---Home---

---Tcakqaal’s perspective---

My flight muscles tighten across my chest, all my feathers stand on end and my heartsrate increases enormously as I look at the ship that’s class came to be known as death incarnate during the War.

I can only imagine how those aboard the space station must feel, looking at it… Though, those without a service record probably don’t fully grasp just how lethal what they’re looking at truly is!

The Terrans apparently started the conflict with only five of them… By its end, they had twenty, despite having lost eight!

They were controversial since, thinking themselves alone in the galaxy, it was hard to justify the enormous outlay of cost on a weapon that would only ever be used against other Terrans.

Their very existence was seen as antagonistic to peace, an implied threat of force against any who might seek independence from the UTC.

Those who pointed out that they may, one day, encounter advanced life in the stars and it may not be friendly to them were brushed off as making flimsy excuses.

It is certainly not the largest craft in space… only around ×10 the size of the Bright Plume… though the mythos associated with it does make it loom a lot larger in my mind!

What it is, however, is the most heavily armed and armoured class of ship that has likely ever flown!

Unless, lost in deep time, there was some other deathworld empire who created its equal, no single craft ever constructed has rivalled the Terran dreadnought…

It’s sleek hull is reinforced with durasteel and plated with panels of a heat resistant armour which would (plausibly) allow it to submerge itself several [kilometres] deep into the plasma of an O type star without the crew inside succumbing to either the heat or the pressure!

Every one of its sides is lined with a forest of rail gun emplacements, each able to shoot various kinds of ammunition at up to 95% the speed of light.

They cause it to somewhat resemble a shocked Kwilion, their spines all erect(!)

There’s one feature, however, that sets this model apart from any that saw service during the War: its fighter hanger blast doors are fully open with distant Terrans visible moving around inside. It has an atmospheric containment field activated.

There certainly wouldn’t be space for us to dock the entire ship inside and, for various reasons, transferring the prisoners through the space station is out of the question, so they’ve sent a troop lander to dock with us externally.

The doors open and reveal a dozen durasteel clad Terran warriors.

"Permission to come aboard?" requests a male voice, emanating from one of the [marines] (though, which I could not say!)

"Granted." I answer.

They stride onto my ship but, immediately, startle and whip into a volley fire combat arrangement without a word needing to be spoken.

Their guns are all trained on the tall, skeletal, durasteel droid stood among us, its limbs unrestrained and its eyes glowing red.

“What the Hell’s going on here!?” demands the same voice as spoke before.

“Calm down, calm down!” reassures a mechanical woman at my side, running forward without putting herself in the line of fire “That is not Jackson ‘Scout’ Stetter! This is!” she holds up a portable stasis tube containing a jar with a crinkled mass of pink flesh inside it “That’s just his body which I’m controlling right now. I’m sorry, I should have warned you…”

“Stand down.” comes the same voice as before.

One of the soldiers stands and steps forward.

“You’re just trying to keep us on our toes are you(?)” he says, removing his helmet to look down into Twila’s elastomer face. His expression is a mixture of amusement and exasperation.

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“No, Sir. A genuine oversight. I just thought walking the body here would save your people some of the effort of getting it aboard.” responds Twila, apologetically.

“You know what Victor would say if he were here, Twila?” I chime in, wryly.

“I’m sure I’d get an earful about safety and negligence, Captain.” says the girl.

The warrior turns his attention to me.

“Captain Tcakqaal, 27th Daughter of Highspire Peak?” he asks, extending his hand.

“The very same…” I answer, extending my wingclaw to his manipulator in a Terran greeting “…and you are…?”

“LtCol Jasper ‘Knight’ Richter of the UTC Marine Corps….” responds the Terran as he shakes my hand “…Commanding Officer of the Marine detachment aboard the UTCS Spite.”

He gestures out of the window to the ship that’s name is a synonym of ‘Malice’ “Lucky we happen to be in the neighbourhood. We’re just on our way back from Jukt Space. We were helping them out with a little piracy problem they were experiencing in their parts of the lanes… If you’d made the call a month before or after you did, there’d not have been a ship in 10,000ly that could have taken someone so dangerous… even in this state!” he gestures between the docile body and the brain that was pulled from it “I don’t suppose you would be able to walk it aboard our lander, would you?” he asks.

Twila shakes her head “I’m afraid not, Lieutenant Colonel… your cybersecurity is too formidable, my control doesn’t extend inside. Unless you want me to make it take a running leap aboard but… I feel like it would damage your floor when it collapsed, with how hard and heavy it is…”

He shrugs “Can’t be helped… Cpl Altan, GySgt Tveit, get a mule for this. Pvt Hargrave, please take… uhm…” he frowns at the container before settling on “…him aboard… If someone would be so kind as to lead us to the Brig, the rest of you can form up and follow along.”

---Kara’s perspective---

The other prisoners from the Vulture have already been taken away when the clear polymer of my cell door retracts.

I walk forward, the cuffs that the snake woman deployed from the wall jangling at my wrists in front of me.

I turn to one of the soldiers, clad in fullplate durasteel nicer than any I’ve seen on Bastion.

“Could I have a moment to say goodbye?” I ask, gesturing to the gigantic man, looming over both of us.

I can’t see a face through the rippled, black metal helmet but the bodylanguage is hesitant as she turns from me to look up at the man.

The man briefly shuts his eyes and lolls his head slightly to the side in a gesture of ‘it’s fine’.

She walks off, leaving me alone with the giant man who (genetically at least) is my son… still not used to that!

I’m sure she hasn’t gone far… ready to rush back if she hears any sign of a struggle.

“From the looks of us, you’d never guess it was me who had spent the last few weeks locked in a cell(!)” I smile, nervously, up into the eyes the precise same shade of green as mine, ringed by dark eyebags.

He gives a mirthless scoff “Yeah… ain’t been sleepin’ well… for obvious reasons…”

There’s an awkward silence as we both just stand, facing eachother, for a few moments.

Finally, I look down and clear my throat “*ehem*…Listen… I’m… really sorry I’m not who you thought I was!… If it’s any consolation, I would have much preferred to be the real thing too!”

He sighs “…Yeah… prob’ly would’ve been too much to ask that they’d give you a temporary release from rehab to come and sit in the front row at my weddin’, even if you had been her… even with your promised cooperation… It’s fine… what you are ain’t your fault and… not like I’ve got any less family now than I did before I met you…”

Sheepishly, I answer “I… I hope this isn’t weird to say but… I feel like… I feel like we… are family… kind of…? Long lost siblings I guess? Children of the same mother… even if you’re the only one she actually meant to have…”

He smiles a smile that doesn’t come close to touching his eyes and shakes his head “Nope… I was an accident… she didn’t mean to have either of us…”

“Well then…” I smile back “…that’s something else we have in common(!)”

He actually laughs for the first time I’ve heard, even if it’s just a chuckle.

I hesitate for a long time before asking what I want to ask next.

The awkwardness finally gets too much and I just blurt “Victor,couldIhaveahuggoodbye?”

His bloodshot eyes widen slightly and both his eyebrows raise as his head moves a few centimetres backwards.

“No… of course not…” I say, my cheeks immediately burning with embarrassment “…that was too weird! I’m sorry! Forget I s-Ah!”

A pair of thick, solid arms fly around my shoulders and my face impacts a muscular chest as the giant man pulls me into a bear hug!

I’m not able to hug him back, my hands still cuffed in front of me.

No one has ever hugged me like this…

Not one carer, friend or lover has ever squeezed me with this amount of tenderness!

There’s a desperate longing to how he embraces me… Like he’s been waiting a lifetime for it… which, I suppose, he has!

As I breathe in the smell of the man who shares half of my blood and half that of a man that another me, in another time, loved, I sob.

Tears sting my eyes as I wish again, so badly, that I could be the woman this hug is actually meant for… that their geneticist could come in right now and tell me they’d made a mistake and that I am, in fact, a mindwiped Esme Reid/Taylor and not just some fucking livestock clone of her!

I wish I could watch him get married from a front row seat… not a remote viewing channel in a cell in a medium security women’s prison!

Even with the reduced rehab term I’m probably gonna get sentenced to, considering my circumstances and willingness to cooperate, it’s probably going to be years before I get out and get to think of building a relationship with this man who is my only family in the universe… As much as being what we are actually makes us family at all…

I can think about the future when it comes…

Right now… this hug… it feels like home…