The instant she saw the field fail, Tessa closed her eyes, half disconnected from her rig on the wave of pain that seized her, left cheeks wet with tears. The degen drive at the core of the Hephaestus followed the systems crash almost immediately, the alignment of the superdense matter spinning out of control, eviscerating the sleek little warship from within with knife-like waves of undampened gravity. Whole sections pressed in on themselves as she watched, the skin of the hull cracking, buckling, exploding outward before bending back and collapsing in on the hot center of the ship, fragments spiraling in, leaving nothing but empty void in their wake. Piece by piece, the Hephaestus gathered itself up into a tiny sun, and then the ship that had been her home for four years spread itself across the sky, pelted the Von and the nearest Coralate warships with hot debris. Only the escape pods hung untouched in the void, streaking toward the massive Wallace class on autopilot guidance.

Soon, only she would remain, a lone testament floating in the void, the footnote of a warship that had reduced itself to cinders at the edge of a sea of silver.

Standard protocol would have been to radio in, to call tower and land in the bay with the pods, but Tessa had other plans. Plotting a course to a location in the moving flux of space time that met the requirements for the jump as Phoebe and Panem had calculated them, Tessa’s Stormfury moved slowly, quietly, half-visible in the haze. In the construct that allowed her to interface with the machine, she could see the variables lining up like crosshairs, searching, searching, targeting.

1522 km, three quarters burn, seven point two second window upon arrival.

Hit it.

And then, as if by cue, the fighters came.

There was only one at first, a single dash of silver that came blasting out of the stars and haze to drop in behind her, railcannons heating up late, flaring at the same instant her thrusters did. Movement came reflexive– throttle dashed forward and back, her mind giving control of coordinate tracking to the AI, glancing into it periodically as she whirled and dashed, dodged the Coralate’s fire as nimbly as a dancer. He was good, but she was better, and the second he filled the night with his plasmatic payload, she banked, darted, spun, primed and in one smooth movement triggered her rig’s own plasma repeaters, hammering the Cygnan with a salvo of hot slugs that beat and butchered his rig before he could even react. Thrusters flared again, hotter this time, and before the Cygnan’s drive even destabilized, she was gone, hot after her target.

Unfortunately, so were the Cygnans, and her momentary tangle with the lone pilot had given the closest twelve rigs enough time to close with her, to get a swarm of crosshairs lined up on her backside. Numbers ticked down, distance to target. Closing, closing. Too slow, too slow.

And then a voice:

“Keep going, LC! I’ve got your back!”

The sound rang out clear across Tessa’s radio, brought a momentary grin to her mind.

A glint of light flashed across canopy as Phoebe’s rig came darting in, hot as a rocket, weapons live, warheads already detaching from racks, intent on Coralate targets. Words came reflexively, delivered even as the younger woman burnt three chrome rigs out of the sky, blasted through the rest as they peeled away from her in waves like silver fish.

“Major, Phoebe. You’re the lieutenant commander.” Tessa shot back, almost grinning, ignoring the edges of fear that pulled at her, silently grateful for the assistance another pilot could bring to the fight. “What are you doing out here? Isn’t your squadron supposed to be closer to the Von, scraping up damaged pods or queuing for the bays?”

“My squadron is.” Phoebe shot back, and Tessa could hear the grin in her voice. “But when I saw you out here with no backup and burning hard, straight into Cygnan city, I sent them ahead and jammed out here to cover you.”

“This is a one way mission, Phoebe.” Tessa managed. “You know that.”

“Yeah. I know.” Phoebe’s response came quieter, softer. “At least let me escort you as far as your jump point.”

“Fine,” Tessa hesitated, forced iron into her voice. “But then you get the hell out of here, okay, Phoebe? Minerva squadron needs its LC.”

“I know.” Said Phoebe. “I remember when she left.”

“I’m sorry, Phoebe.”

A pause, the sound of a long, deep breath.

“Don’t worry about it, Major. In a few minutes, it won’t matter.”

Tessa hesitated, opened the channel to speak, but before the words would come, could even form, the Coralate rigs were in their midst again, lining up sights, railcannons heating up. Cursing, she swung back toward Phoebe, ducked under the younger woman’s rig as it passed, then triggered the sweep cannon on the nose of her fighter with a flick of the eye. The beam cut smooth, lashed into chrome, and her eye followed each fragment of Coralate confetti as it ripped free under the force of the blistering column of energy washing over and through the fighters, leaving only hot slag in its wake. Only the spidery-shape of a hunter-killer rig had enough warning and grace to dance nimbly out of her way, spinning, darting out of her crosshairs until the system could no longer compensate for the heat of the cannon and killed the beam reflexively, flooding the firing chamber with a burst of liquid hydrogen. Plasmatic shards rolled up and across her fuselage, catching, spun off by debris shielding as the hydrogen haze blossomed all around her, hung heavy against cockpit glass. Phoebe said something unintelligible into the radio as she swung in behind the Coralate hunter-killer, caught the wicked, spindly little rig in the crosshatch of her argon-ion L-web emitters. Coasting through the flames, she shouted, cheered.

“We’re clear!”

And then a single contact flared on Tessa’s scopes, hot after Phoebe’s rig and dropping fast toward her position from the rear.

“Phoebe!” Jesus Christ. “Behind you!”

There was a half second’s hesitation, and then Phoebe’s rig twitched, shifted. Behind her, the single Cygnan fighter blasted into view, railcannons hot, leaking streamers of plasma held too long, eager for release. Tessa tore open the channel, mouth biting in on the edge of a yell, but Phoebe was quicker, more nimble, thumb jamming the radio even as she spun away, rotating fast and flat in the hopes of getting behind the sleek little rig as it passed. “I’ve got him! I’ve got him!”

“He’s right there, he’s–” The Coralate rig cut throttle suddenly, spun and darted even as Phoebe swung out to meet him. Fingers mashed triggers, and as Tessa watched, the sleek little silver ship fired, filled the sky with vicious light. There was no time to move, no time to react– Phoebe punched the throttle, blasted hard through the cloud and bounced off the other rig so quickly that it lost control just long enough to take one of the lieutenant commander’s rockets square in the closest thing it had to a cockpit. Riding the blast of the Cygnan’s destabilizing reactor was like surfing a tidal wave and then getting dashed against sand just in time to be snared by a sudden undertow.

“I’m hit, Tessa.” Phoebe managed, and as the older woman’s eyes chased digital magnification to her friend’s rig, she caught the sudden plumes of white-hot brilliance trailing from struggling drives, solidifying into columns in the endless night. “I’ve got a leak in the liquid helium coolant lines for the hotcoil pods, massive flooding, expansion corruption in the drive, internal systems.” She swallowed. “Oh man. That’s the end of the runway for me.”

“Phoebe, hang on, I’m coming back for you.”

“NO!” Static jumped into the channel as Phoebe pulled in a sudden breath of rapidly cooling air. “Tessa, you can’t do that. You have to go now, while you still have a chance.” She shivered suddenly, forced herself past the pause. “Go, save the commonwealth. Save Izzy. It’s too late for me.”

“Don’t talk that way.” Tessa managed, but even as her gaze swung back, focused on Phoebe’s cockpit with a single, reflexive movement, her mind hesitated on the controls, the throttle. Deep within, she knew Phoebe was right, that there was nothing she could do to save her, that her best bet, the best chance the commonwealth had, was to bug out now before the rest of the Coralate wave caught up with her. In her magnified vision, she watched as Phoebe smiled, pressed gloved fingers against the glass of her cockpit, almost reaching, a tender gesture that came on the wings of words almost whispered across the channel, words her augmented mind picked up clear, strong.

“I love you.”

Then, all at once, there was a sudden flash of bladed movement, ice punching through the fuselage of Phoebe’s rig as liquid helium spread through the systems, shattered lines, opened her rig from the inside like a viscous knife and spread its innards for the hungry depths of hard vacuum. Before Tessa could even blink, it was too late, and the look in Phoebe’s eyes as her canopy suddenly darkened and decompressed into open void bit into Tessa’s soul like a jagged razor, left her staring, broken.

And then a single thought rose up within her, lanced through the ice that kept her paralyzed–

Go and don’t ask questions. The admiral had said. This is the way it must be.

You’ll be going back to a better time. A better world. Ben.

Go, LC. Phoebe. Save the commonwealth. Save Izzy.

Somewhere deep inside the metal body of her rig, she swallowed. Floating slow into the coordinates the AI had picked out to use as a starting point for acceleration, she felt each tick of the timer dropping away into slow oblivion. Close behind her, too close, the Coralate armada spun hungry, vicious, eager. Mind-fingers hovered at the edge of a virtual throttle, hesitated. If she didn’t go now, in this moment, then all the sacrifices, all the deaths, the losses, the colonies that the Coralate had burnt down to barren earth would be final, unshakable, blood spilt without meaning, purpose. At least this way, with this rig, this shot, she had a chance to bring it all back, to give humanity the edge it needed to overcome the Coralate and prevent the loss of billions upon billions of lives.

Here, now, there was nothing left. This was it.

She swallowed, jammed the throttle. Space hung on around her, hesitated, and then for a moment, reality seemed to flex, to fall away in a cascade of light and vibration. Thought compressed, engines howled, and then she was gone, catapulted into the nothing-realm between the present and her future, between the now and the then.

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