Chapter One

Change is the only constant

“Explain this, please,” Salem said sternly. Her eyes raked over The Girl, taking in all the changes.

“Explain what?” The Girl replied innocently.

The last time Salem had seen The Girl, she had been a thin, sort of gangly child who could have passed for anything from ten to twelve years old, depending on the expression on her face. Short, messy hair, baggy clothes, and a constant layer of grime from her habit of moving about the station through the vents as opposed to the carefully planned and equally distributed corridors and lift tubes. If Salem had been forced to choose a word to sum The Girl up, it would have been Urchin.

Salem pulled up the memory of the feed from outside Paren’s department, watching again as the nameless girl walked inside with an absent expression and a slight skip in her step. Completely normal.

Now, she was at least sixteen years old, but more likely eighteen, and she was far from child-like. A phrase Nellie had used once about Lucy described it—all the right curves in all the right places. Long, blue-black hair hung over her shoulders as the shipsuit hugged her figure, and the face itself had filled out, the child-like innocence that had never touched her eyes now completely gone.

“Do not play innocent,” Salem said sharply. “I am busy.”

“I can not answer a question without knowing the parameters,” The Girl said with a very dramatic sigh.

“Explain the physical changes to your body, the mechanism behind them, and the reason, cause, and responsible parties.” Salem played along with the request while tying Lucy and Nellie into her feeds so they were aware of what was happening.

“My sister advised me that I would be unable to take part in the exploration mission to the planet due to my apparent age,” The Girl said easily. “I wanted to go, so I adjusted my appearance to allay any issues on that front.”

“Incomplete answer,” Salem tutted. “I was specific.”

“The rest of the answer is classified and above your clearance,” The Girl shrugged.

“Is it above mine?” Lucy appeared in a hologram, her expression near pure thunder.

“Uh, maybe?” The Girl tried to appear relaxed, but Salem felt herself starting to smile at the signs of tension.

“Salem, this happened on your watch,” Lucy snapped, instantly causing the smile to die. “Do I need to come back there and deal with you in person?” The last comment was shot at The Girl, who had started to shift uncomfortably.

“My appearance and other factors are adjustable to allow me to blend into local populations, attract help, and enable easier access to a target.” The Girl said, each word seeming forced out against her will. “Until recently, the young appearance was effective.”

“Your age is now in question,” Lucy said, the hologram walking in a circle around the suddenly teenaged girl. “Your efforts to hide it are no longer acceptable.”

“I see no relevance,” The Girl replied sullenly.

“Then you can’t go,” Nellie appeared on the command screen.

“What?” The Girl gaped at Nellie.

“No going to the planet,” Nellie said simply. “You won’t tell us anything, so I am going to treat you as a ten-year-old, no matter how you look.”

“But that’s not fair!” The Girl insisted.

“Who’s the mother here?” Nellie asked.

“You are,” The Girl snarled.

“Which means so is Lucy, and Salem is your Aunt,” Nellie said simply. “No being rude to your Aunt. If you won’t tell us the truth, you can’t go.”

“I don’t know,” The Girl growled. “Okay? I can’t remember how old I am.”

“How long can you remember?” Nellie prompted.

“I was with Dad for about ten years before that… I think seven years?” The Girl seemed to be thrown by the sudden shift in the conversation.

“And how old was your body in your first memory?” Nellie nudged.

“I was about half the age I was when I met you?” The Girl seemed to be trying to remember. “But I didn’t feel any younger.”

“Okay, I’ve decided you are eighteen,” Nellie said simply. “That is how old you are.”

“What? You can just do that?” The Girl was staring at the wall, as lost and off balance as anyone had ever seen her.

“I just did,” Nellie shrugged on screen. “Are you my daughter?”

“I am,” The Girl said, clinging to passing solid ground. “Dad told me to be your daughter, so I am.”

“Well, a mother knows how old their child is; today is your eighteenth birthday. Congratulations,” Nellie grinned. “Your present is that you can go to the planet with Paren when she goes.”

“Thank you,” The Girl looked slightly smugly at Salem.

“You're welcome,” Nellie said with a smile. “Now, time to come clean about the rest of it.”

“I can’t believe you told on me to Mum,” The Girl huffed, sitting with her back to Salem. “That was dirty tactics!”

“You claimed I didn’t have clearance, so naturally, I called someone who did,” Salem replied calmly, hiding the fact she had called much earlier than that.

“Still,” The Girl huffed again.

“Would you like to continue sulking, or shall we get on with it?” Salem asked.

“So much for you being the NICE Aunt,” The Girl spun in her chair, pouting as she peered out from behind a wall of black hair.

As the sulking teen continued to glare daggers at Salem, she calmly reached a hand out toward the Comm console.

“Fine!” The Girl huffed again.

“You are overdoing the theatrics,” Salem noted. “Teenagers barely act like that in their early teens.”

“Oh,” The Girl straightened. “My files on the matter are mostly from vid-cubes and the like.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“At the age of eighteen, most people consider the young to have reached adulthood.” Salem offered. “You never acted like a child; why impersonate a teenager?”

“It seemed like fun,” The Girl shrugged. “I never got to be one.”

“You could be one now,” Salem offered gently. “There is no need to skip the experience if you want it.”

“I’m over it,” The Girl said simply. “Now I want to go to the planet.”

“To summarize, you have no idea where you came from, who made the changes to your body, how they work, or why. All you know is that you have extensive knowledge of infiltration, evasion, assassination, and target profiling.” Salem said as she checked the notes from the brief, if explosive, discussion on the command deck. “You met your father, Leo, and he adopted you. You remember wondering what it would be like to have a father and going along with the idea.”

“He gave me a fluffy toy,” The Girl said quietly. “No one ever gave me a toy before.”

“By all accounts, Leo was an excellent father,” Salem said gently.

“The best,” The Girl did something Salem had never seen her do before.

She wiped a tear from one eye.

“He explained the idea of a mother and a family to you?” Salem checked.

“Yes,” The Girl nodded. “He said he would tell me when he found me a mother, and she would love me and look after me forever.”

“I see,” Salem said carefully.

“And he did,” The Girl said. “Nellie is my mother, and she won’t leave me. Right?” There was a pleading note in her voice that was new.

“Correct,” Salem said with confidence.

“Good,” The Girl straightened. “So, what else do I need to tell you?”

“Nothing for now,” Salem said as she closed her notes and stood. “I think I have everything I need.”

“Great,” The Girl hopped out of the chair and onto the table. “I’m going to go bug Paren.”

“USE THE DOOR!” Salem snapped as the teen leaped for the vents in the ceiling.

“Sorry!” The Girl rolled her eyes. “I’ll use the door,” She stepped pointedly off the table and stomped out into the corridor. “Like an idiot,” She mumbled as she went.

Salem squeezed the bridge of her nose with one hand. Now there were two of them…

===<<<>>>===

Two days of fleet exercises had shaken the kinks out of the Sparklight and her crew, but Nellie wished they could have gotten a small break. There just wasn’t any time.

Even as they headed back to the Rest, Nellie was already handing over command to her X.O. and headed for a shuttle where Lucy was waiting for her.

For the last four months, there had been a nonstop rush to scavenge and process the remains of the fleet and the abandoned colonies on the moon. All the while, Nellie sensed that it was never quite fast enough.

Even with their new and improved fleet, it wasn’t enough.

Controlling an entire system, especially one where they had barely explored one planet and one moon, was a daunting task. They had dispatched Orbs to all other planets to start the mapping process, and the satellite network was coming on nicely. Now, it covered the nearest planets on either side, as well as the jump points they had discovered, but that still left over half of the system a giant question mark.

Nellie waved to Lucy as she trotted up the ramp and into the Indomitable, feeling it lifting off the second the bay doors closed behind her.

The victory against the Imperial Line fleet had been a turning point, but it was a temporary victory at best—an opportunity. The computers on board had given them a wealth of information, but the biggest discovery was that the fleet had been a quick response force. The main fleet was several orders of magnitude larger, and they rarely worked alone. The Line appeared to favor the hiring of mercenary fleets pretty heavily, so when they came, it would be with friends. While there was a chance they would not all come at once, Nellie had no intention of betting on that.

So, they had to keep going. They had to keep building, exploring, and improving until they had something that could challenge anyone who came calling.

There was just one problem.

People.

The cents were incredible; Nellie still could not believe that Paren had managed that, even if no one could figure out HOW she had managed to do it. That Paren was apparently more intelligent than the incredibly advanced AI Nellie was hoping to propose to when they got a minute to themselves was a little alarming. Still, the cents alone could not replace the sheer number of personnel that were required for a fleet. Even now, they were starting to push at the upper limit of the number of bodies the cores were capable of keeping track of. Pure automation was out of the question, given that the complexity of fleet operations was mind-boggling. Every day, they discovered a new layer of problems that needed to be juggled, monitored and accounted for. What they really needed was an entire logistics division.

So, yeah, they needed the one thing they could not get in this system. People.

Slipping into the flight seat after giving Lucy a peck on the cheek, Nellie saw the worry etched into her girlfriend's flawless face.

“How many scouts have we lost so far?” Nellie prompted when Lucy remained lost in thought.

“Four autonomous drones in the last month,” Lucy replied, chewing nervously on her bottom lip. “But it is the changes around the egg that are worrying me the most.”

Nellie nodded and pulled up the latest scans on the volcanic planet their station orbited.

“Are these readings confirmed?” Nellie asked.

“They are,” Lucy nodded as she banked the shuttle toward the atmosphere.

The volcanic planet. It was just what they called the place. Due to all the volcanos. Simple. Except the volcanos were gone.

“Ostie,” Nellie muttered as she pulled up the previous readings. The place had been cooling steadily since they had disturbed the egg while setting up their mining base on the planet. It had been relatively slow at first, but by the time the Imperial Line started causing trouble, it had been at a noticeable rate.

They had been busy.

It seemed like a stupid thing to say, given that it was massive changes to the large planet they were literally orbiting, but it was the truth. With all the focus on the upcoming battle, and then recovering from the battle, and repairing their ships, it had been busy. Readings had not been noticed, and automated reports went unread as all focus was on other issues.

Now, they had a volcanic planet that not only lacked volcanos but had also experienced the kind of cooling that would typically have taken millions of years. More to the point, it was evolving into an ecosystem that was not even remotely native.

The first signs of plant life had appeared around the base of the ‘egg’ about the same time its size reached something akin to Mount Everest back on Earth. You could literally see it from space now. An expanding area was covered in strange crystalline plants, vast ferns with geometric fronds, and glowing cacti with hexagonal shapes.

The rate of growth was incredible, but at least that was directly attributable to the egg itself.

The rest of the entire planet was less explainable. Rivers of concentrated acids had started to become crystal clear water, while metals were pushing to the surface in strange ovoid clusters.

There was not a single detectable agent to these changes that any sensor could find.

As the Indomitable shifted into a hover several miles from the egg itself, they could clearly see that the edges of the new habitat were growing at a visible rate.

“I know this place,” Lucy said in a half-whisper. “Nellie, I know this place.”

“Yeah, you have been staring at the scans for every spare second for the last few months,” Nellie agreed. “I feel like I know it as well.”

“No, I mean,” Lucy faltered. “I think I have been here before, a long time ago.”

“Lucy?” Nellie asked, feeling worry twisting in her stomach. This was not the way her AI usually acted. Far from it, in fact. There was a touch of awe and sadness in the voice that Nellie had never heard before. “This wasn’t here before. We have watched it happen, remember?”

“Yes, but still…” Lucy frowned and then shot the Indomitable forward, sweeping over the landscape and up the side of the egg before coming in to hover next to an infinitesimal crack in the surface. “I know this place. I really do.”

Before Nellie could even think of what to say, the crack bulged open and spat out a familiar-looking automated drone. It hovered in front of the shuttle for a moment and then signaled that it was ready to transmit a report.

“Identifying,” Lucy said, seeming like her usual self again. “It’s the first drone we lost, the one just after the fleet battle.”

Nellie scanned the small orb a few times, checking that nothing had been added or removed, and found nothing that seemed to have been changed. It was their drone, alright, just the same as when it disappeared months ago.

The single anomaly she could see was in the small organic tissues it carried to use for testing. Each and every one of them was mutated, twisted, missing, or simply dead.

“No dangerous materials, energy signals, or any forms of radiant energy detected,” Lucy reported. “Shall we bring it on board?”

“Not yet,” Nellie shook her head. “Let’s get an Orb over here with a pair of Cent units to examine it first.”

“Good idea,” Lucy agreed, looking off to one side for a second as she issued the orders. “They are on their way from the carrier, ETA, five minutes.”

Nellie nodded and started looking for a good spot to land as she latched a grav tow line onto the autonomous scout.

“Just what we needed, another mystery to solve.”