The Federation's Last Words

[estar222]

The very next beacon held a surprise of sorts.

An engi ship was chasing something bright and red down, and a teleported sounded on deck.

"Please! Please let me stay with you!" Begged a distraught mantis.

"All of my crew are dead and my ship will be blown apart in a matter of seconds if you don't help me! Please!"

Emily goes against better judgement, and allows the mantis to stay aboard. Both he and Hania rush to the crew teleporter, and board the enemy ship.

Hania just stands there, dealing out punishment far superior to that that any weak engi could deal to her, and the mantis, whose name is fumiyo, acrobatically dodges whatever blows the puny engi could try and land at him.

The fight is over quickly, and a hull missile is taken from the still-intact engi ship, and installed on the Heartbeats.



They soon reached the destination of their cargo, and delivered it intact to a grateful slug.

"Ignoring that you're late, we owe you our lives. Without these drone parts we would never be able to get our hull into any condition to survive an FTL jump. Please, take all of the scrap we can spare you as a payment, and I think I have an extra drone schematic we won't be needing for repairs lying around in the drone department somewhere."

"My thanks to you, good slug." Says Emily in a jovial tone as they jump away again.

[estar222]

Soon enough the good crew of the USS heartbeats have exited the Engi sector, and come to rest in the Zoltan homeworlds. Immediately, they are confronted by an overzealous security team of zoltans, and the heated discussions regarding weapon licences quickly turned to heated gunfire. Hania, Fumiyo Juliet and Mai leap to the fight, and quickly rip the energy from the Zoltan's loose energy bindings.

The ship is in relative chaos, too, until eventually the Zoltan crew are defeated. Then, all efforts can be focused on the enemy ship itself.

Basically, Hania and Fumiyo beam aboard and kill them off.

[estar222]

Then, another army of the Zoltan try to kill them off, this time without boarding them.

So the new resident boarding party- Hania and Fumiyo- board them, and kill them very quickly, as soon as the enemy's advanced shields stop glowing bright green.

[[ From now on, I'm only going to record very interesting things, this is getting to be a real drag. ]]

[estar222]

During FTL flight, Baran makes contact with Emily yet again.

"What's up?"

"I should be asking you that, not vice versa." Emily replies.

"Ok. Well, we've just been hit very, very hard by a federation fighter that was hanging about in the Zoltan homeworlds, and we won't be able to move about for a while, so yeah. The funny thing is, on the scans my ship received of the federation fighter, I swear I could see you and your crew moving about down there."

"Probably because you did. We had a few very painful run ins with your guys when they reached the exit beacon."

"Good to know you know how to take out some elite fighters when you need to. Now, what's up?"

"Not much. I found out that Lucius is gay, but really, not much."

"Hah! He's actually Bi."

"Good to know."


Suddenly, an ailing engi ship appears on screen.

"I've got to go, Baran. Speak to you later."

At first, scans reveal nothing alive, but once they've run another scan, it is obvious that there is an injured engi, barely alive, inside the engines room. There is also a drone schematic, but it is clear to Emily as to which they save.

The engi, Yoshie, joins there crew. He pushes the inexperienced Rock man and Mantis out of 'his' engine room, and promptly declares it his own property. He begins decorating it with pictures of his family and home planet as soon as they jump.

[estar222]

Soon after that encounter, a Rock Assault ship hails them, and when Emily answers, she is met by mocking laughs.

"I suppose you're trying to save the Feds, right?" The Captain says between bursts of laughter.

Emily Remains silent.

"I knew it! You're hopeless!"

"Listen, you stupid pile of pebbles. Me and my crew are the most dedicated, the best trained, and the most ruthless Federation crew on the market. We are going to save them, or die trying, and kill as many rebels as we can." Although Emily knows a few rebels who are certain to survive The Heartbeat's wrath, and she knows them by name.

"Alright then. Let's see how tough you actually are. Follow our ship's jump co-ordinates, I've got a right challenge in mind for you, miss."


As she follows them, the heat of the ship's hull becomes increasingly unbearable, until they eventually come out of Lightspeed.

Right next to a huge star.

"Welcome to Hi Novoriea! The Ship Burner!" The Rock man slurs into Rock-tongue for a minute, before translating the star's pet name into English.

"Whoever jumps away first, loses, got it squishy one?" Emily nods in reply.


Scans immediately show that the Rocks are charging their FTLs, presumably so that they can jump away if needed.
Emily gulps, and vents all oxygen out of rooms that she deems un-necessary to her crew's survival, to thwart fires whenever solar flares (pardon the pun) flare up.

The Rocks weapons are weak, and although all of their shots hit Emily's glorious ship, none of them penetrate her shielding, and she is left with the choice of destroying them, or keeping her word and lasting longer than them.

A fire, by the oxygen room.

"Concentration of CO2 detected, moving to engage." Yoshie says over his built in speakerphone.

He sprays as much fire depressant into the inferno as possible, and the whole ordeal is over in but one minute.

"Come on, pebblemen! Is that all you got?!" Emily shouts over the ship's communications array.

"My apologies, fair human, I didn't realise you liked getting hit." The Rock man says with a mischievous grin, before engaging his lasers again.

Emily just blushes, a bright, crimson red.

A phoenix missile punctures the Rock's hull, and the Rock on the Vidscreen's face turns from a cheeky smile to a look of complete and utter terror.

There are alarmed shouts of Rocks from all around him, and he looks Emily in the eye, smiling slightly, before jumping away, leaving the clear message that Emily is to follow him.

When she does, she is told that...

"We have been proven that you are the stronger of the two sides in this war. We will side with you. One of our highly advanced cruisers has already been sent to aid your people in this fight, and our warships are moving to engage the Rebel Armada as we speak. For now, let my friends patch up your hull, and see if we can't improve it a little bit." He winks at her.

Before he goes, he says one last thing.

"Oh, and human? You never slept with one of my kind before, have you?"

"No..." Emily says, taken aback slightly. Then she remembers Baran. "I don't think I'll ever get the chance to, either, pebbly, I reckon there's a rebel somewhere out there who wants to switch sides. Make sure you don't blow him up, or I'll be hot on your tail, buddy." She winks in reply.

"I see. Now don't you have some data to deliver?"

"How did you-"

He taps his nose, and closes the chat.


Time to move on again.

[estar222]

Few jumps later, the Heartbeats' fuel tank is empty, and the ship can no longer initiate FTL jumps.

Every Captain's nightmare.

They put up a distress signal, and wait. Eventually the signal is answered.

By an angry mantis captain.


Emily panics for a moment, forgetting that they did not need FTL fuel to dodge errant lasers and missiles, and then when she remembers this fact, she diverts more power to the weapons, and launches all sorts of glorious missiles and lasers in the enemy's direction. They are torn apart in a few minutes, and they drop two fuel cells which are still usable in their hurry to get away.

Brilliant.

[estar222]

Soon after, they are locked in ferocious combat with some Rock Pirates. The fight passes uneventfully.

Except that Fumiyo and Hania were both aboard the enemy ship when it was torn apart by the fires that Emily had set alight.

As Emily watched in horror, the carapace of an insectoid she'd called a friend, and a boulder who she would one day have called best friend, sister, bridesmaid, were exploded by the vacuum of space.

Never again, vowed Emily. Never again.

[estar222]

The next sector they jumped to was the Engi homeworlds. Perhaps they'd meet James Bond again?

Regardless, they were soon engaged by a well equipped Auto-Assault, marked as a rebel craft.


The AI throws Ion at them first, and although Emily is able to dodge some of the blasts, one or two find their mark in her shields, which is not good by any extent of the imagination. Emily returns fire with lasers, Spectral Ion and missile.
The Enemy's weapons are hindered, but not fully destroyed.

A phoenix Missile fixes that.

"God. I love these things." Jess says down the line.

More lasers, this time to their enemy's shields, and only one makes a damaging mark, but it's still worthwhile.

"Throwing an Artemis at it, boss." Jess says over the wires, followed immediately by "Shit I missed."

She makes up for it with a precise Phoenix missile to the Shields system, though, which tears apart the enemy craft instantaneously.

There is whooping throughout the ship, and Emily sighs.

"Put a few dozen steaks in the pan, Jules. Mai, can you do more of that delicious mashed purple stuff?"

"Aye Captain." I echoed twice from the shields room. Mai is really learning from Juliet.

[estar222]

After another, more boring fight with some Zoltan pirates, the crew find themselves at the doorstep of a very familiar looking Engi craft. An Engi with a pair of what looks like sunglasses and some sort of Motor-Oil drink with a mini-paper parasol in it is lounging on a recliner of sorts.

Bond. James Bond.

"Why hello there, crew of the USS Heartbeats! What can I get you fine folk?"

"I see you have a cloaking system there. Mind if we take it?" Emily gets straight to the business.

"For a fair price."

"Of course."

Minutes later, the Heartbeat is invisible, and Bond is dragging a large bag of scrap onto his ship.

"I can be assured we'll see eachother again? My wife, Shirky, would like to meet you."

"Of course."

[estar222]

At last. The final stand.

It took them a while but eventuallly. There would be no delaying the inevitable.

Well, actually, I'll delay it until tomorrow.

Goodnight.