12 September, 2015: I've been told by some that returning to your past work is a bad idea, but I've decided to take that risk. The sequel to this story relies heavily on the conservation of specific details - details which have changed in numerous ways since this story was first written. Rather than attempting to track down individual inconsistencies, I've decided to revisit every single chapter in order. Changes may be large or small, purely cosmetic or crucial to the storyline, but should be considered "canon" from here on.
Please enjoy.
Chapter 1 – Not Just Any Battle
Tails sat in his captain's seat, watching the scenery outside as the Blue Typhoon roared through space. It didn't roar, really; in the airless vacuum outside, the powerful ion drives were completely silent. The bridge was another matter: the beeping of consoles and the bass hum of the frigate's cruise engines filled the crew's ears between the occasional brief snatches of conversation. The stars, many of them light-years away, appeared perfectly still; at this distance, they gave no sign of the Typhoon's enormous speed.
On Tails' center display, the image of a gold, insect-like starship revolved slowly in place. He had been examining photos and video footage of this same vessel, the heavily armed and armored Scarship, for what must have been nearly an hour. Their scanners, much like their weapons, had been unable to penetrate its hull, so they knew little about its inner workings. The Typhoon had managed to disable and escape from the self-piloted destroyer unscathed, but without any further understanding of their enemy, the victory was a shallow one.
A total of seven people were stationed on the bridge. Before a long row of colored displays on Tails' right, the young Seedrian Cosmo kept watch over the radar, telescopes, and other sensors. To the fox's left sat Cream and her Chao companion, Cheese; the two were officially in charge of weaponry and defensive subsystems, though they usually deferred to Tails in battle. On the tier below sat Amy Rose, the Typhoon's science officer – a position to which she had adapted surprisingly well. She was studying her own console intently, cooperating with the ship's computer to analyze the steady stream of data Cosmo sent her. Across the aisle from Amy, helm officer Chris Thorndike monitored the vessel's path, making adjustments as necessary. Last but not least was Sonic the hedgehog. He held no official position on the ship – strictly speaking, he was a passenger – but his importance to the team was unquestioned.
There was only one other person aboard the Blue Typhoon at the time: Knuckles the echidna, named "chief of engineering" because of his unique understanding of the Master Emerald. As usual, he was in the generator room many decks below, guarding the massive gem and making sure the ship had a constant power supply.
The Typhoon's current heading was in a region of space that Chris knew as the Orion stellar association, and for which the rest of them had no name. They were traveling in the direction of a fragmented message picked up by their radio telescope. They were unable to identify the source, but had managed to decode enough text for Cosmo to recognize a distress call in her native language. Where there were Metarex, there was bound to be either a stolen Planet Egg to restore or a Chaos Emerald to track down. Whatever was going on, the Metarex were evidently having trouble with it, and that meant the crew of the Typhoon had to be interested.
It had been five ship-days at relativistic speed since then, and they were getting close to the origin of the signal. Tails expected to reach the target within a few hours' time, but they had made little progress in determining just what was happening. None of their scanners showed any sign of a Chaos Emerald, another distress call, or even the usual signs of a Metarex fleet on the move. No one knew what to expect.
Tails was broken out of his reverie by Cosmo's voice: "The radar's picking up something!"
"What is it?" Tails asked, instantly becoming alert. Amy tapped a series of keys and examined her screen intently.
"It looks like a meteor shower," the hedgehog replied. "Straight ahead and closing fast."
"Shields up," Tails ordered. Cream promptly complied; a faint ripple of energy passed in front of the Typhoon's bow, and not a moment too soon. Seconds later, moving too fast for the eye to follow, something hurtled out of deep space, lighting up the bridge with a flash of electric blue. Before the shock waves had time to fade, a second object slammed into the shield just as violently. A sound like distant thunder rolled up through the vessel's superstructure – the energy of both collisions, spread out over space and time to cause as little damage as possible. "Chris, reduce speed! Divert excess power to the shields," Tails instructed.
The Typhoon slowed as debris continued to batter her, making the protective dome of electrical force churn like a storm-tossed ocean. "Brakes are running a little hot," Chris announced after a few moments, and the bridge filled with an unaccustomed silence. The speed and force of the collisions had lessened, but even a single direct strike would still have been enough to demolish the ship.
"What's this coming from?" Tails asked Amy, staring around at the turbulent shield, still unable to catch a glimpse of the debris itself. Even in a relatively dense region of space, the probability of so many large objects traveling so close together was extremely low.
"Some of these are pieces of Metarex battleships, judging by the style and the materials used," she answered, turning one of her screens to show him a photograph slightly distorted by motion blur. "The others look like starships as well, but the designs are different. Nothing in the computer matches them." The hedgehog paused. "Anyone else think this has something to do with that distress call?" No one spoke; they had all been considering the same thing.
Once again, the silence was quickly broken by Cosmo. "Hey, someone just tried to contact us." She examined a row of text scrolling across her terminal. "Standard broadcast frequency, no encryption… There it is again! I think it's a homing beacon!"
"Wait, you mean there's actually someone else nearby?" Tails asked, incredulous. "Where are they, which direction?"
"Ahead to starboard, 150 meters... wait, 850 meters to port and fading?" She frowned at the screen, looking nonplussed, before her eyes widened in alarm. "I think it's coming from one of them!" she exclaimed, pointing out at the debris still pounding against the shield.
"Well, what are we waiting for? We have to catch that ship!" Tails tapped a sequence of keys, transferring control of the impulse thrusters to his own console. "Chris, prepare for field acceleration. Knuckles, be ready down there in case we need your help. Everybody else, hold on; this could be a little rough." While Chris readied the Typhoon for the coming maneuver, Tails swung his ship around to face the source of the rapidly-diminishing homing signal. With this done, he shut off the engines completely and checked the vessel's power supply one last time.
"Chris?" Tails asked. Not taking his eyes off of his console, the pilot gave the captain a thumbs-up sign. "Engage."
A multicolored energy field suffused the Blue Typhoon, surrounding and taking hold of every atom and molecule it reached. A fraction of a second later, the entire vessel hurled herself along the chosen vector, a 174-degree hairpin turn that should have crushed her thinner than aluminum foil. The empty shield continued on its original path for a brief instant, but the next piece of debris blew it apart like a soap bubble.
Over a hundred kilometers away, the Typhoon's normal colors returned; her crew found themselves traveling alongside the fast-moving debris field. They now had a clear view of the rubble: charred and half-melted fighters, engine cones snapped and splintered like tree trunks, and enormous segments of battleship armor that had once been a Metarex naval group.
What could have caused this? Tails wondered, looking around at the destruction on every side. Normal weapons cut through hulls and might wreck smaller targets, but to tear whole starships completely apart...? Tails glanced at the radar to make sure nothing was in danger of colliding with them. A split second later, he took a second, closer look, certain he had imagined something.
He had not. The debris field, though it extended out of radar range ahead of and behind the Typhoon, was less than a kilometer wide. Maintaining such a tight formation without deliberate course correction was beyond improbable – or so it seemed. They're moving nearly as fast as we were, Tails reasoned. If you wanted to travel a long way without dividing the fleet, this formation makes sense. But then someone attacked them, and they just stayed on course? How would you even engage a target at relativistic speed? I'm missing something here, I know I am.
"Have you still got a signal, Cosmo?" Tails asked, partly to keep himself focused on the task at hand.
The Seedrian nodded. "The signal is much clearer now. If we go straight ahead, we should be able to locate it on the radar before long."
"Roger," Tails replied, bringing the engines back up to full power. With well-practiced care, he guided the Typhoon forward along the length of the debris field, taking care not to disturb the larger pieces of rubble. The gentlest touch – even a breath of exhaust from the engines – might send a vessel drifting away from its fellows, and no one would ever be able to find it again.
"It looks like this happened pretty recently," Amy commented as she studied the incoming scan data. "Metarex armor blocks our sensors, but it seems like most of these ships are still losing heat. Nothing we would be able to pick up at a distance, but still, it means they haven't had time to freeze completely."
"Weren't you just telling me space isn't actually cold?" Sonic interjected, speaking for the first time in several minutes.
"Space itself isn't cold because there's nothing in it, but things in space get cold because there's no source of heat."
"Got it…" Sonic replied. A few moments later, his bemused expression vanished. "Take a look at that!" he called to the rest of the crew, pointing outside to port.
As the Blue Typhoon advanced past a dismembered weapon battery, one of the unfamiliar ships Amy had mentioned came into full view. A cylindrical body, tapered toward a cluster of engines at one pole and a blunt face at the other, made up the bulk of the vehicle. Three smaller thrusters, angled away from the body for steering, were spaced evenly around the far end, interspersed with what looked like low-mounted laser cannons. Three curved struts extended forward and joined into a conical prow, making the vessel look like a squid with its tentacles pressed together. The entire thing was about half the Typhoon's length, heavily scarred but apparently in one piece, and painted a deep garnet red.
At that moment, one of the points on Tails' radar screen flashed green: the ship's computer had recognized the homing signal as well. "There!" Cosmo exclaimed at almost exactly the same time, standing up to get a better view through the canopy. "In front of that silver ship," she clarified, pointing to a nearby Metarex interceptor with one of its engines missing. "It's very small, but you can see its shadow moving as we get closer."
The source of the signal was much smaller than most of the surrounding vessels and debris. Rather than the dark mattes and bare metal of the Metarex or the polished fiery hues of the unknown warships, their target was eggshell white – the same color and finish as the Typhoon. Also unlike the other debris, the edges of which were jagged from battle damage or by design, this one was highly streamlined and smooth. Tails understood now how someone might be alive inside, though how it had escaped the destruction wrought upon the larger ships was beyond him.
Tails moved the Typhoon close to the tiny craft and slowed just slightly. The pieces around them now appeared to hang in space, twisting and cartwheeling slowly. "Activate the capture arm," he told Cream. She took hold of a small control stick, and a moment later a metal claw ending in a four-fingered gripper moved into view. The remote-controlled arm reached forward slowly, taking care not to hit any of the surrounding debris. The entire group watched as Cream expertly steered it to her target and, ever so slowly, closed the fingers until the claw held the ship firmly in its grasp. The room breathed a collective sigh when the white vessel held its shape.
"Nice work, Cream," Tails said.
"Thanks, Tails," she replied, politely as ever.
Tails turned back to the window and took hold of the controls once more. Working, if anything, more carefully than before, he began to steer the Typhoon out of the path of the debris all around her. After several minutes, they finally reached the edge of the cluster of ships and moved into unobstructed space. Once there, Tails steered the frigate into a gentle left turn to set them back on course. With the autopilot taking control, he deactivated the ship's controls in his own console and leaned back against the headrest of his seat. After a moment, he spoke again.
"Amy, do you think you could go and check out that ship we brought in?"
"Not a problem," she answered good-naturedly. She got up and walked up the steps to the door behind Tails' seat, entering the short hallway and elevator beyond.
After checking to make sure the room was sealed and filled with air, Amy entered a code on a keypad, causing the door to the landing bay to slide open slowly. There sat the ship they had captured, still held in place by the capture arm, looking for all the world like a huge egg with short, stumpy, trapezoidal wings. She stepped closer to examine it.
In the front was a large sliding door with an angular number "2" painted on in red. Most of the body was white, with a single yellow stripe running down the middle and navy blue tips on the wings. Amy barely noticed these details; she had eyes only for the two words superimposed on top of the painted number, which read "Blue Typhoon."
Slowly, Amy looked over to her right, where the ten escape pods stood in a line at the other end of the bay, ready to launch. Number 2 was among them, identical in every way to the ship they had captured. The left wing even bore the little two-tailed spiral insignia that Tails painted on everything he built.
Something was definitely up.
Up on the bridge, Amy's voice suddenly issued from the speaker on the captain's console. "Tails, I think you should see this."
"What is it, Amy?" he asked.
"It's about the ship we picked up. It's… one of our own."
"What do you mean? All the ships are…" he started, but Amy cut him off.
"I don't understand any better than you do, but I'm looking at one of our pods. That's why I need you to come down here."
Tails frowned, still perplexed. "I'm on the way." He shut off the link and stood up. "You've got control of the ship, Chris," he said simply, and left. Sonic dashed from his spot at the top of the bridge and fell into step beside his near-brother; this sounded interesting.
When the two of them reached the bay, Tails' eyes widened; the craft actually was a perfect copy of the original. He approached the pod and ran his hands across the surface in astonishment, sweeping away a thin coating of dust and chemical residue. Amy was right: it was identical to the emergency vehicles he had designed in every way, right down to the chipped-off paint on the "T" in "Typhoon." Tails remembered when that had happened. Sonic had called his name while he was assembling the pod, startling him and causing a hammer swing to go awry. Most disturbingly of all, it was escape pod number two.
Mine.
Looking down, Tails noticed the red beacon lights on the wings blinking on and off slowly. The ship still had power. He pushed on a panel below the door, causing it to swing open, and twisted a large red handle inside the compartment. He stood as the door sank inward with a hiss and a stream of vapor, then began to slowly rise upward into the ship. A part of Tails already knew what he would find, despite knowing it was impossible.
When the door had vanished completely into the hull, all three crowded around the cylinder that enclosed the single seat. Sandwiched between two thick layers of acrylic glass, a solid black LCD screen hid the occupant from view. Tails had to type his access code twice before his nerves had settled down enough to press the right keys. A small speaker chimed one, two, three times; the screen depolarized and became transparent without a sound. Sonic and Amy gasped in unison, but Tails had not yet remembered to breathe.
He was staring into the unconscious face of himself.
