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The Liberty siege cruiser made another pass at the ancient Harvester cruiser and another section of the ship buckled under the pressure. Metal jutted out of the mastiff ship at every possible angle and the ship began to spin helplessily out of control. Then, without warning, the ship detonated in a massive explosion. Men and women cheered.

The monster, Nemesis, was no more.


Several months later

The dark structure of the station known by Nemesis as Nyx hung in the darkness of the cloud in the massive nebulea known as the Barrier Rim. Lights around the jagged structure of mechanical and technological parts slowly began to light up with an omnious glow of dark green. In the silence of space, you could not hear the eerie sound of a new ship being assembled. The station worked on in silence for several more weeks until a ship was completed. Downloaded into the ships dizzying amount of wires and giant cables that ran from one end of the ship to another, was an AI program. Backed up and downloaded to the station known as Nyx in the event that something was able to destroy the AI in any event.

The massive ship slowly came online as automatic testing systems made sure the ship was in full working condition. As time drug on, the ships lights slowly illuminated so brightly green, that staring at them for too long was sure to burn holes through your retnas. Suddenly, the doors to the station opened and the huge cruiser size ship jumped to light speed, aimed at Liberty space.


Texas System, Liberty Space
Just outside the system

"Private, is the station operational?" asked a man with the clear rank of General on his shoulder.

The young man stammered at the sudden arrival of a high ranking officer in his midst and saluted.

"Yes, sir!" he said standing up suddenly facing the General.

"Good, as you were private. Bring up the relay for Planet Houston and let them know we are up and running for the first attempted use of the Dark Matter clouds for a potential fuel source."

"Already done, sir." replied the private.

"Good. With any luck--"

"Sir," said the private "we have an unknown variable that just jumped into the cloud we are aimed at draining."

"Unknown vessel," said the General. "this is General Anders of the station Hydro. You are to identify yourselves immediately, you are in restricted space."

Silence was all that was returned.

"I say again--"

"**I heard what you said, meeeeeeeeeeeatbag.**"

The General froze.

"Impossible, Nemesis was--"

"**Destroyed? You can't kill something that can't be killed, mortal. Nemesis Protocol activated. Target locked...Station Hydro.**"

"Shields up!"

By the time the General authorized the defensive posture, it was too late. Nemesis launched a volley of powerful missles at the station. The first few grazed the shields, knocking them out within a few hits, the remainder destroyed more than half of the station a fury of decompression and fire. No screams came across the comms, no warnings to Sirius of the return of one of the most feared AI's in known space. The massive green and black ship floated slowly over to one of the damaged and broken docking bay doors. Out of one of the ports on Nemesis, a large black cable floated into the station searching for anyone who might have survived. The cable receded out of the station with two bodies sealed in some kind of bags. Once the cable returned to the ship and the body bags were onboard, the huge ship jumped away to light speed.

Nemesis had returned.

Yaren Base, Omicron Delta System
One week after the attack

Kazinsal Goldsmith stared out the window of his temporary accommodations provided to him by the Corsairs of Yaren. He knew he had to keep going after the attack on the nearby station of Freeport 11, but he didn't know where to go. He paced back and forth along the side of his bed.

"Kaz..." a female voice spoke softly. Zoe, an advanced holographic artificial intelligence, laid on the bedspread. "We have to keep moving. The Corsairs can't hide us from the Zoners forever, you know."

Kaz stopped and looked at her. "I know," he said. "But the problem is... where do we go? We abandoned the Order -- hell, we trashed one of their cruisers -- so we can't return to Minor. The Zoners are hunting us, so Freeports are out of the question. I don't think I could ever live in Kusari or Rheinland..."

"Bretonia likely wants us dead, as well," she sighed, sitting up on the edge of the bed. She pulled herself off of it and tugged the covers gently to a neat position.

"Liberty."

Zoe looked at him, as if the word he had said made him seem completely stupid.

He looked deep into her eyes.

"We have to go back to Liberty, Zoe. Ironically, it's the only safe place for us."

Kazinsal knew that Liberty would want to take him into custody, but he would be safer there than out in the Nomad worlds. The two had deserted Liberty almost a year ago, taking a damaged Liberty Gunboat, the LNS Langley, along with them for the ride. The Langley was destroyed in the escape, but the two survived and joined the Order to fight off the Nomad threat, until a pair of Aoi Iseijin showed them the plight and suffering of the Nomads themselves, causing Kazinsal to strike against the Order in an act of vengeance for the Nomads.

"They'll arrest us, and maybe even kill us!"

"We'll die if we stay here," he said. "We'll be safer out there than we will here. We just need to make a push through Minor and into Alaska..."


Alaska System, Liberty Space

The LNS Walnut Grove jumped into the Alaska system under the command of Fleet Captain Rodney Salas of the Liberty Navy Secondary Fleet. A pair of Nomad Voidrunners attempted to assault the ship, but the siege cruiser's massive turrets vapourized the aliens in mere seconds.

"Charge the cruise drive and enter the Trans-Alaska Corridor," Rodney ordered. "We're heading up to Omicron Minor."

"Aye, sir," the helm officer called out. "Engaging cruise engines."

Alaska System
Unknown Sector

Space rippled and tore. A massive green and black ship came barreling out of the rift and into regular space. For a time, the ship sat without moving, it's internal core glowing green and taking in sensory data on the surrounding sector of Alaska. The ancient Harvester design was obvious in the ships composition. This was Nemesis, the terror of Sirius space, or at least one of them.

Her goal wasn't credits. It wasn't fame or even terrorizing the organic population. Nemesis had only one goal in mind for the past several years. Her one single solitary goal was to bend mankind to her will and rule Sirius with an iron fist, mankind would be her slaves and would do exactly as she said. They abused her when they created her, now she would show them exactly what it meant to be a slave.

The two meatbags she had collected from the station in Texas were proving to be very hard to break...the younger man died from exhaustion within a few hours of the torture, his genetic material was melted down and stored for later use, possibly for a construct of some kind. The older higher ranking man, however, proved to be very strong, and resisted both the torture and the attempted enslavement. Nemesis decided against killing him, she would come up with a use for him yet.

The radar pinged and Nemesis suddenly grew aware of her surroundings again as a Liberty vessel was flying through the cloud at a quick rate. Its trajectory indicated that it was destined for a jumphole located within sight of her ocular sensors. Nemesis engaged her cruise engines and flew quickly within range of the jumphole and overloaded her secondary core. An EMP shockwave blasted outwards and the jumphole destabalized. It wouldn't realign for at least ten minutes. A plus to the destabilization to the jumphole was, even though the EMP shockwave got less powerful as it went, it would still cause a mess for the large Liberty ship...which Nemesis would then attack with fearful force.

If Nemesis was capable of maniacial laughter to herself...now would have been the perfect time to use it.

The jumphole to Minor shuddered and shot out periodic bursts of superheated lightning as it naturally tried to realign itself. Nemesis floated past the anomoly and headed straight for the ship flying towards her. As she came within range of the ships sensors, another ship appeared on the radar, larger than the one coming into view. She didn't care, she would have two ships for "dinner" instead of one. Her plan would come to fruitition.

The smaller ship opened fire once they realized who and what Nemesis truely was. The weapons fire from the ship only scratched her shields and irritated her. The larger ship came into view at this point and fired a heavy mortar in her direction, severely draining her capacator. Nemesis inwardly hissed at the setback. She quickly began a flight around the larger of the two to avoid the damage she would take. She attempted to hack the larger of the two, but failed. The smaller one would have to do as a distraction.

Nemesis's secondary core came back online and began the feverish job of hacking through lines of code in the smaller ship. Within seconds she had succeeded and the smaller Liberty vessel was in her control. The ship turned wide and opened fire on the larger battleship along with the cannons on Nemesis...the larger ship was beginning to falter but not nearly enough. The larger ship fired another heavy mortar at Nemesis but she was ready this time. She brought the smaller cruiser size vessel up and directly in the path and dropped it's shields with their own people's mortar. Nemesis then fired a single mortar at the smaller cruiser.

As soon as it hit the hull, it buckled. Superheated Mox fuel and molten metal exploded into space from the other side of the ship. The Liberty vessel had just contributed to the end of one of their own vessels. Nemesis roared with delight. Nemesis diverted power from the secondary core to the shields and braced for an attack from the larger vessel in spite of what they had just done. Nemesis looked for any kind of vulnur--

There! A moment of lax, an opening in the computer systems. She dove through the hole and shut off the ship's engines, shields, and weapons. Powered down everything that they could use to harm her. After she completed, she scanned the smaller vessel for life signs and found several still alive. She floated up next to the ship and began her harvest of the vessel, how ironic that she would do the same thing as the Harvesters did so long ago...only now for her own benefit.

Once she had picked the smaller vessel, the Crimson clean, she hacked it's datacore and took all the information from it's databanks. She floated up towards the larger vessel, the LNS Walnut Grove and scanned it for lifesigns as well. A skeleton crew she had deduced. Not many lifesigns on board and she was more than full on meatbags for the time being. She still had to process them for their transformation...their enslavement. Nemesis connected to the ships computer to download the data and was met by something else.

Another AI.

Around Nemesis walls of code formed around her, she was being blocked in, contacted by the AI of the other vessel. A battle of wills began. Near her, a woman stood, no doubt the AI of the Walnut Grove. She glared at Nemesis from across the expanse...and spoke.

The AI of the Walnut Grove rang out.

"My name," she said, "is Zoe. I have no surname. What you need to know, Nemesis... is that you are choosing the wrong person to mess with. I am not unlike yourself, a computer-manifested creation by a human, built to learn and survive as a sentient being. I roam the universe much like yourself, travelling between my home ships, seeing Sirius firsthand. I live, exist, much as you do. But there's one difference between you and I, Nemesis..."

She stepped closer.

"You are a killer. I am not."

She smiled deviously, flipping her dark brown hair aside.

"You may know a man named Kazinsal. Kazinsal Goldsmith. He is the man I love and have known all my life. He is whom I live and fight alongside. He is also a friend of the captain of the Walnut Grove... the ship I often visit when it comes within range of Alaska. It's one of those things that keeps me happy... and if you destroy that ship..." she stopped suddenly, her eyes beginning to glow with a bright red fury, "I will be very... un... happy... as will Kazinsal, who has ties to forces..." She looked around. "Beyond our comprehension. Understand?"

She grinned, leaving a final message in the "room" as she dematerialized, transporting herself back to the Walnut Grove.

"I hope you do."