I could feel the strain of the inertial and gravitic fields as I jinked the Athame hard. I was barely in time. Cherenkov light filled the cabin from the lower ports as the cabin lights brightened and then failed. I glanced down and saw the lightning like bolts of blue and green pass below the ship. Even the near miss was devastating. Alarms shrieked as sparks and flame leapt from the control surfaces and wire ways. The stasis and gravitic fields fluctuated wildly subjecting us to pummeling from the acceleration and squirming nausea as the gravitic fields ran squeezing fingers through our bodies. The cabin filled with smoke and then we tumbled out of jump just as the drive failed and the Athame tumbled through real space trailing smoke. Sally had screamed once as the assault damaged the ship but managed to reach under her panel and activate the emergency repair systems. A glance at the panel told me we would be waiting quite a while for them to accomplish much of anything. "Sally, have them concentrate on the life-support to try and clear this smoke and ozone before we cough ourselves to death." "I'm trying, Captain. They took damage also. I'm working on it now." She unstrapped and floated out of the seat before pushing off the ceiling heading aft to the engineering spaces. I hadn't realized we were in free-fall until that point and I wondered where Sally had picked up the ability to move so well under such conditions. Coughing frequently Lady Silver managed to get out a question. "What was that thing, Captain?" "Something that never should be fired from a ship and I hope that they are in as much trouble as we are." "Trouble? We are sitting ducks like this," she said in a strained voice. Turning I looked at her as I started to unstrap to go help Sally with Damage Control. "There are good things and bad things about this situation, Lady. I floated out of my seat and caught a handhold on the ceiling. "And those are, Captain?" "Bad point one. They should not have been able to find us in Jump Space. That is supposed to be impossible because of the quantum nature of those kinds of anomalies. Bad point two. The secondary effects of a near miss of that weapon are pretty spectacular as you can see for yourself." "So what are the good points?" "Good point one. I was able to maneuver enough to create a kink in the jump space tunnel that was sufficient to keep the tunnel from leading that beam right too us or we wouldn't be around to be having this conversation. Good point two. That was an anti-matter particle beam weapon. No sane Navy fires one of those from a vessel because the effects to the ship firing it are almost as bad as it is to the target they are shooting at. So they are in similar straights to us." I thought for a moment. "Someone has a real ego and enough clout to have that kind of weapon installed. I'm willing to bet they are not real happy about learning what happens when you fire something like that." As I started aft I continued, "And because of the nature of Jump Space we are not going to be near each other here in Real Space." "You and the Iskar unstrap if you can and try to get down near one of the ventilation ducts. The smoke and smell will be a little more tolerable there until we can get repairs effected." A lot of damage had been done to the Athame. I hoped between Sally, me and the repair systems we could get the ship to a point we could make it to someplace where we could have more sophisticated repairs done. I also hoped that the damage to the ship firing that weapon was worse than what it had done to us.