He was still sleeping when the first shot hit the Calypso, at first, it didn't register in his mind. The thuds were background noise in his dreams. Then, after two more shots, he awoke with a start. The Calypso was under fire.

The haze began to clear from Darren's mind as he noticed the flashing red lights and the blaring sirens going off inside the Calypso.

Who would attack a freighter guild caravan? Not pirates. The guilds always hired fighter-ships to guard the caravan, and even the freighters had some weaponry. It didn't make any sense and it wasn't supposed to happen like this. Darren was just supposed to stow away on the Baern-Terran freighter for a few days and find himself on a new planet, far away from Nechi and its miseries. Instead, he smelled burnt metal and felt the Calypso shudder.

Nothing amazing had ever happened to a Vaclav, no Vaclav had ever amounted to anything, Darren's seyr stone had shown him that. The closest thing to a successful ancestor Darren had was Dr. James Vaclav, and the only thing he did was perform the daily duties of a family doctor. And certainly nothing this dangerous had ever happened to any of them, but now Darren was stuck on a freighter in the middle of a heated battle.

Now that Darren was conscious, he could remember hearing Aherne over the intercom say that the captain was dead, and then another explosion over the intercom cut the transmission. Darren was stunned to think that Aherne was probably dead, his heart sunk, there's no way a good man like him could die just like that.

With the captain dead, and Aherne likely also, Darren had two choices: to stay and die, or to run and maybe fly the ship to safety.

It wasn't much of a choice, he would almost certainly die either way. The weight of every bit of worthlessness he'd ever felt was holding him in place. He'd never piloted anything before, but if he didn't try, he would die for sure. The irrational part of his mind started his work, "What if I'm seen? What if they catch me?" As the ship shook again and again, he thought about these.

Finally he decided.

Cautiously, he stood up behind the crates, and then broke into a run. As the next blast came, crates fell to either side. He pushed the lighter ones aside, and jumped over the ones he couldn't move. His sprint seemed to last an eternity, though it was only a half minute. He wasn't certain where the control room was, but guessed it was near the end of the long hall. Ceiling tiles and pipes had fallen in the hallway, and Darren had to be careful not to slip on any of them. He also had to avoid any exposed wires so he wouldn't be fried by the electricity. The wires were especially difficult to see in the smoke that had filled the ship.

When he finally reached the last door, it wouldn't open for him. He had to pry it open with a pipe that had fallen from the ceiling. He'd guessed right, it was the control room.

As soon as he stepped into the room, he noticed the smell. It was the smell of burning flesh, but he didn't know that. The captain was heaped over on his left side, hanging over his chair's armrest. An electrical wire had fallen from the ceiling and was burning the dead man. Darren shuddered at this, he'd never seen a dead man before. The captain just seemed to be staring off into the distance, but, laying as he was, he was obviously dead. Darren lifted the captain out of the chair, while carefully avoiding the wire. He put laid the captain out on the floor. The light was reflecting off the irises of the captain's still-open eyes. The eyes seemed to stare up at him, asking him questions, or looking straight into his soul. This was quite disconcerting, and Darren closed his eyes as quickly as possible.

There was another dead man at some controls behind the captain's chair, but Darren didn't figure those controls were important to him at the moment, so he left the man there.

Darren nearly cried when he saw Aherne's body. It was heaped over the controls, there was a piece of metal in his head, and his blood was draining down the control panel. All he wanted now was for Aherne to live, but couldn't waste time. Aherne was heavy, but Darren managed to pull him off the controls and lay him on the floor. There were two flight sticks and a multitude of buttons and mini-displays all over the panel.

From the displays, Darren saw the distinctive design of the D'Qulen's ships, and the emblem of the Baern-Terran Government. He had found himself in the middle of the biggest war in centuries. He sat down at the controls and grabbed the flight sticks. One of the controls had already been driving the Calypso forward at a consistent speed, until Darren could find that control he could only point the Calypso in different directions.

The flight sticks felt heavy to him, but the ship responded much faster than he expected. He had some immediate concerns, such as the D'Qulen ship the Calypso was already headed for, and the surrounding fire fight. The first thing he tried with the sticks has to push them both forward. This pointed the nose down, but also made the ship travel upwards, like opening a book against a wall. The right hand stick controlled the nose direction, and the left hand stick controlled the "slide." Soon he found he could slide sideways, up and down, and turn the ship all together. This allowed him to do spirals and dodge the enemy more quickly.

It was too late to change his mind, but the irrational thoughts kept coming back to him, "What if I break something? What if I kill Baern-Terran ships?" This caused him to hesitate at the controls, slowing his response. He could have simply piloted the ship, but the weapons controls were too big a temptation. They allowed him to retaliate against the merciless D'Qulen, not simply escape the conflict. The first D'Qulen ship he destroyed was a surprise, he'd figured it would take a lot more to destroy them. Six or seven bursts near the hind portions of the ship was all it took to destroy them. Still, the "sky" was filled with ships, and most of the ones he could see were enemies.

Eventually Darren's fear of destroying Baern ships diminished and he began flying wild, specifically unpatterned manoeuvres. When he finally realised his mistake, it was too late, he was flying into the centre of the D'Qulen's force. All his manoeuvres took him away from his goal, and straight into the most dangerous part of the battlefield.

What he couldn't see were the dozens of Baern ships following him into the centre. He was their rallying point, but was oblivious to it. While thoughts of impending doom raced through his mind, the ships around him became focussed on one thought: "We can win this battle."

They didn't know that a no-account stowaway was recklessly flying into heavy battle. They didn't know just how scared, how inexperienced that stowaway was. They just knew a freighter pilot was braver than they were. It gave them hope.

While the fleet was rallying around him, he was slowly realising that there were no other freighters in the nearby space. The Calypso hadn't been travelling with the guild, for some reason, it had been travelling alone. Darren's confusion was growing by the second, who would travel so close to the Baern-D'Qulen conflict, and why?

He had too much to concentrate on to mull over this for long, there were too many ships to dodge. Too many Nentaque firing at him. Still, it was a nagging thought in the back of his mind.

Darren had a sudden scare when he pushed his feet forward to relax his legs and accidentally nudged a pedal, sending the Calypso bounding hard for the nearest D'Qulen ship. He soon found that he could speed up or slow down using the same pedal.

After awhile, the Nentaque fleet seemed to thin a bit, though Darren was actually just flying out of their formation. As soon as he was out of the centre of the battle, he turned the Calypso towards the fleet and began firing. He destroyed a few more ships, but the Calypso was too damaged to risk rushing back into the battle; certainly not after his escape.

Darren watched the last of the battle through the sensors, both sides seemed to have lost interest in the battle. A few shots were fired upon occasion, but the real fight was over. Neither side shot at enemy ships that seemed to be close to destruction.

The D'Qulen ships began disappearing in flashes of light, not all at once, but staggered. Some of the Baern ships started heading in the direction the D'Qulen had retreated to, but seemed to change their minds and come to a complete stop. Darren got up and looked out the window, he was amazed to see the hundreds of Baern ships doing absolutely nothing. A few looked on the verge of disaster, and all had received some damage.

The comm. started receiving hails intended specifically for the Calypso. Normally, those would have been handled by the officer at the sensor/comm. position, but the computer couldn't detect anyone alive at that position, so it transferred comm. control to the pilot's panels. A red light started flashing on one of Darren's auxiliary screens and he pressed the screen button, allowing the call to come through.

"Hey, Calypso, to whom do we owe this victory?"

"Victory?! You call that a victory? All their ships got away!" The silence from the other ships told him he'd done something wrong. He tried the button right beside it.

"Victory?! You call that a victory? All their ships got away!" Darren repeated.

"Well, whoever you are, you must not see many battles!" Aherne would have said the man had a smile in his voice, "We took more of theirs than they took of ours, and this is our biggest success in six months!"

"Oh sorry."

"Hey, it's not your fault you weren't flying for us six months ago, right?"

"No "

"Alright then, you don't have any reason to apologise, 'cept that you weren't here," the voice chuckled, "What's your name, anyway?"

"Darren Vaclav," he answered with a surprise. He wasn't used to people asking what his name was.

"Good work, Mr. Vaclav. Tell me, is anyone alive over there, or is it just you?"

"I'm sorry, I haven't checked the engineering compartment, but everyone in the control room is dead "

"That's a shame, there were some d*mn fine people on the Calypso "

"Yeah I met one of them."

"So let's get this show on the road. You wanna dock? It'll make getting back to the station a lot more convenient "

"Sure, which ship is yours? I haven't gotten all these panels figured out yet."

"Look up at the main viewscreen, that big on right in front of you, that's me. You can dock on port nine."

"Is there any way you could blink a light on port nine so I know which one you're talking about?"

The voice laughed, "Yeah, we can do that."