“Massetti’s or Nguyen’s?” Her question deflected attention from Steph and allowed her to recover herself for a moment while the subject was roundly debated and the die cast in favor of French-Viet cuisine. They set off happily chattering amongst themselves with Elissa bringing up the rear, hand in hand with her wife.

“She’s growing up so fast… I swear it seems like it took longer with Jamie.”

“Its always too fast, love. Never enough time in all the world to love them.” Elissa squeezed Shannon’s hand and gave her a quick kiss. The two women followed their brood of children, content for the moment to savor the togetherness, to make memories to carry them through what may yet come.

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And now…

Sean looked up from her work to watch Ken dropping the girder into place in the brackets, closing the doors against bitter cold and whatever else might be out there. He started shedding clothing almost immediately but still took a little time before he was down to his thermals and had everything stacked in his careful methodical way.

“So we’re not leaving this morning?” She asked, glad that he had his back turned and couldn’t see her half-smirk.

“I don’t think we’re leaving anytime soon… its been like this for 2 days now and I don’t see any sign of it letting up. On the plus side, it’s a fair bet that nothing else is moving in this either and it has pretty thoroughly camouflaged any track either of us may have left. The last storm like this lasted almost 3 weeks and the winds were over 200 KPH. Its basically not survivable outside of a really decent shelter…” He paused for a moment. “Did you run into any storms like this on the way down here?”

“4 of them. I had to find shelter and just stay in place until it let up but I don’t recall any of them lasting 3 weeks. Maybe the storms aren’t as nasty farther north?” She started closing her work down, verifying each segment of code before shifting it to her semifinal working file.

“I guess that makes sense… there’s more heat transfer going on in more southern latitudes although if I had to guess it seems like the major ocean currents haven’t been disrupted totally. I think the ice gets thinner out where we were because of the warm water from the Gulf Stream but even that doesn’t keep it clear. There’s a zone about 10 miles further out where the ice is still pretty thick but its all broken up and I wasn’t willing to go any further out on it.”

“That was likely a good call, Ice like that can open up under you with no warning. On the plus side, this means we can be fairly certain even deep rivers will be fully frozen over and not present serious obstacles.” She laughed at his bemused expression. “You can’t tell me you didn’t take that into account. I’ve been through the inventory.”

“I did” he admitted, a little grudgingly. “But I didn’t count on it, that’s why I sealed them up the way I did. In an emergency there’s enough juice stored to run fully submerged for up to a week but that all depends on surviving a fall through the ice with an intact vehicle. Not a chance I want to take if I can avoid it but the further south we get the more likely something like that is. That’s one of the functions of the tanks, to test ice and terrain if needed. Their weight puts more point loading on the ground than anything else and if the surface can stand one of those running over it the greater weight distribution of the train as a whole won’t be a problem. At the very worst we lose a tank but its pretty likely those will survive if they fall through and be able to make it back out under its own power.”

Sean finished closing out her work and stood, stretching to get the kinks out from the long period sitting in one position. “That’s pretty amazing. I can’t say I would have ever considered a submarine tank but it totally works!”

Ken blushed behind his beard and she grinned at him, arching her back a little as she stretched. “I can’t say it hurts my feelings to sit here in comfort for a while. I didn’t realize how worn down I was at first but a couple of days without the constant routine of traveling brought it home pretty solidly. Even the fishing trip was more fun than I’d had in ages… outside of bed that is.” She felt her face heat as she thought about the time they’d spent entwined in each other.

Ken moved over to the kitchen area and lifted the lid on a pot, tasting the contents and replacing the lid. “Maybe another hour till its ready. We’re going to be a little heavy on the canned seafood right now because a lot of that stuff expires within the next year and I hate the thought of wasting it.”

“That’s ok, I’m eager to try a few of the things you’ve described. You must have spent quite a bit of time assembling these meal plans from the level of detail I saw?”

“More than a little bit I’m afraid. The imagination tends to run away a bit when you’re so utterly alone… thinking about food is an easy way to lose yourself in memories. Everything there is ranked by expiration dates, that kind of thing.” Ken grinned at her and she felt his mirth. “I went a little food-mad when I discovered a mostly intact supermarket a while back. For a while there I dreamed about food every night, thought about it constantly while I was working or whatever. I gained a lot of weight just then but I was working really hard so not much of it went to fat and when I stopped doing so much heavy physical work I had to deliberately reduce my intake. That was when I sat down and planned everything out. I built in allowances for fresh catch, that sort of thing... I guess it all needs rebalancing now but I built the spreadsheet out so that it could handle just plugging the foods in and letting it recalculate for an altered caloric load so its easily enough done. It can be weighted by food preferences too… I just couldn’t think of anything I wanted to favor that way.”

“Luckily MRE’s last practically forever so I can put them at the bottom of the list… If I never have to eat another it’ll be too soon!” Sean made a show of shuddering. “I took a look at the kitchen you installed. The way you put that together is really something. You can definitely tell you’ve had a lot of experience with cramming loads of stuff into very small spaces.”

“Comes from messing around with boats since forever and loving to cook. I’ve had a lot of time over the years to refine my idea of what a galley should be and how it should be built. I’ll still be sorry to leave this kitchen though… it might be a little spare but it has space and that’s the one thing I couldn’t build in.” He shrugged and came to sit across from her, reaching down and sharing a quick kiss on the way.

Sean reached up and traced a fingertip over her lips lightly, unaware she’d done it until after. “I’m glad you’re back in. It feels safe and solid in here, with you… I haven’t felt any of that in so long.”

Ken leaned over and took her hand. “I’m the one who has been here and fairly safe while you were out there by yourself but you being here makes me feel safer too. Its like I’m slowly waking up from a very long nightmare and realizing half of it was real… and yet, even in the middle of all of that there’s this bright spot… there’s you.”

They kissed again and both leaned back, content to be in each other’s company for the moment and secure in the warmth of what had quickly become more than just a shelter.

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Nimashet woke to an alarm from a monitoring station indicating the sudden termination of communications with one of her stealthy remote arrays. She made her way over to her primary workstation and brought up the logs for that and the others in close proximity, poring over them until it became clear that someone had located and deactivated it. She pondered for a few moments, certain this meant the loss of her eyes and ears on at least one ship, the one she least wanted to lose. Oddly enough another array which was very close was still active even though it had apparently been examined and put back into place.

There wasn’t anything to be done about any of it at this point though. She triggered a full sensor dump from the still active neighboring array and went back to her interrupted sleep, aware that the download would take at least an hour or two to complete. She was tired enough to fall back into sleep almost immediately and came back to awareness to the barely audible ping indicating a completed download. Rather than rushing into the work that awaited her she took a careful 30 minutes to prepare and eat a meal before sitting back at the workstation with a cup of hot tea in hand.

Another 30 minutes later she sat back and took a sip of her now cool tea, barely noticing in her excitement. The download revealed irregular movement in a spot which should see no traffic at all in normal circumstances. It was too random to be truly random and she recognized the signs of someone doing their best to be deliberately unpredictable. It was barely possible this was the result of an extremely well executed deception but there wasn’t enough information to decide. She sent out another query, this time more targeted toward other areas she had under observation and surrounding the times when movement showed in her existing data.

This data grab would take a significant time, several more hours but she was willing to take her time. Even if one of her bugs was discovered she was fairly certain their method of communication would remain a mystery to the finder since it did not use any form of radiation to avoid any betraying emissions. Instead they used a tiny gravity generator on a chip she’d designed to send micropulses of gravitational disturbance calculated to induce a harmonic in the ship’s gravity generators. This was small enough to remain unnoticed unless you were looking for it with the exquisitely sensitive detectors she had designed to complement them and gave her another bonus.

Gravitational pulses did not obey the same speed limit as light since they propagated through the fabric of spacetime itself. It wasn’t instant communication by any means but it was so much faster than any other form available that a distance measured in light-minutes only incurred a second or two lag time in communications. The downside was low bandwidth, hence the hours-long download times she had to deal with. Given the circumstance and the fact that literally no one else had this technology it was an acceptable limitation for the degree of stealth it enabled.

Nimashet spent the next several hours waiting, working on a new encoding scheme she’d designed in the past weeks which promised to yield a significant increase in bandwidth with the side benefit of another layer of encryption due to the compression method she’d devised. When her downloads were all complete she set started a search routine designed to pull out the patterns of movement and plot pathways. It took a few minutes but when she saw the result she felt her lips pulling upwards in a way that had become unfamiliar for her. It took a moment to realize that what she was feeling was a savage and predatory sort of joy.

She had her rats in the plumbing and they were apparently very stealthy rats too… now to see just how many of the other Earther ships had the same problem…

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Higalik performed her final check on the module she’d just finished, verifying for the 4th time that everything was within the tight tolerances she set for herself. The modules were designed to allow a certain amount of imprecision but her work ethic demanded she do the best she could with the tools and materials she had available. She almost started another check then mentally scolded herself for malingering.

This was the last of her work here and though she was excited at the prospect of the odyssey in store she was also a little afraid. Not afraid for her own life, not really… more that she would fail in some way and cause someone else to lose their life. That was the thing that caused her to obsessively check and recheck her work while continually driving herself to move faster without sacrificing quality even the tiniest bit.

There was a very real fear for her family and everyone else she know in the Saturn system, that if they failed in defeating the Earther fleet there would be reprisals but that fear also served to drive her determination to be the best she possibly could be. Along with that there was the uncertainty of all the interpersonal interactions shipboard life would require. She’d been away to university and mostly spent the trip there and back in her quarters or in the engineering spaces learning everything she could but those were small ships and her new home would have a crew of several thousand. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for that sort of thing.

She made her way back home , working through the usual unsuit and check routine automatically. Ilya greeted her warmly as she entered the common area and the 2 shared an embrace.

“So, tomorrow is the day, yes?” the other woman’s expression was solemn.

“Tomorrow is the day…” Higalik exhaled, almost a sigh “The day I go off to war.”

“I hope you know that we all support you. Look” Ilya pointed over to the main wall where family portraits hung. Sitting in front of the wall was a beautifully bonsaied dwarf oak with a yellow ribbon tied around its main trunk. “It is an old tradition from the North American Union dating back to the World Wars of the 20th century. It symbolizes our love for you and our hope for your safe return from the war. Mother brought the tree with her to Mars and brought it along when we escaped so I can’t think of any better way to express how we all feel about you.”

Higalik found her vision blurring with tears and had to swallow a few times to get the lump in her throat to relax. Her voice was still husky with emotion as she managed to get out her thanks and then had to hug her friend tightly while they both cried. “I’m going to miss you so much Ilya… You’ve become the sister I never knew I wanted or needed. I promise you this right now… If I am not killed in action I will be back and I will help untie that ribbon. When next I leave, it will hopefully be to do something other than make war. Exploring, construction… I don’t know.”

“I understand your destiny is out amongst the stars Higgy… I knew that the moment I met you. I’d thought maybe your brother had exaggerated that part of your being but being around you these past months has made it more clear than ever that you are not like us, not like settlers, people who are content to build a life in one place. Your very nature is to seek the unknown, to defend those who cannot defend themselves. It’s a good thing… Our universe demands your sort of person or the rest of us would now languish under the tyranny of a few.”

“Ilya, you give me too much credit. I’m no hero, no savior. I’m just a woman who sees what needs to be done and has the skills to do it. Nothing more.”

“You are wrong, sister. You are the cream which will rise to the top simply because it is where you belong. I watched the way you bossed the shipping crews and it was impressive. There was no doubt you were in charge but you never even gave an order, never a harsh word when someone screwed up, you just got right in there and helped unscrew it. Everything was phrased as a polite request and they were more than eager to do your bidding, to get your approval… and they got it. I have to say it was pretty amazing to watch grown men and women act that way toward someone their junior in both age and rank.”

“That’s as it may be Ilya but I won’t be bossing around transport crews shipboard. I don’t even know what I’ll be doing yet although I sincerely hope it isn’t kitchen duty. I don’t need “Poisoning half the ship” on my permanent record…”

“Have you seen your simulator scores? I know you’ve been spending at least 6 hours a day on it…”

Higalik frowned. “Why would I look at my scores? I keep losing scenarios and each time I win I lose the next level, over and over… it seems like I never make any progress…”

Ilya snatched up a tablet and poked about for a moment, bring up Higalik’s cumulative scores, split out by challenge-levels. The first thing she noted was the scoring system and that her scores were rated in the high 90th percentile at the very lowest.

“See? I haven’t gotten anything above a 98th percentile grade when everything went perfectly. Every percentage point off represents a casualty… its not good enough. I can’t go out there knowing I’ll lose at least one or two every single time. These scores make me not wing commander material, barely even EWO on a bomber. I’m afraid I won’t be good enough and because of it people will die.”

“You know, for such a brilliant woman you sure are a moron. If you’d bothered looking you’d notice that your scores are the highest amongst both the new recruits and the old experienced pilots. Your cumulative score is 96.99%, literally the highest scoring ever. The next closest is at 89.3% and he has 20 years experience on you. I don’t want you to get full of yourself or anything but you’re quite literally the best Saturn has to offer.”

“Then we’re in even deeper shit than I thought…” Higalik was interrupted by another hug, this one from her brother.

“Listen to her, little sister. It is not just our family that has faith in you, it is the entire planetary system. I know you bury yourself in your work and studies so you haven’t seen any of the gossip but you are being admired by most and practically celebrated by some. You have a fan club even!”

Higalik freed herself from his embrace. “Stop teasing me brother. No one knows who I am, why should they? I sit here and I make modules and in between I study and train. There’s nothing special about me at all.”

“Good, keep that attitude. It will serve you well Lieutenant.” Higalik looked over toward the voice and tried to hide behind her brother, finally giving it up as a bad deal and standing at attention to salute.

“Admiral! I had no idea you would be here tonight! Welcome to our humble home sir. Has anyone gotten you a drink?”

“We’re both in mufti here Lieutenant, no saluting necessary. I came to visit the most promising young officer in our incoming class. So much so that you have been given the rank of Lieutenant to begin with. If your testing and aptitude scores are any reflection of the performance I can expect you will rise in rank very quickly.” He held up a finger to forestall the protest he saw coming.

“This isn’t special treatment or favoritism. This is simply a case of identifying an outstanding talent and making the best possible use of her. For us to do otherwise would constitute dereliction of duty and that’s all I intend to say on the subject. Understood?” He grinned at her to take the sting out of his tone.

“You’re going to start out bossing an assembly and testing crew but once we’ve got the first full wing flightworthy you will be out there training and practicing as our first operational Wing Commander. You need to understand that you’ll be training the rest of the best, the people who will become the other Wing Commanders. You’ll have 3 months to create an effective fighter component before we arrive and another month to drill in coordination with the Hermes’ contingents. If our intel is correct there will also be a couple of Martian ships coming to render assistance as well as a sizable contingent of smaller Belter craft.”

“That’s… I have no idea how to do that, sir. I think you’re putting way too much confidence in testing scores here.” Higalik privately wondered just what sort of rabbit-hole she’d wandered down and whether she was dreaming all of this.

“Its not just your testing scores Lieutenant. It is your entire educational and work history, psychological profiles… literally every yardstick we have available to measure command talent puts you at the very top of the ratings. You’re not just suited for command, you’re born to it. It is as instinctive to you as breathing. Others recognize that in you and it gives them confidence, helps them to reach their own potential. We desperately need that… we’re starting out with a bunch of hotshot pilots who need someone to chase, to emulate… and you are her. Get used to it.”

“I’ll do my best, sir…”

“That’s all anyone can ever ask. Now, since we’re here in an informal setting, please call me Rob. May I call you Higalik?” he offered his hand in a clear gesture of personal greeting.

Higalik stared at it for a moment before remembering to respond, the turmoil of her thoughts causing the hesitation. Recovering quickly, she took his hand a grasped it firmly. “Yes, s… I mean Rob.”

“Good. Now I understand your brother has been slaving away in a hot kitchen for our dining pleasure but I am well informed that it will be another 45 minutes before he is ready to present the final product of his labors. I for one would like a cocktail and I’d be most flattered if a certain promising junior officer would join me for a private conversation?”

It was phrased as an oblique request but Higalik knew it to be more along the lines of an order so she led him over to a secluded area after pouring them both a healthy glass of whisky.

“Higalik…”

“Higgy please, if we are to be on a first name basis in this setting.”

“Higgy then. I wanted to make sure you understand something but it isn’t the sort of thing that can be known amongst the command crew. You are going to be my eyes and ears. In a lot of ways I’m out of the loop when it comes to the crew. Its good because it means people are doing their jobs but it also means I might not be aware of issues that need my attention until they become actual problems. If you see an issue and can handle it or cause it to be handled, well and good but if not I want to know about it.”

“Sir... Rob… that sounds an awful lot like being a spy and I have to tell you I’m not at all comfortable with that. I’m no snitch and if that’s what you want me to be I’ll tell you right upfront you won’t get shit from me, ever… and that includes my respect!” Higalik’s glare could have scorched holes in steel.

“Whoah there Lieutenant.” The admiral made a quelling gesture. “I’d never ask you to do anything like that and if you’d offered to do it I’d have lost any respect for you as well. I’m just asking you to do the same thing every junior officer is expected to do… but you’re not going to be a junior officer for very long and I want you be able to hit the ground running and in the process enhance our overall effectiveness. I will never ask you to betray a confidence that does not have direct bearing on the combat effectiveness of ship or crew but if its something you need help getting sorted I want you to come to me. Can you accept that?”

“I couldn’t accept anything less. Thank you for that si… Rob.” She was aware her feelings of relief showed on her face and for once she was glad of it.

“I’m glad we put that to rest. In fact, I’m glad you confronted me the way you did. It shows a strength of character we will sorely need in days to come and enhances my already high opinion of you. Now there’s only so much I can say until we get underway but I think you’ll find your duties will be… rather far afield from the expectations you’ve been given. You will be making far greater use of your studies than any of us had imagined.” His face was impassive as stone.

“I’m not sure I understand?”

“Just enjoy that for a little while. Soon enough you will understand far more than you ever wished. For now, let us enjoy this excellent whiskey and speak of more pleasant things, yes?” He waited for her slight nod of agreement. “I understand your family has a rather happy occasion tomorrow, one which I feel privileged to witness. I have known Ilya literally from the moment she was born and I could not think of a finer mate for her than your brother. It warms this old heart to see love blossom in the middle of…”

He stopped himself. “Happy thoughts, yes?”

They sat together in silence until the summons to dinner came.