Prologue the Second: Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fusion Reactor

SEVENTEEN MINUTES FORTY-SEVEN SECONDS LATER, GALACTIC AVERAGE TIME

Captain Chris Ennings, late of the Battlecruiser Perse, was having a good day rapidly turn from bad to worse. The stress was manifesting as a tendency to shout.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN HIS HEAD POPPED OFF?" he shouted, eyes fixed ahead on navigating through an asteroid belt. Parson sat in the copilot's seat, wiping sweat from beneath his bedraggled brown hair with one hand as he used the other to plot asteroid positions into the navaputer.

"Chris, I mean a large stack of crates fell on him in such a manner that his head was-" Ennings gritted his teeth.

"-detatched and is now in the galley freezer on top of my last deep dish pizza. You told me all of this. But we can't afford to lose Greg- he's much too valuable!"
"We just hired Greg a week ago and virtually all of our crew is dead. Why are you upset over the guy who ate 750 Pentacreds worth of Vorlock Wings and got us chased across the Casella system by the Dreevan Bloodmuckers who owned them? I had to physically restrain you from spacing him after that."

Ennings sighed. "Because those crates that fell on him were every gigakeg of Olympian Moonbeer in this galactic arm, and Greg had just finished encrypting the locks on them to keep the crew from 'sampling' it before our next leave."

Parson's hands froze over his console. "You mean all of the alcohol on the ship is locked up with gigaquad encryption and the only person who knows the password is dead with his head freezing next to the Rocky Road?"

Ennings nodded grimly. "Precisely. And don't think I don't realize that you were also hiding your good junk food on this old crate." Parson grimaced.

"Greg figured it out at least a week ago. I saw him in the torpedo room eating your last deep dish pizza."

"THAT GLUTTONOUS SPAWN OF AN UNSTABLE SINGLUARITY ATE MY LAST DEEP DISH PIZZA? Take over, Parson, I'm digging out his flat corpse and heaving it out the airlock."

"We both know that's just the stress talking, Chris. Which is good, because the angrier you are the better you fly. Watch the planetoid to port."

"I HAD THOSE PIZZAS SHIPPED FROM EARTH!"

"I know, Chris. And he didn't even thaw it first."

Ennings made a strangled noise as he used the planetoid's gravity to slingshot the cargo hauler between two large asteroids in an artful move that saved both fuel and time. Moments later, the two asteroids collided.

"Nicely done." said Parson, resuming his plotting of hazards on his console. "That move got us clear of most of the asteroid field."

"And in visual range of Bochco." Ennings added.

The sudden bright flash of crimson light startled both men; the deafening explosion, violent lurch, belches of smoke and warning klaxons startled them further.

"WE ALSO APPEAR TO BE WITHIN VISUAL RANGE OF BOCHCO'S PLANETARY DEFENSE GRID" Parson yelled as he jabbed at controls on the comm panel. "BOCHCO PLANETARY CONTROL, HOLD YOUR FIRE! OUR DISTRESS BEACON IDENTIFIES US AS A LIFEBOAT!"

The only reply was a second shot from the now visible defense satellite, a shot that went wide of its mark.

Ennings laughed, his infamous devilish grin colored red by the emergency lights. "We're too small to target properly."

Gizmo's voice crackled over the intercom. "I don't know what you two are doing up there but one of my engines just got blown completely off. Cut it out."

Another shot crackled past, so close that Ennings fought the instinct to duck. "Can it, Gizmo. We're too busy trying to figure out why this planet is firing on a lifeboat."

"Probably because we don't have a distress beacon. And without it, the AIs controlling the defense grid probably determined that our mass, speed, and trajectory are consistent with that of a Punisher-class Antipopulation Missile."

"You're killing me, Gizmo. In fact, you're killing all of us. WHY DOES OUR LIFEBOAT NOT HAVE A BEACON?"

"You said at our last Crew Brunch that you were going to, and I quote, 'use the boatload of pentacreds we get for Clockwerx's reagent to get the Perse some ARCO sleds and that our space barnacle of a lifeboat could be used for target practice.' So I took the beacon and used its parts in my Portable Zerochron Singularity Generator. That's how I was able to finish it a month early."

"And you say we never listen." Parson was still transmitting hails to Bochco Planetary Control and getting no response.

A second satellite was firing; Ennings' tension was obviously mounting as evidenced by his using a barrel roll to dodge two converging shots.

"Gizmo, can your Chroniton Parallax whatever take out these defense satellites?"

"Zerochron Singularity Generator. And no. But it can keep a cup of coffee hot and piping fresh for up to ten trillion solar years. It's really quite exciting techn-"

"GIZMO, THE ONLY THING THAT EXCITES ME RIGHT NOW IS LIVING LONG ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU EAT YOUR PENTAQUAD SORORITY GENERATOR."

"I'll go back to monitoring the reactor if there's nothing else, Captain. Gizmo out."

Uncharacteristic tension colored Parson's voice. "We're caught in the planet's gravity well and we're not coming back out with only one engine. We're going in hot and fast. But the good news is we're past the defensive satellites so all we have to worry about is planetside defensive responses. And, of course, landing."

Ennings tightened his grip on the controls. "This may be the most stress I have felt in at least three weeks." his eyes narrowed as the lifeboat's scanner display lit up with incoming missiles. "And it looks like I'm going to need every bit of it."