“Panem.”

Tessa stopped beside a pair of greasy workboots poking out from beneath a beat up Blasterchild. The rig sat propped up on the deck and stripped to the frame, torn open and left in the throes of a full overhaul. Crouching down, she grinned, elbows on her knees. “Got a minute?”

“Huh?” The lieutenant pushed off, and the cushion between his back and the deck responded slickly, rolling across steel like oil, repulse-hovering. Young eyes stared back, blinked as he came free of the fuselage. “Major? Yeah, sure, what’s up?”

“The latest calculations from Phoebe.” She handed him a strip of silicon. Glancing at the thing for an instant, the young lieutenant pulled the clunky maintenance noteputer at his side and slotted the data instantly, eyes glancing through code sequences, equations. Tessa stood, glanced up at the cold, dead husk of the Seindrive IV, pulled in a deep breath. “Got anything new for me?”

“Nothing much at this point.” He tabbed through a handful of displays on the noteputer, hesitating and holding the edge of a nervous breath as another technician walked by, nodded to him. He swallowed, got to his feet, clipped the ‘puter to his side. “I’ve rigged a bypass, but its not ready.” He whispered. “Its unstable. It keeps snapping back and overcompensating unexpectedly as the AI tries to sort through and override what it sees as a problem. I wouldn’t risk flying with the bridge in play at this point unless you want to take a chance on being thrown into a ten thousand year relativistic stasis or ripped apart by temporal stressing.” He wiped his hands, added: “in the end, I dropped the idea of a hard bypass and imported the settings into a chip taped under the Resident AI that you can slot into the system anytime you want before you fly if you’re feeling lucky.” He hesitated again. “I’ll get a working model eventually. Just keep feeding me these calculations and I’ll rig up something that will do the trick.”

“Glad to hear it, Lieutenant.” Tessa smiled sharply. “Keep up the good work.”

“Uh, Major.” He tried, hesitated. “If you don’t mind me asking– what are you planning to do with a bridge that overrides your rig’s speed limiter and monkeys with the tachyon field settings?”

”That information is classified, Lieutenant.” She half turned, smile slipping to wry. “You know that. Nothing has changed.”

“And I believed you for a while,” He smiled. “But then I cross-checked your orders in the system and found out that there, well, aren’t any orders.” He hesitated, swallowed as she fixed him with a solid, careful stare. “You’re working alone on this one, aren’t you? Not even the admiral knows about the bridge.”

Tessa swallowed, hesitated, almost pushed ahead with the farce, then dropped it suddenly.

“How did you. . . ?”

“Give me some credit, Major.” He grinned. “Its not every day that a pilot asks me to bypass the safety protocols on their rig, and I’ve spent enough time on the deck that I know a thing or two about navigating the command systems on a starship.” He sighed, glanced down for a moment before meeting her eyes again. “So do you want to tell me why you’re having me modify the tachyon displacement profile of your rig?”

Tessa bit her lip. “Honestly, Lieutenant,” She paused. “Not really.”

“I thought you wanted my help.” He grinned again. “How can I design a specialty piece of equipment to do something if you won’t even tell me what it’s supposed to do?”

The major swallowed again, looked away. Panem gestured, added: “This is already between you and me, Major. Well, you, me and your friend Phoebe. You know I’m not the kind to talk.”

“I know.” She said softly, then glanced back, fixed him with a look that was all iron, strong and uncompromising. “That’s why I chose you for this, Panem.” She hesitated again. “That, and you’re the best mechanic on the deck.”

“Thanks, Major.” Another grin.

“The truth is, I’m hoping I don’t have to use the bridge.” She swallowed. It was hard to continue, hard to put the feelings, the thoughts into words. She closed her eyes. “I may have to use the bridge. I may. . . I need. . . You see, there are things. . .” She shook her head. “It’s a way, it’s a way to stop this war before it even starts, a way to put my life back on track, a way to. . . save the Commonwealth and stop all of this–” she gestured expansively “before it even happens.”

“You’re going to use the Stormfury to go back in time.” He said slowly, almost warily, watching her, unsure and hesitant. She looked away, swallowed in the pause. “You’re going to punch through the light barrier, use the tachyon displacement settings to modify your movement through hyperspace and change the past at some specific juncture in the hopes that the war doesn’t turn out as badly as it has.”

“It’s a way, Panem.” She said solidly, fixed him with an eye suddenly moist with tears. He swallowed, hesitated. “If I do this right, it could save billions of lives.”

“I know.” He nodded, looked away. “Okay, I’m in, whole-heartedly this time, but I’m going to need to spend some more time working on the bridge in order to get it stable enough to do what you need it to do. Tell your friend to keep feeding me the tracking and differential equations.”

“You’ve got it.” Tessa swallowed. “Anything else?”

“A six pack?” He grinned, and the grin was echoed on the major’s face.

“I can do that.” She nodded once. “Get it done, Panem. Make it first priority, but keep it quiet.”

Panem grinned again, wider.

“Will do, Major.”