If you asked a killer of any stripe if they remember their first kill, the answer would usually be yes. In fact, the answer is probably always yes. They might lie to you, tell you that they've forgotten either on purpose or that the mirror of memory has been fogged or stained or broken somehow, but their heart will always remember.

If you asked Jax Davis the answer would be yes. Of course it would be yes. What he would tell you, though, is that his first kill was a Blackwatch transit guard who found him stowed away on an outbound cargo transport sealed in a crate of survival supplies. It would be the truth, too. He killed him with a can of beans applied liberally to the forehead, messy work.

But to Jax, that wasn't his actually first. To Jax his first kill wasn't truly his own. The first tally mark, the first notch, the first of many came when the doctors at the Saint David Medical Center pronounced his mother, Susan Davis, dead of blood loss. Her true killers, the Blackwatch who took his father and forced his mother down the spiral path that led her to a nameless knife-wielding drifter who skipped town to deny the next of kin his revenge.

After these two, the rest seemed to blend together in a long ribbon of crimson. Even Cosmo who he had shot by accident not ten minutes earlier had already been forgotten, not to mention Jacobson who's body had been thrown from the trench toward the bow by Four Arms. Those memories thrown out in favor of freeing up precious brain power to focus on securing his new prize. It wasn't about freedom anymore, once the ship was secure they would have their freedom. Now it was about the heist.

"You two!" He pointed to Stalky, who blinked his tall eyes, and the Tarrian.

"Close the door and watch it. If you start seeing sparks coming through then open the door up and start shooting, don't ask questions, okay?" He tried to be as simple and direct to the aliens, the Tarrian even helped him out by repeating his directions in Stalky's language.

He pressed the button on the right armrest that powered up the projection-window and his eyes went wide at what he saw. The flank of the KNIGHT ERRANT only two hundred and fifty kilometers away according to the projection-window's highlight. Not only that, but the bright blue contrails of a smaller vessel heading toward it, identified by the window as SQUIRE, the distance number rapidly increasing as the shape got smaller.

That's gotta' be Calhoun. He can't get to that ship, he'll sink us! Jax thought. Then something occurred to him. This ship, unlike just about any other Blackwatch vessel was equipped with shields.

He turned his head up to where he guessed the shipboard AI was listening. "Hey! Bring the shields online!"

"Pass authorization code!" It chimed In hapless response.

He pressed the intercom button, even if he didn't know the code, he knew someone who could find out.

"Arna! Dig through the AI's memory and find me the auth-code!"

"Can do! Also, Jax, it looks like I was right! This ship is equipped with a directed EMP device!"

His lips pulled away from nicotine stained teeth as a sinister grin cut across his face. "Get that cookin' too. I want that ready to go, there's another Blackwatch ship out there!"

Had he not killed Cosmo, he might have had someone around who could have worked the shielding system. Hell, he wasn't even sure what Cosmo's skill set even was--he put her on Engineering to fill a slot! Now he would never get the chance to find out. Had he not killed Cosmo, the back of his mind might not have been trying to pull his conscience back and force it to see what he did now at the worst of times.

"Four Arms! Bring the guns online and target the  shuttle! Shoot it down while we still have a chance!"

The huge being grunted in response, still mostly visible from the upper set of arms up. A dozen bright green crosshairs blinked to life across the screen and all slid slowly toward the blue dot, the corresponding armaments grinding away above them on their automated mounts. now almost one hundred and seventy kilometers away. As they found their mark, or got as close as they could, they burned an angry red.

"Fire!"

Four Arms used all of his arms to fire all of the fire-groups at once. A fusillade of cannon fire streaked with green tracers, bright blue laser streams, silver flashes of linear gun projectiles, and the deep amber burn of rockets filled the screen. Jax' heart thumped and thudded, his whole body felt ready to jump and run, and a somewhat childlike giddiness filled him as the full might of the ship was unleashed on the little dot.

Even if we miss, we'll hit that fuckin' destroyer. Any damage is good damage.

Unfortunately, the shuttle was still there, and nearly at it's destination when the light show gave way back to the view of KNIGHT ERRANT. A series of bright flashes on a lower section of the destroyer's hull signified a few good hits, unfortunately, no major damage.

"What the hell else can this winda' do? Anybody?"

"Display highlighted target hardpoints!" Marten shouted to the ceiling from Jax' right.

"Pass authorization code!" The AI answered back.

"Okay, how about instead you get us on a course away from that damn thing before it can return fire."

An instruction which Marten complied with gladly. The engines spooled up with their screaming howl underscored with steady bass thumps, and the ship listed slowly to the right.

Jax pressed the Intercom button again as the shuttle's highlight disappeared from the window. "Arna, where you at down there?"

A rapid muffled clatter from below answered for her. A few tense moments later her voice came over the intercom in response, "Yeah we're just dealing with a little situation here. I can't charge the EMP without the auth-code, the system won't let me."

As if summoned by name, the gatekeeping voice piped up again, "Warning! Multiple radar locks detected! Recommend engaging shields!"

Jax slapped his own face and growled with frustration, "Then do it, cha' bitch! Raise th' god damned shields!"

"Pass authorization code!"

"Jesus-fucking-Christ!"

"Input invalid! Pass authorization code!"

Jax searched his mind for anything that might be even close to a secret password for a robot designed to keep hijackers like him out. The few ideas he came up with felt unlikely, though given the circumstances, anything would be as good as anything else.

"Cold Beer! Is it fucking cold beer!?"

The voice was quiet for a while and Jax peeked through his fingers, his golden hair in his eyes. The view of KNIGHT ERRANT listed to the left as the ship continued to turn, leaving only the vertical fork of the front end visible.

"Authorization code incorrect, two attempts remain."

Before Jax could think of another response, the AI almost screamed and raised the whooping alarm at the same time, "Warning! Projectiles incoming!"

The ship rocked and rolled as a volley of crashes and bangs shook through the hull from the port side. Jax was nearly thrown from the command chair, and Jacobson's body slithered back into the trench. The outlaw stabilized himself, jaw clenched, and pushed his hair from his face.

"Hull integrity compromised. Hull at ninety-one percent."

He looked to Marten, who kept his focus on the terminal before him with his hands squeezing around the helm of the vessel.

"Can ya' make this thing go any faster?"

The soldier shook his head but didn't look back, "Nope. This is just capital ships for you, this thing is big and mighty heavy."

The vast KNIGHT ERRANT was almost completely gone now, the blackness of space and it's paint-splatter of stars now filled the projection-window almost completely. Once the nose was clear, and Jax' pride was sufficiently beaten back down, they might be able to make a real getaway.

"Warning! Projectiles incoming!" The AI warned innefectually, before another series of heavy impacts rattled them like an earthquake. The voice followed this up with another update on their hull strength, now just eighty seven percent. Of course, it happily chimed in with a suggestion to raise the shield.

"Authorization code nineteen!" Jax made another blind guess, though it too was incorrect.

"Arna! We're taking heat, we need that code now!"

Silence from below.

"Warning! Projectiles incoming!"

Arna shouted into the speaker system with enough volume to make it crackle like static, "Chassit! The authorization code is chassit!"

Jax jumped up from the command chair, unable to control his nerves which burned with the anxiety of combat. "Authorization code Chassit! Shields to full power!"

"Authorization code accepted, shields online! Repulsors at one-hundred--"

The inbound shots from the Blackwatch destroyer hit the shield with a rapid series of deep liquid thunks before the AI could finish her status update.

"Shields online! Repulsors at ninety-six percent!"

Jax' gamble hinged on Calhoun likely assuming that they would have been unable to figure out the authorization. Such assumption was fueled in turn by his belief that the conscripts were uneducated and utterly dull. How wrong he was.

Trading one problem for another, the sharp hissing of a Breacher came from behind Jax. As instructed, his guards lifted the door and opened fire. Jax drew Triple Regret and held it near his right cheek, cocking the stiff hammer as he did so. He whirled around the side of the command chair with the heavy weapon raised, both hands squeezing the polymer grip.

Three Blackwatch exomarines lied dead in the doorway, but his guards had been rendered equally lifeless, their blood painted the back of the command chair an abstract pattern of purple and green. Commander Cross stood panting in the doorway, his black uniform tie-dyed with the splattered fluids of almost half a dozen unique alien species.

He opened his mouth to monologue, and Jax blew two matching holes in his gut with Cross' own weapon. The shots ricocheted off the elevator door at the far side of the hallway and penetrated through his body again, and repeated the pattern after deflecting off of the back of the command chair, finally coming to rest in Cross' chest cavity.

Jax lowered the weapon, the vibrant orange barrel threatened to melt beneath a trail of sharp smelling gun smoke. Cross' body joined the group on the ground, and Jax shoved him out of the doorway with the kick of a worn boot and shut the door behind him.

He took his seat again, congratulated by the applause of the destroyer's weapons pounding their shield. The AI reminded him that barrier held at eighty-seven percent now.

"Give me hardpoints!" He said, raising a triumphant finger.

"No target!" The AI replied.

The KNIGHT ERRANT was almost all the way off of the screen, with only the very end of it's bow peeking out from the left side. Jax surmised that if the weapons could swivel to bear broadside then there had to be a way to target them.

"Marten, what's the command to switch the camera?"

Marten turned and yelled, "Port side view!"

The screen changed to reveal the full profile of the destroyer, which was automatically highlighted. Several glowing shapes were also marked out as incoming projectiles, but before Jax could see what they were each of them pounded into the barrier which blazed with defiant blue.

After the drum-solo against their shield, which had been reduced to eighty-two percent now. Jax called again for the AI to mark the hardpoints of the opposing vessel. Areas like the tips of engines, barely-visible clusters of aentennae along the flat dorsal surface, each portion of the bow, and several other areas along the body turned to a bright red.

"Four-Arms, do your thing. Send that ship to hell."

The beast grunted in response, and the turrets ground their way back on target. The former gunnery officer hadn't missed a step and targeted what he identified as life support and taking a guess at where the unindicated bridge may have been. The reticles locked on, and their return barrage let fly.

Instead of watching the light show Jax activated the intercom again, "Arna! Any update on that EMP?"

He looked up, the areas hit by their attack were still plenty visible and lacking in any nearby debris. The excuse of a small target didn't work here, and Jax stroked his goatee, trying to puzzle out what could be going wrong.

"Well, it's charging sure, but we're looking at three percent. If you think we'll hold out for thirty times this, sure!"

"Just keep it goin', we'll try to buy time!"

He grit his teeth as another incoming volley thunked against their shields. Seventy eight.

"What's going on, why aren't we doin' anything to 'em?" He yelled to Four-Arms, who shrugged with his upper set of arms, blasting away with the other two.

"Think they loaded training rounds. Less power, still live."

Of course. Because we sure as hell can't have it the easy way. If we can't sink 'em, we gotta' run.

"Warning! Multiple locks detected, brace for significant impact!"

Snapped from his thoughts, Jax looked up. The destroyer had retracted a portion of it's armor along the flat starboard surface, revealing twin stacked rows of cannons poised to rip their shield down.

He pushed the intercom button with his elbow,  "Everybody brace!"

And a series of rapid flashes ran along the revealed weapons like an excited crowd doing the world's fastest wave, and Jax gripped the armrests for his life.

---

General Calhoun made a beeline for the KNIGHT ERRANT's bridge, muscling his way past his subordinates and flattening them against the walls when clearance wouldn't allow. The trip was short and sweet, thanks to the uncharacteristic design decision of putting the bridge inside of the ship rather than keeping it elevated from the rest of the hull. His men had already begun the work of attempting to disable the Prototype, the repeating patterns of exploding deck guns and the low thrums of energy weapons signified that much.

The door to the command room slid open, retreating in two halves into the slots in the wall. Calhoun strode across the circular chamber's elevated walkway and dropped himself into the captain's chair, putting one leg above the other. He swiveled the comfortable seat to face the starboard side and panned his eyes across the curved projection-window that spanned the entire circumference of the room save for the doorway just in time to watch the destroyer's most recent volley strike a blazing blue envelope that surrounded the Prototype.

They've figured out my auth-code. Note to self, don't store AI recording data locally. The General tapped the tips of his fingers together and ground his teeth.

"Gunnery!" He shouted to nowhere in particular, unsure of where the stations on his brand-new vessel even were.

"Yes, General!"

"Wha'do we have that can crack a shield?"

"Well, sir, our forward railgun could probably overpower the repulsor but I doubt we can turn about in time to disable them before they jump away."

Calhoun straightened his cap and rubbed his temple, "Then why did you suggest it? What else do we have?"

The Prototype outside flashed a few times, and red boxes indicated incoming projectiles which struck the hull with heavy thuds. The AI of KNIGHT ERRANT announced that the hull integrity held at ninety-four percent.

Calhoun's lips curled back and revealed a sinister smile, "They haven't figured out the training ammunition yet. They're hitting us at a quarter strength."

The Gunnery officer piped up again from behind Calhoun, "I can order the starboard side Zip-Gun Array prepared but I can't guarantee its effectiveness, sir."

Calhoun squeezed the arm rest of his chair and his smile dropped, "Doesn't matter. We'll pound that shield like a drum."

"I will have it done right away, sir."

Calhoun swiveled around again, facing away from the Prototype which fired away at their ship's exposed hardpoints. The damage was mostly ineffective, but continued strikes could render modules inoperable and Calhoun knew it. The Prototype needed to be sunk or disabled before they hit KNIGHT ERRANT's life support too many times.

"Engineering! Is this ship equipped with shields?"

"No sir!" The officer representing Engineering stood at attention, her arms pinned to her sides. "The ship does have an advanced point-defense system however --"

Calhoun stood and cut her off with a booming shout, "Why the hell does everything in a state-of-the-art ship come with a 'however' or a 'doubt' or a 'I don't know' just do it! God damn the penny-pinching bureaucrats."

"I'll power the system up right away."

"Good." Calhoun slumped back into his seat and swiveled back around to watch another volley of shots streak under and over the camera, directed toward the exposed communications array and life support.

"Hull integrity at ninety percent! Damage to communication modules!" The AI said flatly.

"Hey Engineering, how do our point defenses work?"

"It's uh, directed light sir. Laser."

He looked over his shoulder and pointed vaguely in her direction, "Once the Zip-Guns go off I want you to direct the point defenses at the shield. Maybe we can drain the repulsor that way."

"Aye, sir!"

There was a heavy mechanical sound as armor plates in the starboard side retracted to reveal the twin rows of Zip-Guns like the teeth of a starving animal. Quickly after, a short grinding as they fine-tuned their aim to center their barrage onto the Prototype.

"Cannon array ready to fire, sir!"

Calhoun bit the inside of his cheek to stifle a burst of laughter. He leaned back and drew his pointer finger like the gun from his holster, and shouted his favorite word.

"Fire! Smash him!"

There was a sound closer to that of ripping paper or a rusty chainsaw than the rapid burst of heavy cannons, and a bright line streaked toward the Prototype.

The General held his breath until the envelope around the floating brick blazed to life again, shining a dying star's bright blue. Hardly any time later, the shield flashed white and disappeared. They wouldn't need the improvisatory backup plan anyway.

"The shield is down! Unleash hell!"

----

The shots hit the shield with such speed the AI stuttered like a heavily scratched CD, unable to keep up with the dropping shield percentage until a great electronic decrescendo sounded through the wide corridors.

"Shield offline! Repulsor zero percent! Recommend tactical retreat!"

"Fuck that!" The ever-defiant Jax Davis was out of his chair and pointing at the great destroyer.

"I want every gun we have on the life support! Take it out and choke 'em to death!"

The reticles, still burning red as they slid across the destroyer's surface, all converged on the flashing red point denoted as the life support system. Jax didn't need another word, Four-Arms squeezed triggers and pushed as many buttons as he could, their weapons a thunderstorm above them.

Something pulled at Jax as the integrity percentage shown by the screen ticked down by single digits, and he swiveled on his heel to face Marten at the navigation terminal. He squinted his eyes, trying to make heads or tails of the tiny squiggles of jargon on the monitors that surrounded his view of the Big Black. "Marten, how far can we get with half of our fuel?"

The navy-man stuttered, and leaned into one of the bar-gauges to his right, then turned to the map above him. "Thirty-six lightyears?"

"Is that far enough away for 'em not to just warp forward and hit us?"

"Well, I mean yeah but--"

"But wha'? We're runnin' out of options! I just watched their life support take a fuckin' from our guns and what? Dropped like four. We don't have any fuckin' shields, Marten!"

Punctuating his point, the ship was hit with a quake of impacts from the destroyer, dropping the hull down into the seventies. The shock threw him back into his chair, and he pressed the intercom with his elbow.

"Arna! Where're we with the EMP!?"

There was some silence, and Arna's voice came back through with the background noise of indistinct shouting calls in alien languages.

"Twelve percent? I don't think this thing's ever been used, Jax. We're gonna' get shaken apart before we can hit 'em. You got anything else?"

Running away always hurt, but losing the score hurt more. After the skyjackers took the loot from Block Thirteen, and the job on the transport ship went bad, Jax pockets felt as empty as his ego. He needed to prove to himself that he could still take what he wanted, that he could make the Blackwatch pay for what their hunger put him through.

He needed to make up to his mother by saving as many as he could, but that wasn't a thought on the surface. No, the surface was occupied only by proving that The Jax Davis was still around.

"Marten, take us out of here. Use half our fuel and just warp straight ahead!"

"Whatever you say, don't listen to the guy with actual Blackwatch military experience."

Marten's turn came to use the intercom after an incoming volley pounded their outer hull down to sixty-one percent.

"All hands, batten for immediate emergency warp!"

Jax fastened a seatbelt across his lap and squeezed the armrests. Marten hadn't given much time to batten before the whole ship was flung like the bullet from a gun.

A shiver ran throughout Jax' body as the KNIGHT ERRANT disappeared and the stars blinked out. He had been in ships that had gone supraluminal before, but had never been somewhere he could actually see exactly what special kind of dark that lightless version of space was.

He let himself slowly relax, his breath caught up to him and his heart knocked against him almost in protest at what he had done. The Outlaw wondered for a moment about what things might they crash into out here, what could live in a place he was coming to define as almost distinct from the rest of existence. A lightless void. A starless sky.

A noise like a thunderbolt striking the ground outside a peaceful home rolled through the Prototype, and Marten nearly screamed.

"What! What now?" Jax turned, annoyed by the fact that he had only almost gotten to relax. Almost.

"Our engine output is dropping. Something's wrong!"

His thoughts drifted briefly again to Cosmo. Someone operating the Engineering station probably could have fixed this, or at least diagnosed it. But of course, and as he always did, Past-Jax robbed Present-Jax of such things.

"Arna!" He shouted into the intercom, "Get to the engines, I think somethin' happened!"

"On it!"

Another concussive noise, and Marten was almost out of his seat, hell at this point it might have even been safe enough to be out of his seat. The stars crashed back into view as they dropped into 'real' space, and their speed only continued to fall.

Arna wouldn't make it to the engines before the cause of their problems made itself apparent. Marten informed Jax with no shortage of trepidation that their speed had in fact hit zero.

"Warning! High-speed object incoming! Capital-class warp signature identified!"

"Forward cam'ra!"

The screen flashed from displaying their port side to the space right in front of them. The screen highlighted a single kite-shaped ship, far enough away that it's details were obscured by a fading pink light that shined from its bow.

"Is that it? Is that what she's goin' on about?"

Then the KNIGHT ERRANT appeared in the periphery of the screen's view. It stopped with a precision and a distinct ease that Jax always found strange about starships.

"No, Jax. Like I was trying to tell you, The Blackwatch perfected warp-tracking!"

Of course they did. Because there ain't no clean getaways, is there? Jax squeezed the armrests with enough force he was sure they would snap.

A shape interdicted the view on the screen, blotting out the image of the two ships beyond them. A single man stood at tight attention. His shape slim, tall, and dressed in an exotic uniform the color of coal dust with deep purple sloped shoulderboards and a wide double-breasted front. Above gleaming golden eyes sat errant tufts of dark hair below a hat not unlike a pilotka, with a simple red eye in the center. His nameplate was illegible, written in hieroglyphs that appeared more scratched-in with a knife rather than printed neat and uniform. Above it, a patch with a silver shield and what must have been a broadside image of their ship with two equally illegible characters proudly displayed below it.

The unknown individual brought up two erect fingers to their temple in salute. The bare arm was tattooed with an image of a tightly coiled serpent terminating on the back of his hand with a sun held in its jaw and two stacked red slit-eyes.

"Greetings, undesignated vessel, and Blackwatch Destroyer KNIGHT ERRANT. You have both made the mistake of crossing into the exclusion zone of Shield World Akka, the sovereign territory of the Krazoran Infinite Empire. I advise and encourage you both to submit for mercy."

He turned around with a quick heel-turn, his arms folded tightly behind his back.

["Fire the disturber net."]