Well, this is only 2K+ words, but school is a $! #

AN: The count down is in Pandoran time, not Earth time. Also, Earth has yet to receive new of the changed situation on Pandora.

Answers to the reviews

ChocolateTeapot: I had Norm find Trudy because a Sampson is the only thing that would have allowed him to experiment with the 'Face hugger' while in transit, and, no sarcasm intended here, it does kind of make sense that the glasses are on upside down since Norm is depicted as a bit of a klutz, as well as being twice the size needed to operate sunglasses. (I'm also a huge TrudNorm shipper :) And yes, the thing on Trudy's face is very interesting… (Laughing)

Oldtimer70: Glad you like it!

Disclaimer: As it turned out, Toruk are better at hunting then digging… Aaaand now they're trying to eat m- HOLY CRAP!

Location unknown: Draken ETA: [1] Year, [6] Months, [2] Days.

When you puke in space, it is far from pretty. Holly De'orik was known to have a deft eye and steady hand, not a strong stomach. It didn't help that her transformation was by far the largest of any of the active crews. With the flood of mutagens in her system, war had been waged between consuming the correct amounts of nutrition and expelling said nutrition from her body. From five feet to nine and a half was a massive jump, and while she was looking forward to finally being able to see the tops of peoples heads, it was hell while she waited.

Shar, Holly's husband, plopped a sachet of black coffee down on her control panel, retrieving a miniature vacuum stashed below her station for this exact purpose. He planted a kiss on her head, glancing about the Draken's vehicle bay, noting the disheveled state of the Sparrow starfighter docked inside Holly's work station.

"How're you holding up?"

Holly shivered a little, sucking the bitter beverage down with vigor, "Better, I'm going back into stasis tomorrow. Doc said my, eh, problem should be resolved by next month."

"Have you been to the gravity section lately?"

"I went yesterday. How're you holding up?"

Shar flexed his muscles, letting the bright light of the maintenance bay play off his powerful, lithe body. If Holly hadn't had the ability to get such a show on demand, she would most likely have been drooling. Shar stopped his improve gun show with a chuckle, "I'm doing goooooooood."

Holly licked her lips, suddenly nervous, "How do- I mean- I-" She stuttered, finally blurting, "How do I look?"

Shar didn't even need to give his wife a once over, already being intimately familiar with every detail, both on paper and in the flesh. And he knew what she was asking. Did her new stature upset him? No, and he was taller to match. Did her sharper teeth scare him? No, he loved cooking new, exotic Pandoran dishes for her. The Queue? Tail? Talons? Nothing could ever be wrong, he loved every inch of her, no matter what.

Shar didn't even need consider his answer, he just kissed her.

"Hey Captain," Another of the pilots called as he floated by, "I'm not judging here, but Boss said-"

Shar broke off his kiss, leaving a slightly dazed Holly to float away and fumble for her coffee, "-Keep fraternizing for off-duty and Garden time, I know, I know."

The pilot laughed, "Honestly, I just jealous."

Holly shook herself and pitched her empty coffee sack into the recycling port beneath her console, "Bleh, I hate that stuff."

Shar pulled a wrench from a tool box, pushing off the bulkhead in the direction of Holly's ship, Schakal. The sleek Sparrow class was one of the only Starfighter line ever created, since there was no real need for personal starfighters. Currently, the slim craft was far too large to Shar or Holly to operate, being configured to fit their bodies only after the modification were finished, but that didn't stop it from breaking down every now and again.

"Any idea what's wrong with the engine?"

Holly glanced over as Shar popped the rear hatch open, exposing the bomb proof anti-matter engine nestled inside. While smaller then the ones mounted to the RDA Venture Star, it was by no means less powerful, capable of outpacing it's bigger cousin in a flat out race. The only problem was that it was impossible, even for someone of Holly's ability's, to react to anything at that speed, so they ran the engines at half speed for everything but intercepting. The engine was the same one that Holly's previous Schakal had used, just beefed up and slapped in a bigger frame. The PDARF Fighter Core's Leader, Captain Gray Raider, had insisted that his starfighter pilots get ships as close to their originals as possible, to eliminate having to learn the upper limits of their machines all over again.

Holly floated after Shar, "I haven't gotten a chance to check yet. I think the auxiliary hydrogen injectors are misfiring, and that's tripping the speed control safeties, but it's not like I can fire up the engines in here."

Shar messed around with the heatsinks for a minute, then tinkered with the hydrogen injection models. He closed the maintenance hatch, locking it shut before turning to Holly.

"It looks like," He began, "You shook the leftmost injection nozzle loose during that, impressive, landing you made earlier and they didn't catch it when they swapped the engines over."

Holly couldn't help but smile as she remembered her last landing aboard the Draken.

The fighting above Earth had been fierce and terrible, the Draken struggling to break the gravitational death drip while Earth's token defense fleet hammered it's hull with everything they had. Gray's Starfighter Core had proven invaluable in handling the point defense aspects of launching an unregistered Star-cruiser into high Earth orbit. Earth's brass had been completely taken aback by the ferocity and efficiency of the tiny two-man and one-man craft, having already turned down a proposal to develop such a fleet, deeming it useless. However, what should have been a turkey shoot quickly turned deadly when one of the Earth Defense Fleet's ship Captains discovered quite by accident that the tiny fighters were vulnerable to the spray of energy released by the larger Anti-matter engines of the EDF. By utilizing their maneuvering jets, the EDF Captains had been able to turned their ships into interstellar flame-throwers, blasting the tiny Starfighters with the radiation and force of their engine outputs, and effectively throwing them far from the battle. This hadn't deterred the PDARF long, as the Draken's on-board computers quickly rounded up the straggling fighters and produced calculations that would allow them to power through the blasts rather then be swept away by them. Holly had been caught by one such blast while attempting to dock with the Draken. Only quick thinking and Gray Raider's Valkyrie II had saved her from becoming a cloud of cosmic dust. While she was rocketing toward the bay at four hundred kilometers per second, Holly and Gray (who was already docked) had flipped their ships so the engines faced one another and fired them at full throttle. The resulting energy wave had fried every circuit in the landing bay, but still slowed Holly's ship to a survivable speed. The resulting crash completely destroyed the Valkyrie II and most of the Schakal, but both pilots had walked away with only minor injuries, a testimony to the durability of Violet Colore's designs.

Raider drifted by, eyeing the thrust cones critically, "Pilot,"

Holly snapped to attention, "Sir!"

""At ease pilot. Just thought I should point out that your port thrust cone looks a little warped. Nothing major, but it could impact your turn radius."

"I'll look into it sir!"

Holly twiddled with a lock of her brown hair, "Um, I haven't had a chance to speak with you yet but… no hard feelings?"

Gray looked blankly at her for a second, then laughed, "None at all Pilot, see you in a month."

oo00O00oo

On Earth: Draken ETA: [1] Year, [6] Months, [1] Days

"It will work!" Dr. Dale Forlack whined in his nasally voice, jogging along through the halls of the Earth Defense Fleet's ship yard "I've run every possible test I can and I guarantee my engine can haul a vehicle the size of the Venture Star at four time the speed of light!"

General Erkhart, of the Earth Defense Fleet, eyed the short doctor skeptically, "Just like the last three models have 'worked'?"

The short, fat scientist scowled around his hawk-like nose, "Those were incomplete! I had no way of knowing they would malfunction like that!"

"And that cost us the lives of fifteen marines."

"They should be glad that their deaths went to advancing science!"

Erkhart rubbed his eyes, a gesture that was becoming more and more common the longer he had to deal with the stuck up little inventor. "You should be glad that your life hasn't been given to a prison cell, pending lethal injection."

Forlack blanched, "Without me, the scientific community would lose decades of work!"

Erkhart could feel his control slipping, "And eleven families wouldn't be mourning a lost loved one because you were to stupid to double check your work."

Forlack drew his fleshy body up to it's full height of five and a half feet, opened his mouth, and then closed it. The General was glaring at him with that look that brooked no argument.

"This version is perfectly safe." Forlack wheezed, "Perfectly safe."

"You better hope it is," Erkhart growled, sunlight splashing over his face as he and the Doctor emerged from the building and entered the shipyard.

Four Venture Star sized cruisers rested in cradles spanning the entire length of the orbital shipyard. Unlike the Venture Star, however, these ship were being retrofitted for combat. Orbital and deep-space weapons were still at the experimental level, so most of the armaments were adaptations of earth based weapons. AA guns, Mass accelerator rails, and 90MM cannons were the majority of the weapons. The hope was that the ships could reach Pandora and secure sufficient hostages before the PDARF Draken entered the system the set up shop. RDA and the EDF were relying heavily on ground forces as the backbone of their operation, and as such the new cruisers, dubbed collectively Beta company, were packed with every weapon Earth could spare.

Erkhart grinned evilly down at the Doctor, who was breathing heavily and gaping out the windows, "You are going with them to find that renegade ship. You leave in two months."

oo00O00oo

On Pandora: Draken ETA: [1] Year, [6] Months, [1] Days

Jake cursed as his earpiece vibrated, ONCE AGAIN disturbing his rest. This time however, the incessant buzzing woke Neytiri as well. In a move so human it scared Jake, Neytiri reached over from on top of him and slapped the earpiece, attempting to silence his new pseudo-alarm clock.

"-~-~ng bug." She muttered blearily in Na'vi as Jake slipped his equipment on, rescuing the earpiece from under her hand.

"Jake here." He yawned, "What's up?"

This time it was Norm who answered, "Jake, we need you at Hell's Gate, right now."

"Well good morning to you to buddy. For a second there I though you were Grace, what with the 'do or die' attitud-"

"It's Trudy," Norm blurted, his voice cracking on the last syllable, "She's alive Jake."

Jake sat bolt upright, accidentally throwing Neytiri off his chest, "Trudy? What? How! Where is she?"

Neytiri landed on her hands and feet like a cat, eyes wide and searching for danger. She looked at Jake inquisitively, but Jake just waved her off, starting to dawn his other gear.

"How long have you had her?"

"Two days since we uncovered her. We tried to get a hold of you when Wanda and I originally found her, but Luke changed all the com lines. I saw that message by the way."

"Weird huh?" Jake took his finger off the transmit button, "Neytiri?"

Neytiri had already strapped on her gear, including her own earpiece and mic. She glanced up sharply when Jake said her name.

"Jake?"

"They found Trudy."

Neytiri hadn't know Trudy all that well, but she knew that she was a great friend of Jake's, and also a fearless flier. The Na'vi naturally hated the metal flying machines of the humans, but they held a certain respect for the woman who had given her life like so many other for the freedom of The People.

Neytiri was genuinely puzzled, "If they discovered her body, why do you celebrate?"

"Not just her body!" Jake shouted as he ran for the mouth of the cave, "Her! She's alive!"

Neytiri followed her mate, starting out of long habit to call for her own Ikran before remembering she was dead. Jake's heart hurt as he heard her usual bird call break off halfway. The ex-marine threw an arm over her shoulder, pulling her into a quick hug.

"Come on," He intoned, making an effort to remain the more chipper of the duo, "We better find some Pe'li."

By Direhorse it took them well over an hour to reach Hell's gate. The sun was just peaking up over the tree tops when Jake and Neytiri rode through the open gates of the semi-abandoned human compound. Their Pe'li's hooves clacked on hard concrete as the maneuvered between the few remaining vehicles, mostly tractors, dump trucks and the massive mining rig. Neytiri shivered nudging her mount closer to Jake's. The vehicle yard was cold without the sun to warm it, so unlike the humid, steamy mornings in the jungle.

By the time they reached the AVATAR compound, Neytiri was all to happy to slip off her Pe'li and in to the knee high grass that the Drivers had let grow wild. Much of the compound had fallen into disuse after the RDA left, the only things the Drivers maintained being the cabin, garden, and select pieces of the training courses that had been converted for research. And of course, the basketball court, but that now housed an open air AVATAR sized laboratory on one side and a few picnic tables on the other.

Norm's AVATAR was seated on the rubberized pavement next to one of the human sized tables, while a handful of Drivers were crowded around an AVATAR sized gurney parked off to the left of said table.

Jake weaved carefully through the crowd of masked humans, going to sit by Norm.

"I see you." Jake directed the words and accompanying gesture to Norm, who had been accepted into the Omaticaya tribe much the same way Jake had been, but for his valuer in leading the ground side charge instead of for research purposes.

Norm returned the greeting a little distractedly, his eyes never leaving the gurney.

"How's she doing?"

Norm just gestured to the head of the gurney. Leaning over the stark white bed, Jake sucked in a breath when he caught sight of Trudy's 'passenger'.

"The hell is that?"

Norm shrugged, "We don't know. It seems to have formed a symbiotic relation with her respiratory, digestive, and nervous system. Can't touch it, and we're certainly not removing it."

Jake eyed the pilot sharply, "Two more things. She's taller then I remember. And is she missing an eye?"

Norm stood, unsteady from sitting so long, "Her eye got infected and we had to remove it. And yes, she seems to have grown six or seven inches."

Jake tapped his chin with a finger, "In four days?"

"Yup, hasn't woken up once."

"Holy crap."

"That's a word for it."

Jake straightened up, lowering his voice, "You're missing her?"

Norm made a helpless gesture with his hands, "A week Jake. seven days I thought she was dead. I just kept expecting her to show up out of the blue with some smart-ass comment. And we'd be like; 'Where have you been?' And she'd say something like; 'Someone had to teach the blue-boys how to party!' And we'd laugh and go back to our normal routine. Then I'd turn around and seen the smoke rising off the jungle and I'd remember she was dead. And now here she is. And I'm happy, but..."

Jake slung an arm around Norm's shoulder, "You're afraid your going to lose her."

"Now that she's here, I fell like I can't help," Norm sighed heavily, "I wish Grace were here."

Jake nodded, "Me too man, me too."

No, I will not be bringing Grace back :(