, decommissioned from combat, with all armaments removed save for a small self defense laser point defense. Cami was three things, two of which could be blamed on genetics. She was a decent pilot, not hard on the eyes, but thirdly she was an engineer. Half the ship was of her own repair (Why pay full price when you really don't need both hulls intact right?) And the other half was good luck.

Sitting now in the sole cargo hold sat several crates of heavy construction and one bio-crate. The trip was a quick and low profit run to Ustyria, a backwater habitable moon. It was a six hour run from Hozuno to Ustyria at ten lights, but that's what even provided the work. Small ships like the Fol were never built as cargo haulers, those always run massive loads for small margins and can take weeks to ramp up enough speed to break into super light. But the Fol could reach super light in one day of hard burn, and break out just outside of orbit safely enough. Just the kind of thing you'd want in an assault fighter shuttle or in this case a very fast cargo runner.

Humming away in time with her reactor, Cami watched the space lanes line up in her console. Each lane was the projected super light course of a ship, and hers was barely a flicker amongst the fat lines of capital cruisers, destroyers, cargo haulers, and who knows what else the seeders could imagine. And in another hour she'd be at super light with six hours to nap and relax before break out.

"Hmm, what're you doing there little yellow light?" She mused.

There was a warning on her console, showing a plotted ship lane even smaller than her own on a connecting course. This wasn't uncommon, some over confident pilot plotted without checking first. Both navigation computers would negotiate around the other and no harm done. This line however was converging, not pulling away from Cami's course.

"Ship on lane 56 departure for Ustyria colony, this is the Cassium Fol. I read you on a converging plot and no correction vector from your nav comp. Please correct your heading as I'm about to go super." She called on the general ship communications, lazily flipping herself around to the monitor to see the response.

The response came, but not from her station. The under powered and rarely noticed defense console left over from the Fol's active days started going off. Normally, another officer would be handling that station, but with just her it was left in idle standby. Cami jumped over her chair and stumbled over into the tactical station, leaving navigation to the plotted course.

The thing about assault fighter shuttles is that they were designed for quickly delivering cargo or troops into a hot combat zone. What they lacked in attack power they made up for in defensive features, namely, electronic counter-measures. When the Cassium Fol was originally decommissioned the ECM equipment had been removed or disabled, but the brains...being spread out through the ship...had been largely left intact. One small mouse engineer later the Cassium Fol had over the years re-acquired enough hardware to enable most of the ECM features for combat.

Flashing indicators started to line up her panel from the passive ECM, active radar locks on her twin engine pods. Two more warnings flashed shortly after, laser assistance tags for guidance.

"Wonderful, rockets." She muttered. Cheap, lazy, and devastatingly effective when tearing through hulls. "Alright...You want to play? There was a game like this once...cat and mouse. And wouldn't you know it, I'm already the mouse." She teased the panel, powering up her active ECM modules.

"I bet this'll make your ship light up real nice..." A button was pressed, dumping a small charge along her engine pod reactor lines. When that jolt reached the filter stage it spat out random electromagnetic noise from radio all the way up to gamma-ray frequencies, rendering even coherent laser guidance for rockets practically worthless. "Craaaap."

One of those rockets had already dropped out of laser assist and was on electro-magnetic emissions tracking, following the low levels of energy emitted by her ship.

Deft violet colored fingers danced over the panel, every button and dial memorized from long hours of repair. Two EM decoys were dropped from the engines, each packing a tiny thorium battery and thrusters to produce a stronger localized EM field.

Two minutes to super light and closing, a very bad time to have someone trying to poke holes in your ship.

The rocket almost took the bait, until the distortion wave began to form about the bow of her ship. Now it was her turn to light up nice and bright for the rockets EM based guidance.

And then there was a hell of a kick.

With every kick comes a boot. This particular boot came in the shape of a rocket detonating just behind Cami's ship when it clipped the distortion wave as she was breaking into super light. The Cassium Fol was rattling and rolling around while the navigation computer tried to correct the pitch of her ship mid-jump and its violet hued and fuzzy captain was bounced around inside the small cockpit like the last hard candy in a tin. And what's more fun than an unexpected carnival ride, separating you from the vacuum of space while traveling at speeds that defy the rules of normal space? Doing it while a ship wide alarm echoed against the walls.

"I know I know, you're pissed, I'm pissed, shut up and let me fix it!" Cami growled to her ship in no particular direction. The navi comp was busy correcting phantom alignment issues, then over correcting the other direction while Cami was force to drunkenly stumble about the floor until at last she was in front of her normal pilot seat and able to turn off the strobing glaring sound of distress from her poor hauler.

"Gyroscopes seem to have been knocked out of calibration, we have an attitude thruster misfiring, and oh look my drink is on the floor. And that's just what I can see from in here, what other surprises do you have for me Cassium?"

The thruster would have to wait until Cami broke out and could dock her ship for repairs, but at least the shaking and rolling could be managed mid jump. Disabling the thruster was a simple matter of accessing the computer, while turning off the computers ability to try and correct her heading required a more non-regulation fix...yanking out the positional correction circuit until the gyros stabilized and performed a calibration which would only take a couple of hours.

"Six hours of super light while you fix yourself up. Suppose I'll make myself useful and find out what else that jerk decided to break..."

"Tissue samples, varied." It said that right there on the cargo manifest and again on the large metal container currently upended and tossed into the corner of what used to be a cleanly organized cargo hold. The problem with that description is that the container was stocked with rations and life support gear to sustain a full someone and not just Tissue samples, varied. More importantly and central to the current concerns were that the container held zero samples of any tissue, whatever was in it had gotten out when the ship contents were dice tossed in a very large cup.

Those concerns were short lived and eclipsed with something more important exploded into the foreground. It wasn't an explosion at all but the effect was almost more alarming, primary systems failure. Something had triggered a safety in her ship and shut down all main power. Main power ran the calibration process, it ran the oxygen scrubber, heck without main power even the gravity would break down as the charge dissipated from her deck plates.

"And now we have no power. As my hero once said, you are seriously starting to damage my calm."

Grumbles and complaints quietly bounced off of bulkheads while the tip of a tail disappeared into a tight crawl space that lead into the bowels of the Cassium Fol. The tight crawl space would be tight for most species, impossible for others, but positively spacious for a small space-faring mouse that was intimately familiar with each turn, data line, and sharp edge of the service tunnel. Measure this, re-apply loose tape that, duck under that almost factory new bundle of fiber lines, to find the root of dark rooms since the modern age. A circuit interrupter had tripped due to a short in the cargo area. With a sharp crack erupting from the panel when Cami toggled it from interrupt to operational, Power rushed back into veins and arteries of her ship. Bit by bit, familiar sounds started to vibrate within its depths as systems came back on-line.

Subtle vibrations rumbled through the metal beneath her knees and rattled various color coded cable bundles that hung over head as she crawled forward on her hands and knees along the service tunnel. Every so often Cami couldn't help but stop as she rummaged through the bowels of her refitted cargo ship. There was always a cable to secure, a panel to open and double check, some processor to verify. An hour came and went before a satisfied squeak escaped from the service area, quickly followed by Cami as she hauled herself up and onto her feet again.

"Hnnnnnnraugh!" Came a low throaty growl, accompanied by the smash of an aluminum railing against the bulkhead just above the short hairs atop Cami's head. Had she been most any other species, that crash would have knocked her skull sideways. There standing just to her side was a hulking and wild eyed wolf breed. Cami flew solo and had no passengers, there's no way he should be there nor stowed away on her smaller ship. Dangling from his arm were several tubes, one still dripping an opaque ooze, tubes and such just like you'd use in a medical...

Cami hadn't the time to connect the tubes to the upturned, damaged, medical crate still resting at an odd angle against her cargo hold wall as there was a very angry and apparently armed wolf towering over her. Instincts, even those buried under generations and generations in addition to the genetic labs that created the seeds to begin with, are hard to ignore. Cami tore forward in a mad dash across her ship towards the door and the safety of the cabin, a started squeal trailing behind her. Behind that sound of distress was a low, predatory, and outright feral growl of frustration from her unwelcome guest.

Warmth surrounded her throat while a started cry was trapped there within it, ridiculously large fingers curled and yanked to pull her up from the ground by her neck before she'd even made it a half dozen steps. He didn't even need to make a sound when that large arm effortlessly picked Cami from the floor and flung her slight form across the deck plates, as far from the door as possible.

"The ship is mine, an I don' like strangers touchin' ma things." He growled again low and angry to shaking and crumbled mouse on the floor. Taking his time as his large frame stalked towards Cami.

Cami shakily got up to her knees. Pain was started to seep into her joints already, throbbing and aching acutely. The only safe area was now through the brick wall of an angry wolf between her and the door. Around her feet and thighs were broken and strewn bits of tools, supplies, things that had originally been on the shelf she'd just landed against. There was one last option available, a really really bad option, and it was there just to the side of the shelves. A red capped button shown on the wall with a smaller recessed partner just below it.

The pair lunged as one. Cami flung herself at the wall panel while her large pursuer leapt at the mess of shelving that she'd just extracted herself from. Her slender fingers mashed the large easy to reach button to no effect, the cargo doors refused to open without the ship docked. But, her other paw and fingers desperately found the small override button beneath it. With both pressed the Cassium Fol started a set of procedures all on its own.

Inertia ripped Cami, the wolf, and most everything not anchored down towards the front bulkhead as the Fol trigged an emergency drop from super light and broke out into normal space. The breakout wasn't so bad, but the thrusters attempting to slow down...minus the damaged unit... while the navigation computer was still trying to calibrate the misaligned gyroscopes kicked the ship into a fairly uncontrolled spiral that kept everyone off balance. Cami scrambled and made for where her shelves once stood, the bottom of which was welded to the bulkhead and remained in place. Her feet more than once found the grabbing paws of her attacked as she pushed off time and time again, each gaining a foot or so of distance until her small battered and bruised body bounced into the space below the shelf and she pressed tight to the wall. Slender shaking fingers gripped onto the short metal posts of the shelf where it was welded to the floor, now that the ship was out of super light it would move onto the next step.

A loud siren rang out over the screaming sounds of Cami's hoarse throat and the raging of her attacker. The siren rang only for a couple seconds before it too was drowned out by a louder and much more dangerous sound. Air whipped up into a frenzy when the vast vacuum of space was exposed to the inside of the cargo area. The loading ramp had begun to drop as requested by the button press. Anything with surface area and air behind it, namely most everything in the cargo hold, was immediately buffeted by an immense pressure from behind against the suction of space. There was a defiant growl and the sounds of claws as they tried to dig into her cargo deck plates, bits of claw even breaking free in the effort before he too was ripped from the room and flung into the emptiness of space between worlds. Cami hung on tight to the shelf posts from her hiding space, trying to keep herself tucked far from the raging winds as all the air in the cargo was ripped free. Tools, small cargo boxes, even the hatch used to block off the service tunnel trailed out behind her ship.

Only when the air was mostly gone did the buffeting of Cami's small body end, to be replaced with a desperate need of air and the sensation of her body being exposed to hard vacuum. She crawled out from the shelving and again just threw her body painfully at the wall panel to slam into that big red button a second time before collapsing. Already she could feel her skin blistering and tearing against the harshness of space. The siren rang out a second time, soundless without the air of the room to carry it, and the cargo door began to close as Cami collapsed to the deck and writhed ineffectively on the floor.

Pain echoed up from toes to ear tips, even her eyes hurt through her eyelids as light filtered through them. Every muscle refused to move without complaint as feeling returned to her extremities. She was laying on something that made an attempted at being soft and comfortable and the air was crisp, moisture-less, and heavily filtered. Laying meant gravity and the air was definitely not from an atmosphere but artificial.

Slowly her eyes opened to the brightness of an overhead light in what was unmistakably a medical room. There were wires and a few tubes leading down her arm, none of which she could reach. There was a dull thud each time her left arm reached for her right, the source of which was a cloth tie that kept her arms to her sides and lightly restrained. A dull beep started to go off somewhere behind the bed where she could not reach, some kind of annoying generic alarm that hospitals always have.

An achy eternity later finally some noise made her ear twitch when someone entered the room and shut off that infernal alarm.

"Good morning Cami, I'm Dr. Adok Hauger. Do you know where you are?"

"Alive and breathing on some station...where's my ship?"

"You're on a Navy patrol cruiser orbiting Ustyria moon. We found you after your breakout outside of normal shipping lanes, trailing debris and running on auto navigation here through normal space. Can you tell me what happened?"

Cami groaned inwardly as she had to run the events of her run through her rattled brain, then again aloud as she had to sit up some against the complaints of her body. "The cargo and I didn't get along...so I let it out to get some air. Where's my ship please?"

"The Cassium Fol is currently docked while it's inspected and you recover. Now let me tell you what we know happened and see if you can't fill in the blanks for me. You picked up some goods at Hozuno destined for the moon here. You appear to have been attacked, both your ship and yourself. You jettisoned the attacker and about killed yourself by decompression while forcing your ship into breakout. Let us not forget that your navigation system was partially disabled, a lateral thruster damaged, and your orientation gyros were misaligned. All in all, an impressive string of luck that you didn't break apart."

"But, now the stuff you probably don't know. That corpse trailing behind your ship was an escaped madman following the humanist movement. It looks like the ship that attacked you was trying to steal him before you reached any security checks at the moon, but they under estimated the acceleration of your ship and caught you when you broke into super light."

There was another low groan from the bed as Cami gave her head a dramatic slow shake. "And now that leaves me with a confiscated ship, bruised up body, and a murder to my name. What happens now Doc?"

"Your ship is free to go once you are, though I recommend you commission some repairs while you're docked here. You're mostly on the mend, just needing some rest, and the murder was actually manslaughter due to self defense. You're off the hook legally."

"With who knows how many psychos with the humanists after me and my ship while the Navy has me under their radar."

Dr. Hauger smiled as he stood and turned to leave the room, winking, "Well, I think we could always use a lucky and talented little cargo runner that's not officially a Navy ship. Rest now Cami, I'll pass the word along and wouldn't be surprised if you wake up to work waiting for you.