I took one last look over the room I'd been using for the last twenty years and made certain that any personal effects I'd accumulated were packed away and already sent off to the Phoenix. Finally, I was going to get back in the fight, after spending so long working to build up the protections on Obelisk, I was more than ready to be gone. Hopefully I wasn't leaving just for Orricks to fall apart and lose control of the single most important piece of technology that the Nephilim Army had in our control.

Despite having spent nearly three-fourths of a century building the Nephilim Army and protecting the Solar Empire's expansion efforts, I still didn't trust the governments that ran the Empire to have the best interests of the common people and the Wardens as a core tenet and belief of theirs. If word got back to them that there was an alien device that held the total knowledge of a race that had reached heights that dwarfed everything the Wardens had built, then they'd stop at nothing to get their hands on it.

I couldn't trust the Wardens of Life with this knowledge either; since the formation of the Nephilim, races within the Wardens of Life that had expressed displeasure at having to constantly run from the Scourge while bringing other races into the fold had taken the first opprotunity available to them to break away from the Wardens and form their own alliance. They were dedicated to trade, expansion, and mutual defense rather than policing the rest of the universe. They'd formed a very tight alliance with the Solar Empire when the Deva Collective had officially formed.

I hadn't even sent word back to the civilian aspect of the Collective about the obelisk to avoid any of them leaking the information about it and causing what little stability had formed when the Milky Way was completely Scourge free to disintergrate. To avoid any leaks of information, I'd worked to make Obelisk into the Nephilim Capital in Andromeda. No one who was brought here was allowed to move around without an escort of Nephilim, unless they were Nephilim themselves. Even the Aasimar brethren we had in the Deva Collective weren't unescorted when they were on the planet. The only non-Nephilim people that moved around freely were the scientists and researchers that had spent the last fifteen years examining the obelisk and they were still monitored heavily, despite their freedom to move without escort.

"Rick, you've got that same look you get when I talk about Earth," Carrie said. "What's up?"

"Nothing," I said, I hadn't realized I was so deep in thought. "Just thinking and hoping I'm not making a mistake."

"If you were making a mistake about this, then we're so screwed," Carrie said. "We've had Orricks here for almost ten years and if she wasn't on board as a Nephilim, then she's hidden it so well. there's no hope of us figuring it out now that we're giving her the keys to the planet."

"I know," I said. "Knowing that doesn't mean I don't worry a little."

"If you spend all your time worrying, then you'll never get anything done," Carrie said. "'What if's', 'I wishes,' and 'If only's' will paralyze you and then you'll never move forward again without something so major you can't stop it or change it happening. If you let a few worries stop you, then you'll never have any fun."

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"That was almost wise," I teased her. "Finally acting your age?"

"You wish," she scoffed. "Just cause I'm pushing ninety, doesn't mean that I'm going to start acting like an old lady with grandkids now."

"If you did, I think Sarah would explode," I joked.

"That might make it worth it then," Carrie said, giving the idea serious thought. I laughed as we walked down the hallways toward the landing pad where the shuttle was waiting for us.

"Demigod James," Wing Qin greeted me as I stepped off the shuttle and onto the Phoenix's hangar deck. "Welcome back sir."

"Good to be back," I told him. "I hope you've kept the tank gassed up and the paint job intact while I've been gone."

"Of course, sir," he said with a smile. "Just topped up, in fact. Thought you'd like to take it out for spin now that you're back."

"You thought right," I said, returning his smile. "Cai, set course for WS-HP-05. Should take us about ten weeks travel to get there. I want to see how far my Extermination Generals have come before we set course for a Scourge controlled world to take back."

"Course plotted and set," he answered me.

"Sarah, you take Bunny and get her settled somewhere close to you," I told her. "Carrie, I'm going to grab some food and then go to the bridge. Qin, take a break now. You've earned it after the last twenty years."

"Thank you, sir," he said before saluting and leaving the hangar.

"Food sounds nice," Carrie said. "I'll make my way there after I drop my things in my quarters."

"Is there a reason you want me close to Sarah?" Bunny asked.

"I don't need my squadmate being harrassed by everyone else because her room's closer to theirs," I told her. "Sarah's going to be back-up for you if you need it."

"Come on, Bunny," Sarah said. "I know the best room and I'm sure it's empty."

While Sarah led Bunny to her new quarters, I turned to Carrie.

"You sure you don't want to put either of them close to you?" I asked her.

"Sarah would hate it if I did," Carrie said. "She'd say I don't trust her and that I was trying to control her."

"And Bunny?" I asked.

"I'm still mad at her for not telling me about what Sarah had planned when she brought her aboard the Phoenix's Wings," Carrie said. "I know it's not good to hold a grudge for so long about something that's been taken care of, but I don't like that she kept it from me then. Makes me wonder if she's keeping anything else from me."

"She's not," I assured her. "Erica was just caught up in Sarah trying to help and she was afraid of what would happen if she told you. Besides, I've had Cai and Touka monitor her and Rex's activities to make sure they don't over-reach. They've kept their noses clean and they're definitely onboard as a Nephilim rather than someone's spy."

"Still doesn't mean that I'm not upset when I think about the whole thing," Carrie sighed.

"So long as it doesn't affect a working relationship between you two," I said.

"It won't," Carrie assured me. "I like Bunny, I just don't like how we met. That made it difficult to trust her for a while, but I got over it when I trained her and now she's probably the only Knight I'd trust to cover me in the field."

"That's good," I said before making my way out of the hangar and toward the cafeteria. I was hungry and I wanted food before taking command of the bridge and having to put up with the Paladins that monitored the starship's travel route for anything unexpected, like a group of pirates that thought we were an easy target. The only time that'd happened, I'd been giddy like a kid at Christmas, excited to fight actual space pirates; and then we'd destroyed their ship in two shots from our main cannons. Then I'd been a little let down.