Eldon Thorngage, a young halfling rogue, adventurer and pilot, had found himself working for the growing Resistance movement off and on. For his latest mission, he was called into a briefing and introduced to a soulmech mechanist named Marcus Lear. The two were given a dangerous mission: to break into the elven scientific space station Risengar, heavily guarded by drow, and steal an experimental starship which could mean the fate of the galaxy to whoever possessed it.

Chrysalis was certainly revolutionary. She was a technological breakthrough from a druid/scientist group called Elven Balance Syndicate, designed to be the perfect balance between science and nature. What EBS produced was something that could change the face of the Dragon Empire: a living ship which could reproduce. Naturally, the Resistance wanted it before the drow got ahold of it.

There was just one problem: the drow were already at the station, running the shots and controlling the frightened druid scientists. And EBS had another enemy, as well, a radical druid terrorist group called Movement for a Natural Universe. Unbeknownst to Eldon and Marcus, MANU terrorists had already infiltrated the station and were planning to destroy it, thus ending the "natural abombination."

Eldon and Marcus managed to sneak onboard Risengar, making their way to the protected hangar where the experimental ship was still emerging from its chrystalline chrysalis (hence the name). Outside the hangar, Eldon found himself in a firefight with a few drow guards, but he managed to hold his own, attacking through stealth and misdirection. Unfortunately, the MANU members picked that exact time to arrive at the door and set their bomb. After taking out the MANU terrorists, Eldon set Marcus to defusing the bomb, while he tried to get into the hangar. His efforts increased when Marcus told him that the bomb could not be stopped.

Bluffing their way into the hangar, Eldon and Marcus managed to force their way onto Chrysalis, taking a few of the elven scientists with them. The arrival of more MANU terrorists prevented the drow guards from stopping them, and Chrysalis fled the hangar just as the bomb went off, barely escaping a fiery death.

Eldon dropped off the scientists on a planet, and he and Marcus decided to lay low for a while, hiding the ship on a low-tech Outlands world where (hopefully) no one would come looking for them. The realization that he was sitting in the most sought-after starship in the entire galaxy at the moment brought Eldon more than a little discomfort.

TO BE CONTINUED...