Koretz wasn't sure which was worse: the physical incompetence of his crew or their awesome stupidity. Communications with the main fleet had gone down because two of the fools had gotten in a fight and smashed into the communications board, and now fights were breaking out over how to fix it. This was no way to run a ship.

"If I'd had enough sense, I would've come by myself and left these idiots back on Geo," he muttered. Their home planet needed them more. With their numbers decimated, the royal guard was wide open for attack, and the Roc had many enemies. Their only hope was to finish this mission and return before Geo's vulnerability became widely known.

Koretz sighed and scratched his block-like jaw. It was, to his way of thinking, entirely unnecessary to bring this many fighters for this "war". It was a war of extremely limited scope, not usually a good idea, but the king had declared it, and there was no turning back now. At least they'd finally locked on to the bastard and were beginning to close in. Another few days of sitting around, waiting, and he would have gone bezerk. He'd heard the rumor spreading among his crew that in fact he already had gone crazy.

He didn't really care. On any more prestigious a mission he would have kept a tighter rein on his underlings, but their numbers made it difficult and his own apathy made it impossible. He just couldn't get motivated for an action this petty. Why was it his job to kill this guy? Let the next poor saps he attacked deal with him.

He heard a loud crunch, followed by a rash of angry shouts, coming from the communications room. Growling, he headed for the noise. He'd had about enough of this crap. He needed a little bloodshed to soothe his nerves and ease his mind.

The two who'd been fighting scattered as he entered the room. Only brave Fespa remained by the console, his expression worried.

"We did everything we could, sir," he said. "As near as any of us can tell, the machine has been fixed and is in perfect working order, but it won't transmit, and the computer can't even give us a specific error."

"So between you three sacks of shit and this damned computer," Koretz roared, "not one of you knows what the hell is going on? A full day's work and that's your answer?"

Fespa was unruffled. "Sir, our best guess is that we're receiving external interference. It could be incidental, or it could be that someone's tapped into our system and is wreaking havoc."

"Any other systems affected?"

"Not so far."

"If the tracking system goes down--"

"It won't, sir."

"--life as you know it will end."

"Yes, sir."

Koretz sighed. "How long until you can give me a definite cause on this interference thing?"

"I really couldn't tell you, sir." Koretz lashed out suddenly, kicking Fespa in the side, claws digging parallel gashes in the lieutenant's thick hide.

"How about now, worm?" Koretz hissed. Fespa gritted his teeth in pain and shook his head. Koretz took a step closer, towering over the injured warrior.

"Are you sure?" he murmured threateningly. Fespa lifted his hands in a gesture of supplication.

"There's just no way to tell, sir."

Koretz rammed his fist into Fespa's throat, crushing the windpipe. Fespa squeaked through his damaged larynx, eyes wide as he struggled for air. Red froth bubbled around his mouth as he slumped to the ground. Koretz turned to the remaining two.

"You have six hours to get this thing back online!" he shouted. "Move!" They scuttled forward and peered at the screens again, trying to look busily engaged in their work. Koretz grabbed Fespa's corpse by the tail and dragged it out of the room with him. The two at the console looked up in time to see Fespa's bloodied head disappear from view, along with the scarred stump of Koretz's tail.

*****

When Mordrig awoke, he was himself again. Sitting up, he made a quick assessment of his mottled blue-grey limbs and found them to be in satisfactory condition, aside from a slight ache in the arm he'd stabbed for ink. With a moan, he rose to his feet and ran his hands over his face, tracing the scars with his fingers. His whole body was covered with scars; they intermeshed in cryptic patterns on his skin.

"An occupational hazard, I suppose," he sighed, and rummaged through the papers that littered the floor, trying to put them in order. He slapped a blank sheet over the top and applied a fastener to one corner, making a crude book. On the cover sheet, he scrawled "Sentarn" and walked along the wall until he came to the small door marked R-S. Opening it, he drew out heaps of papers and shuffled through them, muttering aloud to himself.

"Roc, Runkin, Rykal, Saiyan, Satel, here we go: Sentarn." Slipping the new file carefully into the pile, he replaced the heap and shut the door gently. Turning, he surveyed the rest of the room.

"What a mess," he groaned. "I don't have time for this." He strode into the other room, seating himself before the flickering screens. They should have been glowing brightly. 'Damn interference,' he thought, fiddling with the dials. Turning to the other side of the console, he stubbed his toe on something. With a breathy curse, he picked it up: a rock, a souvenir from his most recent venture. He'd forgotten that he'd kept it. He tossed it aside. Billions more like it were floating out there now.

Squinting, he managed to make out the tracking signal, faint, but thankfully still holding. He was heading in the right direction. Satisfied, he returned to his library for a little research. Pulling out his chosen file, a well-thumbed packet, he sat cross-legged on the floor to read(his chair was drenched in ink and blood and had not yet dried). His lips moved silently with the words as he sped through each hastily-written paragraph. He slowed down when he came to the important parts, reading and rereading to be sure he had it right. At last he closed the packet and shut his eyes, willing his mind to absorb the information. He smiled.

"Vegeta."