Memoirs of Kitty Siam - Hydrogen and Stupidity.
They are a dying race, we should let them pass. β Ambassador Kosh
After scanning the area where the jump point had been I ran a quick diagnostic check on our ship to make sure we had not suffered any major damage from being caught in the singularity's gravity. My diagnostic told me that everything was in order, and other than a few hits from disruptor fire we were good to go. I launched a mini bot with a camera to survey the areas that had been hit and found that the living skin of the ship was repairing its self as expected. Once I determined that our ship was healthy enough to ride the wave I set course for Epsilon Eridani activated the FTL drive.
I understand that all branches of the military from whichever country, or planet they protect has their own set of rules that they must go by. I did my best to try to calm Megyn down as she continued to beat the dead horse that was my disregard for her military's rules of engagement and prohibition of the use of weapons of mass destruction. She would not listen to my counter argument that the planet killers we had destroyed were about to use weapons of mass destruction against her commanders and the planets in the surrounding star system. Unfortunately she was a creature of duty and continued to cling to the rules and regulations of her service and her precious Pan Galactic Consortium (PGC).
As a Princess and a leader I commend her for her ethics, but as a warrior I condemn her stubbornness to accept the fact that our actions saved the lives of possibly billions of the people her military were sworn to protect. I think she believed that I was just being a smart ass when I told her that if they wanted to execute anyone for violating the rules that I would confess, take the blame and the execution. After all, it would not be the first time I had been executed and probably would not be the last. The Colonel laughed about the execution part of the conversation. I suspect that she thought I funny when I had mentioned that I had been executed before... silly human!
After the discussion of her rules of engagement ended we had about an hour of silence which I used to plot the course of the fleet that we had destroyed. I knew I was about to treat a hornet's next like a piΓ±ata when I displayed my proposed navigational chart on Megyn's screen that showed her the approximate location of the carrier group that had successfully jumped before the planet killers made their failed attempt.
I suggested that we set course for their rendezvous point and attempt to take out the carriers as we did the planet killers. I already knew what the answer would be but I had to ask anyway. I was not surprised when she gave me a loud and definite "HELL NO!" as her answer. The surprise came when she once again did not hit me in the back of the head with the fire extinguisher. Of course I could have gone ahead and done this anyway as I did not require her permission or cooperation, but this time I agreed to do things her way and remained on course to Epsilon Eridani.
Twelve hours later we were approaching our final destination. Our scanners were picking up the frenzied scans of the picket ships as they attempted to identify the anomaly that was approaching their patrol zone at a speed many times greater than the speed of light, which they knew that no object in their known universe could obtain.
As we approached the outer most planets I disengaged the FTL drive and allowed us to coast until we obtained a speed that would allow the local patrol ships to catch up with us. I was a good enough pilot that I could have run the rest of the way to the Central Command location while still in FTL but I did not want to alarm the locals by showing up unannounced in orbit around their military's command and control facility.
Once they picked us up on their scanners we had four fighters and a destroyer heading in our direction at high speed. Megyn was working the comm. system trying to make contact with whoever was in charge of the destroyer. At first she was talking to the pilot of one of the fighters, then another fighter pilot claimed to be his senior and took over the conversation. Finally a bridge officer from the approaching destroyer Noriega took control of the conversation and requested that we come to a complete stop and await their arrival. What I was not expecting as I listened in on the conversation was the Noriega painting us with their targeting scanners before locking on to us with their main batteries.
I understand that we just popped in unannounced, but the Megyn did identify herself and her identity was confirmed so I could see no reason for them to approach us on an attack vector with their weapons locked on us. I was tempted to follow suit, and Megyn anticipated my reaction and cautioned me not to. I agreed and kept my hands off the weapons console but I did keep my fingers close to the controls for the shields and cloaking system.
The Colonel informed Commander Scaramanga that we had urgent business with Central Command. She asked for the nature of our business but Megyn told her that she could not put that information out over ship-to-ship communications. The communications between them and us fell silent for a few minutes before the Commander came back on and requested that we proceed under escort by the four fighters that had us surrounded and targeted. She agreed and I did as well, though I was tempted to cut into the conversation and ask if any of the four fighter pilots wanted to race us to the fifth planet.