“Our little display seems to have caught their attention captain.” Valerie’s physical avatar said as she walked into the Bridge. “One of their cruisers has switched fire from the Hive to target us.” As if to illustrate her point, the ship shook again from another shot finding them. “And they hurt” she continued as she took up station at one of the bridge consoles. It always amused Rhea that the android body the ships AI used as an Avatar would bother to manually enter input into a terminal her greater mind could control with a thought. sometimes she wondered if the android was actually doing anything or just miming to appear as though she was. The bridge shook again as another shot impacted.

“Is there anything we can do about that fire Valerie? I can’t stand just sitting here and waiting for them to figure out our ECM.” Rhea’s disposition had changed quite radically over the course of this battle, from almost disinterested nonchalance to considerable concern for the present and future. It was starting to look rather like instead of dodging a proverbial bullet by ending up in unknown space, she had ended up with a far bigger problem. “No, but we can do something about those incoming missiles.” Valerie said as she motioned at the display on the central viewscreen. “Then by all means do so. Switch to defensive missiles, keep us and the Hive safe. There’s no telling the kind of damage they could cause.”

“Captain, an incoming message!” One of the bridge crew exclaimed. “Do leave me in suspense.” Rhea said with a stern glance at the crewman. He must’ve been a new member on the bridge crew. Valerie’s hologram appeared on cue to answer. The crewmen might not always understand Rhea’s expectations and humour but at least her ship did. “It’s from a ship called the USS Aurora. They’re relaying coordinates to a meeting point at the edge of the system. We don’t know if the Hive will take us there, and if we want to make sure we’re there, we need to go right now. Orders captain.?” Before Rhea could reply the ship rocked again, Rhea barely keeping her footing and her temper. “Oh dear.” The voice from helm control said. Rhea turned to face the man who owned it, a [url=http://www.andromeda-web.com/caps/108/images/108_cap016.jpg]Perseid[/url] who was prone to significantly under-reacting to terrible situations. “It seems the Slipstream drive is offline.”

Rhea sighed at that news. Now they definitely only had one option. “Recall drones and use the AG fields and bucky cables to secure us to the Hive. when its done, signal them that we’re ready to go.” A chorus of affirmative responses came from the bridge crew, though Rhea hardly listened to them. The majority of the crew knew that it was best to exhaust every alternative to solving a problem before bringing bad news to Rhea Shohashi of Kenja Pride.