Ryouga Hibiki, Lost in Space. 
          Chapter two
     
     A fan fiction based on the works of Rumiko Takahashi,  
     Creator of Ranma 1/2, and, Masaki Kajishima, who is the 
         creator of Tenchi Muyo. 
     
     Hitoshi Okuda, is the artist and creator of the Tenchi Manga.
     
     What has gone before?
     That's a long story. 
     First, read chapter one of R.H. L.I.S, of course,
and then chapter seven of Tench and Ranma, Together, Forever!?
They can both be found at the following sites. 

          http://www.geocities.com/animecrossovers/
     http://www.anime.usacomputers.net/~dragon/
     http://tannim.anifics.com/index.html
     http://www.crosswinds.net/~silentnova/index.html
     I'd like to thank those people for finding my stories interesting
enough to post them to their sites.
     
     For those who don't feel like reviewing those chapters, a short
summary.

     Ryouga has found his ability to get lost reaching new heights. 
     Now, not only does he get helplessly lost going to the bathroom,
he finds himself visiting strange alien worlds.
     One such trip resulted in a confrontation with a wicked criminal
who was about to devour a small black talking pig. Said pig turned out
to be an undercover special agent by the name of Agent P. 
     P helped Ryouga sort out some legal troubles, and set out to return
him to earth. A close encounter with the 'A' class criminal Kagato
resulted in the destruction of the ships carrying Ryouga and P.
     P crash landed on earth, where he met a certain Akane Tendo. As
for Ryouga . . .well, he's once again lost in space, which is where we
now join him.

     Guest appearances in this story. Team Lightyear from Disney's
Buzz Lightyear of Star Command.
                                 


     He'd really done it this time, Ryouga couldn't help thinking.
Despite all the times he'd been misdirected, been led astray by
incompetent map makers, had run afoul of cities that changed their
names weekly, he had always been able to rely on one constant, the one
thing that always kept him going. The fact that wherever he was, no
matter how strange, or how confusing, he was at least somewhere. 

     He might not have known precisely where that somewhere was,
but at least it was . . . well, somewhere. 

     That had always been the foundation of his wayward life, and now
that support was cracking. . . seriously. Ryouga looked around him, or
at least, he thought he did. He couldn't even be sure of that simple fact.
Not that it mattered. No matter which direction he thought he was
looking, backward, forward, side to side, or up and down, the view was
the same. Not that view was the right term, but then, as far as he knew,
no one had ever invented a word for what he was seeing, or not seeing,
as the case might be.
     It wasn't darkness. Ryouga had ended up in enough caves and
sewers to know what total, unrelieved darkness was like. This wasn't it.
Darkness at least had substance of a sort. It was something. This was
nothing. 
     
     Nothingness. 

     No other word fit his current environment. Nothing he had ever
experienced in his life gave him any reference to cope with his current
situation. 
     That thought started Ryouga thinking along paths that he'd been
trying to avoid. If nothing in 'life' compared to this, what was left? "Am
I dead?" he asked out loud, taking a small measure of comfort in the
sound of his own voice. 
     Small comfort indeed. His voice echoed in his head, but nowhere
else. His speech had a flatness, as if it faded into the nothingness as
soon as it left his mouth. "Hello!" he shouted, with similar results. Still,
even if his voice faded out as fast as he could say the words, at least it
was something to distract him from the mind-numbing environment. 
     "Can anyone help me!?" Ryouga shouted.
     "Of course," a cheerful voice said from directly behind Ryouga.
     Ryouga gained some measure of comfort from the surprise he
experienced. Dead men don't have heart attacks, and at that moment his
pulmonary muscle felt like it was doing tap-dances. He whirled, or at
least re-orientated, to face the speaker. 
     Ryouga blinked as he took in the figure in front of him. Female.
Small in stature, young in appearance, twelve or thirteen at the most.
She sported a mane of spiky red hair that was bigger than her body, and
was dressed in clothing that looked a bit like a band uniform, colored in
various shades of green. 
     "Who-," Ryouga started to say, but was interrupted by a fanfare of
trumpets. The sound of which seemed to originate in his own head,
which was puzzling, but not so puzzling as what the girl in front of him
was doing.
     The young-looking girl produced a pair of cheerleading pom-
poms, and started shaking them with great enthusiasm in time to the
trumpets. "Yea, yea, yea, who's the greatest!?" she chanted loudly.
Jumping into the air, she kicked her legs out wide, and fell into a full
split. She then pushed both pom-poms in Ryouga's direction, an
expectant look on her face.
     Ryouga stared at the girl blankly, until her expression informed
him that her question had not been rhetorical, and that she expected an
answer. "Um, Elvis," he hazarded.
     The girl fell on her face.

***************************************

     In another location in the nothingness, or maybe in the same
position, at the same time, or maybe a light year away, and a century
before, or after - make your own choice, time and space not having any
real meaning in this strange void - a jumble of junk, 'was'. 
     Was. That was as good a word as any to describe the objects. You
couldn't say they floated, because there was nothing to float on. You
couldn't say they hung, or lay, or were piled. The junk simply, 'was'. 
     And just as the junk 'was' in the void, a solitary human figure
'was' on the junk. 
     The figure's tattered uniform made identifying it as a humanoid,
mammalian female fairly easy, but that was about all. Dirt and grime
hid any identifying marks, both on the uniform and the female herself.
Her hair was a dark matted mass hanging in tangled streamers down her
back, tied away from her grime besmirched face with a hunk of
insulated electrical wire. Blackened, grease-encrusted fingers worked at
the panel of a large emergency ration dispensing machine. The sort that
was present in the crisis evacuation areas of every space habitat in the
galaxy. 
     No money was required to sample this machine's contents. No
one, given a choice, would ever want to. The machine was capable of
producing food from its raw stock of chemicals that would sustain life
in several hundred different alien species. And just about every one of
those concoctions tasted like wet cardboard, with the singular exception
of the food intended for Digiterms, who rather liked the taste of wet
cardboard. Their emergency rations tasted like Prime Rib. 
     A being normally activated the machine by inserting its hand, or
whatever it used for that purpose, into the serving slot. The dispenser
would scan the supplicant's genetic code, mix the appropriate
chemicals, and produce enough food to sustain that particular species
for twenty-four hours. It would also remember that specific entity, and
not serve them again for one full day. This prevented hoarding, and the
premature depletion of the ERD's, 'Emergency Ration Dispenser',
resources.
     Despite a rather emaciated appearance, the female currently
working on the machine was not trying to extract food from the
machine. Instead she was concentrating on prying a panel off the side.
With a grunt of satisfaction she finally managed to free an access hatch
and exposed the complex circuitry that made up the main controls for
the ration dispenser. Reaching into her matted hair, she carefully
extracted a thread-thin test probe from behind her ear. With lower lip
gripped between her teeth in concentration, she maneuvered the delicate
super-conducting lead into a hole in the machine's circuit board. A sigh
of relief escaped her as it sank home with a barely audible click. 
     Leaving the probe where it was she put her hand into the
dispensing slot. A few seconds later the machine deposited a small
brick-shaped ration pellet. The female carefully set the ration block
down out of the way, and reinserted her hand into the machine. Sweat
was beading on her grease smeared brow, and she bit her lip so hard that
a droplet of blood appeared. 
     All the tension seemed to leave her, and her body visibly slumped
when, with a 'thunk', the machine deposited another brick of rations
into her hand. She leaned her head against the vandalized machine and
gave into her emotions. Shoulders shuddering with long repressed
emotions, she cried silently, tears cutting tracks down her grimy cheeks.
The female allowed herself several minutes of this self-indulgence,
before bringing herself back under control. Wiping her face clear of
tears with a tattered uniform sleeve, she set the block of rations in her
hand with the previous one, and reinserted that hand in the dispensing
slot. 

*************************************

     "Elvis!!! Elvis!! Are you crazy, you claim Elvis is the greatest!!?
How can you even suggest such a thing!?" 
     Ryouga found himself backing away from the irate young girl as
she stalked toward him. He held up his hands, palms out in a gesture of
conciliation. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he said hastily. "I was surprised. I
didn't mean it."
     For a second, the redhead glared at him, and then with a sniff,
turned her back on him. "You'd better be telling the truth. Elvis
indeed," she muttered. "By the way," she asked, turning to face him
again, "who is Elvis?" Before Ryouga could even formulate the
intention to reply, she cut him off. "No! It doesn't matter. It's just
shameful that you don't know that your creator is the greatest being in
the universe! No wonder you need help." 
     The girl was very disgruntled, but Ryouga wasn't really paying
any attention. One thought had all his attention. My creator! His
stomach sank. That was it then. He was dead, and this girl in front of
him was some sort of bizarre angel. Choking back emotions, he looked
up at the girl, no, the Divine Entity, and asked, "Are you here to take me
to heaven?"
     The girl blinked at him and then flushed red, as her eyes narrowed
in anger. She produced an enormous mallet, and used it to flatten
Ryouga, while yelling, "I'm not that sort of help program, you pervert!!"
     Ryouga covered his head with both arms in order to ward off any
other surprise attacks, while thinking that he'd been wrong. She was no
angel, and it didn't look like he was going to heaven.
     Banishing the hammer she'd summoned up, the girl started to fade
away. As she did so she directed one last parting shot at the cowering
lost boy. "Don't call me unless you need real help, pervert!!" 
     "Wait!" Ryouga shouted coming to his feet. "I do need help!
Where is this? Where am I?"
     The young girl faded back into view, but only partially. She gave
Ryouga a skeptical look, while repeating his questions. "Where are you?
Where is this? How can you not know that? Simply scan for known
stellar phenomena, and extrapolate from the data. You should be able to
place yourself within a millimeter."
     It was Ryouga's turn to blink. "Uh, how do I do that?" he finally
asked.
     "Are you playing some sort of sick pervert game here?" the girl
demanded. "Simply look at the stars," she said, waving her hand in a
large arc above her head while turning her view away from Ryouga for
the first time. Her arm stopped moving, and she gazed at the
nothingness that surrounded them. "Where are the stars?" she asked in a
stunned voice. 

***************************************

     How long had it been since she'd seen the stars? The dirt smeared
girl wondered. A week? A month? A year? Longer? The dirt smeared
girl had lost track in the scramble for survival. Finding all the bits and
pieces of the destroyed research facility. Lacing them together with bits
of salvage wires. Finding the few remaining power sources. Finding
water. Scavenging components to discover what her options were,
narrowing them down to two, one of which was dying. Not finding that 
option to her liking, she'd devoted all her efforts on the second, more
palatable option. And now she was so very close to completion. Just a
little bit longer and she'd be able to rest.    
     The food dispenser deposited another brick of rations into her
hand, and she added it to the growing pile beside herself, tallying it in
terms of survival as she did so. "Fifty-nine days," she whispered, and
put her hand back in the food slot.  

***************************************

     "The stars, where are the stars!?" the young girl shouted, as she ran
around Ryouga, her arms pin-wheeling. Suddenly, she came to a stop,
and rushed up to Ryouga. "Have you tried all sensors? Is there a fault?
No! There can't be a fault! You were created by the greatest genius in
the universe. 'I' was created by the greatest genius in the universe. This
is impossible. . ." A maniac gleam suddenly appeared in her eyes. "Do
you know what this means?" she demanded of Ryouga.
     "Uh, no, not really," he stammered out. 
     "Opportunity!" the girl shouted. "This is an unknown
phenomenon! We must make records! Turn your scanners up to
maximum! We must not miss anything! This is for science!" She struck
a dramatic pose, and held it for a minute. When Ryouga just stood there,
she started to show a little annoyance. "Well? What are you waiting for?
Start scanning!"
     The girl's behavior had resulted in Ryouga being in, what seemed
a permanent,  state of confusion, but the unreasonable demands and
orders were beginning to annoy him. "What the hell are you talking
about?!" He yelled at her. "What scanners? There is nothing here but
you and me!"
     "What do you mean, what scanners? Your scanners, of course . . ."
The girl trailed off, and suddenly gave Ryouga a searching look. "Wait a
minute. How long since you assumed your primary form?" she
demanded. 
     "Primary form?" Ryouga repeated in puzzlement. "What are you
talking about?"
     "Why didn't you say so in the first place?" the girl shouted at him.
"Look at all the time we've wasted when we could have been compiling
data for the mistress. Here, look at this," she said, holding up a full
length mirror that she'd produced, apparently from the same source as
her mallet.
     Or at least it looked like a mirror, but when Ryouga looked into it,
he didn't see his own face. Floating in the glass was a piece of jewelry.
A simple round domed disk of some sort of yellow crystal, set in a mass
of raw black crystal. Four dark spires projected outward and upward at
equal distances around the disk while another four, smaller then the first
set, projected downward. Their respective bases were lost in what
looked like a random mass of smaller crystals of a similar nature to their
large cousins, while the yellow dome nestled in the center of them all.
Ryouga had second thoughts about it being jewelry. Despite the
disparity in types, he had the feeling the two dissimilar minerals had
grown as a whole unit, rather then being constructed.
      Suddenly, a part of Ryouga's mind that had been lying quiescent
til that moment started to supply information, and the object in the
mirror abruptly had scale. He now knew with complete certainty that the
yellow dome was one hundred and sixty five-point-six five meters in
diameter. The four upper primary columns were each one hundred and
fifty seven-point-three eight meters in length, while the lower four
smaller were one hundred and five-point-four three two meters long. 
     While that was impressive, it didn't mean a whole lot to Ryouga.
He directed a questioning look at the girl. "What is it?" he asked.
Unspoken, but implied by his tone of voice was: Why are you wasting
my time with this?
     "That, cutey, is us, or more specifically, you."
     "What!!???" 

***********************************          

     The emergency ration machine buzzed negatively, indicating that
its supply of raw chemicals was exhausted. The ragged girl withdrew
her hand from the food slot with a sigh. She looked over at the ninety-
seven ration blocks she'd managed to accumulate. Each one
representing two days worth of food if she stretched them out. One
hundred and ninety four days in all. That was how much time she had
left. In one way it was depressing, knowing exactly how much longer
she had, but in another way it was a blessing. At least now she wouldn't
have to face each day, fearing that this might be the time the machine
failed to deliver. That was all beside the point, however. She'd not gone
to all this trouble simply to discover how large her food reserves were. 
     With that in mind, she picked up a piece of scrap metal about two
feet in length, which came to a sharp point. She now inserted that sharp
point in a gap between the main circuit board and the frame of the ration
machine. With a twist of her wrist, she popped the corner of the panel
free. She repeated the process on each of the other three corners, and
when she was done she set down her makeshift pry-bar and lifted the
circuit board free. In behind the removed panel were several devices,
each one nestled into its own particular slot. The girl slipped out the
second from the left, and carefully wrapped it in some padding. 
     Pausing only to break one of the ration bricks in half she set out
for the other end of the conglomeration of junk, chewing mechanically
on a single bite of the awful tasting stuff. With the skill of long practice
she made her way from one section of scrap to another. In some places
she walked, in others, where gravity was absent, she floated, keeping
one hand on a safety line fashioned from braided electric cables. Along
one small section, where the gravity was five times normal, she crawled.
One thing was constant, however. No matter what method of
locomotion she used, she always kept her eyes focused firmly on the
various pieces of debris, not once did she shift her eyes toward the
nothingness that made up the bulk of her present environment. On the
single occasion when she traveled between two widely separated pieces
of scrap, she closed her eyes and traveled by feel along thirty feet of
heavy duty wiring. At last she reached her destination. The
conglomeration of various electrical components plugged into each
other, and then into a universal battery mount. 
     Universal batteries were standardized energy units that worked on
the basis of direct conversion of radiation to electricity. They could not
supply varying amounts unless linked to separate storage cells, but they
could supply a steady and constant low amperage output for decades. In
a culture where fusion reactors were compact and common these were
not in widespread use, but they were useful for supplying lighting to
habitats that were still under construction, and which had not yet been
wired into a primary power source. And of course, they were the power
source of preference for emergency equipment.
     It took very little time to install the battery she had ripped out of
the food dispenser, all the wiring and connections were prepared, just
waiting for this final device to make the whole conglomeration ready for
use. A second after she plugged it into the prepared socket, a light lit up,
indicating a complete, and working, circuit. 
     Once more the girl closed her eyes and made a visible effort to
control her emotions. Leaning forward, she placed her mouth close to
the pick-up from a voice activated cleaning unit. "Th--" she started to
say, and then broke off in a bout of violent coughing. 
     The violent reaction from her first attempt to speak in over four
months brought tears to her eyes. She blindly reached out and picked up
a glass beaker sealed with a rubber stopper. Taking a gulp of water from
the container, she swirled it around in her mouth, and then swallowed
the dregs. Making a few nonsense sounds to get the kinks out of her
speech, she leaned forward once again and spoke into the pickup. When
she was done, she pressed a button, and settled back with a sigh,
knowing that her equipment would repeat that message over and over
again, for far longer then she was likely to be here. A few seconds later,
she fell into an exhausted sleep.        
     
                                                       
***********************************

     In the end, it was his Jusenkyo curse that helped to convince
Ryouga. After all, when one has spent three months turning into a
battle-scarred tomcat at the merest touch of cold water, what was so
hard to believe about turning into a spaceship. 
     In addition to his curse, he was aided in his acceptance of the
situation in no small part by Help-chan, the self proclaimed greatest
help program in the universe. Unlike his condition after Jusenkyo, this
time he had someone to explain what had happened, and to teach him
how to cope. Add to that a notable lack of people who wished harm to
him in one form or another, and he was one happy spaceship.
     Compared to the hell he had gone through after getting his curse,
this part of his life was one of the most relaxed and contented periods he
had ever experienced. He had no pressing need to get anywhere. His
feud with Ranma seemed a distant thing. After all, he could hardly
challenge the coward to a fight now. Still, when Help-chan's teaching
reached the details of his offensive capabilities, he couldn't help but
daydream of making a strafing run on the cowardly Saotome. A warm
glow filled him as he imagined the expression on Ranma's face as he
ran for his life.
     Not that it was all cream in his coffee. Going from being a purely
biological organism, to a multi-thousand ton crystalline space ship was
a big step. Fortunately, Ryouga had time to spare. Help-chan informed
him that he could last centuries in his current powered down state. 
     In the end it didn't take centuries, but it did take, by his internal
chronometer, some six months to get to the point where he could begin
learning at computer speed, after that it took in real time, thirty three
minutes, in subjective time, seven and a half years. When it was
finished, Ryouga was as comfortable in his new shape, as he had ever
been in his old human body, and much more then he had ever been as a
cat.                                    
     He had also made his first real and true friend in the form of Help-
chan. It was therefore a great shock to him when at the end of his
training, she said goodbye.
     "Goodbye!?" Ryouga exclaimed in shock. "You're leaving me!?"
     "Never!" Help-chan said vehemently. Taking his hand between
hers, she looked up into his eyes. "Ryouga-chan. I'll never leave you. I
will always be with you, always be a part of you. But I'm a help
program, and you no longer need any help I can give.  Now it's time for
me to step back, and let you find your destiny."
     "My destiny?" Ryouga asked, while holding tightly to her hands.
"I don't know what my destiny is. I still need help. You can't go!"
     Help-chan effortlessly drew her hands from between his, and
reached up and stroked his cheek. "Silly boy, you are a ship, and your
destiny is to sail the stars, taking your captain where they desire."
     "My captain? What are you talking about? You never told me
anything about this before!" Ryouga said in a panicked tone as Help-
chan began to fade away. 
     "Search," her whispered word came to his ear, as her form became
transparent. Just before she faded out of sight completely, her final
words caressed his ears. "Goodbye my friend, clear sailing, and
remember, I will always be a part of you . . ."
     If Ryouga had still possessed knees, he would have fallen to them
in despair. "No!" he cried out. Even though he knew it was useless,
Help-chan had never existed anywhere but in his circuitry, he extended
his external sensors to the maximum, and he heard something. For the
first time since he had come to this void, there was sound, a signal,
broadcasting across the spectrum, and up into the hyper range. A simple
message, repeated over and over again.

     "This is Detective First Class Kiyone Makibi of the Galaxy Police.
To anyone receiving this message; I am in distress, and request
assistance under the distressed spacer conventions of 23.8675." There
was slight break, and than the voice continued, this time with a
noticeable quiver. "Please," she said. "Please, anyone."


     Ryouga might have ignored the first request, loaded as it was with
officialese, but there was no way in all the nine hells that he could, or
would, ignore the entreaty in that last line. The loneliness and distress in
that plea resonated within his soul. He could no more ignore it than he
could talk about his feelings to a girl. 


******************************************        

     Kiyone was sleeping when her I.D./Criminal database scanner
sounded the alarm. She was doing that a lot now that her transmitter was
finished. There was nothing more she could do to improve her chances
of survival. Therefore, taking into account that she used far fewer
calories while dozing, it made sense to do as much of it as she could.
     She stared bleary eyed at the display that hovered above her wrist,
trying to make her brain work so that she could decipher the holo
display that whirled and spun in front of her. Slowly the gyrating images
settled down and came into focus. 
     Even though she was now able to read the information, it did not
register immediately.  Kiyone had been experimenting for the last few
days with seeing if she could function on a third of a ration block, and
the lack of food was having a deleterious effect on her cognitive
functions.  Her energy deprived brain was having a hard time processing
the data in front of her. 
     #WARNING# "Unknown craft in area. Craft possesses a ninety-
four percent energy and physical similarity to the criminal craft Ryo-oh-
ki, wanted for the destruction of twenty-eight worlds and sixty nine
colonies. Extreme caution recommended. Proximity of craft, two
meters." 
     Kiyone blinked as her brain finally comprehended the message.
"Two meters!? What was wrong with her unit? Was the null-space
effecting it? Kiyone gave her wrist a shake while she struggled into a
sitting position. This brought her line of sight up two feet, and she found
herself staring at the needle-like point of a glistening pillar of black
crystal. Eyes wide, she followed the gleaming length up, and up, till she
focused on the massive dome of yellow that hovered a hundred and fifty
meters above her. Her eyes continued to roll upward, until they
disappeared under her eyebrows, and she keeled over in a dead faint.


     When Kiyone rejoined the land of the living, she found herself
staring at a black sky, which resolved into an expanse of black crystal.
With a jolt, she remembered the ship. She sprang to her feet, and nearly
fell on her face. Only the gentle tug of a small tractor field kept her from
going nose first into the floor, which was also of black crystal she
noticed in a detached way.
     "Take it easy, Miss," a masculine voice said in a concerned tone of
voice as the tractor field lowered her back to the bed she'd been laying
on. "From the look of things you've not been eating very well. You need
to take it easy till you can get some food inside you." Providing
counterpoint to the voice, a tray floated into the room with a small bowl
on it. A savory odor reached Kiyone, and her mouth filled with drool at
her first wiff of real food in nearly five months.  
     Kiyone snatched the bowl from the tray, and guzzled the few
teaspoons of broth it contained in one swallow." More," She gasped,
holding out the bowl.
     "In a bit," the bodiless voice said gently. "You're stomach won't
be able take more for a bit. Trust me, I know. Is there anything else I can
do for you?"
     Kiyone wanted to scream that what she wanted was more food,
enough food to founder a whale, but under the raging hunger a small
rational part of her mind realized that the voice was correct. If she ate
too much, too soon, she'd just end up vomiting it all up again. But if she
couldn't eat, there was one other thing that had filled her sleeping
moments with dreams of pleasure. "A bath!" she said in a passionate
voice. "Can I have a bath?"        
     There was a pause, and then the voice said, "Uh, a bath? . . . Sure,
No problem. Just give me a minute to run the water." 

     Ryouga hastily searched through the latent matrixes in his
structure. At the moment, except for the room that the castaway was in,
his interior was raw crystal. That did not mean that other rooms did not
exist. They did, but in a quiescent state. He had an entire catalogue of
different configurations imbedded in his memory banks. And if that was
not sufficient, he could shape his interior into whatever form he could
imagine. That was not necessary this time, whoever his creator, the
Great and Powerful Washu, was, she'd obviously not been one to stint
on the creature comforts. The nascent structure Ryouga found was a
virtual spa. 
     A twitch of his mind and the section next to the girl's room began
to reform. Having done that, he switched his attention back to his
passenger. He had not yet learned how to multi-task consciously, though
Help-chan promised that it would come in time. For now, when he
focused hard on one thing, everything else muddled along on automatic.
What he found when he returned to the bedroom was the girl standing
on wobbly legs. "Miss, please," Ryouga entreated. "Let me help you."
     "Kiyone, the name's Kiyone," The girl mumbled. "And I can help
myself. Just tell me where to go."
     His own pride let Ryouga understand where the girl, Kiyone, was
coming from. So he made no objection as she struggled toward the one
door in the room, which was fortunate, because Ryouga had been about
to point her in the other direction.  Hastily extinguishing the indicator
light on the wall, and hoping she had not noticed, he lent a hand, or
rather a multi-phasic tractor field.  The feather light touch he used
cradled Kiyone, offering just enough support to keep her on her feet, but
not enough to be noticed. 
     The girl came to a sudden, and shaky stop, when she reached the
door to the bath. "Oh my," she said in a faint voice as she looked out at
what seemed like an endless expanse of pools, each filled with steaming
water. Each one set in its own little nook, and surrounded by artful
sculptures and artificial plants, all done in the same uniform black
crystal. Kiyone was beginning to get just a little tired of the ship's color
scheme, but at the moment that consideration was a far cry from being
top of her list of things to address.
      "Oh, my," Kiyone repeated, in a dreamy voice, as her hands
reached for the closure on her uniform. A few tugs, and the ragged
remains of her uniform slipped from her body and puddled on the floor.
The lack of clothes did little to reveal her body however. The heavy
coating of grime that covered her from head to toe was as good as a full
body stocking when it came to concealment purposes. 
     As Kiyone stepped forward she moved into a small depression in
the floor, and Ryouga activated the pre-wash shower.  A fog of
detergent laced water vapor lifted up to surround the detective, another
unobtrusive tractor field keeping it away from her eyes. Sonic vibrations
agitated the molecules of water, and aided them in sluicing the five
months worth of accumulated grime from Kiyone's body. The fog
surrounding her turned black with liberated dirt, and then cleared as
filters removed it, revealing a Kiyone so clean that she squeaked. And
for the first time she became something other then the victim of disaster
in Ryouga's mind. The lost boy, now a lost ship, realized with great
shock that there was a lovely, if malnourished, naked girl standing in the
middle of his field of view.

     "That's an improvement," Kiyone thought to herself as the walls
of the bath suddenly shifted from a stark black to a gentle pink. Then all
thought fled as she slipped into the first of several pools.     


     Some hours later, Kiyone, clad in a soft towel, with another one
wrapped around her long, dark, green-tinted hair, lounged in a
comfortable sitting room, cradling a hot cup of tasty broth in her hands. 
Every few seconds she would take a small sip of the nourishing brew.
She hadn't heard anything from the voice in some while, though he had
made his presence known in the form of the towels and broth, not to
mention this room. But now she was bathed, fed, and was ready to move
on to slightly more abstract subjects. Such as who the heck her rescuer
was.
     "Hello. Can you hear me?" she called out.
     "Huh? Oh. Yes. Can I do something else for you?" the masculine
voice of her unknown host asked with a touch of hesitation.
     "Well, it would be nice to meet my rescuer face to face. Is that
possible? 
     There was silence for several seconds, and then he spoke again,
"Um, well, not exactly. I don't really have a face right now. I'm sort of,
well you see . . .I'm the ship."
     Kiyone blinked, and then remarked, "Oh. You're the AI. Is your
captain present?"
     "I don't have a captain," Ryouga said, with just a tiny bit of heat in
his voice. He had suddenly remembering that Help-chan had said he'd
need one to find his destiny. Grateful as he was for all she had done for
him, that was one bit of advice he had no intention of taking. Ryouga
had experienced some bad moments when it came to captains. He
shuddered to think of someone like the captain his cousin, Aki, worked
for walking his decks. He voiced none of this to Kiyone however, as he
expanded on his first comment. All he said was, "I don't need one. I'm
perfectly fine just the way I am."                
     This time Kiyone's blink was more pronounced. While there were
sentient mechanical races, it was almost unheard of for a ship's AI to
operate independently. After all, being a ship was not usually an end to
itself, they were created and built for a purpose, and there was nothing a
machine intelligence hated more than not being able to perform its
function. "You don't know if you want a captain? Were you designed as
an independent entity?"
     "I don't know!" the voice said with some heat. "Help-chan helped
me understand what I am, and what I can do, but she couldn't, or
wouldn't, tell me what I 'should' do. I know that ships are supposed to
carry things and people, and that there is a captain in charge of them,
but I'm not really a ship. I'm a person. My ancestress was a space ship,
and I've inherited that from her, but I don't know how to be a ship. I
mean, I know how to be a ship, I am one, but not how to act like a ship.
I don't want someone telling me what to do, where to go . . ." the voice
broke off as a sudden thought occurred to Ryouga. It would be nice, to
have someone who knew where I was going, and how to get there.
Ryouga dismissed the thought as quickly as it occurred. The minuscule
benefits were far outweighed by the disadvantages of having some
martinet lording it over him, treating him like a slave.
     Kiyone had been listening intently, if somewhat confusedly, to the
voice's ramblings, and one statement in particular had stuck. "What do
you mean you're not really a ship? How can you inherit being a ship?"
Even as she asked the question, she was calling up data on her wrist-
unit, recalling the warning she'd received just prior to meeting her
rescuer. 
     "I told you. My ancestress--"
     "Was her name, Ryo-oh-ki," Kiyone broke in, having called up the
files she was looking for.
     "Yes!" The voice said in surprise. "How did you know?"
     Kiyone held up her hand to show her wrist-unit. "This is a Galaxy
Police ID. Its also a very complete criminal data base, and there is a very
large file on your ancestress."
     "She was a criminal!?" The voice said in shock.
     "I'm afraid so," Kiyone said, "but other then her scanned vitals,
very little is known about her, or how she did some of the things she is
suppose to have done. Some of what she did was supposed to be
impossible. I suppose having descendants is no more unlikely than
mounting a successful raid on Jurai. What's your name anyway?" She
said, breaking away from the topic for a moment. "I can't keep thinking
of you as a cute voice."
     "Huh?" the voice said, and Kiyone was rather amused to notice he
sounded flustered. "Oh. Ryouga. My name's Ryouga."
     "Pleased to meet you, Ryouga. Don't worry to much about your
ancestress's record. You're not responsible for what she did, and as far
as I'm concerned you proved yourself a stellar citizen when you rescued
me. Speaking of which. When will we be reaching an inhabitable planet.
I really need to report in."
     "Ahh. . ."


     "Ok," Kiyone said some time later. "Let me be sure I have this
straight. You don't know where you are, you don't know how you got
here, and you don't know how to get out of here. Is that about it?" 
     Kiyone's voice had a certain tenseness that Ryouga's had come to
associate with people who were trying to give him directional
instructions. The resemblance made him cringe, because that particular
tone of voice usually preceded the other person screaming in frustration.
Unfortunately, there was little he could do to ease the situation. The
facts were as Kiyone stated, and there was little he could do to alter
them. "I'm sorry," he said in a contrite voice.
     Kiyone took a deep breath, and let it out. Then in a carefully
controlled motion, the result of much unwanted practice on her part, she
lifted a hand and pointed to her right while saying, "Go that way."
     "Is that the way out?" Ryouga asked in a hopeful voice, even as he
started moving parallel to Kiyone's indicated direction. 
     "Damned if I know," was Kiyone's succinct reply, "but it's at least
better then simply sitting here. The null-zone can't be infinite, and
should be spherical. If we just proceed in a straight line we'll come out
of it eventually." In her mind Kiyone added, I hope.   
     Silently, Ryouga also sent up a prayer, only his was that he'd
manage to maintain a straight line for long enough to reach the edge, if
there was one.
     
     In the end it proved to be Kiyone's former home that was their
salvation. Without it, Ryouga wouldn't have even known if he was
actually  moving. As it disappeared behind him he was reassured that he
was, in fact, making progress, even if he didn't know where to. More
importantly, with it as a reference point, he could maintain a straight
flight. Even after it disappeared, the signal from Kiyone's transmitter let
him know he was still moving away from it by the variation in the signal
strength. As clear to his new senses as the sound of traffic on a highway
had been to his old ones. 

     After a while, when it became clear that they were not going to get
out of the void immediately, Ryouga filled the silence by asking Kiyone
a question. "How did you end up here?"
     Kiyone blinked, and visibly drew herself back from wherever her
thoughts had been. She gave a bitter laugh, and said, "Recovering a
stolen pet."                                      
     "Pardon?" Ryouga asked in a startled voice.
     "Sorry, I'll start at the beginning," Kiyone said. Her eyes went
distant as her thoughts traveled back five and a half months. "We were
on home detail, Mihoshi and me. Mihoshi is, was, my partner." Ryouga
noticed that Kiyone tended to clench her teeth slightly every time she
mentioned her partner's name. "Our ship, Yukinojo , was in the shop for
upgrades and repairs. Poor Yukinojo spends a lot of time in the shop."
Kiyone offered as an aside.  
     "If I recall correctly, Mihoshi was scrambling the brain of a young
intern who had made the mistake of confessing her respect for Mihoshi.
Poor girl ended up sitting through a three hour lecture of how to be a
good officer. Or, at least that was what it started out as. As I recall,
when the 'Lady' was shown into our office, Mihoshi was expounding on
how wonderful the tea was."
     "The lady?"
     "Oh yes, 'The Lady'. She was really something. The daughter of a
high ranking official, and she knew it. You could tell by the way she
looked at us that we were not worthy of kissing her boots. The officer
that showed her in gave me the high sign, meaning, humor her, and for
god's sake, keep her away from the higher ups."
     Kiyone took a sip of her broth, and continued. "I'd been doing
both mine and Mihoshi's paperwork for two days, and I was ready for
any sort of break at all. So I sat her highness down and took her
statement. It seemed a low-class trollop of a robber had stolen her Prince
from her."
     "A prince?" Ryouga said in surprise.
     "Oh, not a person, a Snat." When Ryouga made a puzzled noise,
she explained. "Imagine a legless, spineless, cat, that's a Snat. Its name
was Prince. God knows why." 
     "You, and your partner looked for stolen pets?" Ryouga asked in
surprise.
     "Heavens no, but like I said, this lady was connected, and she had
no sense of proportion. As far as she was concerned her problem ranked
right up there with the Kagato case."
     "Kagato?" 
     "I'll tell you later, for now just take my word for it - he's serious
stuff as far at the GP is concerned."
     "What should have happened was:  we would take her report, made
some reassuring noises, and sent her on her way. What did happen was
that Mihoshi," Kiyone's teeth clenching was much more noticeable this
time, she practical chewed the words as she spoke, "told her that we'd
get right on the case, and did she know where the perpetrator was at the
moment." 
     Kiyone gave a shake of her head. "I've gone over it time and time
again in the last few months, and I still don't know how it happened, but
somehow, ten minutes later I was on Yukinojo, along with Mihoshi, the
intern, and the pain in the neck noble lady, whose name was the Lady
Kinishia Haptam Dinwit, by the way. She'll always be Lady Dimwit in
my heart, however. 
     "We spent the next two days going from one seedy dive to another
looking for the thief. All at the directions of Lady Dimwit, who
strangely, seemed to have a very good idea of the places this person
frequented. I was starting to get more than a little suspicious by the time
we finally tracked the snat stealer down. She was in her apartment, a
hole in the wall, literally - it was in the side of an asteroid habitat. We
walked straight in, thanks to Mihoshi's less then subtle technique. When
Lady Dimwit saw the thief, she went ballistic. I never would have
imagined that a lady could have known language like that. And the thief
gave as good as she got, even when it moved to a more physical attack. I
tried to break them apart, but I didn't want to use a weapon with Lady
Dimwit so tangled up with the thief, and Mihoshi was no help, she was
busy covering the interns ears, protecting her from the language the two
of them were spewing out."
     Kiyone paused to wet her throat with a swallow of the broth she
was still holding. A wry smile twisted her lip. "I guess I should have
twigged early on, but while I had my suspicions, it wasn't until I started
to listen to exactly what the two of them were screaming at each other
that I finally understood what it was all about.  The two of them had
been lovers, and the split up had been less than harmonious."
     "What?" Ryouga said, his voice startled. "But, they were both
girls?"             
     "Eh?" Kiyone said, surprise in her voice. "Nothing strange about
that, not common, but not rare either." 
     "Oh. . .were you and--" Ryouga started to ask, his disorientation
causing him to blurt out a question he would not normally think of
asking. He didn't get a chance to finish his question, however.
     "NO!!!, Don't even think that," Kiyone snarled. "Me and . . ." She
shuddered. "I might have been a bit hard up in the romance department,
but I was never so hard up that I'd have considered that bubble-brain." 
     Someone else might have taken note of the vehemence with which
Kiyone denied a possible romantic relationship with her former partner,
and to wonder at it, and if there might not be something behind her
vehemence. Providing, of course, that they did not have first hand
knowledge of Mihoshi, that is. Ryouga was too cowed by her tone of
voice to even consider the reasons behind it. He hurriedly changed the
topic. "So you found this girl, and discovered that the lady had been
lying to you, but how did that lead to you being here?"
     Kiyone collected herself, and took a deep breath. "Mihoshi, of
course. After we finally got things under control, and tossed the
girlfriend in a holding cell. There was a warrant out for her in regards to
another crime. Mihoshi decided to go and play conciliator, and try and
get the two of them back together. The girlfriend played along, and
when she got a chance, cold-cocked Mihoshi, snatched up Prince from
where we were holding him, and did a runner, right to her mother's ship.
     "Now the girlfriend might have played at being from the wrong
side of the track, but her mother was a high-powered corporate scientist.
Had her own private research vessel and everything. Girlfriend takes off
with the ship, but we managed to get on board before she got underway.
It was a big ship, however, and by the time we got to the bridge, she'd
sealed it, and we were stuck on the wrong side of several tons of armor
plating.  
     "What none of us knew was that mommy was in the shipboard lab,
working on her latest invention. An Ultimate Energy Generator."
Kiyone capitalized the last three words, then paused, and waited, then
asked, "Aren't you going to ask me what an Ultimate Energy Generator
is?"
     "Uh, should I?" Ryouga asked in a confused voice.
     "Never mind," Kiyone said, waving aside the question. "I'll
explain anyway. I had to sit through that nutcase's lecture, no reason
why you should get off. There is an ultimate  structure to the universe. A
structure that goes beyond mundane things like matter and energy. It is
what establishes the underlying set of rules that were formed at the
moment of creation, and which controls every aspect of what we know
of as reality, the thing that says Pi is 3.14, or that gravity is gravity, and
that light can only go so fast. It can't be measured, it can't be detected at
all, but it has to be there. The Ultimate Energy Generator worked by
consuming that basic reality." Once again Kiyone paused, and waited
for Ryouga to mull over the implications. She wondered if he would get
it. He seemed a bit dim in some ways.
     It took a little while, but finally Ryouga gave a startled
exclamation, and said. "That's insane. Wouldn't it be like sawing off the
branch you were standing on?"
     "Bingo," Kiyone said in an approving tone. 
     "So that's what created the void?"
     "Bingo, again. That's exactly what happened. But I'm getting
ahead of myself, the professor was not happy when she discovered that
daughter-dearest had jacked her ship and--"
     "The stars!!" Ryouga shouted.
     Kiyone stared in shock as the ceiling above her became
transparent, and the glory of the star field near the galactic core
exploded into view. For a moment, she was at a loss for words, but then
she quietly murmured, "Hello, old friends. Miss me?" The tears running
down her cheeks belied her flippant words, however. For Kiyone it was
over, and even if they exploded in the next minute, she had won. She
had escaped the void, and made it back home. But, as she didn't think
they were going to explode in the next minute, there were things to do. 
     "Are you still receiving my distress call, Ryouga?"
     "No, it stopped as soon as we crossed the boundary line," Ryouga
answered, after checking his data recorders. 
     Kiyone lapsed into thought. She had been afraid that her distress
call would serve to lure other ships into the void. That did not seem to
be the case, but . . . "Ryouga, could you brush go back in, just a little
way?"
     "You want to go back in!?" Ryouga said in a startled voice.
     "God no!" Kiyone said with a shudder. "If I never have to enter
that place again, I'd die happy, but, just this once, I think we have to."
     "Why!?" Ryouga said with some heat. Kiyone had been pale
before, but now she looked like a ghost. Even someone as self-absorbed
as Ryouga usually was could see that she was scared stiff of the very
thought of reentering her former prison. 
     "The signal. We can't leave it on. If some other ship brushes the
edge they'll hear it. If they follow the signal in . . . I cobbled it together
out of material that was never meant to be used as a transmitter. It was a
miracle it worked at all. If some ship were to be lured in by it, just as it
failed, they might never get out again. I wouldn't trap my worst enemy
in there." As Kiyone has talked, her voice had become shrill, and her
eyes had taken on a haunted look.
     "I understand," Ryouga said in a gentle voice. "Leave it to me."

     Ryouga edged back toward the distortion that marked the edge of
the void, and allowed a pair of spines to cross over. A chill ran over his
outer shell. The previous transition had been too quick for even his new
senses to register, but this, this was different, lord it was different. If he
still needed to breath, he'd have gasped in shock. 
     Gritting figurative teeth, he concentrated on the task at hand. He
could now hear Kiyone's signal and he focused on that. Using the
slightly different pressure against each of his spines, he triangulated on
the source. Having done that, he armed his main beam. 
     If it had not been for the discomfort caused by the interface,
Ryouga would have taken his time and savored the sensation of his
weapon charging up. Ever since Help-chan had run through his weapon
systems, he'd been eager for a chance to try them out. But he was not
going to be able to do that this time. The itching discomfort over his
outer shell discouraged lingering. He did indulge in one form of self
indulgence, however.
     "ROARING TIGER BULLET," He yelled exultantly as his main
weapon reached full charge. A beam of coherent light, nearly six meters
in diameter, sprang from the focal point between his two spines, and
flashed into the void.  Nano-seconds later, the signal disappeared from
all of Ryouga's sensors. With a sigh of relief, he backed out of the void.
     "It's done," he said to Kiyone. When he got no reply, he switched
his focus from the exterior to the lounge. Kiyone was hunched over on
the sofa, two pillows pressed against either side of her head. Ryouga
big-sweated. Maybe he'd overdone the yelling bit.

     A little while later, Kiyone, convinced that Ryouga was not going
to indulge in any more theatrics, asked, "If you would, please, Ryouga,
take us to GP headquarters."
     "Umm, sure, be happy to, right away . . .Uh, you wouldn't know
where it is, would you?"
     Kiyone was surprised. The Galaxy Police was a non-partisan
enforcement body. Supported and staffed by a dozen different
jurisdictions, some of which had contact only through the GP itself. It
was thousands of years old, and had extra-atmospheric jurisdiction over
almost all of the galactic cluster. It seemed inconceivable that there
could be a ship in space that did not have the coordinates for the central
headquarters. 
     Fortunately, even if Ryouga didn't have the location, Kiyone did.
Long ago, when still a cadet, she'd been given an assignment to
calculate the location of GP headquarters. That assignment, just like
every other one she'd been assigned during her cadet days, was stored
within the molecular memory of her personal ID. With the ease of long
practice, she called up the pertinent data, and projected it via the Holo
emitter in her badge. "Here you go," she said.
     Ryouga memorized the twenty six digit designation at a glance,
and then waited.
     "How long do you think it will take to get there?" Kiyone asked,
beginning to get a bit impatient.
     There was a moment of silence, and then Ryouga spoke, his tone
calling up an image of a puppy who expects a painful swat on the nose
after making a mess he couldn't avoid. "I don't know where that is."
     This time Kiyone was past surprised. The code she'd just showed
Ryouga contained the precise location of GP headquarters. The
designations used were as close to universal as it was possible to be in
the varied universe. It was within the realms of possibilities that Ryouga
not know where GP Headquarters was located, it was out of all reason
that he not be able to calculate that location from the code that Kiyone
had just given him. 
     Another person might have given into despair at that point,
resigning themselves to a cruel universe that was out to get her, but
Kiyone was made of sterner stuff, or at least, had been forced to deal
with someone who made Ryouga seem merely uninformed.  So, rather
than screaming curses at the gods, Kiyone merely thought for a few
minutes, and then began to call up more data to display to Ryouga. 
     This time she brought up the location and spectrum of several
hundred major stars. Personal identification badges did not usually
contain cartographical information, but Kiyone was in the habit of
recording some of the more spectacular stellar phenomenon she came
across in the course of her duty, to send home as postcards. "See if you
can find any of these, and correlate the data with the location your
sensors give them," she told Ryouga in a firm voice.
     Grateful at Kiyone's patience, something that had been rare in his
life, Ryouga complied with her suggestion. Help-chan's training proved
its worth as he spread out his sensor array without need for thought, and
one by one matched each of Kiyone's postcards with the real thing. As
he did so, a feeling began to grow within his breast, or more correctly,
his second ventral propulsion spine, a feeling that expanded with each
star located and placed. "I know where I am!" he shouted in an exultant
voice. "I KNOW WHERE I AM!!"
     Kiyone big sweated at his volume, but inside felt an echo of his
pleasure that gave her a warm glow of satisfaction, knowing his joy was
a direct result of her actions. "Now," she said, her firm voice cutting
through Ryouga's personal celebration, "add the GP coordinates I gave
you and fit them into that map. Do you know where it is now?"
     "Yes!" Ryouga said, his voice trembling with excitement. "Should
I go there now?" he asked, half afraid that if he moved he'd lose this
wonderful feeling of knowing his exact location.
     "Of course," Kiyone answered. 
     A second later, a shocked Kiyone was staring out at the central
recreation sphere of GP headquarters, and she suddenly remembered
why she only got a B on her assignment.  As they started falling toward
the large body of water that was the central attraction for the park, she
heard her teacher's voice in her head.
     "Sometimes you don't want to be quite so precise. It's all well and
fine to resolve your numbers down to the exact location of an object as
an abstract, but do you really want to warp into the exact center of a
sun?"



     GP Headquarters was no simple police precinct that was
responsible for looking after a small locality. Its area of commitment
was all of interstellar space and the crimes that were committed there. If
that mammoth task was not daunting enough, they also served as a
liaison between planets when criminals fled from one jurisdiction to
another. The central staging area for an organization with such a
mandate required something special, something out of the ordinary,
something damn big.  GP HQ was all of that. 
     Thousands of years old, it was a world onto itself. It had been built
in a system with no inhabitable planet: a tribute to its directive to police
the empty reaches of space. At this current time it had a permanent
residential population of some three hundred thousand people, and a
transitory one, made up of students, teachers, support staff, and officers
serving duty time, of almost five million.
     All those people had lives outside of the daring capture of
desperate criminals. The permanent and long term staff had families.
The students, as students will, had their own groups and interests. And
each and every one of those people demanded entertainment and
recreational facilities. 
     It was a need that had been foreseen and planned for from the
earliest days. The station was well equipped with a wide variety of
diversions. From the mundane neighborhood pub with seating for a
dozen or so to Center Park, which could offer recreation to several
hundred thousand people at a time, and which frequently did. 
     As its named implied, Center Park was located in the middle of the
station. No simple planet-bound green space, restricted to two sparse
dimensions, it occupied a sphere nearly five miles in diameter. Eight
lakes, each almost two miles across, played double duty as water
reserves and recreational areas. Each lake occupied its own quadrant of
the sphere and was central to a specific ecosystem, ranging from lush
tropical, to cool temperate desert. Boaters on one lake could look
straight up and wave to their friends five miles away on the opposite
bodies of water. 
     Boats and other water-craft dotted the surface of seven of the
lakes.  The eighth was currently having its ecosystem balanced. It was
empty except for a remote sensor from the environmental department.
     A wide variety of ground cover filled the spaces between the lakes,
and offered many different recreational activities from the active to the
passive. Multicolored sand beaches lined significant sections of the
shore line, each with its own direct artificial light sources, designed to
mimic the suns of several different planets. Farther back from the lakes'
shores, lush green lawns, perfect for picnics, were broken into cozy
nooks by tall trees and gardens of blossoming flowers. Craggy rocks, the
displaced carcasses of mined asteroids, offered challenges to people who
craved a little more excitement than wondering if they had a strong
enough sun block.
     The activities were not restricted to the surface area, either. Close
to the ground, hang-gliders and kites danced in the powerful air currents
generated by the air circulation fields. Higher up, where the artificial
gravity was almost nil, non-avian life forms soared, moving and
swooping through the air with the aid of artificial wings. 
     It was in the midst of this relaxed and laid back atmosphere that
Ryouga appeared with an explosion of displaced air, sending hundreds
of beings tumbling through the sky. 

     Shocked at the chaos his arrival had caused, and fearful of doing
much worse, Ryouga scanned the area for somewhere safe to set down.
He found what looked like a suitable place in the pristine surface of one
of the eight lakes his scanners had spotted. While the other seven bodies
of water were dotted by boats and swimmers, this one was bare of any
activity. Cursing the necessity, but seeing no way out of it, Ryouga
aimed himself at that gleaming body of cool clear water. It wasn't till
just before he hit the cold lake that he remembered Kiyone. Panicking,
and fearful of the consequences, he phased his structure slightly out of
sync with the former castaway. 
     As Ryouga felt the familiar tingle of his transformation, his
surprised passenger dropped through his suddenly insubstantial
substance, and fell several feet to land with a loud splash, which was
accompanied by a not very ladylike curse.

     The sudden change of situation was rather startling to Kiyone, to
say the least. One second she'd been cuddled up on a comfy lounge,
swaddled in a warm soft towel sipping hot broth, and the next she was
splashing around in the middle of one of the recreational reservoirs at
GP headquarters. She adapted to the change quickly, however. Losing
the towel that was wrapped around her hair, she snugged the one around
her body more firmly in place, and held it closed with her free hand
while using her other arm to tread water. Bobbing in place, she looked
around trying to get her bearings. Happily, she was only a few dozen
meters from shore where several people were already wading into the
water toward her to offer aid.
     A thrashing in near her drew Kiyone's attention, and she turned
her head to see some sort of small furry creature struggling to keep its
head above water. A closer look identified it as a feline, of a particularly
nasty appearance. It possessed a battle-scarred face that sported only one
eye, which had an evil glint to it. A yellow gem was centered in the
middle of its forehead. Its mouth, which was open wide in distress
sported an impressive set of razor sharp teeth.
     Many people would have had very serious reservations about
lending aid to such a creature. Aside from its unprepossessing
appearance, there was the little matter of the claws that such an obvious
predator would be armed with. None of that mattered to the detective
when faced with a being in such obvious distress.
     As a student, Kiyone had ranked very high in Xeno-compatibility.
Her roommate during her second year had possessed an exoskeleton, the
habit of eating its food alive, and a belief that the pun was the greatest
form of humor in the universe. Next to that, the animal struggling in the
water was nothing. The creature was in obvious distress, and despite the
evil cast of its single eye, she was sure she could detect a silent plea in
that yellowish-green orb. She didn't even for a second consider
abandoning it.
     She was left with one problem, however. She needed an arm to
swim, and one arm to hold the towel in place, and yet another to snag
the struggling feline. She was one limb short. 
     To some it would have been an easy thing to do, but Kiyone was
from a cold planet. Unlike her partner, Mihoshi, who came from a warm
world, she was more than a bit body shy. In the end she didn't have
much choice, however. Giving into the inevitable, she let go of the
towel. Reaching out, she snagged the cat with her now free hand, and
pulled it in tight to her body, its head nestling neatly between her
buoyant breasts.                                            
     Surprisingly, as soon as she pulled the cat against her body, it went
limp. That was a relief. Kiyone had been afraid it would try to crawl up
on top of her head. Obviously, it was more intelligent than it looked. 
     Kiyone was a bit too distracted to notice the small crimson stain
spreading in the water.
     The soggy detective began to stroke slowly toward the people
lining the shore, reaching wading distance in short order. She staggered
out of the water, her legs trembling from the strain. She was, a part of
her mind noted, still a long way from being fully recovered from her
sojourn in the void. 
     Kiyone felt more than a touch of annoyance when no one stepped
forward to offer her a hand. She realized that her presence was likely a
complete surprise, but still, you would think that common courtesy
would bring at least one person forward. Keeping a firm grip on her
soggy passenger, she used her other hand to brush her soaked hair away
from her face, in preparation for delivering a scathing stare to the
unhelpful bystanders. 
     Kiyone's stare ended up lacking a certain force. It likely had
something to do with the score of high-powered pulsars being pointing
at her by a detachment of security personal. 
     "All right, Sister. Hold it right there," ordered a squat, white and
green robot, who was pointing half of the weapons directed at her
personally, each weapon clasped in a separate manipulator. Kiyone
recognized the color scheme on his torso, and the emblem, as that of an
associated police force, the Space Rangers. Incongruously, the robot had
a flower lei around his neck, and one of his many manipulators was
holding a frosty glass of some sort of light weight machine oil.  The
robot was flanked by an attractive blue and yellow skinned girl in a very
brief green swimsuit, and on its other side by a very large, and bulky,
orange being in a pair of blue swim trunks. Both were armed with guns
that matched the ones grasped by the robot.
     "Oh, what a cute, kitty," gushed the orange alien. 
     "Would you get a grip, Booster!" the robot exclaimed. "Here we
are facing a threat that  registers within a few percentage points of one
of the most wanted and dangerous criminals in the galaxy, and you're
gushing over the cute kitty. Besides, it's an ugly kitty." The Robot's
narrow golden head, which hovered under a transparent dome on top of
its body, took another look at the cat hanging from Kiyone's crossed
arms. "Boy, is it an ugly kitty." The robot next ran his eyes up and down
Kiyone's body, and a golden eyelid arched appreciatively.  Leering, he
said, "As for you, sister, drop the cat, and get them up." 
     Even if she'd not been tired and angry, it was doubtful if Kiyone
would have complied with the robots request. Her crossed arms, and the
dangling cat were the only thing protecting Kiyone's modesty, and it
was going to take more than a lecherous robot and twenty pulsars to
make her expose herself in front of the crowd facing her. She was saved
from having to make an issue of it when one of the robot's companions
spoke up in her defense.
     "XR!" the blue and yellow girl said in a censorious voice. She
turned and looked apologetically at Kiyone, while saying. "I'm sorry. 
His programming is a bit messed up. Please, use this." The last was
accompanied by the girl bending over and snatching up an abandoned
beach towel.
     Kiyone, after her initial shocked reaction, was beginning to
understand what had happened. Obviously, Ryouga had dumped her,
and left, but not before registering on the station's scanners. Now these
visiting officers from the Galactic Federation, one of a half dozen
organizations of the same name, had mistaken her for the source of that
alert. Disappointment colored Kiyone's thoughts. She'd thought better
of Ryouga, but obviously from the way he had left he was not quite the
innocent he had seemed. Still, he had rescued her, and brought her
home, so there might be hope for him yet. The only thing left for her
was to explain the situation, and to make her report, and then she could
check herself into the Med Center for about six months of TLC.
     Meanwhile the robot, XR, was arguing procedure with the blue
and yellow girl, whose name seemed to be Mira. "Mira, Mira, Mira,
kind, gentle, sweet, Mira. Are you nuts!? We're facing a class 'A' felon,
and you're offering her a towel. Get a grip, woman!"
     "Don't give me that, XR. I know exactly what you're thinking.
And it has nothing to do with her being an 'A' class criminal."
     "Mira, Mira, Mira. You wound me. Really you do. Sometimes the
lot of a Space Ranger is not an easy one. Sometimes we have to do jobs
that we wish we didn't, and yes, sometimes we have to handle naked
attractive females. But we can't get soft, we have to bore right in there
and do our job. Why, if Buzz were here, he'd say . . ."

     "Good work! Detective Makibi, is it? So pleased to see the rumors
of your death were exaggerated." Kiyone glanced to the side to see a tall
broad-shouldered man in a conservative swimsuit moving through the
crowd to join the circle of people surrounding her. Kiyone suddenly
found herself wishing the ground would open up and swallow her. Buzz
Lightyear had been a guest lecturer during her forth year of training, and
she, like half the female students in the class, had developed a severe
crush on him. To find herself now standing if front of him, wearing
nothing but a cat, was not one of her finer moments. 
     "Exactly," XR said hastily. "Good work. Couldn't have said it
better myself. You always have a way with words, Buzz."
     Except for very deliberately averting his eyes, Commander
Lightyear seemed to pay no heed to Kiyone's state of dress, or to XR's
sucking up. Instead he addressed the individuals surrounding her.  "You
can put down your guns, people. Looks like Detective Makibi has things
well under control." Still without looked straight at her, he said in a
drawl, "Very good work indeed, Detective, first rate. You returned from
the dead carrying victory in your arms . . .  I like that in a law officer."
     "Huh?" was Kiyone's intelligent reply.
     But the Commander was no longer focusing on her. He was
watching a platoon of very heavily armored troops marching toward
them at double-time, a portable force field generator carried by four of
them. "Ah, here are the proper authorities. I trust you gentleman will be
able to take it from this point? If you would Detective Makibi."
     "Huh?" 
     "The cat, if you could give it to these officers." 
     Feeling slightly stunned, Kiyone handed the cat to one of the
armored troopers, while Mira slipped a towel around her body. The
trooper lay the cat on the bed of the portable FF unit, and activated it,
sealing the feline behind a glimmering aura of force that nothing short
of a fusion grenade could disrupt. As the field went up, the tension that
had been present in the atmosphere dropped several degrees of
magnitude. 
     "Mira," the Commander said, "why don't you get Detective
Makibi to the infirmary.  She looks like she could use a bit of TLC."
     "If I may suggest," the robot started to say in a suggestive voice,
only to be interrupted by Mira. 
     "I'll get her right up there, Buzz. Right this way, Detective," Mira
said to Kiyone, taking her by the elbow, and leading her through the
crowd. 
     Kiyone, who'd been a bit baffled by events, asked, "What's going
on? Was that feline a criminal?"
     "You mean you don't know?" Mira said in some surprise. "That
cat registered to withing several percentage points of the notorious space
pirate Ry-oh-ki. Hard to believe such a small creature could be so
dangerous. If I hadn't seen the ship transform with my own eyes, I'd
never have believed it."
     Kiyone stopped and looked at Mira in blank amazement, only to
find that the other girl was becoming blurry. "But, Ryouga's not . . ."
she said trailing off as her recent exertions finally caught up with her
abused body, and she slipped to the sand unconscious. 


     For most of his life Ryouga had lived in a fairly constant state of
depression. In order to function, he'd been forced to learn how to cope
with that. Some people afflicted as he was turned to drugs, legal, and
otherwise. Ryouga normally turned to anger, using his rage against the
unfairness of his life to burn away the dark clouds.   
     When he'd awakened to find himself sealed inside a cage that was
standing in the middle of some sort of high-tech lab, his first reaction
was to rage over his betrayal by Kiyone. Who else could be at fault for
his presence here? She must have lied about not holding his ancestress'
crimes against him. 
     For a little while that thought had kept him angry enough to keep
the depression at bay, but not for long.  For the first time in his life,
Ryouga found himself unable to sustain a state of anger at someone who
had done him wrong. The reason was really very simple. 
     Even stuck in a cage, with no idea of how he had come there, and
with no input from his surrounding to allow him to place his location,
he still knew where he was. Not just in general term either, he knew, to
within a fraction of a meter his exact placement in the galaxy. He knew
how fast he was moving in relation to the galactic core. He knew where
he had been five minutes ago, and he knew where he would be in an
hour if he maintained his present course. And he owed all that
knowledge to one person.
     Kiyone had given him that. It was a gift so precious to Ryouga that
he could never hate the giver, no matter what crime she committed
against him. But, that did not stop him from dwelling on her betrayal,
and if he could not hate her for it, he could become depressed over it.  
     Ryouga could have escaped his cage anytime he wished. The
shielding surrounding him only dipped into subspace a few percentage
points. It would have been child play to duck under it, and the physical
elements of his cage might as well have been air for all the good they
would have done. But what was the point of escaping? Where would he
go? The universe was a dark and lonely place, and this particular corner
of it was no less, or more, dark and lonely than any other. Why leave?
So, for going on two weeks now, Ryouga had simply laid in his cage,
chin resting on forepaws, refusing to acknowledge the outside world.
Even someone as depressed as Ryouga could not keep that up
indefinitely, however. The sorrow in his heart bubbled and churned, and
he felt compelled to let it out in some form. If Ryouga was not going to
shatter his cage, and wreck havoc, then some other means of expressing
his unhappiness with the situation would have to be found.  
     
     Some time before, on one of Ryouga's many journeys, he had
traveled through a very strange land. In that place, in a dimly lit bar, he
had encountered for the first time a sort of music that resonated with his
soul. A music that seemed to express all that was him. For a week he
had stayed, playing every song on the jukebox again and again, working
to earn the quarters he needed. Now in times of strife, when nothing else
would relieve the sorrow in his soul, he would sing those songs. 
     For the first time in two weeks, Ryouga sat up. Closing his eyes,
he lifted his muzzle toward the roof of his cage, and yowled out his
sorrow.   
     His feline vocal cords were not really up to the task, but in his
mind, the words rang like a bell, and that was enough. He put all his
pain and loneliness into his voice.
     
   "I hear the train a comin'; it's rollin' 'round the bend,
     And I ain't seen the sunshine since I don't know when.
     I'm stuck at Folsom Prison and time keeps draggin' on.
      But that train keeps rollin' on down to San Antone."
                                
     Outside Ryouga's cage, lab technicians, and white coated
supervisors, started in shock as the equipment in the lab went crazy.
Digital readouts flashed conflicting data unable to display the variables
that the various sensors were picking up. Several large pieces of
equipment exploded in sparks as their internal circuitry proved
inadequate to the task at hand. 
     "Fields failing!" one technician yelled out in a panicked voice.
"We need more power! Now people!"
     "What the hell is he doing!" another called out frantically, his
fingers flying over his control board, as he glanced toward the small
prison in the center of their work area.
     "I would think that was obvious!" one of the supervisors snapped
out. "He's trying to escape! Well, by hell, not on my watch he won't!
Get those reserves on line, shut him up tight!"
     "The reserves already are on line, and at max output, it's not doing
any good! It's not the power, it's the uncontrolled modulations. The
shields can't cope with the fluctuations."
     "Draw from the main lines then!" the supervisor snapped. "Draw
everything short of life support if you have to! That creature is the most
dangerous potential security breech we've ever encountered. I want him
held! Do whatever you have to in order to do that!"

     Inside the cage, Ryouga reached the last verse of his song,
                                
"Well, if they freed me from this prison, if that railroad train was mine,
     I bet I'd move on over a little farther down the line,
      Far from Folsom Prison, that's where I want to stay,
     And I'd let that lonesome whistle blow my blues away"

     With a sigh, Ryouga slumped back down, feeling a bit better for
having vented slightly. 
     Outside, the various technicians froze in place, as every indicator
suddenly dropped back to zero, and calm fell over the area. 
     "Good work, man," the relieved supervisor complimented the
technician. 
     "But, Sir, I didn't-"
     "Upgrade the equipment, I don't want a repeat of this the next time
that animal tries to escape," the supervisor said, ignoring the other
being's reply. 
     Inside his cage, Ryouga ignored the chaos on the other side of his
prison bars. The small release gained by singing had already started to
fade, and he was sliding back down the slippery slope of depression
again. "Why did you betray me, Kiyone?" he murmured sadly to
himself.  


     "But, Commander," Kiyone protested. 
     "No buts, Detective," the golden furred alien replied. "The one you
call Ryouga is not in custody. He is being tested, with his full
cooperation I might add. I wish I could let you see him, but at the
moment the doctors and scientists do not want any outside interference
that might jeopardize their results."
     "When can I see him then?" Kiyone asked, refusing to let the
matter drop. 
     The commander's tone was that of one who was running short of
patience as he said, "I can't say, a week, a month, longer. It will take
what time it takes." Looking down at Kiyone's face, still thin even after
two weeks of healthy eating, he took in the determined set of her chin,
and gave a sigh, then said, "Detective, it is laudable that you are so
concerned about this being, and I understand, but you must trust us.
Please, go back to the clinic. The doctors tell me you are still not fully
recovered from your ordeal. You will do your friend little good if you
collapse again. Get some rest. That is not a suggestion, Detective!
Consider it a direct order. Now if you will excuse me, I have important
business to attend to."
     Kiyone saluted smartly, when what she really wanted to do was
take the arrogant so-and-so by his fluffy, carefully coifed mane and
shake the truth out of the seven foot, four hundred pound, feline
humanoid. She watched, simmering in indignation, as the Head of
Internal Security walked down the hall and around the corner. "Damn
them," she cursed under her breath. "They're lying.  I just know it."
     How she knew they were lying, Kiyone couldn't have said.
Somehow she knew that Ryouga was not cooperating with the
investigation. That in fact he was utterly miserable. She had spent a
week trying to convince herself that it was merely flashbacks to her own
despair while she'd been trapped in the void, but she couldn't bring
herself to believe it. Something was wrong! Something was very wrong
with the being who had saved her life and sanity and she couldn't do
anything about it.
     "Damn you, Mihoshi! Where are you when I need you!?" Kiyone
said with vehemence, and then blinked as she realized what she'd said.
"No way!" she said. "No way do I want that air-head back!" Despite the
emphasis she put on her words, they lacked conviction, and Kiyone
knew why.
     If Mihoshi had been here, Kiyone would have found herself
participating in a commando raid, thinly disguised as visiting a sick
friend, to free Ryouga from whatever situation he was in. Mihoshi never
gave a single thought toward chain of command, or consequences for
promotion. She acted purely as the inclination to action took her, and
the majority of times the results ended up vindicating her instincts. 
     Kiyone thought highly of her own skills, but somehow she had
never possessed Mihoshi's blind faith in her own feelings. Nor, did she
believe for a second that she was blessed with even a fraction of
Mihoshi's uncanny luck. Kiyone was a simple detective, competent and
diligent, but she was no shooting star.  
     Kiyone began running through her options, only to find they were
few indeed. The Head of Internal Security took primacy over anything
that might threaten the habitat that housed GP headquarters. There were
very few people who could question his orders, and none that could
override them without strong evidence to back them up. 
     "There's nothing I can do," Kiyone's said in a mournful tone. At
that moment the deck under her shuddered, and the lights began to
flicker. Kiyone looked around widely as sirens started to wail, and the
hall filled with people rushing toward wherever they were supposed to
be in a situation like this, whatever that situation was. 
     Kiyone backed up against the wall of the corridor, giving the
emergency staff, room to pass her by. As one group passed, pushing a
cart containing shield generators, her ears pricked up at the words they
were shouting back and forth between them. "It's that freakish feline
spaceship. He's trying to overload the force fields with chaotic
modulations again! We have to get these back up units to the lab before
the present ones are fried!"
     Very deliberately not thinking about what she was doing, Kiyone
stepped over to an emergency equipment locker. She opened it and
snatched out a fire suppression device. Lugging the heavy object as a
form of camouflage, Kiyone fell into step behind the group transporting
the shield generators. 
     Kiyone was doing everything in her power to avoid thinking about
what she was doing. She knew that if she looked at her action in a
rational light, she'd put down her fire extinguisher and go quietly back
to the clinic, which was the last thing she wanted to do. "I'm just doing
the right thing. There's an emergency. There is likely a fire. I need to
lend a hand," she repeated over and over again in a quiet voice. For just
this moment, in this place, she was Mihoshi. Brainless, well-meaning,
and unstoppable. 
     The group in front of Kiyone stopped in front of a heavily armored
door, and one of them pulled a data crystal from around his neck, but
when he went to insert it in the slot beside the door, he saw that the
opening was charred around the edges, with a trickle of smoke
emerging. "Damn!" he cursed. "Give me a hand!" he ordered, hooking
his fingers as best he could into the thin seam that split the door. 
     His companions hurried to join him, as did Kiyone, who was
thinking, I'm Mihoshi. Mihoshi would help anyone who asked. To
Kiyone's complete amazement, no one questioned her presence. Instead
everyone remained focused on getting the door open. Thankfully,
whatever had fried the security lock had also disabled the
electromagnetic locking system, so they were able to force the door open
wide enough to squeeze inside. 
     The interior of the room was uncontrolled chaos. Dozens of people
ripped charred and damaged equipment from slots, and tossed them into
the nearest corner, while slapping replacement units into the empty
slots. Heavy cables snaked across the floor from portable power sources,
and more were being laid by the moment. For a brief moment Kiyone
was baffled by the activity, but then her eyes focused on the solitary,
heavy mesh cage, that sat in the middle of the room, the center around
which everything else revolved. 
     In the middle of that cage, a black furred feline sat, its battle-
scarred muzzle pointing toward the top of its cage as it howled out its
unhappiness at the world. 

     The dreadful racket Ryouga was making had no meaning to
anyone but him. In his mind, however, the words echoed clearly and
with great feeling.  Ryouga had gotten a bit original, and placed his own
words in an old standby. 
                                
          "You picked a fine time to leave me Kiyone,
        Three empty rooms leave a void in my hull . . ."
                                
     "Ryouga!!!" Kiyone cried out, her voice cutting through the
turmoil filling the room like a knife. 
     The unearthly yowling cut off, and Ryouga whipped his head
around, his single eye unerringly finding Kiyone standing in the midst
all the people filling the lab.
     He was not the only person who's attention Kiyone had drawn.
"What is that woman doing here?" the head of security shouted. His fine
mane was no longer looking quite so neat and orderly, being somewhat
charred around the edges. "Take her into custody! Now!" 
     Several men in the uniform of internal security obediently started
to move toward Kiyone. Ryouga's eyes narrowed, and he let out a battle
cry that froze every person in the lab in their tracks, cold shivers running
up and down their spines. Ryouga leaped toward the side of his cage,
and passed straight through the sophisticated force field that had been
supplementing the cages physical restraints. Not a single gauge in the
room registered a thing out of the ordinary. There was a black blur, and
Ryouga was positioned between Kiyone and the advancing guards. 
     It should have been a ludicrous sight. Ryouga couldn't have
weighed more than twenty-five pounds. Some of the guards facing him
were a dozen times larger, but no one in the room looked inclined to
laugh as he posed there, his mouth open in a snarl of pure rage. His
single yellow eye gleamed madly in the dimness caused by several failed
lighting fixtures, and more than one being felt a wave of superstitious
fear as that eye swept over them. 
     Despite what some in the room might have believed, that yellow
eye was not looking for throats to rip out, but something else entirely. A
satisfied snarl ripped from Ryouga's throat as he spotted the beaker of
coffee simmering on a hot plate. Weaving between the legs of the guards
and lab technicians, he made straight for that hot fluid. A jump, a
splash, and the huddle of guards who had surrounded the small feline
were suddenly tossed back as a bipedal figure rose up in their midst. A
five-fingered hand closed on the collar of a guard, and that unfortunate
found himself hauled into the air, and tossed across the room. 
     Kiyone boggled at the figure moving toward her, tossing aside any
guard careless enough to come close to him. A couple of inches taller
than herself, the masculine figure was heavy with muscle. He had a
shaggy shock of black hair that flowed down the sides of his hair and
rested on a pair of broad shoulders. A muscular chest tapered down to a
trim waist and a washboard stomach, supported on narrow hips which  .
. . Kiyone suddenly blushed, and averted her gaze. 
     Ryouga, seeing Kiyone looking away from him, paused in his
rampage. He caught her eyes flickering back toward him, in a
downward direction. A red flush colored her cheeks, and she hastily
adverted her eyes again. Ryouga's puzzlement lasted only a second, and
then he too blushed madly. A nearby lab technician received the fright
of her life when Ryouga suddenly tore the lab coat literally off her body.
A member of a furred race, she was not wearing anything underneath.
Despite her alien origin, she was most definitely mammalian and it was
Ryouga's turn to blush and look away. That did not stop him from tying
her purloined coat around his waist. 
     "Kiyone, are you all right? They didn't hurt you, did they?"
     "Ryouga?" Kiyone said in a questioning voice. She poked a finger
at his chest, as if expecting him to disappear like a soap bubble. When
she touched warm flesh, she quickly withdrew her digit. Giving her head
a shake, she said, "Of course, if you can turn into a cat, why couldn't
you turn into something else."
     A series of clicks and clacks announced the activation of a large
variety of weapons, and Ryouga and Kiyone both looked up to find
themselves surrounded. 
     Ryouga snarled at the guards, and his fingers flexed. "No,
Ryouga!" Kiyone said in a firm voice, placing a hand on his shoulder.
"Not yet!" At her touch, his body relaxed, but his eyes still stared
daggers at the beings surrounding them. 
     The head of security pushed through the line of guards, his eyes
bulging in rage. He was all but snarling, his teeth showing the predatory
nature of his species, before he could say a word, however, Kiyone
spoke up. "Is this what you call willing cooperation?" she said in a voice
that dripped contempt. 
     "Now, you listen here, young-"
     "I will not!" Kiyone shouted him down. "I don't know what the
hell is going on here, but I'm betting that the law has nothing to do with
it. I swore an oath to protect the law, and by the seven hells I'm going to
do that!" Kiyone was in a fury. For once in her life she was not worried
about following the company line, of being the good little soldier. To
hell with promotions. They had imprisoned the being who had saved her
from the void. No! They had abused her friend, and someone was going
to pay. 
     "You're all under arrest," Kiyone yelled out, glaring at everyone in
the room. 
     The head of security looked a bit taken aback by this, and a little
nervous. He stole a glance toward Ryouga, who looked very much the
outraged sentient. It was one thing to lock up and study what appeared
to be a dangerous animal. It was another thing entirely to do so with an
intelligent being.  As a furred alien, he did not have sweat glands, but
his tongue lolled out of his mouth in a nervous gesture.  While he had
certainly skated on thin ice with his actions, the commander was not an
evil being. It was to his credit that the thought of ordering an
'accidental' shooting, and later coverup, never occurred to him. "Look,
could we go somewhere and talk about this?"
     "I think that sounds like a very good idea," A voice boomed from
the background. 
      All eyes swivelled to take in the tall leonine, but fully human,
figure standing in the door. "Marshall!" the security chief said, in a
voice that almost squeaked as he took in the head of the Galactic Patrol.
Maybe his authority over internal security made him technically the
Marshall's equal in the command structure within the station, but
authority on paper was very different to authority in the field, and no
one in the room was in any doubt as to who was the person to listen to
here.

     By the time they reached the Marshall's office  Kiyone had pretty
much lost the mind-set that had carried her this far. She was feeling just
a touch nauseous, and wished for nothing more than to go back to her
nice safe clinic bed. But matters had come too far for that, and she had
little choice but to see matters through to the end. It was not an unusual
situation for Kiyone, but all the previous times she'd been in this
situation, it had been at the instigation of Mihoshi. This time she had no
one to blame but herself. 
     Swallowing a mouthful of bile Kiyone pointed an accusing finger
at the head of security. "He imprisoned a sentient being without cause,
and without legal representation."
     "Oh now," the chief said. "I would hardly say without cause, and
we did not know it, he, was a sentient being at the time."
     "What was the cause?" the Marshall asked in his rumbling voice, a
light brown finger stroking his blond beard.
     The security chief, on more comfortable grounds settled back in
his chair. "Two weeks ago, our shields were breached when this being,"
he pointed at Ryouga, "appeared inside the central hub of the habitat."
     The Marshall lifted a golden eyebrow, and looked at Ryouga with
curiosity in his gentle gold eyes. "Really, I thought that was
impossible."
     "So did we all, sir. But he did it none the less. But, that is the least
of it. He didn't just penetrate them.  He bypassed them entirely. The first
warning we had was when he appeared inside the station. The experts
can only conclude that he came in under the stations shields."
     "Well, yes," Ryouga said apologetically. "But I didn't mean to. I
wasn't even aware of them until I phased in, and by then I was already
past them."
     The Marshal sat up straight in his chair, his calm exterior fading as
he stared at Ryouga with wide eyes. "Young man," He said. "Our
shields penetrate the dimensional levels deeper than any known ship is
capable of traveling. If you can dive that deep, then I can understand
why the tech people were so eager to study you. Even if I don't approve
of their methods."
     The Marshal was not the only one who had sat up and taken notice
at Ryouga's words. Kiyone also was staring wide eyed at him. She had
not stopped to consider the implications of Ryouga's actions before, but
now listening to the Marshall, she couldn't help but do so.

      While just about every race used a different means of achieving it,
nearly all forms of faster-than-light travel relied on a certain
phenomenon: the Onion Theorem. If you applied just the right sort of
force to a physical object, you could project it into a sub-dimension, or
sub-space as it was more frequently called. This was an environment
that corresponded exactly with the normal universe, except that it was
smaller. Submerge, travel a mile, and surface, and you would find that
you had traveled a dozen miles. Complicated as that was, it was only the
beginning. For there were levels within levels. You could push deeper,
to realms that were even smaller, and where the travel differential was
even greater. 
     Theoretically, if you could dive deep enough, you could emerge
anywhere in the universe at the same time as you left your previous
location. This was the Holy Grail of space drive engineers, which they
had named the blink drive.  No one had ever developed a drive that
could even come close. 
     The shields around GP headquarters projected deep into subspace,
farther then any other similar shield. In fact, they extended 75 percent
deeper then any registered ship had ever dived, and Ryouga had slipped
under them without even noticing them. 

     We're doomed, Kiyone thought to herself, not even thinking about
the fact that she was linking her fate with Ryouga's. There was no way
in hell that the Patrol could let someone like Ryouga run free. Every
planetary system and alliance would quietly put a price on his head. The
ability to do what he had done was of such military importance that it
could start wars. Simply by being what he was, Ryouga could end a
thousand years of mostly peace.
     Two other faces in the room reflected Kiyone's thoughts. The
exception was Ryouga himself, who was looking ill at ease in his
surroundings, but other than that seemed to have no concept of the
bombshell he had just dropped. The poor kid, Kiyone thought with pity.
He has no idea at all.
     Once again Kiyone found herself wishing for Mihoshi's presence.
Kiyone had no idea how this could work out in a way that would not
hurt Ryouga, but somehow, if Mihoshi were here, that way would have
turned up. She would have said something ridiculous, and . . ."
     "I guess we are fortunate that Ryouga is owned by a distinguished
member of the GP," the Marshal said.
     Kiyone blinked at the golden haired man, and a thought crossed
her mind. He's Mihoshi's grandfather.
     "What!?" Ryouga said in a startled voice. "No one owns me!"
     "I agree, Marshal," The leonine Chief of IS said. "He's not
registered on any data base we have accessed. He's a complete
unknown. We have no idea who owns him."
     "Hey, no one owns me," Ryouga protested again, but no one
seemed to be paying attention to him.
     "Really?" the Marshal said, blinking his eyes. "I was sure I . . ." he
fumbled with the stack of paper work on his desk. Most of it slid off
onto the floor, but he held onto one specific page. "Ah, here it is. Silly
me, I forgot to have it entered after I approved it. Here you go my dear,"
he said, handing the sheet across to Kiyone. "It was presumptive of me I
know, but I had my ofice file this for you while you were in sick bay."
     Kiyone looked at the sheet of paper in her hand in bafflement.
When the Marshall was not forthcoming with more information, she
began to read. The sheet was covered in fine print and it took her a
while to wade through the first few paragraphs of legalese. "This is a
salvage claim!" she said in a startled voice.
     "That's right, for the derelict space ship you discovered while
trapped in the void."
     "Huh," Ryouga said in surprise. "There was another ship in there?
They don't mean that pile of junk I blew up for you," he said in a
worried tone. "I didn't know it was worth something."
     "Not that, silly," Kiyone said in a distracted voice as she continued
to read. "He means you."
     "Me?" Ryouga said in a startled voice.
     "Commander, I must protest," the internal security chief objected.
     "Well, if you insist, go ahead," the Marshal said in a bemused
tone. He then waited.
     The security chief big-sweated. "Ah, I protest," he finally said.
     "Noted," the Marshal said. Turning to Kiyone, he asked, "Would
you be willing to lease your new ship to the GP, with you as captain of
course?"
     "Captain?" Ryouga exclaimed. Suddenly remembering Help-
chan's final words. "But Kiyone can't be a captain!"
     Kiyone, who had finished reading the paper in front of her, and
was slightly stunned, looked over at Ryouga and asked, "Don't you
want me to be your captain, Ryouga-chan?"
     "Huh? Well, I, I guess it would be ok, but you're, I mean, a girl. I
thought only guys could be captains."
     The other three people in the room blinked, and looked at each
other. The Marshal spoke for all of them when he addressed Ryouga. "I
assure you, Ryouga-kun, Detective Kiyone is perfectly able to assume
that roll. Of course, if you don't want her . . ." 
     "Yes!" Ryouga shouted. "I want her!" He blushed as his words
echoed in the room. He directed a bashful look at Kiyone, "That is, if
she wants me to be her ship," he added.
     "Well, Detective, it looks like it's up to you.  Will you take
command of the GP patrol craft, Ryouga?"



     Ryouga stood in the air lock, looking out at the empty space of the
massive ship dock. Beyond the open end of the enormous room he could
see the stars gleaming. His heart ached at the sight. That was his home
now, the place where he belonged. An unlimited range for him to
wonder through. All he needed was a purpose to his journey to make
himself complete, and he had that now. Thanks to Kiyone, his captain.
     Captain! Once he had detested the thought of some person walking
his hull, telling him what to do, and how to do it, but not now. Kiyone
had earned his trust, and confidence. All his life he had longed for
direction, a purpose to his life. Thanks to Kiyone, who had rescued him
from the void as much as he had rescued her, he now had that. 
     Ryouga would go where she said, do what she asked, not because
it was ordered by her superiors. Not because he was now a space ship,
and she was his owner, on paper, but because she was his lord, and he
was her servitor, her samurai. 
     Taking a breath, Ryouga dove through the shield into the vacuum
on the other side. His body shuddered, and he felt an incredible sense of
release as he exploded into his crystalline space going form. 
     Ryouga turned his attention to a small feminine figure standing on
a gang way that projected out into the vastness of the docking port. A
tractor beam snagged the lady, and drew her up and into his main
habitat. Kiyone materialized on the bridge, and shut off her suit's
shields. 
     "Report!" she snapped out, her official sounding voice at odds
with the almost giddy grin on her face.
     "All systems ready," Ryouga replied, suppressed eagerness in
voice. Then, with a voice that fairly quivered, he continued. "Where to .
. . Captain?"
     "Out there," Kiyone declaimed, pointing toward the open door of
the dock. "Somewhere out there is a criminal called Kagato. We are
going to find him. You have the coordinates for his last known
location?"               
     "Yes, Kiyone, I mean, Captain," Ryouga said, and paused, waiting
for the next order, the one that would send him soaring into the welcome
embrace of the universe.      
     "Then, take us out, Mr. Ryouga," Kiyone ordered in a ringing
voice.

     And he did.


End