"Isn't it unlucky to celebrate someone's birthday three days late?" Jason asked, coming into a ready room unrecognisable behind miles of paper streamers and a whole flotilla of balloons.

Princess turned from where she was balanced on the back of the sofa attaching streamers to the ceiling. "No, late's fine. Early's unlucky. Where I come from, at least, and since I'm organising it that's what matters. Did they give you the all-clear?"

"Yeah." As much as he was likely to get, anyway. He'd spent the past hour walking the clifftop, drumming into himself that there was no way Anderson would have reinstated him as Phoenix jump-pilot on the basis of a one day disaster recovery mission. He'd need more evidence than that to get it back, and he was sure he'd get the chance. Mark was no fool - and the difference in their times for the jump back was very telling. Mark had also been at pains to tell him that the debrief had considered the relative accuracies of the jump-calculations the two had used, and that in fact the first set of numbers, those Mark had jumped with, had been slightly more accurate. Jason did wonder why his commander had felt the need to share that piece of information, and could only conclude that someone at the debrief had publicly assumed otherwise. His money was on Grant.

It was a shame he hadn't been at the debrief, but he hadn't even been aware it was happening. He'd come out of the jump home with a migraine he couldn't even start to handle, had just barely managed to tell Rick to take over, had stripped his helmet off and collapsed forward onto his console. The next thing he remembered clearly was waking up a full day later, shaky, headachy and miserable, for just long enough to take in that the Phoenix had made it home safely after nearly an hour in jump. Chris Johnson hadn't even allowed him out of bed for a further thirtysix hours, and he hadn't wanted to argue for thirty of them. The doctors' logic seemed good enough - he'd piloted three jumps, and two of them had triggered migraine, therefore jump was to blame. He was sure they were wrong, that each time the jump had been the last straw in a run of events which had forced him to push himself way beyond sensible limits. He'd prove it to them, sooner or later. Preferably sooner.

"That's good, man." Tiny's expression was all too readable, and Jason stiffened for the assault. "But you're still supposed to steer clear of that list of foods, right? Shame we got chocolate cake. Can I have your share?"

"Like hell." Jason grinned, and retaliated. "How about that ten pounds you're supposed to be losing? Princess, we have to save him from himself."

"If you two can't play nicely, neither of you will have any cake - Keyop! You're here!" She vaulted down and rushed to hug the small figure who'd been standing silently in the door, observing the argument with a broad grin.

"I could eat it all. Doesn't give me headaches, and I'm supposed to be growing."

Princess shook her head sternly. " Do I really have to tell you we share? Good timing, though. Mark shouldn't be long."

"Where is he anyway?" Jason asked.

"Medical. They're retuning his implant again." Tiny sighed. "He's going spare - they don't seem to be able to get it right at the moment. It gave us a chance to get this lot set up, at least."

"So who else is coming?" Princess asked him.

"Just us. I asked the P-X crew, but they didn't want to intrude."

"Intrude? They saved our butts back there!" Jason stated indignantly.

"They did good. I think Rick and Dimitri saw how far they still have to go, though, and Paula - I dunno, it was a lot to ask of her. Too much. She's been awful quiet since. They feel like this is for us, and I do understand. It's no fun going to a party where everyone else is best buddies."

"If you say so. I think we're nicer than that." Princess looked up at the clock. "We must finish setting up - Mark'll be here any minute, and I want everything to be perfect."

"That should do it." The probe was withdrawn from the back of his neck and replaced with a pad and pressure to stop any bleeding. "G-5 suggested that being interfaced with the jump-drive as it failed could have caused the problem, and I'm inclined to think he's right. I can't find anything else wrong with it. Try not to blow up any more engines, and it should stay in tune for rather longer this time."

Mark chuckled obediently as he stood up and stretched the kinks out of his spine. "I'll bear that in mind."

It was a good explanation. It seemed perfectly logical. If only his memory didn't insist that he'd shut down the interface the moment they'd gone to jump, before the problems manifested. That there hadn't been a connection to his implant as the jump-drive went wrong - or at any time afterwards. He shook his head, forcing it out of his mind. He had to be wrong. There had been an external cause - feedback from the damaged circuits as the drive chamber shattered. They'd retuned the implant , and it would be months before he was face down on the table again. The problems he'd been having were random, statistical variations within perfectly normal implant functionality. There was nothing to worry about.

Zoltar looked from the report in his hand to the one lying on the desk, then up to the quivering soldier in front of him.

"So. You say you fired on the Earth ship with the dimensional needle, and hit it from behind in the area of the engines."

"Yes, my lord."

"They then went into interstellar flight."

"Yes, my lord." He seemed to gather his courage. "I saw an explosion as they vanished, my lord. I'm sure the ship was destroyed."

"Are you now?" Zoltar turned the second report to face him. "Then perhaps you can explain how our operative observed it descending from orbit on Earth some eighteen hours later?" He paused for several seconds, enjoying the look of frozen horror on the wretched man's face.

"I thought not."

He gestured elaborately to the guard at the door. "This man is a liar who abandoned his crewmates. Make an example of him."

Notes:

Migraine takes many shapes and forms, and is associated with both light-sensitivity and motion-sickness. One thing it doesn't usually do is cause ongoing vision problems - as far as I understand, they usually last only a few minutes and go away once the headache starts. Then again, if what Jason had was standard migraine, they'd surely have picked it up much earlier. The electrodes exist and work on a similar principle to TENS machines, but from what I've read, they don't work for many people.