"I know," Arwen replied, her voice slow and weak. "But I need to follow my orders."

"I understand," Juliet replied. She stood on a chair and took aim at a large group of wires bundled and tacked to the wall. It was a tough swing but she managed to hit them dead on. All the computers in the room fell silent and even the emergency lights went out. She had hit the main power supply. "Arwen, are you still there?"

She got nothing as a reply. A few seconds later Adam's and his team ran into the room. Flashlights moved back and forth in the darkness. "Are you okay?"

Juliet nodded in the negative. "No, I'm not. I just killed my best friend, I won't be okay for a very long time."

Her communicator chirped and the voice of her navigation office came on. "Commander, we've entered the wormhole."

"Can you turn us around to get us out?"

"No, when you took out the Arwen's computer I lost control of the engines. It's going to take some time for me and the Chief's team to reroute everything to the secondary computers."

"Okay, you guys get right on that. I'm heading to the bridge. Commander Monrow out." She turned the communicator off and slowly walked away from the wreckage of the computer room.

Chapter forty-seven.

Professor Ricter has seen devastation before. He was on the Arwen when they arrived in the Ulliam system years earlier to find the fleet that should have been waiting for them destroyed. He was on Ulliam when the Gyssyc war started and saw the debris from the Gyssyc ships drift out into space. He wasn't immune to the death he's seen and he felt he had some tolerance built up over the years. Seeing the left over debris from Captain Cook's fleet left him speechless.

He had no idea how many ships had been lost, no idea how many people had been killed. The numbers were more than he cared to know, more than he could bare. This war needed to end and he was the only one who could end it.

His research ship had enough shuttles and personnel to help with the cleanup. Scanners built for science were now scanning the debris field for any survivors. It wasn't unheard of for people to find pockets of air inside the ships and with this many ships it seemed most likely they could find someone. Another set of scanners was trying to find dead bodies, the poor people who had that assignment would then have to go out and gather them to bring them back. It was a job he would never do and he respected those that did.

He dared not ask the Captain if the Arwen was somewhere in the field. Each ship had a transponder, small, nearly indestructible, to help identify which ships had been destroyed. The names of the ships started to populate on his screen and he refused to look at them. The thought that not only was Marjorie dead, that the Arwen was destroyed, but that Juliet might also be dead, had to be left for another time.

He continued to watch the operation from the observation deck. Around him were his team, scientist who were there to usher in a new era of research, to help control a new weapon in this war and to answer to him when he called. They were just as silent as he was. He wondered how his life, how his career would have been like if not for this war. If not for all the wars he had been through. Wasn't he one of the leading scientists in many fields? Didn't he deserve to be on some remote planet, perhaps the one that Captain Cook named after him, discovering the secrets of the universe? He used to think war made science move forward. Wasn't it war that brought them the Atomic Bomb which lead to the building of the first particle accelerators which eventually lead to the ability to make stranglets?

He was sick of war. He was sick of this war. It was costing him too much and even if he lived for the three hundred years predicted he would never get over the waste that war produced.

"Professor Ricter, Captain Fubula would like to see you on the bridge." The computer said.

What could that windbag want? Professor Ricter thought walking off the observation deck and onto the elevator.

When he arrived at the bridge he found it abuzz with activity. Hundreds of people fit inside the large room. Science ships were spacious beyond belief. They didn't need as much in the way of wiring or systems since they had no weapons. That extra space was taken up with extra stations and personnel. He liked living on a science ship much more than living on a battle cruiser.

Captain Fubula looked at a report on a screen and when he saw Professor Ricter he did something that took the Professor by surprise, he smiled. "Professor, I thought you'd like to know that the Arwen survived the attack. Her name is not among the listed ships and all transponders have been accounted for."

"That's good news," he replied as dryly as possible. He didn't want this man to see any emotion other than annoyance and anger, it was the best way to control him. "Do we know where she's at?"

"She might have gone into wormhole space, that's what we're looking into right now."

"If the battle was hopeless Captain Cook would have retreated, she's brave but not stupid. Thank you, Captain. Now, I have work to do." He turned to walk away.

"Professor," Captain Fubula said. "I'm not done."

Professor Ricter stopped, turned back and looked at the Captain annoyed. "What?"

"We're sending you all the sensor readings from the battle. I know you've provided important tactical observations over the years and I'm sure the Corp will want you to look over this battle as well. Figured I'd give you a head start."

"Don't fool me, Captain Fubula, I know you're just giving me busy work to stay out of your hair while you do the important stuff."

"That's true," he replied, it was refreshing to see him actually be honest with the Professor.

"Well, then, I'll look at the sensor readings when I'm ready. In the meantime I'll be in my lab looking over my own data from the failed attempted to move a planet into a Wormhole. Perhaps I'll look over the readings while I'm heading to bed, could be good to get me all nice and tired. Now, good day Captain, I don't want to be disturbed again." When he turned around this time he did it swiftly with the plan to ignore the Captain should talk to him again.

The data was organized and loaded into the ship's mainframe within hours allowing Professor Ricter the opportunity to look through it quickly. As he read the reports and saw the data a strange pattern reviled itself. It almost seemed as if the Arwen, and the Captain, where being protected by another source.

The first piece of data came from the Arwen herself. The other ships, in an attempt to contact her, received nothing back and reported she was heading for a wormhole which had none of the deadly black slabs. Some had even reported, and the sensors reading confirmed, whenever a black slab headed for the Arwen it was deflected away by another slab. This suggested not all of the slabs belonged to the same group.

The strangest reading came after Captain Cook left the Hal. He looked at some blurry images of some sort of shell surrounding her shuttle, moving it toward a newly opened wormhole. He watched as it disappeared into the opening. The Professor closed his eyes trying not to imagine what he suspected. The Handler's now had a Corps ship and if Juliet followed the protocol she would have destroyed the Arwen within seconds of entering Wormhole Beta space. Unless they weren't associated with the Handler's. The uncertainty was maddening.

He recalled one report of a Water Planet nearby that showed signs of a Beta Wormhole at its core. Was this the wormhole he was looking for? They had searched the systems for water planet that was closer to Earth, one they could use in his experiments. This one was only a few light-years away, close enough for him to check out. He looked over some more scans and found the sun to be a class G sun, the same as Earth's stars. They were hot and could produce energy for billions of years. He felt his excitement grow, this was the prefect system to try his experiment on. The perfect wormhole to plunge into a sun and to see if it would indeed prevent the Handler's from using Wormhole Beta space for travel.

"Captain, I need to see you right away." He said.

"What is this about?"

"There is a Water planet nearby, I need to get to that."

"It'll have to wait. We are way too busy to succumb to one of your whims."

"All need to do is get me to the Water Planet that's nearby, I'll take care of the rest."

"No," the Captain replied. "I have to go, Professor, good day."

Does he really think a no is going to stop me? Professor Ricter thought.

She wasn't sure how long she had been traveling but Captain Cook did know she was running out of food. The shuttle always had a cache of emergency rations just in case something happened. Under normal conditions it could last about a week, which is normally plenty of time for a search party to find them. This situation was hardly normal so she had rationed the food as much as she could. Even with that her supply was running low.

The shell was still around her shuttle and had made no attempted to communicate since she first entered. She had tried talking to it hoping for some response but she was pretty sure there was a vacuum between her shuttle and the shell and sound wouldn't travel at all in a vacuum. She had blinked the shuttle's lights and got nothing in response. She tried revving the engines up to full power but the shell simply moved along with her. She tried stopping only to have the shell bang into the back of her ship to push it forward. They didn't want to hurt her but they did want her to move with them.

She tried to beat back the desperation which has slowly crept into her gut.

She felt her stomach flip and it reminded her the feeling she would sometimes get when they would leave Wormhole space. For the first time in who knows how long something was different, something was about to happen. She felt the anticipation flow through her body and suddenly she was restless. She sat up in her seat and looked out the window. The black slabs were still stacked there like bricks on the side of a building. Then, one by one they started to move away. It was slow at first, as if the Handler's wanted to make this as dramatic as possible. Then, all at once, they moved away. Marjorie was able to look out her window and what she saw amazed her.

Her shuttle was moving away from a giant Beta Wormhole. The silver substance that was that universe seemed to pour out into space where it formed large spheres. Smaller spheres, drawn by gravity to the larger ones, merged together making them larger. She saw that the spheres were moving in a very uniformed fashioned toward a fleet of ships. Scale was hard to tell in space but she knew those ships were large, maybe even larger than the Earth. They were tube shaped with an open bow and a closed aft. The sphere drifted toward those ships where they were captured. She witnessed several of them entering the large holds where doors slowly closed around them.

In another section of space she saw the same sphere catchers heading toward another large opening into Wormhole beta space where they seemed to melt into the silver liquid. She guessed they were carrying them to new locations, looking for new places to lure new raced too. The universe had to be riddled with them now, millions upon millions of beta spheres just waiting to be discovered.

It was then she noticed she was heading toward one of the silver balls. She tried to take over, tried to move the shuttle but found the controls frozen. She guessed they had somehow taken over her system, just like they did with the Arwen. She pulled on the stick and punched the controls knowing they wouldn't respond, not caring because it felt good to get the frustration out. What could she do now? Where were they taking her?

To her surprise her communication alert chirped. She answered it. "If this is a Handler I demand you give me back control of my shuttle."

The voice that replied was that of child. "Captain, please don't worry, you are safe."

"Who is this?"

"I'm am clone of you aged to age 8."

Another clone, Captain Cook thought. The pain from Ann's death still haunted her mind, it was enough of a distraction she hardly noticed an alpha wormhole bullet explode in front of her shuttle.

Chapter forty-eight.

Professor Ricter needed to get to that Water Planet. He could send a message to the President but it would take a few weeks to reach him, a few weeks for him to make a decision, and another few weeks before he got the permission. That was too long, he would probably be back on Earth by that time and it would be too late.

He could talk to the Captain, get on his good side and ask him nicely but the Professor didn't respect the man enough to even pretend he could be nice to him. He could just grab a shuttle and head there himself but none of the shuttles could go into Wormhole space and it would take him years to reach the planet, and even then the shuttle didn't have the scanners he would need. No, he would just have to harass the Captain until he relented. That worked toward the Professor's strength.

The first thing he did was send the Captain a new message every few hours, each message was long and filled with his argument for heading to the Water planet. Eventually the Captain would stop reading them all together and that's when the Professor would badger him in person.

The first few times he cornered the Captain he was polite enough to listen. As the Professor continued to corner him he could see the Captain's will breaking down. This man wasn't nearly as strong as Captain Cook but even the Professor had to admit he if used this tactic on her even she would break down and relent at some point. They were going to be in this area for another few months cleaning up and no one could withstand a full assault from Professor Theo Ricter.

After the third week he was finally called into the Captain's office. He had a feeling this was going to be the reward for all his hard work.

Professor Ricter walked in and stood by the chair, waiting to be greeted. "Professor, please have a seat."

He took the seat and sat there with his legs crossed and his hands laying on his knee. He didn't say a word, instead he simply sat there waiting for the Captain to continue.

"You've made your point to me several times over the past three weeks. I've read your file and it seems to be a tactic you've used a lot. Harassing people until they relent, very effective."

"I find it useful," Professor Ricter replied. "I'm a man who likes to get what he wants."

"I know, and I think I've been very good to you as you did your experiments. Gave you access to my crew, my sensors, anything you needed."

"Yes, well, I consider my work more important than your ship."

"You always need to come first, I get that, took me a while, but I get it. Tell me, Professor, if I don't give you want you want what will you do?"

"Ever see a caged animal try to escape? It will claw at its cage until its paws are bloodied. It will knawel away at the bars until it loses all its teeth. All it wants is to get out and it will do everything it can to get out. That's how I feel right now. All I want to do is go to the Water Planet nearby and if I can't I'll keep pawing and chewing at you until I get out."

The Captain closed his eyes and took a deep breath, probably trying to imagine what it would be like to endure this behavior for another three months. Finally, he said, "We can't take this ship. I'm in charge of the clean up until the Corps can send more ships. However, I can give you a ship, a smaller ship, to the planet."

Professor Ricter thought about it for a moment. This ship would do nicely for what he wanted and he could pressure the Captain into giving it to him but that could take another month or so and he didn't have that kind of time. "What type of ship?"

"A Card Class cruiser. It won't be heavily armed but it will be armed just in case there's a problem at the planet. It has scientific sensors installed for our original mission and I can make arrangements to have any equipment you need transferred over to it. I've talked to the Captain and he agreed to take you if you wanted. This is the best I can offer you, I suggest you take it."

It was a good deal, Professor Ricter thought. "I'd be a fool not to take it, I suppose."

"You would be," The Captain replied. "Gather the crew you need and head on over to the Petra, you can leave as soon as you're ready."

Juliet stood in the empty hologram room amazed at how dead it truly seemed to be. This is where she and the Arwen would communicate in person and knowing she could not do that again weighted on her soul. There were backups of the Arwen's personality and when she got back to Earth they could reinstall her but to Juliet she would never be the same. The Arwen would have no memory of being turned off, she would have no memories of anything past her backup but she would read the logs, she would incorporate that information into her personality. How would that Arwen treat her? Would she be upset that Juliet was the one who pulled the plug? Would she understand why it had to be done? The Arwen was such an unpredictable personality she could go either way.

The Captain had been right all along. The Arwen was nothing more than a complex computer program. To be so easily fooled by a computer virus, to not listening to anyone when they told her the truth, she was simply following a subroutine, reading code, translating it into the real world, she wasn't thinking, not like a human anyway.

That was all moot now. She was in Wormhole Beta space looking for a way out. They had been in Wormhole Beta space for a few weeks now just following the river, letting it flow around them. She hadn't ordered the engine fired up to full power just yet, she wanted to see where they would go and didn't want anything to disrupt that.

She walked over to the control panel and turned the hologram projector on. She then requested all the outside data to be combined to show her the most accurate view of Wormhole Beta space. A request like this would have taken a few seconds with The Arwen still active, it took her over fifteen minutes to get the programming right before the room showed her what she needed to see.

The first time she saw Wormhole Beta space she didn't know what to look for. It was so new and beautiful it took her breath away and she just accepted it for what it was. Now she wanted to know more, wanted to know how to use this place to their advantage.

She looked at the silver flowing over the ship, it has substance, it had to be something. She wondered what a Strangelet would do it. Would it destroy everything? Would it react differently in a new universe?

"Commander," her communicator chirped breaking her out of her thoughts. "We've detected an opening."

"Are we heading for it naturally?" She asked.

"Yes, the flow seems to be taking us toward the opening."

"Great, I'll be right up." She turned the projectors off and ran out of the room.

This was the moment she had anticipated and feared. Keeping the crew together was amazingly easy. They were all highly trained professionals. The ship really could run itself without a Captain if all they needed was to get from one location to the next without any surprises in between.

Juliet arrived on the bridge and took her seat at the Captain's chair. It still didn't feel right to be sitting in Captain Cook's seat. "Give me a report."

The sensor office turned to look. Juliet tried to remember his name, he was a second shifter and she hadn't had to talk to him too often. "I estimate we'll be out of here in about fifteen minutes."

"Helm, do you foresee any issues about leaving?"

"No, sir." The Helm officer replied.

"Get the engines ready. Once we get out I want to get as far away from here as we can." Juliet placed her finger over a communication icon on her computer. "Chief, put a bullet in the chamber, we're going into Wormhole space."

"You got it," Chief McFerren said.

The Arwen followed the flow from the Wormhole Beta stream and passed from Wormhole space into the real world. Juliet looked at her readouts just as the engines kicked in. She was pushed into the back of her seat for a moment as the ship lurched forward. Juliet looked at her screen carefully, her mind trying to grasp with what she was seeing.

Silver bubbles floated around the Arwen as if she were caught in some odd parade. Juliet warmed the Helm to be careful not to bump into them, she recognized for what they were: cores for Water Planets. She had more than enough experience with them to know that's what she was looking at.