[right][sub]the Meeting Place station[/sub][/right] Kelsie knocked on Julianna’s door softly. She wasn’t sure the scientist would be there, lately Julianna had been spending a lot of time in the docks and aboard their ship, the Chimera, playing around with some science project as she called it. Kelsie didn’t mind, the time on the Meeting Place could be incredibly boring, even to the point that some of the Undefeated stationed there frequently visited the holosuites in the ECU segment. Not her though. Not after reading Harlowe’s report on how they used those things to brainwash the Protectors. Abadi assured her that they’re completely safe and that they could be real fun at times, but Kelsie preferred the actual reality. “Come in!” The voice from inside the room sounded a bit muffled and upon entering Kelsie realized why - Julianna was assembling some mechanism on the table and since her hands were full, she was holding a screwdriver in her mouth. “Oh, Kelsie. Just a second.” She slid a pair of large protective goggles from the top of her head down to her eyes. “You might want to look away.” Even through her tightly closed eyelids Kelsie could actually see bright sparkles when Julianna grabbed a small welder and used it on the mechanism for a few seconds. “What is that?” Kelsie pointed at the thing. It looked like a box with lots of wires and weird gizmos inside. “It’s a dynamic stabilisator for a magnetic wavelength source. It’s just a prototype.” Kelsie blinked a couple of times, having no idea what any of those words meant. “Right. I forgot I shouldn’t ask such questions. Well, as long as it doesn’t explode, destroying the station and killing everyone on board, you play with your wavelengthy stabilisation magnet all you want.” “Nah, these don’t explode. At the very best they can emit a mild EMP, but that won’t cause any damage. Well, it shouldn’t. Probably.” Julianna hesitated and chuckled. “I sound like a wacky scientist sometimes, don’t I? What did you need?” “Can’t a friend just visit to come and look at your sourcing magnetic dynamo?” Kelsie’s brows went up in a pretended surprise. “I’m kidding, obviously. I just came to tell you that we’ve been summoned back to Ellara, just me, David, and you.” Julianna laid the tools down, her face growing serious. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” “Honestly? I don’t know. I think it’s a good thing, there is supposed to be some official parade or something, so maybe we are just supposed to make an appearance there as the heroic diplomats who risk their lives on a daily basis dealing with evil robots and aliens, finding friends and allies among the stars?” Disgust curled her lips when she pictured thousands of eyes and dozens of cameras carefully observing her reading some stupid speech. “I have no idea whether there is something else behind it. And it’s not like we have a choice anyway.” “True.” Julianna clearly didn’t like the new orders, but the fact remained - there was nothing they could do about them. “Kelsie, wait!” Kelsie was just about to leave the room when her friend’s voice stopped her. “There is… something I need to tell you.” Julianna’s eyes were pinned to the ground and she was biting on her lower lip, looking nervous and… ashamed? Kelsie gestured at her to continue. “I… Okay, this is going to sound terrible and you are going to hate me. And I swear I wanted to tell you earlier, but I had no idea how. It’s just… I’ve really done nothing wrong, but…” “Julianna?” Kelsie interrupted her blabbering. “What the hell are you talking about?” The girl took a deep breath and looked Kelsie in the eyes. “Okay. I’ve been in contact with your mother for the past few weeks.” “You’ve been WHAT?!” Kelsie was beyond furious. You’d think that being in a different solar system would prevent her mother from trying to interfere with her life, but no. Julianna took a cautious step back, putting the width of the table between them. “Kelsie, look, it was no big deal, she just offered me a place in her project, and…” “So you betrayed me?! For my mother? For that…” There were several profanities ready on her tongue but none of them seemed descriptive enough. “... and I refused. We just talked a bit about some science stuff and yes, she asked how are you doing, but she just wanted to know whether you are happy.” Kelsie gracefully leaped over the table, avoiding the magnetic wavey something, and grabbed Julianna’s shirt. “So you were spying on me?” she hissed right into the girl's startled face. “NO!” Julianna might have been scared but still decided to fight the unjust accusation. “I told her you seemed happy and that was all. I didn’t spy on you for her or anyone else.” Kelsie’s only response was an angry scoff. “I mean it! Look, I know you hate her, and she herself told me you have a very good reason for that, but I can’t! Not after what she has done for our people!” So now Claire Martin was some kind of a savior of the Rejected? Perfect. “Oh, so it’s your people now. Yes, my mother always loved to meddle with the status quo. That doesn’t make her a saint, though.” A sudden spike of anger appeared on Julianna’s face and she pushed Kelsie away. “Well if the status quo is shit, then perhaps it is supposed to be meddled with,” she hissed. “Kelsie, I was a slave. And when you think about it real hard, so were you.” Noticing the hint of confusion on Kelsie’s face, she kept talking. “You could never choose what to do with your life, there were always only two options - be a nice obedient soldier or get cast out, stripped of your rights as a citizen, as a person. Could you choose where you live, what you do? Where you go and when? You either follow the orders or get punished or even executed. How the hell is that any different from being a slave?!” Julianna’s voice gained intensity and she was almost screaming at Kelsie at the end, desperate to make her understand. “Claire Martin might have been a shitty mother and she has definitely made lots of mistakes, but she managed to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people just by whispering the right things into Pawlowski’s ear. And I simply can’t hate her for that.” Kelsie stared at her friend, stunned by surprise. Julianna was always the silent type, and unless she was talking about science and her inventions, she barely said more than two or three sentences at once. To hear her speak about something with this passion, let alone raise her voice to yell at Kelsie, that was definitely new. “You are fired.” She managed to calm down a bit and her voice was now ice cold. “When we get to Ellara, you can crawl to my mother and kiss her Rejected ass, I don’t care.” With those words she turned around and left the room. [center][b]~~~~~~~~[/b][/center] Kelsie punched the bag hanging in the gym over and over again. Left, right, left, right, relentlessly, hoping that each hit would take a bit of the rage bubbling inside her and make it disappear. It didn’t. What was worse, there was a tiny quiet voice in the back of her head, suggesting that some of the things Julianna said weren't complete nonsense. Whispering in people’s ears. Yes, that was her mother’s specialty. Twisting people’s minds, questioning their beliefs, making them risk their lives while she watched from afar. That’s how people got killed. That’s how Kelsie’s father got killed. “Fuck!” No, she couldn’t think about her father now. Oh how much she wished the Grand General let Claire rot in her cell forever and never pulled her out. But some of those words… It never even occurred to Kelsie to think about her life that way. A choice? Who needed a choice? Not being a soldier? That was no life at all. Or was it? It was true that she considered the laws against the Rejected a bit harsh and unfair especially since many bright and skilled people like Julianna didn’t get a chance to use their skills for something good. If the change didn’t come from her mother’s head, Kelsie would support it with way more excitement. She slid down on her knees, panting heavily and drowning in sweat. Surprisingly, once she stopped fighting it the anger disappeared on its own, leaving her with only a ton of sadness and a bit of shame. She treated her friend like shit, dammit she almost physically attacked her, just because Julianna had the audacity to act as an independent person. Not just as a mindless drone following orders to the letter. A slave? Kelsie tried really hard to push her feelings aside and look at the things from Julianna’s perspective. From her mother’s perspective. But the years of grudge and resentment weren’t easy to overcome. ‘Forget about your mother for a moment,’ the bugging voice told her. ‘Do you really have so many close friends you can afford to chase them away for no reason at all?’ She didn’t. A quick shower later she was standing in front of Julianna’s door again. She hesitated before knocking, not sure what she wanted to say, only certain she wanted to apologize. “Yes?” Julianna’s voice was quiet. Kelsie entered the room to see the girl packing, carefully wrapping various instruments and putting them in boxes, an occasional tear rolling down her face. Upon hearing Kelsie entering the room she looked up with a terrified expression. She was right to be afraid. Being a Guardian, the second highest rank a person could achieve, surpassed only by the Grand General, Kelsie had practically unlimited power over other people. With a blink of an eye she could decide to have Julianna executed and nobody would even bother to raise an eyebrow over it, let alone ask why. Plus Kelsie was known to be hot-headed. “I’m sorry.” Kelsie wasn’t one to play with words. “I acted like an idiot and I apologize. I thought I could outrun my unresolved family issues by moving thousands of light years away, but apparently such things follow you no matter how far you go. But I should have never taken it out on you.” Kelsie paused for a moment, trying to tame the thoughts whirling through her mind and put them into words. “As you rightly pointed out you are not my slave and you are free to do whatever you want. If that means you want to go and work with my mother on her cool secret projects, then I… I’ll wish you good luck. But… if you still wanted to stay here, I’d be happy to keep you on my team.” Julianna looked surprised. Yes, it wasn’t every day a Guardian came to someone and offered a sincere apology. “Kelsie, I never wanted to go work with your mother,” she sniffled a bit. “I mean yes, the project sounded really tempting, but it doesn’t come anywhere close to being the first one to see and examine new technologies the other nations bring here. I’d love to keep working with you and I hope you can trust me again some day.” “I hope so.” Kelsie didn’t magically stop feeling betrayed but at least she wasn’t overreacting about it anymore. “Let’s just get ready for this trip to Ellara. David is already preparing the Chimera.” There was a visit Kelsie had to make, a long postponed one. She pulled out a datapad and typed out a short message. [i]“We need to talk.”[/i] Her finger hovered over the Send button. “This is a mistake,” she sighed, quickly pressing it before she had a chance to change her mind. Her mother will no doubt be thrilled by it. [center][b]~~~~~~~~[/b][/center] [right][sub]the Sol system, near the Gateway[/sub][/right] The Chimera shook violently, lights and the artificial gravity went off. Fortunately, the inertial dampeners were still working, but even with them they could feel the ship spinning wildly, absolutely out of control. “What the hell is happening?” Kelsie yelled at David. “We lost control of the main engine. Something exploded there.” Julianna cursed and pushed herself towards the bridge door. “I need to check the reactor containment. If that doesn’t hold, the ship will…” Another powerful explosion tossed Kelsie and Julianna into a wall. Kelsie could distinctly hear something snap, but when she turned to Julianna to check on her, the girl just shook her head and pointed to the window. “We’ve got bigger problems.” The ship was spinning fast, giving them a split second view of a Gateway each turn. “Our trajectory is wrong, we are headed for the edge.” “The reactor and the main drive are offline,” David reported. Unlike the women, he had been strapped in the pilot seat the whole time and sustained no injuries. “So is the nav computer. I cannot activate the Gateway and put in the coordinates. I’m trying to use the maneuvering thrusters to avoid the edge, but our velocity is too large.” “What happens if we hit the edge?” Kelsie watched in horror as the Gateway got closer, creating a colorful blur as the ship kept spinning. “Guess we are about to find out!” [center][b]~~~~~~~~[/b][/center] [right][sub]Ellara[/sub][/right] Claire could hardly hide her excitement upon seeing the message that popped up in her mailbox. After the dozens of messages she had sent over the past few months, not just unresponded but unread, completely ignored. And now, all of a sudden, a message from Kelsie. A few short words, but at least it was something. Better than silence. New simulation results appeared on the screen and Claire smiled. It seemed like it was a double good news day. “Now don’t you seem happy today.” Oscar Pawlowski was looking at her standing in the doorway. Claire rolled her eyes. “Our supreme leader. To what do we owe the pleasure?” He was down here way too often in the past weeks. “You know, just checking on my favorite project. Do you have anything?” The screen of her workstation filled with numbers and diagrams, Claire studied them for a moment before answering, not wanting to jump to conclusion. “Actually, I think I do. The lodestones are working. These are just simulations of course, but the numbers are more than promising.” “Great,” Oscar grinned. “It was just a sample shipment offered to us by the Matuvistans in hopes of establishing a trade route. So, how big are we talking?” Men. Everything was about size in their world. But Claire knew where he was heading and knew she had to dampen his excitement. “Not as big as you think. With this quality of the material, we can maintain a field around a small spacecraft, think fighters. Nothing bigger. We could try to expand it around something larger, like a Scout class ship, but I don’t think it is going to work, the field would be very volatile. The lodestones were all synthetic which lowers their efficiency greatly. It is still much better than any materials we have at our disposal here on Ellara, but still…” “That is very disappointing,” Oscar sighed, looking at the numbers on her screen even though he couldn’t possibly understand them. Claire frowned at him. “Seriously?! A few weeks ago we could barely cloak a box, now I am giving you invisible fighters. How the hell is that disappointing? You know what? Get the hell out of my lab!” No, she wasn’t going to let him spoil her good mood today. “Sorry.” Oscar ran his hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, of course it’s amazing. You know me, I’m always thinking big. So you think if you had the natural stones you could make the field larger and more stable?” Claire nodded and he sighed. “Well, that sucks. Because there is no way we can afford those.” That did suck. But still not enough to ruin her day. Kelsie was coming to Ellara and wanted to talk. Even if all she did was yell at Claire, it was still better than the cold silent treatment. Oscar’s datapad beeped violently and his face grew serious upon looking at it. He gave Claire a worried look and walked a few steps away from her, concentratedly staring at the small screen. He always had some super important secretive matters to attend to, so Claire wasn’t really surprised by that, but why did he keep glancing at her, looking almost… afraid? “Oscar?” She couldn’t stand it any longer. “What the hell is going on?” “Claire, I…” He shook his head and pressed a few buttons on his datapad. Claire’s screen flashed when the forwarded message arrived. “Something happened.” The file contained a 3D reconstruction of scanner data, showing a small Scout class ship flying towards the Sol Gateway. The ship suddenly shook and started spinning around all the axes, still getting closer towards the wormhole, until it finally reached the edge and… disappeared. Claire stared at it in horror. “Please tell me this isn’t what I think it is,” she whispered as the footage played the second time. The Grand General didn’t respond. “Oscar? Please tell me this isn’t the Chimera? The ship MY DAUGHTER was on?” “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “NO! What the hell happened?” Claire refused to believe it. No. This was a good day. Oscar shrugged and handed her his own datapad. Normally such a thing would be unthinkable, the amount of top secret information for his eyes only forbade him from letting the device leave his hand, but Claire didn’t even think about it and quickly grabbed it, swiping through his messages. Apparently there was an explosion aboard the Chimera just before it arrived at the Gateway. The ship was out of control when it reached the Gateway and then just… disappeared. There is no wreckage on the Sol side, safe for a few pieces of debris ejected during the explosion. The ship didn’t appear on this side of the Gateway either. “We’ve contacted every nation we came across to see if they accidentally didn’t pop out somewhere else, but… so far it seems they have just… vanished,” Oscar said carefully. Claire’s head shook in disbelief. “Are you telling me that my daughter got evaporated by a fucking wormhole?” No. This was just not happening. The footage of the Chimera exploding and then disappearing inside the wormhole kept repeating in an endless loop, engraved in her brain forever.