Anna shifted slightly. The girl next to her hummed and wrapped her delicate arms around the redhead. Opening her eyelids, Anna gazed into a pair of blue eyes a few shades darker than her own. They were icier, colder, but warmer, somehow.
Anna's older sister, Elsa, pressed a kiss to the redhead's lips before pulling back and looking at her again. They both smiled as the younger ran her hand through the elder's hair.
Anna thought back six months earlier, to the first time they had seen each other after thirteen years of separation. Anna thought she had been afraid, but the fear she'd seen in Elsa's eyes was so much greater than her own that Anna's fear had been almost immediately replaced with concern and love for the sister she barely knew.
The separation coincided with a vote held by the leaders of the Coronal Coalition to train the young blonde. The galaxy may have been at peace, but everyone knew war was approaching and the Coronal Coalition needed a decisive edge, which they believed Elsa would provide. Elsa and Anna's parents, active members of the Coalition and the King and Queen of the planet Arendus knew that training Elsa as a commander, and if need be a weapon, was a necessity.
Anna still blamed them. The younger, through all her years of intense and rigorous training, never once believed that their separation was necessary. In fact, by the end of their training, she believed it was actually a tactical disadvantage for them to have been separated for so long.
The redheaded-girl had been trained into a one-woman strike team. Excelling in every field from marksmanship to electronic-infiltration, Anna understood every facet of her military education.
Trained into a tactical thinker, she needed to be able to predict actions, not only from her enemies, but from her friends, her commander. For her enemies this meant understanding their training, their commander's training, and their orders. For her commander, it meant holding an intimate and personal relationship. Anna knew that she'd never be able to recover the time she'd missed with her sister and because of this she was afraid that the six months they had before their mission began wouldn't be enough time for her to catch up with the woman she had so desperately missed.
Anna remembered the moment when she realized how beautiful Elsa was. More specifically, however, she remembered the warm rush the realization sent across her skin.
Although their training had separated the pair, in thought, they hadn't gone a day apart.
After their reunion it hadn't taken long for the girls to realize that they had rather unsisterly feelings for each other. It took even less time for them to act on said feelings. The one-woman strike team kissed the royal captain on the nose before the two of them broke into a round of giggles.
"We should get up soon."
"Aww, but Els…"
"Anna, you know we can't stay in bed all day. Besides, we're leaving tomorrow, remember?"
The older sister smiled and stroked the younger's face.
"I know, but that doesn't mean I can't hope you'll say yes."
Elsa rolled her eyes as Anna smiled and grabbed the blonde's hands, lacing their fingers together.
"How do you feel?"
The elder sibling looked down at the ruffled sheets, but said nothing.
"You don't have to be afraid, Elsa. I'm right here, I'll always be right here."
The redhead brought their hands to her chest and pressed the blonde's palm against her heart. Their eyes met.
"Do you promise?"
Anna's grip on her sister's hand tightened and she smiled.
"I promise you'll never lose me."
Elsa nodded and pressed herself against the girl.
"I don't know what I would do without you. I can't even bring myself to think about it."
The redhead smiled and pulled her sister close.
"Then don't. Let's just think about us being together right now."
Elsa smiled and gave a content sigh.
"One more hour."
Anna laughed and the two shared another kiss.
Four months later.
The door to the shuttle closed just a moment before two burning bolts of energy collided with it. Anna carried forward despite the many injuries her body had sustained. Clutching her bleeding arm, the girl sat down in her chair and tapped on of the computers with her elbow. The screen flashed and the ship's interface appeared. Letting go of her still-bleeding arm, Anna wiped the blood on the leg of her battered uniform and began inputting commands. Small streaks of crimson marred the screen. The ship's interface disappeared and a cluster of runic symbols replaced it. The redhead smiled; Weselton Auto-Sentry tech was too easy to hack into.
Weselton Auto-Sentry tech operated off the same frequency that all other Weselton technology operated off of. The layers of encryption and protection, however, differed. Anna knew that there was a priority of protection that Weselton employed; she knew that the power systems in Auto-Sentries usually had very little protection because back-up systems could very easily be installed, while ships usually had a lot of protection for their power cores because they were too large to have backups. Because of this, shutting down the generators on an Auto-Sentry array was the quickest way to shut it off.
The sound of plasma bolts colliding with the armor of her shuttle ceased.
Tapping a few commands into the ship's computer, the engines roared to life and the take-off sequence began. Moments later the ship was rocketing into the planet's atmosphere. A blue icon flashed on the forward display.
Tapping the icon, an image of her sister, clad in a tight white-blue command uniform appeared on the display. The elder sibling's face scanned across the younger's, a concerned expression taking hold, forcing her beautiful lips into a grimace. A whimper barely escaped the Queen's mouth, but Anna recognized it as her name.
The Princess smiled.
"Els, it's alright, I'm fine. This is nothing."
"You're hurt."
"I've been hurt worse than this and you know it."
The elder sister shook her head and smiled. The younger knew it was forced. She hated to make her sister worry, but knew that that was the nature of the mission. For a moment she wondered if that represented a liability, but the girl quickly dashed the thoughts to oblivion.
"How close are you?"
"Ran into some trouble with the Auto-Sentries on the planet's surface so I had to disable them, I'll be exiting the planet's atmosphere any minute now. Elsa, how are things up there?"
The screen crackled with static as an explosion rocked her sister's ship. Anna swore under her breath as the screen dimmed and her sister's bright face was cast in red light. The redhead could barely make out the voices in the background, the ship must have suffered a hit to one of its power cores. Her sister turned back to the viewscreen and spoke.
"Anna, you need to push it as fast as you can, our only option is to jump. I can buy you some time, but you have to hurry."
The Princess nodded and the display blinked away, she attempted to speed up her shuttle as much as she could. Tapping at the display she rerouted power from her rear shields to the engines, the shuttle shook slightly before it adjusted to the new speed.
The ship's scanners squealed seconds before a massive jolt shook the ship. The damage report registered multiple hits on the shuttle. Anna watched as the power level drained. One of the blasts must have connected with a node. Shaking her head, the girl reassigned power from the forward blasters to the rear shields.
A moment of reprieve in her grasp, the Princess checked what had hit her. The Auto-Sentries had come back online. Chastising herself for not being more careful and checking for a reserve generator, when she knew there could be one, or going for something a little less flashy and just overloading the turrets themselves, Anna hooked back into the system. Sweat pooled on her forehead as she diverted more power to the shields.
After a few moments she was back into the system, the runes reappeared and a few deft taps later the Auto-Sentries deactivated once more.
The blue icon popped up again. The girl brushed a finger against it and the screen flashed.
"Anna, where are you?"
Elsa's voice was laced with desperation. She grimaced before responding.
"Exiting the atmosphere now, those Auto-Sentries must have had a back-up system; I've lost power to my cannons, so I'm not going to be able to blast through any debris."
The expression on her sister's face made a knot form in her gut. Elsa whined and her fists clenched. As the shuttle exited the atmosphere and into the debris field above the planet her focus shifted to piloting the ship through the field. The shields would help deflect the smaller rubble, but without her main guns, she'd need to be a lot more careful, which meant she'd be going slower. She heard her sister barking orders.
"Tell the crew to evacuate all unnecessary decks. Get them to engineering and the crew quarters. We're shutting down life-support in all of the other decks in one minute."
What?! No!
"Elsa! You could end up killing a lot of people! I won't let you do this for me."
"Anna, you don't have a choice. This is my only option. I can't lose you."
The redhead looked into Elsa's eyes and nodded. The monitor snapped off.
Her body went numb as raw determination filtered through her system. She saw the glow of the dreadnought's cannons preparing to fire. The cannon would tear Elsa's ship apart in its current condition, but she wouldn't let that happen. Diverting her ship's course toward the dreadnought, she booted up the hacking program once more. Weselton's security protocols flashed through her head. Scanners were usually less protected in ships because manual navigation was always a possibility.
The runes appeared on her screen once more, although this set of runes was far more complex. She knew she only had a matter of seconds. Ignorant of the searing pain in her arm, the redhead mashed at the screen until everything aligned. Thinking quickly, the girl inputted several directives and closed the system. She watched as the dreadnought's cannons intensified. The bright white glow of the cannons burned her eyes. She swallowed dryly and bit her lip.
The glow suddenly decreased in intensity, until it was no more. Smiling, she wiped the sweat from her brow, turned her ship around and raised coms with Elsa.
The red glow of the backup system's lights shone across her sister's stunned face.
"Surprised?"
The blonde's face crinkled into a sad one and Anna's own expression softened. She could sense her sister's distress from the pain in the icy, but warm, blue eyes staring into her own.
"Elsa, what is it? I'm almost aboard, we'll leave as soon as I'm on, and everything is going to be fine."
The viewscreen flickered off and a wave of exhaustion poured through the redhead. The searing pain that radiated from her arm finally caught up to her. Bruises and cuts all across her body screamed as the shuttle made a hard landing in the ship's hangar. The jump to Flash Space jolted her, sending flares of pain dancing across her body.
Rising from her seat, Anna took a few steps forward before collapsing on the cool metallic floor. Blood pooled around her arm. For a moment, her eyes drifted across the console, red liquid dripped from the left side of her seat, splashing on the ground. A black haze drifted over her. Light shone across her, the door of her shuttle opened; the girl's last thoughts were dashed into the void as she passed out.
A/N: Because of all of the entirely unexpected positivity I've been receiving regarding this story, I've decided to change its status to "in-progress" and write more! Happy day! So, expect an update soon!