Chrono Jump saga

[monbvol]

[Author] Some y'all will need some context for this so some related reading: Universal Truths and me getting the idea of what if she arrived a bit late and to not near future/mostly real world Earth and debating what era to put her in and Cannonshop asking "Why not all of them?" and add in a little:

And so the Cameron sisters find themselves leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that thier next leap...will be the leap to fix home!

[/author]

Some Things Truly are Universal
[/b]
A Chrono Jump ‘verse  saga Prelude
Brought to you by Monbvol and Cannonshop
With editing by Daryk(when possible)

A simple wood lodge in the middle of a forest grove
A world far away from the Inner Sphere
A long time ago


“The war is over.  We have received word of the terms of our surrender and the truth of how and why it was started.  Fatiama you know what this means do you not?”  Fatiama’s mother said solemnly.

“I do.  The lives I took were not a threat to us or our people or our lands.”  Fatiama answered.

“There is an opportunity for you to atone.  Go to the capital, to the Council of the Clans.  They seek a volunteer for a mission of great importance.  If you undertake it and complete it successfully you will be welcomed back among us and so will your daughters.”

Fatiama nodded and silently stood and left the lodge.

She looked around at her friends and relatives.  She could see the pain they felt for what must happen now, after everything Fatiama had been through, to now be exiled like this for breaking a sacred oath to only take a life if there was a just reason.

She entered her tent and gathered her possessions.  It would take her two days to get to the capital, which meant she would have to pack some rations.

She also looked at the spear, sword, and knives her cousin had made for her.  Even though she should not need to hunt or defend herself on such a short trip now that the war is over she packed those as well.

two days later

Fatiama looked at the capital city before her.  She’d visited it a few times before the war, even made some unusual friends during that time.

The scars of the final battle of the war were still being repaired.  The great walls inset to the mountains and cliffs that had made the capital such a formidable place for invaders to attack now had great gashes and great holes in them where they were breached and the heavy artillery had been stationed and subsequently knocked out.

Of all the urban areas the capital lasted longest but all knew the war was lost by then.

She could see some occupation troops at the main entrance.

“ID.”

Fatiama silently produced her ID and presented it to them.

She could sense the conflicting emotions coming from the man.

“Problem?”  The other guard asked.

“She’s…The Ghost of Tybolt VII.”  He said after a moment.

“I have been asked to report to the Council of the Clans.”  Fatiama said flatly.

“You killed my brother on Tybolt VII.”  The first guard said.

“She’s on the list.  They are expecting her.”  The second guard said calmly.

“There is nothing I can say.”  Fatiama couldn’t help but remember the face of everyone she killed on that campaign.

“Let her go.  Someone important has put her on the list.”

“Go, while I am able to let you.”

Fatiama took her ID back and walked quickly past the gates.

Past the gates was the great market.  She stopped on a spot she knew well.  The mosaic in the brickwork that made up the surface of the market square was no longer pristine but she could still see the design.

This is where she met Johan, the man that had taught her the English and Dutch she was still struggling with.  And Ling, the mother of her cousin.  The happy memories from before the war lifted her heart for a moment before the sorrow dropped it again with a tear in her eye.

She continued along the main street.

Next was the Great Forge, or what was left of it.  There was a tradition in the capital of craftsmen practicing old fashioned blacksmithing.

She stepped to the remains of the workspace that her father, uncle, and cousin had passed their Grand Master trials.  The tools and weapon she carried now were made here by her cousin.

Knowing she was stalling she resumed her journey.  The third sun was high in the sky now.

The Council of the Clans building now loomed in front of her, it too showed signs of the recent battles.  The guards at the doors didn’t even challenge her.

She entered the chambers, the light coming through the stained glass made the empty chamber a sight to behold.

“Somehow I knew it would be you, niece.”  Her uncle entered the chamber.

“I had to.”

“I’m about to tell you something that the rest of our people don’t know yet.  At least it isn’t common knowledge but it will get out, and soon.  And it will likely cause us to fall into civil war at a poor time.”

“I know, the war was our fault, elements of the Council engineered events to start it.”

“That’s only part of it.  As the final battle approached many of our vessels and troops simply left.  All that had allegiance to the factions that started this war.  According to the few that stayed behind that were not as committed, they head for the homeworld of humanity, knowing they will not be pursued for some time.”

“What is the plan?”  Fatiama asked.

“We know little about how developed the homeworld of humanity  is currently or will be by the time they arrive.  We must give them a chance.  As covertly as possible.  Which means not giving them our technology.”

“So what am I to do?”

“Assess the situation, if you can find a way to help them prepare for what is coming without making our influence known, do it.”

“How am I to do that with their head start?”

“They travel by older style FTL, which our sensors cannot track any longer but with a force that large, they will not be able to go at maximum speed.  But with just you…”

“If I go by the same method they likewise won’t detect me and I can arrive there before they do.”

“Yes.  But there is a downside to the old style FTL.  Time will move at a different rate for you and the renegades.  By our calculations, best case scenario you’ll arrive at the homeworld of the humans at a point in time where all your family and friends here will be old and gray, possibly even dead by old age.”

“A terrible price to pay.”

“It is also quite likely this is a one way trip for you and you’ll never see your home again.”

“Which also means my mission can also be pointless.  If you recover from the wars fast enough…”

“While unlikely that is a possibility and we would not be able to inform you until it was too late if we did.  It is a major gamble.”

“The Seers said that I was to witness things during the war.  I think it was to prepare me for this.”

“The god of Fate and Chance seems to have designs for you.  I must offer you one more chance to decline, to find a life here.”

“I will undertake this mission.”

“Good.  I will permit you to take your tools and sword with you then.”

“One last question, the occupiers, will they help?”

“No.  Even if they were willing it’d only make the problem worse.  We must police our own and solve this ourselves.”



Convenience

Project: Journey headquarters, Armstrong Base, Luna, 2138…

"What concerns me, is why you'd even care, without the Sinai Germanium fields, the whole program would be dead, Dean."  The russian-born administrator often intentionally mispronounced Dinh's name, "and it's not like those people weren't a problem since the twentieth century anyway."

"Two things, Pavel, first, we've got richer sources in the outer system and you know it-the mining in the Sinai desert isn't about production, it's about make-work that's insanely dangerous, and it's about mollifying the Islamic League in the Alliance Parliament."  He set his helmet on the rack in the dressing room, "Second, is that I can use a ****** telescope, remember?  They're not even bothering to hide it from anyone but a few media people who've accceded to the no-fly-zone near the Suez."

"Hence, why I wonder why you would give a damn, weren't you born in like, Wyoming?"

"I care, because I'm a human being, Pavel. It's wrong, we both know it."

"And neither of us can do a goddam thing about it.  They're shifting more of the project to the Alliance Military and select contractors-and those contractors want that legacy oil money."

"So they do.  You're going to be ready for my backup on the Perdition run?  You've looked over the new navigation setup, what do you think of it?"  Dinh Tranh Ngo shifted the conversation as they passed into range for the Terran Alliance guards.

"It's idiot proof, Dinh, what's there to say? We eliminated the sequences that were problematic on Morissey's last attempt, the simplified equations mean shorter computation cycles and it lets the safety programs do their jobs.  Your run out to Epsilon Eridani should be just about flawless.  They tell you what the mission package is?"

"Colony provers, out of Xianchang China, the whole run should only be about six months with the improved core."

"But the mission profile says eight."

"Well, yeah, using that nanny state atrocity of a jump computer, but there's bound to be an emergency or two on the way out."

"The director doesn't want any more of that 'Space Cowboy' shit, not after what happened with the TAS Philadelphia."


"I know.  Look, I've got a load of paperwork to go through tonight, so I won't be joining you and Katerina in the lounge tonight."

"Really? Isn't Joanne supposed to be back from her run tonight?"

"Joanne? Yeah. We talked on Radio when she hit the system..well, not so much talked as 'sent texts back and forth with a half day light delay.  We're done, Pavel."

"Shit, I'm sorry."

"It's the hazards of the profession, Pavel.  As you correctly noticed, I have a bad habit of opening my mouth when it's more convenient for the admins for me to shut up.  Joanne Cameron's a proper Toronto gal, and thinks the International Unity party walks on water and can do no wrong.  She wants to be the program director, that means she needs the freedom to socialize with the politicians…and aside from my record of holeshots in the New Avalon project, including delivering emergency supplies after their crop failure? I'm a liability the minute they need me to convince the oversight committee that we're still doing valuable work here."

"Because you can't shut up?"

"Because I outright told Pieter Amaris, the elected rep from the 11th district European Union, that he was supporting a genocide like his ancestors did in the nineteen forties, and called him a collaborationist son of a bitch."

"So that was why we got scheduled for international sensitivity training next month?"

"Maybe.  They're still trying to arrange the colonization initiative into a mercantilist system that failed with the belts two generations ago, and bloated parasites who get re-elected to keep the poverty down to a dull roar in northern france really shouldn't be influencing policies that could end the problem...anyway, Joanna doesn't want to see me again and tonight's her welcome home party, so, I'll be working.  You might tell Tyler he's got a chance with her if he moves fast."

"What kind of paperwork?"

"I'll be looking at the probe data, of course, so that when the nanny state software chokes we can still plot the next jump, even if it means breaking out the hand calculators and the slide-rule."

Somewhere in the Oort cloud

Fatiama had been woken up by an alarm.  She could sense something was wrong right away.

As soon as the fog of, was it sleep or something else?  She wasn’t sure but she was able to read the displays.

Her craft had hit something and the stress faults were spreading slowly but surely.

She’d have to abandon ship soon.

She checked the nav readouts.

“Late… I should have gotten to Earth sooner…  Something really went wrong.”

She put everything she could into the escape pod and punched one last course correction into her ship.

As she abandoned the ship she knew it’d break up some but most of it should plunge into the nearest gas giant.

Fatiama could feel the escape pod slowing down.

Soon she’d be in the inner system unless someone picked her up first.

Fatiama held her hand over the emergency beacon override.

Soon the pod would slow down enough for anyone to pick up the signal and she didn’t know how she was going to explain any of this if someone picked her up.  But if she got to Terra somehow, or even it’s moon she would have more time and more options.

***

Baines-Riley/DeBeers number three, out of Eros station, Sol system…

"It's weird."  Giordana Riley looked up from the plot, "Higher energy alright, squealing on RF, it isn't a probe, and it's not got a registry number, and it's falling kinda fast."

"What's the projected course?"

"Oh, it'll hit somewhere in Australia or the pacific if we let it, so not like it's a big deal, but the question you really want me to answer, is if we can make the intercept."

"Can we?"  Tommy Cartwright was being paid for this gig-the investors back in New York wanted their hand on the tiller, and that meant hiring someone from Earth, or maybe Mars to sit boss on a mining ship.

"It's not under thrust, if we have enough fuel, we can match vector and position.  Do you want to spend the fuel is the question, because we're going to need to spend a lot of it and the TSA only authorized us half a tank at the last stop."

"We can refuel." he said, "we'll file it under 'safety of flight'."

They could refuel-but it would mean either filing with the authorities for tapping 'The common property of all mankind' or not getting caught.  The Alliance government levied fines and taxes on unauthorized use of deep space resources, in order to prop up planetary mining interests that could buy the votes of elected representatives to keep their competition from becoming too viable.

The intercept took five days to get into clear visual range of the signal trace.

"Huh, that's funny."

***

"How does it open?  There's no jake handle, and I can't tell if those are decorations or text, if it's text? I got no clue what it's saying because I've never seen it before."

The unusual object was in their cramped internal storage space-the bay usually used for loading up consumables on pre-formed pallet loads.

"Maybe it's sitting on the door?" Cartwright floated over, "see, Engine nozzles, RCS thrusters, there's a windscreen and…I can see what looks like an interior, so there's got to be a rescue handle somewhere nearby, and a hatch."

It was shuttle sized, at least.

A very small shuttle…

With a little manhandling they did find the hatch on the other side of the small shuttle, almost more a pod really.

With it they found the emergency release.

In the cramped interior was a small figure with a duffle bag.

***

Fresh air.  She felt it, a slight tang of alien body-odour, a little bit of ozone…but fresh air, she'd been on the verge of suffocation, the limited capacity of life support in the survival pod had failed two days ago.

Fatiama slowly opened her eyes, not sure what to expect.

She took in one immediate fact, she was in a low gravity environment.

Soft voices warbled.  Up close, they almost looked like people.  A bit fragile looking, bulky.

Her head began to clear, her English lessons coming back to her.

“Hello…  Where am I?”

"Cah-go bey, Mass, j'all ben aht yere pree long, Kin ja tall oos whey yuh from?"  the obvious male asked.  It took a second for her lessons to parse through the accent, all the vowel sounds were wrong sounding.

Fatiama took a moment to decipher the strange dialect, she could tell it was a kind of English but different than what she studied and still was trying to master.

She considered answering in Dutch for a moment but she knew she had even less command of that language.

Fatiama gestured at her head then used an old gesture based language her people used for trading in ancient times to try and communicate she didn’t remember much.

“I…I’m not sure…”  Fatiama finally said, seeing the look of confusion on her rescuer’s face.

"Anoxia." the male commented, "prolly 'sposure tah. Heah, av sum'tin t' drink, cayful, 'kay?" he was holding a squeeze-bottle of something clear.

Fatiama could smell it, it was treated water.  She took slow small sips to help herself regain focus.

'We rapport is?" the female asked.

"Nawt yit, nawt t' th' [undecipherable] anyweey.  We's onna coas fo' Gennymeed, Tok t' th' Freestahs faxion, mebbee?"

“Thank you…”  Fatiama handed the bottle back.

Her head clearing, she could make out the words they were speaking more clearly. 

"She could be one of theirs, she's built like a Dirtyfoot."  the female said, "maybe one of their rescues fell off."

“Dirtyfoot?”  Fatiama asked.

"From a planet, not born out here." the female clarified, "She's traumatized, boss, we need to get her to help."

“Yes, a planet, I was born on one, far away from here.”  Fatiama knew the best way to lie was to tell just enough truth while leaving out key details.

"Alright, I'll alter our course for a loop at ganymede, it isn't like our whole schedule wasn't already screwed…"

“I’m inconveniencing you…  I’m sorry.”

"That was a week ago, ma'am, don't worry about it, we'll have to tank up on air and consumables anyway."

“How can I help?  I don’t like being idle.”

"Right attitude, boss." the female said.

"Yah, but she doesn't have a suit…aw shit. Okay, Riley, figure out what she can do, and what she can learn, I've got ballistic calcs to work out and burn rates."

"Aye boss…" the woman, Riley, nodded, "Come on, let's go over what you need to know out here in the Open, miss…and I'd like it if you can tell me your name?"

“Fatiama Bre’Kla, of the Hol…”  Fatiama stopped herself before she said the rest of the traditional introduction she had been used to giving her whole life so far.

"Fatiama, so youre from the Arab states, or maybe Pakistani League…that's a start. Come on, let's get you sorted, I have a suit that might fit you in the emergency stores…"

Fatiama looked at the flight suit she had worn for the trip wondering what was wrong with it but followed her host not wanting to give offense.

She soon learned that 'what was wrong' with her flight suit, was that these human natives didn't recognize it as a complete suit.  The 'spare' suit she was shown, was bulky, had a big, bubble-like helmet fixed to the neck, and primitive-almost more armor than anything else. 

It looked clumsy, because it probably was.

“I do not wish to offend but what I am wearing will suffice.”  Fatiama said as she looked at the suit.

"HIgh end prototype? Yah, that would explain the weird layout in your shuttle…okay, so we get you Ganymede and you can figure out a ticket back to Earth from there, plus you'll be able to report your breakdown to your bosses…"

“I am in your debt.”  Fatiama bowed slightly.
She was starting to feel relieved, so far her hosts did not seem to suspect her true nature.

***

"We're pulling you from the mission, and giving it to your alternate, Ngo."  the director said bluntly.

"Why?"

"Because you won't play ball, so you get benched." there was a malicious gleam in her eye, "You're out.  Not a suspension this time, I got the Alliance Oversight committee to back me, you're done, pack what you still have, your ticket's already signed, all I need, is your destination code."

"Ganymede Settlement.  I've got a lease there, See, I've been expecting this for months now.."

"Just as long as you're out of my hair, I don't give a damn."

Trip to Ganymede…

Fatiama had little experience with human technology.  But she had managed to figure out which computer was the navigational computer.

While she never fully qualified as a pilot or navigator she’d been given some learning materials for this mission, just for this situation.  She pulled up the locations of several stars she had memorized and adjusted for stellar drift until they were where she last knew them.

She was almost a full hundred years later than she should have been to Earth.

“You’re pretty good at that.”  Riley startled Fatiama.

“Thanks.”

“Not many people can account for that level of precision of stellar drift.”

“A specialized area of study for me.  I’ve never learned all the math to be a proper navigator.”

“Don’t sell yourself too short, if you can do that you could probably do more with a bit of training.”  Riley said.  “So what else do you know how to do?”

“Hunt, fish, live with nature.  Fight if I must.”  Fatiama answered.

“One of those types eh?  I couldn’t help but notice you have a bit of a strange item in your kit that makes more sense now, not much hunting to do here in space, but on Earth?  A spear makes sense for that but I’m not sure why you brought it with you.”

“Sentimental value.  Tradition.  I know it is outdated and not much use in modern times but it has been with me a long time and a connection to my people.”  Fatiama admitted.

“You know you can trust us.  I know there’s more to you than meets the eye, I’ve seen plenty of people from Earth and the belts and none of them seem quite like you and I can see when someone is guarded.”  Riley probed.

“Oathes.  I made some promises.  I cannot break them.”

Riley nodded.  It was the first thing Fatiama had said to her that she fully believed and accepted.

“Okay I’ll stop probing then but let’s get back to finding out what else you can do to pitch in around here.”

Later in the crew lounge

“So what do you make of our guest Riley?”

“She’s strange and definitely unusual.  And her kit?  We weighed it for fuel consumption calcs.  She’s packing a good 80 kilos of gear in her duffle.”

“Even at our levels of thrust that’s not normal kit mass.”

“No.  She’s got some grasp of stellar mathematics and once she learned how to weld a bead she has the steadiest hands I’ve ever seen.  I mean the girl was meticulous to the point I don’t think even a machine could do better.”

“Spook?”

“If she is, I have no idea who she is working for.  All I know is she is just different and she spends a lot of time finding big heavy things to move about, things that most of our cargo jocks have to work in teams to move.”

“Shit.”

“You’re telling me.”


02:30 ship's time…

Fatiama found Boss (Tom Cartwright) on the flight deck alone on watch.  On one of the screens, a distant person was speaking into a microphone in a language she had not yet learned.

"You should be getting rest, Fate." He said, "You're not on the rotation for watch tonight."

There was something in the air in here, lingering.  anger  "I…could not sleep sir." she told him.  The tang in the air had seeped throughout the ship, she'd been led here by the strength of it.  "Is there something wrong?"

"Depends who you ask." he said quietly.  "You ever dream about meeting Aliens, Fatey?" his diminutive of her name was irritating, but the man's whole manner sometimes was, and other times, in the last few days, he'd said or done or implied things that were funny, rather than annoying.

"I did.' she said, "I even thought of going out to find other races…why?"

"I imagine, Fatey, that if a representative of an alien species knew mankind through our actions, they'd either run the other way, or wipe us out as a threat."  he said candidly, "I'm not entirely sure they'd be wrong in either case-wipe us out, or run away…have a seat, we'll start getting you familiar with Watch tasks, I feel a need for company, and it'll make it easier on you if you sign up with a ship at Ganymede or Io."

She took the seat he indicated.  "The broadcast, what language is that?"

"Oh, that? That's not a language, that's the signal being screwed up by interference and time delay-they're speaking Russian, and the broadcast is Russian-one of their news services covering something the American and European agencies won't."

She hadn’t even begun to study Russian.  She was aware there were many human languages, her people had many as well, but Johan Rassman, he had prepared as many study materials for her as he could to help with that.  Fatiama slipped an ear bud in and linked it to a translator program that was also provided to her.

The translation was clearly imperfect but from what she could gather the reporter was describing conditions in the Sinai germanium mines, the use of forced labor, and the failure of many member states in the Terran Alliance to actually get a decision on doing something.

"See, thus the reason I figure an alien-like, a real life alien? Wouldn't want to come within light years of mankind if they had a choice-except maybe to finish us off after we've cut down our own numbers.  Logic goes like this, see?  WE do this kind of shit to our own kind, the people who SHOULD be stopping it, are desperate for the good opinion of the people financing and doing it, so they let it happen, wring their hands a bit, and do nothing-even though it's what happened before.  It doesn't matter if it's the diamond mines in Zimbabwe, or south asia, or Utah-they look away while other people die for a percentage point in political funds, or to prop up the 'friend' who's giving their kid a no-show job in the top levels of income.  We're all the monsters though."  he turned his head to meet her eyes, "Monsters, or cowards.  Either way, an advanced alien species, if they have any sense at all, would want nothing to do with us."

"What would YOU do?" she asked him.

"I don't know what to do." he told her, "So, I'm as guilty as the rest, sitting by, watching it happen, feeling helpless and doing nothing.  I can see evil, and know it's evil, and do nothing, so I'm also guilty."

There it was, the tang under the rage.  Despair.

"Hypothetically, if you could do something, what would it be?" she asked, "the end goal, I mean?"

"Get them out of there, but there's nowhere left for them to go, not in the Sol system, and only the richest corporations can afford the jumpships to leave the sol system, and they'd have to be willing to leave…" he shook his head, "it's impossible."

"What about fight?" she asked.

"Been tried.  But it came back, this time powered by petroleum money and investment bankers, lawyers, even-and the diplomats, and all the people whose ancestors once swore 'never again'...well here it is, happening again.  The flag's a little different and it's not Germans this time, but…that just means it's kind of universal.  Did you know spaceflight wasn't my first choice?  I majored in History Fatey, but I tested into this when it was clear nobody was interested in hiring historians anymore, not even as teachers.  I passed the exams, got on with one of the startups investigating offworld mineral rights, transferred to shipping when the TA High Court ruled that the 1967 moon treaty was enforceable, didn't make it into the extrasolar exploration when the Pathfinder Service was still hiring…I became a Belter because I couldn't stand going back to Earth…and now, it's coming out here to us."

He flicked the channel off, "Enough whining, let's get you through the checklist."

These humans, they don’t know that they have kin stolen by others much farther afield than they can possibly imagine.  If I could help them scatter further to the stars…That too could be a solution.  Fatiama thought to herself.

“Yes.  I really do detest being idle.”  Fatiama followed Cartwright.

Fatiama had an achievable mission now.  One that would end oppression and help these humans either survive or perhaps even resist the renegades of her people.  She just needed some help and Cartwright was giving her some already without realizing it by teaching her how to run a human ship.  She’d need more allies but for now it was a start.

She also started contemplating telling him more, revealing more of herself and her mission.  What she really was.

After a moment she decided to ask a question.  One that if this human was more observant than she was giving him credit for and if she could trust him with more.

“If an alien did come to Earth, one for whatever reason was interested in helping humanity but couldn’t do it on their own, what would you do then?”

“Then I might have hope.”

Fatiama smiled.  It was a good answer.  Even if she had just given him a massive hint she would have to continue to give them both plausible deniability based on their conversation.

“It is a nice fantasy but perhaps fate has smiled in another way.  I may be one woman, one without a lot of resources at the moment, but I am willing to do something.  Like I said, I detest being idle.”

She knew there were certain things about her that she just couldn’t hide.  One big clue she was giving was she was sleeping in her pod so she could turn up the artificial gravity in it to normal levels for her but outside it?  Hiding her increased strength compared to these humans was difficult at best, especially when she was doing her strength and conditioning training.  She could stay in her pod during her free time but she was not lying when she said she detested being idle.

Another was there was more oxygen in their air than she was used to and she found out very quickly she started acting like a ‘happy drunk’ when she didn’t drink human alcohol on a regular basis.  The alcohol did reduce the flow of oxygen to her brain but that was a stop gap at best and the crew was probably noticing that she wasn’t having the normal human reactions to how much alcohol she had to consume to get through the day without becoming a ‘happy drunk’.

Cartwright nodded.

Fatiama wasn’t sure if that meant he already knew or something else but it was clear he was accepting that just maybe he could have a little hope right now.

“So tell me a bit more about yourself Fatiama, what did you do before becoming a space explorer?”

“Hunt, fish, live off the land, and I fought.”  There was a quality to Cartwright that Fatiama could sense that made her feel she could keep trusting him, let him have more clues.

“A real outdoorsy type eh?  You sure seem to have done more than most people your age have done in their lives.  So what do you do for fun?”

“Before I would play competitive games and cooperative games with my sisters, I believe the term is metaphorical sisters to be precise.  I was an only child but I had other girls around me that I grew up with and played with.  And I admit I am finding reading some of the ship’s library interesting.”

“Heh, knew it.  A jock too.”

[monbvol]

Ganymede…

There's a reason spacers, belters, and those who make their lives in the black keep things clean and tidy.  Unlike the popular fictions of centuries ago, spacers don't survive long with too much random dust and debris in the life system, and letting anything go without maintenance is suicide.

It can also be homicide, if enough of the system is allowed to fail.  Ganymede settlement began as a group of earthers, a commune of sorts or cooperative effort, dreamers and radicals who managed to scrape together enough hard currency and backing to get out of the Gravity Well, without the sponsorship of a planetary government or multinational corporation.

It was, one might say, the 'grandfather' of the independent belt colonies, and it had its own internal struggles in the century and a half since the first wildcatters landed and dug the first ice-caves, burying the bodies of the vessels that brought them here in a statement of 'we're not coming back'.

Terran Alliance Marines patrol the corridors of Ganymede Settlement now, and a governor appointed in Paris is the official 'law' here.  He's 'advised' by a group of elected locals, but the assertion of 'The Common Heritage of Mankind' came with automatic shotguns, a new weapon called the Needler, body armor, and the removal of sovereignty for these breakaways.

At least, at first glance.

You don't piss off the people who keep your air and water going, if you want to live long, and the Alliance did NOT send technicians to this lonely outpost.

Not cost effective.

Ganymede has riots, but the rioters don't leave trash behind.  Nobody wants to die that badly.  And as such it was to the benefit of the administration to call them ‘peaceful protests’ whenever possible instead.

Major Alvin Osis, Terran Alliance Marines, looked over the intake reports for this week, the inbounds, he was looking for people who might disrupt the fragile quiet of his station here.

There were a few-known activists mostly, some from Earth, some not.  Nobody with a warrant that would let him put the boot down.  One or two on the Watch-List though, a navigator from the Pathfinder program and a couple of suspected troublemakers would be arriving in three days and four (Seventy Two Hours for the Navigator, four hours for the Ambrose brothers).

The mood from Navy command was to leave the civilians alone whenever possible, regardless of what Alliance Colony authority or the Resource board had to say.  Alvin liked things quiet, he didn't like sending the troops into the halls in force, and he especially didn't like having to manage the shuffle if someone got hurt.  Replacements, and help, are months away at best.

If anything, Alvin worried more about some of his new personnel in the guard-force.  M'Rembe and his squad were fresh from putting down revolts in North Africa,  Lt. Liao was a transfer up from the Chinese Combine's domestic control units, with a record for using maximum force for minimum provocation.  He arranged the duty cycles to keep the two maniacs and their favored men out on perimeter-away from the civilians for as long, and as often, as possible. 

Nobody wants a mess, not when damage can kill the whole ten thousand or so people who live here, or visit here as a trade-hub to the inner system's terraforming projects on Mars and Venus.

Ship board on approach to Ganymede

"The mechanics intended to make government efficient are, some would say, the very reason that it's so…blundering." Riley suggested.  "Last year, my tax burden was thirty five percent, but we don't get that in terms of support from the Homeworld-they spend a lot of money for not very much at all."

Fatiama wasn’t sure how to bring up something she figured would be an issue soon before now but this seemed a good opportunity.

“The accident, I don’t have my ID.”  Fatiama was clever enough to figure out a ploy.

"No implant? Your folks must be VERY exempt-" Riley began, and Cartwright interrupted.

"Here's what we're going to do.  You're going to walk through the entry control point, and you're not going to mention anything, as if the RFID scanner's malfunctioning-because that's what they're going to assume, so they'll send you to medical to be checked out.  Medical will find no chip, because you don't have one, they'll call someone from Social Services, who'll come down, give you an interview, and since you don't have scarring from a removal surgery, they're just going to assume you're one of the 'ones that got forgot' and they'll order a chip from the main office on Earth, it'll be encoded, they'll put it on a mail hauler, it'll be here in six to eight months, and in the meantime, they'll issue you a temporary ID.  Why? Because it's less trouble than locking you up."

“I understand.  My things…”

"THOSE will be waiting for you at the Hostel." he said, "because you're not dumb enough to carry weapons through a security checkpoint, but it's not interesting enough for them to look for anything lacking circuits or explosives at Cargo Transfer."

“Only thing I have with circuitry is my tablet I use for reading.”  Fatiama was glad for the lack of tech in her pack.

"THAT won't be confiscated. It's not considered a weapon."

“Thank you.  You have done much for someone you know so little about.”

"Just make sure you can get OFF Ganymede before the packet ship with the chip they'll order arrives."  Cartwright commented, "unless you want to be monitor-able."

“That would be counterproductive to my goals.”

"It usually is for everyone, except the population bureau, Alliance Security, or Social Services, keep in mind without it you don't get the welfare stipend that's supposed to provide a living basic income."

“I’ll find a way to manage.  I am used to living off the land after all so that will be an option once I get to Earth.”

"If I introduce you to a guy who prefers hiring unmonitored people, would you do the job interview? There's nothing to 'hunt' out here but work."

“Yes.  Staying out here would also be unhelpful to completing my goals.”  Fatiama answered.

"Who are you thinking of, Boss?" Riley asked.

"Kham Sithers." he said, "the guy's already been fined for sabotaging his chip, he's richer than Solomon and the only reason he's not sitting in the Alliance Penitentiary at Pelican Bay, is that he can afford the kind of lawyers that give politicians hives-and right now he's suing the Alliance Court to overturn their confirmation of the 1967 and 1979 moon treaties on the basis that no signatory yet has actually upheld them."

Port Entry check point

It was strange to Fatiama, she knew she had little to fear from these humans if it came to a physical confrontation even without her knives, sword, or spear, but she felt an almost nakedness not having them on her.

She drew in a deep breath and confidently walked straight towards the officers at the checkpoint like Cartwright told her to do.

The men scanned her and as expected…

“No reading.  You have backup physical copy of your ID miss?”

“No.”  Fatiama shook her head.  “Lost it in an accident, don’t remember much…”

“Okay.  Sorenson escort her to medical.”  The guard obviously in charge barked.

Fatiama followed Sorensen through the settlement to the medical station.  Watching, memorizing the paths and turns for later, taking note of where the cameras were.

Eventually they arrived.

“Hop up on the bed there miss.  The doc will be in shortly.”

Fatiama sat on the exam bed.  She began to wonder what all they would ask her for.

“Hello miss, I’m Doctor Centrella and I’m told you were in an accident and are having some memory issues?  I’ll ask mister Sorensen to step outside so you can disrobe so I can check your vitals and for any signs of injury, purely standard procedure I assure you.”

The guard stepped outside to give her some privacy.

Fatiama unzipped her flight suit and stepped out of it.

“You don’t have to take anything else off.  Okay let’s see if we can find your ID chip.  Do you remember your name at least?”

“Fatiama.”

“A variation on Fatima, mean something similar to beautiful like the stars as well?”

“One who shines brightly and beautifully.”  Fatiama wasn’t actually sure what her name would translate to in English but figured something close to what the doctor offered would work.

“Okay no sign of a chip.  We’ll have to correct that.  Now let’s get your blood pressure and some other basics for establishing a medical record.”

Fatiama knew she was cornered at the moment.  If she used violence it could cause issues but she didn’t know another option to prevent what was about to happen.

The cuff went around her arm easily enough and started to squeeze on her.

“Your blood pressure is alarmingly high but pulse is good.  Okay on the scale and let’s see how tall you are.”

Fatiama stepped over to the scale and stood on it.

“Adjusting for Ganymede gravity… 92 kilos.  A bit high for 1.54 meters but you sure don’t look it.  Must be an error in the scale, we’ll have to recheck that later.  Okay two things left then we can let you go about your business.  A temp ID and a blood draw.”

The doctor wrapped a band around Fatiama’s left wrist then turned to get a syringe and vials.

Fatiama grabbed her flight suit and ran out the room, past Sorenson in just her bra and panties.

She quickly found a spot she felt was safe enough to take a moment to pull the temporary ID off her wrist and dress.

Any pursuit did not seem particularly interested in finding her.

Fatiama found her way to the hostel.

Her belongings were there waiting for her as promised.

She didn’t like being in the kind of debt she was in to Cartwright and Riley she was in now but she knew the only viable way to pay them back was not to get caught or outed.

So she set about finding out where this Kham Sithers was.

***

"******, Dean, You're looking good man."  Kham Sithers greeted Dinh at Luby's on level 22.  "They finally had enough of you after all."

"Rub it in, Kham, rub it in."  Dinh Ngo joined him at the table.  "What brings the king of Charon into the inner system, anyway?"

"Dirty little rumour that my wife's big brother got himself all kicked out of the service and might want a job, what else?"

"I was going to guess you were getting your lawyers ready to mug EADS aerospace over patent infringement."

"You Wound me, dude.  I mean, yeah, it took you ten years longer than it took me to leave, and they had to throw you out…but you knew it was coming, right?"

"No…okay, sure, I knew…so, my brother in law wants…?"

"A Jumpship navigator for a special charity project."  Kham stated. 

"Charity?"

"Yeah. kind of a Moses thing, helping some friends move."

"That presupposes you have a jumpship, and I know you don't."

"One can always be impressed at what money can buy, which is why I went into making a lot of it.... anyway, you remember the survey run we ran fifteen years ago? Deep range, coreward?"

"The Unicorn." Dinh acknowledged.

"Yeah.  No Clear Horizons crap, and it's  a hard entry.  I want to take a special colony group in there, quietly."

"Are you stupid? This is a public place!"

"Relatively public, sure."  Kham chuckled, "look around…"

Dinh looked around.  Faces he knew-guys and gals from the older days in the Pathfinder service…

"Nobody's going to talk, and they're not recording here, Dinh.  Welcome home."

There was a slight commotion at the door, a stranger had shown up.

"Is that Cartwright? Who's the tiny thing with him?" Dinh asked.

"Dunno, he's here, which means he's looking for me."

"You still haven't paid him for the Packers vs. Samurai bet?"

"I keep putting it off…" Kham tapped the table and gestured, and the commotion eased…

***

Cartwright met her in front of a door marked 'Luby's'.  "good , you made it."

"You didn't make it easy."  Fatiama said.

"Had to make sure you weren't followed…and that you could find your way around the station without help."

“I see.  It is that sort of situation.  You could have said so.”

"I could, but then the test wouldn't mean anything." he told her, "follow me in, or better, once we're through the door, up on my left side, and look…confident.  If you think my test is unfair, you'll flip when Kham tests you."

“I can manage that.”

The inside of the establishment was decorated with abstract symbols and images that might be a form of heraldry.  The people inside were the same sort of tight, clean, reserved with a suppressed air of irritation as they walked in.

Passive and aggressive.  Hostile, but subdued.

"Cartwright, I eightysixed you three years ago!" the woman behind the bar scowled.  She was small-for a human, black hair, tilted eyes.

"Bianh, I couldn't stay away.  Kham's here?"

"****** you."

"He owes me, I'm here to collect."  Cartwright said.

The barkeep's scowl deepened but she motioned two men armed (Fatiama could see) with half-concealed clubs to back away.  "He's at his usual table, he's got another guest, but this is debts, you settle up, you get out of my bar!"

"Always."

Fatiama bobbed her head slightly to indicate she also understood.

Kham Sithers turned out to be a man with fine features and the darkest skin she'd seen yet on a human.  "TOMMY!! It's good to see you Man!!"  the man across from him in the booth cocked an eyebrow as Kham stood up and grabbed Cartwright's right hand in both of his, "I heard you'd be nearby…"

"You know my route." Tom said, "I'm here to call in the Superbowl bet-one significant favor."

"Really?"

"This, is Fatiama, she needs a job, you're going to give it to her." Tom said.

"Sit down, BIANH!! Bring a Two Liter of Coulson's Red and some cups!!"  Kham barked out.

The scowling bartender brought a plastic bladder with a tap on it, full of something reddish-brown, and four sippy cups.  "You're letting him stay?" she growled.

"It's important, Bianh."

“He is helping me, so please if you must, be angry at me.”  Fatiama offered.

Bianh's expression softened, "Oh you poor girl…come back when you're as through with that man as I am, I'll have chocolate waiting…"

“Chocolate?”  Fatiama asked.

The men waited until the bartender had returned to her spot behind the bar.  "Tom and Bianh were married for, what, six years? The divorce was…loud."  Kham told her, "and messy."

“Ah.”  Fatiama didn’t entirely understand the concept of marriage and divorce beyond their dictionary meanings but the context was clear enough.

"Tom, I AM glad you're here to collect, because I need to offer you a job you're actually qualified for."  Kham told him.

"You've got freight packets all over the system…"

"I don't have former  North American Marines on tap, you're it for that, and what I need, is something you're qualified for."

"Merc work?"

"Sort of. It's more along the lines of helping some people get past a few borders and out of the system."

“If you need someone who knows how to fight, I can help with that.”  Fatiama said earnestly.

"Isn't she a little young, Tom? Even for you?" the other man asked.

"We're not dating, but she's un-chipped…as in never had one…what are you up to, Sithers?"

"We're going to steal fifty thousand people from the Sinai death camps. If your girl's got training I'm going to be happy to take you both on as a package deal, complete with a ticket out of the Sol system."

“Top marks in Scout Sniper training and expert in hand to hand.”  Fatiama didn’t hesitate.

"Dinh, did he talk you into this?" Tom demanded.

"Seems reasonable, we have a destination worked out already-one of the low probability hits during the Odysseus mission…I assume, Kham, that you've gotten someone to delete the survey from the archive in Langley?"

"You know, I wouldn't admit to it…but yeah.  It didn't cost a lot to do it either."

"Fifty thousand is a lot of people, Kham, we're not going to get them out of there in midnight shuttles."

"Not all at once, Tom, Can your girl fly?"

"I've been teaching her." Tom said.  "Let me guess, staged insertions? How are we going to cover the extract so that TA forces aren't flying intercepts?"

"That's part of what I need to hire you for-you're the twistiest bastard I've ever seen when it comes to tactics, Tom…will she be ready by next summer?"

"I can get her trained up by then, yeah. How many others?"

“You can count on me.  I will learn what I need to learn.  This is an affront to living sentient creatures I cannot abide.”  Fatiama didn’t catch her terminology until it was too late.

"Only one problem left." Tom said, with a wince.

"You're going to have to talk to her like a civilized person, Tom, if you want Bianh to help, that is…"

"Do you want her?"

"You need her." the third man said.  "Unless you think she's going to blue falcon?"

“With all you have done for me, if I can help convince her somehow, I would be glad to help.”  Fatiama nodded.

"Bianh's not a Blue Falcon Deano." Tom said, "but yeah, Fatiama, if you would be so kind as to…bring my ex wife over to the table?"

“I will ask her to join us.”

Fatiama calmly stood and walked to the bar.

“Bianh, we are discussing something of great importance.  Something that we feel needs done.  We need your help to do it though.  Would you please join us?”

"Oh my god, Tom's going on one of his damned foolish crusades, isn't he?  And he's got Dinh and Kham with him… I guess they need an adult in the room." Bianh said and nodded to Fatiama.

“We hope to right a great wrong.  Please join us at the table?”

"Oh to witness such a disaster in the making…I'm coming." Bianh said.

“Thank you.  And Tom and I, we’re strictly professional in our relationship.”

"Keep it that way, that man tears through anyone who cares for him."

“I will and I know this is difficult for you.  So I thank you.”  Fatiama thought back to the first spotter she had worked with in the war.  How a misunderstanding with him had grown into a problem that made it difficult to continue working together.

***

Private room in the back of Luby's

"...first problem is the Arab States air defense network, they'll pick up anything coming or going and they're good at it."  Bianh began after hearing Kham's idea.  "Second, is getting the shuttles loaded while the guards aren't firing at you.  Third is the scale of what you're trying to do, Kham.  You're going to get yourselves killed with this plan."

"It takes a minimum forty thousand people to start a viable colony without steady immigration, that's genes and math."  Dinh (she'd learned his name indirectly) noted, "so we need that many people."

"What you need is a distraction on the order of a major war."  Bianh stated, "Or, you need to buy off enough of the leadership that they can be conveniently disorganized.  Mass breakouts fail more often than they succeed, or have you forgotten how you got that artificial set of kidneys, Tom?"

Fatiama was studying what maps they had scrounged up of the area, learning the terrain and where the troop concentrations were most likely to be.

"You still have friends at Intelsec?" Tom asked.

"Yes, and if we do this, I won't have them anymore…you're talking about burning whole networks.  The Church's networks, for this."

"They're replicating the Holocaust down there." Dinh stated, "Year Zero, genocide."

“If I’m not mistaken, this base here, that is their main headquarters.  Get me close to that and I can disrupt their command and control communications.”  Fatiama pointed at a base on the maps.

Bianh peered at Fatiama, "Tom, you didn't have a daughter sometime before we met, did you? She thinks just like you do."

"Nope."

“I know who my father is, he’s some distance away.”  Fatiama added.

'Just checking.  Okay, if we're really going to do this, Kham, we're going to need friends, and a rallying point…friends, with dropshuttles, supplies, and fuel."

"So you're in?"

"God help me I'm in.  You have your intelligence support."  she muttered "and lord have mercy on us all."

“{God of Fate and Fortune, Goddess of Knowledge and Wisdom, guide us and aid us.  God of the Forge and Creation may your works be true and our tools masterful.}”  Fatiama offered her own prayer in her native tongue.

Later on the ship

Fatiama was using a temp loaner suit as she was performing cleaning, maintenance, and a modification on her normal flight suit.

The gravity from her pod was what allowed her to feel normal, to combat the low gravity.  Even after all this time all the low gravity was disorienting for her and she could feel it sapping her strength and endurance.  She needed a better long term solution.

Still she was learning enough about how things worked that she was having an idea about how to incorporate the field generator into her suit directly instead to provide a more long term solution.

She rigged fast action controls into the gloves and turned off the generator.

Next she slid the gravplate into the upper back of her suit and connected an emergency portable power pack from the survival pod’s stores.

Some slight changes to the control program that was now running on her tablet and it was time for a test.

Fatiama activated the gravplate.  It worked.  She had her own personal bubble of proper gravity.  She next tested safe shut down speed and was pleased.

A little scrubbing to maintain hygiene of her flight suit and clean up after the mess she made, she hung it up to air dry.

Fatiama looked at her escape pod.  It was the most outdated model her people had to give her but it still held technologies beyond anything she had encountered so far.  Add in the fact she couldn’t keep hauling it around with her…

She was contemplating the first chance she got also sending it into a star or gas giant where no one would ever find it.

It made her wonder if her main vessel exploded as it entered what she learned was ‘Saturn’ after the impact that started it breaking up and her subsequent abandoning of her vessel.

“You keep saying you can fight.  It occurs to me none of us have really put that to the test.”  Kham Sither’s voice ended Fatiama’s solitude.

“I’m willing to prove what I know with a little friendly sparing and a rifle range.”  Fatiama smiled.

“It’ll take a little arranging for a proper rifle range but this bay seems big enough for a quick bit of sparing.”  Kham smiled.

Fatiama floated down from the pod, still in her borrowed suit.

She bobbed her head as she assumed a fighting stance.

Kham’s advance was fluid, precise.  She blocked the first three punches he threw but the fourth got past her guard and landed with moderate force on her jaw, just enough to rock her head back.

The gravity was throwing off her timing but she was starting to get used to moving in it now.

Their next exchange Kham again pressed the attack but she was able to withstand it this time before she found an opening and landed a light palm strike to his sternum.

“Sparring Fatiama, and jeez you got some sort of bone grafts or something.  I swear every time we make contact it’s like I’m hitting steel conduit.”

“Sorry.  I’m still getting used to Ganymede’s gravity.  As far as my bones, they’ve always been tough.  Where I come from they have to be to support me but not be so brittle that being broken is a death sentence.”  Fatiama apologized.

“Well I think I’ve got enough proof that you can fight hand to hand.  Seriously even when you block or parry…  I guess I’ve not been dealing with enough Earthers.”  Kham shook his head.

Fatiama smiled.

“I’m still trying to figure you out.  Cartwright and Riley are pretty sure you’re not a spook but you sure as hell ain’t normal.  By Earth reckoning my best guess is you’re 18, maybe 19 but you do carry yourself like someone who has been trained and I recognized the look in your eyes when you talked about having fought.  You really have, haven’t you?”  Kham probed.

“By Earth reckoning I am 22, almost 23.  And yes.  I killed many for a poor cause.”  Fatiama answered.

“You don’t strike me as a terrorist or freedom fighter.  You’ve got the tells of someone trained by a professional military.  That makes me curious about exactly where you served.”  Kham pressed.

Fatiama realized at that moment she had no answer to give.  Not one Kham would accept at any rate.  She’d been studying human history and there were no major conflicts that aligned with her apparent age, which left only enforcement actions.  Almost all of which were against groups that as far as Fatiama could gather had done nothing wrong and her previous answer had walked her right into this trap.

“It doesn’t matter.  I made an oath to make up for my part in that conflict that now stains my soul.  Among my people our oaths are everything.  Without them we are nothing.”  Fatiama gambled.

“Okay.  Let’s get you a rifle and someplace you can show off just what kind of shot you are.”

As Fatima followed Kham he used his comm device to call ahead somewhere, clearly making arrangements.

After a few hours of what seemed like pointless wandering but Fatiama could actually discern was an evasion technique to throw off pursuers they were at a locker room.

Kham opened one that had a small selection of rifles.

“If you’re thinking of shooting out their comm gear I’d recommend the big one on the right but for a tiny thing like you it might send you flying on Ganymede.”  Kham cautioned.

Fatiama grabbed the large rifle.  In all it was nearly longer than she was tall.  She examined it, the workings and mechanisms, then grabbed as many magazines as she could carry.

“South African Z55 20mm Anti-material rifle.  It’s not really made for precision work beyond about 500 meters or so but it’s our best bet for giving you something that’ll take out a transmitter cluster in one shot.  That close in…”  Kham’s pause at the end clearly conveyed a warning Fatiama knew all too well.

They went into the next chamber.

“Downrange we have two mockups of the antenna arrays.  One at 500 and one at 1,000.  Each has eight targets.  Your weapon has a five round mag.  If you want to avoid standard anti-sniper tactics and their response you’ll have to figure out which is their sniper locator microphone and take those out before they can raise an alarm.  Fail to do that, at least try and take the lights.”

Fatiama nodded.

It only took her two rounds before she understood the limitations of her rifle and the ammunition she was supplied with and proceeded to flawlessly take out all the indicated targets on both rigs setup for her.

***

In ancient times a messenger would run from village to village with a flaming cross, or a burning axe.

Cass Riley didn't have that kind of terrain, there were no mountain trails, and the 'villages' were dispersed across distances measured in scientific notation.

Doing it under the nose of the Terran Alliance? Requires a bit more subtlety than that, as well.

She didn't expect much.  The Belter families and communities didn't tend to be political beyond clinging to some vestige of past national affiliations sundered more by their parent nations in exchange for Global hegemony…

In ancient times before a rising, there was a messenger.  In modern times, it's a message.

This one had to be simple and straightforward but something the Alliance wouldn’t catch on to, at least in time.

Spartacus has joined with Moses.  Bring your arks.  The solstice is our guide.

Riley stared at the message, contemplating if it was the right balance of obscure yet understandable.

***

"I don't understand, Kham, I thought there would be more…fighting, since you need fighters."

"Strategy, Fatiama." he said, "Our problem: we have to extract and relocate a population that has been enslaved in all but name, and if we start with violence, we fail automatically."

“Because the enemy is far too numerous.”  Fatiama nodded.

"Think deeper-what will frightened people do when the gunfire begins?  We want to get them out, that gets geometrically more difficult if they suddenly have a reason to trust their oppressors out of fear."

“Panic.  Run, hide, cower.  Be afraid.  Of us because we are outsiders whose intentions are unknown.”

"Exactly.  So, this becomes viable only if we can start filtering them to freedom under the noses of their captors."  He turned his terminal to where she could see it, "Bureaucracy as warfare, bribes and incentives as weapons, and blackmail of the right people, so that by the time it IS time for violence, we can win regardless of numbers."

“So my kit should actually include comms gear, something to break enemy communications encryption and feed them false information.”

"In a sense, actually…" Sithers changed the display, "Your kit will include formal wear, and some of your training will be in etiquette.  There are many ways to compromise security, one of the best, is to be invited inside.  I need a date for a formal occasion, and you're tough enough to  also fill the bodyguard role."

“I understand.”  Fatiama nodded.

"There was an ancient general, he wrote, 'To win every battle is not supreme strategy, supreme strategy is to win, without having to fight battles'.  Our initial battles must be won before the enemy knows he's under attack, do you understand my meaning?"

“Yes.  Superiority of position, superiority of action.  All things working in concert to make physical conflict untenable.”

"Or to make it unthinkable." he said, "if the enemy does not believe he is attacked, he will not defend."

“Like hunting certain prey, if you do not present as a threat you can make a clean kill.”

"Exactly, only in our case, we're out to bag some ministers of parliaiment without them knowing they've been taken.  To prepare you for this, I will begin to teach you the 'secret language' of the super-rich and the politically powerful.  There will be fighting, just…not what you might imagine or remember. Our objective is imaginations, hearts, and minds."

“I am ready to learn.”

"Let's begin…"

To Be Continued…

Interlude…


"Tired of the grind? Want to get away?  Do you feel like the world is getting you down?  SD engineering has an answer!  Shake off the dust of Old Earth and seek comfort in easy living in easy gravity!   We're offering shares in our Wunderland Condominiums out where the sky is spectacular all year round!  Our company is the leading edge in terms of habitat construction, and we're looking for clients and we're looking to expand our employee base!  Recruiters will be in your area!!"
end Interlude

[Daryk]

Clearly, I need to get my editing back in gear! :)

More seriously, this week is REALLY busy, so maybe the weekend for that?

And it would be easier if you two weren't giving me TWO things to work on at the same time! ;D

[Wrangler]

Interesting so far?  So this a sort continuation of Beyond Hope?

[monbvol]

Clearly, I need to get my editing back in gear! :)

More seriously, this week is REALLY busy, so maybe the weekend for that?

And it would be easier if you two weren't giving me TWO things to work on at the same time! ;D

Sorry, not sorry?

Interesting so far?  So this a sort continuation of Beyond Hope?

Let's just say Fatiama will eventually get an 'Al' to help her on her adventures.

[Brother Jim]

and another ping!

[Cannonshop]

Clearly, I need to get my editing back in gear! :)

More seriously, this week is REALLY busy, so maybe the weekend for that?

And it would be easier if you two weren't giving me TWO things to work on at the same time! ;D

NEW material trumps rewrites.  My rewrite project can sit on the shelf a bit.

[Euphonium]

TAG'd

[Daryk]

NEW material trumps rewrites.  My rewrite project can sit on the shelf a bit.

Roger!  I'll prioritize that way when I next get a chance to edit (today was kind of long...).

[Daryk]

Caught up with the new story... I left some comments that should probably be resolved before posting... :)

[worktroll]

TAGged ... got to say the title didn't grab, but the story is indeed intriguing.

[monbvol]

It is surprisingly difficult to come up with a good play on "Quantum Leap".

[monbvol]

Part one: The Last Train to Albion
A swanky party
Somewhere in the Arabian Desert
22 May 2140

Fatiama was still uncomfortable at these sorts of parties but she was doing her best to follow the direction of Kham Sithers.  He had a clear plan and she understood the philosophy behind it.

She may never have been a leader during the war, but she was a hunter and could understand strategy and tactics in that vein.

The dress she was wearing though, well it was clear what kind of attention she was getting from the human males.

It was another sensation that warred with her sensibilities.

Kham had excused himself a few moments ago but now returned.

“Trouble?”

“Islamic Morality Police are just outside.  We need to get out of here.”

Suddenly the party became a hive of activity as contraband was carefully hidden, in the chaos though Fatiama got swept up in a crowd of other women and Kham was not able to stop it.

Fatiama watched as the Policemen came into the temporary structure.

The host met with one of them and began talking in a language Fatiama did not know as another came over to the group of women Fatiama was with.

The RFID scanner was now familiar to Fatiama as she watched it wave over the other women, buzzing on some, but not on others.

There was no way for it to be played off as malfunctioning.

Fatiama knew to not ruin everything Kham had been working for she couldn’t dare resist.  Not at this stage.  The falsified documents were still working and people were still getting out without having to engage in violence.

In the end Fatiama was sorted with the rest of the women that also seemed to not have ID implants.

They were herded into the back of an APC.

Fatiama carefully studied the route, how long they took, and even did her best to track how fast the APC was going.

Once they got where they were going she was next herded into a compound.  Her fingerprints and picture taken.

She was tossed in a cell, alone.

She could hear it and smell it.  The despair, the anguish.  The sounds of women being used for the entertainment of men.

The hypocrisy of “Morality Police” was not lost on Fatiama.

As she waited her turn, knowing it would come soon enough, something seemed different about the procedure she had observed with the women across the way.

The guards were leading her in a different direction.

She was taken to an office complex.

Inside the complex she was led to the top floor office.

“I am Commander Sheikh Aswan Bin Halawi,” the sole occupant of the office said as he dismissed the guards.  “And you are a stray caught up by our morality patrols.  I must admit the reports and pictures did not do you justice.”

Fatiama just stood there in silence, daring not to speak, her every instinct to lash out at this man but knowing if she did so she’d be condemning thousands to a terrible fate that could yet be saved.

“What is your name?”

“Fatiama.”

“You truly live up to it.  You must think us cruel and inhumane.  How we are treating you and your companions.  It is simple practicality.  Women who sell themselves and their virtue must be treated a particular way or it will become a rot in the core of our society and it allows my men to exercise certain urges from their systems.”

“I am no prostitute.”  Fatiama felt her rage building.

“You have no chip.  No ID whatsoever.  You do not exist as far as any record is concerned.”

“You think that gives you the right to treat people the way you do?”

“No ID, not really a person now are you?”

Fatiama understood his game.  No one would miss any of them brought here because they had no IDs, no one to miss them, at least no one that mattered.

“Now be a good girl.  Come here and let me properly see you.”

Fatiama strode over to the man.

"I have a son that's about your age." He said, "Stop there."

She stopped.  She waited for his next demand.

He studied her face, then, he nodded to a guard behind her, "Fascinating."  she felt the edge of a blade cut the straps of her dress.

“Now what?  Am I to dance for you?”

"You meet my eyes, you demand answers…" he looked over her shoulder, "She is not a jew…or at least, not from this side of the world.  Your accent is not American, your name is a corruption of one of our traditional names, you act like this is beneath you…you're not Russian either, and your eyes would show surgical scarring if you were a Chinese plant.  Who are you? Who do you work for?"

“I work for the preservation of life, and the sanctity it deserves.  You, you defile it.”  Fatiama answered.  “I can smell the death on you.  The despair of those you lord over.”

Fatiama took the moment of hesitation for the advantage it was and smashed her elbow into the face of the guard behind her then stepped forward, ready to deliver her fist into the face of the man before her.

The tingle ran up her legs, a completed circuit on the floor, voltage.

As she felt her body spasming, she heard, "Get her to medical, find out where she is from and who sent her.  I swear if those fools in Paris are interfering again…[untranslateable]"

Fatiama was vaguely aware of being picked up and taken out of the office.

The guards seemed to be aware she was disabled but aware and took the opportunity to take the long way to medical.

The horrors of the camp were on display as they moved.

One of them leaned in, close to her ear.  "Take a good look, remember the path."

Fatiama was able to barely nod her head in acknowledgement.

***

"Force… equals mass times velocity, energy equals mass times acceleration."  Kham Sithers met the eyes of the Mullah.  "Do you know how fast I can make a crater?  Anywhere in the solar system, and your defense networks won't be any help whatsoever.  I want my secretary back, intact, un-drugged, un-touched."

"Or else?"

"Or else the next pilgrims to Mecca will need radiation gear, and they'll be visiting a crater," he hissed.  "They'll also need breathing masks, because of the dust, which will make the whole world a LOT colder."

“I think you really mean it… By Allah.”

'Your men took my wife.  We've kept it quiet as a courtesy to her family, but if my wife isn't right here, beside me, before sunset, there will be a sun blooming in the Arabian peninsula.  And if she doesn't appear after that? Then a second at Medina., and a third after that, at Jerusalem.  You'll need to die to talk to God after that."

“I’ll make the calls.”

Without an ID to work with it took an uncomfortable number of hours before Fatiama was found and brought back to Kham.

Fatiama stepped out of the APC, staggered over to Kham and wrapped her arms around him.

"My dear!  They didn't hurt you, did they?"  His scent was rage and worry.

“I’m fine…  Thank you for finding me.”  Fatiama felt euphoric.

"We're leaving.  I expect we'll make orbit in time, if we leave right now, to send the recall," he directed the comment at the uniformed men and clerics within earshot.

Fatiama kissed Kham.

“You’re worthy,” Fatiama found herself saying.

He leaned close and whispered, "Timetable's moved up, but they'll deal, I didn't want to do it this way, but…" he hugged her close, "Sometimes a man must do away with complex plans."

“Hehe.”  Fatiama knew she shouldn’t be laughing right now but couldn’t stop herself.

Traffic to the spaceport was nonexistent save for armed escorts clearing the path-the most direct path-to the port.

“You got anything strong in here Kham…  I need a drink…”

"No alcohol or other intoxicants in Arab lands, except where they can hide it from each other, so  no.  We'll have to wait till we've cleared their airspace."

“Oh…Okay…Hmmm… I guess I’ll just have to hold myself together until then.”

"Let me help with that," he told her, and pulled her close to him.  "I honestly didn't want to do it this way-once we're clear of Earth's atmosphere, I can't come back."

"What did you DO?"

"I threatened to un-terraform three holy cities and an uncountable number of religious sites if they didn't deliver you right to me post-haste," he explained.

“You did that?  For me?”  Fatiama kissed Kham again.

"It still might happen if we don't make orbit soon," he told her.  "Getting those impactors to speed takes distance and fuel.  I called it in while they were driving you to be interrogated.  I don't really WANT to kill millions of people, but…"

“I know you don’t.  I’m okay now.  A little loopy at the moment… But okay.”  Fatiama smiled.  “Too much oxygen here.  I’m…hehe.”  Fatiama leaned into Kham.

"That's one most people never say," he grinned.

"What about the victims?" she asked.

"I bought them," he told her, "the rocks were going to be a bargaining chip but the religious police forced my hand.  Al Saud agreed to terms, and I paid him the money, and they all know I can decide to throw more rocks if they welch on the deal.  I expect Halsey will get his space-going warship approved, just so they can stop me from this kind of move again.  Therefore, we're leaving Earth, and leaving sooner rather than at the leisurely pace I'd intended."

“Good.  Then I can put the terrible things I saw today behind me…”

"Just remember, what you saw today?  Can happen anywhere.  All it takes is for a simple majority of the population to see the minority as something despicable… so remember it.  We must be better than this."

“The legend of my people say we were created to be protectors of wild spaces, make sure nature and civilization could co-exist.  To be better than those who would exploit nature at the expense of all else…”  Fatiama leaned into Kham’s side.  “I sense your nobility Kham, that you’d never do something so terrible, but that you used it to free me…  I’m tempted to express what that means to me…”

Fatiama clearly lost her war against her temptations.

***

Orbit was a relief in one way for Fatiama.  The alcohol was helping clear her head, but she could remember what she did with Kham.  It complicated her mission.

But did she regret it?  No, timing was inopportune and she was overwhelmed by the higher oxygen of Earth’s atmosphere compared to her homeworld, but she didn’t regret it now that she was thinking clearly.

“You look better,” Kham came up next to her.  “You took me a bit by surprise there, how aggressive you were.”

“I hope I didn’t offend you or do something wrong.  But we should talk, Kham.  You and me.”  Fatiama looked at Kham.

“Yeah.  I think I know what’s coming,” Kham fished something out of his pocket.  “Best I could do on such short notice.”

Kham slid a ring on Fatiama’s finger.

“Kham… I’m not human.  I know I look it, but I’m not.”  Fatiama searched Kham’s eyes for a response.

“What are you talking about Fatiama?  I know you’re not typical but you seem pretty human to me.”

“You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed certain things about me.  How I start acting if I don’t have something strong to drink every few hours, or my strength.”  Fatiama swallowed.  “I’m telling you this because your instincts are correct.  There are going to be consequences for what we did yesterday and in nine months…”

"Fatiama, you could be a pile of circuit boards and I'd feel the same," he told her.  "I don't love the package, I love the woman-otherwise we'd just have sex and be done with it."

“I’m glad I haven’t convinced you that I’m insane or scared you off.”

"Sometime, I'll have to tell you the REAL reason I resigned from the Pathfinder program," he told her.

“You found alien life didn’t you?”

"I found what was left of it after the Ulysses probe passed through, and I learned a new name that sickened me.  'Clear Horizons'."

“A terrible truth of space faring civilizations it seems.  We can’t help but interfere and all too often not for the betterment of the species we interfere with.”

"It was enough to make me leave the project," he said. 

“My people, renegades from them at least, last I knew they were heading for Earth.  I’m not sure how long Earth has before they arrive now because I should have arrived nearly a hundred years ago…”

"Then it's good we're not staying," he told her.  "Though it does suggest we'll need to post a guard of some sort, just in case."

“Yes.  I guess I am going to have to adjust to being your wife…”  Fatiama looked at the makeshift ring.

"I'm sure it will be a terrible burden, and we'll both regret it frequently… but nothing worth having comes without a cost."  He kissed her neck.

“Truth be told, even among my people I come from a subculture that is very matriarchal.  To the point male children are taken to the cities once they are old enough.  It is not unheard of for the mothers to stay with them but those who stay behind… We’re not used to interacting with males on the regular.”

"You'll adapt, or you'll get tired of me," he sighed.  "Either way, I love you."

“My mission demands I adapt, though with what I saw…  And I love you too.”

"There are two ways to adapt-one, is to accept things and adjust to fit them.  The other is to force your will upon the universe until it submits."

“Well we’ll just have to see who flinches first then, me or the universe.”

***

The 'patrol ships' from bases on Luna and Earth couldn't keep up.  There would be no arrest tonight, while the lawyers went to work to get the charges vacated on the basis that despite the horrific threats, no super-weapon actually materialized, no attack was actually launched….

And three fifty ton projectiles made of nickel-iron elements passed near earth orbit harmlessly, bound for the sun.

Things had not played out as anticipated.

At Terran Alliance high command, underwear was replaced, and then, soiled again as demands for some sort of response, and demands for investigations into why, and how, someone could make such credible threats…

Yes, indeed, lots of 'response' was going on.  This got worse as shuttles left the Sinai in relays, and the representative of the Arab League states confessed that the mines were closing, at least until a new workforce could be recruited.

The one they had, was leaving.

It was no longer politically convenient to keep a slave force on Terra.  How this would play out would not be known to Fatiama though.

***

The ships were blocky, and they were new.  "Connestoga class, honey.  Fifteen light years at a hop," he explained.  "Of course, they're trying a new tack: they're trying to block the departure in the courts."

“We’ll just have to cut through that red tape then won’t we?”

"Let it play for four more months.  I've got volunteers from some of the Asian Bloc.  We may have more than forty thousand colonists," Kham said confidently.

“You’re right, my calculus has changed as far as taking risks…”  Fatiama found herself rubbing her lower abdomen.  “So we’ll play this quiet instead of loud.”

"Kham, what did you sell them?" Dinh asked.

"I sold the Arabs Charon," Kham said calmly.  "And the refinery on Pluto."

"Shit," Dinh marveled.  "So you liquidated everything for-"

"For the ships, and the people," Kham said.  "We'll have just enough to get there, but we won't be coming back."

"I was starting to not like Earth anyway," the Navigator, Dinh Ngo, said somewhat sardonically.  "Well, there goes the whole 'quiet retirement' thing…"

“Heh, quiet is over-rated for retirement anyway.”

“So what are you going to do now, Fatiama?  Now that you and Kham have tied the knot?”

“I’m honestly not sure now.  In theory, my mission is done but I sense there is something more… and I’ve never been a wife or mother before.  So this is all new to me.”

“Well there’s still plenty of work to be done, and we need all available hands to do it,” Dinh offered.

“Yes.  For now that will suffice,” Fatiama nodded.

Fatiama did worry just how her pregnancy would turn out, the higher gravity of her homeworld made Ling’s pregnancy with her cousin difficult but with the species reversed for who was mother and who was father, just the way her muscles were arranged and her skeleton…She worried if she could even safely carry her child.  But she kept up a face of confidence for the sake of others.

She had told Kham about her true nature and if she was going to get through such a long trip she knew she might as well tell the others, she’d need their help.  Especially now that she couldn’t drink…

“Dinh, Bianh, Tom, Riley…  There’s something I need to tell you all…”

“We know Fatiama.  We’re not oblivious.  You’ve let it slip you’re pretty sure you’re pregnant,”  Bianh said as she hugged Fatiama.  “It’ll be tough on you doing this trip and keeping your baby healthy.”

Fatiama sighed as she removed her left glove and placed her bare hand on a table then drew one of her knives, driving her knife into her hand with force.  Bianh and Dinh’s eyes went wide when it bounced off and embedded itself in the table she put her bare hand on.

“And yes I am as certain as I can be that I am pregnant.”

“The rest of you knew about this didn’t you?”  Bianh demanded.

“Well I didn’t know she had that kind of parlor trick, but yeah.  It wasn’t too hard to put together she isn’t human,” Tom Cartwright answered.  “She bench pressed cargo pallets that took my cargo jocks working in teams to move, and she was doing it for exercise.”

“I’m trusting you all with this because I am going to need your help over the next nine months.”  Fatiama nodded.  “I can’t hide it anymore, not now that I am with child and that I don’t know what to expect.”

“For what you did to help make all this happen?  To save all these people?  Of course I’ll help.  It’s the right thing to do, and the least I can do for someone who gave me a little tiny sliver of hope again,” Tom nodded.

With that the others added their own agreement.

Her secret would be kept from anyone who didn’t need to absolutely know and they’d help her with her pregnancy, especially finding ways to lower oxygen ratios when possible for her.

As the months passed it didn’t take long for Fatiama’s pregnancy to be visibly confirmed with her small frame.

***

July 11, 2144…

The Terran Alliance Supreme Court upheld the injunction in a last minute ruling, and Terran Navy units were dispatched to the Zenith point to enforce the seizure of twenty four colony ships belonging to Charon Industries.

The push for this last minute change came from the Far East Bloc, a political body that had initially been fine with letting their dissidents be taken away to points unknown, particularly un-mutual groups like the Montagnard, Shan, H'Mong and certain Taiwanese and Philippine groups that were known to have chronic social credit problems.

The real motive wasn't driven from Beijing, but instead, from San Francisco.  The conflict in the North American bloc with the Mormons was on the verge of heating up, and a fairly large number of LDS groups had joined Charon's colonization effort, including militants that refused to have their religious doctrine 'regularized' to conform to the new culture laws being passed in Paris.

Vengeful meddlers can't stand it when the people they've been painting with the brush of dangerous radicals leave without a fight, especially when the departure leaves them with the consequences of their well meaning policies and nobody to take the blame.

At this point, not even Fatiama had expected to have to fight, but Alliance Marines that had been once contracted to help maintain security for the colonists, were trying to take the jumpships.

She had to fight.  Her daughter Mary's life was worth more than the Alliance soldiers who were trying to take over.

Needler fire raked her husband right before she stopped it. Her fist smashed through a Marine’s face plate, breaking transparent armor rated to stop most small arms fire.

She had a choice to make, stay with her husband or to end this threat.  She chose the second option.

In a rage she swept through the ship to her quarters.

Fatiama grabbed her sword and spear.  They may look primitive but her cousin made sure they were anything but.

As fast as she could she created a secure corridor starting at medical, where her daughter and any injured crew were secured.

The next marine she found was raising their ‘Needler’ at a crew member, Fatiama didn’t even stop to see who it was as she stepped between the marine and his victim, feeling the impact on her suit as she drove her spear through the marine’s chest with a look of shock in his eyes.

The next one kept firing at Fatiama, trigger pull after trigger pull until her suit was in tatters but she kept coming until the weapon stopped firing despite the marine still pulling the trigger.

A quick thrust from her spear ended his threat to the crew.

She came up to the command deck.  A marine had just fired on Dinh.  She drove her spear into him, the angle made it look as though she impaled him on a spike.  She put the butt of her spear in the grated decking and moved to Dinh to tend to his wounds.

"Grab something! We're leaving now!!"  Dinh Ngo was also bleeding-globules of blood floating from holes in his suit.

"All ships, all ships, Execute!!"  Bianh used the radio.

Fatiama returned to her husband, running.  She desperately tried to tend to his wounds.

Kham died in her hands, his last words before the jump, "I will always love you."

Fatiama found herself crying as they jumped.

This was something she never expected to prepare for, to encounter.

As the ship re-materialized she still felt as if part of her was still back in the Sol system.

“{Goddess of the Natural Order, guide my beloved to his eternal rest.  Let him know he is loved and remembered.}”

"Jesus, Kham…" Dean said, not 'Dinh', she would remember him the way her husband termed him.  "He didn’t make it, did he?"

“No…  There are others I should be helping now…”

"We're supposed to clash with our brothers-in-law, Fatey.  Only Kham was like my only brother, when Mary succumbed to the cancer.  He carried me through the grief.  I guess… you've got a little girl who needs you, and I need to find out how many ships made it out, then figure out how to carry on from here."

“The only way possible, together and one day at a time.”  Fatiama offered.

"We've got to clean up the dead and try to stop more from dying right now. See to your girl.  I'll deal with the bodies."

“You’re right.  I can help with that and me crying helps no one.”

"The only good part, is that the Chinese wanted these ships intact, and the Alliance wanted them to get them intact, so the repairs are going to be relatively simple…dammit Kham…" his wordless grief came in waves off him, suppressed by ragged professional training, but there like a complement to her own.

“Let’s get moving.  You should get to medical too for your injuries.”  Fatiama stood.

As if to punctuate that, Dean started coughing a fine mist.  It smelled like blood.

“Come on, I’m not losing you too.”  Fatiama grabbed Dean and started hauling him to the ship’s medical bay, packing him like an oversized toddler.

Bianh met them at medical.  "Did Kham make it?" she asked.

“No…”  Fatiama shook her head as she laid Dean on an open bed.

"The bright side is that our colonists didn't experience it in their cold-sleep capsules," Bianh told her, "but Tom…"

“Small miracles… Humanity seems so cruel…” Fatiama sighed.

"How [cough] bad?" Dinh (Dean) asked.

"Doctors stopped the bleeding, but he'll never walk in gravity again… Dean, did you-you stupid male!  You're bleeding internally!!  Stop trying to be tough, and…  May!!  Captain's hurt!!"

“I’m going to look for others that are hurt but can’t make it here on their own.”  Fatiama straightened up.

Dinh shook his head, "Get status on the rest of the fleet, Fatey.." he gasped, "they hit all of us, we need status on the rest or Kham's dream…" his words were interrupted by more wet coughing.

“You’re right, I wish I was a leader though, someone these people could look to…”

"You're what we have right now, Fatiama.  Pull up your big girl panties and LEAD," Bianh snarled.  "I've got to help here.  Someone needs to hold them together and dammit, you're His Wife."

Fatiama nodded, they were right and stalling would help no one.

She gathered herself and made for the command deck.

“Attention, all ships.  Many of you do not know me.  I am Fatiama Sithers.  Kham Sither’s widow.  I need you all to report to me your status, crew losses, and what repairs need to be conducted.  I know we’ve been through a lot together just now, and a lot of us have grieving to do.  But right now, right now we need to pull together and get the job done.  Together, one day at a time, one jump at a time.  I stand by for your reports.”  Fatiama hoped she didn’t sound too heartless on her broadcast.

Over the next few hours she learned something important about Sol Belters.  No matter the situation, they could make the hard calls and do what needed to be done.

"We can't go back now," Bianh met her on the command deck twenty hours into it.  "Feel that? In the air?  We can never go back again."

“Uncertainty.  But a hint of hope still lingers.”  Fatiama nodded.

"More than a hint, since we can't go back, there's only forward," the older woman told her.  "We've escaped Earth, and Gaia will not eat these children."

“All ships are still with us.  I suspect that may change during our journey, but we will carry on as best we can.”  Fatiama studied the displays.

"You've been on watch for twenty hours, Fatiama.  I'll take it from here, you go get some time with your daughter and some rest now, it's going to be another week before everyone's charged for the next jump," Bianh told her.

“Thanks for everything Bianh.  I’m not sure I could have done all this without you and the others.”

"We do what we must, because we can.  Get with your girl, Fatey.  I've got the conn."

Fatiama gave a mock salute then left the command deck.

She entered her quarters and dismissed the nanny.

“Hello, there,” Fatiama cooed at her daughter.  “Looks like good timing, we both need a nap.”

Fatiama nestled into the chair and let her exhaustion finally overtake her as she held her daughter.

As she dreamed, she dreamed of the Marines she had fought.  There was a message her mind was trying to send her about the confrontation.

The injured and the dead.  That was it, she had acted out of anger but what she had done was to protect others, those who could not protect themselves.  That was what her dreams were telling her.

At least until they turned to the other darkness of humanity that she had witnessed first hand.

When she woke she cried again, taking solace in the fact that she had saved at least some of humanity from itself.  For a while at least.  She wasn’t sure for how long, though.

She changed and fed her daughter and waited for the nanny before she went into the shower to get ready for the next day.

As she made her way to the command deck the rest of the crew seemed to be in awe of her.

She wondered how many saw first hand what she had done to the marines, how many suspected the truth of what she was.  She wasn’t stupid, and knew that there were at least rumors spreading.  But no one gave her the slightest indication that they were afraid of her, or what she could do.

Fatiama stepped on the command deck again.

“Tell me how I can help today.”  Fatiama put on a smile for the sake of the others.

Fatiama never rose to a position of real authority with her own people, but here she had become at the very least, a figurehead.  She knew the power of legacies and names.  They were paramount among her own people.  That humanity seemed to revere them as well, at least these humans anyway, was some comfort.

This was her routine now.  See to her daughter, then see to these humans, then see to herself.

And so it continued until they were finally ready to jump.

***

A convoy this large, breakdowns and any number of other delays were inevitable.

But the convoy never truly stopped.

Slowly but surely, it plodded toward its final destination.

Poised to make the last jump, somehow Fatiama could sense something was different but not what.

unreality

February 2, 21xx

emergence

"The ******??"  Fatiama's station was empty.  Dinh looked around CIC, "What the ******? She was right there!!!"

"Crap…that was a bad one…but-"

"Bianh, take the helm.  I need to go see if my god-daughter's okay, and get a deck-by-deck search going.  People do NOT just vanish in mid-jump."

The search turned up Mary Sithers, sleeping quietly in her mother's stateroom.  Of Fatiama Sithers?  Nothing, except for a few knick-nacks, a chest full of clothes, and the spear she'd used repelling the Marine boarders.

She, the physical SHE, was gone.

"Thousand Dollar question, sir, did we make it?"

Dinh checked the telescopes, did some napkin math, and said, "Yeah, we're at site Wonderland.  I guess we'll have to see what the colonists want to call it, but one high-potential habitable planet fifth out from the binary, multiple belts, and enough nebular remnant dust still around to shroud RF from low power sources, just like Kham and I found it on the Odysseus run."

"Maybe she-"

"I don't know, what I know, is that my best friend's daughter just lost her mom."

Bianh nodded, somehow she felt it too, the loss of Fatiama.

"What's our plan?"  Bianh asked.

"We'll need to establish basic infrastructure before we wake up too many of the colonists, or we'll overload what we've got for supplies.  Endurance on those sleep chambers is five years.  We'll set up the first colony site on the planet after… ******, after I finish doing a detailed survey for a good site TO set up.  We'll need to lean on the deep space assets for a while though, so you and your friends can start staking out sites now in the outer and inner systems."

“If you still have the old survey data that will help expedite things.”

Dinh handed her a data-disc.  "Everything from the Odysseus mission," he said.  "Except the embarrassing hijinks we didn't get up to."

“I promise Dinh, soon as we can, we’ll figure out something, some sort of service.  Let everyone properly grieve,” Bianh nodded.

“How do we explain this to her though…”

"I don't know yet," Dinh confessed.  "I'll have to tell her something when she's old enough to start asking."

“Fortunately we have time now.  Yes there is still a lot of work to do but we have time.  Time to think up an answer, time to let people grieve for the ones they lost back at Terra…”  Bianh sighed.

"In the ancient days of the old Cold War," a younger spacer, Leslie Mun, from Io, observed, "Refugees fleeing the Communists congregated in Hong Kong, looking to get out through the British lease… they had a refuge there.  It was called 'Kowloon'.  This is our refuge from the insanity of the Sol system and the Terran Alliance."

“So then we do as we have always done, carry on together, one day at a time.”

To Be Continued

Interlude, Honor system, 30XX…

Amanda could physically see the aerofighter coming in through the open hole where the outboard bulkheads had been.

They'd done their best, the refugees would have to make it out of the system without them.

"Nobody can hear me, but if you can, brace for jump in three…two…"

The Choir sang out, and she was wrapped in colorless chaos.

End Interlude

[Daryk]

Progress! :)

[Cannonshop]

So, what do y'alls think?

[willis]

I like these stories....dare I say they are better than cannon..

[monbvol]

Glad people are enjoying.  Just kind of wishing I could have come up with a catchier title than Chrono Jump though.

[willis]

I wonder if Fatiama will come across the Cameron sisters in her time jump(s)?

[ThePW]

I like these stories....dare I say they are better than cannon..

PARTS of these Are at least dramatic effects of events that did happen. Cannon in post expansion phase of the Terran Hegemony is ripe for detail...

(Helm? Park this B.)

[Daryk]

I had to cram five days of work into three days this week... I'll be back to editing tomorrow! :)

[Dave Talley]

Tag

[monbvol]

No worries.  I've decided to let more of a buffer build up before posting the next section.  I'll probably put up Part two Thursday or Friday.

[Daryk]

I think I've caught up on editing... it looks like there was a big block inserted before my last edit, and I'm not 100% sure I caught everything that was inserted.

[monbvol]

[sarcasm] Where's that slave driver emoji when I need it...[/sarcasm]

Seriously no worries, we appreciate the service.  Though you'll probably need to do some more passes again...

[Daryk]

Heh... just please put a note in where you insert stuff! :)

[Daryk]

Ok, I think I responded to all the back-and-forth notes... :)

[monbvol]

[Author]  Daryk has warned us there is a scene in this part of the saga that will offend the science nerds.  I will say this:  Fatiama is the worst kind of layman, she knows just enough to suggest something plausible but not enough to actually follow through on a better plan and Amanda is not operating at full mental capacity.  [/Author]

Part Two: "The Stars Beyond Her Reach"


Fatiama had never experienced anything like that, the pain, the sense of, well everything, before.

She only knew something was wrong and her immediate surroundings were all wrong.

Damage.  There was damage around her.

As almost by instinct she checked her suit and helmet, no leaks detected and air supply was good.

Next on her mental checklist was to see if the area of the ship she was in was going to kill her before she could do something about it.

A quick survey didn’t reveal anything that would outright kill her in the next few minutes but she didn’t feel confident about the structural integrity of the compartment she was in.

No grav plating, or it’s offline, okay let’s explore a little.

She stepped toward the hatch.  Slowly but surely, measuring her steps to make sure she got good footing with her mag boots.

She opened the hatch.

What greeted her on the other side was a huge section of the outer hull clearly ripped off, exposing the compartment to space.  No, “space” wasn’t the right word.

This must be hyperspace…******…

Fatiama closed the hatch, going back the way she came.

Another hatch, deeper into the ship presumably, was on the other side of the compartment.

She made her way to that hatch.  No atmo on the other side according to the readouts again but with no other clear path she opened it.

A long narrow corridor greeted her this time.

She followed the emergency lights.  She knew they’d either lead her to somewhere preferable to where she was now.

Her helmet lights illuminated stencils on the corridor.

'Missile Room 2'

“A warship.”  Fatiama understood the implication.

The 'corridor' ended at a circular room, dead bodies strapped to secure couches, still suited up, and an open ‘sky’ right where the wall might have been.  Frozen blood floated in a reddish snow.

Fatiama shook her head.  She knew she needed to get the systems online if she was going to find out anything.

No gravity decking, means the core is… she looked to her right, at the solid wall.  They would either lay it out with a spinning deck, which seems unlikely given the fittings, or stacked like donuts on the central core, which is where the jump core would be…

She left the 'missile control room' heading away from the massive breach.

A search of a few minutes found a zone with a hatch in the wall, and another in the floor and ceiling.

I’ve been living on human ships for a while now, they should have labels here somewhere…

She brushed frost away from a promising looking plate.

"Caution: Electromagnetic Effects and Radiation, do not open without lockout/tag-out in place"

“So that’d be the core…”  Fatiama muttered to herself.  “So a control station should be behind one of these other hatches…”

The hatch in the deck opened with some difficulty, below her, was what looked like maybe a cargo area, though it was mostly empty.

The one above, opened into an area with familiar, bulky shapes.  She'd seen ship-scale fusion toroids before.  Half of them were visibly damaged and there was considerable plasma scoring, indicating breaches as she swept her head lamps over the toroids.

“Now this is promising.  Okay, now to find a tool kit and see if I can get power back on in here.”

Fatiama still wasn’t much of an engineer but she’d had little else to do but learn how to fix human technology over the last few years.

She rapidly discovered this wasn't much more advanced than the colony ships, though there were elements that were almost familiar from her own culture's technology.

“Huh.  Interesting.  Wonder if somehow they made contact or if this is convergent development.”

It took her a bit longer to find a viable display, this one with a keyboard suited for gloved hands-as if it were made for use without an atmosphere.  Getting it up wasn't difficult.

The layout shown was of a ship design, and that ship showed red over more than three fourths of its structure.

CIC was forward (up), and the decks forward of that were a mix of darkened red, and pale yellow on the display.  Areas where the damage control system was either reporting damage, or was not reporting at all.

“Okay so I’ve got my work cut out for me… Oy vey.”  Fatiama had picked up new words from her human friends.

She played with the computer for a while before realizing it was isolated to just maintenance monitoring.  A simpler machine than she'd seen with the Colony ships.

“So step one: get to CIC, once there see if the nav computer is online, step two will be seeing if this thing has enough juice to jump back to real space.”

Fatiama traced the route on the display into her memory and set off, knowing she needed to treat each moment as precious.

On the deck above, she found a blown rack of capacitors and most of the remains of a large lasing chamber on one side, and bodies.

Lots of bodies.

Most of them charred by random energy discharge, right through skin-tight suits of a familiar design.

“Shit.  That’s a lot of energy to do that…”  Fatiama found herself almost morbidly curious.

The suits were almost copies of the flight suit she'd worn when she was picked up in the Sol system, and could've been made for her people, if not for the human language lettering and the image of a leaping killer whale on the patches.  'Coast Guard'...

They built it.  Like Kham and I discussed…  a sting of pride mixed with grief.

It was also undeniable proof of what had only been a hunch until now.  She was not where she should be in time and clearly not in space.

The next level had a branching, one sealed door said 'Boat Deck' the other had a number.  The 'boat deck' was one of the blacked-out segments; she could peer through the deadlight, and see open…chaos, hyperspace held back by the ship's KF field.  The space beyond was sheared, the edges still glowing. 

The aftermath of a battle, and one that should've completely destroyed this ship.

She tore herself away from the window.  It was further confirmation she needed to stay on task, and be quick about it.  She needed to get to CIC and fast.

Though that presented a debate.  Technically the fastest route went through a blackened out section of ship, but the shortest safe route required more detours through various parts of the ship.

She decided she had to risk it.  Going through a blacked out section of ship, she didn’t know how long she had so moments could be the difference between being trapped here until her death or getting out.

She made her way to the hatch that would cut a great deal of time off her journey, assuming the damage wasn’t catastrophic.

She opened it.  As she stepped through she could feel it: her Bre heritage.  The thing that let her sense where her weapon would strike and gave her small hints of destiny from time to time.  It was being overwhelmed.

She stepped slowly but surely.  She began to wonder if she should have gone the safer way.

Then finally she made it to the other hatch.

This compartment wasn’t much more intact but the exterior hull was providing just enough extra protection she managed to clear it much faster.

She wasn’t far from CIC now.

It took her planting her feet and almost putting her shoulder into the last hatch, something was blocking it from the other side but she managed to get through just barely.

More bodies.

Fatiama wasn’t surprised, the state of this ship, it had probably been abandoned before it jumped by anyone who still could.

As she made her way to what looked to be the nav computer, one of the bodies seemed different.

Curious, Fatiama went over to it.

Somehow, despite everything, there was one survivor.

Fatiama did a quick suit check and was relieved to find it intact.

Next, she started scavenging the other bodies and suits around her for air tanks and battery packs that still had good air and charges as there were two of them now, and they’d need them.

Fatiama replaced one of the nearly empty air bottles and slipped a fresh powerpack into the suit.

It was then she saw the nametape.  Ngo.  The occupant was female.

A mixed sense of dread and relief came over her.  The family line had survived but what if this was the last one, or what were they facing that they were at war again?

These were all questions she would have to answer later.

Right now, she had to find out if she even had time to do basic first aid on the survivor or if this hyperspace bubble would collapse in on them at any moment.

With terrible anguish at her choice, she went to the nav computer and typed in a few commands.

While she didn’t fully understand the outputs, she was satisfied she didn’t have to worry about the pocket of reality they were currently in collapsing.  The ship’s structure, on the other hand, seemed to be more of an issue.

Fatiama grabbed the survivor and made her way to a compartment that she knew was safe to pressurize so she could perform a more thorough examination.

Upon entering the compartment she did a check for small breaches, ones even the sensors might have trouble with.  She found a couple and broke out the welding torch and emergency seals.

A few adjustments to the controls and Fatiama could feel the compartment fill with air.

Fatiama hadn’t really registered it until now, but the survivor was somehow familiar…  A thread, a tiny one, but of a shared lineage.  She carefully checked for broken bones and internal injuries.

The woman’s breathing was shallow until Fatiama pressed gently but firmly on her rib cage.

“A bruised, maybe broken rib or two…  And some signs of head trauma as well as a likely dislocated shoulder.  Okay, time to see how much I really know about human medicine.”

Based on what she saw in CIC, Fatiama was surprised that was the extent of the woman’s injuries.  The collapsed structural members, the bits of decking that had been displaced.  Heck, even the suit the woman was wearing was showing signs of direct impacts of blunt force trauma despite still being intact.

Fatiama then set about mending her new companion as best she could.

The emergency manuals she had already studied and the ones she could find gave her at least a few things to try but in the end Fatiama knew her companion would likely still be out for hours and she had work to do before then if the two of them were going to get out of this.

So she wrote a note to the survivor, letting her know she wasn’t alone anymore and that Fatiama would be fixing the ship and what injuries the survivor had.

She did what she could to make her new companion comfortable, even going so far as to take the gravity plate she salvaged from her pod all those years ago and adjusted it to Earth normal and slid it under the survivor’s back so that she could start healing properly.

With that, Fatiama created a makeshift airlock.

Her next priority then was to get internal communications back on line.

A checklist of future tasks was already forming in her head, prioritized in order of problems that needed to be solved with considerations granted according to how long it’d take to solve them, and finally which ones she just was not able to solve on her own.

There was a lot of work ahead of her.

***

The Choir howled as her lungs burned.  Did they make it out? Did we make it out?

Hsssttt… cold clean air washed down her throat, through her sinuses.  Her body burned.

"What do you want to be when you grow up, Amanda?" Mom's friend asked her.

She watched as fire bloomed where a town-site had been, the actinic streaks of orbital bombardment.

"...it's a summer course, mom, not even dangerous…"

Her friend Cymbral giggled, "...he Likes you, Roshak!  He thinks you're pretty, he wants to bone you.."  the mess deck became the boat deck, and time shifted.

Korvettenkapitain Daimh asked "Is there anyone here who doesn't want to commit to this?"

A particle beam the diameter of a standing man lanced through CIC and it crossed the command seat.

"Be careful sis, okay?" her brother Pat said. October in Nha Tranh, early springtime.  "I don't want to be the only one left."

It was a guess, it was a frantic try.  Initiate  Hyperspace is endless…

Endless.
Endless..
Endless…

***

She didn't seem to be waking up so much as boiling in a nightmare when Fatiama came back from a scavenging expedition.  Delirious, but she's got no fever…

"Nó là vô tận, nó kéo dài mãi mã!!!"  the girl muttered, "Nó không phải là ngay lập tức, nó tiếp tục và tiếp tục mãi mãi !!"

Like an infant, Fatiama carefully administered water with electrolyte solution.

"The physics books are wrong, it's forever in there…out here…forever…"  the girl slumped back and babbled some more.

“Take it easy, just rest for now.  You need your rest.”  Fatiama wiped Amanda’s face with a cool wet cloth.

She dug out a tube of ration paste.

“I know it tastes terrible.  But you need to eat.”

Fatiama sighed as she looked around at the small sanctuary she’d created for the both of them.

“I’m not sure I know enough about the technology on this ship to get us out of this situation without help.  I’m not even sure how I ended up here.  But I know I’m here for a purpose.”

Amanda seemed to clear up.  "It's just a training ship, outdated. Leftover from the war with the Word of Blake.  Heck, we were only carrying warshots in the first place for qualification on the disarm… all gone now though.  Shot the magazine dry.  There's manuals and textbooks."

“Yeah, it’s how I’ve managed as much as I have,” Fatiama nodded.

"Told you mom, it's just a short cruise, the summer, it'll look good on my transcript…" she was gone again.

“Shit, I really do need another set of hands.  How to keep her awake without harming her.”  Fatiama picked up the medical manuals she found again, thumbing through them for anything helpful.

"Kapitän! Sie schießen Zivilisten nieder!!"  She was back in the nightmare.  "Wir müssen etwas tun!"

“{Neither English or Dutch, I really need to learn more human languages…}”  Fatiama grumbled in her native tongue.

She dug into the medical kit for what the manual she was reading through suggested was a good stimulant to give her companion in her current state.

Amanda's delirium hit a peak again… her face ghostly white, "They're killing them…"

“Who is killing whom? {Son of a bitch I’m getting nowhere.}”  Fatiama was running out of ideas for what to do.

The girl slumped down, "Why are they killing their own people?"

“{Fine.  I still don’t think I can get us out of this by myself.  But I’ll give it my damndest.  You just stay alive.}”  Fatiama was slipping into her native tongue more and more.

With little choice she knew she needed to work on the fusion toroids next.

The comm system was as intact as she could make it if her companion ever regained enough sense to use it anyway.

“{Going from my biggest problem was stalking what me and my extended family would eat for the next week, to an interstellar war, to getting thrown head first in the deep end of human technology.}”

She worked for a few hours then went back to the makeshift sanctuary.

"We voted."  The girl was back to something like clarity when Fatiama checked on her again.  "We could have left, and that's what the book says to do-a Sampan II isn't a good match for actual battleships.  But we were all we had, and the only hope those poor bastards had to get anyone out… so we voted to try and fight it, because it's thirty six months with this drive core to home.  And that's if we don't stop somewhere and nothing goes wrong.  Only something went wrong because we weren't even supposed to be in that system, it's not considered possible."

“Here, some water.”

"Thanks."  She was more lucid than she'd been in days.  "We're still in hyperspace, aren't we?"

“Yes.  And I don’t know how to get us out.  Not by myself anyway.”

"To figure out how to get us out, we gotta figure out why we're still here-the field should've collapsed after fifteen light years."

“Here’s a readout from the controller computer.  I don’t understand half of it.  And most of what I do understand doesn’t make sense.”

"Neither did the guys who wrote the software.  WE still don't know everything about Hyperspace and people have been at it for over nine centuries now…  But the mechanical limits on these fifteen light year cores can only be cheated with a capacitor for so long before they crack."

“So what I need to do is find the cracks then?”

"Maybe.  The Mila Weintraub was a war-era build.  Something cranked out in a hurry when the Word of Blake lost their ****** minds and declared war on the rest of humanity.  Wartime builds have looser tolerances, if there's a difference in how the forging was done, or a lucky flaw, that could explain both how we ended up that far from home on an in-system jump, and why we're still in hyperspace for, what has it been, days?"

“******.  Days, yeah.  My specialty is Scout Sniper not Hyperspace Engineer…  So a lot of this is just lost on me.”

"Well, it's good I was majoring in hyperspace physics then, isn't it?  Of course that's the theory, not the practical…  Wish Steven hadn't died on the ground trying to evacuate that village, he was talented."

“I haven’t found any other survivors…”

"They hit us with naval PPC's and nukes, it's amazing I'm still alive," Amanda stated.  "Still kind of fuzzy around the edges though.  I kinda remember overriding the safeties…"

“Heh, yeah you seem pretty tough.  The size of the structural plate that I’m pretty sure hit you should have killed you.”

"Good suit protection." Amanda said, "also, it couldn't have been moving that fast, human tissue has only so much resilience."

“Well whatever the reason that you survived, I’m glad to have the help.”

"First tasking, is to figure out which of our remaining power plants are still feeding the capacitor, so we know what not to turn off."

“Best I can figure, three and five are providing main power, six through nine are holding the core charge.  I think I can fix one on my own, but I need help with two for sure.”

"Well, assuming I don't lapse into weird memory loops and hallucinations again…"

“I only know basic first aid and emergency medicine…”

Amanda tapped the side of her head, "Hallucinations can come from either environmental exposure, or organic damage.  There's no first aid for that."

“I didn’t want to say, but you do have a pretty nasty bump on your head.”

"Okay, so the corpsman would say I've got a closed head concussion, which means brain damage.  Plus I have a fuzzy recollection of my suit's 'cycler crapping out and we'd already lost the common pipe-feed for air, so anoxia, which also does nervous system damage.  And finally there's the latent overcharge from Naval PPCs coming way too close, and hyperspace exposure… Means my marbles are scrambled and I'm not one hundred percent reliable."

“We make a pair then.  If I get too close to hyperspace it overwhelms me too.”

"Yeah, me, and my cool hallucination," Amanda stated.  "Josephson would say you must be a spirit guide.  But he's a pseudo-pagan and doesn't even know much about what he pretends to believe in…  What I do know is I have to figure out how to get us…  Get me, out of hyperspace somewhere where there's a chance of rescue.  That means a controlled re-entry into normal space without knowing where we are in relation to it."

“Oh I’m physically here, and real.  At least I feel real.”

"My imagination would say that.  Relax, I'm doubting reality a dozen different ways right now, because the last eleven months shouldn't have been possible."

“Tell me about it.  I’m pretty sure I’ve been displaced in space and time twice now.”

"Space is big, it's easy to get lost.  And what a KF drive does to time is the sort of thing that makes respectable physicists pull out their hair in frustration.  Questions like 'where did the angular momentum go?' tops the list.  We 'teleport' ships and they're always at rest to the destination.  That breaks lots of basic physics."

“Does make me wonder if every form of practical FTL travel messes with time in some way.”

"It would have to.  Either that, or the astronomers must truly be badass.  Estimating the relative position of stars they're only seeing the light from many decades ago, moving because it's all in motion, and predicting where to hit.  It's like shooting a bullet, with another bullet, while riding a motorcycle on rough ground."

“Now that I can do…”  Fatiama chuckled.

"You're sounding like one of Pat's fantasy heroines now, in those little paperbacks he loves.  'Mechwarrior's Star' maybe, or 'Far Country'."

“Well I’m no mechwarrior, not even sure what one of those are.  But I am Fatiama Bre’Kla.  My lineage traces back to the Goddess of Knowledge.  She has blessed me with limited foresight.  So doing things like shooting a bullet with another bullet while riding a motorcycle are child’s play for me.”

"Huh, funny…" Amanda mused.  "You look like Terri Sithers's Aunt Linda, but shorter.  They're distant cousins on Mom's side."

“I am also Fatiama Sithers, Kham Sither’s widow.  Our daughter…  She must have gone on to have children of her own.  This relieves me no small amount.”

"Huh."  Amanda started adjusting and reassembling her suit.  "So you're saying you were there at the start."

“Last I knew the year was 2144,” Fatiama said.

"That explains the bulky guest-bag suit with the bubble helmet then.  NOT a Dirtyfoot, just really old."

“Nothing wrong with the feeling of mud between your toes,” Fatiama chuckled.

"Mom would say something like that, when she tried to get me to join family trips to the Folly.  Pat loved those.  I didn't, not really.  But I paid attention because I wanted things, and some of those require going planetside after you grow up."

“Much like my youth.  I grew up in the wilds, but my people did not actually forsake technology, so we’d often go into the cities to trade for things.  All things are connected like that, at least they should be.”

"If you don't service the life support, everyone in the burrow dies.  During our 'field trip' out here, I had to teach Clanner civilians how not to kill themselves in space.  You maintain your life supports, or everybody dies."

“Since coming to space, I’ve learned to weld, wire, replace, and many other basic tasks.”

"Welding is useful," Amanda agreed.  "If I'd grown up in my inheritance instead of planetside, I'd probably be better at it than I am.  Dad wanted me to get a 'well rounded' education, especially if Roshaks arrived to look in."

“Can’t argue against a well rounded education, but no one can know everything.”

"I tried, but… y'know, 'Daughter of the Duchess' and with a Clanner adoptee for a father, I wasn't going to win the arguments.  Not even with Spider Moon being what I was going to inherit at eighteen."

“My biggest concern at eighteen was much less complex.”

"Wish mine was.  I'm the 'spare' if Patrick somehow dies or gets disgraced among the peerage, and that's a whole mess right there.  I only got the spacer slot because most of the people I'll be Baroness to live in the outer system.  A noble has to know something about the life of the people they're responsible for, ergo, I didn't have to go to soldier school for ground forces because deep interplanetary isn't good ground for walking combat machines."

“I was raised to believe no matter where it was found, life was interconnected.  Each person and creature serving a purpose, none useless or wasted.”

"Ah a believer in 'destiny'," Amanda chuckled.  "You gotta be real.  My imagination couldn't come up with that without making it a joke."

“Heh.  Sometimes I do wonder what a person or creature’s purpose is though.  It is not always obvious, and sometimes it seems there are people whose purpose is to commit evil acts.”

"The purpose of all life, Fatiama, is to resist entropy.  That's what Mom would say, and that's kind of what I believe when I dip into philosophy.  Now, mechanics?  THAT makes sense to me."

“Shall we get to work on those toroids now?  Maybe you can figure out what’s wrong with the others.”

"We have a lot of work…  So first we're going to map the power runs and see what's still in one piece, and what's shorting across decking thanks to the damage…"

“Here’s everything I’ve mapped so far,” Fatiama handed over her tablet.  “Oh and before I forget, this button turns off the gravity plate I put in your suit to help you heal.  This one turns it back on.  This program adjusts its output.”

That was when Amanda realized it.  She felt the gravity.

“******…”  Amanda said as she took in the implications.

“I’ll need that back later if possible.  Both the tablet and the gravity plate.  Microgravity is a bitch for someone from a high gravity world.”

Only higher gravity doesn't make you superwoman, it makes you sick. “Okay."

Fatiama helped Amanda up slowly.

"First-first," Amanda half-said to herself, collecting her helmet and checking the seals. "Engineering survey without the engineer…"

“Yes.  I know my surveys are sorely lacking.”

"Not your fault, 'kay?" she shrugged.  "Mine, got sloppy, got loose."

“Well they say the best way to learn is to teach.”

"Best way to learn is to fail and have to fix it," Amanda countered.  She managed to deploy a plastic temporary lock over the hatch.  "For example, remembering why we have these as inspection items in the damage control suite- pull the bag over the hatch, seal it, instant airlock with a zipper closure."
“Did I do it wrong on this other hatch then?”

Amanda shook her head, "Nope, but what we need, if it's still here, is through this one."

“Okay, sealing up.  I did what I could to fix internal comms but we still might be on suit radios in places.”

"Likely so."  She undogged the hatch, opened it and waited for Fatiama to go through before passing through and dogging it behind them.

The faint hiss of air leaving the improvised bladder and the eerie silence of the next compartment announced the start of their next task.

Amanda went straight for a locker door inset in the bulkhead.   

She came out with a canvas tool bag and a Halligan tool.  "There we go."  Her voice was distracted on the suit channel.  "Test kit, patching gear, and a crowbar.  Just like training, or like Chief Wahlberger insisted on the last inspection, take your pick."

“Given your injuries, I probably should take the prybar.”

"I've got it."

Two more compartments and Fatiama got it.  What was going on was that Amanda had decided she was a hallucination, probably brought on by stress and loneliness.  She was treating her rescuer as a psychotic break that couldn't be medicated away.

“{Whatever, I’m not sure we have time for me to convince her otherwise.}”  Fatiama didn’t realize she was still transmitting.

"Now, see… Fatiama?  There's our problem right there.  Number six fusion plants main power feeder has shorted through the core.  It's keeping it energized instead of letting it dissipate.  We can start thinking about how to get out of hyperspace now."

“So how do we fix the short without frying ourselves though?”

"That's a cable as big around as I am, Fatiama, fixing the short needs a shipyard or salvage yard, what we're going to do, is see about stepping down the wattage on number six fusion toroid, hopefully without breaking something we truly can't fix... But first, gotta work out something else.  To the Captain's Sea Cabin!"

“Okay.”

"Then comes the scary part, because we'll have to actually go outside the hull and hope the KF field still extends a couple meters above the decking."

“******.”  Fatiama did not like getting that close to hyperspace.

"It's the only way to even TRY to get a read on our actual position.  Gotta look for distortions-distortions means gravity sources."

“Okay big girl panties time then.”  Fatiama realized she wasn’t sure which way was the Sea Cabin.  “Which way?”

“My hallucinations are so trying sometimes…  Come on.”

Amanda started off toward a hatch.

"Do you know what you see at the edge of space, Fatiama?"

“The horizon?”

"More space, there is no horizon.  Tag line, connect to the first fixed handle outside the airlock, don't want to float off, that would be bad."

Fatiama could already feel it, the overwhelming force of hyperspace, playing havoc with her limited precognitive abilities.

"Remember, nothing you see out here is anything but what you brought with you.  My first hull surf was… exciting."

“You do this for fun?”

"It was more 'by accident'.  The term comes from hazing newbies. First jump after training someone might have you check the yards for the jumpsail, then initiate before you're back inside, if you stay low to the hull you'll be okay-you'll still be inside the KF field."

“I don’t think I could handle being outside it.”

"You're doing okay so far, we're inside the field,but if you'll notice, we're outside the hull now."

“I noticed and I’m rather motivated to get this over with.”

"This way.  We'll use the number four arm.  That's got the sensors for the missile systems portside, and it seems to still be intact."

“I thought we needed to come out here to get to the Sea Cabin?”
"That too.  I'm planning ahead of myself.  First, find out if Captain Daimh kept that fancy telescope of hers, since the ship's scope is," Amanda gestured at the wrecked remains of an installation, "trashed."

“Okay.  Moving.”  Fatiama picked up her pace.

They climbed along the hull to another tear, this one into what must have been an office space next to CIC.

"Here we are…and…." Amanda lifted the hinged top of the desk, and opened a chest below it. 

"One amateur astronomy grade Zess-Defiance reflector telescope, a sextant, not sure if that'll be useful, and an amateur art-photo kit…  And she padded it well, so it might even still work."

“Set the base, look for landmarks of known dimensions to gauge magnification and distance to sighted target…”

"We can do that, or, I can take a laser from the DC kit, reset focal range, and use it to look for distortions."

“Guess it’s my sniper training trying to solve the problem that way.”

"Nobody has good pictures of Hyperspace, Fatiama.  Nobody knows what anything is supposed to look like out here-so we're guessing.  But we can create baselines to base guesses off using theoretical math and some basic experiments."

“We can also use things like the ship’s sail booms.  That should give us some known numbers we can extrapolate from for sighting distances.”

"Assuming distance works in this dimension the way it does in the normal four-dee space, which Kearney's 11th equation suggests might be the case."

[monbvol]

“Okay so I guess you do the laser thing and I’ll get the base secured so we can put the telescope on it for information gathering.”

"Let's not get separated, Fatiama," Amanda said grimly.  "I can't verify the field isn't attenuating or fluctuating."

“If you could feel what I feel right now, I suspect you’d have your answer.  But I don’t need to be very far from you to just set up a telescopic tripod.”

"Next stop is the armory-the one for the infantry.  We picked up a few clanner laser rifles.  They'll make good instrument lasers, better than the cutter if they're still there."

“I think I actually know where that one is.”  Fatiama grabbed Amanda’s hand as the two moved to the next section.

“For a hallucination, you don’t seem to know the things you should and know some things I’m pretty sure I don’t.  Weird,” Amanda grumbled.

“{Of course.  But of course you’re going to dismiss obvious proof I’m real as a delusion.  But maybe that is better as I’m clearly a long forgotten legend at best, and who knows how things will play out once we return this ship to real space.  ****** me.}”  Fatiama was starting to worry that she was complaining to herself out loud so much..

Turning high intensity pulse lasers into low intensity scientific instruments was not without its challenges.

"Where did you say you got these?" Fatiama asked.

"The locals named the planet 'Honor'.  We ended up salvaging them when we ran out of rifle ammo…  Well, the Marines did.  I was giving classes on setting up soil generation and converting sewer sludge into fertilizer under microgravity."

Fatiama grabbed a tool to disassemble the rifle she was working on to get at the emitter.  Despite being a rifle she never used before, she understood its basic layout and principles well enough.

"The plan is to set up several of these, with converging patterns, then watch the beams.  Gravity sources will bend them, that tells us where one is ahead of time."

“So a minimum of four for each major axis with extras giving better precision.”

"Yep.  We'll tap them into Number One fusion plant, that one's almost idle and largely undamaged.  The boost will let their output reach far enough to be useful... assuming the cooling circuit works."

“Best I could tell when I was working on Toroid One it was.”  Fatiama started working on the emitter logic board to tune the output to the desired levels.”

"Now, we're going to use these suit fittings, so that we can circulate coolant through our laser emitters.  THAT way they won’t burn out instantly."

"Meaning you expect them to burn out anyway."

"Yeah.  This is all desperate, last minute tries before I go throw the big breakers and drop us out of hyperspace wherever it is we actually are."

“That sounds really dangerous.”

"It's about as dangerous as trying a Lagrange point between two enemy battlewagons while the ship is burning and nobody's answering comms," Amanda noted.  "Maybe less dangerous.  Less chance of being redistributed in a five dimensional scatter pattern of particles.  But then again, we'll be taking THAT risk too if there's a mass too close to my attempted exit."

“Translation, get a move on re-calibrating those rifles, Fatiama.”  Fatiama grabbed the next rifle.

"It's too bad KorvettenKapitain Samantha Daimh didn't survive…" Amanda commented.  "She could review my work and tell me it's bollocks.  She was a GREAT teacher."

“Sounds like she was a friend too.”

"Captains can't have 'friends'," Amanda said.  "They can't have favorites either.  She was as close to it as she could afford to be."

“Probably explains why I never got promoted past section leader.”

"Per my Dad, a commander can't have ties, because if you send someone to die that you don't like, it's murder, and if you send someone you DO care about, it's devastating.  Commanders have to make those calls."

“My first spotter that I worked with.  He made a mistake on our first mission, calling in support when it wasn’t needed.  I chose to take pity on him, thinking it was his first real mission too.  He took it as something more.”

"Personal?" Amanda suggested.  "More personal, like he thought you like-liked him?"

“Very.  He became obsessed.”

"Pretty people's problems," Amanda shook her head.  "Kinda glad I'm the ugly girl here. Guys don't get obsessed when you're plain and kind of bookwormy."

“I don’t know.  I know plenty of people that would find you more attractive than me.  Of course, most guys I’ve met don’t like small girls like me.”

Amanda held out her hands in front of her chest, "You've got it, Fatiama.  I'm flat as a board and I've got a fat ass, guys like big chests."

“This is a conversation I never thought I’d have.  Having to reassure another woman was actually attractive.”

"You're a Tab Three girl from the Donegal Sun!" Amanda giggled.

“I’ll take your word for it.”

"Okay, good, break time.  I need to have a lie-down before we go into setting up, as you pointed out, still not healed."

“Okay.  I’ll make sure you don’t sleep too long though.”  Fatiama grabbed all their stuff and packed Amanda back to their sanctuary inside the ship.

The challenge was more finding places to put everything on her small frame than the mass of stuff she packed.

Getting everything laid out and through the airlock was a process but soon enough she had Amanda resting comfortably while she kept working.

Fatiama was pretty sure she knew everything she needed to do now.  So she set to work.

Getting the laser rigs for sightings went easily enough, as did setting up the telescope.

"So….how is this supposed to work?" Fatiama mused.  She'd seen Amanda writing numbers with pencil on paper between modifications of the laser rifles.

So how does this… how is it supposed to work?

The visible light terminated.  Then, it stretched out in a pulse, almost too fast to see.

How is that supposed to help?

***

Amanda was awake.

"I started without you."

"Oh? What did you see?" 

"The laser light terminated at the edge of the field, then, it reappeared and streaked off in a pulse. What does that even mean?"

"Let me check my notes…"

***

Amanda and Fatiama made some modifications to the array, tying into the capacitor bank for the Naval Laser, which wasn't being used being that said Naval Laser was in the past-tense.

"Okay, now we run the experiment again...huff… this time, watch the screen display we've got set up next to the telescope."

The switch closed, and the modified lasers began to cycle. 

It was still pulsing, but the pulses were timed, trackable, and being watched.

"Deviation starboard, thirty degrees, range out to visual….now twenty….now fifteen, fifteen…twenty…twenty five…and out of our arc.  see?"

“Yes.  Calculating…”  Fatiama answered.

"Now, here's where we're going to break with what you did last time," Amanda said, and applied a spot-weld to the improvised knife-switch.  "We're going to leave it on while I route this to the display in what's left of CIC."

"You're asking why, aren't you?" the girl said.  "Answer: because that's where the navigation data is, and if we're going to work out some kind of conjecture about hyperspace reflecting real space, then we're going to need to compare patterns to see if they're consistent. Distances won't work or we'd never go FTL in the first place."

“Like long range shooting in shit weather.  If you know where the building is you can account for the clouds and fog, and see the lights in the interior spaces.”

"I think it's more like how a blind person taps with a stick to tell them where the curb is.  We know that something interacted with our light pulses, and that the ones not on that path? Didn't get affected, that tells me that at least gravity works something like what we know of."

“And that will give us a reference point.”

"Bingo.  With a reference we can at least orient to THIS environment.  We're also going to need to restore helm and whatever RCS thrusters we've still got."

“Time to get to work then.”  Fatiama grabbed her tool bag.

Restoring helm and RCS thrusters was something Fatiama knew she could do.

"I should write a paper on this," Amanda noted.  "Fatiama, your 'gravity plate'... do you know how it works?"

“Not a scientist or technician, just that it does.”
"Okay, so that's off the table.  Number four thrust unit's choking on helium because it's not exhausting.  So some things in this environment are different."

“Let’s see, if it’s choking, usually that indicates a blockage.”

"Camera view."  Amanda showed her.  "See?  The hot helium's just building up at the edge of the KF field instead of going, so there's no equal-and-opposite to push us forward, just a growing cloud of superheated gas molecules, presumably with the same velocity we're at, once they reach the limit of our 'pocket' of real space."

“Which means if we let it, it’ll eventually fill the pocket with superheated helium.”

"Yeah, which is why I'm shutting it down, and wondering if we can't come up with something reactionless instead."

“Hmmm… What if we tried to impart a magnetic field in the helium?”

"Can't hurt to try."

“So how to magnetize superheated helium…”

"’Magnetizing’ plasma, you mean, this is just helium plasma.  Let's figure that out?  First statement of real science, so my mother says, is admitting you don't know something, and it becomes science when you try to figure it out."

“Helium is non ferrous and magnetics tend to break down at high temperatures.”  Fatiama started pondering.  “Maybe instead of making the helium magnetic we should make a pole with a magnet to disrupt a localized area of the KF field to let the plasma out?”

"Well, we're dead if we don't do something-or as good as dead, so let's try it!" Amanda grinned in a way Fatiama hadn't seen yet from her-a look of eager amusement and maybe a touch of humor.

“{Humans have the most unsettling smiles…}” Fatiama grumbled again.

"{I heard that,}" Amanda chirped.

“{Wait, you can understand me?}”

"We've been in this for three months, Fatiama, and you make those asides constantly."

“Three months… Has it really been that long already?”

"I've gone to sleep-not passed out, gone to sleep ninety seven times since we met… So it's logical to assume three months, more or less, has passed… Also, that's how many ration packs we've each gone through."

“I must admit it’s hard to say.  Keeping track of time with no day-night cycle even with clocks is difficult in this sort of environment.”

'Figure that we're also near the core, and based on superstition, time flows differently the further out you get from an active KF core, and ours is at least partly active…so objective time I have no idea, but subjectively, ninety seven wakeups and ninety seven one-day Ration packs each, means ninety seven days."

“What’s really scary about that is I haven’t had my period the entire time…”

"Want to borrow some supplies?  I've been hitting mine regularly, if my other estimates are correct."

“I think it means I’m experiencing time differently than you are.”

"Or , simpler answer, is that you didn't get the side effects and your suit catheters took care of the mess."

“Possibly.  This realm is weird.  I can feel it having all sorts of odd effects on me.”  Fatiama was certain that something was wrong with her body, but not the cause.

"I bet we both smell bad when we pull off the suits, Fatiama.  Like 'summer sun at the docks on strike' bad."

“Probably by now.  Maybe we should set up a shower when we get back to our oasis.”

"I use sponges.  Like I asked, would you like some hygiene time with soap and…well, it's not HOT water, but it's warmer than ambient."

“Yeah.  I think I need it.”

***

"Okay, that didn't work."

***

"...mark that one off as 'didn't work’." Amanda sighed, "let's figure out why?"

***

"Turn it off-turnitoffturnitoff!!"

***

"Okay, new plan, we broke it.  Let's see if we can do better with thrust unit five."

***

"Science, Amanda, is not supposed to go 'Bang'," Fatiama scowled.

"But we learned something new," Amanda replied.  "Let's see if thrust unit two…"

“Narakin give us insight and wisdom,” Fatiama prayed to her goddess of Knowledge and Wisdom.

***

The arc passed through everything before they could turn it off.  Unfortunately this included Amanda, who needed a lie-down, leaving Fatiama's headache to start…  Easing.

It began easing because the disjunction was easing up.  Not exactly reality, but the discord between what she'd seen and felt probing out of the KF field, and what she once 'knew' to be true.

"You need a lie-down, Amanda."


"I need to check the program, see if we have a map yet."  Amanda stubbornly went to CIC.

“I can do that, you need to rest.”

"I can rest in the chair.  Did you check our hydrogen tankage?  Because it's running LOW, we may end up back in realspace 'wherever' pretty soon.  Fusion engines don't run on dreams."

“Fine.  And yes, just like you showed me.  It is true we’re running out of time to choose our destination instead of it being chosen for us.”

***

Fatiama understood the basic focal principles easily enough, and had been doing her best to pay attention to what Amanda was saying.  Despite hyperspace’s unusual nature it still had some slim relation to real space, namely the distortions caused by stars in real space that translated over to hyperspace due to their gravitational influence.

“Okay… So how do I figure out which star is which distortion…”  Fatiama said as she climbed back out on the hull with the improvised rig.

Fatiama shook her head as she had a truly terrible idea.

“She needs help that I can’t provide and she needs it now and the ship is running low on fuel.”  Fatiama gave herself more slack on her safety line, and then jumped off the hull.

The headache was incredible, almost completely debilitating but she pulled herself back to the hull.

“Memo to self, never do that again,” Fatiama groaned.

But her experiment confirmed something.  This hyperspace was interacting with her precognitive abilities in a way she wasn’t used to but was starting to understand, even though it was not pleasant.

Fatiama took her readings and plotted them against the data she managed to pull from the nav computer.

“Okay, so we are here, and if I can figure out how to deal with that short we’ll come out…There.”  Fatiama traced her finger across an imaginary map in front of her.

As imaginary as it was, she knew it was accurate.

She packed up the instrument and returned to the sanctuary to check on Amanda.

“Good, still asleep but stable.”  Fatiama could sense something…

“Something to remember me by,” Fatiama figured it out as she slipped the necklace that she wore with Kham Sither’s improvised engagement ring on it off her neck and onto Amanda’s.

Fatiama took her tablet and gravity plate back.

Next she returned to the fusion toroids and looked at six.

“I think I know how to fix you on my own now…  I just need to break your circuit for a moment…”  Fatiama hefted the Halligan tool around and threw it.

For the brief moment she needed, it broke the circuit and she manhandled the massive cable.  Even for her it was nearly too much, but it was back where it should be.

An alarm Amanda had set up sounded, and Fatiama felt a surge of something ahead.

The system tripped and the ship returned to normal space.

Discontinuity

To Be Continued

Interlude

The wreck of the KCGM Melinda Weintraub emerged at over 55 meters/second through the gateway at Kowloon, and had to be caught and captured by Coast Guard personnel.

Only the ship's cadet navigator, Amanda Roshak-Ngo, was alive aboard, still strapped to her post in the ruins of the CIC.

She was found alone.

Amanda never told anyone about the necklace that she found around her neck.

[Daryk]

Good break point! :)

[monbvol]

Part Three is going to be interesting to break up within the forum posting limits, there are some pretty long sections in here where a good break point for posting will be difficult to find.