I Have a Hammer

Rebecca Stein looked at the barren landscape and tried to pinpoint which of her past choices had really gotten her into this mess.

Was it when she'd taken a leave of absence from her doctoral program in geology to work for a mining startup? A few years, she'd thought, would get her rich enough to return and finish her degree without needing to live on ramen. No, that hadn't been the key mistake.

Renouncing her Human citizenship, had that been the key mistake? They'd never have dared to enslave a Human citizen. In fact, they'd been nervous about taking her. But if the Human Republic rescued her, they'd be fighting not just the Dec Empire but every slaveholding polity in the galaxy. Humanity wasn't ready for that. Still, lots of people had renounced citizenship in order to work in less Human-friendly spaces, and generally they hadn't regretted it.

Was it leaving F'drous to hire their security guards? F'drous was extremely capable in general, and Rebecca knew nothing about hiring mercenaries, but there was no denying the facts: their own bodyguards had betrayed them and sold them into slavery.

So here she was. On the bright side, this world had an oxygen atmosphere and gravity close to Earth's – which felt good, after a week in ships that maintained about half of that (“galactic standard” they called it). On the not-so-bright side, it was uncomfortably hot and worryingly dry. Worse, she was the chief geologist in a high-tech mining startup and they'd given her a sledgehammer and marched her off toward a hole in the ground. At least they hadn't shackled her, probably because she wouldn't have been able to do much work if they had.

Worst: F'drous staggered (he wasn't used to this gravity) and the overseer responded by shouting “Get back up” and hitting him with some sort of energy beam. Whatever it was, it seemed to be really painful.

That settled it. She was not tolerating this. The only question was whether to rebel now or later. If she waited, F'drous might get hit again, and she might get weaker from hard work, poor sleep and inadequate food. On the other hand... Actually, she couldn't think of a single reason to wait.

She took a moment to study the overseer. It was about ten feet tall, shaped roughly like a Tyrannosaurus with two extra legs, covered in thick scales and armed with claws on all six limbs, though its right claw was busy holding the energy weapon. Yikes.

She wasn't usually very devout, but this seemed like the right moment for a prayer. Unable to remember anything appropriate, she improvised on a common theme. “Praise to God,” she whispered in Hebrew, “Ruler of the universe, who hallows us with commandments and calls upon us to free the captive.”

Unwilling to take a third moment, she charged.

She covered the forty feet to the overseer in six great bounds, moving faster than the creature could respond to and bringing the hammer up over her head at the same time. Then she brought it down with all her strength on a single toe.

Overkill. The ten pound hammer went straight through the scales and splashed the underlying flesh. She lept back, trailing the hammer, visualizing a reflexive kick that didn't materialize. Instead the thing howled in pain and turned toward her. But slowly. It wasn't native to this gravity either.

She should be able to take advantage of that. She just wasn't sure how. She'd never used a hammer as a weapon before. The closest she'd come was longsword or quarterstaff, and those only in refereed Society for Creative Anachronism duels, with extensive rules to prevent actual injury. Still, it was something. She pulled herself into a quarterstaff stance – bent knees and hands at the third-points of the weapon – and studied the creature again for vulnerabilities.

She was still studying when it got its energy weapon pointed at her and fired.

For a moment, her entire body lit up with pain, but she was moving before she even had time to think. She jumped to the side, out of the beam and toward the creature's tail, then ran forward under its stomach and out the other side. This time a kick came, but she saw it and swayed out of it's way.

The kick revealed a simple knee, similar to a human's. That was a weak point she could reach. She spun and jabbed the hammer into the side of the knee.

No effect. OK, she thought, I guess that's not how to use a hammer in battle.

The creature turned the energy weapon toward her again and she dodged toward its back end, only to come into the path of its tail. The massive thing struck her along her lower chest. Her ribs held, but she went flying. Size counted, it seemed, and the creature definitely had the edge in the total strength department. She managed to land in a backroll, and came up on one knee, both hands still on the hammer.

This seemed to surprise the creature, which bought her a moment that she spent getting her breath back. It brought the energy weapon up again and fired.

She ran on a zigzag, hoping to evade its shots and close the distance again. She mostly succeeded. The glancing blows it did make didn't weaken her. Was that the idea? A weapon to cause pain without damage? To motivate but not ruin slaves? If so, it was a mistake. Pain didn't make her more co-operative – only more angry.

She made it to the creature's front, close knee with the hammer in long-form position. She made a solid swing at the kneecap and was rewarded with a sickening cracking sound. The hammer came straight through the other side, so she advanced two steps and took the back knee from the side on the backswing. That cracked too and the creature began to topple.

She barely avoided the falling body. Then she looked closely. Was it dead? Most creatures could take a fall, but if she was right that this was native to a lower gravity...

She almost got caught as it's head snaked out to bite her. She brought the hammer up in something between a parry and a short-form strike on the nose. The majority of the lunge missed, but the lower jaw scraped along her stomach. Shallow, she thought, and under so much adrenalin she dismissed it beyond that.

Her hammer was still rising along with the head, so she flipped perspective and struck with the handle-end in the creature's eye. That made a nice mess.

It pulled back in pain exposing its long neck. She shifted back to long-form grip, took a guess at its esophagous and struck full power. Scales cracked, tissues pulped, and blood sprayed a surprisingly long distance. It was dead.

She cleaned her wounds as best she could and improvised bandages. She really needed stitches on the long one, but she had no supplies for that. It would make an impressive scar. At least differing biochemistries would probably prevent infection.

She'd seen some small spacecraft earlier. Her co-workers seemed to have fled, but if she could gather them it was likely that the roboticists between them could hot-wire at least one. Then they could probably sneak back to Human space. She might not be a citizen, but Humanity never extradited escaped slaves, and they weren't likely to start with her.

She got up to start exactly that process and then stopped. It took her a moment to realize why.

Because the mine was already dug, which meant there were slaves already here. It wasn't enough to rescue her co-workers. She needed to rescue everyone.

Did she? It wasn't like she had any idea who they were.

But she knew who she was. She was still the same woman who as a child had sworn to use her Art in the service of Life. She'd been maybe eight years old, but she'd meant it. And she was a knight of the SCA, committed to “defend the weak” and “bring unceasing war against the evil.” When she'd first encountered that code, it had seemed a little silly. Standing here, on the closest thing to a medieval battlefield that she was ever likely to see, it didn't seem silly at all.

So she was plotting a slave revolt. Better take things seriously. Start with inventory. She had a hammer. That concluded her inventory.

Didn't most revolts start a bit better supplied than that? Even slave revolts? Although...

“Simon, Yon and Yonatan,” she sang, almost in tune and only a little ironically, “and Rebecca Maccabee”. Wait, that didn't scan. “And Rivkah Maccabee.” The ancient form of her name fit remarkably well. She felt better. She was still ridiculously outgunned, but she was part of a tradition. Perhaps when she was done she'd burn this place to the ground and the fire would last for eight days.

Still, more equipment would be good. She found the energy weapon, which her enemy must have lost hold of when it fell. It didn't have any modes other than “intense pain”, and she was never using that, no matter how desperate she got, so she broke it open for parts. She took what looked versatile and smashed the rest.

The memory of every Dungeons and Dragons character she'd ever played said to loot the body, but that wasn't very knightly. Besides, the creature didn't seem to have anything besides its clothing. She could leave it that much dignity.

Starting with, she really ought to start thinking of her foe as “he” instead of “it”. Granted, there was no sign of a gender, but it, no he had spoken and used technology. She'd killed a person, not a monster. Well, a monstrous person, given what it had – what he had –

She gave up. She'd try again later. Maybe much later.

She found her co-workers, and the rest of the slaves. There were almost a hundred all together – too many for the small spacecraft she'd seen earlier. None of them were willing to fight, but they had, reluctantly, described the enemy and drawn her some good maps. Even more reluctantly, they had helped her to prepare the battlefield.

The room she was in now had no name and little special about it. She'd picked it because the ceiling wasn't very stable. It was held up by four poles, all of which looked ready to buckle if they got a strong lateral shock -- such as a hammerblow. Furthermore, the ceiling was rich in water-soluble feldspars and the chamber above was floodable. So now the ceiling had extra weight on it and was cracking as bits of it dissolved. Drips of water came through the cracks, but only drips.

Apart from that, they'd scattered overturned carts around the room to provide cover, and walled off the exit that would lead to the rest of the slaves. If she failed, they'd have some warning time in which to try to reach a different exit. Not that she was planning to fail.

The soldiers entered from exactly the tunnel she'd expected. There were an even dozen of them, holding some sort of energy weapons. The experienced slaves had predicted about half that many. On the bright side, if she made it out of here alive, the manor would be poorly defended. On the other hand... “if”.

At least they weren't wearing armor. Perhaps it would have been too heavy. From the way they moved, they weren't really native to this gravity.

She waited, barely breathing, as two-by-two the soldiers entered the chamber. She was hidden behind a cart. They hadn't seen her, but that couldn't last.

The last pair entered the chamber. The kept walking forward: step, step. Enough. She smashed the support pole at her side and sprinted for the next one.

The pole collapsed easily. The ceiling shifted, cracked, and stabilized. A steady stream of water, perhaps as thick as her thumb, poured down.

The soldiers wasted their first round of shots on the water, splashing it all over the far wall. But then they spotted her and the next round came way too close. She gave up on reaching the next pole and dived behind a cart.

The third round of shots hit the cart. It rang like a massive gong, but the thick metal held. The weapons were firing kinetic energy in some form. Worse: they fired cones of it. It limited their range, but there was no way to take advantage of that in these close quarters. At the same time, it meant they didn't have to aim very well.

Even at that, they'd missed her so far. They didn't seem prepared for how fast she could move, or at least for how fast she could move in this gravity. And they were distractable, or at least had been once. She pulled a conveniently-sized rock out of her pocket, took very careful note of where everything in the room was, and settled into a crouch.

Seconds ticked by. She waited. They waited. She listened. The only noise was falling water.

One of them said something in a language she didn't speak. Orders, perhaps? Two others started walking.

She let them take one step, then poked her head up to see hurled her rock full-force at the one who had spoken. She got her head down before their return shots took it off, but the enemy commander didn't. There was the smack of rock hitting flesh, a scream of pain, and the duller, splashier thud of an entire body hitting a wet floor. She couldn't tell if he was dead, but he was certainly distracting. She lunged for another cart. Three giant steps took her there.

Five of the soldiers got their heads together fast enough to shoot at her while she was in the open. One clipped her shoulder. It didn't connect fully, so the bone held, but she wouldn't have the full use of her left arm for a while. Three shots missed altogether, smashing up the far wall with dull thuds and the high-pitched fall of new gravel.

And one shot clipped the pole she'd run in front of.

It couldn't have conveyed anything close to its full energy, but the pole must have been on the verge of buckling already. It snapped cleanly in half and both halves went flying across the room.

A true torrent of water and stone came down, and large cracks began to spread across the ceiling. Everyone forgot fighting and ran full-speed for safety.

Rebecca made it first. There was one more pole right next to the exit, so she trailed the hammer behind her and hooked the pole as she left. The ceiling came down at once. The soldiers were perhaps five feet behind her, but they didn't make it.

The inrushing water struck her as a solid mass. There was no resisting it, but she held her breath, clutched the hammer, and tried to shield her more vulnerable parts.

Had the tunnel sloped downward, she probably would have died there. But it sloped upward, toward the surface. The upward slope robbed the water of much of its power, and soon she was able to regain her feet. Battered but whole, she trudged up the tunnel and into the daylight.

She rested for a while. The hot sun and arid wind dried out her clothing nicely, and the cleanish water now flowing gently out of the tunnel quenched her thirst. Her shoulder wasn't broken or dislocated, but it was one giant bruise. Score one for human durability. Those guns were probably intended as lethal weapons, but it would take more than a single shot to bring her down. More than a single shot that only winged her, anyway – a direct hit might do it. Or a grazing shot to the stomach or neck or face...

OK, enough of that depressing line of thought. Time for a new plan. Attacking the manor before the soldiers were missed still sounded good, but she'd planned on doing it with their guns – guns which were now buried under three feet of stone and twenty of water. She still had the hammer, but couldn't wield it very effectively with her left shoulder in such bad shape...

OK, that line of thought was depressing too. What wasn't depressing? She looked around. Nice layering of rhyolite flows. In fact...

An hour or so later she had a knife. The blade was a single shard of obsidian, broken off with the hammer. The handle was duct tape, which she had taken from the mine while setting up the ambush site. She hadn't had any plan for it, but life was always better with duct tape. There was a reason that it was the one Human product found on every civilized world.

“Yesterday,” she said to herself, “I was complaining that my robots weren't good enough. Today I am proud to hold a knife any neolithic hunter would call crude.” She took a deep breath. “So it goes. At least I found this obsidian by the power of my studies – I'm a trained geologist working as a rebel but I am using my degree.”

She got close enough to see the manor without being seen. The broken landscape provided plenty of cover. There were three soldiers at the main gate. If the old slaves were right, that should be the last of them.

Whoever had designed the gate understood military design. The cover stopped about a hundred feet out, giving perfectly clear sightlines. Bringing a knife to a gunfight was a poor choice under the best of circumstances, and having to start by charging over that much open ground was anything but.

So she circled – staying under cover and looking for another angle to approach the manor from. That plan fizzled quickly. The manor was built against the side of a cliff. It wasn't a tremendous cliff, but still nothing she'd want to fall off. Probably just a normal fault that slid a bit after the actual volcanism ceased in the area. More relevantly, the cliff wasn't perfectly straight, and the manor sat in a place where it bulged out over the plain below. One side of the manor was the front wall with its guarded gate; the other three sides looked over a very long drop. Once again, the designer showed competence.

Could she climb the cliff? It was natural stone: not quite vertical and with some decent holds – unlike the manor wall. Even if she could, she'd go down a bit, sideways a lot, and then what? She leaned over the edge to see what...

And there were windows in the cliff-face. Big, openable windows.

Apparently the manor had a basement, and, where possible, the basement had windows. How had this passed by the otherwise capable security designer? The cliff looked unpleasant to climb along – especially with only one arm – but doable. Was it a trap?

Then she imagined what it would be like climbing that face wearing her own body weight in gear. That's what everything was like for someone accustomed to half this gravity, which included the Dec and approximately everyone else.

Sadly, she set the hammer down between two boulders, where it wouldn't easily be seen. She double-checked that the knife was solidly in her pocket; tightened, tied and double-knotted her shoelaces; wished she had some sort of safety rope; took a deep breath and began slowly working her way down onto the cliff-face. There was a little ledge within her reach. It was about half as wide as her feet were long, and it ran all the way to the closest window. It shouldn't be too bad. Just so long as she didn't look down.

She had to look down to find her footing.

It wasn't as bad as she'd expected. It was worse. But she made it. By the time she pulled herself in through the window – shaking with exhaustion and prolonged fear – the sun proper was gone from the sky and the world was getting dark. She'd rushed the last bit, rather than face the cliff in true darkness.

She lay on the floor and took some time to collect herself. Her heart and lungs burned from sheer exhaustion, her feet and arms were sore, and her left shoulder – which she'd only had to use twice – had strange pains shooting up and down it. She hoped she hadn't caused herself a serious injury there.

Sleep was tempting. Giving up was tempting. But there was quite literally no way back. And someone would find her eventually. After ten minutes or so, she pulled herself to her feet and proceeded into the manor.

The basement level was empty. Perhaps it was the domain of house-slaves, who were sent back to their barracks at night. She moved quietly, and listened carefully, but heard nothing.

Her first target was the gate. She'd have to face the remaining soldiers sooner or later, and she'd rather it be on her terms. Also, it was the one place within the manor that she knew the location of, even if not how to get there.

She reached the guard-room without incident. The guards were still there: resolutely looking outward. In fact, they seemed very determined to leave no corner of the plain unwatched. Word of their missing comrades must have reached them. But it seemed the High Alert doctrine didn't include “look backwards occasionally to make sure no one has gotten around you”.

She took a moment to study their backs. They were built on the same overall bodyplan as humans, but a little bigger. They probably weren't as strong or tough as she was, not having evolved for as high gravity, but they were well armed, and there were three of them. She could take one by surprise. She could probably take one in a fair fight. That left one more...

As she considered, one seemed to hear her breathing and turned toward her.

She wasn't ready but she was out of time. She lunged. Her knife sank deep into the guard's neck.

And got stuck.

She grabbed the falling body and spun behind it as the other guards reacted. Their shots hit the first guard with dull thumps. If he wasn't dead already, he surely was now.

She threw the dead guard at the more distant living one while jumping diagonally toward the nearer one. He fired the moment the body was clear, but he hadn't anticipated the jump. The plain plaster wall behind her shattered.

She closed before he could adjust his aim. She got her good hand around his gun barrel and slammed her good shoulder into his chest with all the force of her jump. He wasn't remotely ready for that, and they went down together in a tangle.

The other guard untangled himself from the corpse and pointed his weapon, but didn't fire. He wasn't willing to hit his comrade.

The guard she was grappling got both hands on the weapon and wrested it from her grip. He fumbled slightly bringing it into a firing position.

And she slammed her forehead into his lower jaw with all the force she could muster. Earth-bred bone held, while the alien version snapped. The guard dropped the weapon in shock.

To her own amazement, Rebecca caught it. She pointed it vaguely at the free guard and fired. It wasn't a good shot, but between the wide-angle weapon and the stationary target, it didn't need to be. The kinetics swept out his legs, and he fell.

The close guard recovered and got his hands on the weapon once more, but more clumsily. Neither of them could use it.

Rebecca rolled, putting herself on top, and her own weight on her elbow on her enemies neck. Something went pop, and he spasmed. The weapon went flying.

She lunged after it. As she lunged, she looked up to see the other guard had pulled himself into something like a sitting position and was raising his weapon again. His legs looked broken, but he was still trying to kill her, and this time she had no cover.

But she was faster. Her shot took his head a split second before he could draw steady on her. He went down.

Then she shot all three of them in the head and chest. Then she shot them again, just to be sure. Then she kept shooting them, while the rage and fear slowly drained from her body.

She stopped when she heard a footstep and a gasp. She raised the weapon, but the Dec raised his hands in immediate surrender.

“Please don't hurt me!” he begged, “I had nothing to do with how you were treated! I'm just a geologist. I don't want to die.”

“Isn't that funny,” Rebecca said slowly, “I'm a geologist too. And I never wanted to kill anyone...” She let her voice trail off quietly, then snarled full volume “But we don't always get what we want, do we?”

He tried to back away from her so fast he tripped over his own feet. Sitting on the floor, he bent almost into a ball. “You do now. Get to not kill me. Get anything you want! That was the last of the soldiers. No one will give you any trouble. You don't have to kill anyone anymore. Just take whatever you want and go.”

He looked far too scared to be lying, and not killing anyone more held a definite appeal. Except...

“No,” she said, “There's one more person I have to kill. The person in charge. The person who decided to build a mine here, staff it with slaves and keep them in line with brute cruelty.”

“That's Baron Beyzink. He's probably in bed by now. Keeps very early hours.”

“Take me to him. Quietly.”

The Dec Geologist wasn't as quiet as Rebecca, but he was quiet enough. They came to a simple door after a few minutes walking.

“This is his bedchamber,” the Dec whispered. “He should be alone in there. I don't have the key.”

Rebecca studied the door for a moment. It was a standard swing door, with the lock built into the doorknob. She shot the knob out of the door, and kicked the rest open.

Inside the room, a Dec rose groggily from a bed, mumbling incoherently.

“Is that him?” Rebecca asked her guide.

“That's him,” the retreating geologist confirmed.

The knightly thing to do would be to let him wake up and obtain a weapon before facing him in a duel. The satisfying thing to do would be to make him listen as she explained exactly why he deserved to die.

Instead she shot him right in his groggy head, and then a few more times to be sure.

It was the just thing to do. And she wanted to be done with killing.

“Now take me to a spaceship big enough for all of us.”

There was a big enough spaceship: an ugly old cargo freighter half-loaded with ore. It was currently shut down, and no one knew the password to activate it.

Rebecca and her guide gathered and questioned all the surviving staff, but none of them could log in. Several said that when the ship was full, a professional pilot would arrive by personal shuttle. But since his services were only needed a few days a month, he didn't live on-planet. It was possible that one or more of them was lying. Rebecca could think of no way to tell.

Instead she locked them all in a reasonably comfortable store-room, promising to let them out before she left provided they didn't make trouble. Then she went back to the mine to pick up her co-workers and the other rescuees. On route, she picked up the hammer. She probably wouldn't need it, but she felt better having it.

Her own co-workers included several roboticists who might be useful in activating the ship, and she guessed some of the others might have useful skills as well. If not, she'd think of something else.

Rebecca's co-workers did get the ship online, and connected its computer to the mansion's comm system, but they could not get it flying. They could activate the drive itself, but on a ship this large bypassing the computer was a good way to explode. Apparently skill at designing robots did not extend to skill at breaking into them.

At least there was one real robotics job. The store-room door was now rigged to let the staff out several hours after she departed. This was close enough to her promise not to trouble her, and considerably safer. They'd probably still be seen leaving, but an untimely launch would attract less attention than a call to emergency services.

That was one problem solved, but it still left the problem of launching the ship. Rebecca had none of the right skills, and it seemed no one there did. What did she have? A hammer, but that wasn't very useful. And a manor... with a comm system.

She also had an old roommate from her first year in grad school who quite specifically was good at breaking into computers. They'd wound up sharing a room because housing was expensive and timing worked out, but they'd been a better fit than most deliberately matched roommates. She'd probably be willing to help out. Now assuming the house comm system could call arbitrary people on Earth...

“Hi, Becca, hadn't expected to see you so soon. How are you doing?”

“In a bit of trouble, hoping you could help. You're not on a government grant, are you?”

“No. This term I'm on Clay Foundation. What difference does that make?”

“I renounced my citizenship, so I cannot request aid from a government agent.”

“I'm thinking whatever you need is a little outside the scope of my duties as a research assistant anyway.”

“To put it mildly. But I'd hate to start a war over a technicality.”

“A war? What's going on?”

“I got kidnapped and sold into slavery --”

“Kidnapped! Do you need a ransom gathered?”

“No, I already killed my owner and overseer.”

“Go you.”

“Thanks, and I claimed their ore-hauler as a legitimate prize of war.”

“Legitimate?”

“I have a hammer.”

“That's kind of like a legal system.”

“I knew you'd see things my way. What I don't have is administrator access to the main computer.”

“I'm not sure I can do much from here.”

“I've connected this computer to that one's 'debug' port. It's channel 0x3E04.”

“One moment.... I think I'm going to need you to flip a few physical jumpers.”

“Just tell me which ones.”

The ship made lift-off, but it didn't make it unmarked. They ran for the Human border at top speed, but a handful of Dec warships were maneuvering to cut them off. It looked like they were going to do it just short of the border, giving themselves the most time to get organized.

Several of Rebecca's co-workers tried to jerry-rig weapons. Improvised weapons on civilian spacecraft were dangerous against soft targets, and they had saved the Human Republic centuries ago when it was just getting itself together, but they were no match for real, modern warships. Still, it felt better to have something.

Human warships had noted the movement and responded. There was a small fleet on the Human side of the border. If the Dec crossed, they'd regret it. Rebecca called them and secured permission to enter human space, but failed to convince them to assist. They were under orders not to start a war.

There were no mercenaries for hire within range. She'd checked.

What else could she do? If one of the great heroes of ancient legend were here, what might they do? She mentally designated that option as plan B and went back to thinking.

Two minutes from weapon range with no further insights, Rebecca implemented plan B. It wasn't the sort of thing that would work often, but from what she'd seen so far, hardly anyone ever tried anything.

“Can you modify our engine ratios,” she asked a suitably skilled rescuee, “in a way that's slightly less efficient, has no benefit, and is clearly visible from watching our subspace field signature?”

“I can,” he said, “but what's the point?”

“That's what I want them wondering. Do it.”

“If you say so. Let's see... Two over one on the monopole phase... Adverse curls on the saddle... Done.”

“Now open a channel to the Dec fleet.”

The Dec Commodore appeared on the main viewer, while an icon indicated the other ships were listening. He spoke first, “Have you come to your senses yet and chosen to surrender?”

“Surrender?” Rebecca echoed. “Why would I surrender?

“Because you have a fleet of warships and I have an ore hauler? That's not so different from when you had a platoon of soldiers and all I had was a hammer. Remember how that turned out?

“And I still have the hammer.

“Those Human warships behind you – just praying for an excuse to open fire – they have the anvil.

“When we meet, you will either be somewhere else...

“Or you will be flattened.”

With that, Rebecca hit the comm-off button. The fleet hailed her. She ignored them.

And her single, barely armed, completely unarmored ore freighter with strangely configured engines sailed unhesitatingly down the throats of the enemy war fleet.

15 seconds to weapons' range. What did the Dec think was happening?

10 seconds to weapons' range. What did the Dec think that she thought was happening?

5 seconds to –

The Dec fleet broke and ran. However much they got payed wasn't enough to justify facing this.

Rebecca laughed all the way into Human space.