STARDATE 4470727
The expedition was well underway, weeks into Flesher Space. They ships had been traveling in zig-zags, at low speeds, to avoid Flesher patrols in hyper-space. The result was long days of silence. No communication from the homeworld. Or any world. Just the incessant buzz of creatures communicated through mental-neural links. They had spent days screening the sector, searching for Zolkaan, but to no avail. They had no charts, no way of researching Flesher patters, no way of possibly finding the darn artifact in time...
The only bright spot of their voyage was that hopefully, or luckily, the lack of Flesher scouts meant they hadn't adapted to their stealth systems, and hadn't detected them on short-wave graviton scans.
Graviton scans.
Of course! That was it! Short wave graviton scans were undetectable by most Flesher units. Of course, there were the giant communicator Fleshers, but they were far away from their positions, on the edges of the rapidly expanding Flesher space. It was their only hope of achieving their mission in time to actually save anyone's life. Otherwise, they, and billions of Alteriians would undoubtedly die.
STARDATE 4470826
Racheiylla warily eyed her energy-enhanced sword, hoping that they'd never need to be used. Thought passed through her mind agonizingly slowly. There was a picture in her mind of a young marine, stabbed to death by a thick undergrowth of vines. An image, brief and horrific, of a dart clearing the head off one of her commanders.
They had spent two days trekking through the boiling jungles of Zollkan, a planet smaller than Pluto. A tiny gas-covered planet thick with vegetation, poison, and predator plants. Racheiylla had already lost more than 30 marines to the native vegetation, very much less any Fleshers they had encountered.
They didn't have much time left.
STARDATE 4470911
They had found it. The tiny black, polished stone... within an ancient temple, of unknown design, it rested undisturbed, surrounded by some sort of magical force-field, which prevented the vegetation from consuming the temple whole. Racheiylla was able to disable the force-field with the use of their Rolxaan... she and her two dozen surviving compatriots.
They had to make it somehow, back to the ships... To transport this tiny rock home. To vault through Flesher space and onto Vertrus, without Verax realizing what they had done.
Vault... vault through space... it was crazy, but for a second time, the Lieutenant Commander had an idea.