Andre walks impatiently in the control center of the Theseus.
Nicholas: Stop that, its getting on my nerves.
Andre: Its already two hours that we are scanning the entire system. Dmitri, did you got something in the scanners?
Dmitri Petrov: No sir.
Nicholas: Andre, sit and calm down. And let me give the orders to my tactical officer.
Andre sits in a chair: How this can happens? Just now that everything was going fine, with the liberty navy being destroyed by the combined effort of outcasts, hackers and roguesthe Perseus disappears and my base in California Minor is discovered. Now the worse thing that can happens is a loyalist revolt in the Defiant.
Vladimir Chernov: Sir, we got a transmission.
Nicholas: Lieutenant, not now
Vladimir: Its important sir, its a liberty governmental encoded transmission.
Andre: Oh, no, its not what I thinking it is?
The hologram that comes from the control table shows the face of a man with a thick mustache and a big cowboy hat, and cowboy clothes.
Bill: Im senator Bill Money. How are you? I have some news to you. The loyalists inside the Defiant mutinied and aprisioned your lapdog, Julian Sark. They have taken control of the ship and are now heading to Texas to get you. Yeah, our patrols knowns you are there.
Nicholas: He is bluffing. This is a bluff.
The hologram shows Julian beated, his face full of blood.
Nicholas: Well he is not bluffing.
Andre: And why are you sending this?
Bill: Well, Im just braguing one more victory for us.
Andre: You are being beaten everyday by combined fleets.
Bill: Yeah, but every single victory counts. We owned you in this one.
The transmission ends abruptly. Andre gets irritated and take a breather of cardamine.
Nicholas: Relax, our ship is better equipped against it.
Andre: We have to rescue Sark. He is a honourable man, and a good card player.
The battle was quick. The Defiant was beaten, mainly because the rebels who were at the side of Sark had retreated to the back of the ship and sabotaged its engines. The marines invaded it and brought Sark back, but the ship was in flames and there was no time to repair it again. So Andre sent word to the Phoenix shipyards in Vespucci to send a container transport and two repair ships. A wing of fighters was also dispatched from Mactan to guard these ships during the repairs. Sark was severely wounded and brought to the medical emergency room. The mission for the search of the Perseus had to continue.
When Sark awakened, he was informed about the situation, and he tells to Andre, from his bed, about the hypergate in the uncharted territory.
Andre: Why he dont reported it?
Sark: He said that to me when we were playing cards at Alcatraz. He said it was a very occasional incident, and was not needed to report to the high command. However, James Edwards knowns about it, as that happened before he was transferred to this ship.
Edwards was just working in his laboratory with his drugs at that moment. Andre calls him. Knowing the approximate position of the gate, Edwards helps Dmitri to find it in the scanners.
Nicholas: So, Sark said he jumped through this gate. But we dont have the codes to activate it. How Scuttari got those codes?
Andre: The package. They opened it. Thats the reason why its so precious. It opens up new possibilities of colonization that were to be only available to the outcasts.
Nicholas: To the doms of Malta, you mean.
Andre: We dont have this code. Theres no way to go through this gate...The Perseus is lost forever...Lets go back to the location of the Defiant.
Nicholas: Ok, then. Full power to engines.
Andre: Wait!
The gate suddenly opens as a light glows on its center, and from there came a infestation of nomads.
Nicholas: Battle stations, now!
Another furious battle happens, and the remaining nomads try to escape through the gate. The Theseus go on their tail and reaches the other side. Still, the nomads escape from its cannons.
Nicholas: Hmm, I think I known this system
Vladimir smiles: Sir, its the Cygnus 32 system! I recognize the two stars.
Nicholas: Oh, sowe find a way to go back to home.
Andre: Common, you are not thinking in visiting your parents right now, do you? Lets keep the mission.
Nicholas: Of course.
Dmitri: Sir, I found it. Its wrecked.
Like the Defiant, the Perseus was let in flames in the middle of the space, after a battle with the nomads, involving a fleet two times larger the one the Theseus fought in Texas. But the scanners showed the crew was alive, in escape pods in the middle of the ether. They are tractored to the ship.
