Thanks for all the replies everyone. Joshua was talking to his daughter Cynthia and brother Mackenzie, when Ulrich entered the otherwise empty room. Peenk, Mala, and Nani had taken Boz back to his mother for his feeding. "Still talking I see!" Ulrich quipped. "Ulrich, meet my former identical twin brother, Mackenzie, and my daughter, Cynthia." "Oooo, nice stripe up the legs!" Cyn said, staring at the broken red stripe that ran up the legs of the man's pants. Ulrich glanced over at Joshua with amusement. "I think you need to explain to my daughter what that is," The older of the two Kirk brothers said. "I think so too. She's going to need to know this when she gets here," Turning to the screen, he smiled at the girl. "Miss Kirk, see that stripe on your fathers pants? That is a fashion accessory. This broken red stripe on mine is not. This is the Corellian Blood Stripe, First Class. It is the highest honor that the Corellian people can bestow upon one of our own," Cynthia nodded. It was clear that she was interested in what the man had to say. "I have two of these. My brother K'Shee has one, and two Second Class as well." "For bravery under fire?" Mackenzie said. "No!" The Corellian man said quickly. "Anyone can be brave under fire. This is for walking into a situation where you know there's very little chance of you coming out alive." "Really?" The girl said with a smile. "What did you do to get yours?" "I was given the task of taking a crippled Home One class Starcruiser, and I was given a company of Stormtroopers to do it. Which is what I did. I Brought half my men aboard as close to the engineering section as I could. The other half were given the task of taking the bridge. This gave us control of the ship. We threatened to expell the atmosphere into space if the crew didn't surrender." "Wow. Did you lose many men?" Cyn asked. "About a quarter. After the ship was secured, I gave the ok for a prize crew to be brought aboard," Ulrich shook his head slowly. "That was when I was given the order to execute all Fifty thousand prisoners." "What did you do?" Mackenzie asked, staring at the man suspiciously. "Why, I rearmed the crew and helped them take their ship back!" Ulrich grinned at the others. "You should have seen the looks on the faces of the prisoners in the ship's hold, when I entered with three of my people, all of us pushing bins full of blasters. I told the Alliance captain what was happening. In fifteen minutes, we'd taken the ship back." "I bet your Stormtroopers were surprised," Cynthia said. "Not as surprised as the crews of the two Stardestroyers on station. You see, their captains had already cancelled the battle stations status. Suddenly they found all the guns on the Star Cruiser powering up. They never stood a chance. Help from the Alliance arrived an hour later. Of course, as far as the Empire was concerned, we were all killed. It wasn't until the Corellian government was giving me my other Blood Stripe for the capture of an Imperial battle station when the Alliance took coruscant from the Empire that they found out about it." "So you were given this Blood Stripe for taking both sides in the same battle?" Mackenzie said, laughing. "Hey!" The former Stormtrooper interrupted him. "What could be more Corellian than that?" "Daddy?" Joshua's daughter cut in. "We have to go. It's game time." "Ok, you go kick some ass then!" Then turning to his brother, he went on. "And I mean that figuratively, Mack!" "Ok, ok! I have not taught these girls to play dirty." "Yeah!" Cyn said as she was moving to switch the comm station off. "He's just taught us to take no prisoners!" She grinned as the signal was cut. V'reenda shook her head as she walked down the passage on USS Excalibur. "So you're saying that the crew didn't desert, they were ordered to jump ship by this Captain Mackie." "Yes," Joshua Kirk told her as they stepped into a turbolift. "Which put hundreds of Federation spies inside the Republic!" The woman said with a smirk. "Well, it's not like it was a one way exchange. Some of the crew helped the Republic navy develop the weapons that are ending this war with the Empire." "What kinds of weapons?" V'reenda aske curiously. "A faster than light fighter, and one hell of a kinetic torpedo," Glancing over to his cousin, Joshua shrugged. "For better or worse, the way you people fight wars is over. Planetary shields will not stand up to these torpedoes." "Which means that no world is safe," Kirk's cousin said after a moments contemplation. "It would be suicide to start a war, because our worlds would be just as much at risk as our enemies." "Exactly," Kirk said. He then went on. "In order to win a war, one side would have to take out most, if not all, of the opposing forces ships. And I don't think that is possible," The lift's doors opened, and they stepped onto the brige. "Weapon's on the bridge!" Lt Daultry said loudly. "Lt Daultry, thank you," Ami said, cutting him off before turning to V'reenda. "Welcome aboard Excalibur, niece. What do you think of her?" "It's an amazing ship," She told her. "I especially found the food replicator to be interesting. That is until Joshua here ordered some Corellian food." "I don't see what you people here have against Corellian food!" Kirk said emphatically. "We love it!" "We?" V'reenda began eyeing her aunt. "Hell yeah!" Ami told her. "It's just like what we eat on Mars. Good old fashioned American food." "Ugh. You people are insane then," The Sith shook her head in disgust. "Either that, or you have no sense of taste." "They have no sense of taste," Daultry muttered under his breath. Commander Wu spun about in the captain's chair and faced her weapons control officer. "Lt Daultry! You are English, a people famed for their bad food." "True commander!" The man smiled smugly. "And that's why we set out to conquer the world. We were looking for better food." "And now most of the restaurants in London sell either French or Indian food!" Kirk said with a grin. "Indian food I can handle, but that French stuff is revolting." "There is nothing wrong with French food," Ami cut in. "You just don't like it because it can't be used to cut through hull plating." "What ever," Joshua said. "Is Captain Mitchell in his ready room?" "No, he was in engineering, but he's on his way back, so you two can go in and wait for him." Five minutes later, Gavin Mitchell stepped into his ready room and greeted V'reenda. "We have something for you," He told her. "It's why I asked Joshua to bring you up to Excalibur." "V'reenda," Joshua said as they stepped away from the windows where they'd been viewing Coruscant as it slowly spun under them. "They were able to recover some of the data on the computer core from King George V. And the last entry was made by your mother. It's a message to you." V'reenda watched as her mother, Keeda, played with a baby that floated in a large clear tube. The baby, of course, was herself. The woman would laugh and wave at her. Soon though, the child's eyes closed and she slept. With a shaking hand, Keeda turned the stasis field on and the baby froze in time. After staring at her daughter a few seconds longer, she turned to the camera. "I am Keeda Wu. Daughter of Aradda and Lorin, and wife of Mark Wu, of the line of General Annalee Tanaka. If you are viewing this my daughter, then that means you've been found. I'm sorry I couldn't take you with me, but when I leave here, I know that I will most likely die," V'reenda's chest tightened. "You see, the Rakata have been hunting us for ten months. They somehow knew that we, unlike the Hirohito and the Lincoln, had Family members on board. The bastards are damned sure patient. We've figured the other two ships came out of the wormhole about one hundred thirty thousand years ago. It was they who seeded this galaxy with it's Humans and Melani." "And more. We've seen that the Rakatans have been experimenting on their Human slaves, producing new breeds. Races like the Twi'leks and the Devaronians. There was a blue skinned group that they say escaped a few hundred years ago. They could be the Chiss. These Rakatans are an evil bunch! They are so infected with this energy field that envelops this galaxy, the Force. But unfortunately, it's with the dark side." "I put you in this stasis tube because of something your father's cousin, Joshua, told us a few years ago. He said that even the best sensors cannot detect a stasis field. He said that's how they were able to get close enough to steal that damned Dominion battleship. So to hide you from the enemy, I've put you outside time." "I should have left when the three hundred Soldier class split away. They knew that it was they the monsters were after. They wanted to create a race of slave soldiers. I guess nobody told them that's how they came into being. And let's not forget what happened to their creators: dead at the hands of those they would make slaves." "Ah, but you are not a simple Soldier class, my girl. You are a General. And as such, I have booby trapped this tube. If a Rakatan enters this part of the ship, a bomb will explode. As much as I hate to do it, I can't let them get you. It will also detonate if the field collapses and there is nobody here to rescue you. I will not have you die in agony here, alone. And I could not bring myself to kill you outright like Mike and Linda Dederich did to their twins. I will give you a chance. Something tells me that I must do this. Maybe it's the good side of this Force." "Well, I must go my daughter. Maybe we will meet again in the next world. Please forgive me. Forgive me Cynthia Lorin Wu," That was when the recording ended. "Why didn't she cry?" V'reenda asked Joshua, angrily. "She was leaving her baby, and she didn't cry!" "The Kouree, like the Klingons, can't cry," He told her. "It's not that she will not, but that she can't." "Oh," V'reenda said quietly before asking Kirk another question. "When she mentioned her husband's cousin Joshua, she was talking about you, wasn't she?" "Yes. I was the one who told her about the inability of sensors to detect a stasis field." "Then you helped my mother save my life," The Sith smiled slightly. "I owe you."