A year had passed since the u.s. government had discovered the orphaned space whale and her human captain. When her story hit the news nets, a huge outpouring of public sentiment was the result. Something about the story of a last, lone survivor of an attempted genocide had spoken deeply to the hearts and souls of the human race.

Commander Jane lynch had been attached to Starlight and Sam as a tactical advisor and unofficial second in command. For a year, Sam had been intensively trained in three dimensional tactics, ship tactics and theoretical space warfare. He had proven to be a master strategist, the synergistic link between him and his ship allowed for a level of intuitive ability that was unmatched anywhere in the world.

Coupled with that, a contingent of the cream of the special forces crop had been specifically trained and outfitted for extravehicular ejection and boarding. Using a mixture of Starchild biotechnology and good old fashioned human bloody mindedness, a whole new generation of weapons had been quickly developed. Pulse rifles that could break down organic material, plasma throwers that could destabilize metallic bonds, and even a cannon based on the hyperspace jump apparatus that could rip spacecraft apart. The physics breakthroughs were also incredible, they had developed graviton technology into a weapon called the Subspace Area Denial field, essentially freezing nonorganic ships in space and draining their electrical energy. Essentially, it was a small, localized singularity that was cycled in and out of hyperspace at rapid speeds, altering the fundamental fabric of space time, making technologically based ship movement impossible, but leaving organic ship, like the Starchildren, unaffected.

These weapons had been painlessly grafted to Starlight’s hull, drastically increasing her defensive capabilities. Starlight, through her human partner, expressed an extreme gratitude for all that the humans had done for her. Indeed, the partnership between Starchild and human had grow even deeper; the humans had graciously offered their solar system as a new nursery system if she ever found more of her kind. And what a system! A young main sequence star to warm them, several large gas giants to nourish them, the sol system was a paradise!

But today was the day. Today, starlight was strong enough to leave the surface. After taking on her ships complement of fifty hardened warriors and their military advisor, Sam went to the bridge and began to commune with his partner. Slowly, silently, the space whale lifted off to the roaring approval of crowds of humans the world over. She was their darling, their mascot. Humanities little sister. The whole world had united in support of her and her mission of vengeance.

After a brief orbital on load of supplies, she turned towards the blackness of space and jumped towards the last known pod sanctuaries. This process had taken a day.

Unbeknownst to the humans, a lone observation station behind the moon was entering a panic. Alarms were blaring and the one Hawbran observer was frantically trying to message the galactic senate, his wings buzzing and appendages gesticulating wildly. The message that got out would spell a radical change for galactic politics for all time; “the humans are loose! The humans are loose! Burning sky, they’re loose!”