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As Samis looked at me, I coughed and pointed up at the top left hand corner. "This is Morse code, a rather ancient way of getting information to one another via a series of dots and dashes. The sender would tap for a dot, and hold for a dash, and the message would be sent wirelessly to a reciever, who would have to write it down as it was transmitted. As tech advanced, the reciever was treated to an automatic read out, much like this. But age has eaten away at the markings a little. DAIN, could you scan it and give us a slightly more enhanced version?"

DAIN nodded, and his glowing eyes ran across the perimeter of the mural, following the ancient script, which Celiana the recieved to her laptop, leaving a perfect pair of rows of the communication. "Do you know how to translate this, Lieutenant?" Celiana asked, and I noticed there was a lack of the usual spite she accompanied with the word. "It's been a while, but I think I've still got most of it memorized." I admitted," Does your laptop not have access to a database of some sort? Your computer would be more reliable than my rusty old brain cells."

Celiana ran a quick scan of her laptop, and shook her head. "Nothing, and we're several lightyears too far away from my planet to connect to any global knowledge servers. Silver, do you have some oil for the lieutenant?" I gave her a surprised look."Witty, very witty." and she imperceptibly checked herself, as if she had getting too familiar with me with her joke.

I rubbed my muzzle, and began to rack my brains , trying to piece together the puzzle in front of me. The vowels were the easiest, and I started translating onto my book. But halfway through, I frowned. "More oil?" asked the dragon. "No, that's not the problem." I said slowly." The Morse is definitely complete, and it definitely corresponds to the common universal language we all speak, but none of the words make sense, it's just random letters in a gibberish order."

"Well, what does it say?" I took another minute or two to finish, and then showed them the translation. "XC IWT KDARPCXR GTVXDC DU XZJGXP, IWT HLDGS HATTEH." is what the text read. Samis matched my frown. "Huh, that's not helpful." But just as we thought we hit a brick wall, Celiana had a brainwave. "That's quite clearly a code of some sort. The IWT repeating is too obvious for it not to be the case. And HATTEH, identical pairs of letters. DAIN, how much code breaking do you know?" "Not much, Celiana. What do you want to focus on?" "HATTEH, shift all the letters one forwards repeatedly, see if you find them make a word."

There was a long pause while DAIN nodded his head down and began calculating. Samis turned to the three searching the chests. "Find anything good?" Acheron smiled. "Captain, I think we've found quite a lot of good." he held up a white cube, a foot by foot by foot in size. Samis looked puzzled. "What is it?" "If I'm not mistaken, a data core. And it had a note in the chest, not encoded at all. "Find the location, and the guardian will recognise you as a friend."

"Guardian?" Caboose looked nervously, but Samis smiled. "That's excellent. I'll imagine that some sort of AI runs the location, so if we plugged that into the Dolphin's transmitter, the AI will recognise Kraven's own programming. What else?" "Sleeps." DAIN announced suddenly." One match, HATTEH shifted forwards 11 times turns into Sleeps." "DAIN, using that code break, complete the rest of the message." "Translating. IN.THE.VOLCANIC.REGION.OF.IKURIA.THE.SWORD.SLEEPS."

"Ikuria?" I looked at Samis. "That's in Nexa's territory. Far from Ia Gelliath, but close to the invisible dotted line between the two factions." "Four planar jumps to the border, at an angle away from Ia Gelliath, and then two on Nexa's side." Celiana announced, as she checked her laptop." Population. Zero. But there is a small automated refuelling station there for craft passing by, so we could dock in orbit with the refueller and scan the surface."

"Ikuria, Ikuria." Samis muttered to himself. "DAIN, isn't the Sectivore planet close to Ikuria?" "One planar jump, sir. Did sir wish to make arrangements to visit them?" "I think so. But not right now." I lifted a finger. "Point of interest, but me and Cee here wouldn't be allowed on the Sectivore's planet." "How d'you figure that, Lieutenant?" Celiana asked. "War on. The Vulpini and Azuri have been supporters of Chaio, quite possibly we'd be arrested as spies."

"That's ok." Acheron interrupted," Silver and us two kitties are both former Nexa territory members,so worst case scenario, we'll do the outside work of refuelling. You, Cee and Caboose can stay inside the ship for the duration if necessary." Celiana nodded. "Suits me fine." Belvedere was looking through her chest, and she pulled out a glowing circular ball of the purest white.

"Kitty's keeping this, ok? Anyone got problems with that?" she said, staring deeply into the ball. "That's not a power core, is it?" Silver said, quickly moving over to look at it. DAIN spoke. "It is indeed. I believe they refer to it as a Diamond particle, because of it's brilliant shine." "Power core for what?" I asked. "Diamond cores were normally utilised for high intensity shielding for medium class ships. One of those could power a shield for a medium sized frigate for weeks of constant bombardment."

"I've never seen one before." I admitted. Samis nodded. " Generally cores nowadays are larger in size, due to the increased size of ships. Very few mediums remain, as the ships grew larger and larger. With that extra space comes a more lax approach to things needing to be compact. This however was forged in Kraven's times, and I believe they were tested by leaving ships in an asteroid field for months."

"Does the Dolphin have shielding?" "No, it was not a standard part. Shielding could be obtained for it, but it would be a custom job, and expensive." "Uhhh, I don't think that would be too much of a problem." Caboose said, while looking through his chest. "Caboose? What have you found?" Silver asked.

Caboose backed away from the chest, as if repulsed. "I think the appropriate word is treasure trove." he stuttered. We approached. Inside the chest was several large bags. One of which Caboose had opened, to reveal diamonds. Not more diamond cores, but actual proper diamonds, sparkling under the light of DAIN's eyes. "Oh wow." I breathed, having never seend that much money in one place.

"Wow seconded." Acheron agreed."How about we get back to the Dolphin and study this all in a more scientific way?" "Uhh, before we go. Shouldn't we not forget our hosts?" Caboose said quietly. Samis looked at Caboose, and then at the priest still quietly standing by the door, candles in hand. "Excellent point, Caboose." he reached into the bag and pulled out a small handful of the gems, moving over to the priest.

"You have fulfilled your duties to Kraven's lineage, and I am in your debt for your assistance. May this be a token of our gratitude." He bowed, and held out the handful of gems in front of the priest. The priest paused, and looked at the gems with an expression of what could only be called shock. "Umm, your gift, sir, it's more than I've ever heard of. Are you sure?" "Completely and utterly. Use it wisely, for you and your race's prosperity. " Samis replied.

The priest took the handful with reverence. "Sir, Samis, we humbly accept your gift, and wish you the best with your cause. We do not wish war to ravage our world again, so you have our blessing." He bowed. With that, we took the three chests upstairs, and closed the altar down, the priest hurriedly arranging the sheet over the top of the buttons once more, before bading us farewell, and disappearing into one of the side chambers, carrying the pile of gems.

"I think his day just got made." Silver commented with a grin. "I think his LIFE just got made." I replied, as we headed out the main door. 'Him and all his friends just got enough wealth to last anyone not engaged in a major war." "Well, call it 300 years back pay for him and his ancestors dedication to Kraven's temple." Acheron commented playfully. Samis didn't say a word, he was busy reading pages of his diary all the way up to the ship. Only when he got there did he speak.

"Ok, Ikuria it is. Acheron, Celiana, plan the planar jumps to Nexa's territory. Kitty, we will need some electronic paperwork to say we're allowed in Nexa's domain. Please remember to add our additional crew member to them as security detail. DAIN, please examine this data core we've collected, scan it and work out how IT works. Silver, you and Caboose look at the Diamond core, try and figure out where we could put a shielding unit on this ship compatible with it. And Facilier, get this ship ready to fly. As soon as Celiana has the planar jump details sorted, I want to be on a path out of this system.All clear."

We all nodded, and headed up the ramp quickly. I was first to the ladder, and entered the bridge, followed closely by DAIN. I began powering up the ship's flight controls. I opened a link on comms. "Let me know when the chests are strapped in and everyone's followed suit. If it's loose it's going on the floor, sorry Bel in advance." DAIN chuckled, and gave me a wink while plugging in the data core into himself. I smiled, recieving checks from everyone. Everyone had gone back to their quarters, except Caboose who revolved his seat to face the front.

The Dolphin's take-off was textbook, and the ship took off vertically once more before I throttled forwards. This time however I slowly introduced more and more of a climb into the Dolphin, and as the ship started arcing up and up, it's nose pointed to the sky, I throttled ALL the way forwards. The ship trembled and vibrated as it punched upwards, my pilot's chair rocking back and forth as I followed the angle for orbital exit that had appeared on the heads up display, the automatic systems having correctly deduced my intentions.

Once I had got far enough up, I began to pitch her slowly towards a more horizontal trajectory, following the yellow estimation line, before the juddering came to a cease, and we had left the turbulent atmosphere of the Dromantis world. I enquired of the ship a route to planar jump, and was informed it would be a couple of hours on this course and speed. "Cee, Acheron, ship says we'll get to planar position in two hours, is that sufficient for you to program our next location?" "That should be sufficient, Facilier, thank you."

I breathed out and swung the ship out on it's projected route, giving the ship to the auto-pilot and unbuckling myself. Standing up to crack my knuckles and wrists from the vibrations of the take-off. DAIN was already reading the contents of the data-core. "Fascinating." he said, "Ramon, this data core has thousands upon thousands of terabytes of memory space, more than me in fact, but all it's carrying seems to be a couple of megabytes of command code, indeed to be a "friendly handshake" with a specific recieving system computer."

"Translation for the not-particularly tech-savvy person?" I said. "Terabytes?" "How far should I scale it down then?" "Your snark is ever appreciated, DAIN." "What can I say, it's preprogrammed." the robotic creature shrugged, his robotic jaws managing a grin, or maybe a smirk. "Look, there's just too much empty space in here. You could fit the command code on here about ten million times and still have space for a couple of libraries. It just seems wasteful." "Any theories?"

DAIN shrugged again. "I don't know what Kraven was intending. There's not even a read me file in here." "Well, I imagine he's got SOMETHING planned. He seems to have thought of everything else." "There is that." DAIN admitted. "Foxy! Are you still on the bridge?" The voice of Belvedere came across the comms. "Yes, Bel, I'm flying the ship, thus I'm on the bridge. It would be a spectacular feat if I wasn't." "Apparently snark is contagious." DAIN said to himself.

I slapped his shoulder and poked my tongue out at him. But Bel responded before DAIN could. "I need some facts and figures for these security forms, could you come here?" "Ship ok on autopilot?" "Of course. Samis wouldn't get half the time he normally gets for orgies if it wasn't." "I'm yet to hear you volunteer for one of those, Kitty." the dragon interrupted almost immediately, playing along.

I sighed. "Solid copy, on my way." Celiana cut in before we left. "Could we at least leave the smut off comms, people? We're trying to work over here." "Sorry, Cee." Kitty's voice sing-songed back. I entered the electronics room, to find Kitty with her own laptop out, and a little gizmo of some description in her hand.

"Ok, boring stuff, boring stuff, boring stuff, name, species, sex, lots of it, ah, yes. Age?" she recited down a checklist. I inwardly smirked at the sex joke, before telling her my age. "Ancient." she copied back, and I rolled my eyes again. She measured my height and weight with her little gizmo and entered them in quickly. "Oooookay, that seems to be everything, Although my sainted brother did have some other information for me about you."

I grinned "He told me as well. And I wouldn't call him a saint." "Rascal?" she opined. "Devil." I confirmed. "I'm sure he'd be delighted to hear that." she giggled." But now we know we can party." "Indeed we can, albiet not right now. Might get a wee bit embarassing if there was a ship wide call to action only to find the pilot's got his trousers round his ankle and the cute electronics girl suckling on his cock."

"Oh, so that's what you've got planned? Typical male, what about pleasuring me?" she pretended to pout. "I'll think of something to reward you with, if you're a good girl." I winked, and she bopped me on the nose. "Being good is over-rated." "Well, then, sufficiently skilled at being bad would suffice." "That works." she giggled. "Alright then, flyboy. Maybe during one of our refuelling stops on the way to Ikuria then." "I look forwards to it."

I headed back to the bridge, and took the pilot's seat, leaning back into it and zoning out while the auto-pilot took us further and further away from the Dromantis world. After about an hour, with the sun looming in the distance, getting larger and larger, Acheron arrived on the bridge with his own palmtop, entering figures into Celiana's computer. "That the flight co-ordinates for the jump, Acheron?" I asked. "And for the next three after that. Two planets and two space based refuelling stations. Time to the border, about 24 hours. 2 hours for each jump roughly, 3 hours to refuel the jump engine.

"Never been across the border before. What's it like?" "Under normal circumstances, not too bad. Extra amounts of paperwork and probably a ship wide search to make sure we're not carrying anything illegal, like contraband in the form of narcotics. We should be good there, massive amounts of riches and stuff like that shield core don't count as contraband, just credit and space parts." "My uniform isn't going to cause a stir, is it?" "Shouldn't do. Security details normally come from special service and army types, so you'd just look like one of the old guard who likes to make it clear who he is and where he comes from." "Oh, ok." Acheron smiled," Domineering attitude, a comprehensive knowledge of rules of engagement and a touch of arrogance, that's all you need for the security business." "I hope you're joking." "Well yes, but if you can bluff that, you should at least pass the border.Just treat Samis as your commanding officer." "I don't need to bluff that, I already do." I retaliated, and Acheron smiled.

"How long to the planar?" I added. "About thirty minutes, give or take." I winked at Acheron, and took over from the auto-pilot, executing a gradual u-turn of the craft, without changing it's path, so that we were hurtling backwards towards the jump point. Acheron looked at me quizzically, but I just smiled and told him to wait.

After two minutes, Caboose clicked on the radio. "Ramon, could we have the ship pointing the right way please? I know it's you, and the sun is very distracting in my window." Acheron held his paw over his mouth in a stifled giggle as I returned the ship to it's proper alignment. "Thank you." the bunny finished. "I just thought you'd like to look at it for a while, we've all got a nice sun tan in the cockpit from looking at it for so long." I said innocently.

"Yes, I'm sure the three feet of polarized uv-resistant polyglass diffused the gamma radiation nicely. I can assure you I've got exactly the same set up back here." "It's a darker room than the bridge, the illumination would be more useful for you." "Your concern for my Vitamin D levels is appreciated." I muted the radio and looked at Acheron. "He's a little more playful over the radio." Acheron laughed," Well, he's not having to engage face-to-face. It's much easier for him to talk over comms. His comment after your Cobra on approach yesterday was another example."

"Well, at least we're moving him out of his shell." "Indeed, and I am glad you have taken a liking to each other." Acheron smiled. "I also noticed that even Cee was less vitriolic, shall we say, in the temple? You seem to have a knack for getting on with people." "Well, Cee has an advantage in that Azuri don't like the Vulpini, and she in particular doesn't like the military, so I was hardly expecting her to welcome me with open arms, but she hasn't thrown anything at me and has been civilized, so I wasn't going to complain."

"Yeah, Cee is yet to tell anyone why she so whole heartedly dislikes the military, and yet she's joined the head of what's going to be a military force attempting revolution, but she undoubtedly has some reasons." DAIN coughed, or at least made the sound of a cough. "Sorry to interrupt, Ramon, but just to confirm we've got the planar jump in twenty minutes, and the space station at the other end has just confirmed they have a dock for us." "Thank you DAIN, I'll tell Samis that, then get in position. Back to work, Ramon." Acheron nodded, and disappeared quickly.

I got back into my seat properly, and buckled in. Samis appeared, looking thoughtful, before taking his seat. DAIN informed him of the contents, what few there were, of the data core, and then Celiana entered and took her seat.

This time I was on pilot for planar jump. I had done it before, but on the first occasion I was flying a light cruiser on a training mission, in a simulation. Effectively, it was just timing, but the approach for a precise planar jump had to be pretty much millimetrically precise, as the fraction of a degree off course would mean a pretty substantial gap at the other side. Not to mention you were orbiting at a pretty close distance to a star.

Fortunately, the Dolphin's systems were advanced enough to the point that all I had to do was steer the Dolphin onto the approach and then let the auto-pilot guide it to the boost point, where upon Celiana would hit the jump control. Using the stardock beacon back at Dromantis as a triangulation point, the ship could do all the incredibly difficult work. But you still got stories now and then of people who had to make week and month long flights to their destination because they entered the decimal point in the wrong place.

Just as the sun filled the entire left hand side of the polarized polyglass, Celiana hit the button at that precise moment. The craft shivered and pulsed forwards, clipping the outer layer of the sun and filling the planar engines with raw, undistilled fire from the sun itself, which in turn heated up the engines to the point they'd ignite. The world in front of the screen went flashing reds and pinks, and the cabin was diffused in a pink light once more. The traditional queasiness arrived, and Celiana coughed once or twice.

"Ok," Samis spoke," Time for an early lunch, I think."