Allison tapped her way through Bit’s various systems. Pre-flight checks were something the AI could handle for her easily, but she still did it. She used the process to center herself before taking control of the multi-billion-dollar starfighter. Olga was in the rear seat watching Allison go through the ritual she smiled slightly and got a far off look in her eyes. Allison was checking her antimatter levels and containment when she realized Olga wasn’t talking. She glanced back at Olga, she had noticed the Russian woman was uncharacteristically quiet as she was preparing for launch. Allison asked quietly.
“Everything alright?”
Olga nodded. She smiled.
“Just remembering when I was your age and learning how to fly a jet.”
Allison glanced back at Olga.
“You know how to fly?”
Olga nodded.
“Yes. I learned when I was part of the KGB. We were expected to be able to handle any situation, a group of us girls. It’s where I met Hazel. You know, your mother, she taught me how to fly.”
Allison paused her preflight check completely.
“My mom?”
Olga motioned with her hand.
“No, your biological mother. Enid. Apparently in one of her mortal lives she was a fighter pilot. You come by it honestly, by the way. Hazel got a hold of her mother’s flight recorder when they were in 2025. She did things in one of those old jets that she shouldn’t have been able to do. Hazel has this whole package she put together. It’s probably saved on her cyberdeck at your apartment. Had a computer build a holo-simulation of it. She used to fly off of aircraft carriers.”
Olga had Allison’s full attention at this point.
“Wait, they had carriers in the twentieth century? I thought that was like… a historical misunderstanding. I thought they basically barely got into space before the Grey.”
Olga laughed.
“No, aircraft carriers as in, ocean going ships that could launch fighters.”
Allison blinked a few times. Even with all her consumption of twentieth century media she’d never heard of such a thing. Though she knew what their fighters looked like from pictures.
“They must have been huge, like kilometer’s long, how did the even float? It takes a lot of runway to even get Bit here off the ground if I don’t use antigrav.”
Olga laughed again.
“No, you know there are these movies Hazel showed me. Tob gun…”
Olga snapped her fingers.
“No, Top Gun. Hazel was fascinated by them. They had this guy in that she was totally crushing on… Hank Cruz or something. Hell, I can’t remember. Anyway, she made sure to go out of her way to grab them when she was stealing data from the media companies. She watched them obsessively. Anyway, it is about this elite school for pilots, US Navy. You totally remind me of them, not the ego though, strangely enough. Bet you would have been invited to that school, you know, if it was real.”
Allison blinked a few times.
“Sounds like ASTS. I did get invited… after the whole rogue planet thing. Major Ghai denied the request. I would have been going this summer. He said, I’m no longer Fleet, so it should go to a Fleet pilot. I need to focus on my weak spots. I am already one of the elite pilots.”
Allison rolled her eyes.
“Such a control freak. It’s like the best of the best. I was pretty mad. They only let ten pilots in per year and only like three pass. I would have been the youngest invitee and graduate.”
Olga leaned forward.
“You could always ask Maria to overrule him.”
Allison glanced back at Olga with an are you serious look.
“Yea, because he won’t hold that against me.”
Olga shrugged.
“After the shit you pulled on Titan, and that landing you pulled off on Sauroid Prime. You don’t need anyone to tell you that you’re one of the best.”
Allison shook her head and moved on to the fusion reactor status. She continued the conversation.
“Luck. All luck.”
Olga shook her head.
“Nyet. After our conversation I requested access to the data records of your crime spree. It was more than luck. You know someone published a paper on your antics. Not specifically mentioning you, or what exactly happened, but on how you used your fusion reactor coolant and water supply to prevent that transport you were flying from burning up. They’re proposing to use that as part of an emergency response to uncontrolled reentry in a craft with no or little heat shielding left. They did the math, you released each in the right sequence and at the perfect timings for that transport and its condition. Tell me, were you lucky, or was it instinct?”
Allison blushed and kept doing her pre-flight checks.
“I ran sims before I tried it.”
Olga leaned forward.
“Yes, but you thought of it. See, that’s the difference between people like you and I, and the average person. As your CO says, Adapt and Overcome, isn’t that it?”
Allison rolled her eyes.
“Don’t remind me. I’m ready to launch. Are you sure you want to come directly to Earth? I can drop you off anywhere.”
“Yea, I’m sure. I’m invited to the Christmas thing. Not because you need a bodyguard. Maria seems to treat me like I’m her kid or something. She always makes me show up for family events. Half the time I think she regrets giving me a choice and not turning me.”
Allison was about to open comms to Silwra’s civilian combined space and air control but stopped and looked back at Olga again.
“Why did you choose to be a toaster anyway? Being a vampire doesn’t seem that bad. I mean blood is okay. I know you can swap bodies and stuff, but like, it’s not the real you and Eyre taught me this thing, I can change my hair and eye color. I can’t do more because it would hurt too much. You could have been anyone anyway.”
Olga shrugged.
“You, and they have this thing. It’s something I can’t put my finger on. There is this distance between you and humans. Like, humans know you’re predators. No matter how pretty you are. How safe you seem, there is always this prick, or there was always this prick in the back of my mind when I had a living body that I was just food.”
She waved her hand dismissively.
“It doesn’t matter now. I was never a fan of my body anyway. I do miss real food, but vampires drink blood so what’s the difference?”
Allison shrugged at that response and opened her comm channel.
“Silwra Control, this is Shadow One. I am requesting launch clearance and a FTL transit corridor to your system’s heliosphere.”
She heard the distinct voice of a Yorleer come through.
“You are cleared, on the vector just transmitted. Have a safe trip, Shadow One.”
Allison hit the antigravs and left the spaceport. It took only a few minutes for them to reach the point at which she would be allowed to activate her wormhole generator according to SA policy surrounding their use. Initiating one without a stargate needed to be done in interstellar space. She opened a wormhole comm to Sol system.
“Sol control, this is Shadow One, out of Silwra system, requesting wormhole transit to Sol beacon six.”
She received a challenge code. She gave the proper response. The beacon lit up on her wormhole projector’s target list. A female comm officer who sounded quite young responded.
“Greetings, Shadow One. You are cleared for wormhole transit to requested beacon.”
“Initiating wormhole in sixty seconds. Thanks Sol control. Shadow One out.”
Allison charged the capacitors before projecting the wormhole. Olga had no complaints this time. They appeared a few hundred thousand kilometers past Luna’s orbit. Allison moved the fighter immediately. Wormhole exit points were marked by warning buoys for good reason, getting hit by a wormhole unaware was pretty much guaranteed death by spaghettification. That was why transit to beacons was strictly monitored and controlled, and partially why opening a wormhole via coordinates was strictly an emergency only option. She had been surprised to have been authorized to use the Earth beacon. Usually transit via wormhole into Sol system was strictly to the outer beacon which was just past the heliosphere.
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She didn’t have to communicate with Earth control, or New Amazon control. She’d already pre-registered her flight plan, or Bit had, so basically, she just followed the green line on the HUD into New Amazon and brought Bit to a gentle landing in her personal hanger. She removed her harness and slid her finger along the side of the canopy and the liquid metal covering it oozed away, then the canopy slid inside the airframe. Allison hopped down the liquid metal ladder that formed and patted Bit’s side before hopping off.
“Thanks for getting us here in one piece, Bit.”
“As always, it is my pleasure. Going into sleep mode. Enjoy your visit.”
Olga shook her head.
“It’s like the two of you are friends.”
Allison blinked at Olga.
“Of course we are. We’re best friends. If I could hang out with her all the time I would. She gets kind of cranky if she’s out of sleep mode for too long though. She says a hundred thousand years is more than anyone should be around.”
Olga smirked.
“You think it’s maybe just that she gets bored of dealing with teenage angst?”
Allison gave Olga a dirty look before throwing the Russian woman’s heavy bag at her. Olga didn’t seem to notice the weight, or the force of the throw.
“Hey, you didn’t lose it, at least you have something over corporate flights. The meals were non-existent, there was no leg room and the entertainment options were terrible.”
Allison made a face before pulling her own things out. Olga hefted her bag and entered the apartment. Allison looked around the empty hanger before dropping her things, climbing up to the cockpit and linking her holo-tablet up to Bit’s systems via liquid metal wire. She checked the antimatter levels and containment then shunted the remaining stores to local storage so Aurelius could pick it up. Then she started the fusion reactor shutdown. The antimatter reactor would shut itself down in a few minutes, once it went through the remaining molecules in its tank. She pulled the connector and dusted her hands off. None of this was necessary, but it always felt like she was tucking Bit in for a long nap. She patted Bit’s liquid metal armor.
“Have a good sleep.”
She picked up her things and went inside. The apartment was not the cold place it had been. The sheets had been pulled off of everything. Christmas decorations seemed to have exploded all over the living room. A giant artificial Christmas tree which was covered in red and white lights dominated a corner of the room. Olga was nowhere to be seen. Her mother was in the kitchen cooking while she watched a holo-show. Aryna was on the couch with a lazy looking Oozie sprawled beside her.
The nargle’s nose was on Aryna’s thigh as it snored away, seeming to be completely unaware of her chosen human’s arrival, until her nose started to twitch. Before anyone could respond Oozie had nearly knocked Allison over when she bounded towards her. Allison kneeled down and rubbed Oozie behind her front legs. In response the nargle purred loudly and licked Allison’s face repeatedly with her long tongue.
“I missed you too Oozie. I should have brought you as my bodyguard. You’d be less annoying than a cranky Russian cyborg, yes you would.”
Apiyo turned at the commotion and put her hands on her hips. She looked at her daughter expectantly. Allison scratched Oozie’s head gently before going into the kitchen and engulfing her mother in a tight hug. Her mother hugged her back tightly.
“How was your trip?”
Allison shrugged.
“Fine.”
Apiyo raised an eyebrow.
“You go to a whole new alien world. You give a speech to their leaders and all you give your mother is, ‘fine’?”
Allison shrugged again.
“I don’t know what to say. It was pretty. The food was good. I got medals and went shopping?”
Apiyo threw her hands up.
“The food was good, she says.”
She waved her spatula at Allison.
“Your speech was very well spoken. It’s been twenty-four hours, and the news is still talking about it. The food was good! I’m so proud of my child. Now get changed, wash up and eat something.”
Allison turned to head to her room then spun back around.
“How do you know about my speech?”
Her mom shook her head.
“It was broadcast live from Eden Prime. From the embassy to my office, to the Earth and to the rest of the System’s Alliance. Logistical nightmare! SA media relations demanded it be live. As if the speech would change everything. I suppose they knew what you were going to say.”
Allison rubbed the back of her neck and bit her lower lip not quite meeting her mother’s gaze.
“Yea, yea, they did. Okay getting changed.”
Allison turned to leave, and her mother spoke her full name, first, middle last… Allison winced. Never a good sign. She turned back to face her mother once again. Her mother waved a spatula at her.
“What did you do?”
Allison shrugged and refused to meet her mother’s eyes.
“Well, you see, they… uh, never sent a speech. So, I uh, figured I was just supposed to say thanks and leave… Then the envoy for the council asked me for a copy of it… but because I never got sent one, I uh, well couldn’t give her one. I didn’t want to make our government look incompetent so I just umm, said it would be a surprise. I kind of realized about an hour before the council meeting after checking everything it hadn’t been sent. So, it was, uh, like too late to get a wormhole comm open. And uh, well, Bit and I made it up as we went.”
Apiyo rubbed the bridge of her nose.
“You can be so careless. You are lucky it went well. You could have ruined relations between the League and SA! What were you thinking?”
Allison blushed. She hadn’t really been thinking. She was after all just a teenager, thinking first was sometimes not her strongest quality. Her mother fanned herself.
“Lord save us from my daughter and her carelessness!”
Allison slipped away when her mother turned to her pan. She took her time getting ready. Aryna knocked on the door frame of the washroom where Allison was washing her hands.
“Well, I think it was perfect. My memories of the council, well my mothers say they respond best to heartfelt speeches, and something produced by your government probably wouldn’t have been heartfelt. I am also the best teacher. You did everything I taught you to do when addressing a court. The council is no Qual’sa grand noble house circle, but you made me proud.”
Allison smiled at her friend.
“Thanks. I was super nervous. I’m also wondering what punishment they’re whipping up for me for not following the speech I was never sent.”
Aryna shrugged.
“I’m sure whatever it is, the person who didn’t send the speech will be happy they avoided it. Of course, they might just avoid it all by saying that they updated it and sent the wrong copy to everyone else. Taking credit for your work.”
Allison made a face at Aryna as she dried her hands. Aryna held up one of her delicate fingers.
“Ah, there is a human saying, stop making that face, or it will get stuck that way.”
Allison couldn’t help but laugh. Aryna put her arms around Allison and hugged her tightly.
“My sister, there is another saying I heard, you shouldn’t take life too seriously, you’ll never make it out alive.”
Allison laughed into Aryna’s shoulder.
“You are watching too many movies.”
Aryna released Allison
“Your media is fascinating. Especially this, Winter Wolf… streaming service. It is fascinating how much of your culture they managed to save. I was watching, Star Wars? Yes, that’s it. Quite interesting. If it were made by a Qual’sa I would say it was a commentary on the renegade house and the royal family, and the conflict between us. However, in our case, the light side won.”
Allison shook her head.
“The acting was barely acceptable, and there are two versions of the first three movies! Either he shot first, or he didn’t. Why rewrite history? Ugg, and it’s like they had no concept of space battles. Like, there’s no sound in space. Hello, you need something to carry the waves. And what idiot would fly a spacecraft without shields through space. There are microparticles and debris everywhere. Do you know what that would do to your ship at fractions of the speed of light? And while I’m ranting about how unrealistic it was, you cannot FTL through a ship or planet. They’re out of phase! You’d have to drop out of FTL without decelerating. That’s all they had to do! Stupid fake hyperspace physics. And a ship going to FTL does not look like that at all. I can’t believe I ever liked those movies. Awful writing. Awful realism. Unwatchable now that I’m an actual starfighter pilot.”
Aryna followed Allison as she walked into the living room and continued the debate.
“In an infinite universe, of infinite universes there is a chance such a universe and a galaxy exist. Who do you think would win in a war? The Empire, or the System’s Alliance.”
Allison rolled her eyes.
“The System’s Alliance, for three reasons: One, our fighters actually have shields so we can make it to the fight without being torn to pieces by space dust. Two, wormhole technology. Three, fighter-based antimatter weaponry. And if you need an extra reason, oh yea, vampires and werewolf soldiers, also we’d hear them coming because for some reasons tie-fighter’s scream! In space… so yea, we’d hear them screaming before they disintegrated from space dust. Peh, not even a competition.”
Apiyo shook her head as the two girls argued about something so silly. It was times like this that reminded her they were both just children. Aryna seemed to be enjoying getting Allison a bit riled up, so she shook her head and continued the debate.
“Yes, but their hyperdrives do not create antimatter. Yours do, so you are carrying around the potential for your own destruction.”
Allison blinked at Aryna.
“Well excuse me for ignoring such a stupid idea. Everyone knows you cannot break the laws of physics without exotic matter, and you cannot use exotic matter without creating ant… err FTL byproduct.”
Aryna smiled at Allison.
“Ah my friend, you are wrong. You see, Qual’sa ships do not need exotic matter to travel at FTL speeds. Therefore, produce no FTL byproduct. Did you find any on my royal ark?”
Allison blinked a few times.
“What? How is that even possible?”
Aryna smiled.
“The ships are genetic twins of Sh’jar’ti. A species of hyperspace, hmm, you would probably equate them to an extinct species from your world, a manatee. They were bio-engineered from their genetic material and grown. They can travel through hyperspace without the benefit of a drive via a natural organ.”
Allison looked down at her food her mind drifted back to the intel the League had provided about the Sal’nash.
“Could you be tracked through hyperspace? Using exotic matter… it causes a pulse. That’s how the League and System’s Alliance both track FTL travel… did yours?”
Aryna shrugged.
“I do not know. Our ships were few in number after we gave up space travel. My ark was one of the last. We utilized League vessels, usually of Silwrath design.”
Allison rolled the long stringy pasta on her plate in her fork and sat in silent contemplation. She suddenly stood up and left her plate untouched. Aryna and Apiyo watched her leave. She vanished into the hanger.
Allison opened a link to System’s Alliance Command on her AR HUD. Her new role as a Military Specialist came with certain perks, such as a higher security clearance. As a pilot she would have had to request access to FTL tracking officially. As a Military Specialist with Military Intelligence, she was expected to access such things as part of mission planning and intelligence gathering. She quickly ran a search for FTL transits around Andromeda-1 and AGN07. She could see her FTL jumps with Bit, her grandfather’s arrival several hours afterwards, but nothing for the Qual’sa ark. She then accessed the data around the rogue planet. She once again saw Bit, then the Alliance search and rescue fleet shortly afterwards. Nothing for the Sal’nash that escaped.
She gasped out loud and she spoke to herself in a quiet voice.
“They can’t track the Sal’nash… They could attack anywhere and anytime and we’d never known.”
She logged out and rubbed her face.
“That’s why there wasn’t any antimatter on their ships… are the Sal’nash using stolen Qual’sa ships? Did the Qual’sa create them to fight in their civil war?”
She started to pace back and forth. Right now, Aryna was trusted but if… Allison bit her lower lip.
“If her people created the Sal’nash… if people think they did.”
Allison rubbed her face again. She had to think. The two things could have nothing to do with each other. She went back to her seat and played with her food before finally eating. She had a lot to ponder.