CYGNUS WAR

Get your copy today!

2011-05-19T11:13:00.000-07:00

From the back cover:

It is the dawn of the twenty-third century. Space has been good to the pioneering men and women of the Terran Commonwealth, but in spreading out among the stars mankind has become a rich target for the enigmatic and predatory Cygnan Coralate. Thrilling squadrons of fans from all over the globe since 2005, The Cygnus War is a story that looks at love, war, and what makes us human in the wake of an interstellar war with the Cygnan Coralate, a shadowy enemy bent on nothing less than the total and complete annihilation of humanity itself.

Official Website: http://www.cygnuswar.com

Jump to the first episode: [Aces And Veterans, Part 1]

This is the omnibus edition containing all seven arcs of the Cygnus War!

Individual arcs:

[Tarsis] [Rescue] [Downfall] [Weapon] [Awaken] [Erebus] [Last Run]

How to order:

Paperback: [lulu]

Ebook: [PDF] [EPUB] [LIT] [MOBI] [Kindle] [Nook] [Scribd]

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- - -

S2: Episode #52: A Better World

2011-05-18T00:00:00.000-07:00

It was three AM when Imalda found Tessa alone in the officer’s mess, face in her hands. Hunched over an untouched drink, her Ultima Thila uniform stripped of tags, brass and rank insignia, Tessa looked broken, the shadow of an officer, a husk discarded in the name of a cause, an ideal. Sure, she had her life, her freedom, a free ticket to any world she wanted to settle on, and a modest-sized check from the military to help her start her new life, but she’d lost everything else she’d ever had, ever loved. She didn’t blame Izzy for breaking things off, for choosing her career over their relationship, couldn’t blame Phoebe, Cordova, Stone or any of the others for becoming suddenly distant, uncertain about how to act around her, what to say, what not to say. She was someone wholly different from the Tessa they had all known, someone trapped in a past as painfully perfect as she remembered it being.

“Tough breaks, Major.”

Tessa glanced up, caught the older woman’s eyes. In her own timeline, she’d met the Chief Marshall of the Ixion Condottieri years before at Izzy’s funeral, but this time around would be Imalda’s first. Tessa’s eyes dropped back to the table. With mottled and burnt skin traced by lines of brushed steel, hair as sharp as chrome bristles, and a thick leather eyepatch emblazoned with a leering jolly roger that bit into her scarred features, the Chief Marshall was a person whose face was hard to forget.

“Former Major.” Tessa managed, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice. Her hand dropped loosely to her drink, tapped out a quick, absent beat. “Thanks to the gratitude of our enlightened Commonwealth’s completely unbiased public policy.”

“Laws are harsh on constructs, but that’s the price paid for genetic security.” Imalda said, gesturing at the seat. “Mind if I sit down?”

“Yeah, actually.” Tessa looked up, fixed the older woman with a sharp stare. “I do mind.”

“Fine.” Imalda’s hands came together behind her back. “I’ve always been partial to standing, anyway.”

“Can I do something for you,” Tessa shot back suddenly, anger jumping across her features. “or did you just come down here because you forgot what the people you killed during the war looked like?”

“Centauri wasn’t a war.” Imalda said levelly. “It was a police action.”

“History is written by the victors.” Tessa shook her head. “From where I’m sitting, it was a war. A war for survival that the oppressors won and the oppressed keep losing.”

Imalda’s features darkened at the edges. “Call it whatever you want, Eisenherz. It ended decades before you were even born.”

“Yeah.” Tessa scoffed, turned back to her drink. “Tell that to the lawmakers.”

“Look, Eisenherz,” Imalda leaned over suddenly, brought herself eye to eye with the other woman, gnarled hands flat on the table. “I didn’t come down here to debate social policy with you or take your shit. I came down here because I’ve seen your combat record, I’m vaguely impressed, and I’ve got an empty rig in my squadron that needs a warm body to fill it.”

Tessa met the other woman’s stare levelly. “Even if that ‘warm body’ is a GMO freak?”

“Like I said,” Imalda eyed her carefully. “The police action was over fifty years ago.”

“So just like that, huh?” Tessa asked, eyes flicking as she leaned back, folded her arms. “Forgive and forget?”

“You never forget.” Imalda’s stare smouldered as she stood upright again, eyes dark and steely. “Besides, you got anything more spectacular planned?”

“Oh. . . yeah.” Tessa managed, sarcasm crawling through her voice as she looked away again. “I’ll probably catch a transport out to a farm world and sign up to work on a plantation with my own kind.” She made a vague gesture. “Y’know, the simple life. Chains, a drafty shack, campfire songs.”

“Funny.”

“No it isn’t.” Tessa shook her head, tone dark, cut with a darker depression. She rubbed at her face, sighed.

“There aren’t many jobs in the civilian fleet for pilots with GMO ancestry.” Imalda managed, the steel edge in her voice softening. “A plantation might be the only other choice you have besides taking me up on my offer.” She shrugged. “But then, maybe you’ll get lucky and some brass or CEO will get a wild hare up his ass and decide the fact that you’re from the future makes you valuable enough to hunt down and turn into a lab rat.”

“I’m not from the future.” Tessa said softly.

“Spare me.” The Grand Marshall made a vague gesture. “I have connections. I know what’s going on.” Tessa looked up again, met the other woman’s eyes blankly. “Look, Eisenherz. All I’m saying is that I’m offering you a way out, a new ship to serve on, and a chance to keep flying.” She shrugged. “The seat’s yours if you want it. The Karkadann breaks from the fleet tomorrow at twelve hundred hours, so you have until then to pack up your gear, stow your demons and report to the primary overhead umbilical.”

“Sounds so easy when you put it that way.” Tessa managed.

“It’s the only part of working for the Ixion Condottieri that is.” Imalda smiled briefly, turned away. Tessa’s eyes milled across her drink as the Grand Marshall crossed the room, made for the door.

“Hey, Grande.”

Imalda turned back, gave Tessa a level stare. The other woman smiled softly, letting the pause linger as she picked up her drink, swirled it.

“What does Mac think of all this?”

A grin played across the Grand Marshall’s face, stuck.

“How do you think I got your files?” She turned toward the door again. “It was his idea.”

And then she was gone, leaving Tessa alone again in the officers’ mess, her own grin spreading slowly across her face. Glancing down at her glass, she reached into the breast pocket of her uniform and wrapped her fist around something that stood in her mind as the emblem of a choice, the first step down the path to a future whose door was still open to her, a path that lay waiting, ready to be walked.

Holding her fist out in front of her, she looked at it for a moment before her fingers uncurled, opened, leaving only the three little pills the doctor had given her rolling in her palm.

I came back here to save lives. Not to end them.

Looking up, her eyes caught on a poster tacked to the wall at the far end of the mess, a simple silicon image of a Seindrive II Ignus burning hard through the brilliantly colored atmosphere of some nameless gas giant, the word “FLY” flickering beneath it. Smiling, Tessa closed her hand again, held it over her glass and dropped the pills into her drink.

A better world.

Standing, she crossed the room, splashed the untouched drink into the recycler, heard the pills clink against glass on their way out.

- - -

S2: Episode #51: Among Soldiers

2011-05-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

Date: 8th April, 2307. 08:01 (ES/GMT)
Location: Officers’ Conference Chamber, TCV: Wu Ang Hok (Frontier Space)

“Major Eisenherz.” Virek began, the silence rising to meet him. Seated at the center of the room with a guard off each shoulder, Tessa regarded the old admiral silently, her features blank, almost tinged with concern, almost touched at the edges with the iron built through years of service. “Rise, please.”

Guards helped her to her feet, cut free her synthplastic cuffs with a gesture from Virek. Izzy glanced at her from the sidelines, met her eyes loosely.

“In the light of the value of the intelligence Major Eisenherz has provided, the testimony given by Lieutenant Copperfield, our own reviews of transcripts and a recent communique confirming Admiral Blavatsky’s input code on the orders to breach the conventions of New Arahal, the members of this court have decided to drop all charges against you as they currently stand.”

An exhale escaped Tessa that she didn’t even know she’d been holding. She smiled reflexively, glanced at Izzy, but only got a careful nod back in response. Biting her lip once, absently, she turned back to the admiral, her smile already fading, falling away.

“You are hereby exonerated of all crimes, and all mention of the charges brought by this court will be stricken from the record.” He let his eyes drop to the silicon sheets in front of him. “Officially, this incident will be filed in public record as a military flight test accident involving the failure of the experimental drive of a top secret prototype on lease from Seindrive. The Stormfury will be ‘returned’ to the fleetyards at Sirius immediately, and no mention of time travel will be made in any of the associated reports. As lieutenant commander of Minerva Squadron, you are hereby recognized for your valor in the situation and have been granted induction into Ultima Thila with the rank of Major. The breach of the conventions of New Arahal will be acknowledged only on a single report which will accompany all transcripts we’ve generated during your stay, and the entire data package will be handed over to Ultima Thila as maximum eyes-only classified status materials scheduled to remain so indefinitely. Any mention of the events which actually transpired here by any of the parties involved, including members of the judging panel, will be grounds for immediate seizure and execution without trial under charges of treason.” Virek paused, fixed Tessa with a meaningful stare. “Do you understand?”

She nodded once, firmly. “Yes sir.”

“Confidentiality agreements will be circulated within the hour, along with a copy of the official story that is being fed to the media. It is your duty to familiarize yourself with this version of events so that any questions which may come up can be answered without casting doubt on the story as it stands.”

A fresh smile caught on Tessa’s features as she nodded again, let the curve of lips break to almost hesitant white.

A better world, Ben had said. Yeah. I can see it now.

“That leaves only one matter still to be addressed.” Virek shifted in his seat, his sudden grimace harsh enough to fade her smile. She glanced at Izzy, but the other woman had already looked away, refusing to meet her eyes.

“Major Eisenherz, as a citizen of the Commonwealth with confirmed GMO ancestry, you are ineligible for military service of any kind.” Virek began. “As such, you are effectively guilty of perjury for knowingly providing false information on your entrance forms, as well as providing false samples to and or bribing the medical examiners during standard health screenings.” Tessa swallowed, features paling as the admiral continued, her face empty of the fleeting smiles that had tugged at it before. “The sentence that this court has ultimately decided as punishment for this crime is immediate discharge from service and a loss of all rank and benefits you would otherwise be eligible for. Your service will be noted, and your termination will be listed as a discharge for medical reasons. You will be required to register with the Department of Licencing for Genetic Constructs within seven days. Do you understand?”

“Yeah.” Tessa managed, breathed, tore her eyes from the floor. “Yes sir.”

“I want you to know that this decision did not come easily, but it was unanimous.” The old admiral said, tone softer, less formal. “The loopholes in the system that people such as yourself exploit are left open precisely because we realize how valuable soldiers with GMO ancestry are to the service, but that doesn’t mean we can ignore the laws that the people have enacted, no matter how much we might disagree with them.” He pulled in a deep breath. “As soldiers, we are the thin line that exists between chaos and order. As soldiers, we pledge ourselves to protect the Commonwealth and all that it stands for, whether we agree with the decisions that have been made by the people or not. We support the whole, because the moment our practice breaks from the policies of the people, our nation takes one step closer to becoming a military dictatorship where no one can be truly free.”

Tessa swallowed, held his eyes. “I understand.”

“Major Eisenherz, stand proud.” Virek added, the edges of a smile tugging at his face. “You may not have won the war yet, but make no mistake that this moment marks a decisive battle for the rights of citizens with GMO ancestry. It is such moments which the people remember, and which stand as important steps forward in struggles of rights and social change. Your service to the Commonwealth both as a major before this moment and as a citizen forever after, have set an example that we could all learn from.”

Slowly, Tessa’s smile returned, spread. “Thank you, Admiral.”

“No, thank you, Ms. Eisenherz.” He smiled, folded his hands in front of him. “Given the nature of your sacrifices, your service record, and the risks that you’ve taken to ensure the safety of the Commonwealth, we owe you a debt of gratitude.”

- - -

S2: Episode #50: Life and Death

2011-05-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

“Eisenherz.”

Tessa didn’t react, didn’t respond. Laying on the cot, she stared at one hand, picked absently at the blanket. The voice tried again: “Tessa, we need to talk.”

“What is there to talk about?” She managed. Beyond the cage, she heard the man hesitate, shuffle.

“Tessa, don’t do this.”

“Why not, Ben?”

Beyond the composite bars of the brig, Dimitrov sighed, began to pace. Slowly, hesitantly, Tessa’s fingers stopped moving, gave one last twitch outward, then balled into a loose fist.

“Look, Tessa, I know about the baby.” Ben finally said. “I couldn’t believe it when they pulled it off the audio in medical, but after the doctor confirmed it with a paternity test, I. . .” He hesitated.

“You decided you wanted to talk about it.” Tessa sat up slowly, but didn’t meet his eyes, just continued to watch her hand. “Right?” She looked up, smiled softly.

“Yeah.” Ben stepped up to the bars and wrapped his hands around them. “I mean, Jesus, Tess. A baby?” He looked away, shook his head. “Tessa, if my fiancé ever found out about this. . .”

“She’d be livid, I know.” She looked away again. “You told me all about Theo when we were together, how she used to tell you who you could see, who you could talk to or smile at when you were living together, how she’s already picked out names for the children you’ll have some day. Courtney or maybe Debra if it’s a girl, Ryan if it’s a boy.”

“It’s just–”

“I know all about Theo, Ben.” She stood, crossed to the bars. “When things first started getting serious between you and I, you couldn’t stop talking about her, half the time worshiping her, wishing you could see her again, half the time cursing the day you met her.” Her eyes narrowed. “I saw what she did to you, Ben. I know the medications she’s on, the anti-depressants, the anti-psychotics–”

“Stop, just stop it!” He broke away from the bars, crossed the room, burying his face in his hands. “Dammit, Tessa!” He spun back. “I’m not here to talk about Theo!” He shook his head, glanced at the floor. “Sure, she has her problems. Everyone has problems, but if they work at it, they can overcome them.” He looked at her firmly. “Theo and I will overcome them.”

“No you won’t.” Tessa said flatly. “She’s going to break your heart.”

“Not Theo,” he shot back, shaking his head. “Never Theo.”

“Jesus, Ben.” She laughed. “How do you think we got together? You were a wounded bird, I fixed your wing, we had some great sex.”

“That wasn’t me.” He stopped, jabbing his finger at her. “That was someone else. Theo may have left him, but she won’t leave me.” He said firmly. “She won’t.”

“I can tell you his name, Ben.” She pressed herself against the bars. “The guy Theo is already falling for, the guy she’s probably fucking right now, as we speak. You want to hear it?” He hesitated, unable to move, to respond. “Geoffrey Chambers. Look him up. He works as a civil engineer on Carridan IV. Right now he’s supervising the construction of a bypass about fifteen miles from where your wife is currently living.”

“This isn’t. . .” He shook his head, hesitated. “You can’t know that!”

“I’m a good listener, Ben.” She said. “You used to talk about transferring to the station there, pulling one of the old mothballed Slashdrivers out of long term storage and dropping orbital, then accidently putting a couple of rounds of flak–”

“Enough, okay!?” He shot back, gesturing fiercely. “Enough.” He hesitated. “Theo is going to leave me, fine. Geoffrey Chambers is the ass that is going to steal her away from me, fine.” He threw his hands in the air. “We had sex, multiple times, fine!” He pointed at her. “I still don’t want the baby.”

“Tough shit.” She shot back. “I already promised a more stand-up version of you that I’d bring her into the world, and I’m not going to break that promise.”

“You want to talk about failed relationships. . .” He shook his head. “Tessa, he doesn’t even exist in this timeline! There’s just this,” he gestured. “Us, me.”

“I’m not aborting.” She said flatly.

“You don’t have a choice.” He shot back. “I have a doctor outside the door that says, as the co-contributor to the fetus’ genetic template, I have equal rights.”

“Equal rights doesn’t mean full rights.” She shot back. “It means we agree to disagree, and I have the baby anyway.”

“I won’t let this go.” He said firmly. “If you have this baby, it will destroy me. It’ll destroy my relationship with Theo, my relationship with my family. . .”

“She’s a baby, Ben,” Tessa shook her head. “Not a curse.”

“She’s genetically modified.” Dimitrov shot back. “She’s the daughter of a gene-freak that slipped back in time with a body full of crazy technology.” He shook his head. “Jesus Christ, Tessa, at least think about the screwed up future she’s going to have. Everyone from here to Proxima is going to want to get their hands on you or her because of who you are, the techware you’re carrying.”

“At least it’s a future.” She tried, but his point had left her softer, triggered the moistness of tears at the edges of her eyes.

“It’s not, Tessa, not really.” He shook his head, breathed a sigh through his nose. “Look, you’re young. This won’t be your only shot at having a kid.” She looked away as he continued. “This just isn’t the time. I’m just not the right father.”

“Yeah.” She said softly. “You’re right. You’re not.”

“Look, the doctor outside has the pills you need to put an end to this.” He swallowed. “Just, just take the pills, and I swear I’ll leave you alone, okay?”

“And if I refuse?”

“Don’t do this, Tess.” He shook his head. “I don’t want things to get nasty between us.”

She looked up at him then, looked into his eyes and saw the iron there, the fear, the disgust. There was one thing she could do for him, one way to make him happy again, to solve things so they could go their separate ways and never see each other again.

“Fine.” She tried a smile, blinked as new tears broke, dropped in thick trails across her cheeks. “Bring him in.” She gestured. “I’ll do it. I’ll do it, but only because I love you.”

“Good.” Ben managed, then slipped away, crossed out of the room to the door and called in the doctor. The man smiled lightly as he stepped up to the bars, pulled a synthplastic case of pills from his breast pocket, shook several into the palm of his hand.

“Take three of these.” He handed them to her, slipped the case back into his pocket as she let them roll around her own palm. “One now, one in four hours, and the other tomorrow morning with breakfast.”

Tessa glanced at the pills in her hand, met the doctor’s eyes again almost reluctantly. Words came shaky, hoarse. “That easy, huh?”

The doctor looked at her pointedly, features tinged with sympathy.

“These things are never easy.”

“Yeah.” She looked down, breathed through the pause. As she looked up again, the doctor nodded once softly, turned away. The pills disappeared into her fist. Ben swallowed apprehensively.

“Do you mind?” She said finally, fixing him with a stare that was half hurt, half iron. “I’m about to kill our child. I’d like a little privacy.”

Ben swallowed, shifted, nodded.

“Sure.” He managed. “Sorry.”

“Save it.” She made a vague gesture. “You’re not him.” She looked at him pointedly. “I need to stop pretending that you are.”

- - -

S2: Episode #49: Final Inquisition, Part 2

2011-04-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

“As you may or may not know, I have always been an advocate for genetic purity and a devout Catholic.” Izzy began, addressing the officers seated around her, watching her. Behind her, Tessa breathed a quiet sigh, tried to lose herself in memories of happier times, tried to lose herself enough to dull the blade she knew Izzy’s words would drive into her heart. Virek steepled his hands again, fingers touching lips as the lieutenant continued. “Suffice it to say, I am the last person you might expect to take a stand for someone like Major Eisenherz, but I hope that the conviction with which I defend her humanity will convince you, as even I, one of the most hardened critics of GMO rights have been convinced, that to condemn someone based solely on their ancestry is the only true abomination here, in this room.”

Tessa’s eyes snapped open and she looked up reflexively, stared at Izzy’s back, the firmness of it, the way her hair fell across it as she spoke. One thought blasted through her, hung on in her mind even as the other woman continued. No way. No way.

“In the years that I have known her, both as a friend and as a lover,” Izzy glanced at each captain in turn. “I have come to see the person beyond the flesh, the person that is Major Tessa Eisenherz.” She paused, bit her lip lightly. “As a soldier, she is unparalleled. As a friend, she is loyal and more supportive than anyone I have ever known. She is an officer who genuinely cares about her squadron, her subordinates, and her support staff, and she keeps a cleaner house than I do.” She cracked the edge of a smile. “I fell in love with her because of the person she is, and it wasn’t until very recently that, like you, I discovered she was a person of genetically modified ancestry, that she was the very thing I had crusaded against for so long and called abomination in front of so many people.” She looked down, breathed a sigh in the pause, glanced back. “The Lord works in mysterious ways. He tests us, challenges us on the beliefs we hold and urges us to question the things that we do in His name that are not in the spirit of His teachings. To me, Tessa is a friend, a lover, someone I could see spending my life with.” Eyes moistened, tears forming at the edges. “To you, she is a soldier without parallel, someone who deserves our respect even now, at the very least, for her service to the Commonwealth and in the light of her recent actions.”

A few of the captains glanced at each other, whispered quietly among themselves for a moment. Yuuki’s stare of hatred had softened, but found a new target in Izzy. Only Kongar-Ool was smiling, and his was a thin line of respect that curved slightly at the edges.

“I’ve read the charges as they stand.” Izzy began again, clearing her throat. “Treason and intent to undermine the structure of command– that comes entirely from the fact that the major willingly lied about her heritage and served with the Navy illegally for six years in her own timeline, two by our reckoning, an act which some may condemn but which I believe to be courageous on the level of bonafide heroism.” She paused, pulled in a shaky breath. “While other genetically modified citizens of the Commonwealth have been content to be barred from military service, this woman stood up in the tradition of so many rights activists that have come before in our checkered history as a species and defied the unjust laws of the past century, risking her very life to serve the Commonwealth to the best of her ability in any way she could manage. The very fact that she has ascended to the rank of major within Ultima Thila is a testament to her value as a soldier.” Izzy paused again, made a soft gesture. “As a woman who has the right to vote and as a person who comes from a family which claims, as so many of us can, roots in cultures and ethicities that were once discriminated against, African, Irish, Native American, Jewish. . . I applaud Eisenherz for her bravery, her strength to persevere and show us as citizens of the Commonwealth, that we are not so enlightened as we might like to believe, and that indeed we still have work to do if we are ever going to come together in a society where everyone is truly equal.”

“Your point is well made.” Kongar-Ool said firmly, levelly. “But the validity of the major as a person does not address the other charges that have been brought before this court.”

“You’re right, and I’m glad you brought that up, Captain.” Izzy paused, breathed, half smiling. “Captain Kongar-Ool is, of course, referring to charges such as the theft of experimental military technology, namely the Stormfury which everyone is so excited about and Seindrive is already suing for control of.” She breathed a sigh, glanced at the ground. “If you’ll check the transcript records on data article 227 slash B among the materials recovered from Major Eisenherz’ person when she was admitted to Medical yesterday, you’ll notice that there is a copy of a signed order made by Admiral Blavatsky herself, dated March first, 2308, which states, and I quote: ‘I hereby order the pilot Tessa Eisenherz to act outside the conventions of New Arahal and cross over into the past in an attempt to avert or significantly improve our chances in the war that history will come to know as The Cygnus War.’” She paused, wet her lips anxiously. “I’d say that wraps up the charges of theft and of breaking the conventions with intent to modify the course of events.” The edge of a smile pulled at her lips. “Our major was under orders to do everything she has done, and she has performed her duty with distinction, yet again.”

Silence dropped in to fill the pause. Virek tapped his steepled fingers against his lips, hesitated.

“That still leaves the matter of the murder.”

“In cases of extreme disability where the quality of life of an individual is significantly reduced, that individual has the right to request and be administered euthanasia, is that not correct?”

The admiral nodded. “Of course.”

Izzy smiled again. “I can’t think of any form of euthanasia more effective than twelve nine millimeter rounds administered to the brain, and since it was Tessa Eisenherz herself who did it, it falls under voluntary and acceptable suicide as witnessed, approved and confirmed by the deceased’s next of kin, making it a private matter and dismissing the need for an investigation.”

“This is ridiculous!” Yuuki made a sharp, curt gesture. “Admiral, I move that the court dismiss all of this evidence, especially the last piece, as having no relevance to the situation at hand. It is clear that–”

“Captain Yuuki, is it not true that the historical records brought back by the major show that your entire ship was destroyed by its proximity to a detonation of the core of a Coralate warship, indeed one of the warships that is now safely in our possession, thanks to Major Eisenherz?” Kongar-Ool grinned sharply. The other Captain sputtered, glared, fought for words, but his rebuttal didn’t come fast enough. Glancing up at the admiral, Kongar-Ool’s smile softened, became almost proud. “Admiral, I move that this court be dismissed and the major be exonerated of all charges.” He turned back to Tessa, locked eyes with her. “It is the least we can do after the sacrifices she has made, giving up a life and several years of her existence in order to save all of us, indeed the entirety of the Commonwealth as it stands.”

“I appreciate your enthusiasm, Captains.” Virek nodded at both Yuuki and Kongar-Ool in turn. “But I think that it is still too early to make a final, formal decision, even in the light of Lieutenant Copperfield’s rousing speech.” He paused, regarded Tessa carefully.

“Do you have anything to add, Major Eisenherz?”

Tessa swallowed. Tears had left thick trails across her cheeks, her smile. “No. No sir.”

Virek nodded once, a soft acknowledgment, then dropped his stack of silicon sheets against the table.

“Very well. This court is adjourned until tomorrow at 08:00 hours, at which point we will have our decision.” He made a quick gesture to the guard. “Sergeant Dougherty, return the prisoner to her cell, please.”

Standing, Tessa caught Izzy’s eyes, the tears there, the conflicting emotions, the burning hatred mixing with confusion, love, fear. Tessa smiled back, offered the most loving look she could manage.

“Thanks, Izzy.”

“You’d do the same for me.” Was all the other woman could manage to say.

- - -

S2: Episode #48: Final Inquisition, Part 1

2011-04-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

It was morning when the guards came for Tessa, the rattle of composite and boots as they opened her cage almost a welcome change from the dim, sleepless monotony of laying on the scratchy cot. She was up and on her feet before hands could grab her, catch her shoulders and twist her hands into synthplastic cuffs, but she went along with it anyway, didn’t fight her captors. She’d come back to save lives, not end more of them.

No one told her where they were taking her– she simply walked, let them lead her, hardly even looked up as they crossed the ship, brought her to a conference room and pressed her into a seat. Above her, the six captains of the six warships that had come together in the system sat like a tribunal, each shuffling through their own set of files on silicon. Admiral Virek sat quietly at the head of the table, fingers steepled. Locking eyes with him came natural, felt right. If this was a court, it was a joke, a useless formality, and she smiled accordingly.

“Major Eisenherz,” The admiral met her stare levelly. “You have been accused of murder in the first degree of one, Lieutenant Commander Tessa Eisenherz, treason and intent to undermine the structure of command within the military, breach of the conventions of New Arahal prohibiting temporal displacement with intent to modify the course of events, and theft of experimental military technology in the form of the Seindrive V Stormfury. How do you plead?

“Guilty.” Tessa’s stare stayed strong, refused to waver. “On all counts.”

Several of the captains glanced at each other, hesitated. The man she recognized as Kongar-Ool, captain of the Feynman, leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, brown and harsh-edged face darkening quietly. Virek blinked, breathed.

“You realize that the penalty for being found guilty of even one of these charges is death.”

Tessa nodded immediately, shifted into a more casual position.

“You can only kill me once, admiral.” She bared teeth in a half-grin. “I’ve done my duty. I’ve set things right. That’s all that matters.”

“The sentence of death could be commuted for an indefinite period of service at one of the Navy’s experimental research facilities. . .” Another captain offered– Kyme of the Constantine. Virek glanced at her, met her gaze evenly. “There is still a lot about the Stormfury that we don’t know, and even more that we could learn about the major’s own enhancements.”

“Fuck that.” Tessa said evenly. “I’d rather die than be one of your lab rats.” The look Kyme shot her was half stunned, half furious. “The instructions, the research, everything you would ever need to know is in the files I brought back with me.”

“There’s also the matter of your child.” Virek added suddenly. Tessa hesitated under the force of his stare, swallowed, pushed her resolve back into place. “The laws as they stand hold that an unborn child shall not be condemned along with its mother in the case of a death sentence.” He paused. “Do you really want your daughter to grow up an orphan?”

Tessa hesitated, lips parting for words that wouldn’t come. Before she could speak, another Captain slammed down his packet of silicon sheets and crossed his arms.

“With all due respect, admiral, Major Tessa Eisenherz is a genetically modified organism that has been serving in the Navy illegally for years, openly and willingly defying the laws passed in council over fifty years ago.” He gestured fiercely. “I move that this court stop dodging the point and pass sentence now. It’s clear that this thing wants to die.” He looked directly at Tessa. “I say we grant its wish and put it out of its misery before it can bring the abomination it is carrying into our world.”

Tessa swallowed under the force of his words, the stares of the assembled officers. Bastard. She shook her head. She recognized the captain, even as he stared back at her with a look somewhere on the edge of pure hatred, so different from the easy smile of his file photo. Yuuki Kohta, Captain of the Carl Sagan.

Virek sighed, glanced at his stack of silicon. “Major Eisenherz, do you have anything to say in your own defense?”

Tessa’s lips parted on the edge of words, but the sound was cut off by a sudden scuffle outside the conference room. Shouting lanced into the silence, two voices struggling to overpower one another. Virek glanced at one of the guards standing behind Tessa, gestured.

“Sergeant Dougherty.” He glanced at the door. The sergeant moved like clockwork, crossed to the door and keyed it open. Beyond the threshold, a woman was shouting, something vague and angry that ended with “–you fucking white-glove command assholes. . .” Dougherty shifted, took it in stride.

“What seems to be the problem, Ma’am?”

“Thank fucking. . . finally.” The woman spat back. “I need to get in there. I know Eisenherz better than anyone else on any of the ships here, and there are things the brass in there need to know before they pass any kind of judgement on her.”

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but this is a closed. . .”

“Let her speak.” Kongar-Ool insisted suddenly, voice as hard as iron, smooth as an hiss.

“Agreed.” Kyme glanced at the admiral even as Yuuki crossed his arms, pressed back into his seat. “Virek?”

The old admiral nodded, watched the woman for a moment. Tessa closed her eyes, let herself sag forward in her seat. Just what I need. She breathed a tired sigh. Here I am about to die for saving the human race, and the two people ready to crucify me before anyone else are the captain whose ship I saved and the woman I loved enough to go back in time for. She looked up as Virek made a gesture, met Izzy’s smoldering brown eyes as she crossed to the center of the room, turned to stand before the assembled officers. The admiral was the first to speak.

“Is there something you would like to say, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, Admiral, there most certainly is.” Izzy shot back. Tessa closed her eyes, steeled her heart against the coming storm.

- - -

S2: Episode #47: Always Darkest

2011-04-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

Night found Tessa sitting in the far corner of the Hok’s dimly-lit brig, arm laying limp across one raised knee. It didn’t matter that she’d saved the entire crew of the Carl Sagan from the death that had caught up to them in her own timeline, it didn’t matter that she’d saved Izzy or knocked out two Coralate warships and handed them over to the Commonwealth in pristine condition– the brass were still arguing about what to do with her, about what to do with the data, the hardware, the intel they’d found in the satchel she’d brought back with her. Even her beaten, barely functional rig had been dragged into the bay for the techs to crawl over and pick apart, leaving the mine still jutting out of the Hok’s side like the shattered edge of a knife. Everything took a firm backseat to the data and hardware Tessa had brought back, the questions it all raised. Everyone knew the future now, or at least some vision of it, and everyone was terrified.

Tessa looked up as doors whispered open, half expecting a messenger for the brass, an armed guard with orders to shoot her or drag her away for questioning. A better world, Ben had said. Yeah, sure, but for who? The soft and familiar hands of a Phoebe so young it hurt passed off orders to a guard at the door, smiled feebly, nodded, then crossed to the bars, wrapped her hands around them.

“Hey.” She said softly. Tessa cocked her head a little, watched the other woman out of the corner of a single tired eye.

“Hey.”

Looking away, Phoebe sniffed, hesitated. “So. . .” she tried. “You’re a major now.”

“Yeah.”

“Ultima Thila too.” Phoebe swallowed.

“Yeah.” Tessa shifted, turned to regard the other woman with both eyes, the edges of a soft smile. “It was your idea, actually.”

“Mm.” Phoebe nodded, pulling in a shaky breath, hesitating before she forced the words that were hanging like tattered flags from the edges of her soul. “They pulled the. . . the recording from medical. The whole ship is talking about it.” She swallowed again, her voice caught. “I heard that, in your timeline. . . We’re all dead. Me, Izzy. . . everyone.” She trailed off.

“It won’t happen that way this time, Phoebe.” Tessa’s eyes dropped to the floor, smile fading to darkness. “I’ve fixed things. I’ve changed things for the better.”

“Maybe.” Came the hoarse whisper. “But as you said, you’ve changed things. The minute we act on your information, the Cygnans will change tactics and we’ll be in the dark again.”

“The future is meant to be uncertain, Phoebe.” Tessa glanced back up, made a loose gesture. “The information I brought back will win us the war before we lose all of the people that the Coralate butchered in my timeline, but that’s all. It will set things right, but everything after that is still up to us.”

“I know.” The younger woman said softly, then fell silent. In the quiet pause, Tessa got to her feet, crossed to Phoebe’s side, pressed a hand against hers.

“Hey.” Tessa’s voice came quiet. “It’s good to see you.”

“Yeah.” Phoebe managed, then looked up, met the major’s eyes carefully. “For me, its weird. You’ve been here all along, and now there are two of you, but the one I feel like I know is dead.”

Tessa swallowed past the edges of tears, didn’t even look up as the door whispered open again. “I’m sorry.”

“I hope so. I really hope you are.” Izzy stepped up to the bars, half sneered as she looked the major up and down. “I still don’t understand how you’re alive.” She crossed her arms. “When my Tessa died, shouldn’t you have disappeared or faded away or just. . .” She made a frustrated gesture. “y’know,”

“You read too much science fiction, Izzy.” Tessa smiled softly, held the other woman’s stare even as she looked away. “When I came back here, I left my timeline behind. I changed things here, now, in your timeline.” She hesitated, half afraid to put thought into words. “The other Tessa. . . that wasn’t me.”

“You’re right.” Izzy said flatly, eyes flicking back, stare as hard as iron. “She wasn’t you.”

Tessa swallowed, blinked past fresh tears. It was hard to hold the other woman’s gaze, the fierce hatred stabbing from her eyes. Slowly, timidly, like a child, she reached for her old lover, the woman she’d never forgotten, the woman she’d given everything to save.“Izzy. . .”

“Don’t touch me.” Izzy stepped out of reach, glared at her, arms dropping back to her sides. “I don’t know you.” She snarled. “You’re worse than she ever was.” Tessa’s own arm returned to the bars, hands tightening to wet, desperate fists. “That’s right. I’ve read your file, the one in the database they recovered from your rig. You weren’t happy with being born an abomination, an affront to God’s design, no– you had to take it a step further, didn’t you? You had to change yourself more! You had to become a machine filled with alien parts that pervert your body in ways that are offensive beyond words!”

“Izzy,” She hesitated, struggled with words that refused to come. “I did this for you. For us, for all of us.” Another pause, tears dropping free across cheeks. “In my timeline, the blueskins have slaughtered billions, billions! Humanity has been pushed back to one planet, to Earth, and even that has been burned to a cinder. Not even the Martian Vatican still stands. Your Pope’s cathedral is dust in my timeline!” She shouted. “Dust, Izzy!”

“And doesn’t that just make you such a fucking hero!” Izzy shouted. “Big damn Major Eisenherz, hero of the fucking Commonwealth!” She made a harsh gesture. “Did you really think you could just waltz back into the past with a body full of futuristic techware and make everything all better!? Just cozy up to your old love and live life like nothing’s happened!?” She all but spat. “Huh!? Did you!?”

“Izzy, it’s me, Tessa,” She pressed herself against the bars, wiped desperate at tears. “It’s me, the woman you love!”

“The woman I love is dead, Major.” Izzy shot back, tone hard, cold. “I watched you kill her.” Half turning away, the lieutenant shot Tessa one last vicious look, left it to hang frigid and bitter as she turned away.

Tessa’s mouth drifted open, lips hesitating, unable to form words even as Izzy stomped off, slammed a fist against the retreating door before it could open completely. Phoebe’s own mouth worked in the silence as her voice tried to find words, tried to find something to say, anything that might fix the damage that had been done, might give Tessa the strength Phoebe had come to love in her, the strength she associated with her LC. The major closed her eyes, turned away. The tears came silent, thick, one hand hesitating on the bars, dropping as Tessa collapsed into a crouch, hid her eyes with her other hand.

“She, uh. . .” Phoebe tried. “She doesn’t really hate you, y’know.” She whispered, crouching beside the bars, eyes touched at the edges with a moistness, concern. “She’s hurt, confused. She just watched you die, and you’re so different from the Tessa we know.” She swallowed. “And yet...” She shook her head. “And yet, you’re so similar. . .”

“I know.” Tessa sniffed, wiped at her eyes, glanced sideways at the younger woman. “I didn’t plan for any of this to turn out the way it did. I wasn’t even aiming for this point in the timeline, this place. I was trying to get to Earth before the war even started, put an end to it before any of this could even happen, but. . .” She trailed off, shook her head.

“That’s. . .” Phoebe swallowed. “That’s life, though, isn’t it?” The edge of a laugh snuck past her lips, died as she sniffed, wiped at her own eyes. “I mean, nothing really ever turns out the way we plan.”

There was no answer, only silence as Tessa looked away again, closed her eyes. Phoebe hesitated in the pause, wrestled with herself, tried again.

“There is one thing I’d like to know for sure.” She swallowed again, found herself unable to speak again, to put her thoughts into words. “Tessa, if Izzy. . .” The major glanced back again, met the younger woman’s eyes as she hesitated, struggled, looked away. “Did we. . ? Did we ever. . . ?”

“You mean. . .”

Phoebe closed her eyes. “Yeah.”

Tessa turned away again, pulled in a long, tired breath. Phoebe shook her head, hesitated, stood again.

“You know what, forget it, it’s a stupid question, I. . .”

“No, Phoebe.” Tessa stood, caught the other woman’s hand. “It’s not a stupid question.” She swallowed, hesitated. Slowly, carefully, she moved back to the bars, came up against them, reaching, gently tracing a finger along the line of Phoebe’s jaw. The younger woman closed her eyes, sucked in a sudden, desperate breath.

“When Izzy died, you and I. . .” She swallowed, lost suddenly as the other woman opened her eyes, so clear and blue, depthless and staring. Her heart caught in her throat, left her breathless, unable to do anything but caress the other woman’s cheek. “We got a little close.”

“How close?” Phoebe breathed, coming up against the bars, fingers weaving into Tessa’s fingers, palms touching, gently pressing.

“This close.” Tessa whispered, and then their lips met, locked in a kiss that held them both immobile for an instant, locked, breathing into each other, tasting the sun. When they finally broke away again, it was slow, reluctant, necessary. Phoebe closed her eyes, tried to mask tears as they flooded in, poured suddenly through tight-held lids.

“I’m sorry, Phoebe.”

“It’s okay, it’s. . .” The younger woman tried, voice coming hoarse, shaky. “So where. . .” She wiped at her tears, hesitated, managed the edge of a glance. “Where does this leave us?”

“Right here,” Tessa managed the barest smile. “Just this.”

“Okay.” Phoebe tried a smile of her own, nodded once. “I can. . . I can live with that.” She swallowed, turned back to face Tessa fully.

“The future is meant to be uncertain, right?”

“Right.”

S2: Episode #46: Future Introspection

2011-04-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

“My god.”

Words caught in Tessa’s throat as she stared down at a bleary-eyed reflection of herself that looked somehow older, somehow more feeble and aged than seemed possible. Sucking in each wet breath with the gasping rattle of the dying, her younger self stared back, watched her from the tomb of tubes and chrome that kept her alive, kept her waiting. The major swallowed, looked away, eyes moving to stare at the floor rather than look too long into that cybernetic nightmare, that bizarre mirror of a self that almost seemed to taunt her, whispering: This could be you. This is you.

“Can we have a moment alone?” She asked reflexively. Izzy grimaced, then turned her eyes to the woman she loved, the Tessa who lay broken and gasping against tubes and machinery on the hospital berth. The younger Tessa met her eyes, nodded once.

“P-lease.”

Izzy swallowed, reached for the younger Tessa’s hand as the major closed her eyes, breathed a tired sigh.

“Are you sure about this?”

“Yeah.” The younger Tessa managed. “I. . . need this, Izzy.” She looked up, eyes seeking her older self, lingering on her butchered hair, the years that had etched themselves that much deeper into her face. “There are things. . . that need to be said.”

“Okay.” The other woman tried a smile, sniffed past the tears. “I’ll be right outside. . . if you need me.”

“I love you, Izzy.”

Izzy smiled past new tears, squeezed her lover’s hand again. “I love you too, baby. Hang in there, okay?”

“Yeah.” Came the tired response, the half smile. Turning away, Izzy’s eyes caught against the older Tessa’s for an instant, and for that bare moment, there was something other than hatred in her gaze, something other than the blame, the confusion, the pain. Tessa swallowed, opened her mouth to say something, but before the words would come, Izzy was gone, the wall of her emotionless back disappearing behind a corner, gone in the whisper of a door. Beside her, the younger Tessa stirred, coughed.

“We’re alone.” She managed, and as the older Tessa glanced at her, there came a moment of relief, of understanding. The major swallowed, pulled in a shaky breath.

“I heard them say... you’re pregnant.” The younger Tessa hesitated, breathed. “Who. . . who’s the father?” Chuckling, the major looked away again.

“Want to know who you eventually hooked up with?” The younger Tessa bit her lip, eyes working silently, still bleary with blood. Her older self crossed her arms, sputtered an apologetic laugh, eyes wandering toward the ceiling. “A lot’s happened in the past four years, but I guess...” She sighed, turned back. “It’s Dimitrov.”

“Dimitrov?” Her younger self coughed again. “Ben Dimitrov?”

“Yeah.” The older Tessa smiled softly, absently tucked the edges of the blanket into the berth, worked the folds around the tubes, the spider-like legs of the apparatus clinging to her younger self’s chest and throat, framing the edges of her face. “Long story you probably shouldn’t hear, considering I’m from the future and all.”

“You’ve already changed the way things turn out.” The younger Tessa shot back, “Even if I was going to live, I...”

“Hey, hey, none of that.” The major shook her head. “You’ll get better. You’ve got a lot to live for.”

“Don’t lie to yourself.” Her younger self croaked back. “Our grandmother told you that.”

“Yeah.” The major managed a broken smile, reached out, squeezed the other woman’s hand. “Yeah, she did.”

“Just,” The younger Tessa coughed, “Tell me about some of it. Tell me about how you ended up with the Gray Society. . . or something. . .” She coughed again, sputtered against the equipment, eyes squeezing against the pain. The major’s smile softened a little, wet at the edges with new tears.

“Okay.”

Sitting lightly on the edge of the berth, Tessa’s mind went back to the years she’d stumbled through after losing Izzy, the highlights, the changes, the transfer to the Hephaestus. As she talked, she ran through the years like a blade across ice, just touching, moving at the speed of memory. She talked about her training, her work within the TALENT program, the lacings, seeing Ben again, being there for him as he suffered through his own loss, the strength he gave as she suffered endlessly through hers. She talked about playing the saxophone, about Panem, about the admiral, about Myyaelae and a thousand other things until, finally, her younger self reached out, caught her hand, locked eyes with hers.

“Tessa,” She fought to breathe, to push words into the air. “They won’t wait forever. They’ll be back soon. You know what you have to do.” She swallowed, almost whispered as her eyes darted across the bay and back again. “We both know that I would never want to go on living this way.”

“Yeah.” Was all her older self could say. She looked away, hesitated. No one knew Tessa better than her older self, the self that had looked back on these days and the person she had been with a sort of acceptant nostalgia, reliving her mistakes, her triumphs, sometimes smiling, laughing, sometimes crying. One gesture with her hand, and the lock on the emergency case across the bay where regulations required a handgun with a full clip of twelve rounds to be stored turned to putty, rolled off onto the floor. The younger Tessa closed her eyes, swallowed as the weapon cleared the distance, snapped into her older self’s open hand. The muzzle rose, crossed her chest to stare down at a spot between tear-wet lids, and for the barest space of an instant, the major, leader of Freyja squadron and hardened by years in Ultima Thila, hesitated, swallowed.

“Do it.” Came her younger self’s hoarse whisper. “Don’t make us suffer any longer.”

The doctor came rushing back into the bay before the third round had even cleared the muzzle, Izzy and Phoebe hot on his heels– and even then she kept squeezing, kept putting lead into the ruined face of her younger self, into the support equipment, the berth. When the first empty click came, Tessa dropped the gun, met Izzy’s terrified, tear-wet stare.

“It’s done.” She managed, and the words came flat, emotionless. The single edge of a tear-trail traced its way across her cheek, dropped to spatter on the collar of her black uniform.

- - -

S2: Episode #45: Losing Everything

2011-03-30T00:00:00.000-07:00

“She’s awake.”

Tessa blinked, struggled with the fog of half-sleep. Above her, something moved, the flash of white, movement of something chrome– and then, within the space of a blink, she was on the floor. Steel frames bent and parted like mist in her wake as she dropped to a crouch on cool deckplating, feet moving, pivoting, jamming her back up against the nearest wall. Lost, stunned, the doctor stared on in mute shock, his mouth hanging open, hand frozen over the ruined berth.

“My god. . .” Someone was saying. “Did you see. . .”

Tessa swallowed, gasped, tried to force her mind toward calm, struggled to get a grip on who she was, where she was. Eyes flicked right to left, vision hazy at the edges, picking up furniture and feet, assessing, assessing. Four people. Four.

One hand splayed out across the floor as she drew her other arm to her chest, gathered up the open fabrics of the hospital gown that hung in place of her uniform and squeezed them in the ball of her fist. She had nothing, nothing– and then one of the leg-pairs she’d caught closed the distance, bending, a familiar face dropping in, smiling softly. A hand reached out timidly, dispelled the initial shock in the space of a moment, a handful of breaths, and left only the tattered edges of fear and confusion to whisper in its wake.

“H–hey.” Phoebe tried a smile, but it faltered as Tessa stared at her, one hand going absently to her lips, touching. “Just. . . just relax, okay?” The younger woman swallowed, put her hand out a little further. “You’re among friends.”

“That’s debatable.” Izzy grumbled, crossed her arms as Phoebe glanced back at her. “What? That thing isn’t who you think it is. It can’t be.”

“Then who is she?” Dimitrov stepped up, cocked his head, almost seemed to study her as she stared back, half hurt, half terrified.

“Physically, she’s Tessa Eisenherz,” The doctor raised his eyebrows, glanced at the silicon sheet in his hand. “Just with a few more miles and a lot more techware in her.”

“Is the techware what allows her to manipulate metal like that?” Phoebe asked, turning back to the doctor.

“God only knows.” He shrugged. “I haven’t seen anything like most of this. It’s beyond me.”

“I’m right here.” Tessa’s voice came hoarse, shaky. Sucking in a broken, frightened breath, she swallowed, hugged her flimsy clothing against her chest. Eyes darted up, locked with Phoebe’s. “Where. . . Where am I?”

“You’re in Medical, L.C. Aboard the Hok.”

The Hok. She swallowed as old memories crashed through her mind, mixed with the currents of newer memories. Eyes flicked up to Dimitrov’s, locked. “Ben. . .”

“There’s something else.” The doctor’s brows knit as he looked at Tessa, met the stare that flicked up to lock with his. “One of the tests I did was a code integrity and telomere length screening, standard procedure on the core worlds to protect the government from infiltration and espionage by clones of politicians and aides with their own agendas.” He let it hang. Tessa bit her lip, stared, the edge of one eye twitching in the pause. “But instead of discovering that this, our older Eisenherz, was a copy as I originally assumed, I found something else, something they both have.”

“You bastard.” Tessa all but growled, fighting to get to her feet, staring at the doctor, hands flexing, teeth bared. Phoebe swallowed, hands going out as she put herself between them, her eyes full of worry, confusion. “You leave her out of this, do you understand me?”

“What is it, Doctor?” Ben crossed his arms.

“Both the major and the lieutenant commander, both Tessa Eisenherzs, are marked. Both of them have DNA coding tagged with crossover-proof ownership idents.” He paused, met Tessa’s eyes solidly. “They’re both GMOs illegally serving with the Navy.”

Phoebe tackled Tessa as the older woman lunged for the doctor, screaming, biting, clawing as the lieutenant struggled to hold her down. In an instant, Izzy and Dimitrov were there, each working to pin the major as she fought them, frothed and spat, screaming, shrieking. “You bastard! You bastard!”

“Careful with her.” The doctor was beside her a second later, slapping a low-dosage cool-down patch against her arm. “There’s something else– She’s pregnant.”

“Pregnant?” Izzy shot back, half losing her grip for an instant, catching Tessa’s arm again and holding her as the patch took hold, killed the major’s anger in cool, carefully measured waves. “Are you sure?” The doctor nodded. “But who–” She glanced back at Tessa, saw the moistness in eyes as tears budded suddenly, grew. Within seconds, Tessa went limp, became weak, collapsed in on herself, teeth coming free of lips, flashing white as they let her go, let her curl up on the floor, lost and broken. “I don’t know yet.” The doctor managed. “We’re still waiting to get back the results on the paternity test.” He swallowed, stood. “Unless she tells us, it could be hours before we know. We’re starting with members of Ultima Thila, but we might not find our match there, and there are a lot of men in the Commonwealth.”

“I couldn’t. . .” Tessa tried, gibbering into her hands. “Izzy, I’m so sorry. After you died, I. . . I. . .”

“Shut up!” The other woman shouted back. “It should have been me! It should have, and you know it! You should have stayed where you came from! You should have stayed out of my life!”

“Izzy. . .” Phoebe tried, reaching out, eyes worried.

“No!” Izzy knocked the other woman’s hands away, stared viciously at the crumpled form laying weak at her feet. “If it wasn’t for this, this thing, Tessa wouldn’t be fighting for her life right now. She wouldn’t be hooked to a fucking army of life support machines. She’d be here.” Izzy growled, brushed a hand quick across moist eyes. “She’d be here.”

“But I. . .” Tessa hesitated, glanced at the doctor with one wet, bloodshot eye. “She. . . I stopped the shards. How could she. . . ? I remember stopping the shards.”

“There’s no question that they were stopped,” the doctor managed. “It’s a matter of when they were stopped.”

“She’s going to be on life support for the rest of her life, thanks to you.” Izzy sneered.

Tessa’s eyes flicked between each gaze as it fixed on her, stared back. Slowly, carefully, she struggled back against the wall, righted herself and hugged her knees against her chest, swallowed. “Can I see her?”

The doctor glanced at Izzy, let his eyes flick back. “Why?”

“I. . .” Think, Tessa. “I’m her next of kin.”

The doctor breathed a long, tired sigh, rubbed at his eyes. “Yeah.” He gestured loosely. “Okay.”

“And. . .” She tried, working her way up the wall, standing, back against cold tile.“Since. . . since privacy is out of the question,” She swallowed past the shakiness, tried to force steel into her voice, shivered a little as it caught in her throat. “Can I at least have my clothes back?”

- - -

S2: Episode #44: Love and War

2011-03-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

Tessa closed her eyes and turned back to her younger self, felt the smile drop away from her features. The memory of reconnecting with Izzy, of touching her, feeling the link that they had shared flooding back across her mind and into her very being had been like a fix too long denied, a refreshing release, the cool of rain brushing against a desert’s parched heat; sweet, but gone too soon.

“We have to get out of here.” Izzy managed, glancing back at the younger Tessa, eyes lost, roving. “We have to get her to medical, and. . .” She hesitated, fumbled for words, suddenly lost.

“The safest place right now is here, with me.” The older Tessa looked over at her, smiled softly. “I’ve come too far to let you die again, Izzy.”

Swallowing, Izzy looked away, let her eyes slip back to the younger Tessa’s features, the shallow gasping of a body suspended at the edge of death, looking beyond, looking in. Working quickly, the older Tessa pulled the device Blavatsky had given her from her belt and set it on the floor, studied it with tired eyes. There wasn’t much time– the sooner she dived into the device, interfaced with it and let it do whatever magic was locked up inside of it, the more likely she could stop the warships cold, keep them from moving away, keep the one that had taken out the Carl Sagan in her timeline from blowing its drive in this one.

Baring teeth, she pressed her hands against the box’s interface points and reached into it with her mind, forced it to yield up its secrets. All at once, its systems came alive, reached back, drove dozens of tiny, digital tentacles into her brain, each seeking out their own connections so fast that she was left reeling, swimming in a sea of the unknown, grasping for control in a subset of mental reality where the reins of everything had been snapped suddenly into her hands with a quick, solid, almost mechanical precision. Reality coalesced, dropped away and then reformed as a solid network, a map of alien neurons tangled in the body of the Hok, each set leading back to its respective ship, leading deep into systems that had been left open, unprotected. The Coralate had no reason to fear infiltration– they were a group organism, they worked as one, and their technology was so alien that humanity had never had even the slightest inkling of how to interface with it.

Until the Horus project, but that was four years in the future from the when she was stuck in now. Here, now, the Coralate systems had laid themselves open for her, giving her total access, complying immediately as she shut them down one by one, locking reactors, sealing doors, killing life support. As the final coup de grâce, she triggered the internal autonomic defense systems, watched impassively as they shredded every Coralate spread between the three ships into wet, cerulean-stained hamburger, left nothing living in their wake. One quick check revealed the extent of the devastation, the destruction a few simple thoughts had wrought– everything Cygnan that had once been living, everything they’d brought to the Hok, everything they’d infected the warship with, was dead or dying. Slowly, like arteries hardening under the force of age, long veins of liquid steel slowed, became sluggish, stopped. Only the link that bound Tessa’s mind to the Hok’s drive stayed active and vital, and that only long enough for her to bridge the connection the Coralate had been trying to make and disable the ship’s auto destruct.

Somewhere, part of her smiled a smile of relief. There would be no more death. Not today.

“Copperfield.”

A voice caught Tessa’s ear as she came back, hung with her as she withdrew from the device and slumped weakly into herself. Snatches of conversation, hurried words– the voice seemed vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place it, almost didn’t care enough anymore to try.

“Ben, she’s hurt.” Izzy stood, crossed back to the younger Tessa. “I need your help– we’ve got to get her to medical.”

“No time.” Murphy shot back, shook his head. “The admiral has the ship set for self destruct.” He glanced at Dimitrov. “We’ve got to go, now.”

Ben’s eyes crossed to the younger Tessa, blinked away the edges of tears as his gaze lingered on her spattered face, her tattered, gasping body. “She’s too far gone.” He swallowed, eyes coming back to meet Izzy’s as he offered her his hand. “Come on, we’ll get you to your rig.”

“Wait.” Tessa stumbled as she forced herself to stand, collapsed back against wall as shaky, tired legs all but gave out beneath her. “The drive isn’t going to blow. I’ve fixed it. Everything will be fine. The cavalry is coming.”

“I don’t know where you’re getting your information, but you’re wrong.” Ben said smoothly, his stare level, firm. “Orders were issued. We’ve got minutes. Maybe.”

“Trust me, Ben.” She shifted, lost her balance for a moment, grabbed the wall with flat-palmed hands to catch herself. “Ugh. . . I’ve been through this before. I’ve seen how this turns out.”

“You’re crazy.” Murphy stared at her, glanced over at Dimitrov, put a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, Ben. If she wants to chance it, let her stay here.” He swallowed, eyes flicking between the two officers. “I plan to live.”

But Dimitrov didn’t move, didn’t run. He stood there, eyes narrowing as he studied Tessa’s face in the half-light, tried to make sense of what suddenly didn’t make sense. “Who are you?”

“Ultima Thila.” She managed, coughed. “I’m on special assignment.”

“That’s convenient.” Murphy again. “How’d you get on board? I haven’t seen anything Gray Society on the Hok in over a year.”

“Don’t trust her.” Izzy said suddenly, glancing back, hesitating. “She can do things– I saw her move metal the way the Cygnans do.”

“Its an implant,” She made a gesture. “Experimental technology.”

Murphy sneered. “Experimental my ass.”

“We don’t have time for this.” Ben shook his head, sighed as he drew his stunner. “We’ll sort this out later.” He locked the older Tessa with a firm, immovable stare. “No offense.”

There was no time to react, to move, to speak. Before her lips could so much as open, Dimitrov had pulled the trigger and hit her square in the chest with a blast that washed through her body like paralyzing light, dropped her in an instant. Fingers spasmed, struggled, and as darkness closed in, she reached out for Izzy, begged silently, but the other woman didn’t respond, didn’t catch her, only turned away and let her fall into nothingness, let her disappear into another endless, swirling abyss.

S2: Episode #43: Old Faces

2011-03-16T00:00:00.000-07:00

Izzy grinned, popped the clasp on her holster. “You with me?”

In the darkness of the silver-mottled corridor, Tessa’s eyes shot for Izzy’s, locked with a stare that snared and bored back into hers, filled her with a fiery strength that seemed to cross the distance between them, kindling her resolve, burning away the fears, the nagging uncertainties. In the pause, Tessa gave her a quick nod, just the sharp edge of a movement that conveyed complete understanding and complete agreement. Fingers wrapped solidly around the grips of handguns, minds rattling quick through specs at the touch, facts drilled into minds years ago. Solomon Mark VII Compressed Energy Stunner. Effective stun zone, thirty feet. Effective kill zone, ten inches or less, major organ failure. Izzy swallowed as Tessa’s eyes shot to the Cygnan, but the resolve was there, her heart set. Izzy’s Stunner came free almost at the same instant Tessa’s did, and as they both pushed off, rocketed up from crouched positions into adrenaline-fueled charges, one thought passed between them, crossed the impossible distance of air and absence of touch to burn brightly in open, terrified minds.

Ten inches from internal organs. Full yield.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

The instant Izzy’s feet left the ground, something happened. Eyes registered a change in the globes, a subtle flicker of blades near the Cygnan– and then there was steel in the air. Fingers pulled triggers reflexively, and then something hit her, crashed into her, knocked her shot wild and carried her to the ground with all the force of a concrete wall. There was no time to react, no time to think– in the click-broken silence, the Cygnan rent the air with a shrill, angry vibration that bit and throbbed in every bone like the vicious, howling pain of a fracture. The shards of chrome hesitated mid-air, shifted, reacted almost as if by instinct.

Part of Izzy died the instant she saw the shards dart for Tessa, the instant she saw that phalanx of bladed steel separate, half of it splattering harmlessly in midair as it reached for her, half plunging hard for the woman she loved, each spike unwavering and cruel. She cried out, shouted, screamed, but the weight held her, pinned her. More steel leapt into the air, and then it was the Cygnan that was screaming, its cries drowning out the sound of Tessa’s agony as blood blossomed into the corridor, mixed crimson and blue, splashed the Cygnan, reached as far as Izzy and the shape that was covering her, holding her.

And then the vision came, the voice, the sudden touch of life and passion and fear and relief that overwhelmed her senses and terrified her to the point of madness. There was something of Tessa in that touch, that rush of sensation, thought, and emotion, but it couldn’t have been, couldn’t– she recoiled in fear, fought with the shape, struggled to throw it off, but still it held her, still it reached into her mind, filled her with its thoughts.

Its okay, Izzy. She heard Tessa’s voice, the familiar tones reaching into her mind, playing impossibly across her senses. Shhh, baby. Relax. It’s okay. It’s okay now.

“Get off me!” Izzy shouted, and in one sudden blast of adrenaline, she dislodged the shape that had pinned her and rushed to Tessa’s side, reached for her lover’s hand, gently cupped one blood-spattered cheek.

“Jesus, Tessa.” She tried, hesitated, unsure of what to do. Tessa’s eyes stared on, unwavering, unmoving, her body fighting an internal struggle for survival, drawing endless, quiet, gasping breaths. Izzy closed her eyes reflexively, covered them with one hand, fought against the burning, vicious tears as they came, sucked in on the broken edges of a shocked and wet, shaky breath. “No...” She choked. “Oh. . . oh god, no.” Teeth came clear, bared as pain ripped through her, tore a fissure in her soul. “No...”

Strong hands came to a gentle rest on her back as Tessa tried to speak, panted words past lips speckled with crimson. “Iz- zy, I–”

“Baby...” Izzy leaned in, quickly brushed the tears from her reddening eyes, reached out and moved a loose strand of obsidian hair out of Tessa’s face. “Shhh, baby. I’m here.”

“I–” Tessa’s eyes flicked suddenly to the side, met Izzy’s and locked, wide and terrified, lit with the intensity of the last bright flash of a dying light. For one terrible instant, she stopped breathing, as if in that instant of lapsed concentration she had lost hold of the thread of life and didn’t have the strength to recapture it. Izzy’s own breath held, frightened, unable, unwilling to release– and then the shape behind her gently shifted her away, dropped into a crouch beside her.

“I can stop this.” The shape said, and at the sound of the voice, Izzy started, turned and stared open mouthed at what was an impossibility, what had to be a hallucination, what couldn’t have been real. “I can stop the round before it does any more damage.”

“You. . .” Izzy shook her head, watched as the shape, the woman who had saved her life, the one who was and yet couldn’t be, moved her hands over the dying Tessa’s chest and caught each tiny slug of living steel as they crawled out of wounds one by one, lifting as if drawn by a magnet. Like liquid, they rose in rivulets and coalesced together in the center of her hand, drawing themselves up into a sphere of swirling chrome that hung suspended, ominous.

And then Izzy looked up, caught the eyes of the woman, and for a moment, she seemed to understand, seemed to grasp just enough of what had to be the terrifying truth to understand. The other woman smiled softly and Izzy’s mouth dropped open. None of the changes mattered, the extra years, the butchered hair– it was clear who the woman was, who she couldn’t be.

“Who are you?” Izzy managed.

“Ultima Thila.” The older Tessa smiled, tossed the ball of chrome lightly over to her. “That’s all you need to know.”

- - -

S2: Episode #42: Into The Unknown

2011-03-09T00:00:00.000-08:00

The second the stars closed up behind Tessa’s Stormfury, the AI flickered into sudden, disjointed submission. Everything dropped away, fluttered into nothingness, left her mind lost and floundering in a world that was all swirling, directionless abyss. Enough of the navigation software oscillated between action and oblivion to keep her rig on course through it all, but even with the assistance, Tessa felt hollow, broken, as if half her mind had suddenly vanished, leaving nothing, leaving only a childlike husk to pick its way through a maze of sensation that had all the order and openness of shattered glass.

In the haze, her sensors became like numb, unwilling fingers, optical units sifting through sensory data as light and sound coalesced into one in Tessa’s mind, waves meshing, colliding, beating rhythm across the hull in high energy waves that she felt, heard. All of reality came back to her with the intensity of the surface of a star, her flight like a sudden hard dive into the halo of a sun’s corona. An impossible flight. Part of her smiled in spite of the deadness of the greater whole. As impossible as this drop through hyperspace and into a wholly different intersection of time and space. . .

A harsh flare of burning everything shot through senses, cauterized numb neurons for an instant, then flashed into her mind’s eye. She blinked reflexively, drew back as the warnings coalesced across tortured mind, blasted her with words she could barely understand, could barely focus on enough to make sense of.

Flight disturbance detected, attempting to compensate.

Groping through systems with half of the interface down and the AI assist totally offline was like fumbling through an endless black sea for a life preserver that might never have even been there. Rig systems were like a maze within a maze, a labyrinth beyond the labyrinth of her mind, a puzzle in passages dwarfed by the greater reality that stretched on endlessly into the greater maze of the outside world. Panem had installed failsafes designed to keep the rig on course, but she wandered through the morass anyway, struggled with the darkness and desperately turned each corner, touching the dead sigils of the machine mind in the hopes that triggering or adjusting one might fix the problem that was lurking beyond the wings of her rig. Over and over again in her mind, the system cried out in pain. Failure. Compensating. Failure. Compensating. . .

Failure.

All at once, the echoing shriek of living steel shearing off against vicious waves of gravity and vacillating entropy caught her, blindsided her with such ferocity that her mind shot out of the system, came half-conscious for an instant. She cried out, and the sound hung corrupted and broken in the machine mind, mixing through sensor-streams with the screams of tortured fuselage as she felt it, as she forced herself to seize onto anything for support, forced herself to ride out the pain of catapulting face first into the narrowing unknown, her limbs ripped away at the joints, at the shoulders, scattered to the abyss. All around her, the world of the mind, of the machine and the flesh that hung dependent upon it, spun crazily, mere inches from the brink of collapse. With all the broken impulses of a dying bird, her senses flopped through the darkness one last time, desperate for survival, for a way to tear herself free, but in the end, there was only one choice, one way. Hands came alive, came separate from the system, found the one edge she had over eternity.

Fuck it.

Abort.

For one split instant, the Stormfury hesitated, seemed to wait, unresponsive, then dropped into a shuddering, one-winged spin that left her lost in waves of stuttering light. Space came a second later, triggered by the return of full AI control, limiters snapping into place. In the span of a breath, she was in the stars, struggling to orient herself as the void shifted sickeningly across her field of vision. Flooding back, filling her, the AI gently enfolded her in its augmentation software and guided steel and flesh into something approximating straight and level flight. The full awareness of the machine mind came back to her, and in the sudden pause, time itself almost seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

And then she saw it, saw the shape stretched out below her like a burnt and beaten monolith, a Wallace-class warship strung out between twin columns of untarnished silver. Seeing the thing there left her shivering, unable to pull her eyes away from its tortured hull or the two Cygnan behemoths bleeding chrome lines into it. The request went out fast, aggressive, and as her A.I. assist synced with the ship, she pulled an IFF ident from the thing’s own shaky A.I. system that shocked her almost to the point of silence, numbness.

TMV Wu Ang Hok, c/o ADM. Minear, CPT. Lazar.

She swallowed, hesitated. When control came again, she forced herself to jam a second aggressive request, this one for local date and time, and the response that bounced back carried so much weight in her subconscious that it was all she could do not to pass out under the force of it, the realizations that came with it.

18:31 Zulu. APR 6, 2307. Earth Standard Notation.

Somewhere deep within her injured, metallic body, she opened her mouth, lost focus. Her mind latched onto the date, made it her world, her whole focus, wouldn’t let it go. She knew that date, had lived with it burnt into her brain for years, a wound that had refused to heal, a scar that had branded itself into the skin of her very soul.

April sixth.

The day I lost Izzy to the Coralate.

Systems on her rig shivered and twitched as her mind disengaged fully, as terror, fear, anxiety gripped her suddenly, paralyzed her, left her gasping for air, isolated in the cockpit of a rig that no longer felt like an extension of her body, of her mind, her self. The moment, the time, the meaning– it was all that mattered. She’d replayed Izzy’s death over and over in her mind since that day, this day, spent hours, weeks, working her way through intricate “what if” scenarios, planning out each step she would make, what she would do different– and now she was here, now she’d been given her chance, her do-over, her opportunity to put things right, and it didn’t matter. She couldn’t move, couldn’t act. Fear had lain its cruel, cold hand across her shoulders and left her frozen, doubting.

And then, something broke.

Control didn’t come back all at once. Sliding back into her rig’s systems and dropping into the control interface was like trying to slide back into sleep with the fresh dread of death pulling at her heels. Sluggishly, her mind found its way back into the machinery, picked through the injured systems, vaguely cataloging what was working, what wasn’t. Analysis came slow, too slow, and even as the numbers trickled in, bounced back and forth between computer control and the fleshy passages of her mind, the data she did get became less and less encouraging.

In a matter of moments, it was clear that her rig would barely fly– there was no way she was going to be able to burn back into hyperspace and aim vaguely for a point closer to her original destination, not with a third of her structure gone. That damaged, she wasn’t even going to make it into the bay, especially not as an unidentified rig broadcasting an obscure friendly code that the Hok’s own AI might mark as hostile the instant it got too close to a bay opening. There was only one option, one way to get into the ship, one chance to make her changes and save the human race, and it was almost as dangerous as running the gauntlet of argon-ion web emitters and aggressive Mitarashi response grids that would flare up if she went for any obvious openings. She was going to have to ditch her rig, make full use of her implants and find a spot in the hull where the metal was weak enough for her to punch through, strong enough for her to be able to seal it up after her. The rig would take her as far as the hull, somewhere she could tie it down until salvage teams could recover it during the clean up, but that was as far as it was going.

Beyond that, she was on her own.

Shouldn’t be a problem. She told herself, licked her lips. The lacings and subdermal emitter chains she’d been given as part of project Amaterasu had been specifically designed with short term EVA in mind, but the emphasis had remained on short term. Even with her Ninsar implants balanced at maximum conscious input, she’d have to work fast, hope that whatever energy reserves she had left to work with bound up within her body would be enough to augment and, if necessary, take over for the power assemblies of all three implants for long enough to get her where she needed to go.

She closed her eyes, pulled in a deep, steadying breath, let it out again. The hull of the Hok rose up to meet her, flattened out as the Stormfury modulated its S-vectoring panels enough to melt struts into the hull, an impromptu tethering that stuck solid, left Tessa cold, frozen for a moment with fear, the weight of inevitability.

Move, Tessa.

Now.

Popping the canopy took a force of will, but even as the air in her cockpit rushed out, she didn’t feel the cold of the sudden vacuum. Skin flared golden and green as she drifted weightless, soaked up the meager light of distant stars, and fed a trickle of energy into the halo of fire and light that protected her from exposure, gave her just enough of a window to drop to the hull of the Hok. The resolve to open her eyes came slowly, and even as she did, she was struck for a moment by the beauty of the cosmos as it stretched on around her, the wonder of everything held in cold collusion.

And then she turned back to the hull, stared at it, into it, and dived into the cold sea of steel that opened for her as she moved, closed up again as she passed deeper into the belly of the half-dead warship.

- - -

S2: Episode #41: Final Farewells, part 2

2011-03-02T00:00:00.000-08:00

The instant she saw the field fail, Tessa closed her eyes, half disconnected from her rig on the wave of pain that seized her, left cheeks wet with tears. The degen drive at the core of the Hephaestus followed the systems crash almost immediately, the alignment of the superdense matter spinning out of control, eviscerating the sleek little warship from within with knife-like waves of undampened gravity. Whole sections pressed in on themselves as she watched, the skin of the hull cracking, buckling, exploding outward before bending back and collapsing in on the hot center of the ship, fragments spiraling in, leaving nothing but empty void in their wake. Piece by piece, the Hephaestus gathered itself up into a tiny sun, and then the ship that had been her home for four years spread itself across the sky, pelted the Von and the nearest Coralate warships with hot debris. Only the escape pods hung untouched in the void, streaking toward the massive Wallace class on autopilot guidance.

Soon, only she would remain, a lone testament floating in the void, the footnote of a warship that had reduced itself to cinders at the edge of a sea of silver.

Standard protocol would have been to radio in, to call tower and land in the bay with the pods, but Tessa had other plans. Plotting a course to a location in the moving flux of space time that met the requirements for the jump as Phoebe and Panem had calculated them, Tessa’s Stormfury moved slowly, quietly, half-visible in the haze. In the construct that allowed her to interface with the machine, she could see the variables lining up like crosshairs, searching, searching, targeting.

1522 km, three quarters burn, seven point two second window upon arrival.

Hit it.

And then, as if by cue, the fighters came.

There was only one at first, a single dash of silver that came blasting out of the stars and haze to drop in behind her, railcannons heating up late, flaring at the same instant her thrusters did. Movement came reflexive– throttle dashed forward and back, her mind giving control of coordinate tracking to the AI, glancing into it periodically as she whirled and dashed, dodged the Coralate’s fire as nimbly as a dancer. He was good, but she was better, and the second he filled the night with his plasmatic payload, she banked, darted, spun, primed and in one smooth movement triggered her rig’s own plasma repeaters, hammering the Cygnan with a salvo of hot slugs that beat and butchered his rig before he could even react. Thrusters flared again, hotter this time, and before the Cygnan’s drive even destabilized, she was gone, hot after her target.

Unfortunately, so were the Cygnans, and her momentary tangle with the lone pilot had given the closest twelve rigs enough time to close with her, to get a swarm of crosshairs lined up on her backside. Numbers ticked down, distance to target. Closing, closing. Too slow, too slow.

Shit.

And then a voice:

“Keep going, LC! I’ve got your back!”

The sound rang out clear across Tessa’s radio, brought a momentary grin to her mind.

Phoebe.

A glint of light flashed across canopy as Phoebe’s rig came darting in, hot as a rocket, weapons live, warheads already detaching from racks, intent on Coralate targets. Words came reflexively, delivered even as the younger woman burnt three chrome rigs out of the sky, blasted through the rest as they peeled away from her in waves like silver fish.

“Major, Phoebe. You’re the lieutenant commander.” Tessa shot back, almost grinning, ignoring the edges of fear that pulled at her, silently grateful for the assistance another pilot could bring to the fight. “What are you doing out here? Isn’t your squadron supposed to be closer to the Von, scraping up damaged pods or queuing for the bays?”

“My squadron is.” Phoebe shot back, and Tessa could hear the grin in her voice. “But when I saw you out here with no backup and burning hard, straight into Cygnan city, I sent them ahead and jammed out here to cover you.”

“This is a one way mission, Phoebe.” Tessa managed. “You know that.”

“Yeah. I know.” Phoebe’s response came quieter, softer. “At least let me escort you as far as your jump point.”

“Fine,” Tessa hesitated, forced iron into her voice. “But then you get the hell out of here, okay, Phoebe? Minerva squadron needs its LC.”

“I know.” Said Phoebe. “I remember when she left.”

“I’m sorry, Phoebe.”

A pause, the sound of a long, deep breath.

“Don’t worry about it, Major. In a few minutes, it won’t matter.”

Tessa hesitated, opened the channel to speak, but before the words would come, could even form, the Coralate rigs were in their midst again, lining up sights, railcannons heating up. Cursing, she swung back toward Phoebe, ducked under the younger woman’s rig as it passed, then triggered the sweep cannon on the nose of her fighter with a flick of the eye. The beam cut smooth, lashed into chrome, and her eye followed each fragment of Coralate confetti as it ripped free under the force of the blistering column of energy washing over and through the fighters, leaving only hot slag in its wake. Only the spidery-shape of a hunter-killer rig had enough warning and grace to dance nimbly out of her way, spinning, darting out of her crosshairs until the system could no longer compensate for the heat of the cannon and killed the beam reflexively, flooding the firing chamber with a burst of liquid hydrogen. Plasmatic shards rolled up and across her fuselage, catching, spun off by debris shielding as the hydrogen haze blossomed all around her, hung heavy against cockpit glass. Phoebe said something unintelligible into the radio as she swung in behind the Coralate hunter-killer, caught the wicked, spindly little rig in the crosshatch of her argon-ion L-web emitters. Coasting through the flames, she shouted, cheered.

“We’re clear!”

And then a single contact flared on Tessa’s scopes, hot after Phoebe’s rig and dropping fast toward her position from the rear.

“Phoebe!” Jesus Christ. “Behind you!”

There was a half second’s hesitation, and then Phoebe’s rig twitched, shifted. Behind her, the single Cygnan fighter blasted into view, railcannons hot, leaking streamers of plasma held too long, eager for release. Tessa tore open the channel, mouth biting in on the edge of a yell, but Phoebe was quicker, more nimble, thumb jamming the radio even as she spun away, rotating fast and flat in the hopes of getting behind the sleek little rig as it passed. “I’ve got him! I’ve got him!”

“He’s right there, he’s–” The Coralate rig cut throttle suddenly, spun and darted even as Phoebe swung out to meet him. Fingers mashed triggers, and as Tessa watched, the sleek little silver ship fired, filled the sky with vicious light. There was no time to move, no time to react– Phoebe punched the throttle, blasted hard through the cloud and bounced off the other rig so quickly that it lost control just long enough to take one of the lieutenant commander’s rockets square in the closest thing it had to a cockpit. Riding the blast of the Cygnan’s destabilizing reactor was like surfing a tidal wave and then getting dashed against sand just in time to be snared by a sudden undertow.

“I’m hit, Tessa.” Phoebe managed, and as the older woman’s eyes chased digital magnification to her friend’s rig, she caught the sudden plumes of white-hot brilliance trailing from struggling drives, solidifying into columns in the endless night. “I’ve got a leak in the liquid helium coolant lines for the hotcoil pods, massive flooding, expansion corruption in the drive, internal systems.” She swallowed. “Oh man. That’s the end of the runway for me.”

“Phoebe, hang on, I’m coming back for you.”

“NO!” Static jumped into the channel as Phoebe pulled in a sudden breath of rapidly cooling air. “Tessa, you can’t do that. You have to go now, while you still have a chance.” She shivered suddenly, forced herself past the pause. “Go, save the commonwealth. Save Izzy. It’s too late for me.”

“Don’t talk that way.” Tessa managed, but even as her gaze swung back, focused on Phoebe’s cockpit with a single, reflexive movement, her mind hesitated on the controls, the throttle. Deep within, she knew Phoebe was right, that there was nothing she could do to save her, that her best bet, the best chance the commonwealth had, was to bug out now before the rest of the Coralate wave caught up with her. In her magnified vision, she watched as Phoebe smiled, pressed gloved fingers against the glass of her cockpit, almost reaching, a tender gesture that came on the wings of words almost whispered across the channel, words her augmented mind picked up clear, strong.

“I love you.”

Then, all at once, there was a sudden flash of bladed movement, ice punching through the fuselage of Phoebe’s rig as liquid helium spread through the systems, shattered lines, opened her rig from the inside like a viscous knife and spread its innards for the hungry depths of hard vacuum. Before Tessa could even blink, it was too late, and the look in Phoebe’s eyes as her canopy suddenly darkened and decompressed into open void bit into Tessa’s soul like a jagged razor, left her staring, broken.

And then a single thought rose up within her, lanced through the ice that kept her paralyzed–

Go and don’t ask questions. The admiral had said. This is the way it must be.

You’ll be going back to a better time. A better world. Ben.

Go, LC. Phoebe. Save the commonwealth. Save Izzy.

Somewhere deep inside the metal body of her rig, she swallowed. Floating slow into the coordinates the AI had picked out to use as a starting point for acceleration, she felt each tick of the timer dropping away into slow oblivion. Close behind her, too close, the Coralate armada spun hungry, vicious, eager. Mind-fingers hovered at the edge of a virtual throttle, hesitated. If she didn’t go now, in this moment, then all the sacrifices, all the deaths, the losses, the colonies that the Coralate had burnt down to barren earth would be final, unshakable, blood spilt without meaning, purpose. At least this way, with this rig, this shot, she had a chance to bring it all back, to give humanity the edge it needed to overcome the Coralate and prevent the loss of billions upon billions of lives.

Here, now, there was nothing left. This was it.

Punch it.

She swallowed, jammed the throttle. Space hung on around her, hesitated, and then for a moment, reality seemed to flex, to fall away in a cascade of light and vibration. Thought compressed, engines howled, and then she was gone, catapulted into the nothing-realm between the present and her future, between the now and the then.

- - -

S2: Episode #40: Final Farewells, part 1

2011-02-23T00:00:00.000-08:00

“Screw the pods.” Tessa grabbed her jacket the instant the call to abandon ship went out, slung the satchel full of data, research and gear over her shoulder, glanced at Ben. “I’m not leaving my rig. Not this close to the end.”

“Then we fly.” Ben said solidly. “Together.”

“Together.” She caught his hand, nodded back. “Until I jump, then you get the hell out of here.” Her eyes locked with his, wouldn’t move, wouldn’t break the stare. “I want you to stay safe, Ben. I want you to live.”

“We all have to die someday.” He said stoically, squeezed her hand. Tessa shook her head.

“Don’t talk that way. Not now.”

Ben smiled softly, looked away, and in the pause, their hands parted, became separate.

“We need to move. We don’t have much time.”

Hallways went fast, disappeared as they shot through abandoned corridors and rooms where fire had burnt across the furnishings and left long black stains in the floor, the ceiling, the wall. Between the labyrinthine passages of the residential deck and the high-ceilinged expanse of the hangar bay, there was no one, nothing but scattered piles of upended furniture, boxes, silicon displays. The doors to the hangar bay passed as they ran, and then the final lock ground open, hesitated as both pilots stopped suddenly, stared on in shock, broken-faced awe.

All around them, the bay opened to space, ragged and burnt edges scattered with crumpled fragments of rigs, the ruins of two squadrons of fighters and the entire technical infrastructure required to maintain them. Air pressure was thin but holding, a fragile envelope kept reined inside the bay by a flickering Mitarashi field that stretched from one end of the gaping wound to the other, bent outward only at the center where an independent generator that someone had lugged out to the shattered end of the vector strip sat maglocked into place.

And next to it, tied to the deck with cables taut in the nearly zero G, Tessa’s Stormfury sat open, primed, online, the only rig intact. The only rig ready to fly.

“Just in time.” The admiral stepped up behind them, smiled as Tessa turned to meet her eyes. A hand reached out, pushed something against the younger woman’s chest, a package of hardware and silicon data storage that felt heavy in her hands. “Here.” Blavatsky’s voice was firm, iron. “You’re going to need this. The amplifier is unsteady, but it’s designed to interface with both your Kvasir and Horus lacings.” Tessa hesitated, opened her mouth, but the admiral cut her off. “What does it do? When the time comes, you’ll use this to focus your thoughts on the drives of the Coralate warships and use your connection to their technology to make them do whatever you want.” She flashed the edge of a smile.

“Coralate. . .” Tessa hesitated, fought the edge of a stammer. How could she know? She swallowed, and in the pause, her answer came back strong, undeniable.

She’s a visionary precog. How could she not know exactly what I was planning. And then the realization– the point in history she was bound for was nine years ago, a position in Earth orbit that would put her dozens of lightyears away from any Coralate attack that might put warships in her path. . .

“I know.” The admiral said suddenly, almost dismissively. “Listen. There isn’t much time, and I can’t tell you what’s going to happen without risking damage to the timeline as I have seen it unfold. I just need you to go. Go and don’t ask questions. This is the way it must be.”

Hesitating, Tessa turned away, turned toward her rig and the empty gulf of stars that yawned beyond, then glanced back, met the admiral’s eyes carefully, uncertainly.

“You’ve been playing me from the beginning, haven’t you?”

The admiral grinned. “Not from the beginning, but close.”

Turning back to Ben, Tessa sniffed, gestured toward her fighter.

“I wish my rig had room for two.” She said, reached out and caught his hand.

“Don’t think about it.” He smiled softly, reached out, wiped a tear from her eye. “This is your flight. Yours and Nemea’s.” Hesitating, she looked down. Part of her wanted to say more, to say something, anything, but the instant she looked up and opened her mouth to speak, Ben pressed a finger against her lips, pulled her into one last, tight hug.

“Shhh.” He breathed. “I’ll be fine. There are escape pods in the corridor above this deck.” He hugged her tighter, kissed her forehead. “There isn’t much time.” Breaking the hug, he pulled back, met her eyes evenly. “Go. Do it. Do what you need to do to save Earth.”

“I love you, Ben.” She managed, blinking against a warm tide of new tears. “Take care of yourself.” Pulling in a deep breath, she tried a smile. “Stay alive.” One hand went to his chest, flattened, caressed. “Stay alive for me, for Nemea.”

“You too.” Ben’s response came broken at the edges, ragged with his own tears. “I’ll never forget you, Tessa.”

Reaching up, she met his lips with one last kiss, then, glancing across at the admiral, she turned away and sprinted for her waiting rig, satchel and package in hand. She found the bridge almost immediately, keyed it to activation, then strapped on her flight helmet. Already running and ready to fly, the Stormfury yielded itself to her, guided her mind through an abbreviated form of a pre-flight checklist. As she moved within the system, it reacted fluidly, almost seemed to anticipate each action and kept her on track even as her mind tried to wander back to Ben, back to all they had, to the fears and uncertainties that ate at her concentration. Thirty seconds later, she punched the throttle, glanced back across her sleek, metallic body to take one last look at the two figures standing on the edge of the hangar bay, winced a little knowing that one of them was the admiral, that the other was Ben.

As her rig tore free of the deck and punched through the stuttering light of the Mitarashi field into the black of space, Dimitrov turned to the admiral, gave her a soft smile.

“We’re not going to make it out of this one, are we Admiral?”

“No.” She said softly, her eyes never leaving the engine burn of Tessa’s rig. “But she will, and that’s all that matters now.”

In the next instant, the generators powering the field sputtered, died, and as the field fell, hard vacuum rushed in, swallowed the bay and everything in it.

S2: Episode #39: Moments

2011-02-16T00:00:00.000-08:00

The next two days passed in silence. Tense, on edge, the crew lost themselves in their duties, their own personal darknesses. Time felt strange, strung out, at times fast, at times painfully slow. Tessa spent as much of it in Ben’s arms as she could manage, and the sounds of their soft, gentle lovemaking brought a certain hazy lightness to the time spilling out before them, slipping away into memory behind them. Packing her bags in the last five hours before their arrival in system, Tessa played one last strain on her saxophone, something sad and soulful, something fitting as the last notes she would share with it, with the world, with Dimitrov, before leaving it all behind for a past where she didn’t belong. Two hours from Earth, a short blip came over the QE transmitter, was announced quietly, somberly, by the admiral herself.

Twenty-seven ships spotted by Deepglass five. Contact lost with Jupiter station. Ships holding at Mars and the homeworld. Godspeed, Hephaestus.

Aiming for a spot several thousand kilometers outside Mars orbit, the Hephaestus popped back into normal space right in the middle of a firefight between Coralate forces and the crippled remains of a Commonwealth armada that was trying to retreat, trying to regroup closer to Earth, closer to the reinforcements HQ had promised were coming. It took fifteen seconds to charge the Hephaestus’ ship to ship cannons, but even that wasn’t enough, didn’t come soon enough. Before the admiral could even get off a shot, before her pilots could be called and rallied to deploy in rigs that wouldn’t have stood a chance against the heavy fire of the Coralate fleet, the Hephaestus was burning, venting atmosphere and struggling to escape with the rest of the Terran forces, struggling to stay alive against ever-widening odds. In Operations, the admiral bared her teeth, set fingers hard into paneling, knuckles whitening. Systems designed to compensate for inertia shuddered, blew, and then everything was in the air, spinning, crashing. Fire rolled across deck plating, shot through open hallways, lashed and caught at the edges of furniture, crates, doors, and still the admiral held her ground, rode out the rolling, the bucking and the shifting of the ship until her navigator had a chance to lock the flailing systems down and put the Hephaestus into more level flight. Suppression systems kicked online, and then the husk of the ship was moving again, fighting to clear the maximum range of the Coralate weapons while there was still a ship to fly. The admiral cursed, breathed.

“Dammit! Push her harder!” She yelled. “We will make this! I’ve seen it! Where the hell is the Von?”

There was no time to ask for clarification– in an instant, space bent, and then the battered shape of the warship popped out of nothingness and into the middle of the battle. The sound of a grin came clear across the frequency as the Von pivoted, slid in sideways against the Coralate offensive, ship to ship emitters already flaring, burning hot lines across acres of scorched silver hull. “Hephaestus, this is the Von der Tann IV.” Hilleboe. “You look like you could use a hand.”

“Don’t think we don’t appreciate it, Captain Hilleboe.” The admiral’s response came tired, eaten by static, words she had rehearsed a thousand times in her mind. She licked her lips, cleared her throat, forced herself to face the inevitable. “But there’s not much left of my ship. I’m declaring a 7700 and ordering all hands to abandon before the drive goes critical.” The pause hung in the void like a glacier, solid and cold, chilling. “I trust you’ll be around to pick up the pieces?”

“Yeah.” Came the loose response. The admiral looked up, glanced through the battered viewer to the bulk of the Von, watched as it burnt under the Coralate’s harsh rays, spun silently, presenting fresh sides to the enemy.

“Roger that, Hephaestus.” Hilleboe managed, losing himself in another, more final pause. “Godspeed, Admiral Blavatsky.”

“And to you as well.” She breathed, then glanced at her tactical officer, nodded once, firmly.

“Set the self destruct, then get to the pods.” She hesitated, watched as he swallowed, nodded. “Get everyone to the pods.”

“Lets give the Coralate something to remember us by.”

S2: Episode #38: Last Hours

2011-02-09T00:00:00.000-08:00

“Ben.” The message came strong across his jaw, a private vibration cut with static, shattered resolve. “Something’s happened.” Tessa swallowed. “I need to talk to you.”

Dimitrov pressed the bone-conduction receiver of the telestrip against his cheek. “Where are you?”

“Our quarters.” She managed.

“I’ll be right there.”

Waiting in the silence, alone with her thoughts, Tessa’s mind ran on and on endlessly, darting from point to point, the things she would say, the way she would say them, the way she would react to Ben’s responses. She hugged her arms against herself, paced like a prisoner awaiting her executioner.

And then the door to their quarters whispered open and she was in his arms, lips coming up against his, pulling, breathing, needing. In the moment, they fell into each other, lost themselves in the movements of lips and touch, the caresses of lovers, of souls so intimately close they blurred when they were together. With Ben, it almost didn’t matter that there was no link between their minds– his strength was different, and his natural penchant for empathy, his ability to soak up emotions and study them internally, gave him something that she almost envied, almost wished she could trade her TK or VP for.

“Talk to me, baby.” He said softly. As they drifted apart, his lips rose, brushed against her hair, kissing, breathing. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing.” She whispered, buried her face in his shoulder, filled herself with his scent, his strength. “I” She closed her eyes, squeezed them against the pressure building there, the fear, the worry, the terror of the changes, the realizations that the words would bring.

“I–” She looked up at him, pulled in a long, deep breath. “I’m pregnant, Ben.”

At first, the lieutenant commander didn’t react. He just stood there, staring, his face a placeholder for the emotions, the thoughts that tumbled together through shock in the numb distances of his mind. There were no words– he was as stunned as she had been, his emotions as mixed as hers had been, as they still were.

“You’re. . . uh. . .” He swallowed, voice hoarse, scratchy. “But I thought...”

“Yeah.” She said softly, pulling him closer, resting her cheek on his chest. “I thought so too. Doc said these things happen.”

Ben swallowed, looked away.

“The timing is. . .”

“I know.” She sniffed, an ironic laugh trickling from her tear-moist lips. “It’s the end of the world, I’m getting ready to save humanity by blasting off into the past and risking my ass on an AI bypass that might get me there or might spread me across space, and in the middle of all of this, I’m carrying our child.”

“You’re. . .” He hesitated, words coming quiet, half question, half statement. “You’re still going?”

She pulled in a shaky breath, managed a quiet: “Yeah.”

“Why tell me about this?” He breathed, glanced down at her. “Tessa, I. . .” Hesitation pulled at his mind, dragged at the words before they could form. “I’m going to miss you, and I’m never going to know if you made it or not.” He sniffed, breathed. “Now, I’ll have to live with the fact that, not only did I let you go, but now I have a child out there somewhere, a child I’ll never see, never know. . .” His voice cracked. “Dammit, Tessa.”

“Ben,” She tried, but he looked away, shook his head. Eyes closed, and then she did the only thing she could think of to do, reached out and caught his hand, pressed it in against her womb.

“Feel it.” She whispered, and her hands spread out on top of his. “Remember this.” He looked back, and his eyes caught on Tessa’s, snared by the iron and the ice in her stare. “Remember this moment. Remember our daughter.”

“Our daughter.” He managed. “Christ, Tessa.”

“I have to do this, Ben.” She said, putting as much resolve into it as she could. “I have a chance to save billions of lives. I can’t turn my back on that.”

Dimitrov swallowed against a dry throat, voice cracking. “I know.” He forced himself to nod. “I won’t ask you to stay.”

“I won’t lie to you and tell you I’m not scared, Ben, but things will be better if this works.” She blinked, hesitated. “Trust me.”

Reaching out with his other hand, he touched her cheek, gently caressed it. “I do.” He hesitated, pulled in a shaky breath, unable to break their stare. “Our daughter, she. . . she’ll be in good hands.” He swallowed. “You’ll be going back to a better time. A better world.” Tessa didn’t respond, she simply smiled, squeezed his hands. Words came again almost out of fear of the silence, and as Ben spoke again, she let her gaze fall away, closed her eyes.

“What will you do once you’re there?”

“I. . .” She hesitated, breathed, turned back. “I honestly haven’t given it much thought.” She swallowed. “Disappear into the woodwork, I guess. Find a quiet planet and uh, settle down or something. Help the war effort.” Breath came deep, shaky, uncertain. “I don’t know.”

“How soon?”

“Soon.” She all but whispered. “Our next deployment, if I can swing it.”

Ben blinked at tears. “Then we only have a handful of hours left.”

“Two days.” She managed, and the time sounded like minutes, moments. “Not enough time to say goodbye. Not when its forever.” She hesitated as he looked away, as the tears gathered at the edges of his eyes and dropped in lines down his cheeks. “You’ll cover for me if things get hot out there, right?”

“Of course.” He tried a smile, but the attempt faltered and fell away under the force of tears almost immediately. “I’ll cover for both of you.”

Reaching out, tracing his hands, she gathered herself into his arms again, kissed his cheek, and found a place for herself in the curve of his neck. Breathing across her rough-cut hair, he pulled her in closer, closed his eyes again.

“We should. . . pick a name for her before I go.” Tessa breathed. “I never thought I’d be counting the hours like this, but we haven’t got much time before we reach Earth.”

“A name.” He managed, tone teary, spotted with traces of irony. “Tessa, I–” He swallowed, hesitated. “I can’t think of any names that would fit. She’s probably going to be a little warrior just like her mother.” He paused again, swallowed. “Maybe we should name her after you.”

“And have her called ‘Junior’?” Tessa managed the broken edge of a smile. “I don’t think either one of us would be able to stand that, Ben.”

The edge of a chuckle lost itself on Dimitrov’s lips. “Well my mother’s name is out.” He paused, “Unless you think Alicia is a strong, warrior’s name.”

“Hmm.” She almost smiled, pretended to consider it, then lost the smile again as a thought struck her. “How about. . .” She hesitated. Say it. “How about Nemea” She swallowed. “After my grandmother.”

“Nemea. . .” He said softly. “Okay. It’s decided then.” He drifted down to his knees, reached out, gently kissed her stomach.

“Hello, little Nemea,” He closed his eyes and fresh tears dropped in lines across his cheeks. “Child of love.”

S2: Episode #37: Final Solution

2011-02-02T00:00:00.000-08:00

A baby. Tessa slumped sideways, came up hard against the wall outside of medical. Jesus.

One hand brushed across her cheek, dropped to follow her shaky eyes to her abdomen, palm spreading out across the skin there, almost cradling the shape of a form that had yet to make itself seen. She closed her eyes, and the sound that welled up from somewhere deep within her came broken, injured, afraid.

Ten minutes later, she was in the gym.

Gloves hadn’t mattered; like an animal, she attacked the punching bag at the far end of the bay, stalked it, snarled, fell into the movements as she drove each sweaty jab into coarse fabric. Each hit came in a sharp staccato that left her knuckles raw and red– and still she fought it, squeezing eyes against tears, punching harder. Even when the throbbing and the burn had left her thoughts scattered, drowned, the pain lingered, still hung on in memory, tingled through skin, through her chest, her womb. In the end, it didn’t matter– the pain that came with the knowledge of the way things were, the way they were going to turn out, the way they had to turn out, was growing, worsening, a blade that twisted and twisted with everything she saw, every move she made. There was no relief, no way to let go of it, to drop the tightness from her shoulders.

Because now she was fully in the moment. Now, she had to face it, and there was no grand future to hide in, no reset button to reach for.

Alone in the washroom, the thoughts she had been trying to keep at bay came rolling back like a tide, inescapable. She made it as far as the shower before the tears came, and as the walls of her resolve buckled, she collapsed in on herself, palms coming up flat against the cold tile wall, lips peeling back over bared teeth, opening for a silent shriek, a gasp of soul-deep pain that refused to come. Water burned across raw knuckles, knees weakened, and then she was on the floor, crouching, pressed in against the wall, struggling for support on cold, unyielding tile. Memories of Izzy came back, memories of the wake, of the pain that had lain in her heart for so long, growing and festering, never fully dormant, never really gone. Steam rose around her like a blanket, enfolded her in its hazy wings, and as she hunched into herself, she let it take her, let the heat and the water drain away her pain. An eternity later, as the door to the washroom whispered open, she forced herself to stand, to rein in what was left of the pain, the emotion, and snapped off the water.

Panem. Came the thought as she dried herself, changed back into her uniform. I’ve got to see Panem. Fifteen minutes later, she found him on the flight deck, picking through a series of firmware updates and upgrades with another pair of technicians who looked up unsteadily as she approached.

“Panem.” She managed, words coming weak, eyes as nervous about meeting those of the unfamiliar technicians as they were about meeting the eyes of an unfamiliar major. “Hey.”

“Major.” He turned, hesitated. “Everything okay? You look like hell.”

“Thanks.” She met his gaze, gave him the edge of a wry grin. “I’ll remember that when your next evaluation comes up.” Eyes rose, glanced past him. “What have you got for me? Any progress with the upgrades on my rig?”

“Yeah.” He said, and the word came casual, nonchalant. Turning back to the other two technicians, he gestured, glanced at his note ‘puter. “You two, uh, go ahead with the AI wipe on Morgan’s rig, clean up the buggy mods he’s tacked in, and double check the consistency of the logics on Odom’s bird. I’ll handle the firmware installs for Freyja.” He tabbed through a manifest. “And, uh, take a look at Chartrand’s rig while you’re at it. I’ve got a report here of a strange noise in the hardware.” Both technicians glanced at each other, nodded back. He watched them as they turned away, then slowly, almost casually, glanced back at Tessa.

“I’m close.” He almost whispered. “I almost trust the AI bridge at this point.”

Tessa swallowed. “How soon before its stable?”

“Soon.” Came the firm response. The hand with the note ‘puter dropped to his side as he turned back to face her. “I want to give it another quick go-over, run a couple of simulations and sweep the calculations through an integrity algorithm, but I can pretty much guarantee it will work the way it’s rigged up now.” He hesitated. Her eyes were somewhere else entirely, lost on the curves of her rig as her hands went unconsciously to her womb, cradled the phantom shape again.

“You sure you’re okay, Major?” Panem swallowed, gestured. “You uh, you seem distracted.”

“Distracted?” Slowly, like skin across flypaper, her eyes drifted back to his, touched on his concerned stare. “No, I. . .” She hesitated. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind right now.”

“I know the hangar deck is a far cry from a counselor’s office, but if you want to talk about it–”

“No.” She shook her head quickly. “Let’s just” She pulled in a deep breath, folded her arms. “Let’s just focus on this right now.”

Panem shrugged. “You’re the boss.”

Pulling her arms in tighter, almost hugging herself, she pushed the remark aside. “Give me the run down on how it works.”

“It’s mostly automatic.” He turned, and as he started toward the rig, she walked with him, eyes never leaving the Seindrive. “The inverter is designed to kick off at what we’re calling L+2. Hold that speed,” he gestured, “and the throttle will cut automatically at two hours and twenty seven minutes relative and dump you out in Earth orbit the week before the first Coralate attack on record, nine years ago.” He called up a spacial reference on the note ‘puter, handed it to her, tabbed it closed as she handed it back. “There’s a manual override in case the flight gets too bumpy or the stress on the hull gets too high.” He pulled in a deep breath as they stopped beside the rig, stared up at the chrome hull of the Stormfury. “Just remember– if you kill the engine early, it’ll dump you at some random point in time and space between here and where you want to go. Best to avoid that option if you don’t want to risk punching back into the middle of a planet, a star or even deep space.”

Tessa nodded. “Okay.”

“One other thing.” He turned back to her, eyes searching, seeking hers but never catching them. “This is a one way trip, Major. You know that, right? Once you’ve changed the past, you’ll be attached to a completely different timeline. Even if you disable your rig’s tachyon field and jump forward by pushing the throttle right up to the barrier, the future you’ll reach won’t be the future you left behind.” He swallowed. “We’ll still be here, but we’ll never see you again. To Ben, to everyone on this ship, you’ll be gone, forever.”

Tessa swallowed, looked up at him, iron in her moist eyes, a struggle of emotions tossing, fighting beneath the surface of her features. She couldn’t tell him about the vision, couldn’t tell him about the remains of the fleet that she’d seen spread across space like a blanket over a burning Earth. The admiral’s words echoed in her mind, wry smile strong, knowing, taunting. If I told you either way, you wouldn’t fight as hard.

Just know that the cost of defeat is steep. No less than the complete annihilation of the human race. Let that be the thought that guides you every time you pull the trigger to silence another Coralate soul.

She blinked, set her jaw, nodded. “I know, Lieutenant.”

“It’s not too late to back out.”

“Yeah,” She said solidly. “It is.”

S2: Episode #36: Little Things

2011-01-26T00:00:00.000-08:00

“I can’t believe we’re going back to Earth.”

Tessa’s eyes dropped a little lower, studied the griptile on the floor of the medical bay. The doctor stepped up to the exam table and took a quick sample of blood, added another spot adhesive to the collection already dotting every inch of the major’s exposed skin, the concealed marks of an improper wire harness removal. There was nothing to say– the vision had numbed her to the present, had left her almost uncaring of where the Hephaestus went or what it did. In another fifty-seven hours, they would drop out of bent space and into the Sol system, take their place in the middle of the fleet, and wait with the rest of humanity for the Coralate to make its move.

Fifty-seven hours. She swallowed.

I hope Panem has the bridge working by then.

“The screening should only take a few seconds.” The doctor said softly, crossed the room to a medical panel set up to sweep blood for anything that wasn’t kosher– pathogens, narcotics, signs of organ damage, and anything else that might indicate there was a problem. Tessa nodded blankly.

“Thanks Doc.”

“Anytime.” Olive eyes glanced back, warm on the wings of a soft smile. “Usually I’m notified before anyone runs a wire session. Is everything alright, Major?”

“Hmm?” Tessa looked up, met the other woman’s gaze. “Oh, yeah. Everything’s alright.” She ran a hand through her rough-cut hair. “I’ve had a lot on my mind lately.”

“Everybody is talking about the withdrawal.” The doctor nodded, glanced at the panel. Lights flickered yellow, held, turned suddenly green. “Some of our people had families on the colonies that were abandoned. Alpha hit a lot of people hard.” She offered another small smile. “Lets see how you did.”

Tessa’s eyes tracked the doctor absently as she crossed to the panel, keyed her way to the test results, pulled them off onto a sheet of silicon.

“Pathogen screen came up clear,” She smiled again, turned back toward the major. “Blood chemistry looks good, organ function nominal, no trace of substance. . .” She blinked, hesitated, mouth working silent in the pause. “Oh.”

The hair on the back of Tessa’s neck prickled suddenly, worries, concerns darting into her mind, multiplying. Blood screenings don’t usually check for DNA tags, they don’t usually. . . I haven’t done anything, taken anything. . . She swallowed, breathed, forced calm into her voice. “What is it, doc?”

“I. . .” The doctor looked up, pulled in a breath, tabbed through the results, ran a hand through her bobbed, orange-red hair. “Just a second, Major.”

“Doctor, I–”

“It’s nothing to worry about, Major.” She picked at the display, crossed back to the side of the exam table and passed it quickly over Tessa’s body, too quick for anything other than the hazy, blurry edges of a scan to show up on the silicon. Fingers worked silently as Tessa looked on, followed the doctor’s silent study with concerned, confused eyes.

“Major, I. . . I don’t know what to say.” She breathed, one hand going to her chest, eyes rising to meet Tessa’s in the pause. “Congratulations. You’re pregnant.”

Tessa blinked, hesitated, unable to respond, to react, to do anything more than stare at the doctor in blind shock. “Pregnant?”

“Do you want to see the zygote? It’s really new.” The doctor smiled again, crossed to Tessa’s side, tabbed the magnification on a section of scan dominated by a fuzzy blob. “Less than a month along, I’d say.” Her smile turned to an excited grin. “Chromosomes say it’s a girl.”

“But how did it. . .” Tessa checked the underside of her arm, rubbed at the fingernail-sized subdermal patch there. “My dermaceptive...”

“These things happen.” The doctor shrugged. “Dermaceptives aren’t a one hundred percent guarantee.” She glanced at the display again, the soft, loving smile coming back as she stared at the tiny mass of cells. “Sometimes, one of his little swimmers gets through and–”

“Okay, okay, just stop.” Tessa held up a hand, closed her eyes. “I don’t need the whole breakdown, doctor. I had biology in primary, I know how pregnancy works.”

“There are a lot of support programs.” The doctor’s excitement was almost sickening. “The Navy has a complete temporary service leave package–”

“Do you think I’m actually going to just go through with this thing?” Tessa looked at her evenly, caught the doctor’s eyes so suddenly that her smile faltered. “Have a baby in the middle of a war? Jesus.”

“If you’re thinking about aborting–”

“I don’t know what I’m thinking.” Tessa pushed off the exam table, pushed her fingers into her hair, palm against her face. “Jesus.” Her hand fell away, eyes drifting up to meet the doctor’s again. “I have to tell Ben. I have to talk to him about it.” The doctor nodded somberly, silicon sheet coming up against her chest. Tessa shook her head. “This couldn’t have come at a worse time.”

“I can pull some off-duty psych time for you and the lieutenant commander, if you want.”

“No.” She breathed a shaky exhale, studied the floor in quiet shock. “I... I need some air. I need some time to think about this before I tell him.” Nodding, the doctor switched off the sheet of silicon, stuffed it in the pocket of her labcoat.

“If you need anything, you know where I am.” She reached out for emphasis, touched the major’s shoulder lightly. “This should be a happy time. I’m here for you.”

“Yeah.” Tessa nodded, looked back, gave the other woman a reasonable smile. “Thanks, Doc.”

S2: Episode #35: Cutting Line

2011-01-19T00:00:00.000-08:00

Reality came crashing back on the edge of a scream.

Dropping back into her body was like falling into a sea of ice, a whirlpool of pain and emotion that surged blindly around her on the vicious currents of spastic muscles. All at once, Ben was there, hands reaching hers, touching her cheek, checking eyes as they rolled away, fought the light.

“Tessa.” He breathed. She struggled against him, against the harness, quivered, mouth opening in silent, struggling motions. “Tessa! Breathe!”

Gasping against lungs already full to bursting, eyes flew open, and then she was on her side, vomiting. Ben’s hands were like cool pads against her arms, her cheek, her side, supporting her as the vestiges of the vision left her, abandoned her on the shores of a void-cold reality.

“What did you see?” Ben urged, but there were no words. He looked away as she vomited again, fought the tangles of the harness, strained against the needles wired into her very being. Sweat and shivers shook through her, pushed across skin, left her reeling, broken. Hands spasmed, and then she spun back, yanked free of Ben’s hands, clawed at the leads jutting from her skin. “Tessa!” He fumbled for the harness, tried to help her with the cables, the needles. “Wait!”

In one frantic move, She screamed, ripped the harness free, hurled it onto the floor and shot to her unsteady feet, coughing against bile, bleeding as she careened toward the wall, hands coming up flat against it. It took a force of will to center herself, to focus past dangling, sweat-soaked knots of hair and hold back the urge to vomit again, to lose herself in an eternity of vicious dry heaves. Pain flared, then throbbed dimly across burning skin as she swallowed, breathed, panted, coughed.

“Hey.” Dimitrov tried. His hand came to rest against her back, lingered lightly. She shivered, closed her eyes, swallowed again. “It’s okay now. You’re okay.”

“No.” She managed, shook her head. “No, it’s not okay.”

Ben opened his mouth to say something, but before he could find the words, she pulled away again, stumbled toward the opposite wall, eyes on the shelving, the drawers tucked up under the bed where they slept. Her hands shook as she touched them, tracked across synthpanels, yanked one of them free.

In an instant, Ben was at her side again, watching, eyes moving, confused as Tessa stared blankly at the leather jacket folded into the drawer, the scissors laying in the center of the old German flag emblazoned there, the word Deutschland faded, yellow against scuffed black. She wiped her lips, breathed. One hand reached out, caught the scissors.

“Tessa?” Ben followed her with his eyes as she stood up to her full height, stared at the silver blades in her hand. She met his eyes slowly, the ironic smile crawling across her face, the look in her eyes triggering a shiver in him, raising every hair on the back of his neck instantly.

“What are you–” He tried, but before he could finish, she was gone, flicking the bathroom light, staring into the mirror at a face smeared with blood and bile. He turned, and she smiled back at him again, that same twisted, broken smile. The scissors flashed in the mirror, opened, brushed against skin. Cold dropped into his stomach like a heavy brick.

“Tessa! Wait!”

Hands found wrists, fought, struggled– and then they were face to face, Ben’s eyes lit with concern, Tessa’s hard, steely. Between them, the scissors jutted in air like a chrome omen, a knife-edge divider that stuck, refused to move. Teeth came free of lips, bared vicious in the pause.

“Ben.” She growled. “Let. Go.”

“Not until you tell me what you saw.” He shot back, resolve clear, voice shaky. “I’m not going to let you hurt yourself.”

“Good.” She shot back, hesitated, relaxed a little. “Because I don’t plan to.”

For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, Ben breathed, tasted air, eyes only wavering slightly as he let her go. Their stares locked as hands fell away, stayed until she turned away again, caught his eyes in the mirror. Scissors clicked open, brushed across skin, scalp, bit into midnight, each stroke butchering hair. Ben stirred uncomfortably behind her, folded his arms.

“Talk to me, Tessa.”

“It’s...” She grimaced, watching the scissors as they worked, cutting edges of hair that had grown too long down to sharp, vicious edges. “We have no choice, Ben.” She locked eyes with him in the mirror again. “I have to do it. I have to go back and change the way things turn out.”

“It was bad,” he swallowed as she looked away again. “Wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.” She paused, waited, hands hesitating. “I saw Earth, Ben. I saw it burning.” Their eyes met again. “And I saw what was left of the fleet.”

Dimitrov’s mouth drifted open, but the words wouldn’t come. He couldn’t help it– beyond the shock, the fear, the utter dread, there was nothing to say. Tessa met his eyes for a moment, then looked away again. Eyes rose in the mirror as she set the scissors down and ran a hand through rough hair, watched severed bits of sweat-soaked night fall away into the sink.

“I’ve got a couple of things to nail down before I leave.” She said slowly, glanced across the bathroom at the shower. “I’ve got data to prepare, a few other things, my flight physical.”

“Your. . .” He hesitated “Your physical?”

“Yeah.” She said absently, met his eyes in the reflection again. “If I’m going to be doing this, it would be good to know if I’m going to have a hemorrhage on the way or something. I can’t imagine what kind of stresses this trip is going to put on me.” She swallowed, eyes falling back to the sink. “If there’s a problem, I need to know about it and I need to fix it or its going to be a real short trip and a real expensive waste of Navy resources.”

Ben swallowed, forced himself to nod as arms folded again. “Are you... going to be okay?”

“Yeah.” She said softly, wetting the edge of a towel and wiping at her mouth. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Just need a shower and a change of clothes.” She looked up, met his eyes again. “Sorry about the mess. Can you cycle the floor while I’m gone?”

“Sure.” He smiled sadly, hand shaking as he reached out, squeezed her shoulder. “I– I’ll be in the officers’ mess if you need me. I’ll set the room to autocleanse itself automatically after you leave.”

Tessa swallowed, nodded, eyes somber, cold and wet as they met his in the reflection again.

“I love you, Ben.” She said softly. He nodded once, sadly, then squeezed her shoulder in response, turned away again.

S2: Episode #34: Three Seconds

2011-01-12T00:00:00.000-08:00

“Jesus, Tess.”

Tessa tossed the straps and insulated cables of the wire harness onto the bed, turned back to Ben and held out her hands for the dual core fusion cell he lugged into the room like a heavy toolbox. Her expression was blank, hard as iron.

“Jesus has nothing to do with it.” She said. Ben swallowed reflexively. “Help me.”

Lying down, she set the harness on her chest, started sorting though leads, glanced at each masking tape label in turn. Chest, left, 1 of 3. Leg, lower right, 1 of 2. She handed off a thick line labeled Power, pressed it into Ben’s hand, eyes locking with his, refusing to budge even as he took it, reluctantly plugged it into the fusion cell. Check lights came online, flashed red three times, then turned green. Tessa’s eyes returned to the tangle of leads on her chest, hands sorting again. Temple, left. Hand, right, back. Ben’s hands came hesitant at first, slowly gained confidence, lifted and checked each cable, laid them carefully across the sections of body they were labeled for. Tessa smiled softly, almost wryly. “You’re going to have to help me with the needlework too.” Ben’s eyes were blank, the worried, uncertain shock of someone who had lost so much, someone who was suddenly being asked to lose more. Tessa breathed a silent, shaky breath, looked away. Ben’s voice came cracking, weak.

“Okay.”

The needles went in as easy as could be expected, punching through skin rubbed down with analgesic disinfectant, spreading into her body on nano-active wires which tapped into nerve centers one by one, bridged lines and foci in the body with silent connections. It only took ten minutes, but by the time all twenty four leads had been plugged into her flesh and another thirty seconds had been spent holding Ben’s shaking hands, waiting for the final wires to sink into place, to find their targets and connect with them, Tessa had already started to sweat. She knew what to expect, knew she could handle it, but that didn’t change the reality of the hell she knew she was about to throw herself into.

“It’s not a wire chamber, but a harness is the next best thing.” She licked her lips, tried to calm her breathing. Her eyes flicked to Dimitrov’s, held them for a moment in hesitation. “Ok.” She managed. “We’ll start with three seconds.” She glanced at the fusion cell, met Ben’s eyes again. “Flick it.” Ben’s nod came quick, solid. Fingers traced the edge of the switch, jammed it. Check lights flashed yellow.

And then the hell began.

She couldn’t help it– the scream ripped itself from Tessa’s body like a hungry spirit, burning through skin as reality flared with hot pain. Muscles spasmed, every nerve in her body catching fire, boiling until there was nothing left, until the room, the harness, everything dropped away in a spastic haze and left her hanging in the gray void between sleep and death.

Move. Her mind urged her. Focus.

Light came from nowhere. Thoughts were scattered, broken. She reached out for reality, for some edge of what she had come there for, and found it an instant later, reeling as time and space opened like a bubble, snapped closed around her with all the suddenness of an elastic suit, pinching her into some edge of something that didn’t make sense, something that swirled dark and full of stars. Focus, Tess. Focus.

And then she was somewhere else entirely.

The scene unfolded slowly. Dropping out of the haze, Tessa stepped into a body she knew was hers, felt the familiar, oppressive crash of depression, the harsh, sharp pain of loss, but also the edge of something more, something deeper. All at once, the pain washed over her, soaked into her, the hot, heavy screams of gunshot wounds, deep and bleeding, staining her uniform with the life that drained away around her.

“Fuckin’ freak.” Someone sneered. The heavy tread of a boot connecting with her cheek knocked her sideways, left her sprawled out on the greasy deck of a noisy freighter. “Give her a chance, he says, give her a blood test, he says, give her a fuckin’ fair trial, he says.” A sniff, the sound of heavy boots pacing on deckplating. “Fuckin’ captain should have listened to me, should have stuffed you out the airlock the instant someone saw you playin’ with metal that way, making those fuckin’ creepy weapons so you could kill us off just like your fuckin’ blue buddies did all the colonists on Luna.” The pace quickened, another boot sped in, caught her in the ribs, spun her onto her chest, left her panting, wincing, bleeding. “My brother was there, bitch. You like that? You like knowing that humans are a fuckin’ endangered species now?” He growled again, stomped across the deck. “They fuckin’ grow you in a tank? Stick you in a fighter that looks like Seindrive but isn’t.” A laugh, cruel and bitter. “What the fuck is the point, bitch? You fucks have won! You’ve won!” He kicked her again. “Bitch!”

“Just shoot her, Darren.” Someone else said, voice cold, bored. “We’re wasting time. Captain said bullet and airlock. We’ve still got supplies to stow.”

“Fuck the captain.” Darren said solidly. “Old bitch thinks he can run the show? I do things my way, Mary, and right now I say this piece of shit needs to suffer.” He paused, crossed the deck to Tessa, spat at her. “Let her bleed out all over the fuckin’ deck before we pump her into space. I want her to see what she’s done. I want her to regret it.”

“What. . . ?” Talking came difficult, felt like chewing broken glass. “Uhh. . .”

“Did I say you could talk!?” He yanked cruelly at her hair and slammed her against the ground again, pressed her face against the cold, silicon viewport. “Look at what you did! Look at it! I bet clones like you are the reason HQ pulled back the fleet, abandoned all the colonies. Well, you’ve had your slaughter. You happy, bitch? You fuckin’ happy!?”

Tessa’s eyes widened, her mouth working for words, but there were none. Darren’s line of broken, angry speech dropped away in a silent haze as he pounded the deck with his industrial boots, left her to stare, unable to look away. The only thing that mattered, the only thing that registered in her hot, tear-strained eyes, the quivering lip, the tortured scream that built and built in her chest, scratching at her raw throat, was the image of Earth, the cradle from which humanity had so recently crawled, the fires of a dying world.

It was clear who had won. Spinning silently, slowly in the mass of stars below her, Terra burned, and all around it, the debris stretched on impossibly, endless.

“We. . . we lost.” She whispered, but it didn’t matter. An instant later, the boot came again, smashed against the back of her head, left her spiraling through crimson-tainted darkness.

S2: Episode #33: Shatter's Edge

2011-01-05T00:00:00.000-08:00

“Seventeen ships.” Tessa shook her head, silicon note ‘puter shaking in unsteady hands. “My god, Ben. They took out seventeen ships and burnt everything in the system. Toliman is a cinder.” Shifts of her retina picked up by the silicon triggered more images, more footage, more headlines. “Nine more systems have reported the appearance of Coralate forces since Command issued the recall of the fleet.” She swallowed, hesitated, looked up. “Everyone is being ordered back to Earth. We’re abandoning the colonies.”

“We’re what?” Ben asked hurriedly, leaning over to glance at the ‘puter in her hands. “How. . . how can they. . .”

“The Coralate has proven that they can hit us hard anywhere and at any time.” She managed, her voice coming weak but building steel slowly, hardening to a point of immovable strength. “First the fleetyards at Sirius, then the retro and refit stations at Procyon. . .” She met his eyes again. “Ben, there isn’t enough of a fleet left anymore to defend anything but Earth. Command knows that the homeworld and the yards there are our only chance to save what is left of the species.”

“So they’re just going to abandon everything from here to Luna?” He stared back, then broke away, stalked off, hands going up in frustration. “They’re just going to abandon all those colonists, men and women who can’t even defend themselves from the local wildlife, much less even one Coralate warship– ”

“I don’t know, Ben!” Tessa all but shouted, eyes dropping blankly to the floor as the ‘puter hung limply from her hands. “Look, maybe some of them will be evacuated. We have the civilians from the station– I’m sure we’re not the only ones with noncoms on board.”

Ben shook his head, sighed, turned back, met her eyes. “It’s a crime,
Tessa.”

Swallowing, nodding weakly, she managed a quiet: “I know it is.”

“And what if the Coralate shows up at Earth?” He sat on the bed, put his head in his hands, sighed, eyes only meeting hers again after a long, frustrated pause. “We lost seventeen ships at Alpha Centauri. Seventeen, Tessa.” He shook his head, looked away. “We have what, twelve ships left in the entire fleet? Twelve, if everyone makes it back to Earth without hitting one of those blueskin bend-mines.” He breathed another sigh, followed Tessa with his eyes as she crossed the distance between them, sat down next to him, arms finding his shoulders. “We aren’t going to make it, Tessa.” He said quietly as she let her head come to rest on his shoulder. “We haven’t got a prayer.”

Tessa closed her eyes against the tears that threatened to grow there, to break and drop down her cheeks. Holding him, feeling him reach out to hold her, Tessa buried her face in his neck, breathed a broken sigh. Lips trembled, struggled with words that felt false, broken.

“Ben.” She managed. “There is a way.” He glanced up slowly, eyes red and wet as she pulled away along his shoulder just far enough to look up at him, to meet his gaze. “I have a plan, but first I have to see. I have to make sure.” She swallowed, sat up slowly, then turned away, eyes finding her hands as words came hoarse, broken. “The admiral, she– she wouldn’t tell me, but I have to know.” She closed her eyes. “I have to know how this war ends.”

Ben swallowed reflexively. “What do you have in mind?”

“I. . . I’m predisposed for VP.” She managed, offered the edge of a smile. “I’ve seen things in the past, like that day when I ran into you, when we first met, or in the wire chambers when I was in the TALENT program...” She swallowed, shook her head. “Sometimes, when I push myself, when nothing else matters, I can punch through, see things.” She hesitated, locked eyes with him. “I saw Izzy’s wake before it even happened.”

Dimitrov swallowed, nodded almost imperceptibly.

“And if it works this time, if you see. . .”

“If I see the outcome of the war,” she swallowed “and we’ve lost. . .” She hesitated, pulled in a shaky breath, looked away. “Then I’ll bug out. I’ll go through with my plan.”

“Your plan?”

“I. . .” She looked up at him again, breathed against the fear rising in her chest. “I’ll be going back in time, Ben. I’ll be taking the Seindrive V back to a time when it will make the most difference.” She paused, hesitated. “When it will make the most difference to me, to you and to the way the war turns out.”

Dimitrov hesitated. “You’re serious.”

The look in her eyes was as hard as steel.

“It’s the only way, Ben.” She swallowed, forced resolve into her tone. “It’s the only way.”

“Yeah.” He said shakily, swallowed. “Okay. Lets do this. What do you need?”

S2: Episode #32: Optimism and Desperation

2010-12-29T00:00:00.000-08:00

“You’re really going through with this, aren’t you?”

Tessa sighed, scratched weakly at the back of her head, looked up, met Phoebe’s eyes through the hazy, grainy image shaking across the vidscreen. Words came slow, almost painful, dragged out into the open and abandoned, stillborn.

“I. . . I don’t know, Phoebe.” She looked away again, eyes half absent as they roved across the bed, the shelving in the quarters she shared with Dimitrov. “I’m going through the motions, but I still have my doubts. The Stormfury is an amazing plane. She might just give us the edge we need to win the war.” She shook her head, met Phoebe’s gaze again. “But then again, she’s also the only way I have of going back and making the changes that might save billions of lives.”

“There’s no guarantee that if you go back, your changes will make any real difference.” Phoebe said shakily, the patchwork entanglement signal lancing into her words, eating at the transmission. “Billions of people may still die, and things might turn out worse for you.” She swallowed, eyes flicking, uncertain. “The further you go back, the more time you will have lost, the more you’ll end up giving up.”

“The bigger the impact I’m likely to make on the timeline.” Tessa breathed, then closed her eyes, shook her head, gestured dismissively. “But I know. I know what you mean.” Tessa pressed her fingers into her eyes, squeezed the bridge of her nose. “It’s the doubts that are killing me.”

“And there’s Ben.” Phoebe said quietly, almost meekly. Tessa hesitated, let her hand fall away from her face.

“Yeah.”

“I mean,” Phoebe hesitated. “You love him, don’t you?”

Tessa swallowed, looked up, watching Phoebe with tired eyes before she managed a quiet breath, nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

“Isn’t that reason enough to stay here, in your own time? To not take the risk?”

“It should be.” Came Tessa’s quiet response. “God, Phoebe, I don’t know. Every day the Coralate gets closer, but this close, we should be able to recoup enough ships to beat them, drive them back.” She glanced away, sighed. “If Delaware and his people can just get the new Seindrive fleetyards up and running. . . I know that we can do this. I feel it, Phoebe.”

“I wish I had your optimism, Major.”

“It’s not optimism.” Tessa shook her head, let her chin come to rest in her hand. “It’s desperation.” She gave the ghost of a smile, reached out, traced the edge of the screen. “Hey, you said earlier that you had something for me.”

“Yeah.” Phoebe nodded, glanced across at edges of desk Tessa couldn’t see. “Uh, I’ve got the package on silicon here, just a second.” Phoebe grabbed something, slotted it into the terminal, touched functions on her screen that were mirrored only in the form of translucent frames popping up across Tessa’s screen and fading away again, letters thin, blinking in teal. Incoming data package.

“I’m sending some files through that you might find useful if you go.” Phoebe said absently, glanced back for a moment to meet Tessa’s eyes. “Troop movements, detailed reports of battles, some equipment schematics, all the classified and declassified files I could hack out of the command mainframe without catching a court martial.”

Tessa nodded, gave the other woman a genuine, weakening smile. “I appreciate it, Phoebe.”

“Whatever you decide to do, Tess,” Phoebe paused, breathed. “You have my full support.”

Lips parted, but before Tessa could respond, the sound of a door whispering open cut her off. Ben glanced back at her as he entered, offered a tired smile. Tessa’s response was immediate.

“Any word?”

Ben shook his head. “Still no sign of the blue skins.” He tossed off his flight jacket, turned and came up behind Tessa, hands finding her shoulders, working casually at knots as he leaned in, grinned at Phoebe. “Hey Jenkins. What are you two girls up to?”

“No good.” Tessa gave him a wry smile, eyes half-lidded as she sank into the warmth of his hands. “The usual.”

“Sounds fun.” He dropped back out of sight of the camera, busied himself with the static clamp on his uniform, shucked the entire thing into the autowasher as it came free. “Let me know if you need a hand.”

“You’ll be the first to know.” Tessa turned back to Phoebe. “So, back to what we were talking about.” She winked. “Cute boys on the Von...”

Phoebe colored instantly, mouth working at the edges of sounds, mind lost in an attempt to form words, then blasted into silence as the sound of Hilleboe’s voice came garbled and broken with static through the hazy screen. “All hands, all hands, this is the Captain. Report to duty stations and stand by for further instructions. This is a priority one alert. All non-standard communication channels are now subject to lock down.”

“What’s going on, Phoebe?”

“Not sure, but we’ve got to cut the link for now.” Phoebe looked breathless, keyed a quick sequence. “Catch you later, LC!”

“Be careful out there, Phoebe!” Static lanced into the signal, and then there was nothing, darkness, Phoebe’s soft, worried smile hanging in the dead silicon.

“My god.” Ben’s voice dropped into the silence, caught Tessa’s attention. He glanced back at her, silently passed her a silicon ‘puter scrolling through the latest newsfeed of military data, his expression hanging worried, drawn and waxen.

“Proxima.” She swallowed, eyes scanning quickly across the data, triggering retinal videofeeds of fighters blasted into fiery hail, warships carved by violent light as they spun, dropped away, tried to avoid the sea of silver dropping in on them at high speed. Images of stations burnt to slag, planetary surfaces bombarded, orbital snapshots of cities that were little more than patches of hot glass and fire. Her mouth drifted open, shock hot in her face, eyes wide.

“My god,” She managed. It took a force of will to glance up at Ben, to meet his eyes again, see the shock clinging there. “They’ve. . . They’ve wiped out Alpha Centauri, Proxima, Toliman, the yards, everything.” She glanced back at the ‘puter. “Everything.”

Alpha Centauri. The second most heavily defended system in the Commonwealth.

Home to humanity’s last fleetyard station, Augustus Octavian Orbital Complex.

The gateway to Earth.

S2: Episode #31: The Way

2010-12-22T00:18:00.000-08:00

“Panem.”

Tessa stopped beside a pair of greasy workboots poking out from beneath a beat up Blasterchild. The rig sat propped up on the deck and stripped to the frame, torn open and left in the throes of a full overhaul. Crouching down, she grinned, elbows on her knees. “Got a minute?”

“Huh?” The lieutenant pushed off, and the cushion between his back and the deck responded slickly, rolling across steel like oil, repulse-hovering. Young eyes stared back, blinked as he came free of the fuselage. “Major? Yeah, sure, what’s up?”

“The latest calculations from Phoebe.” She handed him a strip of silicon. Glancing at the thing for an instant, the young lieutenant pulled the clunky maintenance noteputer at his side and slotted the data instantly, eyes glancing through code sequences, equations. Tessa stood, glanced up at the cold, dead husk of the Seindrive IV, pulled in a deep breath. “Got anything new for me?”

“Nothing much at this point.” He tabbed through a handful of displays on the noteputer, hesitating and holding the edge of a nervous breath as another technician walked by, nodded to him. He swallowed, got to his feet, clipped the ‘puter to his side. “I’ve rigged a bypass, but its not ready.” He whispered. “Its unstable. It keeps snapping back and overcompensating unexpectedly as the AI tries to sort through and override what it sees as a problem. I wouldn’t risk flying with the bridge in play at this point unless you want to take a chance on being thrown into a ten thousand year relativistic stasis or ripped apart by temporal stressing.” He wiped his hands, added: “in the end, I dropped the idea of a hard bypass and imported the settings into a chip taped under the Resident AI that you can slot into the system anytime you want before you fly if you’re feeling lucky.” He hesitated again. “I’ll get a working model eventually. Just keep feeding me these calculations and I’ll rig up something that will do the trick.”

“Glad to hear it, Lieutenant.” Tessa smiled sharply. “Keep up the good work.”

“Uh, Major.” He tried, hesitated. “If you don’t mind me asking– what are you planning to do with a bridge that overrides your rig’s speed limiter and monkeys with the tachyon field settings?”

”That information is classified, Lieutenant.” She half turned, smile slipping to wry. “You know that. Nothing has changed.”

“And I believed you for a while,” He smiled. “But then I cross-checked your orders in the system and found out that there, well, aren’t any orders.” He hesitated, swallowed as she fixed him with a solid, careful stare. “You’re working alone on this one, aren’t you? Not even the admiral knows about the bridge.”

Tessa swallowed, hesitated, almost pushed ahead with the farce, then dropped it suddenly.

“How did you. . . ?”

“Give me some credit, Major.” He grinned. “Its not every day that a pilot asks me to bypass the safety protocols on their rig, and I’ve spent enough time on the deck that I know a thing or two about navigating the command systems on a starship.” He sighed, glanced down for a moment before meeting her eyes again. “So do you want to tell me why you’re having me modify the tachyon displacement profile of your rig?”

Tessa bit her lip. “Honestly, Lieutenant,” She paused. “Not really.”

“I thought you wanted my help.” He grinned again. “How can I design a specialty piece of equipment to do something if you won’t even tell me what it’s supposed to do?”

The major swallowed again, looked away. Panem gestured, added: “This is already between you and me, Major. Well, you, me and your friend Phoebe. You know I’m not the kind to talk.”

“I know.” She said softly, then glanced back, fixed him with a look that was all iron, strong and uncompromising. “That’s why I chose you for this, Panem.” She hesitated again. “That, and you’re the best mechanic on the deck.”

“Thanks, Major.” Another grin.

“The truth is, I’m hoping I don’t have to use the bridge.” She swallowed. It was hard to continue, hard to put the feelings, the thoughts into words. She closed her eyes. “I may have to use the bridge. I may. . . I need. . . You see, there are things. . .” She shook her head. “It’s a way, it’s a way to stop this war before it even starts, a way to put my life back on track, a way to. . . save the Commonwealth and stop all of this–” she gestured expansively “before it even happens.”

“You’re going to use the Stormfury to go back in time.” He said slowly, almost warily, watching her, unsure and hesitant. She looked away, swallowed in the pause. “You’re going to punch through the light barrier, use the tachyon displacement settings to modify your movement through hyperspace and change the past at some specific juncture in the hopes that the war doesn’t turn out as badly as it has.”

“It’s a way, Panem.” She said solidly, fixed him with an eye suddenly moist with tears. He swallowed, hesitated. “If I do this right, it could save billions of lives.”

“I know.” He nodded, looked away. “Okay, I’m in, whole-heartedly this time, but I’m going to need to spend some more time working on the bridge in order to get it stable enough to do what you need it to do. Tell your friend to keep feeding me the tracking and differential equations.”

“You’ve got it.” Tessa swallowed. “Anything else?”

“A six pack?” He grinned, and the grin was echoed on the major’s face.

“I can do that.” She nodded once. “Get it done, Panem. Make it first priority, but keep it quiet.”

Panem grinned again, wider.

“Will do, Major.”

S2: Episode #30: At The Edge

2010-12-15T00:16:00.000-08:00

Date: 29th November, 2311. 12:00 (ES/GMT)
Location: Pilot Briefing Room, TCV-X: Hephaestus (Gliese 105 trinary system)

“I assume that by now you have all heard about the attack on the settlement on Eta Cassiopeiae that occurred at oh-five-hundred hours this morning.” Tessa surveyed the faces of Odin and Freyja squadrons’ pilots from behind the podium, somber eyes moving across tired gazes, quiet, watchful eyes. “I also assume that you are all aware that we lost the Feynman, the Banneker, and the Normandy there, all three ships with all hands aboard.” She closed her eyes, and as she paused, the tightness in her expression became like a wince, a genuine expression of pain. When she finally opened her eyes again, she pulled in a shaky breath, swallowed. “I’d like to take some time before we begin to observe a moment of silence for the men and women that were lost today.”

Pulling in a breath, she watched as the officers averted their eyes, closing them or letting them fall to the deck as silence rose to fill the briefing room. There was only a moment of self conscious hesitation before the major licked her lips, let her eyes drop to the podium, her thoughts moving through the names that had been on the list. Captain Kongar-Ool, Captain Montgomery, Captain Winslow. So many others. So very many others. She closed her eyes, breathed a sigh that was tired, soul-deep. God speed, brave fallen. We’ll see you soon on the other side.

“These kinds of losses are unacceptable if we’re going to win this war.” She said suddenly, shouldering aside the silence and staring hard at the pilots as their eyes came slowly back to her. “I just got a report on the way here that the Freeman is crippled and drifting in open space fifteen lightyears from Earth, every single one of her pilots dead or missing.” She pulled in a deep, shaky breath, hands gripping the podium as eyes reached out to meet those of each pilot in turn. “The Crazy Horse is fighting a losing battle against seven Coralate warships intent on eradicating the colony at 36 Ophiuchi right now, right now.” She bit her lip, shook her head. “The Coralate is ripping us to shreds. They’ve cut us down to just a handful of worlds at this point, and they aren’t stopping. We have to fight back, and we have to fight hard if we’re going to keep them from reaching Earth.” Breathing a tired sigh, she forced herself to get control again, forced her anger back into its cage. “The good news is that we might just have a chance to do that today, here, in this very system.” She turned, barely managed a gesture, caught the eye of the man who stood off to one side, strong and imposing as he watched her carefully, silently. “Major Esquer, if you will.”

“Of course.” He nodded once, stepped up, one dark hand gently squeezing Tessa’s shoulder in a gesture of support, of friendship as he crossed to the podium, pulled at the sleeves of his dark uniform.

“Alright people, here’s the scoop.”

Lights flicked off. Behind him, a realtime map of the Gliese 105 trinary rose out of the wall, spun silently like a mass of rock and ice caught in a slow motion blender. He pulled in a breath, held it, turned to face the wall.

“Command has reason to believe that the next strike will come here, in Gliese 105, with the target being Golimowski station,” Red crosshairs picked out a tiny speck of steel and struts in the middle of the stellar morass. “It’s the only thing of any strategic value in this god-forsaken patch of irradiated rock that command calls a system, and it’s the only refueling and refit capable post still left this far out. This makes it a priority.” Turning back, he breathed a tired sigh, gripped the podium, stared hard at his pilots, at Tessa’s pilots. “The size of the attacking force is unknown. The time of its arrival is unknown. All we know is that a small task force of Coralate ships will bend space into this system, and that they’ll do it soon. The station’s defenses are in automatic mode, and the crew has been evacuated to the Hephaestus. Our job is to hide in the radiation wash of the Alpha star, wait for our chance, and then hit them hard, hopefully before they can do any real damage to the station. Any questions?”

Silence. Esquer set his jaw, stood up to his full, imposing height, took in the eyes of each pilot in turn.

“This isn’t going to be easy, but we’ve all been caught in worse at some point in our careers, so command thinks we can handle it.” He paused. “I know we can handle it. Just don’t get cocky out there.”

“This war has already claimed too many dead heroes.” Tessa spoke up from beside the podium. “Watch yourselves, and watch your squadron mates. I want everyone to come back from this one alive, got me?” She glanced at Esquer, smiled as he gave her a slow, somber nod, then turned back to the pilots.

“Alright, I want everyone on standby and I want all rigs prepped to fly at a moment’s notice.” Esquer snapped his fingers, triggering the lights. Already, pilots were gathering their gear, helmets and masks, silicon sheets and noteputers with charts, sectionals, calculations and checklists loaded into their screens. Esquer gripped the podium, pulled in a deep breath. “I need everyone ready to fly the instant the Coralate shows up in system so we can hit them fast and hit them hard. The frontier is getting too close to home. Lets win this one, people.”

When the cheers died down, Tessa grinned, let her hands come together behind her back.

“That’s it.” She nodded once. “Dismissed. See you on the hangar deck.”

S2: Episode #29: Touch of Sun

2010-12-08T00:00:00.000-08:00

Phoebe was on the deck even before Tessa touched down, a spot of tired white and dusky gold among the cold gull gray of the hangar bay. Waiting, hands in her pockets, she watched as Tessa climbed from the cockpit, then shuffled forward in the lower gravity, eyes sometimes fixed on the other woman, sometimes darting away. As they got closer, Tessa noticed the differences in the way the younger officer held herself, the way she shined like sunlight, only darker, as if tarnished by time. The last four years had been hard on her, showed in the deeper lines that had worn themselves into her face, the darkness in and around her eyes, her hair. She looked stronger, deeper, no longer the green recruit she had been when she’d flown as Tessa’s wingman all those years ago. She looked experienced, like she’d been through hell, like she deserved to be an L.C., and it brought a moistness to Tessa’s eyes that she couldn’t shake.

“Phoebe.” Tessa smiled, touched the younger woman’s arm in a tender gesture. “How’s Minerva squadron treating you?”

“Great.” Phoebe smiled past the tears, reached out to pull at and play with the edges of Tessa’s flight suit in absent movements. “Ultima Thila been treating you well? You look good.” She smiled, let her gaze meet Tessa’s, blinked, looked away again, wiping fiercely at her eyes as she sniffed. There was only a moment of hesitation before Tessa reached out, pulled Phoebe into a hug, closed her eyes as Phoebe hugged fiercely back.

“I’ve missed you, Phoebe.”

“I’ve missed you too, L.C.– uh, Major.” Phoebe managed, almost blubbering into her shoulder. “You left big shoes to fill, but every time I think that I might not be able to fill them, I just pretend you’re there, y’know?” She sniffed, closed her eyes. “I try to do. . . whatever it is that I think you might do.” She shook her head, hugged harder. Tessa’s hand went to the younger officer’s hair, moved in a gentle caress. “I miss those old days. I miss you. I miss Izzy.”

“I know.” Tessa swallowed, closed her own eyes against the building buds of tears. “Me too.” She shook her head against the wetness, leaned down to kiss Phoebe’s dirty blond hair. “It’s going to be okay though. I’m going to find a way to get her back, I promise.”

Hands tightened on the synthleather padding of Tessa’s flight jacket as Phoebe forced herself to meet the other woman’s eyes, concern brewing under the firm strength in her misty blue gaze.

“Back?” Phoebe swallowed, then whispered. “How?” Her eyes followed the other woman’s as Tessa looked to her rig, then glanced back again, smiled. Phoebe blinked, and then the realization hit her, struck her soul like a cold, resounding chord. “I. . . I’m not going to like the answer, am I?”

“We need an edge in the war, Pheebs.” Tessa looked away, swallowed against the lingering edge of Phoebe’s expression. “You’re tech savvy. Keep in touch. I might have a few technical questions for you when I start rewiring systems and bypassing security limiters.”

“I’ll encode a link-up between my quarters and yours tonight.” Phoebe said hurriedly, looked away herself. “I can rig a pair of portable QE transmitters.” She looked back, met Tessa’s eyes again. “What you’re doing though. . .” She held a breath, shook her head, whispered: “are you sure about this? I mean, really?”

Tessa swallowed again, closed her eyes, shook her head.

“No.” The major pulled in a shaky breath. “The truth is, Phoebe, I. . .” She bit the inside of her lip. “I don’t even know anymore.”

“Come back to us, Tessa.” Phoebe squeezed the other woman softly, gently. “I’d give your old seat back at the top of the squadron if it meant having you as LC in Minerva again.”

Tessa chuckled quietly, opened her eyes, met the other woman’s gaze with a tired smile on her lips. “I can’t, Phoebe.” She leaned down, kissed the younger officer’s forehead. “It wouldn’t be right. You’re Minerva’s LC now. No one should take that away from you.”

Phoebe opened her mouth to say something, seemed ready to beg, to argue, but before the words could come, another voice broke the teary silence, a voice they both knew, both smiled softly at as it caught their ears.

“Hey, you two.”

“Cordova” Tessa grinned. She glanced back at Phoebe, gently broke away to reach out and hug the newcomer. “Its good to see you, Jose’.”

“Same here, Major.” He grinned back as they broke apart, shook hands. “It’s been a while.”

“Nice uniform.” She reached up, pulled at his collar, smiled playfully. “Those aren’t Minerva Squadron colors you’re flying though. Who are you hotdogging with these days?” She grinned again, glanced at his rank insignia. “Lieutenant Commander.”

“Sulus Squadron.” He grinned again. “After the battle for the Seindrive shipyards in Sirius, I was offered a promotion and a transfer to the Luguvalium.” He laughed. “It’s definitely a whole different experience leading your own squadron, eh?”

“Definitely.” She nodded. “And the kids?”

“Safe on Earth with their mother and her family.” He breathed a relieved sigh. “They caught one of the few transports back before the military started enforcing refugee lockdowns.”

“Everybody’s lost something. “ Phoebe swallowed, stepped up and hugged Cordova. “It’s been too long, Jose.”

“For sure.” He smiled back. “Good to see you again, both of you.” He nodded softly, almost soberly as he and Phoebe parted, she taking up a position next to Tessa, he taking them both in, swallowing. “Well, I’ve. . . I’ve got a little time–” He gestured loosely. “Should we hit the officer’s mess, for old time’s sake?”

“Yeah.” Tessa grinned, caught Phoebe’s tired nod. “Yeah, sounds good.”