The labunit's recorder was active, although there was nothing much to watch. Dr. Payne seemed wholly engrossed in research at her console. Had been since before reveille. Ensign Postar yawned and stretched, idly wondering if his promotion and transfer would ever come through. This assignment was beyond dull. He was half-dozing when Dr. Payne exited the lab. He jumped as she approached, glancing at the monitor he *should* have been watching. The ‘patient' in the trank-tank was still, as always.

"Ensign, I have logged a request with Supply for more nutrient concentrate, and I've coded the message ‘stat'. The frelling tank malfunctioned and jettisoned a good part of the nutrients with the waste material. Our favorite patient could fail if we don't get this straightened out quickly. I doubt Scorpius would be happy." Aleria grinned wryly, hoping her wording would make it clear to the ensign that she considered her problem *his*, as well. "If nothing arrives in an arn, please let me know so I can raise hezmana."

Aleria switched her tone to one of confidential banter. "You know, I get so wrapped up in my research that time just flies by. But this is important. Scorpius wants this man kept in good health until he returns - probably to make executing him more satisfying." She shrugged at the vagaries of dealing with Command personnel. "So, I can't let this slide. Please don't let me forget about the concentrates, hmm?" The boy was nodding agreeably. She had been gratified by the slight widening of his eyes at the mention of Scorpius.

"Oh! I just remembered something. Got to get it down..." Aleria patted her lab coat as if in sudden confusion. She located the palm pad in one pocket, but found no stylus. "Ensign, can I borrow... Oh, here." She looked about the tiny desk, spotted a stylus near the boy's right hand, and leaned over from his left to retrieve it, giving a little grunt with the effort of stretching that far. "Ah! Thanks!" She straightened and quickly made a few notes on the palm pad. She handed the stylus back a mentar later, grinning sheepishly.

"Here I am, brain as big as a Prowler, but if I don't write things down as soon as I think of them, I forget - Poof! Gone, just as fast as they come. Thanks, Ensign. Remember to call me in an arn. I'll leave you alone til then, promise. Your jzah's getting cold."

As she left, Aleria saw the ensign glance at the cup holding his beverage and reach for it. Back in the labunit she noted the temperature in the anteroom. Down several degrees from normal. That should continue to make him groggy, and the mild soporific she'd just hypo-sprayed into his jzah would do the rest.

Her console still showed all tank systems normal, except for the nutrient readout. It was getting extremely low. In reality, the tank had nearly finished its resuscitation cycle. In a quarter arn or so the various shunts, catheters and cerebral probes would retract, and Bialar Crais would wake up. The waiting was hard, now. She had nothing to do but pretend to work at her console until she heard the tank mechanisms begin to activate. Microts stretched until she was ready to scream with the tension.

She quelled her sudden start when she finally heard the servos engage inside the tank. Moving slowly, distractedly, she punched a command sequence into her console and then froze in place, mindful of her posture and position. Then she punched ‘execute'. She prayed to her luck silently that the ensign was peacefully dozing, and that no one else monitoring had noted the slight change in her position when the screens started playing back the duplicate recording she had made of her day at the console. Several arns of recording had been set to play, covering her escape from the lab - she hoped.

After slight hesitation she let her adrenaline take over. She raced around the console to the tank, reaching it just as the cranial probes retracted into their seats and the table extracted itself from the tube. Captain Crais was conscious: disoriented and confused, but awake. She leaned close, catching his eyes with hers and speaking quickly but precisely to make him understand. "Captain Crais. I am a doctor, assigned to you by Scorpius. He plans to replace you as the leviathan's captain, but I am going to assist you to escape. Do you understand?"

Crais came fully alert at the mention of Scorpius and Talyn. He sat bolt upright and grabbed her arm in a painful grip. "Where am I? Why are you doing this?"

"There's no time! We have to get out of here in a quarter arn or we'll be caught. Save the questions and get dressed." She raced for the effects locker and came back with Crais' clothing, suddenly confronted with an alert, angry and quite naked man. She pushed the clothes at him, shaking off her nonsensical reaction to seeing him naked. She was a *doctor*, for frell's sake!

Aleria had brought her kit with her to the lab, moaning publicly that she'd been assigned to range *again* later in the day. But aside from the pistol and rifle, the bag held an interesting assortment of other items she hoped would prove useful. She dragged it out and rummaged now, past the weapons, past a change of civvies, and came up with both hands full. Crais had his trousers on and was slamming his feet into his boots, then gathered his opulent hair into a regulation queue with a practiced gesture. Aleria was busy not staring, and trying to remember all he needed to know before they made their break.

"Listen, I've made all the preparations I can to cover our leaving, but it's still going to be difficult. I'm not a soldier. But I'll do anything I can to help. I want out of here as badly as you do, trust me. Now take this and tell your leviathan to play along." She shoved a transponder unit into his hand, nearly dropping it. She'd filched it from its place in storage in another lab where it was awaiting the arrival of the Techs who were to build a new implant interface for a new leviathan Captain.

Crais' eyes widened when he realized what he held, but he didn't hesitate. He quickly installed the transponder, then moved to continue dressing. "I won't contact Talyn until we're in a transport pod. Any transmission, even as low-frequency as this one, might be picked up."

"Oh, right. You know more about this than I do. Take this." Crais fastened the last closure on his blouse with one hand, and took the pulse pistol from her with the other. "And these." The wolfish grin that spread across his face as she handed him the toss-charges was frightening. The charges were tiny but devastating. If worse came to worst, they could blast their way off the carrier with these.

"I've checked the duty rosters. There should be no one between us and the hangar deck who was assigned here during your command. Scorpius has cleaned house pretty thoroughly. I've also falsified orders for a Lieutenant Deragon to escort me to the leviathan to do some research. It was the best I could do, under the circumstances. I know there is a detail assigned aboard the leviathan, but I couldn't do anything about them. No one would believe an order to pull them back."

"I understand. Once aboard a transport, I can get Talyn to assist us with that. Are we ready?" "One more thing..." Aleria reached under her lab coat and unsnapped the double-pip lieutenant's rank insignia from her epaulets. She handed them to Crais with a shrug.

"You're an officer?"

"Actually, I'm entitled to Lt. Commander rank. These are from an old uniform."

"Comforting to know you don't outrank me," Crais muttered.

Ensign Postar was happily dozing as his charges slipped past him and out of the medunit. It was mid-day, and most of the Carrier's complement was at chow. The midday meal was the primary meal of the day so, unless the Carrier was on Alert or War status, the entire crew dined together in two shifts. Essential personnel were served first, then expected to return to duty stations quickly. The rest of the crew went to meal next, in any one of several dining halls. Aleria had timed their exit to coincide with the meal shift when the largest number of crew would be away from their posts. Getting to the hangar deck turned out to be relatively easy. However, as they approached two very alert-looking guards, Aleria wondered if their luck would hold. She tucked her elbow in close to steady the rifle secreted under her overlarge lab coat.

Crais stepped briskly up to the guard to the right of the hangar bay access. "Lt. Deragon, on escort for the, ah - Doctor."

"Commander Payne, Lieutenant," Aleria snapped. "Don't let the lab coat cloud your judgement."

"Certainly, Commander," Crais quickly gave an obsequious bow, hiding his knee-jerk reaction to being talked down to. He turned back to the guard. "I am escorting the Commander to the leviathan, Officer . I believe you will verify those orders without difficulty."

The guard officer checked a palm pad quickly, finding just such orders for Lt. Deragon and Commander Doctor Payne. However, the orders lacked the double-verification ordered by Captain Scorpius on all actions pertaining to the leviathan, Talyn. Something in the expression on the man's face alerted Aleria, but Crais was even quicker. He had the guard in a headlock, choking off his wind so he couldn't cry out, and was firing the pistol at the second guard before she could react.

"Well, hit him!" Crais snapped. "We'll be here all day if I have to choke him into unconsciousness..." Aleria fumbled the pulse rifle from beneath her coat and swung the butt up and around, contacting the guard officer's head with a nasty *crack*. The guard slumped to the floor, and Crais stood there glaring at her. "You nearly hit *me* with that thing!"

"I'm a Doctor, you frelling martinet! Hand-to-hand wasn't in my training regimen. Now, can we get *out* of here?"

As luck would have it, Talyn's transport pod had not been used to ferry the unconscious Crais to the carrier. The only transports available were those assigned to the carrier itself, and they were on the far side of the hangar. Crais headed instead for the nearest Prowler. It had been a long time, but he could still fly the tiny, fast ships. All sharp angles and weapons ports, Aleria thought the Prowlers looked like knife blades sitting in readiness on the hangar deck. She'd never flown in anything that small or that open before, and she had to swallow a few misgivings before she climbed up into the cockpit after Crais.

They shot out of the hangar and into space without incident, but Aleria knew that an unauthorized launch would automatically trigger alarms. They had to make it to Talyn fast. Crais punched the Prowler's engines and rocketed toward Talyn, muttering all the while. It took a mentar for Aleria to realize that he was speaking to Talyn. She had assumed that their communication would be silent, and was surprised to hear Crais talking to the ship as if it were sitting with him in the cockpit, rather than her.

Then a new panic seized her. Crais was approaching Talyn's hangar bay at a high rate of speed, and he wasn't throttling back. They were certain to splash all over the hangar's back wall at this speed. Aleria felt sick to her stomach, fevered and faint. A doctor was trained to deal with stress, but this was beyond all her experience. The secrets, the espionage, the fear of discovery, and now the fear of pursuit and death were becoming too much for her. She clutched the jumpseat of the Prowler and gritted her teeth for control. They were nearly there, nearly free...

Crais jetted the Prowler into Talyn's hangar in a maneuver that had Aleria's heart in her throat. He throttled back at the last microt, cranking the aileron control about to send the ship spinning as it slid across the deck. Out of the corner of her eye, Aleria spotted two commandoes fail to evade the ship's contrail. They were incinerated in a microt, without ever getting off a shot. Crais killed the engines and popped the canopy, then vaulted to the hangar deck. Aleria followed more slowly, clumsily, while Crais stood pistol-ready, a number of toss-charges waiting in his off hand.

Now, Talyn!" Crais yelled. He pushed Aleria along through the bulkhead doors, his fisted hand hard against the small of her back. She felt the sudden vibration as the supposedly quiescent leviathan suddenly came to life. Crais led the way through corridors and up gangways.

"How long will it take to get away, before ships come after us?" She wanted to know.

"Not long. Talyn's been quietly readying systems since we made the carrier deck. He should be ready to starburst before a Prowler launch can do much damage."

"‘Should'? ‘Much'? Tell him to shoot!" Aleria pulled Crais around by the arm and shrieked into his face, any semblance of composure completely gone.

"I *can't*! He's still hampered by the dampening net. We'll have to get to starburst and get away from here before we can get the frelling thing off him."

"What have I done? We're going to die," Aleria whispered, eyes wide and shocky. Just then a trio of commandoes rounded the bend in the corridor ahead of them. Aleria's pulse rifle came up almost of it's own volition. Several rounds slammed into the commandoes, knocking them backward in a sudden flare of pulse fire. Crais wheeled at the same time, but they were so close to one another that his arm jarred her rifle, sending her last shots astray. The third commando dodged, but went down when Crais' pistol fire made a smoking hole of his chest.

A squad of five more commandoes rounded the bend and Crais and Aleria took up cover positions behind support ribs on either side of the corridor. It was instinctive. The bewildered doctor was no longer thinking but reacting to the situation, prompted by an inner voice that told her what to do. Three commandoes went down before they could reach cover. The other two dug in and a firefight ensued. Pulse charges screamed through the corridor, impacting in the bulkheads with deafening noise. Both the doctor and the erstwhile PeaceKeeper lobbed toss-charges at the same time. The minute bombs were filled with a highly volatile gas. Ignition caused even a small amount of the stuff to flare like a mini-nova, searing anything it touched.

Both commandoes in the corridor ahead lurched from their cover, screaming and batting at the flames that tore at their hair and clothing. Crais stepped from cover and fired his pistol twice, ending their agony. "That should be the whole detachment, except for the officer in charge," Crais murmured, and gestured for Aleria to follow him up the corridor. She hesitated, unwilling to walk past the still-burning bodies. But she followed. She had no choice. This was all her doing - a dozen dead or dying. She gagged and swallowed bile when the smell of burning flesh, plastic and leather enveloped her. Then she began to run.

She reached the command area first, Crais a microt behind her. She had her rifle up and ready, but she saw no one there. Then Crais' hand slammed hard into her shoulder, knocking her aside and to the floor. She heard several rounds go off. When she picked herself up she saw the ranking officer lying on the floor. Several pulse burns told her he was quite dead.

Crais stalked to the primary command console and began calling up tactical updates. Aleria could see that a squadron of Prowlers had launched after them. They'd be on Talyn in microts. Talyn had moved several metras away from the carrier, which was now altering course and bringing its frag cannons to bear. Looking over Crais' shoulder she could see that one of the gauges was just reaching its maximum reading. She knew this was important, but couldn't immediately recall why. It hit her just as Crais growled, "Starburst - now!" and the universe turned upside-down.

To be Continued...