The Nietzsche was to meet up with the Independent forces at a secret location two days after the failed attempted to destroy Osirus. With the small number of Browncoats that had actually managed to get aboard, Christine Wilkins was the official ranking officer on the ship. As she had no experience in commanding a ship of any sort, however, it fell to Jason to fill the role of ship’s Captain.

While there was no public admission of the near destruction of the planet Osirus, the Cortex was ablaze with news that the planet Shadow has been expelled from the Alliance of Planets. Now that several of the most deadly weapons systems ever developed were in the hands of the separatist, the Alliance Parliament had apparently decided it was better to let one or two planets go rather than press the issue. These details, of course, were conspicuously absent from the media coverage. Rather, several Core world politicians took the opportunity to grandstand and speak of how much of an embarrassment this was to the people of Shadow, as if it were somehow a punishment that they were no long part of the Alliance. As it now stood, votes where still in progress to expel Hera as well, and about a dozen moons that had aligned with the two larger planets. As a result of this, the Browncoats on the ship were in high spirits as it made it’s way back out to the Rim.

In contrast to the festive mood of the Browncoat soldiers, was that of the former crew of the Shire. All of them had lost a home at least once before, and having to go through the experience again was no easier. Their depression was particularly acute as they picked through the debris of their destroyed ship. Under different circumstances, Jason and Sarah would have found it technically interesting that the double bulkhead that surrounded the crew cabins managed to keep their contents relatively intact, despite the near total destruction of the surrounding ship. This bit of technical trivia, however, seemed of little consequence other than that it allowed m