The Empress made it's way to Dione. There orbiting around the mist shrouded planet, that was about ten times larger then earth, Denise had never seen such a planet. From orbit it looked like a gas giant, it even had the swirling gas. The mist swirled with the global air currents and Denise could barley tell the difference from this and a natural gas giant. They were not exactly the same, a gas giant is surrounded by any type of gas and usually a combination of different gasses. That is way it has what looks like strips on it, While an over heated Water planet is just covered in steam. Denise looked at it and said,

"Connor please give me a scan of the planet and see if you can find us a land mass of any kind to land on." Connor went to work and Linda tried to help him. He was patent with her even though Denise was sure he could have done it fast on his own. She smiled and made a mental note to thank him later. Denise knew it would take awhile and so she walked up to talk to Yalp.

She said,

"Yalp, if we have to land on the water, will we sink? If not will we be able to lift off again?" Yalp looked at her and said,

"As for landing on water, the Empress was designed to land on water. The only problem could be the damage we took from the Cosmic String. It cut off a big portion of the ship which could make the ship turtle." Denise looked confused, so Yalp held out his hand and then rotated it up side down. Denise's eyes opened wide and she said,

"Up side down in the water would be very bad. We would defiantly not be able to lift off." Yalp nodded his agreement. Denise then asked,

"Can you do a computer simulation to see how we would fair?"

"Yes but it will take about 4or 5 hours and I am not sure how accurate it would be. I can do predicted what the damage to the hull will do." Denise thought about that for a couple of seconds then said,

"Ok, get going." The little T'sa moved off to the computer station and got to work.

Denise figured she had covered most of her contingencies. Then a thought came to her, 'what if we can not land and have to fly to Telemachus.' To this end she said,

"Connor do you think you can spare me Linda? I need her to do something else." Connor looked at Denise and a little twinkle crossed his jade green eyes, and he said,

"Yes Captain, it might take me a little longer, but I can still get it done."

"Good, Linda I need you to plot us the fastest course to Telemachus. Just incase we can not stay here." Linda looked a little disappointed to leave Connor, but she quickly moved to the navigation station and got to work.

Now all she could do was to sit and wait. She called down to the galley and asked for some coffee to be sent to them. It could not have been more then 5 minutes when Pogo walked into Auxiliary Control. He handed out coffee to everyone and then took the last one for himself. Then standing beside Denise he asked,

"Is there anything you would like me to tell the passengers?"

"Yes I am sorry for not up dating you earlier, but after I tell you, you will see we have been busy." Denise then told him where they where and what had happened. This took her almost an hour and when she was done she said,

"You have been with the passengers through all this and have a better idea as to how they will handle this. I think it would be best to keep them as well informed as possible but I do not what any panic. Tell them as much as you think they can handle." He looked at Denise and said,

"I do not understand humans as well as you might think, but I will do my best. Is there anything else I can do for you."

"Yes how about some more of that coffee?"She paused for a second then said,

"Thank you, Just knowing that the passengers are being taken care of frees my mind of that worry." Pogo gave her a bow and said,

"No it is I who should thank you for giving this old Fraal a reason to live again." Denise was taken aback by this, and gave the Fraal a bow of respect. He smiled and said,

"The coffee will be right up." Denise laughed as Pogo walked out of Auxiliary Control.

The first to start giving her information was Linda, but it was not encouraging. The fastest route through the system would take about 36 hours and take them dangerously close to Penates. She did not really what to go to close to the old penal colony, the computer had said it was a spot to be avoided. Linda said,

"I did not think you would want to go that close to Penates so I also plotted another course. This one would take about 72 hours and they would be out in open space. This would make them easy pray for anyone who saw them. Denise did not really like either option, but it was only if they could not land on Dione, so she will not worry about it until she has to. She thought about the whole thing for a couple of minutes then Connor came to her.

He said,

"Captain I have completed my scan of the planet. It does not look good, there is not one land mass one the whole planet. If the Empress can not land on the water we are stuck in orbit." Denise looked off at nothing, she was thinking, 'she should not leave with out an escort, but if she could not land she might as well head straight to Telemachus. What to do?' She muddled around different options, but nothing work. Then Yalp came to her. He had finished his analysis and said,

"I have some good news and some bad." Denise looked at him and said,

"Give me the bad news first."

"Well the Empress is not stable enough to stay afloat."

"Ok what is the good news?"

"It will work if we can dock up to something. We need the stability of a large object or we could turtle in ruff water. The computer says if we can keep upright we will be able to lift off on command."

"Connor please do another scan and see if you can find us something to dock up with," said Denise. He quickly went back to his computer terminal and started looking again.

They had been in orbit around Dione now for almost five hours. Denise looked at Linda and told her to put the scanners on maximum facing away from the planet. She thought, 'If there is someone out there, she wants to know about them before they know about her.' Now all they could do was to sit there and wait. After about fifteen minutes a sensor alarm sounded. It was a low beep, but in the solitude of auxiliary control it sounded like a deafening alarm. Denise at once moved down beside Linda and looked at the information on the screen.

"Dam," she said. There are three more fighters coming this way. They would be here in about Three hours. The only good thing was, they were non-atmospheric ships, so if they could find some place on the planet to dock they would be safe from these fighters. Shr turned to Connor and said,

"There you go, you have two and a half hours to find us a place to land or we will be in a fight with three fighters. We got lucky the first time but I don't think it will hold. They thought we were defenseless, but this time that wont happen, because they probably know that we took out there other ships." Connors fingers flew over the consul.

The time had just zipped by and they were down to their last fifteen minutes. Even it they started down now the fighters would get a shot at them. Connor then said,

"I have something." Denise did not even care what it was. She said,

"Go for it at best speed possible." The Empress started into the atmosphere of Dione and was quickly lost in the mist, but the fighters still knew where it was the mist did nothing hind them from electronics. Connor said,

"They are within range now," and to accent his point the ship was shaken by a Laser blast. Denise looked at the read outs and thought, 'We can not do anything except re-entry or we could get to steep and burn up.' She turned to Yalp,

"Give me weapons control." The three dimensional image came up around her, and she turned to face the fighters. She fired off three missies, one at each fighter. She did not expect the missiles to hit but hoped it would give them time to get deeper into the atmosphere. The display showed her that two of the fighters got off Laser blasts, and they were coming right at the Empress. Though the computer told her she was safe in the atmosphere, she was still nervous.

Connor then said,

"We are right on are flight path, we should be landing in a couple of minutes."

"What are we landing on or near, or what ever?" Asked Denise.

"I am not sure but it is ten kilometers long and half a kilometer wide. It is floating along on it's own power, it's power signature shows it has three Mass Reactors. Though it does not have an ion drive so it can not travel through the system. It is a very weird ship, I have never seen anything so large." Denise said,

"Have you had a chance to call them."

"No," said Connor, "and I can't right now. The heat shields are not dissipating the heat properly. It must be the damage to the bridge." Denise looked down and saw the external temperature was well into the red. Then she looked at the hull temperature and it was also in the red. This was bad the ships hull temperature should have been about half of the external temperature. A bead of sweat formed on Denise's fore head and ran down into her eyes. It was getting to hot, she had to do something. She said,

"Connor slow our dissent, or we will burn up." He shrugged as if he was not sure what to do.

"Increase the angle of dissent,"said Denise. Connor worked on his consul as Denise watched the hull temperature. It slowly stabilized and then slowly decreased.

Denise breathed a sigh of relief until she saw they were off there flight plan. From the look of the new flight plan they were going to land almost a thousand kilometers off course. She said,

"Connor the flight plan, try to get us back on it." Again she could see him fighting with the controls. Watching the red blip on the flight plan on the screen, but she could see it was only marginally coming back around. The Connor said,

"I have totally lost control, We have a minute until impact." Denise pushed the ship wide intercom and said,