EFBT: Thanks for yet another wonderful review, you're spoiling me, you know that, right? ;) This chapter is less action-packed but I hope you'll like it all the same!
Disclaimer: I do not own Terra Nova or any of its characters, this is solely a non-profit fan activity.
CHAPTER 7
Hope
PICKING up the paint roller again as if it was to be her trusted weapon in a duel, Hera rolled her shoulders, her right one healed without a trace of pain or even a scar, and stared determinedly at the wall before her. Their barracks were in desperate need of some new color, the old and dull paint layer was peeling off in places and the storm three days ago hadn't done it any favors either. Together with her squad and some other volunteers they had started the long and rather tiresome job of repainting the three-story wooden buildings next to the training grounds.
Dipping her roller in the lemonish yellow paint she continued where she had left off. A rain of paint splattered everywhere but Hera, used to this by now, ignored it and proceeded stubbornly. Stealing a glance at the others she realized that compared to them she was still making very slow progress. Increasing her effort she picked up the pace.
"Sergeant Hallows?" Hera turned around, roller in midair with paint flying everywhere, to find Corporal Reynolds looking at her inquiringly.
"Yes. What is it, Corporal?" She asked him trying to look more confident with her painting skills.
"Commander Taylor wants a word. He said not to come to his office but Dr. Wallace's instead at your earliest convenience. Ma'am." He delivered his message with the air of a schoolboy who had just zealously learned a lesson by heart.
"Right.." Hera muttered back at him, feeling as if a stone had suddenly been dropped into her stomach, weighing her down. She really hoped this wasn't about the quarry mission. The debriefing two days ago had been relatively okay, despite the fact that Major Croft had blamed her for the Phoenix sniper who had been very close to potentially ruining the entire mission. Luckily both Sergeant Reilly and Corporal Curran had spoken on her behalf, pointing out that Croft had been appointed the task to set up a perimeter and prevent any enemy from coming within range of Hera's squad so they could do their job in relative safety. Commander Taylor hadn't seemed to need their arguments to convince him of Croft's unreasonable accusation, though. In the end the indignant Major had stormed off throwing Hera one of her seething looks, but that had been the end of that story.
Praying inwardly that this was still the case Hera nodded in Reynolds' direction now he was still waiting for her reply. Whatever this was about she did feel rather grateful for the interruption, her hands were painful after squeezing the roller for more than two hours.
"Thank you. I'll go at once." She said and made to leave, seeing the roller still in her hands soon stopped her in her tracks again. Before he had time to refuse Hera pushed the roller in the Corporal's hands instead.
"Here. Go crazy." She added with a smile and quickly headed for the science lab on the other side of the colony.
Unbuttoning her overall and freeing her arms from the baggy sleeves Hera hoped that, for the upper half at least, it would help in appearing a little less paint-stained when she entered Malcolm's office. He looked up from one of the many plexpads strewn across his desk. Judging by his strangely amused frown pulling off the overall to her hips had been a wasted effort. "Don't say a word or I'll give you a hug." Hera stopped him when Malcolm had opened his mouth no doubt for one of his annoyingly witty comments. He closed it again and shrugged, a grin spreading across his face nonetheless.
"However much tempted, I'll try not to then." He promised. "Besides, we have more important things to discuss." He added with a mysterious glint in his eyes, "Follow me." He rose from his chair and preceded her through the glass door leading to the main lab. On the center table a large object was covered under a white sheet. Malcolm headed directly for this table and looked back at her with one hand grabbing the sheet as if he was about to either introduce his latest invention or perform a magic trick. Hera followed suit wondering what on earth was going on.
"Prepare to be amazed!" He announced dramatically and with a spectacular swoosh he pulled back the sheet, revealing the hidden object beneath it.
"What on earth-" Hera stammered then fell silent as words failed her. Stunned her eyes took in every inch of the wooden mermaid on the table in front of her.
An hour later Hera still could barely believe what Malcolm had discovered. Well, technically the Sixers had beat them to it, but still, here it was, tangible proof that their fracture had long ago already stranded this prow here in Terra Nova. Unbelievable, but true. Together with a wildly enthusiastic Malcolm she browsed through all of the data and scans he shoved in her direction until she had a mountain of plexpads in front of her. They were still in the middle of a lengthy discussion about the readouts on the last scan when Commander Taylor walked in.
Hera automatically straightened and tried to look less flustered than she felt. Suddenly self-conscious of her appearance and regretting the fact she had forgotten to scratch the paint of her face and hands at least she folded the latter hastily behind her back.
"Well, I can tell by your mutual looks of sheer triumph that the Doctor filled you in and you found me something good. Am I right?" He looked rather amused at the pair of them.
"Yes, sir." She replied dutifully.
"Care to share your conclusions with me?" He asked, gesturing for them both to take a seat when he himself, with a brief disgruntled look from Malcolm which he thankfully didn't notice, sat down in the doctor's usual chair at the head of the table.
"Um, it might not be a good idea for me to sit down right now, sir." Hera remarked, awkwardly, indicating her paint-stained clothes.
"Ah, Yes.. I see what you mean." Hera felt the color rising to her cheeks now he let his eyes wander over her overall covered in yellow smears, "I'm sorry to have torn you away from your other duties." He apologized but couldn't stop himself from grinning in a way that belied the sincerity of his apology.
"That's ok, sir. I turned out to be the world's worst painter anyway. I think there's more paint on me than on that wall, to be honest." Hera joked before realizing who she was talking to. He didn't seem to mind however and smiled in good humor.
"Well, I'm sure it can handle a bit of paint," He waved in the direction of the chair to his right. "Sit down."
She quickly took the seat appointed to her. When she had Taylor nodded to Malcolm on his left, "Bring me up to speed, Doctor."
Dr. Wallace needed no further encouragement and he passionately plunged into an explanation about his most recent and, according to himself, possibly the biggest discovery mankind had ever made. Even though Commander Taylor cocked an eyebrow at this, clearly questioning his judgment, he listened attentively for the good part of an half hour. Looking slightly confused and perhaps also a little bit sleepy Commander Taylor creased his brows in thought when Malcolm's seemingly endless flood of words ceased at last.
"Does that make sense?" Malcolm looked questioningly at the Commander, who seemed to have checked out of the conversation some time ago.
"Not at all, Doctor. But then that's why you're wearing the lab coat and I'm not." He admitted with blunt honesty.
Hera tried to hide her smile at this while Malcolm looked torn between looking insulted or amused.
"Why don't we have some coffee before we move on?" Commander Taylor suggested making the doctor go and get it for them with one of his intimidating but harmless stares. The moment he had left he leaned towards Hera and asked her;
"Was all of that in English?"
She barely managed to contain her smile anymore. She knew out of experience it took a considerable time to get used to Malcolm's technobabble. The moment her lungs burst because of the straining effort not to laugh she hurriedly turned it into a cough halfway when Malcolm returned with three mugs on a tray. Looking very much like he wasn't enjoying his role as a waiter one bit he unceremoniously planted a mug in front of all three of them and then sat down again rather silently.
"Well, sir, from what I can make out based on the data Dr. Wallace has collected we can rule out the prow is originally from this time stream. It appears to have a similar molecular signature which means it traveled through a time fracture and ended up in the Badlands." Hera started, unraveling and arranging her thoughts on this incredible discovery still so new to her as she went along.
Commander Taylor nodded as his chin rested on his folded hands to indicate he was still with her and she quickly moved on, "Now, it being from a completely different era could indicate the fracture linking our earth with this one has been around for much longer than we anticipated, even though it's still safe to assume we're the first ones to make use of it as we did by creating hope plaza and the particle accelerator there."
She paused, drawing in a breath to slow down the pace in which she was speaking as it always seemed to speed up whenever the theories in her head were starting to run away with her. Commander Taylor's mouth quirked briefly, narrowing his eyes which sparked joyful little lights in apparent amusement as he had no doubt picked up on her enthusiasm. "But that's not the best part, sir."
"It isn't?" Commander Taylor immediately asked her, furrowing his brows as his lips curving into a warm smile now.
"No, sir." Hera responded trying to sound dutiful and not like she was enjoying, perhaps more than she should, this rare and precious moment in which she felt confident about what she was telling him.
Meanwhile, Malcolm wiggled impatiently in his chair now she had been repeating what he thought he had deftly explained not ten minutes ago, but she ignored him. "Scans also suggested this prow has aged at almost the exact same rate as it would have in our own dimension"
Hera hastily leaned across the table and grabbed the plexpad she was looking for. Showing Commander Taylor a graph with the relevant highlighted she continued; "Basically, if what Malcolm's saying is true-"
"It is true!" Malcolm interjected indignantly though neither of them reacted.
"What are you saying? We might not have lost our connection to 2149?" Commander Taylor inquired earnestly, leaning forward in his seat, planting his elbows on the table.
"Yes, sir. That's exactly what I'm saying." Hera couldn't refrain from looking directly into his brightened eyes as she confirmed his speculations.
"And it's possible to reopen fracture to 2149 from this end?" The Commander probed, sounding somewhere between apprehensively relieved and a stark disbelief, at the same time sparking greedy and excited lights in Dr. Wallace's eyes with his words.
Hera nodded somewhat reluctantly now he referred to the part where the theory Malcolm had come up with was still kind of fuzzy, to say the least.
"Maybe." She settled on saying, feeling obliged to point out afterwards, "But by blowing up Hope Plaza we could've destroyed the fracture for good-"
"Yes." Malcolm broke in, impatient to move the conversation along and also undoubtedly wishing to take attention away from the fact that his hypothesis was far from being flawless. "I believe it might naturally reemerge again. Now we know it has already opened in the Badlands before, there's every chance it will revert back there now the terminal near the colony's been taken out. Commander," Suddenly serious, Malcolm clasped his hands together as if in a prayer and pressed them to his lips, throwing Commander Taylor an almost pleading look, "If there's even the slightest possibility the portal is still out there, linking our worlds together we need to know. We cannot afford not to go to the Badlands.."
"We will, Doctor. You've convinced me. You both have. And I want the two of you to join me on this mission. "
Nathaniel threw her one of his appreciative winks as he patted the scientist on the shoulder, instantly causing tears to gather in the corner of Malcolm's eyes either from sheer relief he'd successfully made his case and won or because of the overpowering impact of his support that almost had him slam into the desk.
Hera could hardly restrain a smile from breaking through her usual shyness as the Commander's words echoed pleasantly in her head; they were going to the Badlands and he'd wanted her to come along with him..
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