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Options?"
     
                  "I've been working on that, Captain," Doc spoke up from one of the sensor stations. He had been monitoring the passive sensors and intercepting com traffic. "Corran's EM field is particularly strong and, like most planets, destabilizes near the poles. We could fly up through the charged particle influx and it may mask us long enough to get clear and mesh out of the system." Jason looked at him skeptically, he was certain there would be a picket ship sitting in polar orbit just waiting for them.
     
                  "I concur, Captain," Twingo's voice came over the intercom. As per Omega Force's standard operating procedure during a mission, everyone was on an open com channel. "It's not perfect, but it's better than trying to hang around Corran City until a ship heads back up to orbit. For all we know the spaceport is on lockdown after we were reported."
     
                  "Plot me a course that avoids major population centers," Jason said, not dithering between options while the clock was ticking down. "We're going to have to climb up out of the ground clutter; we can't fly terrain-following all the way to the pole. Keep monitoring com traffic and let me know if we've been detected."
     
                  "Of course," Kage said, his four nimble hands flying over his controls. Jason pulled the nose up and began to swing around onto a northerly course. He was in a gentle climb that would take them up to the beginnings of Corran's stratosphere, allowing them to push up to supersonic speeds without leaving such a large sonic footprint as they crossed over the continent. Thankfully, the northern regions were sparsely populated; Corran's axis tilt ensured the winters there were especially brutal. "The twins are on final approach, lowering the shields to let them in," Kage told Jason without looking up from his console. The two intelligent probes zipped in close to the Phoenix and then eased down onto their respective landing hooks. Once they were pulled back inside and the hatches were closed Kage reactivated the dorsal shielding. Like the engines, the shield emitters were operating in a low-power mode to keep the chances of detection to a minimum without leaving them completely vulnerable.
                 
                  "We're climbing up through flight level zero-three-zero, everyone stay sharp," Jason said. Zero-three-zero represented their altitude, in this case thirty-thousand feet. As an American expatriate, Jason frequently shifted between metric and English units of measure naturally, but for his crew (especially Twingo), who were relying on their translations being accurate, this idiosyncrasy drove them almost insane. Kage looked over at him in annoyance, but said nothing. The ship was now flying at the altitude most commercial flights would be found at, but due to her size and configuration, Jason didn't hold out much hope of the Phoenix fooling even the most inattentive sensor operator. They were still quite a distance from the pole when their luck ran out.
     
                  "Contact! Two destroyer class ships transferring to a lower orbit and moving to shadow us. We can assume they'll be launching fighters when they're within range." Doc's voice was calm and measured, but the Vongaard family looked fearfully between him and Jason.
     
                  "So much for sneaking out of here," Jason said tightly, flipping the engine mode to full output. "Let's hit it!" As soon as his engine indicators greened up he slammed the throttle against the stops. The Phoenix roared as her main engines came to full power and millions of pounds of thrust blasted them through the Corranian atmosphere. He intended to see just how good the picket ships really were. The DL7 was designed especially for this scenario: outrun much larger and more powerful ships within a planet’s atmosphere or low orbit. He glanced down