The team learns of their new status, with juristiction all over the known galaxy, but they are forced to accept the addition of represenatives of the other major races onto the team. The Mimbarai who helped them previously arrives with documentation proving he is the represenative of the Mimbarai, and they are forced to accept him as a member of the team. The team captain distrusts the Mimbarai, and feels these conditions are too dangerous, requests and is granted a transfer to a more stable unit. The leadership role falls upon the inexperienced.
The team recieves a report that no ships have exited hyperspace along the route that the renegade they are chasing departed on. Conventional wisdom would think that her ship was lost to a hyperspace accident, but the team is more suspicious than that, and they set off in pursuit. The first leg of their journey is uneventful, but when they are approaching their destination they discover that the hyperspace beacon beam is resolving as two separate beams, and they don't know which one is correct! The team manages to reach the jump gate by tricky navigation and brave scouting from the escort fighter. The escort fighter is nearly jumped by raiders along the second beam, but manages to escape.
Once in normal space, they learn from the transfer base there that other ships have gone missing along that route. First they work to solve the mystery of how the second beam is produced. Fantastic theories are entertained, such as the raiders having a base in hyperspace, but they manage to deduce that the raiders simply have access to a previously undiscovered jumpgate in a nearby system! Boosted by re-enforcements from the transfer base, the team attacks the raider stronghold.
The attack is ill fated, however. Starfuries are lost in the dogfight, and the Mimbarai's flier is destroyed in a risky move as he tries to pass through a collapsing jump point, although he ejects in time and survives. The team discovers the raider's base, along with several of the missing transports. Included is the transport believed to be carrying their quarry, but the team is forced to retreat because of their heavy losses.
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