PART II

which features:
a dune buggy, two unsent letters, the Bennetts at home,
President Catherine de Bourgh, classical piano, a vaguely worded note,
celebrity gossip, a wrench in the water recycling system,
and a practical definition of in love

Chapter 1

Five months later

Elizabeth had gone out for a walk when she heard the sirens from the military ship. The sound was becoming too familiar. She glanced towards the military station and then towards the sky, but dark as it was she could see nothing. She could only imagine the Ceres ships closing in above her head. She turned around, and began a brisk walk back to the station, which soon turned into a jog.

In as short as five months, Elizabeth's predictions had come true. The war had come to Maia.

Janie was waiting for her on the inside of the station.

"Lydia?" Elizabeth asked, as she let the station door slam behind her. Janie shook her head. "Alright, let's go," Elizabeth said. They headed into the lab, Elizabeth grabbing their radio on the way. The radio was a one-way to the military ship. She began trying to call.

Janie and Elizabeth had never really figured out which part of the station best sufficed as a bomb shelter, but had eventually made an arbitrary decision to use the lab. Had Char been with them, he would've known which part of the station they should use. Or perhaps he could've reinforced some part of the station for them to make it better suited. But Char was no longer with them. He'd been pulled off of Maia shortly after the troops had arrived. The powers that were saw no reason to fund an engineer-slash-body-guard on the planet when they had the military at their disposal.

Of course, there was no place in the station that was built strong enough to be a proper bomb shelter, and Elizabeth and Janie knew they had just been lucky not to have been hit yet.

And Lydia complicated things further. Elizabeth had tried to send her back to Earth with Char. But Lydia, who had found life on a desert planet to be much more entertaining and boy-ridden than expected, argued strongly against it. And though Elizabeth tried to point out the logic of Lydia returning home to her father, Robert Bennett was much too happy to have his younger daughter out of sight and out of mind.

The problem with Lydia was that she paid no heed to the fact that Maia had become a war zone. It was impossible to keep her near the station without handcuffing her to something large and heavy. And Elizabeth had no handcuffs. So she rarely knew where her sister was when the sirens went off.

Inside the lab, Janie paced and Elizabeth continued to try to radio the military ship. After the twelfth or thirteenth try, she cast the radio down in frustration.

"Dammit," she muttered.

Janie looked at her with sympathy. "I'm sure she's safe inside the ship."

And probably Lydia was safe inside the military ship. Where else would she have been? Still, Elizabeth would have liked to have known this for sure.

They waited, they waited, for hours and hours, listening to the sounds of ships and bombs and sirens. Neither said much. Both seemed to be holding their breath. They were used to this by now; at the same time, they would never be used to it. Finally the world outside of the station seemed to quiet. They waited another hour, and then they emerged.

It was morning. Janie had slept some in the lab. Elizabeth had not. But instead of heading to the bedroom, she planned to go straight off to have a word with General Wickham, while the adrenaline was still kicking in her system.

Outside of the station, the dune buggy was parked in its usual spot. Will Darcy had left it the day he had gone, some time when Elizabeth hadn't been around. Char and Janie had taken to it immediately, but Elizabeth had not gone near it for a full month after Darcy left, instead making wide, suspicious circles around the vehicle. She could not fathom the meaning of the gift, but after a month she accepted that there probably was no mean beyond general courtesy. And even if this was Will Darcy trying to get the last word in, what could it possibly matter now?

She climbed into the buggy, and pointed it in the direction of the military ship. When she arrived, she was pleased to be greeted at the entrance by Johnson, one of the soldiers whom she got on with pretty well and who seemed to do his best to steer clear of the vortex that was Lydia.

"Hey Johnson," she said.

He gave her an almost smile. "I saw your sister before the raid. Sure she inside somewhere," he said, anticipating her reason for showing up.

These days, collecting Lydia was one of the few reasons Elizabeth did grace the military ship with her presence. After Darcy had left, she and Wickham had been at an interesting place—certainly not in love, probably not even in like, but acting out a charade to that effect. The truth was, she had never been a hundred percent convinced by his story about Will Darcy. And the better she knew him, the more his character revealed itself to be layers of intricate lies, lies he told to hide a true self that was really very selfish.

When he'd turned out to have a fiancé on one of the Far East planets—Mary King, daughter of somebody of great military importance, the kind of marriage that was sure to improve his position in the world—Elizabeth hadn't even batted an eye. This had been about a month after Darcy's departure. She'd started driving the dune buggy, but stopped heading in George Wickham's direction.

It wasn't much of a loss.

But now she had something to say to him. "Where's the General?" she asked Johnson, who told her that the last place he'd seen him was around back.

She circled the military ship and found Wickham there, reaming out a group of soldiers who had apparently done something stupid during the raid. Elizabeth waited. At last he dismissed the soldiers, turned around, and saw her.

He acted pleased, flashing her the George Wickham grin, an expression that had ceased to make an impression on her long ago. "Elizabeth. To what do I owe this distinct honor?"

Elizabeth folded her arms, ready for battle. Her conversations with Wickham had been strained lately, to say the least. She expected no exception today. She said, "I'm hoping my sister is here under your protection. Alive. Since I wouldn't know one way or another, seeing as nobody here answers when I radio."

A scowl darkened his face, and he started off towards God knew where, leaving Elizabeth to trot after him in order to hear his reply.

He said, "If you haven't noticed, we're in the middle of a war. I can't be asked to pause and locate Lydia when there are Ceres ships dropping bombs on my men's heads."

"Fine. Then bar her from coming here and I'll know where she is because she'll be with me. I'm happy to deal with the temper tantrums myself."

When Wickham didn't reply, Elizabeth added, "You have a civilian population of exactly three people, and I'm only asking your help keeping track of one."

He stopped walking with a suddenness that startled her, and turned around to face her. "Elizabeth," he said sadly, "when I first got here, I thought you and I were going to be such friends."

She held his gaze with her own clear eyes, but she did not speak.

He said, "I should have told you about Mary King. And I shouldn't have told you about Darcy."

As with every time she heard the name—on the news or talk shows or from her mother—Elizabeth felt the pang of regret. She swallowed it. She said, calmly, "Why, because you were lying?"

He shook his head remorsefully. "No. Because you never believed me."

She did not want to go down this road with him again. It was a conversation they'd had before. She said, "All I ask is that if Lydia is here when the sirens go off, you have someone call me to let me know she's safe. That's all."

He frowned, as if surprised by her response. Then he sighed. He said with a resigned intonation, "Perfectly reasonable. I will do so."

Elizabeth left him to go collect her sister. But Lydia did not wish to leave, nor did she see the point in her leaving when a raid had just ended and another obviously wouldn't happen for some time. Elizabeth did not see the point in arguing. She left her in the company of a red-headed boy and found Wickham on her way out, who promised to drive Lydia back to the station later on in the day.

She arrived back to find Janie on the satellite with Char.

"No Lydia?" Janie asked, as Elizabeth seated herself beside her on the couch.

Elizabeth shrugged. "I extracted a promise from Wickham to let me know if she's over there during the raids, but we'll see if that pans out."

Char, on his end of the screen, looked unhappy. "Janie says it's getting bad out there."

Elizabeth nodded. "It's a little dicey, but they haven't hit us yet," she said ruefully.

Char said, "Well, I have a plan that might do us some good, but if it's going to happen, it's going to have to happen fast. Like now. There's a ship leaving from Bisbee for Earth in three days. If one of you is on it, I can get you a meeting at the White House when you get here."

Elizabeth didn't ask how because she knew how. The wonder was that Char was still seeing something of Drew Collins, even now that he was back on Earth with a world of other options. And Collins was, amongst other things, pretty high up in the hierarchy White House personnel. Char was pulling all the strings he could for them.

"How would Janie get back to Maia?" Elizabeth asked him.

"Me?" Janie was clearly surprised that Elizabeth saw her as the right person to go, but Elizabeth nodded.

Char explained: "A week on Earth then the ship goes back to Bisbee."

It probably wasn't much of a chance, but it felt like they had to take any chance they could, however small. Elizabeth said to Janie, "You up for it?"

Janie shook her head. "Are you kidding me? You're far more the diplomat then I am."

True as this might have been, there were other reasons Elizabeth did not think she should be their emissary. She sighed, and said it out loud. "Trust me, I am the last person in this universe Will Darcy is going to listen to."

"Oh the meeting wouldn't be with Darcy," Char interjected. "It would be with the President."

Janie blew the air out of her lungs in a whistle. She gave Elizabeth a nudge with her elbow. "Oh, this one is so all yours."

Still, Elizabeth wasn't convinced. "But you'll be out here by yourself for nearly a month," Elizabeth said with a frown. She didn't like the idea. She did, however, like the idea that this would be a prime opportunity to drop Lydia back off on Earth. No longer would she have to worry about where that girl was and what she was up to.

"I'll be fine," Janie said. "Besides, if we do nothing we will both end up dead by explosion before the year is up."

"Janie, don't say things like that," Char said crossly. But Janie didn't retract her statement, and it was probably true enough. Char added. "You both know I wish I were out there with you. I've tried everything."

He sent Elizabeth a pointed look, and she knew why. The truth was, he had tried almost everything, talked to almost everyone to try to get funding back and return to Maia. He had wanted to try talking to Will Darcy as a last resort, but Elizabeth had made him swear on his life that he wouldn't. She was too embarrassed. She couldn't ask Will Darcy for anything. He had already given her a dune buggy.

"So," she said to Janie and Char. "Is this a plan? Are we committing?"

Janie nodded and Char said, "I think so."

"So all I have to do is convince George Wickham to have someone fly me and Lydia out to Bisbee tomorrow," Elizabeth said. "Oh, I am so looking forward to this conversation."

"If you have sex with him first, it might go better," Char suggested.

She scowled at him. "If I could punch you in the face, I would," she said.

He shrugged and grinned. "Just trying to be helpful." God, she missed having him around.

And she would see him soon. But for now, she left Char and Janie to talk and went to the bedroom to begin packing. It didn't take long, because there wasn't much to take with her. In fact, there was probably more of her stuff in storage in her parents' basement then there was here. So once she was done, she began packing Lydia's stuff to get a head start on it.

George arrived with Lydia sometime during this process. Lydia announced her presence by barging into the bedroom and demanding, "What do you two think you're doing?"

"What two? Did Wickham leave?" Elizabeth stood as she asked the second question, prepared to chase after him if necessary.

But Lydia shook her head. She had a petulant scowl on her face, and Elizabeth realized that she must already know that they were leaving. "Janie's out there talking to him. She says I'm going back to Earth. Which I'm not."

"We both are," Elizabeth said. She sat back down on the floor and continued with the packing.

"Stop doing that!" Lydia demanded.

Elizabeth stopped, but only so that she could look directly at her sister as she spoke. "Lydia," she began wearily. "There's a war going on here. I know there are some boys you like, but there are plenty of boys on Earth and no bombs."

But Lydia didn't relent at all. She crossed her arms defiantly. "You're so condescending sometimes. This isn't just me screwing around with some guy or whatever, you know. I'm in love. You can't take me away from that. It's wrong, and you can't do it."

"With who?" Elizabeth asked incredulously, for this was the first time in love had been mentioned in her presence. As far as she knew there were still several different soldiers between whom Lydia was dividing her time.

A guilty look crossed Lydia's face, and she spat out, "None of your business."

To be honest, it didn't matter that much anyway who Lydia thought she was in love with. The end result would be the same. She was going back to Earth. Elizabeth continued packing. "I'm sorry it has to be this way," she said. "But it does."

Lydia turned on her heals, and exited the room. Shortly after, Elizabeth heard a door slam. She guessed it was the door to the other bedroom, and that Lydia had locked herself inside to throw a passive-aggressive fit. Elizabeth stood and made her way outside of the station. There, she found Janie talking to Wickham.

Janie said, "Wickham says it's fine."

"Thanks," Elizabeth said to Wickham.

He nodded. "Better get back," he said, and with that he left.

"It's probably a good thing you talked to him about it," Elizabeth said to Janie, once they were alone. "He wouldn't have done it for me."

"He is doing it for you," Janie said.

Elizabeth sighed. Why were people so complicated and so hard to figure? It seemed like she would always be doing someone an injustice.

A/N: Hurray, a quicker update! Yes, this chapter was all Elizabeth and the next one will be all Will. Thanks as always for all your amazing reviews. It warms my sci-fi heart that you all have embraced this story :)

Cheers and happy New Year to all!