“On your parent’s bed!” Mirali exclaimed through a smile, as they passed the buildings towering over a sparsely trafficed street. “You are completely shameless!”
     “Why the hell does it matter where we do it?” Jasira replied, cool and confident as ever, knowing and not caring that he was radiating laid-back elation.
     “What if you’re parents walked in?”
     “What if they walked in on us on the couch?”
     Emily just sat in the background and listened. Jasira and Jen had started going out a week ago, and they were already fucking. Typical. Emily loved them both to death, but sometimes she just didn’t get how their brains worked. As they rounded a corner, she heard the distant high-pitched soft shriek of small ships taking off, followed by the deep-bellied roar of a massive freighter. Cariak was one of the largest cities of the nation Hasira, and the only spaceport on the planet Nero Prime. The sound of high-tech plasma-continium drives blended with the red brick walls of the buildings in a queer way that Emily had never been able to completely get over. She didn’t really want to ponder it for the millionth time, but it beat listening to Jasira gleefully describing last night’s activities. Because she had detached herself from the conversation, she was the first to see Bryant and Soñira heading towards them. Thank the gods...
     Emily loved all her friends, but as much as she hated to admit it those two had a even higher place in her heart than the rest. Although she had only known them for half a year, it already seemed like she had grown up with them. The three of them were the kind of friends who would go to the far reaches of the Milky Way for each other.
     “Hey Emily!” Bryant called across the street, pitching his voice to broadcast as clearly as if he was standing next to them, “We’re gonna crash at Margaret's place.” The invitation was implicit.
     “Nice! Count me in!” Emily replied.
     It seemed like she spent most of her life crashing at various friends houses these days, but she didn’t really care. At least not nearly as much as her father. No offense to him, but she’d rather be with four or five of her friends. And at the moment she was more than eager to be extracted from this conversation about Jasira and Jen’s “romance”.
     Bryant and Soñira crossed the temporairly vacant street, and the the two groups of people temporarily melted together.
     “Hey you sexy piece of man-meat...” Emily slyly greeted Bryant, to which he raised an eyebrow. It was their way of poking fun at their friends. The best part was half the time their friends never even figured out that it was a joke. Mirali was particularly gullible in this respect, and this time was no exception. In fact, she didn’t even figure it out until Emily jumped into Bryant’s arms and they started pretending to make out with ridiculous flamboyance. Finally, Emily lost her cool and burst out laughing. She rolled off Bryant and scrambled up from under Mirali’s playful blows.
     “I bet you think that was just hilarious!” Mirali exclaimed. But even while trying to make Emily feel guilty for the joke, she couldn’t stop laughing and beaming. She’d probably still be laughing if she was being dragged off by slave raiders!
     “Hey,” Emily said, “I’m gonna go crash with Bryant and Soñira.”
     “Fine,” Jasira said sarcastically, “Just go ditch us because you think we’re sluts.”
     “I never said that!” Emily could actually tell it was a joke, but she still found herself a little put off.
     “It’s ok,” Mirali said, finally catching on, “We’ll just go on without you. We’re strong enough to take the truth.”
     At least that much was true. It seemed like Emily was the only one here who hadn’t found this group through some two or three year life crisis. Few of them came out of theirs unscared. But scars are little more than reminders of past injuries, not open wounds. And all of them had come out much stronger than they ever could have been otherwise.
     The two groups went their separate ways, and Emily felt like a burden had just been lifted from her shoulders. It had nothing to do with Jasira and Mirali - she always felt this way when she was with Bryant and Soñira. They understood her, and understood life the way she did. A lot of her friends had a tendency to call everyone else sheep while they ran about in their own rebel flock, but Bryant and Soñira were legitimately independent. They somehow seemed more true, more real than Emily’s other friends. They didn’t try to pretend that they had no flaws, and they didn’t say stupid things for the sake of agreeing with the person next to them.
     As soon as they were out of earshot of the other group, Emily turned to Bryant.  “Looks like you owe Soñira 10 Reds.”
     “HA!” Soñira yelled, turning and pointing at him. “I told you they wouldn’t be able to restrain themselves!”
     “What?” Bryant said in mild surprise, but not disbelief, “One week! Those horny bastards...”
     “Come on, cough it up!” Soñira said triumphantly.
     “Those two have as much shame as a Vespasian League CEO...” Bryant said as he counted out 10 translucent red chips.

     The three of them never made it to Margaret's house. They met up with Margaret, and the four of them ended up on a one of their favorite retreats: a rock face on one of the mountains surrounding the city. It was a bit of a climb to get to it, but they wouldn’t be disturbed. No one ever came up here save some of their other friends. And, as a bonus, they got a scenic overview of the city and the spaceport, like a pocket of civilization in wilderness.
     The spaceport dominated the city, which was in turn dominated by the landing fields and ship bunkers. They were spread out all over it, dwarfing the defense systems and navigation towers.
     It was about four-thirty in the middle of summer, which meant that the sun was just setting for Nero Prime’s 20 hour day. The four of them lay there, occasionally striking up a conversation, but for the most part just basking in each other’s presence. They didn’t have to ask permission to lean on each other for strength and support, or ask to confirm that they were getting it. Both were implicit, and that was what made this so great. When Emily was up here with them, she could almost believe that there was no world beyond the woods surrounding them, that there wasn’t a galaxy of people killing each other for any excuse they could think of, that there wasn’t a school full of people with closed minds and tunnel vision, ready to fall into line and lock into step behind whichever faction thier parents belonged to.
     Margaret reached in her backpack and took out a couple bottles of Adrenaline.
     “You guys want any?” She asked.
     “Sure,” Bryant replied.
     “Nah, not now.” Soñira said.
     Emily didn’t have to answer. They knew she didn’t do that kind of stuff. Even now that Adrenaline was a drink instead of smoke or a shot, and it had no harmful effects (besides dependence), Emily still didn’t like the idea of relying on a drug to feel relaxed or happy. Not that any of them wanted to be addicted, but some of them had gotten pretty screwed up while they were trying to find thier footing in this galaxy without paying for it with allegience. Adrenaline addiction was kinda like residue, a constant reminder of how they got to this place in life. But Emily wanted nothing to do with it, and even if she did she doubted these three would let her. At least it wasn’t a hard drug - you couldn’t get a high off it, and it was a pretty weak depressant. It just made you feel more laid back and comfortable.
     Bryant and Margaret took a couple swigs. After a few seconds, Bryant spoke up.
     “I thought we said we were done with this crap a month ago.”
     Margaret reflected for a second. “Yeah, we did. I guess we just hopeless junkies.”
     “Oh, shut up,” Soñira piped in, “Half the kids in our school are hopeless junkies. At least you try to quit.”
     They had been trying to quit for much longer than a month, but whoever made Adrenaline didn’t want their customers quitting. It was easy to trace the line of distribution back to when it arrived on the planet, but no one knew who actually made the stuff. Whoever they were, they were smart enough to realize that they’d made more money if their customers stayed alive, but they made sure that the withdrawal symptoms were viscous.
     As the sun rapidly set, the four of them lay with each other. None of them brought up the subject of going home. Although they hated to admit it because, with the exception of Soñira, they loved their families. They just felt more comfortable with each other. It wasn’t that they felt uncomfortable with thier families, but rather that the four of them had achieved an even stronger bond than they had previously thought possible. Besides, it would be a warm night, and they were more than content to get away from it all up here, basking in a crazy thing called life in a crazy galaxy. But despite enough insanity to drive people who opened thier eyes to reality to cynicism and despair, they were each other’s strength, each other’s conscience, and their companionship was as solid and unshakable as the rock of the mountain they were lying on.

     Emily snuck into her home so quietly she couldn’t even hear herself, but it was futile.
     “Out all night with your friends again?” a gentle yet firm voice asked.
     Dammit! Emily turned around, no longer bothering to be quite. An ancient man with a sparse, untrimmed gray beard and an apparently withered figure sat cross-legged in the corner, hands resting lightly on his knees, palms up.
     Emily had never known anything about her parents. She had been left at the spaceport as a baby, only a few weeks old, though it was obvious that her parents weren’t from the Pleiades Union. She had the long fingers, thin hair and near-white skin common of genetic lines that spent little time planet-side. None of these differences were stark, save maybe the skin-tone, and that was only so because it contrasted with the dark complexion common to Pledians.
     Vrason Harrias, the aging Buddhist sitting in the corner, had taken her in and raised her as his own. He was a very loving father, though he had a tendency to carry out his patience and untouchable serenity to maddening extremes.
     She sat there, waiting for him to say something. He just stared into her eyes, as if to say “you know I can sit here as long as necessarily”.
     “Ok,” Emily said, an uncomfortable edge sifting into her voice, “I was with Margaret, Soñira and Bryant. We slept up on the mountain, and I didn’t fuck anyone or take any drugs.”
     “Not this time,” Vrason said. It was a statment, not an agreement. He paused for a second, pondering. “I worry for you, Emily. Many of your friends fall off the tightrope you’re walking. You haven’t fallen yet, but you’re inexperienced in the ways of life. I worry that you may lose your balance. And that word is such a harsh, spiteful thing to come out of your innocent mouth.”
     “Dad, I’ll be fine. I’m not stupid.”
     “Many bright people have fallen before,” Vrason said in a meandering, airy tone.
     “Well...” Emily stumbled around her mind, searching for words to express what she was feeling. Finding none: “Not me.”
     With that, she was off to her room. She didn’t have to look back to see the well-greased gears spinning harmoniously behind those eyes enfolded in soft wrinkles of skin. Not that they ever weren’t moving...
     Halfway up the stairs, her mood was savagely thrust aside by an explosion ringing in the distance like a klaxxon. Her mind kicked into automatic response as she suppressed her welling panic like her father taught her She retrieved the ancient laser cannon from upstairs, and raced over to the window. There was a small militia stationed here, but they could use all the supporting fire they could get, and many of Emily’s neighbors were already poised at thier windows with any sort of gun they could get thier hands on.
     As she leaned out the window, the scene hit the pit of her stomach like a hammer blow. It was a slaver raid - and she had never seen so many of those wolves in one place in her life.
    The militia stationed here was hopelessly outnumbered, and retreating while calling in reinforcements. It wouldn’t matter, though. The slavers would be gone before any arrived. The slavers broke through the militia’s shattered lines like a tidal wave, flooding the town and seeping into every building. A few stayed behind to butcher some of the militiamen as an example, and then paralyze and capture the rest. Emily cursed, and then raced downstairs to make a mad dash for the raid-shelter. At least the militiamen are brave, she thought bitterly, and they will defy the slavers up to thier death. Those assholes won’t get any slaves out of them.
     As she barreled down the stairs, she found four slavers dragging her father away. One of them fell to her Laser Cannon, and they dove for cover. Before she could react, however, a dark red energy pulse leapt out from a slaver’s arm piece to her left shoulder. She screamed and dropped the gun as the burning reached a climax of agony, before it went numb as her muscles locked themselves in place, as immobile as if they were made of stone. Finally breaking into panic, Emily bolted away without even the vaguest sense of destination, only to feel another bolt burn itself into her leg. She stumbled, hopelessly sprawled on the floor, and the bolts fell on her like a hail of vultures until she found herself completely paralyzed. She screamed at her muscles as the slavers approached casually, but to no avail. Now she couldn’t even cry out any more - she had absolutely no control over her stone body as the slavers dragged her off and threw her into the filthy cargo bay of a Zephyr-class battle courier.

     Tayan’s knuckles were white with tenacity as he gripped the hovercar’s handrail. From the speed of the ground passing below them, this had to be pretty close to the hovercar’s breaking speed, even if it was top-notch military grade. His company were the only ones within response distance of the raid. Others would come, but the slavers would probably be gone before enough reinforcements arrived to actually defeat them. His was an elite squad, though, so they might be able to manage some damage control.
     “GET READY!” The driver screamed over the grating buzz of the heat thrusters. “WE’RE THIRTY SECONDS OUT!!”
     Tayan could just make out the town on the horizon, but it was growing bigger very fast, as the hovercar began to decelerate. As it slowed down to a hundred and fifty mph, the klaxxon sounded, and Tayan redoubled his death-grip on the handrail as the shield went down, allowing the wind to assail them with the apparent fury of a hurricane.
     While hovercars were available to civilians, they were very expensive, and none of the civilian-grade could touch the speeds they had been going at. Heck, the Pleiades Militia wouldn’t even have any if it wasn’t for the sympathy and generosity of the Confederation of Humans and Nassanites. Instead of the standard groundcars that would be all their ragtag militia could afford, they got a brand new, shiny hovercar that could make those ground crawlers look like sloths. Tayan loved the Confederation, and he certainly wasn’t alone. Who knows how many citizens of Cariak will soon owe their freedom to this hovercar?
     Despite generous foreign aid from the Confederation, the Pleiades Militia still looked more like a gang of ragtag renegades than the thugs and slavers they were trying to repel. Perhaps if the 64 city-states over 7 planets and 3 space stations could get along, it would be different. As it was, though, they were constantly feuding and with each other, and too busy with their wars of bigotry to defend their planets or maintain law and order - letting those jobs fall on the shoulders of the Militia. There were constant attempts at alliances, but the city-states were always looking out for themselves and their interests. And with the social and religious differences between them, these alliances took a striking resemblance to middle-school romances.
     The Pleiades Militia, technically, isn’t even associated with the Pleiades Union at all. It is a completely independent organization founded half a century ago by a couple of rich individuals who realized that the existing powers were utterly failing in the Militia’s current role. And it is welcomed by nearly all of the factions - it stays neutral by strictly sticking to the mission statement of protecting the Pleiades Union for foreign incursion and enforcing basic, non-religious law.
     The hovercar was barely five feet above the ground when they leapt off, it’s acceleration thrusters in full reverse, and they hit the ground at a little under 20 mph, landing in a ball and rolling. Tayan was the first up, though one would be hard pressed to notice any difference in their reaction times.
     The scene wasn’t much different than any other raid Tayan had seen seen during his carrer, except for one thing: it was enormous! There were slavers all over the place, a couple of buildings had caught fire. Citizens, partially, half, or fully paralyzed, were strewn all over the place. The slavers didn’t actually capture them during this stage of the raid - they just paralyzed them and then dragged them into the open. They’d go around collecting them later. Except they had seen Tayan’s hovercar coming in, and had started to gather up thier new slaves.
     Tayan took just a fraction of a second to analyze the situation, then: “FORMATION 3, SET YOUR ARMPIECES TO PARALYZE!! TIRA, DREGSON, WITH ME - WE’RE SPEARHEAD!! MOVE!!”
     He brought up his armpieces to block a hail of searingly bright red bolts. If they were dark red, they were set to paralyze... if they were bright red, they were set to kill. Each of his armpieces were a combination of a small, cannon-like electron bolt gun strapped to their forearm, as well as a shield. This was an energy field that looked like a thin sheet of water, spread out like the skin of a bat inside a triangular, spider-web frame. One armset to each forearm.
     Tayan immediately brought up the shields defensively, and it no longer ran a spear through his nerves to see the angry red bolts race at him, only dissolving in the shields half a foot from his soft flesh. His shield absorbed them harmlessly, but they drained it’s batteries a lot more than he felt comfortable with. They wouldn’t be able to sustain this amount of fire very long.
     The next instant Tayan and Dregson were with him, hiding behind his shields with both of their armsets set to full-automatic. The batteries couldn’t keep up a hail like that very long either, but they only needed a few seconds to have four of the slaver’s rear guard paralyzed, and the rest taking cover and considerably reduced their fire.
     Immediately, the three of them dove forward, abandoning the protection of their shields for an apparently randomly staggered approach. While they were doing this, the rest of their squad had encircled the slavers, in groups of three, and the Slavers were now taking fire from all directions.
     Suddenly, the slavers in the middle seemed to collapse into a center pile, ejecting thier captives from it, and lining up their shields in a roman-style dome, double layered, nearly impenetrable. What the hell is this? The slavers Tayan was used to dealing with were unorganized gangs of thugs...
     The slavers started hurling - no gentler than absolutely necessary - captives out of the sphere, right into the Militia’s line of fire. Thank the gods I had them set their armsets to paralyze. Citizens had mostly either been captured or gotten into the heavily fortified raid shelters. The ones left were half paralyzed, and were crawling away, dragging themselves by their arms, or flopping like fish thrown on a dock - using any part of their body they could still move to get away from the slavers. His people had already started trying to break the dome, concentrating their fire on four of five shields. The slavers responded by shifting the pattern. What the hell!? They’re randomly shifting their shields in perfect coordination, without making a single hole in the process! Tayan felt himself sink into a state of complete emotional detachment and indifference - his last resort for keeping his cool on the battlefield. Who are these Slavers? The typical slavers we have here are Klahn-sect or independent... perhaps this is a high Klahn-sect company? Tayan doubted it - these slavers were working too much like a machine for even the best of the Klahn-sect...
     Tayan heard the zap laser like church bells ringing 11 o’clock. Not the weak, obsolete armset lasers. Ship-mounted Laser cannons. That was it - they were way outclassed here. There was no way they could fight space-ships with hand weapons.
     “RETREAT AND TAKE COVER!! I REPEAT, RETREAT AND TAKE COVER!!”
     Then, taking up his comm unit, “This is Tayan Jackson. We are in Cariak on Nero Prime and taking fire from four Slaver Terrapins. We urgently require backup.”
     Even as he said this, pale blue laser beams raked the ground around them, staggered on and off so they arrived like javelins that collapsed on whatever they hit. One of them hit Seth’s shield, completely depleting it’s batteries in under a second, and ripping through his chest with a spray of pink mist.
     The Terrapins were closing in quickly. At this range, they couldn’t aim thier lasers too acurately. But that would change very soon.
     Most of the his squad were safely hidden from the Terrapins now. The only ones left were the ones dragging half (or more than half) paralyzed Citizens to cover. A few of the citizens apparently still had control over all the parts of their body they needed to cry scream, and were doing so very liberally. One particular woman’s voice reached a forte when she lost her grip on her young son. He looked to be around five years old, and was too terrified to move on his own will. The woman started screaming curses at the militiaman dragging her to safety like a bezerker. There was no doubt in Tayans mind that she would be beating her rescuer into a bloody pulp if she could.
     But by now, the Terrapins were way to0 close, and the open ground was becoming a gauntlet of laser beams - even wildfire rockets now. Wildfire’s were the weakest projectile-weapons used in intra-stellar combat, but they were light enough so they could be fired even from small fighters. And they were still much more than sufficient to vaporize any human. That boy was as good as dead now, and sending someone out after him would only get two people killed.
     “HOLD YOUR POSITIONS!! THE TERRAPINS ARE TOO CLOSE!!”
     He immediately regretted it. His people had cool heads - they wouldn’t need to be told to stay put. All of them but one.
     “DAMN YOU, DREGSON, YOU KEEP YOUR ASS UNDER COVER!!”
     Once again, he had wasted his breath. Even as the slaver dome was breaking up, Dregson dove through the laser beams that were now coming down like rain, with Wildfires like bolts of lightning. But Dregson was a Claist who chose to follow the god Jar-Sul. According to the Book of Jar-Sul, it was his divine duty to wage a never-ending jihad against all evil. Jar-Sul would, supposedly, protect him during his services as long as he was supposed to stay in this life. Tayan had yet to see any divine interference on the battlefield, but Dregson was too much a believer to be persuaded by reason. Tayan wouldn’t even have such a fanatic on his hand-picked elite squad if Dregson wasn’t so damn good.
      Somehow, the maniac managed to navigate the gauntlet with only a graze down his back, and he dove under a half-collapsed brick shed next to Tayan, with the bawling boy in his arms.
     “You are a fucking madman, Dregson!” Tayan spat under his breath, more because he felt he needed to say something than because he though Dregson would care.
     “Hey, we’ve got a little kid here,” Dregson said, cradling the bawling boy in his arms, holding the small body benieth his to shield it from flyind debries, “I don’t think his mother would appreciate him heairng that language.” He said it like he was the sane one talking to a fanatic.
     Tayan shook his head and pressed himself to the ground, listening to the screams of people as buildings collapsed on them, the zap of lasers and the whizzing and explosions of Wildfires. But it wasn’t happening to him. It was very real, but distant - like he was a mere observer who just happened to control one of the players. Leaving his mind crystal-clear.
 Whoever these slavers were, they were as brutal as they were cunning. They wanted to make sure than no one forgot this raid. And now that they were in space ships, they were untouchable by hand weapons.
     Finally, the slaver ships took off and the Terrapins pulled out. Not half a minute passed before a full Pleiades Militia Task Force, a Condor class carrier, which carried four Tempest-class fighters, and a escort of four Wolverine class light destroyers, screeched into the sky to find the slavers gone and the city demolished.
    That was way too precise, way too organized. Those had to be Bizar sect. The Bizar slaver sect was the most powerful, most lethal of the three major slaver sects. No one knows where they sell their slaves, but they pay the Arsona sect a heavy slaving tax, apparently without reservations, for slave-raiding rights in the Core, the anarchic cluster surrounding Earth. The Bizar sect left the Pleiades Union alone for the most part, but this raid was too big to be a spur of the moment idea while a raiding fleet was in the area. It would be awhile before they could figure any kind of numbers, but Tayan guessed they could have easily abducted a couple hundred of his people. Most raids only resulted in a couple dozen abductions at the most. This was enormous, and even the suspicion that the Bizar sect was behind it put dragons in Tayan’s stomach.

     Damn these animals! Emily thought. She only felt a tinge of surprise at her treatment here, and it was compounded by her awareness that even that tinge was foolish. After all, these were slavers.
     It still didn’t seem real to her. She was in a cramped, dark metal box with too many other people. Keeping the empty shells of men around her from groping her was a full-time job, but when she looked at them in the minimal light and saw the empty pits of their eyes, she couldn’t feel anything but pity for them. Even as she relentlessly beat their grimy hands back. She had no clue where they came from, but they looked like they’d been locked up here for awhile.
     In fact, they looked like they’d spent their entire life on board this ship. Their eyes became hazy and distorted in the shadows, they smelled like they hadn’t washed themselves for months -  which was probably the case, through no fault of theirs.
     Suddenly, Emily’s panic overrid her humanity, and they ceased to look human to her. They reached out at her with filthy hands that looked more like tentacles from some morbid monster grown out of the bosom of this neglected and broken-down box that could have been scavenged from the derbies of the Great War. Emily felt panic swelling up in her throat again, as she scrambled, frantically beating back the hands of these things.
     Suddenly, she felt several strong hands grab her shoulders and sides. She screamed and lashed out relentlessly, half expecting to be pulled into the gaping jaws of some horrible beast that wandered the depths of space for eternity.
     She found herself thrown into a circle of people. There were several people sleeping inside. In fact, the only people who were awake on the inside were the ones she landed on.
     “Wha’ da hell, Jar?” One of them growled angrily, roughly shoving Emily, who was still numb with shock, onto the unforgiving floor that was more rust than metal. She scrambled backwards until she ran right into a blockade of people - facing away from her. Blocking all the things from getting inside this circle where at least a small number of people managed to sleep peacefully.
     “Ok, girl,” the man who threw her in said, never turning away from his post in the blockade, “If you want to stay in here, you gotta earn your keep,” Emily felt something hit the bottom of her stomach like a brick, anticipating what “earning her keep” might be. “You’ll have to spend about 14 hours a day in the blockade. We all do. People learn to leave us alone for the most part, but some still give us trouble. If you harass, cheat, or hurt anyone in here in any way, you get thrown into the mob.”
     With that, he turned his back to her, the man she landed on went back to sleep. She was inside the circle, just like that. She looked around, feeling like she had to introduce herself, but no one paid her any heed. Seeing nothing better to do, she laid her body down on the sickly floor with great reservation.
     She was teetering on the edge of sleep when she dimly sensed that utter chaos was surrounding her. Still not consciously aware of it, she rolled over, and someone stepped on her side in a desperate scramble. That woke her up, and the single reason she didn’t lose her lunch was that there wasn’t anything in there for her to lose.
     That was when she saw the hatch to her compartment had been blown open. Come to think of it, she thought she remembered hearing something like a loud explosion in her semi-dream haze. She was up in a flash, bolting for the door, a figure outlined against the glaring light urging her on. He followed behind her, powering up his armsets.
     She rounded a corner, and ran right into another person, knocking both of them down. Before she could even grasp what had happened, a bright red bolt streaked over her, and she heard the man she’d run into coughing up the remains of his lungs. The man behind her firmly grabbed her arm and almost violently pulled her to her feet, pushing her forward.
     After a few seconds, she rounded another corner, and the ground dissipated beneath her feet. Or so it seemed to her in her still hazy conciousness. She was jarred slightly, and probably bruised, when she landed on the solid rock ground eight feet below. She stared up at the harshest glare she’d even seen come from the star Nero, sharply contrasted by a pitch black sky. The air was incredibly thin - Emily had to breathe very deeply. It woke her up enough to figure out that she probably wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
     Her companion landed on his feet next to her, and even though she was already getting up this time, he still pulled her to her feet. The low gravity would also explain why this guy can toss me around like an inflatable doll. She found herself racing forward, the guy egging her on, and heard something much bigger than an armset powering up behind her. She ran faster, now taking advantage of the gravity and taking long, bounding leaps. Looking up, she could see several people behind what looked like a jagged dune of solid rock, beckoning her on.
     Suddenly her elbow was on fire. She screamed and almost fell, looking down at her elbow, not surprised to see that it wasn’t actually on fire. It’d just be  paralyzed in a few seconds. She gritted her teeth and tried to concentrate on running.
     But her arm didn’t become paralyzed. It just kept burning, and she could feel her skin blistering and peeling away. They aren’t even trying to capture us anymore! They’re trying to kill us!
     “Come on, hurry up!!” A man yelled behind her. He was holding up an arm-piece shield behind his back, but he still passed her.
     She whimpered in pain as he grabbed her elbow and pulled her along, dropping his shield to do so. Can’t this idiot see I just got shot there!? Another bright red bolt whizzed past her head, singeing her hair. She found herself a little more motivated to get over the rock-dune.
     “HURRY UP DREGSON YOU GODDAMN MANIAC!!” someone from the other side of the rock yelled. “WE CAN’T OPEN FIRE UNTIL YOU GET YOUR SELF-RIGHTEOUS ASS OVER HERE!!”
     They had about five feet to go when another bolt whizzed to them, hitting the man pulling her along squarely in the back. With a scream, he flew forward, landing flat on his face with a sickening crack. Emily almost ran past him, but...
     He probably just died trying to save me, the least I can do is try to give him a chance to live! Emily dove on him, fumbling with his armsets. The bolts were getting more frequent as more of the slaver ship’s crew poured out.
     “HE’S DEAD, LADY!! GET BACK HERE OR WE’LL BE FORCED TO OPEN FIRE, PUTTING YOU RIGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE!!”
     Emily kept working at it, and finally managed to get one of them off. Now that she knew how, she got the other off very quickly. Seeing no alternative, she lay down on top of him, thier feet pointing towards the slaver ships and thier heads pointing towards whoever was rescuing them (probably the Pledias Militia, as there wasn’t any other protective force in the area that did squat). She attached one of his shields to the bottom of her foot, and checked it... it was just barely big enough to cover thier profile. Scrambling, she grabed his other armpiece and held it over thier heads, protecting them from friendly fire.
     Whoever was in charge behind the rock either saw this or decided that he’d waited too long for her. “OPEN FIRE!!”
     If the slavers had been firing freely on them, there must have been a juggernaut behind the cliff. Perhaps it was because they didn’t need to use one armpiece as a shield behind the rock, but the bolts flying over Emily’s head resembled a torrential downpour. Craning her neck as much as she dared for fear of exposing it to fire, she saw five or six slaver’s falling from their perches on the ships, and the rest of them retreating into them. Emily’s heart leapt. The Slavers are retreating!
     The militia behind the rock hadn’t been fooled, though. And Emily soon realized her naiveté. As soon as she saw the ship’s powering up... and their massive fission cell turrets swiveling to face them. This isn’t happening...
     The ship’s shields came up. They looked like glimmering, paper-thin sheets of water, scarcely a foot off the ship’s surface, matching their contour like a layer of skin.
     Emily was no expert on combat tactics, but it was pretty common knowledge that hand-held shields were next to useless against ship-mounted cannons. She lobed Dregson’s armpieces over the rock ledge, and started dragging him there. She was quickly joined by four others, and each one of them took an arm of a leg.
     “Get down, and stay down!” The man next to her whispered calmly but urgently. Emily obeyed almost without thought - only a slight question fleeting through her mind after the fact. And that was quickly dismissed. She was frankly amazed that she kept a cool enough head to rig up the guy’s shields like she did.
     Looking around, Emily saw that there were much more rescued slaves than Pleiades Militia (their uniforms had confirmed her guess). They were all armed to the teeth - the Militia must have all brought extra weapons. The Pleiades Union was a pretty dangerous place - most of it’s people learn how to use hand weapons as soon as they are old enough to effectively wield them. People would leave for safer places, if there was anyplace in the Pledias Union that was really safe. Those who had the money could travel to the Confederation, but that meant bridging a large gap of deep space crawling with pirates, slavers, and worse. It wasn’t a particularly daredevil thing to do, it was just a matter of money. If you had enough money to hire the Mercenary’s Guild to take you across, you could do it without putting yourself in any more danger than you were already in at home.
     “What are we going to do now?” she asked, her mind starting to catch up with events. That rock ledge wouldn’t protect them from ship-mounted cannons any better than hand-held shields would.
     “Lay low and hope our guys get here in time.”
 As if on cue, a small volley of luminescent blue Nassanite torpedoes streaked towards the parked slaver ships, leaving trails of residue like glowing commet tails. The slavers easily shot down the torpedoes at this range... a disquieting development. These slavers really knew what they were doing. Then again, so did the Pleiades Militia. They may be undermanned, underfunded, and under appreciated, but they were pretty damn good for what they had. Any of them who survived the first few months got a lot of good experience very fast, and after a few years in the Militia, your average recruit was probably more a veteran than three quarters of the Vespasian League Fleet. Then again, the militia were still mortal and still lacked super-powers.
     Pirates and Slavers constantly ravaged the Pledias Union. They fear the Militia like the devil himself (probably more, in thier case), but they also know how thinly stretched it is. And as long as they kept getting lucky, they could take astounding quantites of slaves and loot from people who were unguarded at the second. But the Militia had lightning response time, and they had to watch thier windows of oppertunity like hawks. For in evenly-matched confrontations, the Militia rarely lost. This gave raiding in the Pledias Union all the more appeal to these types. “You’re not a real pirate until you’ve raided the Pledias.”
     Still, it was already obvious that these were no ordinary slavers. They were way too organized and efficient. They immediately decided to ignore the escapees, and took off, retreating.... The man bearing the forest green and black chest-strap of a Pleiades Militia leader stood up. He wasn’t screaming over electron fire anymore, but his voice was just as firm.
    “Everyone to your ships! Let’s go! We can still knock out their engines before they reach safe jump-point distance!”
     Soon, eight “Runabouts” - named after something in some old TV show, before the Great War - buzzed overhead. They were Confederate fighters - thus the fastest in the Pleiades Militia. They had originally been shuttles for transporting passengers and small shipments as fast as possible, but when the Confederation restarted the meta-space stabilizer network, they opened the passages to all the other clusters - allowing pirates from the Core, which had fallen into everything short of complete anarchy, to raid the Confederation. The Runabout was quickly adapted with substantial shields and weapons - even though it was really a converted shuttle, it was built by Nassanite scientists, making it one of the deadliest fighters in the galaxy.
     A small swarm of Tempest-class fighters, less glorious but still dangerous, followed, and half a dozen Wolverine-class light destroyers were quickly coming on. Behind those, a couple of Confederate Gargoyle-class heavy cruisers, and a pair of the Confederate Galleon-class dreadnoughts was putting forward a heavy supporting fire of Nassanite Torpedoes. The Galleon was truly a ship to fear, over twice as powerful as the Condor-class carriers (the most powerful warship available to civilians), and almost a match for a Dormus Cartel Supercruiser. Looks like they’ve caught onto who they’re dealing with here, Emily thought. This is an incredible concentration of ships for a force as thinly-stretched as the Pleiades Militia. And considering the skill of the pilots, this is probably a pretty lethal force. Hopefully it’ll be enough.
     “As for the rest of you,” the Militia leader continued, addressing the escapees, “We have half a dozen Zephyrs back there. Marier here will take you to them, and we’ll get you right to Pleiades Station, and hopefully back to your homes without too much delay.” With that, he was off to his ship, as most of his men were already in the air and racing off to join the battle.
 Suddenly, all Emily knew was the searing pain ripping her head to pieces. It was as if her brain was on fire with shockwaves bouncing about inside her skull. She tried to yell out, but found that her brain was so chaotic she couldn’t even command her mouth to scream. She vaguely sensed that she was falling down.

     Emily put a hand up to her dully sore head as she slowly faded back to consciousness, and her thoughts began to come back together. She sat up and stretched, then twisted her torso to crack her back. She took a look around, seeing orderly rows of anesthetically white beds with matching sheets and pillows, most of them occupied. What am I doing in a hospital? She looked at her elbow. It was covered with gauze and was sore to the touch, but it shouldn’t have been enough to get her in here. Then she remembered the mind-jolt, and then... I must have passed out. Which may be why I’m here. What’s the date? She just realized that she had no clue, either how long she’d been on that slaver ship (she physically shuddered at the memory), nor how long she’d been knocked out.
    From what?
     She almost got up, but then wondered if she should. After briefly checking, she didn’t find any tubes or wires attached to her body. She felt fine, aside from a sore elbow. And a headache. What the hell was that thing?
     Emily looked around, seeing if she could find a nurse. Most of the beds were occupied, though most of the patients looked fine. She recognized the man who’d rescued her in a bed across from hers and two beds to the left. He was on his stomach with a lot of stuff on his back and numerous tubes sticking into him, as well as a Neuro-simulator hooked up to his head. Those were machines that would tell the brain everything was fine, whether it was or not, somehow overriding the person’s nerves. They didn’t fix anything, but they could keep the brain from shutting down - borrowing precious time for doctors. They didn’t always work, but they rarely hurt anything, and they’ve saved enough lives to be standard issue - that is, to anyplace that could afford them. The machine’s presence here meant that Emily had to be in one of the largest cities in the Pleiades Union, for none of the hospitals back on Nero Prime had one...
     Emily’s pondering of Neuro-simulator were interrupted by a nurse walking around the corner. Finally...
     “Hey,” Emily hailed him, and she struggled for a starting place. “What happened?”
     He held up a tiny, rubber-enveolpoed plate, about two inches across. An implant?
     “Those weren’t the normal slavers we get around here,” he said, “They were Bizar sect. They’d put these implants in all of you.”
     Emily reached back and felt her head. Sure enough, she felt stitches in her scalp and a soft spot where a section of her skull had been cut away and the bone-implant hadn’t completely hardened yet.
     “You guys were lucky,” the nurse continued, “The implants were designed to kill you if your owners triggered them, but they hadn’t been in long enough to securely connect themselves to your nervous system. When you were all rescued, the slavers activated them, but you only got a partial mind-blast.”
     Emily looked around, seeing if she knew any of the other occupants, wondering about how sanitary a job the Slavers, even if they were Bizar sect, would have done on installing brain implants into slaves.
     “Everyone got knocked out good,” the nurse said, “Some actually were killed. Most of the remaining went into acoma. We were able to bring a few back out - we’ll just have to wait for the rest to wake up on their own, if they ever do.”
     He sounded sincerely remorseful. Then he seemed to wipe the thought from his mind.
     “You, however, just woke up. So let’s see...” his voice trailed off mumbling as he brought up her data on his hand-terminal.
     “Looks like you took an photon-bolt hit to the elbow. You should be able to leave and do alright. Just rest the arm for a few days, or however long it takes so it doesn’t hurt when you move it.”
     He hit a button, and a piece of paper shot out of a slot in the wall down at the end of the room. He briskly walked over to it, retrieving the paper, and brought it back to Emily.
     “Give them this at the front desk as you leave. They’ll give you some cling-bandages for that elbow with some ointment. Wash it every night and change the bandage. There’ll be Militia Zephyrs there to get you back to Cariak, or at least what’s left of it.”
     Emily’s mind was still backlogged with questions, but the nurse was already busying himself with his next patient. Letting out a sigh, Emily got up and headed towards the front desk.

     Emily was all too eager to get out of the cargo bay of the Zephyr. Even though this was a Pleiades Militia ship, and the bay was clean and respectably lit, it was still a Zephyr’s cargo bay.
     She saw the smoldering ruins that used to be Cariak, and it was as if she had just walked into a wall. The fires had been put out long ago (and it occurred to Emily that she still didn’t know how much time had passed since she’d been captured), but most of the buildings were empty husks, like drying skins abandoned by the lizards that had shed them. Emily couldn’t move, couldn’t think... she could pick out where her house would be, where the city park where she’d first met Bryant would be...
     “Ok, everyone, let’s move out,” a woman yelled, obviously through a vocal projector. Emily looked for the speaker - it was a woman in a green and black Militia Uniform, leaning out of the copilot’s hatch of the Zephyr. She sounded courteous, but impatient, “The Militia’s secured the spaceport and set up temporary camps there. Stick together on your way there and the looters and thugs should leave you alone. Just make sure you get there before nightfall.”
     With that, the group set off on the long, sad march through the shards of the city that used to be home to them.

     “There!” Melack exclaimed, “Emily here!”
     “Where is she?” Margret said urgently, scooping up the second set of scope-goggles and slapping them on in the same movement.
     “She just got out of the ship. She’s near the lamp-post by the wing that’s pointing North.”
     Margret found her quickly enough - she had a keen eye for her children (or so she thought of them unconsciously). She had managed to escape the initial raid, along with Melack and Jasira. They had found each other in the chaos as the Militia herded everyone into the spaceport, for there wasn’t enough militia left to protect a larger area from thugs and gangs. The three of them had quickly decided they didn’t want to be in that concentration of people who could barely get along when they were separated by half a city, not to mention when they were forced to sleep next to each other.
     Just before they left, they ran into Mirali and a little boy that was clinging to her leg like a leech. Some ass-hole had tried to steal food from the quivering kid who’d lost his parents in the raid, and Mirali had told the guy to back the fuck off. Ever since then, the kid - Abu - wouldn’t let Mirali out of his sight. Margret had to pry him away from her so she could have some privacy with Melack when she returned. They had been going out for six and a half months, though they had been sleeping with each other a little before they started actually going out.
     Melack had called in a favor from one of the gangs that was ravaging the remains of the city (he was straight now, but he used to be friends with some really sketchy people). The gang escorted them to the city’s edge, and from there they had made their way up to their mountain. Over several trips, they had lugged enough debris up here to set up a crude kind of camp.
     A few days ago, the first Zephyr landed, and Karro had been in that batch. They were lucky that time - they had been just leaving with armloads of debris (though they had to hide, less the Militia arrest them for looting). Karro was in pretty rough shape, but he was getting better. By now, they had lugged all sorts of useful trinkets up here, though only what they needed. Like the scope-goggles.
     “Bryant, Karro, come with me,” Margret said, picking up her sturdy walking stick and the scrap of cloth she had fashioned into a sort of bag she could sling across her shoulder. They set out to go get Emily.

     Emily’s initial shock had faded to an abrasive melancholy as the landscape of charred and smashed brick buildings faded to a hovering monotone as she marched on grimly with the rest of her group. Few of them talked, and no one tried to talk to her. She couldn’t see anyone she knew anyway. That left all the room there was in her head for the events of the last few - days? weeks? - to replay over and over again in her mind. So at first when she heard three familiar voices hailing her, she sourly thought it was her mind cruelly tempting her to hope.
     “Hey, Emily girl!” Bryant called louder, “Over here!”
     Emily turned. Margret, Bryant, and Karro looked much rougher than she’d ever seen them, but she barely noticed. The sight of them shattered her despair like a wrecking ball, and all her pent up emotion flowed out of her like a waterfall as she fell into Margaret's arms.