"Three Qcomm frigates have arrived. They are orienting in our direction as the rest of the Qcomm ships form up with them," Katalynn said, noticing the new contacts even before Alexander had.

"It's more than we thought they would bring." Alexander didn't need to tell the Asgardian leader what to do; she already knew the plan.

"Detonate the missiles and jump us out of this system," Katalynn ordered.

While her people were doing that, Alexander detonated the charge in the satellite they had been using to track the Qcomm ships. While it wouldn't matter if Qcomm or someone else got their hands on the comm node, he didn't need to make their job easy.

Alexander would need to send an apology to the planetary governor of Borrus, and current Chairman of the STO, for all the extra space hazards he was introducing to the system. He was upset that he had to destroy his printer and large smelter, but there simply wasn't any time to dismantle them. At least his bots were back aboard. Those would probably be needed if the Qcomm ships gave chase, and Alexander was pretty sure they would.

"The Stingray is ready to jump," the comm officer reported. "Jump link established."

Katalynn didn't jump immediately. They waited while the temporary manufacturing that Alexander had built was blown into pieces as each missile detonated. Then the remains of Valkyrie broke apart as flashes of bright light poked through damaged sections of the ship.

Grace had moved a quarter of a light second away from the manufacturing and ship, ensuring they were far enough away when the inevitable storm of debris moved outward.

As the last missile was going off inside Valkyrie, the Qcomm ships jumped in on top of Grace, or where Grace had been two minutes ago, proving they had been monitoring them as well.

That area just so happened to be near the debris field.

One of the Qcomm gunships was struck by a large chunk from Valkyrie. It wasn't enough to destroy the advanced corporate gunship, but it did tear a large gash in its side, causing it to stream atmosphere.

The Qcomm ships started blasting the area around them clear with lasers while Grace and the single Stingray jumped into FTL.

"That's not going to slow them down long," Katalynn said once they were safely away from Epsilon Eridani.

"No, but it might buy us the time we need to rendezvous with Ramirez after the jump." If Qcomm had gone through the trouble to gather that many ships, there was little doubt in Alexander's mind that they would chase them until they caught them or were driven off.

Qcomm would know where they were heading based on what direction they were facing when they jumped. The only thing that might prevent them from giving chase was if they knew BSE had a fleet waiting at the jump point exit. They could have also jumped to a random spot between the systems and waited, but he didn't trust their damaged ship enough to risk something like that. It would be better if they could simply link up with friendly forces.

Alexander had four days before they arrived in the next system, so he nodded his avatar once to Katalynn before heading off the bridge. He was glad Katalynn had talked him into leaving instead of trying to have some hostile negotiations with whoever decided to come by.

The first thing Alexander did after leaving the bridge was check on Yulia. It didn't take much effort to find her since she was in their cabin.

"Everything going okay?" he asked.

"Fine," she replied without even looking away from the thing she was modeling, which looked a lot like a ship.

Alexander wasn't surprised. She had been fixated on making a ship ever since he had taken her to watch the Stellar Sprints. A few things had obviously distracted her from those pursuits recently, but it never took her long to get back to them. Thankfully, the model she was making was only a model; it wasn't a workable ship.

Yulia had tried to talk him into helping her build a fully functioning ship right off the bat, but he had shut that idea down fast. He appreciated her enthusiasm for the sport, but she was far too young to be racing the very fast, very dangerous ships.

She might see it as a means to go as fast as possible, but Alexander knew there were far larger stakes at play during those races.

Alexander stuck around for a bit to watch her progress, but he could see her getting annoyed by his hovering, so he took that as a cue to leave for his workshop. Without access to external manufacturing, there wasn't a whole lot left for Alexander to do during the trip, but he did have one thing he had been wanting to work on.

The workshop lights came on as he entered, and he smiled at the much less cluttered space. It was still a mess, but a large amount of the excess material had been used to build the Stingray. If he had time, he could have built two and cleared out the remaining storage tanks, but Qcomm had other ideas.

Normally, Alexander would turn on his main holo display and work on that when he was designing, but today, he fired up the program that Dr. Lund seemed to love so much. Soon, the entire room was filled with floating digital whiteboards, filled with all of the work and mathematics Lund had done in her pursuit of science. At first, he thought it only contained the stuff from her time in Unokane, but the work she left behind stretched back decades.

While it was true that Alexander understood the basic principles behind Lund's work, this would be his first time diving into the theoretical math she had been working on.

It was a daunting task for anybody, but Alexander rolled up his proverbial sleeves and started from her earliest entries. He needed to understand her process and what she was attempting to accomplish, as well as what she had abandoned along the way, before he decided on a starting point.

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Even with his ability to process data at an accelerated rate, it took him the entire four-day trip to get through half of her notes and math. He was starting to get a picture of what she had been aiming for with her research, which he kind of knew already from the times they spoke and the item she asked him to create, but he didn't want to jump to conclusions.

He set the work aside and checked on Yulia again. She had been studiously ignoring him for most of the journey, and he worried he had done something to damage their relationship. It got to the point that he asked Katalynn if she could have a word with his daughter.

Katalynn told him that Yulia was fine. She was just having a hard time dealing with her emotions as she went through something that all women do. Katalynn told him she just needed a bit of time and space.

Alexander thanked Katalynn, but once again, he wished Yulia had an adult female presence in her life that she could go to, since she didn't feel comfortable coming to him about certain things. If they were back on Eden's End, she could have spoken to her friends' mothers about the issue.

"It's time to put your suit on," he said as he entered the cabin.

The girl's joy for the augmentation suit had waned after she had been forced to wear it for multiple days in a row.

"It's filthy, I don't want to wear it," she said in disgust.

"I cleaned it yesterday while you were speaking with Katalynn."

Yulia grumbled, but stomped off into her room. Quite a while later, she clomped back out, dragging her feet. "Happy?"

She went to plop down in the main room once more, but Alexander stopped her. "You know the protocol," he said.

"No. I don't want to get trapped back in there again." For character sheets and glossaries, visit MV|LEMPYR.

"It's for your own safety," he told her, but she wasn't buying it.

"No!"

Yulia tried to run past him, but Alexander managed to catch her.

"This isn't the time or place for this. We might get into a fight, and your room is the safest part of the ship."

His words were not getting through to her, and she started screaming and punching to try and break free from his grasp. Alexander was so focused on not harming Yulia that he didn't even see Dog come running out of her bedroom to slam into him.

"Disengage!" he ordered the robot. It did, but it did so reluctantly.

He sighed and kneeled down, pulling Yulia into a hug despite her still hammering away at him with her fists and kicking his shins.

Alexander held her gently until she stopped resisting and started crying. "What if you don't come back for me this time?" she said through wracking sobs.

"I'll always come back for you, I promise."

"You don't know that," she stated angrily. "People die. You even got hurt the last time. What if I'm the only one left and I'm trapped in that room forever?"

Alexander really wished a thirteen-year-old didn't need to struggle with such thoughts. He pushed her out with his one good hand so she could see his avatar face. "Look at me."

She did, wiping the tears away from her face with her armored glove.

"We have friends waiting for us when we arrive, and they will stop the people chasing us, I promise."

She didn't seem convinced, but she nodded once and headed back for her bedroom. "Come on Dog."

The robot practically glared at Alexander before barking once and turning around to follow Yulia.

Once the door shut, Alexander sealed it and sent a message to Travers. The man showed up a moment later, wearing his augment suit and helmet already. "I figured you might need me to keep a closer eye on her."

"Thank you."

Alexander left the cabin as Travers was strapping himself into one of the folding chairs along the wall. He would have preferred two people to keep an eye on Yulia, but Dorry was still injured and couldn't move around much without his leg.

The bridge was lively as he arrived. People were running diagnostics, checking weapons systems, and ensuring everything was as ready as it could be. Once they dropped out, they wouldn't have long to locate the fleet and make their way over to them before Qcomm's ships arrived.

If Grace and the Stingray came out too far away from the rest of the BSE ships, Qcomm might just risk attacking them before the fleet could do anything to stop them.

Katalynn looked over at his entrance and nodded. "Two minutes until we emerge. I've already alerted Captain Ramirez, and I'm about to send the all-hands alert. You might want to secure yourself."

Alexander nodded his avatar and strapped himself in the chair as the overhead alarm went off and the lights started flashing yellow.

The ship transitioned out of FTL, and it took a few moments for the sensors to come online due to damage that couldn't be repaired. When they did, Katalynn cursed. "We're off course, and over two light seconds from the fleet. We can try jumping closer to them, but I don't think we should trust our jump drive; it's obviously out of sync."

Alexander could see that. He also noticed that the area around the jump point was distinctly empty of anything other than the BSE fleet. He could feel Grace begin to accelerate toward the fleet. Ramirez and the fleet were heading in the opposite direction, so it would take them time to turn and slow down to cover them.

Grace managed to cover a quarter of the distance before ten new signals appeared a quarter of a light second behind them. Katalynn immediately shifted Grace into evasive maneuvers. Most of the lasers missed them, but one of the captains of the frigates landed a lucky shot.

"They didn't even hesitate," Katalynn stated darkly before ordering the weapon's officer to return fire.

It was a losing fight even if Grace was in optimal condition, and it certainly wasn't.

"Alex, hold your fire, we're jumping to you," Ramirez said over the comm.

Katalynn managed to squeeze out another volley a moment before the entire BSE fleet appeared between Grace and the Qcomm ships.

Tempest struck out, hitting the three frigates with its devastating lasers, drilling into the vessels. The Qcomm ships scattered and jumped, leaving the BSE ships behind.

"Let's hope they blew out their jump drives doing that," Katalynn said in disgust.

"Thank you for the timely rescue, Captain Ramirez," Alexander said once it was safe.

"I know you said to be ready for possible violence, but I still find it unbelievable that a corporation would attack you so blatantly," the man replied.

"I'm not, Captain. We're taking away their only source of income. Unlike a company like Omni, which has multiple different products and possible revenue streams, Qcomm only has a single monopolistic product. They may not be as large as Omni, but they will take the loss of that income far more seriously." Alexander had known that going in, but it also made Qcomm the ideal company to disrupt. With their sole income being disrupted and high overhead in the form of their technicians, he was betting they would run out of money rather quickly.

Alexander was basing that entire plan on conjecture, and something Katalynn had told him once, back when they first met. Despite it being conjecture on his part, he was pretty certain he was right. It had always come off as odd to him that Qcomm would risk selling its units on the black market. The only logical reason he could come up with for them risking such an openly illegal endeavor was if the company was short on cash.

Qcomm might be the only FTL communications provider within human space, but human expansion essentially stopped in 2212. Sure, it expanded into a few new systems or planets here and there over the years, but the growth would have been exceedingly slow. That meant Qcomm had a very limited market, one that they had already saturated.

You could only shove so many FTL networks into a system before they became redundant, or people would rather wait for the light-speed communications to reach the nearest Qcomm node instead of paying Qcomm's ridiculous price to have their own.

"Captain Ramirez, let's get those frigates dropped off to our allies and head home. I suspect we're going to be busy for the foreseeable future."