"Sir, this is Somnerson at Control. Uh, have you looked at the sky in the last few minutes?"
Ben Santini was lying on his back, having been awaken by the telephone. "What are you talking about, Somnerson? I haven't been awake in the last few min-"
"Sir, I really think we need you down here. Check out the sky over the bay on your way."

Santini burst into central control. "What the hell is going on up there?" he demanded.
"Two ships, sir. Approximately three hundred kilometers outside the moon's orbit."
"Who's are they?"
The other technician, Oralee, pointed to her computer screen, where a few satellite pictures overlapped each other at the corner. "We don't know for sure, but one of them looks like the diplomat."
"Fuck! Get her online."

A link has been established with I/O Central Command in San Francisco.

"Excellent," Rowena said. "Put me online, Leela."

An almost perfect transmission came through the audio system. "This is the Saenaron. Repeat. This is Rowaena Firedia on the Saenaron. Come in, I/O."
Ben grabbed the mouthpiece. "Rowena, this is Ben Santini. State your situation."

"Oh, thank goodness," Rowena whispered to herself. "I am being fired on by a foreign ship. I have not been hit."
"What do you know about the ship?"
"Leela, copy your information on the Pfhor ship to I/O."

Copying....

"Ben, my AI is going to send you the information on the ship she's downloaded to you."

"Sir, we're recieving a file from the Saenaron."
Ben nodded. "Rowena, if they're hostile-"
"Sir, this says they're slavers."
His eyebrows went up. "I can't let you come in here, Rowena. I've got a planet to think of."
"I know. I'll try to lead them away."

"Leela, take us out two thousand kilometers. Let's see if we can get these bastards to follow us."
The Saenaron shot away from the Earth, firing particle beams behind it at the huge ship that followed.

Hyde Park, UT - 2:35 am
The entire neighborhood stood on their porches or in the street, watching the sky.
Anne Richards was awakened her mother. "Annie, you have to come look at this!"
Groggily rolling her eyes, Annie threw on a robe and wandered outside. "What?"
"Up there," her neighbor pointed. "In the Big Dipper."
Indeed, in the ladel of the Big Dipper something was going on. Green rays of light from unseen sources shot back and forth at one another. It was almost as if space had burst into a lighting storm somewhere light years away.
"What's going on?" Annie breathed, wide awake.
"An interstellar battle," someone behind her said. "It must've happened millions of years ago, but we're just seeing it now."
Usually Annie would have been skeptical about something like that, but what else could it be? She gaped upwards, facinated.

"The public's gonna go crazy with this one," Ben muttered to himself. "Oralee, I need you to get in touch with Bailey in the Media Department. Get his people to think of something." The next few days were going to be hell for I/O's media people. Usually all they had to deal with was easily-workable localized Kherubim/Daemonite battles, or the discovery of some futuristic technology that apeared to be a few thousand years old at an archeological dig. The entire North-Western Hemisphere would be seeing this. Conspiracy theorists and "Truth" seekers would have a hey-day. Bailey was the best PR man in the country. If anyone could convince the public that nothing weird was happening, it was him.
"Yes, sir."
His phone buzzed. "Santini."
"Mr. Director, I know I'm not supposed to use this number, but there was no other way to reach you quickly."
"Hello, Mr. President. What can I do for you?" His tone was hardly polite.
"Director, the American public is going crazy. You know what's happening, don't you?"
"I know exactly what's going on," Ben assured him, "and the Americans are the least of my problems right now. I have it all under control, Mr. Clinton. Now, you do your job and I'll do mine. I have people to handle the public. They'll get ahold of you."
"You've never had to deal with this bef-"
"That's right, Mr. Clinton. I haven't. So, if you'll excuse me, I'm a very busy man."
He hung up.

"Are they following us, Leela?"

Yes, and they're gaining.

"Will they follow us into slipspace?"

Their technology cannot handle slipspace. They don't seem to have any knowledge of it.

Rowena stood up. "See if we can lead them a little farther out, make 'em forget about Earth for a while. I'm going back to do some manual firing."
In the rear of the ship there was a fusion blaster. It could be operated by the ship's AI, but was easier aimed by manual operation.
The Pfhor ship was indeed gaining. It didn't look like a battleship - it was too big. Rowena guessed it was a mining or exploration vessel, or even a slave ship, according to the information Leela had told her.
In front of the ship (or, at least, the part facing Rowena) didn't seem to have any vulnerable areas, so she fired at the particle guns, hoping to disable at least one of them. "Leela, what kind of sheilds do they have?"

Electron deflect sheilds around the entire ship except for small gaps for the particle cannons.

"Okay. Can you give me infrared visual on it?"
The terminal in front of her instantly switched to an infrared view of what Rowena saw out the window. The background was black, and the ship could not be seen behind the green register of the defense sheilds. However, three tiny spots on either side glowed red - the particle cannons.
Rowena maneuvered her fusion gun until the bright blue crosshairs on the terminal were perfectly centered over one of the particle cannons. She fired an overloaded bolt.
The only problem with fusion was that, unlike particle beams, which stretched across to their target, once a fusion bolt was fired you couldn't adjust it's aim. Rowena looked on in anticipation as the white bolt of plasmic electricity moved across space at an unbearably slow rate. The second it took to cross fifty kilometers to the target seemed like hours. If the Pfhor ship was to move... The gaps in its sheild were so small that nothing but a direct hit would work.
The fusion bolt made contact, and Rowena stared stunned out the window as a small portion of the Pfhor ship exploded. She shouted a Roman victory cry her father had taught her. "Leela, could I do it again?"
A window in the corner of the terminal showed the AI's reply.

Doubtful. They'll take defensive measures now. You've done a lot of damage.

Now the Pfhor increased the particle beams that flew at - and continually missed - the Saenaron.

We must get into slipspace. They don't have to miss.

The Pfhor captain gazed intently at his console, and was about to order a new volley of particle beams fired on the small ship as the yellowish spot on the heat detector screen was surrounded by blue. The screen went black.

The Saenaron was gone.