The pilots of Eight-Ball Squadron weren't directly involved in any of the really strange incidents of that Monday afternoon. They participated in the military operation against the unidentified attackers of Musashi City, then returned to their hangar on the Prometheus and went off-duty.

They weren't on the planet's surface when their leader, Commander Benjamin "Gryphon" Hutchins, joined the Lovely Angels and the WDF Shadow Squad in handling a hostage situation at the Seventh Street School. They weren't on flight standby when an inexplicable fight broke out between chief engineer ReRob Mandeville and a woman he had recruited for the Hammers special-ops unit a few months earlier, so they didn't launch in support when that fight ended up happening outside the hull of the SDF-17. They missed it all.

The first of them to have any inkling that something weird was going on was Erik "Saurian" Swimm, who happened to be in sickbay using some of the diagnostic equipment on his cyborg parts when first ReRob - missing an arm! - and then the wounded from the Seventh Street School operation arrived. Rob's story, that his recruit had turned out to be some kind of replicant mole operative who tried to assassinate him, was strange enough - but the aftermath of the Seventh Street School op was even stranger. Gryphon had managed to get shot all to hell, Kei Morgan was wounded, and the whole... the whole vibe was just weird.

Erik watched the medics work on Kei for a few moments; she had a blaster wound in the shoulder, nothing too serious. He walked over to her and said, "Hey."

Kei looked up, and Erik was surprised to see that she looked terrible. Kei had a knack for looking fresh even after a pitched firefight. She enjoyed combat, got off on it on some weird visceral level. Even being wounded usually couldn't dent her high. This time, though, her face was drawn, her eyes surrounded by dark circles. She looked haunted, and there was something ugly lurking behind her deep brown eyes.

"Hey, Erik," she said, her voice hoarse and a little listless.

Erik inclined his head toward the closed bay where chief medico Jenna Steen had taken personal charge of Gryphon's treatment. "What happened to Gryph?"

Kei's hands balled into fists. Her face's lines hardened and turned glacial.

"I did," she grated. "And as soon as I get the chance I intend to finish the job."

Erik blinked. The only thing he could think of to say was, "What?!"

"You'll find out soon enough," Kei said. "Everybody will."

"Find out what? Kei, what's going on?"

She turned fully to him, glaring. The ugly thing behind her eyes was more evident now, the intensity there almost making Erik draw back.

"Don't. Push me," she snarled.

"Okay," Erik said, backing off. "Okay. It's cool."

It sure as hell isn't cool, he though as he left sickbay. What the fuck is going on?

The other pilots of the squadron were thinking more or less the same thing, but no answers were forthcoming that evening. When they asked the bridge for more information, they were informed only that Captain MegaZone was taking personal charge of the matter - whatever the matter was. Not even threats of mayhem could get q to come across with more, and Zoner himself was unavailable. Squadron exec Dave Ritchie considered breaking into his ready room and trying to wring answers out of him the old-fashioned way, but in the end, he decided to wait and see what happened the following day.

It was a decision he would always regret.

Tuesday, September 11, 2288

The next day was worse. Zoner withdrew even further, the SDF-17's internal communication system automatically blocked any attempt to reach Gryphon - even Eve didn't seem to know what the hell was going on. Eight of the pilots of the Eight-Ball Squadron, plus a few of their longest-serving technical personnel, gathered in the Corner Pocket, the squadron's ready room aboard the Prometheus, and speculated.

"Maybe it's a setup for some kind of undercover op," Patricia "Terror" Currier suggested.

"They'd tell us if they were doing that," Erik disagreed.

Chief technician Jean-Coq "Johnny Cogs" Raltigue nodded. "Remember what happened in 2102 when they didn't? They wouldn't risk that happening again."

Therèse Sterling, third-youngest of the seven Sterling sisters and crew chief for the second element of White Flight, added, "Kowalewski in Maintenance D told me at lunch today that Gryphon killed somebody dirtside. Somebody he wasn't supposed to kill, and now there's hell to pay with Command."

"Well, that'd fit with his being under house arrest," Daver mused, "but... I dunno, I mean, Kowalewski. Last year he thought they were going to replace the Alphas with that droid fighter."

Therèse shrugged, the gesture making her shoulder-length magenta hair bob slightly. "True."

"Well, I don't like it," Mark "Haywire" Luchini said. "We oughta go up there and smack some sense into Zoner." He got up. "I'll go get my bat."

"Sit down, Mark," Daver said. "Believe me, I'm keeping that option open, but - "

The door opened, then, and the ninth pilot entered - Komilia Sterling, the eldest of Max and Miria Sterling's daughters and an Eight-Ball of long standing in her own right. She had in her hand an optical disc.

"And here's Miss Liberty now," Daver went on, smirking. "I see you got it."

"Do I ever fail you?" Komilia asked rhetorically as she tossed Daver the disc. "That's a copy of the supposed 'evidence' Kei gave to Zoner this morning. His basis for confining the boss to quarters and ordering a court-martial."

Miria Sterling blinked. "Court-martial? It's gone that far?"

Komilia nodded. "My contact in Security says it's some pretty heavy stuff."

"Well, we'll soon see," Daver said, slotting the disc into the ready room's briefing vidscreen. The display flickered, fuzzed, and then resolved into a security camera image of a school hallway, complete with hostage students and three captors. Gryphon appeared through a side door, took out the bad guys, and stood smiling as the students mobbed him, clearly thanking him for the rescue. And then...

Gasps and winces made the rounds of the room as the pilots and techs watched the slaughter and ensuing brief firefight with Kei. When the recording ended, they all sat in silence for a moment, trying to absorb what they had just seen - and then all started talking at once.

"Hold it, hold it, hold it!" Daver yelled, getting everybody's attention. "Settle down! There must be a logical explanation for what we just saw."

"Sure'n I'd like to know what it is," flight surgeon Ronan "Accuser" O'Meara agreed.

Hayao "Bulldog" Kakizaki, a burly pilot from Tomodachi who was the squadron's latest in a long line of Eight-Ball Tens, looked skeptical and scratched the back of his head. "Well, I dunno," he said. "I mean... that video's authenticated, and the boss never has liked kids much." He shrugged. "People crack up in combat sometimes. Maybe he did it."

Before anyone could stop her, Miria Sterling was out of her seat, her fist like a bolt of lightning, and Kakizaki - a man easily three times her mass - went sprawling across the floor, scattering folding chairs in his wake.

"Whelp!" Miria spat, her emerald eyes flashing with rage. "How dare you!" She advanced, apparently intent on giving the junior pilot more medicine, but her husband Max interposed himself, hands on her shoulders. "Do not interfere, Maximilian!" she snapped. "Lt. Kakizaki clearly needs a lesson in loyalty."

Max looked back over his shoulder and said, "You better get out of here, Kakizaki."

Kakizaki, looking puzzled and hurt, got to his feet and rubbed at his jaw. "Jeez, Max," he said. "All I was saying - "

"Now," Max said, his own normally mild voice just sharp enough to startle the younger pilot and send him from the room.

Miria watched him go, then relented, growling. "You defend the indefensible," she told her husband. "Do any of you seriously believe what you have just seen?"

Daver looked thoughtful. "Well, it's not entirely conclusive by itself."

"Not entirely conclusive?!" Miria blurted, astonished. "It is idiotic. It is obscene. I cannot believe you even consider the matter worthy of discussion, David."

Daver shook his head, looking as somber as any of them could ever remember seeing him. "I'm not going to argue this with you, Miria," he said. "All of you - get to your quarters and try to get some rest. I'm going to see how much more I can dig up. For God's sake, don't go running off in all directions on your own investigations, you'll just get in my way. We'll meet back here at 1700 and talk it over. Dismissed."

The pilots and techs dispersed, muttering among themselves. Miria, still angry, shrugged off Max's comforting hand and strode into the nearest turbolift without him. Komilia turned to her father and nodded, then followed her mother.

She found Miria on the SDF-17 officers' observation deck, at the top of the bridge tower, a few minutes later. The Zentraedi pilot stood at the biggest of the forward windows, looking out at the green arc of Musashi below, her face blank.

"Mom... are you okay?"

Miria looked back at her daughter, then returned her gaze to space. "No, Komilia," she replied. "I am not okay. I could only be less okay, I think, if it were your father standing accused of this hideous thing, and those we thought our friends were turning against him as if spice-crazed." She gripped her shoulders in the opposite hands as if suppressing a shiver. "This is madness."

Komilia walked up behind her mother, wanting to give her a hug but not certain if Miria's fragile mood could withstand it. She settled for putting an arm over her shoulders and standing next to her.

"And fools like Kakizaki do not help," Miria added bitterly. "'You know, he's never liked children.' I have never liked members of Clan Lamiz, but I do not murder them."

Komilia sighed and raked her free hand through her thick blue-green hair, a gesture of frustration. "Hayao's kind of a lunkhead," she said. "You can't take everything he says at face value. Hell, he doesn't take everything he says at face value."

Miria stared out the window for a few moments, then said, not really in reply, "Benjamin was present when you were born. Did I ever tell you that?" Of course she had, many times, but Komilia kept silent, sensing that this was something her mother needed to say.

"Maximilian was on Zeta Cygni II," Miria went on. "I went into labor prematurely and he could not get back to the SDF-17 in time." She smiled slightly, almost involuntarily, at the memory. "Benjamin clearly wanted to be anywhere else... but he felt it was his duty as Maximilian's commander and our friend. I will never forget the look on his face when Dr. Steen put you in my arms. I think he was more awestruck than I was. I, the first Meltran ever to bear a child." She shook her head slowly. "To say that the man who stood by me that day could ever turn into the... thing I saw on that video screen... no. No, I will never believe that." Clenching her fist, she struck it half-heartedly against the window. "I cannot."

Komilia squeezed her mother's shoulder and said only, "I know."

Down below, a spacecraft took off from one of the Prometheus's lower launch bays. That wasn't all that unusual, and for a moment neither woman took note of it - until Komilia realized it wasn't a shuttle, or one of the other small craft that didn't normally use the catapults, but a Valkyrie.

"Hey!" she blurted, looking more closely. "That's - "

Miria's eyes went wide. "Oh, no. Benjamin, you fool... "

Then she turned and ran for the turbolift, with Komilia sprinting after her.

The afternoon unfolded worse than the morning. Gryphon's escape - which even Daver admitted had been ill-advised - led to a chain reaction that saw the Wedge Defense Force's command structure gutted within hours. Gryphon escaped; Kei went after him. That might have been expected. What happened next, though, took most members of the crew - though, Komilia would realize later, not Daver - by surprise. MegaZone, talking and moving like a man in a dream, resigned his commission and abandoned his post. He wasn't pursuing Gryphon or Kei, as far as anyone could tell - he was just leaving. Obviously heartbroken, Yuri departed immediately after him, also headed for points unknown.

Up on the bridge, ReRob refused to accept command, though he was next in the chain; the duty fell to q instead. In the Corner Pocket, the pilots of Eight-Ball Squadron didn't know this. They were suited up and ready to go, receiving from Dave Ritchie the strangest briefing of their careers. Daver was visibly pissed off, controlling himself by speaking very calmly and precisely - a state in which the other pilots rarely saw their normally easygoing exec.

"Okay, Eight-Balls, here's the deal," he said. "Our command staff's gone AWOL and left us in the lurch. I don't know exactly why, and frankly, I don't care. Our job is to go out there, round them up, and escort them back here so we can get to the bottom of this mess. The truth has to be down in Musashi City someplace. The Nazgûl are down there looking for it. Hopefully by the time we get back they'll have something for us. In the meantime, I've had the tech crews fit all our Valkyries with hyper packs and the Great Lidless Eye is out there right now getting trace vectors for us."

Turning to each pilot in turn, he rapped out orders in quick, clipped tones. "Genius. Liberty. Bulldog. I'm sending you after Kei. Max, you've got the best track record in talking down homicidal women; if that fails, you'll need backup to disable the Lovely Angel without blowing her to hell. Terror. Accuser. You've got Yuri. If necessary, use the cookie gambit. Haywire. Saurian. It's up to you two to hunt down Zoner. Take out the WarpZone if you have to, just get him stopped. Don't worry about limb loss, we can always grow him new ones. Megaera, you and I are going after Gryphon. Hopefully we can track him down. He's got the biggest lead on any of us." Daver raked the group with intense eyes. "Questions?"

No one had any.

"Okay," Daver said. "Let's go get our guys back. Eight-Balls never quit!"

"Eight-Balls never quit!" the others chorused; then they rose and left the room.

"As they were leaving, Kakizaki trotted to catch up with Miria. "Senior Lieutenant Sterling?" he said hesitantly. Miria paused and turned a questioning look on him. "I... " Kakizaki looked at a loss for a moment, then snapped to attention and saluted. "I apologize for my earlier remarks! They were insensitive and ill-considered!" he barked.

Miria smiled despite her black mood, touched by the young pilot's slightly goofy earnestness. "You are forgiven, Lieutenant," she replied. "I'm sorry too. I should not have hit you." Then, clouting him on the shoulder, she said, "Now get a move on! We have a job to do."

Kakizaki grinned. "Yes, ma'am!" he said.

Less than a minute later, just as the Eight-Balls were leaving the elevator onto the flight deck, all hell broke loose. Without warning, a massive impact raced through the SDF-17 and its two attendant carriers, hurling people - including the Eight-Ball pilots - to the deck. The convulsion came just as Komilia was about to step through the arch into the main Eight-Ball hangar bay, flinging her down hard on the metal plating and stunning her momentarily. A hand grabbed her elbow - her father, helping her up.

"What the hell's going on?" she demanded over the sudden din of alert sirens and damage warning horns.

As if in answer, the big display screens mounted like a hockey arena Jumbotron in the center of the hangar bay ceiling flickered to a display of the biggest damn Star Destroyer any of them had ever seen. Barrages from more turbolaser batteries than anyone aboard the SDF-17 had time to count started savaging the fortress. And in an inset window, the face of Largo appeared and taunted them - though in silence, for the speakers were drowned out by all the alarms in the cavernous space of the hangar.

"Get to your fighters!" Daver bellowed, hauling up a stunned Haywire and Bulldog and propelling them toward the Super Valkyries parked on the deck. "We have to get out there now!" The nine pilots sprinted across the hangar toward their ships, which technicians were even now scrambling to finish preparing.

The SDF-17's spaceframe hummed with the familiar harmonic vibration of the Reflex cannon, and for a second, all the running pilots stopped and looked up at the screens, expecting to see the beam wreak havoc on the enemy ship.

Instead it vanished, shunted into nowhere by the Star Destroyer's phase shields.

"Fuck!" Haywire yelled.

"My sentiments exactly, now move!" Terror said, shoving him.

They had just reached the formation of parked Valkyries when a massive turbolaser salvo ripped through the armored flight deck overhead, blowing away the Jumbotron and sending shrapnel flying everywhere. Forcefields sprang online and kept the atmosphere in, but the damage was catastrophic nonetheless - and vacuum would at least have put out the resultant fires, which filled the hangar bay with heat and hellish orange light.

"Look out!" Kakizaki roared, throwing himself forward in a flying tackle and knocking Therèse Sterling, who was standing next to his VF-1A disconnecting the reaction mass fill hose, to the deck. A jagged chunk of hull plating hurtled past overhead, narrowly missing them. Had he not knocked her down, it would have cut Therèse in half.

"Phew!" she said. "Thanks, Bulldog. That would've - " She stopped as she realized that Kakizaki wasn't trying to get up and board his fighter. He was just... lying there. Dead weight. "... Bulldog?"

Suddenly panic-stricken, she shoved at his shoulder, working her way from under the big-boned, heavy pilot. Once she managed to scramble to her feet, she realized why he hadn't moved. None of the Eight-Ball pilots had put on the hard CVR-3 armor components over their Valkyrie flightsuits; they were stowed aboard the fighters themselves. The back of Kakizaki's flightsuit was shredded, shards of metal jutting bloodily from his flesh, and one had struck him just at the base of the skull. He hadn't had a chance.

Therèse stared in horror at the ruined thing that had been a friend a moment earlier. She had seen death before, seen pilots go out and not come back, but this was different. No one had ever had his life snuffed out right in front of her - right on top of her - before. She was proud of her self-possession, proud that she had inherited a measure of her father's legendary coolness under pressure, but now she was frozen, paralyzed, not with fear but sheer shock. How could something like this be happening?

Komilia's hand on her shoulder snapped her out of it.

"Therèse!" she yelled over the cacophony of fire alarms. "We have to get out of here!" Komilia turned and looked over the VF-1A standing next to them. It was unharmed - the Valkyrie was a sturdy, heavily armored spacecraft, not likely to be damaged by something as random and undirected as spall damage from a hull breach.

"Take Kakizaki's Valkyrie!" Komilia shouted. "Stay close to me! Therèse! Do you read me?"

Therèse blinked, then shook her head. "Yeah... yeah, I read you," she said quietly. Turning to the Valkyrie, she pulled down its telescopic boarding ladder and started to climb toward the cockpit. Komilia slapped her on the calf as she climbed, then turned and sprinted for her own fighter. The other Eight-Balls were aboard, already spooling up their turbines. Johnny Cogs and the other techs sprinted for shelter, knowing that the hangar would depressurize at any moment.

As Komilia brought the systems in her VF-1J online, the face of Eve appeared on the center multifunction display.

"All craft, retreat," she announced, her voice calm but sad. "The SDF-17's fold drive and primary shields are disabled. The ship's destruction is imminent. Prometheus, Daedalus, undock and withdraw. All fighters, disperse. All hands to escape craft."

The pronouncement hit Komilia like a hammer to the back of the head. The ship's destruction is imminent.

As if to drive it home, the EVE logo appeared on the screen, bearing a subtitle Komilia had never seen before outside of the occasional drill:

FINAL PROTECTION MODE

Komilia had no more time to reflect. It was time to go. The elevators were out, the deck crew scattered. Daver blew the doors at the end of the bay with a Mauler anti-ship missile and the nine Super Valkyries just went for it, using the brute thrust of their engines and FASTpack dorsal boosters to tear them free of the Prometheus's artificial gravity.

The Eight-Balls scattered into space. Komilia tried to keep track of the others, but it was the most chaotic battle scene she'd ever seen. GENOM fightercraft were everywhere - contract-built Lancers, old-fashioned Invid-class mecha, Vulture boomer fighters - and they were bent on wiping out the small craft that were trying to escape. Daedalus had already undocked and Prometheus separated immediately after the Eight-Balls launched. And the SDF-17...

... the SDF-17 was burning.

"Two to all Eight-Balls," Daver's voice crackled in her ears, flattened into the narrowest of sidebands to defeat GENOM jamming. "Keep those fighters off the lifeboats!"

Komilia gritted her teeth, summoning up the fire of her Zentraedi blood within her, and pushed aside the horror and the fear. Time for that later, if there was a later. Right now, she had a job to do.

The Eight-Balls didn't even see the Wayward Son's final attack, so busy were they protecting the lifeboats. The GENOM forces ignored Daedalus and Prometheus entirely, leaving them free to navigate clear and hyper out, but the small craft went after the SDF-17's lifeboats like sharks after chum, and it was all the few fighters that had managed to launch could do to keep them at bay. Komilia caught flashes of a few other squadrons' craft - an Alpha from the Firehouse Gang, one of Def Leppard's Raptors, a Judicator from the Dam Busters, a WCDN Gundam - amid the melee, but she was mostly occupied with just keeping herself, and as many of her shipmates as possible, alive.

Through it all, Therèse stuck to her like glue. Though not combat-rated, she was a certified Veritech pilot, checked out in all the types the WDF fielded, and had the most hours in the Valkyrie; besides which, she was a Sterling. Her performance may not have been the sort of virtuoso exhibition one expected from her parents or her eldest sister, but she acquitted herself well - and kept herself alive, which to Komilia was the most important thing.

Komilia was jerked away from her relentless search for targets by the sudden blinding flash of the Reflex cannon firing again. She turned her head - her Valkyrie battroid's head automatically followed - and she saw to her astonishment that the ravaged SDF-17 had rammed the GENOM ship amidships, at a sharp aftward angle, and blown her guts out from the inside. The Star Destroyer was already breaking up as she fell. The SDF-17 pulled free of her vanquished foe, and for just a second, even though the ship was hideously damaged and battered, the tips of her Reflex booms melted completely away, Komilia expected to see her main drives flare back to life and lift her out of Musashi's gravity well, smashed and torn but not defeated.

It never happened. There was no one left alive aboard the fortress to restart the engines, and no spark in the Reflex furnace to power them if there had been. The SDF-17 fell silently away, began to glow with re-entry heat, and then was lost to sight as the planet turned away. A few seconds later, a diamond flare appeared on the upper limb of Musashi's arc as the GENOM ship's hulk struck ground and her engine cores ruptured.

It was as if Musashi's atmosphere had caught fire. A wave of flame rippled across the slowly turning face of the world, traveling at a speed that Komilia couldn't even begin to calculate. Below her, what had been a lush jungle planet burned to a poisoned cinder. Anyone caught outside a shielded environment would be incinerated.

She was watching a whole planet die.

Blaster impacts against her Valkyrie's armor snapped Komilia out of her stunned reverie. The Star Destroyer might be gone, but the fighters weren't - and reinforcements might arrive at any moment. She switched back to fighter mode and took up the battle again.

"All fighters, this is the Wedge," came a voice - thanks to the compression, Komilia had no idea whose it was - in her ears. "All SDF-17 lifeboats are aboard. We're jumping to hyperspace. Disengage and save yourselves if you can. It's every man for himself now." There was a pause; then, quavering with emotion audible even through the tiny sideband, the speaker added, "Good luck. Wedge out."

The fighters were still thick and furious, and now smaller Star Destroyers were starting to pop out of hyperspace. One nearly collided with the Wedge, arriving just as the latter vessel vanished. Komilia ground her teeth, wavering on the edge of a full-blown red-out, fully prepared to see just how many GENOM personnel she could take to Hell with her, but just as she turned toward the nearest Star Destroyer - one of the new Imperator-class ones, roughly the size the SDF-17 had been - she heard a voice in her ear. It wasn't flanged, wasn't compressed; it was as if the speaker were in the cockpit with her, speaking directly into her ear.

It was the voice of her mother, and it said,

Run, Komilia! Run!

She wavered for an instant, her Zentraedi blood furious at the thought of retreat, of turning tail and fleeing -

- until she remembered that Therèse was with her, that she'd told her younger sister to stick with her. Therèse would do that, Komilia knew. Even if she mounted a suicidal frontal attack on the nearest Star Destroyer's bridge tower, Terry would follow her in.

Komilia might just be willing to go out in a blood-frenzied blaze of glory, Khyron Kravshera style, but she would never take her little sister with her.

"Therèse!" she called. "Slave your navicomputer to mine and hang on!"

"Roger! Navicomputer... slaved and standing by!" Therèse replied, and Komilia allowed herself a momentary swell of pride at the cool, together way her sister spoke on the com. She sounds just like Dad, she thought.

Komilia gunned one last Vulture out of her flight path, then locked over the throttles and cut in her FASTpack's hyperspace motivator. The stars smeared and vanished as the unit catapulted her Valkyrie into hyperspace. She looked back over her shoulder and saw Therèse's VF-1A holding formation with her.

"How you holding up, little sister?" she asked.

She knew they were both in shock, their minds numbed by all they'd just seen. She held onto that, determined to ride it as long as she could. That numbness was armor right now, insulation against a breakdown that could cost them both their lives if it came at the wrong moment. They were still in terrible danger. Escape into hyperspace was no guarantee against pursuit. If Komilia could keep her grip, she could get Therèse through - she hoped.

"I'm... I'm okay," Therèse replied. She sounded a little less steady now, but she was holding on. Komilia decided a little reinforcement was in order - and what she was about to say was nothing more than the truth, anyway.

"You did good back there," she said. "Kept it together, kept yourself alive. I'm proud of you."

"I've got some damage," Therèse reported after a few moments. "I'm airworthy, but one of my actuators isn't responding to diagnostics. I think I'm stuck in fighter mode."

"Well, that's okay," Komilia replied with a confidence she didn't fully feel. "We won't need to be doing any more fighting today."

"Where are we going?"

"No idea," Komilia admitted. "There wasn't time to do more than punch it and hope for the best."

She looked down at her instrument panel and for the first time noticed the flashing icon of an ENB message. The Extremely Narrow Band comm system was used for burst communications between small craft. It had a very long range and required little enough power that it could be carried aboard fighters, but the signal band, as the name suggested, was very narrow - so narrow it could only be used for short text messages.

Calling up the ENB menu, Komilia saw that the message had arrived during the end phase of the battle, just after the comm system logged the final call from the Wedge. It said:

M M E M OK RDVG

"Change of plans," Komilia said, "inasmuch as we even had plans. Stand by for course correction."

"What's up?"

"I have an ENB message from Maia. She's calling for Rendezvous G."

Therèse's voice held a note of hope for the first time that day. "She got out?"

"They all got out. The others are with her."

"Oh, thank God. Okay, ready for course correction."

Komilia punched the new course into her navicomputer and executed it, watching hyperspace tumble weirdly for a few seconds until the new course was locked in.

"On course for Rendezvous G. ETA... a long damn time at h-factor one."

"Do you think Mom and Dad will be there too?"

"I hope so," Komilia said. "I didn't hear anything from them after the furball started, but I imagine they got Maia's message too."

"What do we do once we get there?"

Komilia sighed deeply - not at her sister's questioning, which was all perfectly reasonable, but because of the answer she had to give.

"I don't know, Terry," she said.

Therèse had no response. There was silence as the two Valkyries streaked through hyperspace in close formation; then Komilia's voice, low and flat, whispered across the space between them.

"I don't know anything any more."

"Eight-Ball Elegy" - An Out in the Cold Mini-Story by Benjamin D. Hutchins
With help from Philip J. Moyer
Special to the Eyrie Productions Discussion Forum
© 2007 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited