Chapter 1

6000 Lightyears from Earth:

One of the Lords asks: "Your Highness, you must board your ship, our fleet can't hold the enemy back."
Her Highness replies: "How many people are in stasis, Lord Raiga?"
He answers: "We have reached the maximum capacity of 500.000. Highness you must hurry! The "Heavy Duty" is only waiting for you. The other four transport ships have warped out of the system."
She thinks: 2,500,000 people of 3,500,000,000 - that's all we could save.

Aboard the transport ship "Heavy Duty" - orbit of Tasis:

The Admiral looks at his screen and sees one of the last cruisers exploding.
He thinks: We never had a chance against the Kaltora Empire. Our ships are all underpowered. If we only had more time to find better energy sources and learned fighting! But we never were a warlike race.
On his screen a beautiful young women is replacing the battle, the ships AI.
"Admiral, her Highness is on board and the medical officer is ready to take her to her stasis capsule."
His glance is drifting over the bridge. 'A fine crew - our best', he thinks.
Then he speaks "AI, open a ship wide channel. Attention crew!! We are leaving our home system in the hope of finding a new home and allies to retake our world and the colonies we have lost! We will come back and rescue the people we have to leave behind. The war is lost, but we have a future. All hands man your stations! For her Highness! Tadaki out! Helm, plot a course out of the system. Com, open a channel to the destroyers, Highness Gift and Highness Duty."
The com officer "Admiral, the captains of the Highness Gift and Highness Duty."
The images of the captains replace the view of Tasis, his home world, on the main screen.
"Captains I'm counting on you to escort us out of the system."
The captain of the Highness Gift: "Admiral, I promise we will take you out of the system."
The captain of the Highness Duty: "Yes, Admiral, and even though it'll cost us all our lives you will be leaving this system."
They salute with the fist over their hearts and say: "For her Highness!"
The Admiral returns the salute as the helm tells him that the course is entered.
"Captains keep us save! Tadaki out! Control are all stations green?"
"Yes Admiral, all stations green!"
"Helm bring us out!"

As the "Heavy Duty" flies to the edge of the system, the Kaltora Empire destroys the rest of the Defence fleet from Tasis and overruns the ground troops.

3 hours later transport ship "Heavy Duty" - edge of the System:

Helm "Admiral, 10 minutes to take us out of the gravitation field of the sun."

Draidis: "The enemy will be in weapon range in 5 minutes. The Gift and Duty are taking rear position to cover us."
Admiral Tadaki: "Helm, bring us to warp as soon you can."

He silently watches how the distance between his ships and the enemy cruisers is constantly getting smaller.
Then the time has come: the enemy fast cruisers are opening the fire. The laserbeams open fire against all 3 ships, to take out their engines.

Control: "Shields holding at 60%, no damage."

Draidis: "The Gift and the Duty are returning fire."

Helm: "4 minutes to warp."

Com "The Gift sends that they have minimal damage on her rear weapons."
Admiral Tadaki: "Helm, evasive manoeuvres!"

During the next minutes the ships are turning fire on each other, as the "Heavy Duty", Highness Gift and Highness Duty are running to the edge of the Gravitation field.
Control "Shields are at 20%, they can't take much more."

Helm "30 seconds to warp."

Draidis "Sir the Duty is destroyed."

As Tadaki hears the report of the loss of Highness Duty, he is thinking: Another 50 people dead - how much more before we can live in peace?

Just at that moment the "Heavy Duty" and Gift engage their warp drives, the enemy is firing. The shields fail and the beams hit the main engine room of the "Heavy Duty" and overloads the warp reactor. A bright flash is the only thing one can see from the position of the enemy ship. Just small pieces of wreckage are left.