The ship was quiet, the soft whirring of the engine underscored the quiet, exhausted relief that had followed them from the courtroom not days before. The Captain's chair lay unoccupied, the bridge crew lounged quietly in their seats absently monitoring all incoming data before the warp.

Krill sat at his chair on the bridge just over Sunny who sat, curled up against the back wall listening to her music. Unlike everyone else, the court case hadn't seem to have eased her worries. She sat against her own tense muscles hunched inwards on herself as she stared at her playlist.

Towards the communications console, Captain Vir sat speaking quietly to someone over the phone. The communications expert sat a polite distance away, but the rather smug and amused look on his face told of someone eavesdropping.

"Yes..... yes, YES.... Mom, I'm fine. I KNOW I didn't tell you because I KNEW you'd freak out.... Well if it was Jeremy, you would barely even notice..... That's beside the point..... MOM, I won the case, I am back on my ship, barely a slap on the wrist." He sighed, "Yes mom..... yeah.... No.... no, I just have to wear the leg Sunny gave me....." He paused for a long moment sighing deeply a few times, "Yes, she gave me a leg, yeah it was a gift, and by wearing it it's sort of similar to adoption, you know, technically I'm part of their clan now.... MOM can we talk about this later......." He rolled his eyes to the heavens, "No mom, I am not rolling my eyes..... I am NOT lying, look I love you, I have to go." He hung up and sighed glowering at the com expert as he walked past, "Get rid of that grin corporal before I get rid of it for you."

The threat didn't take, and the crewman just burst into a fit of childish giggling.

The captain rolled his eyes and took his seat, "Alright, The UNSC is sending us on a wide patrol, I think they are done with us being around for a while, so ready the ship for warp." Upon hearing the order, the crew sat up in their seats, while Sunny buckled herself in at the defense controls.

Navigation sent over a pre-plotted course to the captain's screen, pulled up as a hologram in front of the chair. He dropped the controls, and took the joysticks with the ease of someone who knew they had complete control.

"Preparing warp core."

"25.... 45....65.... 75.....85....90....100."

The captain's hand pressed forward on the controls, and below decks, somewhere in the bowels of the ship, the warp core pulsed once, thrumming with a pulsing power that rolled its way through the ship dimming lights and flickering projections as power was diverted to the warp for a split second. There was one horrible moment like they were all being folded inwards, and then the view outside of the windows whent completely white as the cameras shut off.

The entire crew slumped in relief as the feeling passed, and they were finally on their way. If the calculations were right, they should appear just off from the Heaven's Gate Nebula, and then circle around the perimeter, a journey that would take more than a few months with strategic warp jumps spaced throughout.

Captain Vir sighed turning sideways in his chair and throwing his legs over the opposite armrest. Under the leg of his pants, the blue, metallic prosthetic of his new leg winked out at the crew. It only had two toes, like the foot of the Drev and a single backward facing spur. It had taken a while for him to get used to the dynamic of the leg, but once he had, it was almost impossible to notice the difference.

Inside the warp channel, the crew allowed itself to relax, moving from their attentive positions back to their postures of relaxation and sleepy watchfulness. A warp was run completely on autopilot, to do it manually would be to commit suicide in in the most spectacular way possible, perhaps by flying themselves straight into the sun. Either way, the only thing to do now was to sit back, relax and monitor the inner workings of the ship.

Captain Vir was taking the advice quiet seriously, closing his eyes and turning to a light nap within the embrace of the warp channel. Oddly enough, one of the safest place in the universe happened to be carried on the wings of a powerful and reactive force capable of causing planets to implode. It was surprisingly calming, like being rocked to sleep by the universe. The ship itself did rock gently ever few minutes rising over the strange currents residing in the warp tunnel. Sunny was back to listening to her music, and the Captain was fast asleep.

And then the entire world imploded.

If going into warp felt like being folded, than coming out of a warp felt like being stretched and then let go like a rubber band snapping back into place. Coming out of warp forcibly, however, took the rubber band feeling and multiplied it by about a thousand. The entire world was pulled, dragged, and snapped. The ships interior constructions screamed and protested. The entire crew deformed, shifted back and were thrown suddenly and violently from their seats screaming to match the crying of the ship.

The main power of the ship was disrupted plunging them into darkness, before emergency lights kicked on around the room. Captain Vir had been thrown from his seat and lay face down on the deck unmoving.

Warp protocol was strictly regulated for many reasons, the sudden termination of a warp was physically horrendous, and potentially catastrophic. The humans lay across the bridge moaning and contorted into positions of pain against their own whiplash, some of the humans lay very still.

Krill lay draped over one of the seats, also unmoving.

Sunny struggled to her knees armored carapace having protected her form the worst side effects of the warp termination. "No, no, not now, not like this." Sunny whispered. The ship shuttered and jolted with a metallic screech. The emergency lights cast an unholy glow over the room. Sunny scrambled across the floor and onto the defense console. Ahead of her at the systems console, she watched as the ship desperately tried to reboot itself. As far as she knew the main power sources and life support would have remained intact. If there was one thing surprising about humans, it was their extensive need to create backup systems to their backup systems. In some cases, humans could be very cautious.

The ship rattled again, and Sunny desperately rattled at the battle station controls.

Weapons systems offline.

She cursed under her breath, and tried to pull up close radar of the area. The loading screen seemed to take forever as she pulled it up, "Please, no."

The radar came up, but the small signature of their ship was completely surrounded, a mass shape dwarfing them, engulfing them. Somewhere below the ship, a loud metallic thud reverberated through the hull. Sunny raced towards the wall, dashing the coms from the wall, pressing the button and screaming her orders into it, "DON'T FIGHT THEM, REURN TO THE BARRACKS, DON'T FIGHT THEM." A loud screech echoed through the corridors of the ship, "PLEASE, YOU WILL DIE!" She thought about the marines, those idiotically brave humans. How could they not fight; she had a horrible image of the marines lying on the ground, dead. The rattling continued for some minutes and then went quiet.

Sunny rushed over to Krill checking for signs of life, she didn't know what she was looking for, she was a solider not a doctor; that was Krill's job.... But to her..... he.... Wasn't moving. She couldn't see anything, she couldn't feel anything. She shook him gently, but his large head just flopped forward like a rag doll.

Breathing hard, she lay Krill gently on the ground and then leaped to her feet running over to where the captain lay on the floor nearly tripping over waffles, who lay on her side voice wheezing with a quiet whimper as she struggled to breathe

She threw herself to her knees next to the captain and flipped him over placing her hand over his chest. She knew relatively where a human heart was supposed to be, and placed one of her hands over his chest desperately feeling for some signs of life. There she felt it, the distant thudding of his human heart and his chest rising and falling with labored breath. She shook him to trying to wake him up, if anyone knew what to do....

Just like Krill, the man slumped forward upper body falling against her chest head sagging downwards. She knelt on the floor holding him in her arms trying desperately to wake him up, and she was still there as she listened to the floors begin to rattle.

Something was coming.

"Captain-" She began, ready to beg him, to plead with him to wake up, and it seemed as if his eyes had begun to flicker.

The door burst open with a loud CRACK, hinges squealed as metal warped in protest bending and twisting into unintended positions. The door itself rattled to the deck, skidding halfway onto the bridge. A light haze of smoke poured into the room, obscuring the figures behind into shadows. Three figures rushed into the room one after the other ducking through the small space weapons raised to point at the incapacitated crew.

The mist dissipated.

Sunny felt her heart skink....

The Drev soldiers stared back at her with expressions of impassive disinterest. From where they stood, they fanned out across the room brandishing their weapons, blasters, razors, arm cannons, lasers, and of course their armor slid into place between and over the already armored carapace.

They were a good two feet taller than her on average.

Captain Vir shifted against her chest arms limply trying to regain consciousness fully.

And that's when the fourth figure stepped into the room. The shape was so massive they had to bend almost double to make it through the door and into the room stepping with a soft clatter on the floor. Humans may have grown out of predators, but nothing at that moment could have looked more sinister than the shape that stepped from the shadows, and out onto the deck raising itself to a full 10 foot height only added to by the magnificent set of armor about her shoulder, and the mighty war staff in her upper right hand.

....

Sunny's mother stood, metallic purple armor shining in the light of the emergency illumination, casting shadows about her body that turned her normally warlike form into nothing short of sort of hellish. Like the goddess of war herself reincarnate, and come down from the fields of battle to grace her presence on this very isolated ship.

Her regal armored head turned about the room taking in the fallen crew, some of which were finally beginning to stir, and then her eyes locked on Sunny. Sunny rested the captain back down on the floor and took to her feet slowly forced to look upwards at her mother's face. The piercing golden eyes stared back at her as she stepped forward, easily striding over the fallen door with her massive pace.

She paused over Sunny staring down at her.

Sunny stared back.

Captain Vir groaned and struggled to his hands and knees. His bleary human eyes were out of focus ad cloudy with confusion.

Sunny's mother bent down, and with her other massive hand, she grabbed the human by the throat, and hoisted him into the air like he was nothing more than a kitten in the jaws of a lion. He gasped, and gagged and struggled against her massive grip hands desperately scrabbling at her wrist and fingers. His legs kicked as his lips began to turn gradually blue.

The noise of his choking filled the entire bridge from front to back.

"Pathetic little creature, aren't you." She mused as the other humans were just beginning to pull themselves from the floor, only to be encouraged back there by the weapons of the Drev soldiers, "To think many of the Drev consider you to be mighty warriors, but look at you now."

All that could be heard over the sound of the rebooting system, was the human slowly choking. His kicking grew more frail, more labored as he began to grow limp. Sunny took a step forward.

Her mother's head snapped up, and with a flick of her wrist, she discarded the human to the floor. He hit the ground with a sickening thud and a reverberation through the metal. A desperate gasp rent the air as he took in breath hands to his throat.

A set of golden eyes fell on her. The gaze that had contemplated her many times, and only ever come back with disgust and distaste was filled with something else this time. A smile broke across her face, "Daughter....." She looked around to the assembled Drev, "My daughter, a true soldier in the art of espionage. Good work, you did your job perfectly... quite a miracle considering your....usually lacking in these areas."

On the floor Captain Vir choked a single word breaking from his lips, "Sunny..." A word filled with so much betrayal and despair, it turned Sunny's blood right to ice.

She didn't want this.

Her mother laughed, "Look at the poor stupid thing, Sunny, seems you did your job better than I expected." Her laughter rose, and with it came the laughter of the other Drev soldiers, echoing out of the bridge, down the halls, and through the ship to die in dusty corners with its sinister intent.