The star GS-1522 is, as stars go, a fairly unremarkable one. A red giant somewhere on the edge of the Perseus Spiral Arm, it may once have been orbited by a system of planets but was now home only to a wide belt of asteroids, all of them either barren of valuable resources or completely mined out. The only thing worth noting about the otherwise desolate star was the presence of a thick artificial ring deep within the belt, dotted with various constructs and protrusions: a naval stardock, where the warships of the Third Terran Empire occasionally stopped for resupply and refitting during their parsecs-long patrols. Several such ships were there now, one of them a long and sturdily-built destroyer stretching a quarter of a mile from stem to stern, hull studded with rows of gunports, huge main gun blending neatly into the form of the blade-like prow. The harsh red light from GS-1522 shone on the vessel’s hull and illuminated its nameplate, itself a very hefty piece of metal, carved with metres-tall letters: DURENDAL.
Various tiny shapes bustled around it; robots removing and replacing hull panels and the systems underneath them. Occasionally one would float away from the ship and over to one of the six long arms that anchored the battleship to the stardock, there to get a piece of equipment or to shut down and recharge. One of the robots was doing just that, leaving the ship behind it and heading for its berth. Its path took it close to the arm's side, or rather it would have done had it not hit something and bounced off. It span away in a brief daze, then reoriented itself and continued on its way. Because of its fairly simple programming, the obstruction didn't bother it in the slightest, even though a more advanced brain would doubtless have been slightly worried by the fact that there didn't seem to have been anything there.
Despite appearances however, there was indeed something there: another starship, much smaller than the Durendal, but in its way no less deadly. This nimble corvette could easily outpace the destroyer, and could also render itself completely invisible, as it was now doing. Only the most advanced sensor suite could detect the faintest trace of the ship when thus cloaked, and the version of that suite that could be fitted on board ships like the Durendal was still in the experimental stages.
Secure in its concealment, the vessel clung with artificial gravity to the stardock's arm, silently waiting.
The ship's cockpit was shrouded in shadow, the lights off so as not to disrupt the complex photon fields that kept it physically invisible. Quietly seated in the darkness was a lithe and attractive woman, her black-and-orange tail swishing lazily behind her, her pointed ears twitching subconsciously to track tiny sounds around her, her orange-and-white-furred face faintly illuminated by the head-up display projected on the inside of the transparent metal viewscreen. Figures and data flashed by, almost too fast for the untrained eye to read. She took it all in as casually as if she were reading a newspaper. She was briefly distracted by a small light on the console before her, and extended a slender arm forward to press the button next to it. There was a click and a faint hiss as an intercom was roused into life.
"Is everything good, Isis?" a voice spoke. It was the voice of a male, not overly deep, very self-confident. The voice of one who is at his ease under pressure.
"All systems are green," the woman named Isis replied. "Cloak is running at full capacity, and the hacking protocols are interlaced. You're good to go. Good luck, Las."
"Time to go to work, then."
Elsewhere within the ship, the man called Las removed his gloved finger from the airlock intercom and operated the keypad adjacent. There was a distinctive hiss that slowly faded into inaudibility as the air was pumped out of the room, and a subtle shift of sensation in the pit of his stomach let Las know that the room's gravity was now also absent. The airlock's environment was now virtually identical to that of the vacuum outside. The man clambered along handles built into the wall, bringing him drifting up to the outer door. He unlocked and opened it, before stepping out into space.

Most starship maintenance units aren't especially smart robots. They don't need to be, being intended to perform a specific range of tasks and procedures, and are therefore programmed with only a very specific range of information, almost all of it pertaining to starships and maintaining them. They don't trouble themselves with anything outside their sphere of knowledge, mostly because they lack the capacity. Thus, the maintenance robots working on the Durendal's lower hangar bay didn't trouble themselves with the humanoid figure hanging tightly onto one of them. They briefly examined the red and white spacesuit, the scarlet cape and the customised pistols. They calmly watched as the figure turned around and pushed off from the robot it had been clinging to, heading for the hangar's interior. They concluded that the man wasn't impeding their work and simply ignored him, carrying on with their appointed tasks as if nothing had happened. As far as they were concerned, nothing had happened. The limited lexicon available to them didn't include the term 'space pirate'.
However, the rather larger lexicon available to the hitchhiking stranger did include the term 'space pirate', since he was one, and quite a notorious one too. The mere mention of the name 'Laszlo Hadron' would command the ire of many an Imperial police officer or starship captain - and the respect of many a seedy denizen of the galaxy's criminal underworld. It would be fair to say that he had a colourful reputation, that he was a criminal and an inveterate fugitive from justice. It would not, however, be fair to say that he was a bad person, or so Laszlo himself would have you believe. If called to account for his "career", he would offer the explanation (or excuse) that a person somehow had to make a living with the skills life had given them, and his respective talents invariably lay on the wrong side of the law. For example, infiltrating an Imperial warship and sabotaging the sensor array.
The array in question was an abnormally powerful one for this class of destroyer, all because of him. The Durendal was under the command of a man named Elgar Humboldt, a highly decorated officer and a name cursed by many a pirate or outlaw. He was especially interested in apprehending Laszlo, thanks partially to his prodigious criminal career, but mostly to a particularly sticky shared history between them. Laszlo was not a man remembered with much fondness by Captain Humboldt.
As much as Humboldt wanted Laszlo's head, however, Laszlo himself wanted it even more, and was thus not eager to let his edge slip away. With this goal in mind, he had come to interfere with the Durendal's overhaul. He had the plan, he had the know-how, and he had the opportunity. Now he just had to hope he had luck on his side as well.

The corridor was filled with a soft warbling as a small spherical robot hovered through it, its gravitic drive holding it five feet above the floor. Articulated claws and tools on its spindly arms gently twitched and turned, and its single glowing eye moved around the machine's body. The eye carefully scrutinised every nook and cranny of the corridor, each system and panel examined and laid bare by its battery of advanced nanoprocessors. Nothing escaped the robot's notice, not even...
A nearby lift suddenly activated, and the drone's eye sped around to focus on it. At quantum speed, it checked today's work schedule, and confirmed that no operations below this deck were planned for today. The occupant of the lift was trespassing! It drifted smartly over the doors and floated before them, ready to get a good look at the intruder. Insofar as it could be, it was filled with anticipation. There was a soft "bing" as the doors slid open, and... Nothing. Not a proverbial sausage. The robot looked around the small chamber, with a sense of anticlimax and faint disappointment. The chamber was empty, completely pristine. It hovered into the lift, peering about carefully. All this served to do was to confirm the absence of an intruder.
So engrossed in its futile search was the robot that it didn't notice the sounds of someone moving very quietly in the corridor outside. It gave up and drifted out of the lift, and was somewhat surprised to be confronted by the corridor's occupant.
A tall and athletically built man stood before the robot, clad in a well-fitting armoured spacesuit coloured in white and red, the same bright scarlet as the cape that hung from his shoulders. His face bore an impeccably styled beard, sideburns descending from short brown hair, tracing the line of his jaw and chin before coming to frame the cocksure smirk that currently served as his mouth. One eyebrow sat slightly higher than the other, the muscles so used to creating such an expression that by now his face fell naturally into it.
The robot absorbed all this information in half the blink of an eye, but before it could finish notifying anyone the figure's hand darted to his belt and drew a sleek black pistol. There was a flash of light...

The Durendal's bridge was a wide round room, sealed under a huge transparent dome constructed of perspirion alloy. Set into the base of the dome was a plain grey border, bearing a series of evenly spaced consoles. As it reached the aft end of the room it curved upward to encompass the frames of three doors. Two of them led to elevators, and the central one led to the captain's quarters. Lying two metres in from the room's edge was a shallow pit, gentle slopes leading into it from the encircling platform. The pit was host to a wide table, its surface standing at about waist height and glowing softly. Ordinarily the table's surface would project into the air a large three-dimensional map of the area surrounding the Durendal, or a map of the known galaxy and the Empire. For now, however, it created a complex tracery of lines: a wireframe model of the destroyer. Statistics and data flashed around it as information was called up and filed away by the team of technicians and engineers milling busily around. Much of the bridge lay partially disassembled; the consoles' innards pulled delicately apart and assorted instruments and tools scattered haphazardly about the place. The scintillating holographic network of vertices hovering in the air occasionally flickered and twitched, the power fluctuating slightly under the strain of shipwide maintenance.
One technician stood over the central holo-projector, tapping away at one of the panels set into it. Every now and then he glanced up at the hologram, before returning his attention to his typing. He called up yet another set of figures and pored over them. He squinted slightly in confusion, and carefully reread some of the data.
That couldn't be right. The observation drones patrolling the ship were very stable designs, they didn't just explode. But the data was clear: one of them had become aware of an intruder, had commenced an investigation, and then died a minute or two later.
The technician considered this. The ship's surveillance network was offline, so he couldn't just check the camera records, and whatever the anomaly was didn't seem to like observation drones very much, so sending another one might be a bad idea... hmmm...
Accidents did happen, he knew that, but rarely for no apparent reason. The only other option was virtually impossible. No-one unauthorised could get past the shipyard's security... could they?

A matter of minutes later, the technician strode towards the corridor where the observation drone had been lost. The deck was empty. Nothing seemed amiss thus far.
The technician turned a corner and saw the observation drone's wreckage, splayed in fragments on the deck plating. He walked up to it and knelt down to peer at the smouldering remains. He removed a magnetic screwdriver from his pocket and poked at the erstwhile drone. There was an occasional angry fizzle as what was left of the power generator randomly discharged, and the six arms twitched intermittently. The technician stood up, scratching his head in confusion. Judging by the evidence, the robot appeared to have been shot. This was serious. The technician raised his wrist and reached a finger for his wrist-panel's intercom button. There was a small click, but not the click usually made by the intercom. It was an altogether nastier sound. The edge of a hollow cylindrical object pressed gently against his temple.
"Hello there," a not-overly-deep male voice spoke. "Now, this gun’s charged and loaded, so let’s not do anything silly, eh?"
     The technician didn't respond, except to drop his screwdriver. He slowly raised his trembling arms.
"Now then, I need to get to this ship's computer core, preferably with a minimum of fuss. You seem like a smart fellow, so I hope you'll cooperate and tell me how to do so. If you won’t..."
The technician, who hadn't dared breathe more than a little, drew a shuddering breath and spoke, in a quavering voice.
"T-take the lift to d-deck 5 and enter the v-vent system in environmental control." He swallowed and tried to regulate his breathing, "It’s adjacent to the core, so you should be able to find your way okay."
     "Ah, lovely, thank you for the help! Now then, if you'll excuse me..." The cylinder was removed from the technician's temple. He breathed a sigh of relief and-- WHACK!! The technician slumped to the floor next to the destroyed robot, unconscious from the sudden pistol-whipping. The practiced blow wasn't severe, but Laszlo had no time to be worrying too much about that. He turned back toward the lift and pressed the call button. The doors slid smoothly open and he entered, pressing a button to begin his ascent.

The Durendal's computer core was a large structure, a tree trunk-like pillar directly under the bridge. It stood in a huge vault the size of an office block, where various gantries and lifts encircled it like vines. One such lift led to the ceiling, which also served as the floor of Mainframe Access. This room was much more modest, merely the size of a warehouse, and allowed suitably trained personnel to examine and repair the computer's programming and database. Several such personnel were working on it now, sitting at various terminals built into a round skirt-like protrusion encircling the pillar. A few guards paced the room half-heartedly, conducting casual conversation, eating their lunches and generally lounging. In any case, they didn't pay too much attention as the lift to the mainframe superstructure descended.
They did pay attention, however, to the small cylindrical object that was flung through the resulting hole. It curved through the air in a steep arc, all the room's occupants' eyes following it, before it came clattering and spinning to a halt in the middle of the room. The technicians and guards continued to silently stare at it, out of both apprehension and curiosity. There was a tiny metallic "kling", and a low hissing as a thick red-tinted smoke poured generously out of the object, spreading languidly across the floor and up into the air.
The reaction from the guards was virtually immediate. With choked gasps and an occasional cry of alarm they herded the technicians out of the room, all the while desperately clutching their hands over their mouths and noses. As the last guard exited the room he jabbed a finger into the door control panel. The door shut and locked itself fast. A faint pneumatic hiss indicated to anyone listening that it was now completely sealed, and thus totally gas-tight. Nothing was getting out... or in.
Laszlo leant on the lift's railing as it ascended back into Mainframe Access. By now, the smoke grenade had filled most of the room with a thick scarlet fog. Laszlo strode unconcernedly forward into the thickest of the murk, waved some of it aside and stooped down, picking up the grenade that was still merrily belching its supposedly noxious contents. He lifted it out of the cloud and twisted the top slightly, eliciting another small "kling" as it switched off. The flow of gas stopped as suddenly it had begun, and Laszlo smirked. To think that a group of trained Imperial soldiers could be fooled by something he'd purloined from a film set! He walked towards a console and seated himself, brushing more of the mist away. He tapped a few letters into the keyboard, and grinned a little more. His diversion had been so effective that some techie hadn't even had a chance to log out! Capitalising on his good fortune he got to work. He called up sensor reports and communications frequencies. No ship ever switched all its systems off, at least not voluntarily. He entered a specific set of parameters and... there. A faint signal, barely enough to be detected unless you were looking for it. He subtly strengthened the receiver, skimming the barest sliver of power from all other active systems, and was able to establish a connection. The signal's programming interfaced with that of the ship, and voila! His own ship’s hacking protocols were linked to the Durendal’s systems. With it in place, Laszlo could do what he liked to the ship's software, and no-one, not the maintenance crews, not the computer itself, would bat an eyelid. He began entering several long sequences of commands, and within a few minutes leaned back satisfied. The bulk of his new code was in place, and after a brief sensor recalibration the Durendal would be totally blind to Laszlo's ship. As he waited his gaze fell upon the half-eaten sandwich, which he picked up. He lifted the bread and inspected its contents, pulled a face and put it back down again. Laszlo preferred not to eat anything that had come off an animal with more than six legs.
The computer terminal emitted a soft chime and Laszlo read the displayed status report. Everything was working just as he planned. He finished off his work and made to leave, but paused as something else caught his eye. He peered once again at the terminal screen.
Apparently the Durendal had recently taken delivery of a top-secret object. The report didn't go into specifics, but in spite (or perhaps because) of this Laszlo's curiosity was piqued. He had done what he'd come to do, and it was dangerous to linger... but he could never resist a bit of mystery.

The technicians clustering around the door were positively abuzz with anticipation and excitement. This kind of work almost never entailed anything quite so exciting as a gas grenade attack, not even a small one. Wild theories and speculation rippled through the crowd, various attempts to justify the attack being postulated and shot down in rapid order. The guards refused to get drawn in, their soldier backgrounds had kicked in the moment the grenade had started disgorging smoke.
It had been a few minutes since the room had been evacuated and since one of the guards had sent one of the technicians to ascertain whether the emergency air filter systems were working yet. Assuming he could keep a fair pace, it would be about now that he would return. And indeed, the runner came panting back down the corridor. The low murmur of conversation dissipated expectantly, as the lead guard moved through the crowd.
"Well? Can we flush the air?" he asked tersely.
The technician came to a halt and, not used to any kind of running, panted deeply to regain some of his breath.
"I... I checked with... the foreman... he says the... air drain should be... up and running..."
The guard turned on his heel and drew back up to the door control panel, jabbing another button. From inside the room came a loud hiss and a red light appeared on the control panel. The hiss slowly dwindled into nothing, and eventually grew loud again. The red light turned green, indicating that the room was once again safe to enter. The guard unsealed the door, opened it and charged through, stun pistol at the ready...
His careful aim was rewarded with an empty room. Not content with simply being devoid of the red gas, the room also contained no gas grenade, or any unconscious intruders that might have thrown said projectile. The room was almost exactly as they had left it.
The crowd at the door slowly filed in, with a general air of disappointment and vague embarrassment. A few cursory searches were made, but the only things present other than them were the abandoned sandwich and a few errant crumbs.
The guard holstered his pistol and scratched his head. He knew he'd seen a grenade, and so had everyone else... yet here they were, totally grenade-less.
"Um, guys..."
     Everyone turned to face the technician who had spoken, who was looking up at the air vent with a degree of confusion. The cover and its securing bolts lay untidily on the floor beneath it.
"I could be wrong about this, but... wasn't that grille closed when we left the room?"

The main room of the captain's quarters was a good-sized circular room, with a spartan interior. One corridor led to the bridge, and another led to a similarly spartan bedroom. In the middle was a desk with an attached computer terminal and a scale model of the ship, along the walls were portraits and occasional bookshelves, but besides that the room was bare. The only other thing worth noting about the room was a grille, covering an airvent that a suitably determined (not to mention slim) individual could crawl through.
A curious spindly tool came out of the slats of the grille and set about unfastening the bolts. As they came free the bolts landed with a clatter, soon followed by the grille itself, allowing the entrance of a suitably determined (not to mention slim) Laszlo Hadron. He clutched the edges of the hole and pulled himself out, deftly unfurling into a standing position upon his exit. He stretched the kinks and knots out of his muscles and looked around. The report had indicated that the top-secret item in question was small enough to fit in the palm of one's hand, and knowing Captain Humboldt Laszlo knew that he would only entrust it to his own hand. He moved over to the desk and opened the drawers in sequence. Nothing terribly interesting; mostly reports, paperwork, photos of friends and loved ones... ah-ha!
Laszlo rummaged in the bottom-right drawer and removed an object. It was a datacell: a thin square object the size and thickness of a large coin, consisting of a metal rim around a crystal sheet. This sheet was perfectly transparent when empty, but could store a considerable amount of information when full, the data laser-etched into scintillating, labyrinthine patterns within the crystal. It was the standard medium of computer storage throughout the Empire and thus was manufactured in a wide range of sizes, designs and colours. This particular one was fairly mundane to look at; a small fifty-terabyte model with the rim painted in the dull gunmetal grey favoured by the Imperial military. The rim also had a neatly-drilled hole in it through which a thin chain had been threaded.
To the untrained senses, there was nothing to indicate that this was anything but an ordinary datacell. Laszlo's senses, however, which combined over twenty years' worth of incisive perception and finely honed avarice, could tell that this cell could be very valuable to the right person... or indeed the wrong one. He grinned once more and tossed the datacell into the air. As it descended he nimbly snatched it from the air and slipped it into a pouch on his belt. This made for a neat little bonus, he thought.

It occurred to Laszlo, as he crawled through the dark and claustrophobic labyrinth that was the Durendal's ventilation network, just how much luck figured in his life. Like today's escapade, for instance. He had intended to get in quietly, sabotage the Durendal's sensors and get out quickly. He was now enacting the third phase of that deceptively simple plan, but thus far it had gone without a hitch. Not only had his insertion gone almost unnoticed and his sabotage even more so, but the freshly purloined datacell represented a potentially highly lucrative opportunity, whether by blackmail, clandestine auction, or any other of a thousand possibilities.
He came upon another grille and trained his de-bolter on it. When the grille was loose, he pushed it open and slid out, unfolding himself as before. He ruminated on the subject of his pirate's luck, and thought to himself that by now he'd usually be running away from guards, or frantically attempting to circumvent a booby trap, or something equally unpleasant. He depressed a button on his vambrace to call up a map of the Durendal. It was odd, he mused as he consulted the series of holographic diagrams, but thus far there hadn't been any alarms, or even a single--
Suddenly the peaceful calm was shattered by a series of blaring klaxons. The striplights in the ceiling flashed red, and a loud voice crackled into life over the intercom.
"This is a Level 1 security alert! An intruder has infiltrated the Durendal! All security personnel to high alert!"
Laszlo's shoulders slumped, and he sighed in frustration. It couldn't have lasted anyway, he told himself. He removed his finger from the map button and drew his pistols before setting off, alarms screaming in his ears. If he had any luck remaining, he wouldn't run into any security teams on the way to the hangar.
He rounded a corner and almost ran straight into a security team coming the other way. It took a moment for the surprise to wear off, another moment for them to take in Laszlo's appearance, and a third moment for it to register that he was likely the intruder. It only took Laszlo one moment to skid to a halt and take off in the other direction. Several stun bolts sizzled past his head and fizzled against the corridor walls, followed closely by the shouts and barked commands of the security team. Laszlo loosed off a few of his own shots, cursing a blue streak as he did. The day was rapidly declining.

The Durendal, like all Greatsword-class destroyers, had three hangar bays: two along the bottom of the ship and another some way behind the bridge, just above the main engines. It was this third hangar that Laszlo was currently skulking through, ducking behind crates and furtively clambering up, down and across girders, trying to keep quiet. Several security guards searched for him, poking around in concealed nooks and crates. They would eventually find their quarry; it was only a matter of time.
Laszlo had originally intended to find a cargo shuttle and fly it out of the hangar, but there was no chance of pulling that off now. Still, it always pays to have a plan B. He stealthily emerged from his hiding place and crept over to a service ladder. About halfway up he paused and hooked his arm around a rung. He depressed the intercom button on his vambrace, connecting him to his ship and Isis, and opened his mouth to speak...
"Alright you, get down off the ladder and hold your hands where I can see 'em!"
Laszlo glanced in the direction at the command, mouth still open. There, stun pistol pointed squarely at the pirate’s head, was a security guard, soon joined by several others. Laszlo closed his mouth and padded carefully down the ladder, raising his hands in the air once at the base. The rest of the security guards in the hangar joined their comrades and pretty soon Laszlo had a total of fourteen pistols pointing at him. He smirked slightly, provocatively.
"What're you so happy about?" one of the guards demanded with a professional surliness.
"Y'know boys and girls, it'd probably only take a single shot to shut down the hangar containment field from here," he replied airily.
The guards shuffled slightly, exchanging confused and uneasy glances, then shook it off and clutched their guns with renewed determination. The pirate was meant to be getting scared, not them!
"That'd kill you! You must be bluffing!" the first guard said.
Laszlo simply raised an eyebrow and grinned a grin that would send a sensible person running for the nearest lead-lined room. “Must I indeed?” he said.
There was a sudden blur of red as Laszlo went for one of his guns, raised it and fired a single shot at the containment field generator, all before any of the guards could react. The plasma bolt struck home, and there was a screaming gale as the air in the hangar met the cold vacuum of space. The guards all desperately grabbed at the nearest heavy object or railing as assorted debris went flying, tumbling out into the void. The huge hangar door eventually slid to with a hollow boom, and the great wind died down. The guards picked themselves up off the floor and dusted off their uniforms. They looked at the place where the pirate had been standing, before being swept out into space. Unless he had titansteel lungs, he was as good as dead out there.

Laszlo didn't have titansteel lungs. He did, however, have a titansteel helmet, which was arguably even better. He also had, slightly less encouragingly, an excellent view of the Durendal's rear, slowly getting smaller, and no way of controlling his motion. He could only hope Isis had heard the business in the hangar.
Suddenly the Durendal’s hangar door started glinting, reflecting a strange pattern of light from behind Laszlo. He turned his head, just in time to see a white mural on a metal grey surface approaching him rapidly. He hit the surface with a loud and untidy clatter, and activated his boots’ grav-clamps before bouncing too far away. He glanced at the mural below him and smiled with relief. It depicted a dragon, two-winged and two-legged, stretching its limbs out and roaring in defiance, the mythical wyvern that lent its name to Laszlo's ship. He directed his glance to the cockpit, where a pointy-eared silhouette was waving to him. He waved back and started towards the airlock. It opened as he approached and he bent his ankle towards the floor of the room presented to him. He pulled his other foot away from the Wyvern's hull and swung into the airlock. The door sealed itself behind him, and a breathable atmosphere joined him. When the room's light turned green, he pressed the button on his vambrace that caused his helmet to fold back into his collar, before opening the inner door. His co-pilot and shipmate stood before him.
"I take it your escape didn't go entirely to plan?" greeted Isis Lagato, tail swishing languidly behind her. She stood a little over half a foot shorter than Laszlo, in a red half-shirt, a pair of serviceable jeans and black fingerless gloves. A utility belt was slung about her waist, her short fur was groomed to a perfect sheen, and her bright red hair was tied in a ponytail.
"Oh, it went to plan alright," Laszlo replied, "just not to Plan A is all."
     Isis shook her head slightly. "The sensor reprogramming counts for nothing, then?" It wasn’t said with malice or reproach, rather with mild resignation. This mission was never likely to have been easy.
"I'm afraid so. But I did find something that may make this raid worthwhile after all."
Laszlo turned and made for the cockpit, Isis following a little way behind, her brow arched in curiosity. Her exact species was difficult to properly define, her DNA being a carefully-built labyrinth of assorted snippets of human and feline genetics. It was all assembled with a definite purpose, but it would only be with diligent conversational prodding that Isis might explain what that purpose had been, and then only with a select few trusted friends. It was safe to say, however, that she had a history.
Laszlo slumped into his seat in the cockpit with a satisfied sigh, as Isis took up her own seat. She began plotting a course out of the system, through the clear tunnel in the asteroid field and towards hinterland space. As the ship's engines thrummed into life, Isis turned her chair to face Laszlo.
"So what did you find on the Durendal, then?" she asked.
"Well, I came across this little trinket..." Laszlo answered, fishing the datacell out of his pouch and tossing it to Isis, whose arm intercepted the chain. She held the pendant between thumb and forefinger, gazing at the crystal centre.
"A datacell... any idea what's on it?" she asked.
"None whatsoever. The report that led me to it didn't say anything about its contents, other than that they’re top-secret and for the eyes of people with quite a high security clearance."
     Isis unlooped the chain from her orange fur-clad limb and inserted the datacell into a slot in one of her consoles. She loaded a cryptography program and attempted to access the cell's information. After a few moments’ cogitating, the computer presented her with an error message. She frowned in puzzlement and pored over the results.
     "Well, the cipher program can’t break through the encryption,” she reported, “and I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like it before. This must be one of the Empire’s top-level codes."
     "Aaah, one of those codes. I’ve heard rumours of such codes being used to guard secrets of galactic importance,” Laszlo mused. “Now I’m really curious."
Isis removed the datacell from the drive and examined it in deep ponderance, as though trying to read it herself. After a moment, an idea seemed to come to her. “I know who can tell us about this," she said. "I think it may be a fine time to pay our friend Mat Dyson a visit."