by P H Campbell
The UGW didn't want their citizens to know that their most decorated, honored and acclaimed Scoutship commander had informally turned down an admiralty in the UGW Fleet, absconded with a fully functional Scoutship and had instead become a quietly wanted criminal charged with theft of UGW property.
Katy knew exactly what her reality was.
"I knew you could do it, Katy," Treah whispered.
Suddenly Katy felt gravity again, and the familiar sounds of her ship, and friend, around her. She opened her eyes knowing what she would see.
"Katy, what just happened?" Talon asked, the uncharacteristic uncertainty in his voice easy to hear.
"We were dead, but we're better now," Katy blandly replied, her reality dictating a calm and collected Scoutship commander. "Status?"
"We are not where we were, but we are still in the UGC zero zero five two system. Scans show incoming mercenary ships, carriers on the periphery, fighters closing in on the Botany Bay and the Destiny. But I don't have any records of where they came from, or how we got where we are. I seem to be malfunctioning."
"Weapons status?" Katy asked, holding off on trying to explain what happened to her partner until a more appropriate time to chat.
"Weapons are green," Talon replied. "Charging. Shall we engage?"
"Let's announce ourselves first," Katy decided as the Merc ships drew closer to the helpless Botany Bay and Destiny. "Can we take out that first wave with the main gun?"
"Yes, Katy, we can," Talon informed her.
"Do it," Katy ordered.
"Firing now," Talon said.
A blinding ray of pure energy cut through the first wave of fighters, vaporizing them in an instant.
"Open a frequency to the mining ship," Katy requested.
"Frequency open," Talon replied.
"Hi guys!" Katy called out. "Sorry we're late. Had to play dimensional chess to get back. Give us a few while we clean some clocks."
"Katy?" Ash's voice gasped.
"Can't talk now, Ash," Katy replied as she manned the sensor array. "Bad guys to kill and all that. Be with you soon."
"Connection closed," Talon said.
"We should have some Superhawks in the bays, now, yes?" Katy asked.
There was a pause while Talon got over the surprise of finding two recently destroyed Superhawk VI's in his launch bays, then he said, "So it seems, but how?"
"Let's shoot first, and ask questions later," Katy suggested, keying the targets to protect. "Launch them on full integration and have them protect the Botany Bay and the Destiny. Full emergency combat speed to the carriers. I want those bastards out of my sky."
"Superhawks launched," Talon reported. "Course set for carriers on an aggressive intercept trajectory. Accelerating at full emergency combat speed now."
The acceleration didn't even ruffle Katy's hair as the star field before them took on a notable blue hue.
"My inertial dampeners seem to have been fixed as well," Talon dryly noted.
"You're as good as new, my friend," Katy acknowledged. "Prepare the main gun and lets cut them out in one shot."
"Firing sequence plotted," Talon reported a moment later.
"Execute maneuver and fire at your discretion," Katy ordered.
The Scoutship dove in on the first carrier and fired, obliterating it completely. Without shutting down the weapon, Talon pivoted to the starboard, flying through space sideways, and nailed the second carrier, then did the same to take out the third, fourth, fifth and sixth carriers so quickly none had a chance to react.
Slightly radioactive dust was all that remained.
"Okay, let's get back and mop up the rest of the fighters," Katy ordered.
"Bleeding speed now," Talon agreed, rotating the ship on its axis another seventy degrees applying full thrust forward against their direction of travel. In a few minutes they had sped up once again to near light speed and came racing back to the battle. The Superhawks were somewhat the worse for wear, but they were tough ships, and the Mercs had been too rattled by the loss of their rides home to do much more than try to take their revenge on the Botany Bay and the Destiny.
The Superhawks were preventing them from lining up a single shot. Spitting destruction and death in all fields of axis, their shields taking hit after hit without much effect, the Superhawks had kept the swarm of mercenary ships from being able to close within firing range of the two vessels before they were disabled or destroyed
"Talon, usually this is the point where I call for surrender and be the good UGW officer," Katy mentioned. "Do you have any qualms if we simply take them all out?"
"Not in the least," Talon replied in his usual unruffled tone. "They're not fit to exist, but I'll open hailing frequencies if you want them to surrender."
"Open them," Katy said.
"Frequencies are open," Talon said, his voice indicating resignation to the inevitable.
"Attention mercenary fighters," Katy said. "I will give the last one of you safe passage to where ever you need to go to relay the message to the rest of your fellow scum that the Scoutship Talon protects this system. I will kill everyone else, as a lesson in how expensive trying to steal from this system will be if you're stupid enough to try it again. I'll let you discuss my offer amongst yourselves for the next five minutes for you decide which one of you to let live. Then we blast everyone else into a floating cloud of disassociated atoms. Your time begins now."
It took a full thirty seconds before the first mercenary fighter began shooting at another one. Within moments, it was a free-for-all, with everyone trying to kill everyone else so they could be the lone survivor.
Five minutes is a long time in combat. Katy watched, making sure no one attacked anything other than one of their own. Some tried to attack Talon, or the Botany Bay, and were promptly destroyed by Talon or the Superhawks guarding their charges under Talon's control.
Once the shooting was over, Katy asked, "Any survivors?"
"Several," Talon replied. "Most will not live another hour."
"Pick the healthiest one, disable their ship so they can't blow it up and take him in tow," Katy ordered. "Destroy the rest, and try to make it quick for them. No sense making them die horribly."
"Acknowledged," Talon agreed, and did as ordered. For several seconds, Talon was once again a blazing storm of death, leaving only one of the completely disabled mercenary fighters drifting in space. A beam lanced out from the Talon and grabbed it. "Survivor is in tow. Where to, now?"
"I'm thinking the planet would be a good place to take the trash," Katy mused. "If I turn this guy over to the Fusions, they'll serve him for dinner."
"They are not a forgiving people," Talon remembered the aftermath among the Fusions after the Purging.
"They had too much abuse to forgive," Katy commiserated.
"Course for UGC zero zero five two alpha laid in, Katy," Talon reported. "Slow re-entry."
"Fast enough to scare the crap out of him, though, right?" Katy asked.
"He might be a touch crispy, yes," Talon calmly replied.
"You're picking up my bad habits," Katy grinned.
Aboard the Botany Bay and the Destiny the celebrations were loud, long and alcoholic as Talon slowly flew past towing the disabled Merc fighter on the way to UGC 0052-A. Their sensors showed no hostile traffic anywhere in the system, and they hadn't received a single hit, nor suffered a single new casualty because of the battle.
The Twins sat stunned at the magnitude of the power the Talon displayed in its battle.
"That was one ship and one person," Ash observed.
"No, that was Katherine Reynolds and the Talon," Looie corrected her. "I don't think anyone else could have pulled that off the way she did."
"I won't argue with that," Ash agreed.
"Hey, we lived," Looie pointed out. "Should we get drunk yet?"
"I'd wait 'til we're off shift," Ash suggested. "I'd not want to get ticketed for drunken flying."
"You have no sense of adventure
," Looie accused.
With radio being the only current means of communicating with The World from space, Katy waited until the planet was close enough for the Talon to connect to their equipment before she announced her presence and intentions.
"Hello World, this is Katy Reynolds and Talon, is anyone home?" she said when Talon told her frequencies were available.
"Katy who and what?" the answer came back.
"Leave it to you to find the one place in the galaxy where someone doesn't know who you are," Talon remarked.
"Katy Reynolds," Katy reiterated. "Please patch me through to Seren. She'll want to talk to me."
"What?" the reply came.
"Do you know who Seren is?" Katy asked.
"Yes, of course, " the reply came. "Everyone does."
"Well, then please let her know we will land on that quaint little airfield I'm heading for, and that we have a very dangerous prisoner in tow who needs to deliver an important message to their people so they stop invading the system here," Katy patiently explained.
"I'm sorry, you're going to have to speak louder," the tech replied. "There's like, thunder here or something."
"That would be us," Katy tried to tell him, but they cut the connection as the tech switched frequencies. So she just focused on setting things down as gently as possible. A quick scan proved their reluctant passenger in tow hadn't been seriously harmed by reentry (or in this case, entry) and wasn't exactly in a rowdy mood.
Katy exited Talon with a stasis pod in tow on a gravity platform, waved to the growing crowd of gawkers, walked back to the wrecked mercenary fighter, extracted the unconscious pilot, dumped him in the stasis pod, sealed it up and turned it on. She towed the pod back into Talon then approached the throng and regarded them with a cheery expression.
"Hi folks," she waved. "I'm Katy Reynolds, which means nothing to you and I'm glad for that. But I'm here to talk with Seren. She's probably worried about me and my friend here, but I don't have her phone number, so I can't call her myself."
"Katy!" a familiar voice shouted out.
"You're Koreen, yes?" Katy waved as the small Electrian woman ran up.
"We thought ya might be dead," Koreen told her.
"In a way, I think I was," Katy admitted. "But Treah and Miralenda helped me get myself back. Just in time, too. Talon remembers nothing between when we vanished and when we got back. By the way, how long was I gone?"
"Uh, we got here yesterday, and I think the battle was two days before we got here, so three days," Koreen estimated. Koreen looked askance at the crowd and waved at them, "Get back to yer business!"
The crowd dispersed in a hurry.
"You're a little force of nature, aren't you?" Katy chuckled, amused.
"The communications center is this way," Koreen told her, giving her a wink for the compliment and walking in that direction. "We're runnin' kinda handicapped on account of the explosion in the sky blowing the shit outta our satellite we used to have in orbit that let us talk with the pads, but they're fabricatin' another one and we figure we can poke someone to put it back up there."
"I think Talon can handle that," Katy volunteered. "I have to admit I like your accent, though. Part English, part, what do you call it?"
"Common," Koreen shrugged. "I ain't so good in neither, but I get by."
"You do just fine," Katy assured her.
"So what happened up there?" Koreen asked pointing to the red star in the northern sky. "We saw all sorts o' lights and shit in the sky.
"Talon likes to make a flashy entrance," Katy understated the nature of their return.
"Heck of an entrance," Koreen allowed, then she pointed to the north and asked, "What're those dots hangin' in th' north an' south?"
"The north one is Miralenda, the south one is Treah," Katy told her, though exactly how she knew which was which was something she wasn't willing to discuss. Talon had done the flying to get them positioned, and she hadn't specified which was to go where. She just knew which was which.
Koreen stopped.
"Wait, they're up there?" she asked, stunned. "Are they alright?"
"I think so," Katy nodded.
Not sure whether she should find out with more certainty or accept Katy's assessment, Koreen asked, "Well, uh, are they stayin' up there?"
"Yes, and no," Katy remarked. "You can ask them yourself."
"Okay, how?" Koreen wondered. "By radio?"
"Just think about them and ask," Katy shrugged.
'We're fine Koreen,' Katy could also hear Treah's voice in her head.
'Never better,' Miralenda's voice added.
"Am I goin' crazy?" Koreen inquired pensively.
'It's complicated, but we're both here, and we're both fine and we're both able to talk to anyone from The World who was also on UGC zero seven five one charlie when Seren conjured Miralenda that last time,' Treah told them.
'It's a kind of exclusive fan club, members only, in a "you had to be there at the time to be a member" sort of way,' Miralenda added. 'It's an energy thing it exposed you all to.'
'We're energy now, and you being there tuned you to that energy,' Treah explained.
'There are other perks to being in this club we'll eventually explain, but all of us will help you learn about them,' Miralenda mentioned.
"All of us?" Koreen echoed, confused by the phrasing.
'Treah, me and Seren,' Miralenda told her. 'Katy is a lot more advanced than you are, because she got some pointers from us earlier, but she's still got a lot to learn, too.'
"Oh good," Katy remarked, glad to hear that she was part of this exclusive club. "I enjoyed creating that reality."
'That lesson was a one-off, Katy,' Treah told her. 'It gets weird from there, and you can't do what you did, exactly, again without understanding that weirdness.'
The notion it was possible to create one's reality and insert it into a specific place and time intrigued Katy to no end.
"Fair enough," she agreed, though she wasn't certain that Koreen understood why she was talking to herself.
Koreen continued her walk to the comm center in silence, thinking about what she'd been told. She reflected on what Seren had told her in the past and drew her own conclusion about what was happening.
"This sounds like magic," she finally said.
'Just like before,' Miralenda agreed. 'Only this time, it's just you nine, and Katy as a special circumstance, since she wasn't there when Seren conjured me. But there is one other thing you should know.'
"What's that?" Koreen wondered, the tone of Miralenda's voice more serious than usual.
'You will need to teach your daughter how to use her magic, Koreen,' Treah informed her. 'She is of this world and was on UGC oh seven five one charlie when Seren conjured Miralenda.'
That news didn't settle very well with the small Electrian.
"Son of a bitch," Koreen darkly muttered. "She's a handful at the best of times."
'Well, there's good news and bad news about that,' Miralenda told her. 'The good news is that you won't have to worry about that until she hits puberty.'
"Yeah, and the bad news is that I'll have to worry about it once she hits puberty, right?" Koreen remarked sarcastically as the two entered the comm center.
'Pretty much,' Miralenda agreed, amused by Koreen's tone. 'Talk with you soon.'
"Yo, tech, get me Seren," Koreen called out.
"You and everyone else," the Electrian on duty replied. "The comms are swamped."
"Shit," Koreen muttered.
"Is that new replacement satellite ready?" Katy asked.
"Should be, but we ain't got no way to get it up there yet," the tech told her.
"You see that small, white ship that looks kind of like a penis out on the landing field?" Katy asked.
"Yeah, heard the fookin thing too," the tech agreed. Then it clicked. "Oh, can you put that satellite where it needs to go? We're shittin' steel bricks trying ta keep up with the comm traffic without it."
; "If you can have the satellite delivered to my ship, I'll take care of the rest," Katy promised.
"Lady, you are a lifesaver," the tech grinned.
"In more ways than one," Katy grinned back.
It took only a few more units to place the replacement satellite in its proper orbit and integrate it back into The World's Wethersfield-based communications systems. Katy grinned as it restored the communications to the overwhelming majority of The World's ability to talk to one another quickly and easily.
"Talon, when things settle down, can you try to get hold of Seren?" Katy asked.
"It seems she is trying to get hold of you," Talon reported.
"Koreen must have gotten her first," Katy remarked. "Open the frequency."
"Katy?" Seren's voice came over the intercom.
"Hi Seren," Katy replied. "It's been quite a day, hasn't it?"
"What happened to you?" Seren wondered.
"That's a long story to be told in a quiet place over some high alcohol content beverage," Katy told her. "But you need to know something important."
"The magic is back," Seren stated, knowing exactly what Katy would say. "It's not the same, but it's there."
"So you knew," Katy nodded.
"I grew up with it," Seren informed her, explaining in those few words how she'd be able to so readily recognize such an unusual phenomenon. "I've already had a chat with Treah and Miralenda. They seem to have elected me to teach the Nine the ways and means of using the magic."
"Will you have the time to do that?" Katy wondered. "You mostly run the planet, right?"
"They weren't at all pleased that the delegation took it upon themselves to decide the fate of The World, which means I may be out of a job soon," Seren replied. "So I may have plenty of time for being the teacher, and the student."
"Who's teaching you what?" Katy wondered.
"Miralenda spoke about teaching me some advanced things that she didn't get to teach regarding human magic," Seren told her.
