The Line

Posted on Wed May 6th, 2026 @ 4:09am by Captain Marie Batel & Patin

2,075 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Beholder
Location: Celestial Temple

Patin had thrown down the gauntlet, a challenge issued by one who realised that her time to pass on knowledge to a successor may be limited.

"Test the limits?" Maris asked, looking around for their overseers. "In what way?"

Pointing at the outpost, Patin commented, "Those look like a pair of enemy ships. We could lob rocks at them, plenty available. Or we can mess with their firing capabilities." A smirk crossed her face, "Ever stick a Jumbja fruit up an exhaust port? Wicked funny. Creates a power blowback, chokes the engine."

"The battlefield is our playground. We could wait until they board and then add space dust into their weapons chambers." She laughed out loud in the vacuum of space, causing the surrounding starfield to vibrate slightly. "When they fire it will be like they're firing glitter cannons. Might even make them backfire."

"We can do that? They'll let us?" Marie's jaw dropped at the possibilities that were open to them. "They'll let us do that? Or is it more beg forgiveness or plausible deniability?" She laughed as they saw the Nausicaans advance. "How about we start with them?"

A shrug was all she got in return. "Who knows? The only way to know where the line is drawn is to cross it and find out. Besides, if we say it was in the name of protecting The Rhenora... they're bound to look the other way. Maybe." Patin reached over and took Marie's hand. "Come on, let's find out."

Whilst normal Marie would have stopped and considered her option, this Marie shrugged and followed Patin, thinking, what was the worst that could happen? She was already dead.

They moved to the Nausicaan raider, prowling forward like a lion hunts its prey, watching for the opportune moment when it was defenseless. Marie considered her options, adding something as inanimate as dust into a torpedo guidance system could be fun, as could slightly increasing the rodent population just enough for them to nibble specific power conduits....

"Let me see," she mused, and began tinkering.

Patin hovered just behind Marie’s shoulder, hands tucked loosely into the pockets of her jacket as she watched the Raider prowl through the asteroid field. Its weapons flared in sharp bursts, orange light raking across the Sunfire’s shields hard enough to make the surrounding debris shimmer. Somewhere inside that ship, alarms were screaming. Power was failing. People were bracing for impact.

Her grin widened. “Oh, we’re feeling dramatic today,” Patin murmured.

The Raider banked hard, engines snarling as another torpedo slid into position inside the launch bay. Patin tilted her head slightly, eyes narrowing as she watched the guidance systems spool up. Tiny streams of targeting data unfolded around it like glowing thread, visible only because she chose to see them. “There you are...” she whispered.

Marie glanced over just in time to see Patin lift two fingers lazily through the air, making the smallest twisting motion imaginable.

The torpedo launched. For one glorious second, it flew perfectly straight. Then the thing lost its mind. It corkscrewed violently through space, spiraling end over end like a drunk firework while the Raiders’ own targeting systems scrambled to understand what had just happened. The torpedo looped outward in a wild arc, engines shrieking, before abruptly correcting itself and screaming straight back toward the Raider that had fired it.

Inside the ship, Nausicaans erupted into chaos. Patin burst out laughing. The Raider rolled hard to port at the very last second, the torpedo skimming past its hull close enough to rip armor plating loose in molten strips before detonating against a nearby asteroid. The explosion bloomed bright and violent across the blackness, scattering burning debris in every direction.

The entire starfield rippled faintly around them in response. Patin looked sideways at Marie, eyes bright with absolute delight. “Now,” she said proudly, smoke-and-mischief satisfaction curling through every word, “we’re having some fun.”

Marie smirked and followed Patin's lead, tinkering and tweaking, adding just enough chaos to give their people a chance.

"Wait up, they're beaming over....ummmm" Marie stammered, trying to keep up as they moved towards the Sunfire, leaving the raider for now.

Patin’s attention snapped toward the Sunfire the instant the transporter signatures began to flare. Tiny bursts of light shimmered through corridors and compartments, hostile patterns threading themselves into the ship like infection spreading through a bloodstream.

Something in her expression changed. Sharper, more focused. “Oh, now we’re getting to the good part,” she said, energy rising visibly through her frame as she started forward without hesitation. The space around her bent to keep pace, stars smearing slightly at the edges like reality itself was struggling to keep up with her momentum.

"We can go in there?" Marie asked, following and trying to keep up with Patin, who is determined to show her the limits.

Patin saw flashes of terrified crew, failing lights, smoke bleeding through junctions, security teams scrambling into position. For half a heartbeat, something painfully alive crossed her face, instinct older than death itself. Then her grin came back. Bright and dangerous.

“Let’s make sure our friends don’t get dead, yeah?” she said, almost forgetting for a moment that she no longer technically belonged among the living. Her fingers flexed eagerly at her sides as the ship’s corridors unfolded before them.

“C’mon,” Patin added, voice carrying the reckless excitement of someone about to cheat at a game she’d already decided was rigged. “Time to see how creative we can get before the gods start yelling.”

They made their way to the bridge, seeing 5 Nausicaans battling with the bridge crew. Several officers were using their consoles as cover and firing around workstations. She could see Rhenora dealing with an injured crew member, a Nausicaan coming up on her whilst her attention was diverted. Marie weighed her options, pausing time as she did so. The Nausicaan was huge, and his intentions on taking out the ship's Captain was obvious. She could adjust the aim of one of their crew so it hit the Nausicaan, she could cause him to trip - always humorous and tactical to boot. She wound time forward, watching the reaction before settling on her course of action.

The bulkhead from the ceiling fell as directly, landing at the feet of the thug just as he stepped forward. He tumbled forward, his bulk falling into the ship's Captain, who squeaked but would survive the experience. She directed another phaser to hit him in the back.

Patin watched the moment stretch, watched Marie hesitate, consider, choose. There was a rhythm to it, a kind of quiet calculus that felt familiar in a way Patin hadn’t expected. Then the bulkhead gave way at exactly the wrong moment for the Nausicaan and exactly the right moment for everyone else.

The impact knocked the wind from him, his balance gone in an instant as he crashed forward into Rhenora instead of through her. Patin’s brow lifted.

A moment later, the follow-up shot landed clean across his back, dropping him hard before he could recover. Efficient. Controlled. Just enough force to end the threat without tipping into something messier.

A slow, approving smirk curled at the corner of Patin’s mouth.
She folded her arms loosely as she tilted her head. “That’ll do.”

Her gaze flicked briefly toward Marie, something like respect settling in behind the mischief. “Not bad.”

Marie took the win and decided to go bigger picture, stopping the Nausicaans from beaming over reinforcements, or better yet, keeping them from fleeing. She moved back to the raiders, looking deep inside their circuitry for something she could overload. A small power relay directed the energy, and could be 'made' to fail... would they let her go that far? There was only one way to find out.

Patin didn’t follow. Her attention returned to the bridge. To Rhenora.

The chaos pressed in from every direction, alarms screaming, consoles sparking, the air thick with heat and urgency. And at the center of it, Rhenora moved with that same stubborn, unyielding presence Patin knew by heart. Hurt or not, overwhelmed or not, she was still there. Still choosing.

Something in Patin softened. Just a fraction. She stepped closer, positioning herself at Rhenora’s flank like instinct had rewritten reality to allow it. Close enough to matter. Close enough to see every shift in her expression, every breath she fought to steady.

“Hey, Nozzie...” Patin murmured, voice low, threaded with something quieter than her usual fire. “Try not to make this harder than it already is, yeah?” Her hand lifted, hovering just short of Rhenora’s shoulder. She didn’t touch. She couldn’t. But the space around her tightened subtly, like pressure reinforcing a weak point, like presence alone might be enough to tilt probability a fraction in her favor.

A Nausicaan broke from the melee, weapon swinging toward Rhenora’s exposed side. Patin’s eyes narrowed. “Not today.”

A console beside the attacker sparked violently, a sudden surge forcing him to recoil just long enough for another officer to land a clean shot across his chest. He dropped with a heavy thud. Patin exhaled softly, the tension easing from her shoulders as she settled back into position, watchful. Protective. A ghost at the edge of consequence. “Yeah...” she said, quieter now, almost grounding herself in the moment. “I can live with this.”

Over on the Nausicaan raiders, the small power coupling fritzed and burnt out, just enough to prevent the systems from working temporarily - at exactly the same time on both ships. She heard the grumbling and shouting from those waiting on the transporter padds and cared not herself - focused on adjusting the little things that could turn the tide on this battle. It would hold for just a while - enough for her to get some other stuff done on the Sunfire so they could get the hell out of there.

Patin had taken up a position near Rhenora, leaving Marie free to tweak the circumstances on the rest of the ship. She saw Baldric in a storage locker and frowned, "You're not right... Why aren't you right?" She mused. With a flick of the wrist, she rewound time and realised this wasn't Prime Baldric, but the mirror version, and that a takeover was afoot. The Nausicaans were just a diversion.

On the bridge of the Sunfire, the chaos didn’t stop all at once. It sort of thinned. Phaser fire came less frequently. The shouting lost its edge, shifting from panic to command. Smoke still curled through the air, but it no longer owned the room. Systems flickered, then steadied, one by one, like a ship remembering how to breathe.

And at the center of it... Rhenora straightened. Her shoulders squaring under pressure that hadn’t broken her. Voice cutting through the remaining noise, firm, controlled, hers again. Orders given. Acknowledged. Followed.

The bridge began to listen. Patin didn’t move. She stood just off Rhenora’s flank, quiet now, the earlier fire in her expression dimmed into something steadier. Something older. Her gaze traced the familiar lines of her... how she held herself, how she chose others over herself, even now, even here.

“Yeah…” Patin murmured under her breath, softer than before, almost lost to the hum of recovering systems.

There was a flicker of memory behind her eyes. Snow. Firelight. Laughter that had no business surviving the things they’d lived through. The way Nozzie used to look at impossible odds and decide they simply weren’t going to win. And then do it anyway. Patin’s mouth curved, not quite a smile, not quite anything she’d let anyone else see. “There you are,” she added quietly, like she’d been waiting for that exact moment to return.

Her hand lifted again, hovering near Rhenora’s shoulder out of pure habit, a reflex. She didn’t touch. Couldn’t. Didn’t need to. The space around Rhenora held. Just a fraction tighter. Just enough. Patin let her hand fall back to her side, the motion unceremonious, like she was letting go of something she already knew she couldn’t hold onto. But she didn’t step away. Not yet. Not while it still mattered.

From her location Marie noticed the shift in mood - and smiled.


TBC

 

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