by Scott Baron
“Interesting,” the new AI visitor mused. “Well, if you’re ready, Arlo, shall we get to it?”
“All right, Marty. Be there in a minute.”
Arlo gathered up his things and strolled back to Hangar Two, taking a stack of Finn’s baked glory with him for the trip, of course.
“Plenty where that came from,” the crazed chef said as the airlock door sealed. “I like that kid,” he noted, then headed back for the mess hall.
Marty took off a couple of minutes later, making a quick loop of the base as they departed. Just like Vince said, there was no trace of Freya or her ‘home’ anywhere on the base down below.
“Fascinating,” he mused. “She just disappeared. Huh. Okay, Sid, we’ll be back soon,” he messaged, then darted off into the dark sky.
At that same moment, Freya––safely ensconced in her fabrication hangar––was already busy at work on her many projects. There were so many to complete now that she was home again, and even more ideas that were begging to be started, but she had a few top-priority ones that came first.
With a heavily shielded whir of activity, her fabrication devices fired up and came online, as did nearly all of her other toys. It would be a long and delicate process, but that was half the fun of coming up with these ideas.
“Okay, time to get to it!” she said, then got to work, cheerfully humming to herself as she dug in.
Chapter Twenty-Six
As soon as Arlo was clear of the moon, Daisy called a general meeting in Hangar Two.
“What’s this all about, Daisy?” Commander Mrazich asked, a little annoyed. “We just had an all-hands meeting less than an hour ago.”
“I know, Commander, but there are some things I didn’t want to get into with Arlo around.”
“You don’t trust him?”
“Not that, it’s just I don’t know him yet. Some cards should be held close to the vest until you really understand a situation, you know?”
“Well, I suppose,” he reluctantly agreed. “So what’s this all about, anyway?”
Daisy scanned the vast space. Everyone was there.
“Okay, everyone. I have a surprise for you. After what happened with Alma’s infiltrators, and all that, I just wanted to wait until he was gone before revealing anything of real importance.”
Finn took a bite of a cookie with a merry laugh.
“Come on, Daisy, what can it possibly be this time? I mean, your last surprise was Freya. That one’s gonna be kinda hard to top,” he chuckled.
“Hi, Finn,” Sarah said, stepping out from behind a large equipment mover.
The jovial chef nearly choked on his cookie in shock. The other Váli crew were likewise floored by her sudden appearance.
“But…” Doctor McClain managed to blurt, while the rest of the crew remained stunned and speechless.
“But I’m dead. Yeah, I know,” Sarah said with a little laugh. “And let me tell you, being dead sucks.”
Finn regained his composure as best he could and walked up to her, pulling her close in a tight hug. Moments later, the rest of the crew dogpiled in for a massive embrace. The others soon peeled away from the group hug, but Finn and Sarah held on just a tiny bit longer.
“Told ya so,” Sarah said, noting the prolonged hug.
Preaching to the choir, Sis. But don’t razz her, will ya? I don’t want to spoil it for now.
“Yeah, me either. Besides, there’s going to be plenty of time to give her shit later.”
Sarah, a bit overwhelmed in the moment, didn’t catch her other self’s comments.
“So, uh, this is impossible,” Vince said, looking her up and down. “You were blown out an airlock nearly seven months ago.”
“Yep. And it sucked,” Sarah replied. “And by the way, it’s really good to see you, Vince. I’m glad you and my sis worked things out.”
“So you know about all of that.”
“Yeah, Daisy filled me in after she rescued me.”
“But that’s impossible,” Barry noted. “I was present for the events aboard the Váli. Daisy did not launch any vessel to retrieve you. It would have been impossible, given your trajectory. Mal, you can confirm my observations, yes?”
“I can,” she replied. “And no, Daisy did not leave the Váli anytime during, or immediately after, Sarah’s accident.”
“Well…” Daisy said, shrugging her shoulders a little. “There’s kinda a bit more to that story.”
“Obviously,” Tamara said. “Jesus, Swarthmore, you are just full of surprises, aren’t you?” She looked at Sarah’s new arm, smaller and sleeker than her beefy appendage. “Got her some new parts, I see,” she said. “We’ll have to arm wrestle later,” she said with a laugh.
“It’s small, but it’s a lot stronger than it looks,” Sarah shot back with a daring grin. “Don’t get too over-confident.”
Commander Mrazich, though not a member of the Váli crew, was fully up to date on the events that led to Daisy’s arrival on Dark Side, and this unexpected, and impossible wrinkle left him in a quandary.
“Do I need to be concerned, Swarthmore?” he asked. “Is this going to be a problem?”
“Not if everyone can keep their mouths shut,” she replied.
“Good luck with this yo-yo,” Reggie joked, nudging Finn. “Only way to keep his mouth shut is to stuff it with food.”
“Bite me, Reg.”
“Not without a bath, and a whole lot of barbecue sauce, my man.”
“Fellas, enough,” Sarah said with an exasperated sigh. “Jeez, I forgot how ridiculous you two could be.”
“So what did happen, Daisy?” Chu asked, always the curious technical mind.
“To make a long story short,” she said, pausing for effect. “Freya and I accidentally warped back in time.”
Gasps and groans rose from the gathered crew.
“I call bullshit,” Tamara said. “That’s not possible.”
“I’d normally have agreed,” Daisy said, “but you know the power orb I brought back from the lab in San Francisco?”
“Yeah, I know it,” Chu said.
“Well, it’s not a simple power orb like we thought. It’s a warp orb. That’s the tech behind the Ra’azes’ new warp drive.”
“But it was tiny. Just the size of a baseball.”
“I know, but I gave it to Freya to run some tests, and she tied it into her drive system to see how much power she could draw from it in a real-world setting. It seemed like a really great power source, and we were about to do a speed run when Arlo popped into the mix and hailed me on open comms. In the chaos of trying to shut down the system mid-cycle, a whole bunch of unexpected variables came into play and we kinda accidentally threw ourselves back in time.”
The residents of Dark Side were all shocked, reeling in disbelief. All but one, that is.
Fatima had a peaceful look on her face. Almost as if a weight had been lifted from her chest.
“So you jumped back in time and saved Sarah?” Finn said, still reeling with disbelief. “Wow. Thank you, Daisy.”
“I kinda did a little more than that, actually,” she reluctantly admitted.
“Swarthmore, what did you do?” Mrazich asked with a concerned tone.
“We did a few things,” she said, making brief eye contact with Fatima. “But the big one, aside from saving Sarah, of course, is Freya and I kinda went and found the launch point for the Váli’s mission.”
“Oh my God. You interacted with your own past?” Chu blurted. “Christ, Daisy, do you have any idea how dangerous that is?”
“We did, but we didn’t. What I mean is, they were so far away, and the Váli had already been launched a long time by then.”
“So by the time anything you discussed might pop up in your own timeline, you would have already caught back up to it, making it your future and not your past that you stuck your fingers into. Is that about right?” Shelly asked, her metal arms crossed as she mused the situation.
“Yeah, more or les
s,” Daisy affirmed.
“Wait a minute,” Finn said, a light bulb all but appearing over his head. “Holy shit, that arm!”
“I know,” Sarah replied, suddenly self-conscious. “I’m not what I used to be.”
“No, you don’t get it. I recognize that arm. Were you in Rome?”
Sarah glanced uncomfortably at Daisy, who gave a little ‘fuck if I know’ shrug.
“Um, yeah, actually. Sorry about that.”
“Sorry? You saved my life, Sarah. And Phoenix? Was that you too?”
“Guilty as charged,” she admitted, sheepishly.
Finn wrapped her up in a massive bear hug.
“Twice, you saved my ass,” he said, stepping back an arm’s length. “Anything you ever need, anything you want, just ask. I owe you my life, Sarah.”
“Don’t make it weird, Finn,” she said, squirming uncomfortably from the attention.
Mrazich looked like a massive headache was building. One with Daisy’s name all over it.
“So you and your dead sister have been out hopping all over time and space? Can things possibly get any worse?” he said with a pained sigh. “Where are you off to next, then? Please don’t tell me you’re going to change the––”
“No, you don’t get it,” Sarah said. “We don’t dare attempt any sort of warp again until we fully understand the process. More importantly, we have to all swear to keep all of this a secret––especially the time travel. All of this is dangerous information that should stay with Dark Side’s team and no one else. And as for actually jumping in time again, we don’t even know if another time warp is possible, though we have some serious doubts whether we could ever even do another.”
“Ha, she’s a decent liar,” Sarah noted with a little chuckle inside Daisy’s head.
For the greater good, Sis.
“Still a liar, though. Even if I approve. Which I do, in case you were wondering.”
Gee, thanks.
“That’s why I wanted to wait until Arlo was gone to tell you all of this,” Daisy added to the conversation. “No one can know about the time aspect of the warp orb. Only those present here today.”
“You say the time aspect,” Chu observed. “What other aspects are there?”
“Oh, when not accidentally throwing you through time, it really is a proper warp drive, Chu. And I mean light years in a split-second level warp drive. And now, with the Chithiid ready to confront the Ra’az, we need to figure out how to replicate it and install it into their commandeered ships.”
“But we still only have partial notes,” the scientist griped. “It could take years.”
“Yeah, about that. Sarah and I, we kinda snuck into the warp facility before the assault and stole a bunch of stuff,” Daisy said.
Sarah pulled a duffle bag full of notes and diagrams from under a bin and slid it over to Chu.
“Here ya go, Chu. Me and Daze grabbed all we could. Should be plenty of stuff in there to help you figure out how to recreate these little guys,” she said, tossing him a spare warp orb.
“Don’t throw that thing!” Mrazich yelled.
“Relax, Commander. It’s not dangerous. In fact, unless you detonate it inside the atmosphere, it’s pretty benign,” Daisy said, trying to calm him.
“Swarthmore, in case you forget, we are standing inside an atmosphere,” he said, gesturing toward their enclosed space.
“Oh. Well, yeah, there’s that, I suppose,” she admitted.
“You want me––other me––to give him the other orb?”
No, tell her to hang on to that one. It’s our ace in the hole.
“But this is Chu.”
And I trust him implicitly. That still doesn’t mean I want all our eggs in one basket.
“Okay, I’ll pass it along,” Sarah said. “Hey, Daisy said don’t give them the other orb.”
Sarah nodded, keyed in via her and Daisy’s neuro-bands.
Chu marveled at the device in his hands, turning it over and over, studying its design.
“Okay, I have a question,” he said.
“Figured you would,” Daisy replied. “Shoot.”
“So you’re saying that warp––spatial, not time––is what this was designed for.”
“Yep.”
“And figuring that out should hopefully be made easier thanks to these notes.”
“Well, yeah, but I’m more worried about your figuring out how to make more of them, actually. I’m confident you can get that one to function no problem once you chat with Freya about it. The important thing is, we need to build more. A bunch of them, big enough and powerful enough to jump the Chithiid ships out to the Ra’az fleet.”
“Wait, you’re not worried about cracking the warp part?”
“Nah, Freya’s figured out the spatial bit. That part’s easy, at least for a ship her size.”
“But what if we stumble upon the other capability, like you did? I mean, accidental time travel is a huge pitfall.”
“Chu, the events that led to us discovering that were like several million to one. I doubt you could ever make a warp orb do that again, even if you knew what you were trying to do. Hell, I know we couldn’t, and that led to spending a lot of years in cryo until timelines matched up,” Daisy said, keeping a neutral face as she lied to her friend.
It’s for their own safety.
“I know.”
I just hate lying to them.
“I know, Daze. But like you said, it’s just too dangerous, and even knowing some of this stuff could put people at risk.”
Exactly.
“So now we just need Freya to steer their research in the right direction.”
With some help, of course, Daisy replied.
“Okay, Chu,” she said. “Let’s get working on finding you those extra sets of eyes to help with those plans.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It had been a long time since Daisy had found herself in the cushioned embrace of Doctor McClain’s couch, and, much to her surprise, sitting with the head shrinker after all the things she had so recently gone through actually seemed to be helping her strained psyche.
She was still lying about having been in cryo. Daisy, Sarah, and Freya, had all agreed that time travel was too risky a thing to leak, and thus the years-spent-in-cryo story was hatched. But aside from that, and perhaps one or two other little white lies, Daisy was being surprisingly honest with the doctor.
Given her past history of being a somewhat strong-willed and stubborn patient, Doc McClain found her openness refreshing, and the overall feel of their session became unlike any they’d ever had in the past.
“The trauma of losing your sister was enormous, Daisy. It’s only natural you’d leap at the chance to save her, consequences be damned,” McClain said.
“I know. I mean, I rationally understand that, but after the fact, the realization that I could have caused serious damage to time itself made me really question my judgment.”
“But things worked out, didn’t they?”
“Well, yeah.”
“And you said that not once but several times your actions actually wound up leading to events that you had already experienced. You had to do those things, in essence.”
“Yeah, that too.”
“So let it go, Daisy. You’ve always been hard on yourself, pushed to the limit when others might have backed off. Maybe it’s time you allowed yourself a little breathing room.”
“I suppose,” Daisy reluctantly agreed.
“If anyone has earned it, I think you have. Between saving the planet and saving Sarah, you’ve done quite a lot. Now I want you to not beat yourself up about these things for at least an hour,” McClain joked. “And please, my door is always open if you need me.”
Daisy rose to her feet and realized she really did feel better. Maybe not one hundred percent, but significantly enough.
“Thanks, Doc. I appreciate it,” she said, leaving one head shrinker to visit one of an entirely different variety
.
“Daisy, I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time,” Fatima said, pulling her in close for a big hug as soon as she entered the room. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“Um, Fatima, I didn’t do anything,” Daisy replied, a bit confused.
“But you did. I spent decades wondering how I got Dark Side’s systems turned on and managed to climb into that med pod as injured and weak as I was. And I had so many flashbacks about those crazy trauma dreams––I was constantly telling myself it was all in my mind. But then you and the Váli showed up, and the memories started returning with more clarity. It was always there, lurking in the back of my mind, this faint, fuzzy memory of you impossibly with me in a time and place you couldn’t have been.
“Shit. She was conscious for all that?”
Apparently so.
“What do we do?”
I don’t know. Just play it off, I guess.
“And speaking of minds,” Fatima continued, “Sarah is living in your head, isn’t she, Daisy? The version you didn’t save, I mean.”
Daisy gasped in surprise.
“Um, no. That’s crazy, Fatima. You saw her, she’s down the hall.”
“You know that’s not what I mean,” she replied. “I had originally thought that if I wasn’t crazy, then you had been merely talking to yourself all those years ago when you saved my life. But then, when I heard Freya’s voice the other day, there it was, clear as a bell. It was exactly as I remembered, Daisy, and I realized that it couldn’t have been a dream at all, though, to be honest, I’d suspected as much for some time. That means you really were talking to the voice in your head back then, and––”
“Fatima, you can’t tell anyone this.”
“Of course not. It’s not my story to tell, only my thanks to give. I owe you my life, you know.”
“And I owe you mine.”
“Oh, now you exaggerate,” Fatima chided.
“No, really. Your training prepared me in ways I couldn’t have anticipated. Without you, I wouldn’t be standing here today.”