Monday

March 25th, 2357

Cyclotron Laboratories

Doctor Bareilles rushed into Custer's office, a big grin on his face. "Did you hear?"

Custer looked up from his work and shook his head. "Hear what?"

"Aderholdt, Barrett and Pitcairn did it! Stuart Power's alive and Chase has been moved."

Chase be damned. Who cared about her? But Power was still alive? That was not good for him. Still, he couldn't let anyone know. "How do you know?" he asked his associate. "I mean, how is that possible? The Cyclotron is still offline."

"Reports are coming up on the computers now. Those three sent their preliminary reports to the Council, Council filtered them to all of us. It's an attachment on the daily morning report. Take a look." With that, Bareilles turned and left.

Immediately, Custer logged into the network and found the morning report... he'd already read it... routine stuff... but his copy didn't have an attachment to it. What was Bareilles talking about? He went into the main memo system and downloaded the morning report from the Council's databanks, the one with the attached memo that was being circulated. He honestly didn't believe what he was reading. Those three used a new time wave transference technique - without the Cyclotron to power it? How was that possible? They had deduced a method of creating a stable time beam without the Cyclotron?

"Scite, scite, scite," Custer muttered under his breath. How could all this have gone so wrong?

Aderholdt, Pitcairn and Barrett had the technology to initiate a time wave without the Cyclotron. That meant...

That meant...

That meant he had lost control of the situation.

He needed to assess his situation. There he was, still obscure, still unobserved. Nothing had changed in the world structure, at least, nothing of note. Not yet. With Chase alive but sixty years beyond where she had landed and Stuart Power moved sixteen years from when he should have died, history itself should have changed, but it hadn't. Then again, he might not be aware of a lot of temporal changes for at least seven days. He quickly brought up the current timeline and compared it to the original he had tried to change. The differences were... what? Infinitesimal? This wasn't possible. It just wasn't possible. Even within moments of changing a timeline, some type of difference should be registering on the monitors. You can't change history without changing history. That was an undisputable fact. And he had accounted for everything.

He reread the report in utter disbelief. Again, dry words, one following the other, describing the Council's plan to keep Stuart Power was alive and move Chase temporally to England sixty years after the fact, making the Power Team believe that it was one of Dread's soldiers who dispatched her after they had found her. Reports showed that an object was moved to the year 2208 just as planned.

But Stuart Power alive, either in 2132 or 2148, meant one thing to his family - its eventual fall from power.

The timeline hadn't cemented itself yet. It was still fluid. If he could pinpoint other various points in time, maybe he could minimize the damage to his family and perhaps reverse the downfall. That meant starting at the beginning, looking through the new histories created on the now current timeline so he would know exactly what point in time to target.

He started looking through the computer database. What had he missed? How had he -

Wait.

"What the scite?"

A background alert showed on his monitor. He'd programmed his alerts to tell him when certain files had been accessed but by people other than him. Someone had performed a search on his lab's computer logs? Why? Some of the files that were checked out were turned over to the labs when he ran the diagnostics on the Cyclotron. There was nothing to give anyone reason to -

Someone had checked his logs?

How had he missed that?

He did a quick backtrack on the search to find out who the individual was and what they were looking for. The name was unknown, but whoever it was had a valid code. He rechecked the names of the files that were accessed. Most of these were erased off his computer. How could anyone have... the buffer? That would have been the only way anyone could have found these particular files, but they wouldn't still be in the buffer, would they? He was meticulous about erasing his searches. In fact, he was almost paranoid about it. Nothing could be tracked back to him. Not until he righted the timeline in his family's favor.

He followed the search as closely as he could. Someone had typed in a simple text search and found information of his searches still in the buffer. He just didn't understand how any of his work could still be in the buffer.

Whomever it was saw that he had targeted June 14th, 2132, and December 25th, 2147.

That means someone could easily put the pieces of the puzzle together and know he had targeted Stuart Power. That would also mean that someone knew that he created the fake Brophy Theorem. Someone knew that what he did created the situation where Chase was alive which could undeniably destroy the world as they knew it.

That meant someone knew what he'd done.

That meant that he was purposely excluded from getting the memo attachment.

That meant someone was creating a trap for him.

That also meant he had to make a quick getaway.

"Doctor Custer?"

William turned to find Administrator Collier with three guards standing behind her.

"I think we have a great deal to talk about, don't you?"

~0~0~0~0~

Interrogation Room

"You're real name is Byron Micklon," Collier stated, reading from the records Custer had worked so diligently to hide until the proper time they should become public. "You are a direct descendent of Dennis Taggart, the younger brother of Lyman Taggart known as Lord Dread from the Badderdays. Is this true?"

Younger brother? Little did she know. He was a direct descendent of Lyman Taggart himself through his son, Dennis. Still, Custer didn't say anything.

"There's a comment here in your file that your family claimed descendency from General George Armstrong Custer and his wife Libby. A DNA search was performed on the general and his wife, and they didn't have any children," Collier explained as she raised a sheet of paper from the file. "There were rumors that he unofficially married a woman named Monahsetah and fathered two children, but some historians believed that he had contracted an illness while at West Point and couldn't reproduce. Presumably, the two children were fathered by his brother Thomas. In short, the story you told about being Custer's descendent through his wife Libby is untrue. In fact, being General Custer's descendent in any way would be highly unlikely."

"Just a story I used to hear from my grandfather," he muttered. He knew his obscurity was gone. His efforts had been uncovered. He wasn't certain exactly how much they knew for certain at that moment or how much they pieced together, but he was willing to play the game of ask-don't-answer until he had a better idea.

"Really?" Collier suggested. She shoved the records into his hands. "I think you were told that you were a direct descendent of Dread himself. The man who would be king and was reportedly destroyed by the Power Team. Did you really think that by getting rid of Stuart Power, Dread would survive? Do you think one man alone destroyed the Machine Empire? There was an entire Resistance movement during the Badderdays. Stuart Power was just one man. He was important, but he wasn't as pivotal as history remembers him being."

Custer didn't speak. He knew the truth. Get rid of Stuart Power, and the only person capable of matching wits with Lord Dread would be gone. The Power Team would fail because it couldn't stand up to someone as powerful as his ancestor. Disinterested, he opened the records...

The DNA search was absolute. Dennis Taggart was Dread's younger brother? No, that wasn't true. He double-checked the information. The DNA was unquestionable.

But that wasn't right. Dennis was Lyman's son, the heir apparent to the throne of the Machine Empire. He was of noble birth. How could -

"We searched your office and your dwelling."

Searched? "You can't search any of my personal property without -"

"A warrant? We had one," Collier quickly explained. "Manipulating time is a serious offense, and I am making certain all my t's are crossed, i's are dotted and the lower case j's go below the line before acting. Everything is perfectly legal." She pulled a journal out from a pile of papers sitting on the desk in front of her.

"You had no right or authority to search any of my property."

Collier ignored him and opened the journal and began reading aloud.

"Over two hundred years ago, my family held influential positions in both the government and the scientific community. University chairs, scholarships with our family name on them, libraries and high schools named for us. We were influential in the establishment of a peaceful order. Our research, resources, and family position helped move the world to that end. The stories handed down in my family bear witness to what was stolen from us. It was not a single moment in history that changed our lives. It was a ripple effect beginning at a particular point in time. Temporal theory has a single proven reality: change one aspect of history and all history changes. I alone now have the ability to correct the moment that began the chain reaction that removed us from our position. I will retrieve our legacy."

They were silent for a moment, then Collier closed the journal and sat back. "Everything you did is in this journal. How you sought out the exact moment to murder Stuart Power, how you sabotaged the equipment to create a splittered wave fractal and convince everyone it was a true Brophy Theorem coming into law. All of it. Every word."

William Custer, a.k.a. Byron Micklon didn't look at the journal. Instead, he focused entirely on Collier. "Fiction," he said, knowing that denial was now pointless.

Collier nodded. "You're quite correct in that. Much of your assumptions were fiction. Not your attempt at destroying our world by murdering Stuart Power however."

His assumptions were not fiction. He was still a direct descendent of the Taggarts.

Collier laced her fingers together and leaned forward on her arms. "You were working under the assumption that Stuart Power's continued existence was what destroyed your family's place in society. You blamed him for the utter destruction of the Machine Empire and the Taggart family, Dread specifically. However, that's not exactly what happened."

He set aside the name Custer once and for all. Micklon leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. "Since we're speaking in hypotheticals and fictional plots, what assumptions would you consider correct?"

Collier brought out a journal of a temporal lifeline, the pseudo-record of an entire life of a particular individual.

"Stuart Power was very influential, that's true. He was a soldier of a sort, but he was also a figurehead in some respects. Brilliant, technologically innovative, a major player in the war, but he was not the only Resistance leader fighting in the wars. Myth and legend are more prevalent in his story than the actual facts. It has been believed for all these years that Stuart Power did more in the Badderdays than he actually did. He was a focal point for Dread's anger. The personal war between those two caused Dread to make mistakes by acting against Power without considering all the aspects of a plan. That meant other Resistance teams were almost beneath Dread's notice because he was concentrating on stopping Stuart Power and the Power Team. In short, history has been kind to Stuart Power. It made him seem to do more than he actually did or get the credit for things others did because he was famous. He had a major role to play in the war, and because of that role, the Resistance was able to perform tasks and win battles they wouldn't have otherwise. He wasn't the primary force for good behind the war nor was his being there the determining factor of the outcome. It was a mitigating factor."

She pushed another journal toward Custer. "You thought you were a direct descendent of Lyman Taggart. Maybe that's a story handed down from generation to generation in your family. According to your actual DNA, you're descended from Dennis Taggart, known as Dennis T to his friends. He was the leader of a Resistance group in Idaho during the Badderdays. He turned his back on his family, mainly his brother, when Dread began his attempt at world domination. He fought the Dread forces for years. When the Badderdays were over and Dread was destroyed, Dennis married, and they began a family. He used the last name Turner. According to some records that survived, he didn't want anyone to know who he was. He wanted to be obscure and help rebuild the world his brother destroyed."

She leaned forward, balancing herself on her elbows. "You thought it was Stuart Power that destroyed your life. In fact, it was your ancestor turning his back on his brother. Stuart Power had nothing to do with your bloodline's fall from prominence. You chose the wrong target." She sat back and watched him. "Not only that, the trackers you used to pinpoint those particular points in time... you didn't use Masterson or Jonathan Power to triangulate the exact temporal coordinates necessary, did you? It would have been too coincidental for Aderholdt and Barrett to have chosen the exact same trackers to find Stuart Power. You were trying to find the exact moment your family line was removed from its lofty societal heights through a ripple effect. You tracked the moment of the explosion, didn't you? You know that Stuart Power and Dread were together at that moment. You were trying to make certain Power didn't walk away like he did in the original timeline. Then you pinpointed the explosion at the Power Base in 2147. It's a half-drecked way of pinpointing a temporal location, isn't it?"

Dennis T was Lyman Taggart's brother? Power's inclusion in the war wasn't the primary factor of his family's downfall? Micklon reached out and took the journals with shaking hands. All those years, he'd heard stories that his family had once been important. He'd always heard -

Collier continued. "Then there's Corporal Chase. Whereas myth and fiction permeate Stuart Power's lifestory, mostly facts detail Corporal Chase's life. It is true that her absence motivated Captain Power's need for revenge and his need to destroy everything remotely connected to Dread. On the new timeline, during the months that she was gone, Captain Power did destroy facility after facility, put Dread on the defensive in a way the Resistance had never seen before and gave the Resistance the momentum it needed to begin winning the war. We won't know the exact results after her return and subsequent disappearance until the timeline settles down. That should only take a few days, but early reports are remarkably positive."

Micklon sat back and stared at her.

Collier shook her head. "You didn't take her surviving into consideration. Then again, you didn't take the fact that both Chase and Power survived transit via wave fractals into consideration. You didn't consider that energy from an explosion could travel through a time wave fractal and act as a power source so a target could be moved successfully and not be deconvoluted in transfer. You never even considered the possibility of two explosions traveling the same way. You see, to be a true temporal scientist, whether it's a physicist or an engineer, you have to take everything into consideration or risk changing history and the future."

She gathered together all the paperwork and tucked them under her arm. "Remember, Micklon," Collier said as she stood and walked toward the door, "history is written by the victors and half of history is hiding what people don't want known. Even we don't have a clear path to the truth because it's obscured by myth, legend, stories and time itself. After all, history is just agreed upon fables. Maybe you should think about that while you spend the rest of your life in prison."

~o~ This Domino Won't Fall ~o~

Wednesday

July 10, 2148

Power Jumpship

Six days had passed since the Fourth. One spectacular week of discoveries, reacquaintances, tall tale-telling, s'mores-making arguments, and a little scientific analyses of current events. A little fun, a little work, but all in all, it proved that the foundation blocks and the strong ties to friendship that built the Power Team were still there. Time hadn't ripped them apart.

That's not to say that the team's efforts to establish themselves as a six-person/one-personality-matrix team and integrate everyone's fields of expertise didn't meet with some difficulties. The world had changed. Jennifer and Stuart were brought up-to-date with everything that had happened, but the truth of the team being seven-strong in one place at one time was still hard to believe.

Perhaps the most difficult concept for them to deal with was the truth revealed to them two days earlier when Pitcairn had explained the situation to them and how they had to resolve it - they had to destroy everything to do with Dread and Overmind.

All in all, it had been a few days for the old/new Power Team crew to get settled in to their new reality.

However, there were still a few little bumps to deal with.

~0~0~0~0~

"You burned them," Stuart said, trying hard not to laugh.

"Says you!" Hawk was laughingly indignant as he flew the ship back to the base. "You never got the marshmallows soft enough to really stick to the chocolate or the graham crackers. Your s'mores fell apart! Mine, they stayed together and made for a well-stuck snack."

Sitting in the co-pilot's seat, Jennifer glanced back at Jon. He put up his hands and shook his head. Apparently, the great 's'more's making argument' was an ongoing family joke. "Don't get them started on how to stack charcoal in a barbecue grill," Jon said in a low voice as he walked up behind Jennifer. "We'll be here all day. How much longer, Hawk?"

"Just a few more minutes, and we're at the new base. And stacking charcoal is an art form, you know."

Just listening to the meandering rambles of everyone was fun for Jennifer. No one stayed on a single subject for more than a few sentences before another topic was thrown in. It was a massively entertaining conversation the others were having, and there seemed to be a need for it. Maybe there had been a lack of such easygoing talk for a long time? It was like her guys were dying for inane words and off-hand jokes.

Jennifer sat back and watched as the terrain beneath the ship changed from dead forests to a more wintry look. Even though she was healing up nicely and could walk across a room without too much help, her ribs weren't able to handle the g-forces of flying a ship. Hawk would still have that job for a while. This meant she would have to watch the view out the front screen as Hawk flew them to their new destination. The ship was flying straight and level, passing through turbulence without any hint of disturbance. It was as if the ship wanted to prove that she was every bit as ready to fly as Jennifer was.

"She knows you're co-piloting this flight," Tank told her. "She's on her best behavior."

"My ship?" Jennifer asked, a smile on her face. "She knows she doesn't have to be on her best behavior with me."

Scout turned in his chair and said, "You're going to love the new computer setup, Jennifer. I think Mentor likes it up here better than the other base."

"The database is much cleaner," Mentor's voice echoed through the jumpship.

"Cleaner?" Stuart asked.

Jennifer looked back and saw Stuart sitting next to Mentor's hologram. They looked like twins talking with each other. They looked exactly alike even though their voices were just a little different.

"We've amassed a great deal of data over the years, Doctor Power," Mentor explained.

"It should be interesting to learn all that," Stuart said. "Oh, and call me Stuart. All that 'Doctor Power' nonsense is a bit formal, don't you think?"

Jon pointed toward a mountain of glacial ice just on the horizon. "That's it, right there," he told her in a low voice.

Jennifer moved her gaze back to the front view screen. The mountain looked no different from any other ice structure Mother Nature had carved in the area. It was even better camouflage than the mountain had been for the Colorado base. "How cold is it in there?" she asked.

"Outside? Cold. Inside's nice and warm," Jon explained.

Looking around at all the desolation, Jennifer looked back toward Stuart and asked, "How did you build this base in secret?"

Stuart shrugged. "I didn't. It was originally designed as a radar station during the Cold War in the middle to late 20th century. It was decommissioned for maybe seventy years until some DNA researchers recommissioned it as a lab. They could store DNA samples and seed samples and use the cold as natural refrigeration for their tests. They wanted to create the largest DNA database by collecting samples from as many people as they could. They moved that lab, I don't know where, and left the facility empty. It can house up to fifty troops comfortably. A lot of the infrastructure was already installed - labs, computers, personnel quarters. All I had to do was redesign it, have them put in the updated hardware and include a few extras like a landing bay."

"You did it yourself?" she asked him.

"No. All the work was done by a select group from the Army Corps of Engineers. This was the same group that started working on reinforcing the defenses in Washington, D.C. when Dread attacked in those first days after he joined with Overmind. None of them survived," Stuart explained. "I wasn't certain if they completed Northstar before they were recalled to D.C."

"You've never seen Northstar?" Tank asked.

Stuart shook his head. "No. This is the first time."

Jennifer glanced at the sensor screen. "Is there a jump gate nearby?"

"Actually, there is," Tank punched a few buttons and brought up a set of coordinates on the sensor screen for her. "The captain designed it after Christmas last year, only it's not the same as the others we use."

Stuart looked at the readout on Tank's console. "It's fueled by oxygen and nitrogen," he noticed immediately. "Ingenious."

"Anyone tracking it would think they were looking at a brief lightning storm," Hawk mentioned. "But for this trip, we thought we'd take you two on the scenic route. We're almost at the base. Stuart, want to come up here and see your handiwork?"

Jennifer moved over slightly to give Stuart room, leaning somewhat against Jon as Stuart moved between the pilot's and the co-pilot's seat. She noticed Jon's arm was under hers, making it look like a pretext that he was bracing himself against the chair. He was still being somewhat proper in public, but when they were alone, he was more open and friendly. They were both taking the slow approach to their relationship - too much had happened to them for them to go too quickly. Some healing and readjustment needed to take place.

The view of the mountain range in the front screen got bigger, one in particular as Hawk adjusted the ship's angle to a particular mountain. The ice mountain looked real. There was no way to differentiate it from any of the other mountains by visual inspection alone. Then, a small 'door' in the ice opened to allow the jumpship to fly into the landing bay. That was the one small difference in the ice mountain. Hawk brought the ship down in a flawless landing. "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome home," Hawk said as he brought the jumpship to a soft stop.

"Ship is flying better," Scout taunted him.

"Don't say it," Hawk warned jokingly.

That got Jennifer's attention. "Wait, what do you mean better? Tank just said she was on her best behavior. Has something been wrong with the ship?"

Hawk gave her a quiet laugh. "No," he told her. "Nothing wrong other than you weren't in the pilot's seat, and everyone here says I'm not as good at flying her as you are. They want to make it seem like it's the jumpship who wasn't happy."

"She wasn't," Jon said as he helped Jennifer to her feet. "You should have seen how she flew to JPL the day we got your emergency signal. Not a hint of a problem and flying faster than what she normally does."

"Wait, problems? What problems?" Jennifer couldn't believe that the team was being a bit blasé about... oh, the looks on their faces meant one thing. They were joking. It was the old one about how she could get the jumpship to fly better than anyone else. It felt normal to her, like she wasn't the fifth wheel and wasn't going to be.

"Let's give these two the fifty cent tour," Scout announced. "Now the base is laid out a little differently from the one we had in Colorado. Plus, it's got a lot more gadgets to play with..." his voice kept on going as he walked off the ship, the rest of the team filing out behind him.

As Jennifer took hold of the gantry rail to climb slowly down the steps, Jon right behind her to give assistance if she needed it, she took a look around the landing bay. Not quite as big, not nearly as warm but definitely stocked with tools and supplies. Scout's voice was echoing off the icy walls as he, Hawk and Tank showed Stuart everything they passed by as they walked.

"Are you all right?" Jon asked her.

She nodded. "I'm fine. It's just..." She didn't quite know what to say.

"A little overwhelming, I know."

"A little unreal too," she told him. "I keep having to remind myself that this is July and not December. And Stuart? This has to be so strange for him. In a blink of an eye, he's moved sixteen years into the future."

Jon chuckled. "No doubt, but he may be seeing all this as a huge scientific experiment. He's pretty good at adapting quickly to anything new, but I think the hardest thing for him to deal with is that I'm not a teenager anymore and Dread's destroyed a lot of the world."

She glanced up at Jon and saw the slight frown on his face. He hadn't talked much about Stuart being back or how he was dealing with it, but she could guess that he was feeling he was cheated out of being with his dad all those years. He needed Stuart as a boy, but he had learned to live without him as a man. Stuart wouldn't get to be the dad he wanted to be or watch his son grow up into a man. To have that view of reality turned on its head had to be somewhat disconcerting for both men.

Then again, they hadn't talked much about anything else he was feeling toward anything other than her being back. Sure, they did have that one important conversation they needed to have and a few conversations about what they wanted for the future, but Pitcairn's revelation had put Jon in a defensive, overprotective stance where she was concerned. The idea that some faceless somebody in the future could just take her if the team didn't do what they were supposed to...

He was scared, and Jonathan Power didn't get scared.

"It'll be all right," she assured him.

He took hold of her hand, and they began to walk in the direction the others took. "You're sure about that?"

"Absolutely," she smiled at him. "We'll do what we have to do just like we always have. Nothing's changed about that."

He squeezed her hand a little tighter. "But if I don't do what Pitcairn said I'm supposed to do, they'll take you away."

"I don't think so," she assured him. "I've been thinking about this. If we were to not destroy Dread in this new timeline where Stuart was sent forward sixteen years and I survived, then Pitcairn couldn't have existed to run this time travel experiment, right?"

"I don't know." Jon thought about it. "He said something about being protected from all the changes in timelines. And he did exist, which means we had to have destroyed Dread so he could tell us that we needed to destroy Dread. That's sort of like the Grandfather Paradox he mentioned." He paused, then looked her in the eye. "And what timeline are we on? The right one? The wrong one? The one that all the changes settled us on? Trying to figure this out could give someone a headache."

"So we don't try to figure it out anymore. It seemed Pitcairn didn't know a lot about it and he called himself a temporal physicist. We must have done what he said we needed to do, so we go on about our business and do our best and it should happen, right?"

Jon smiled as he leaned over and gave her a slow kiss. "I just don't want to lose you again."

She pushed a small strand of gray hair away from his face. She was still trying to get used to his longer, graying hair. He didn't have that before the base explosion. It was proof of the stress he'd been under for the last few months. "I don't intend to get lost again." Then she got very serious. "And I don't want to see you lose yourself while getting rid of Dread."

"What do you mean?"

"Pitcairn, you, both of you said you got brutal. You got vicious in your tactics, and that's not you."

Jon took a deep breath and looked down at his feet. "I know. But I was so angry at losing you -"

"It's okay to get angry," she said. "But you work through the anger. Remember what you said to me about being glad I got through mine? It was that conversation we almost had back at the old base?"

Jon smiled and nodded his head. "I remember."

"You can stop Dread and destroy absolutely everything in his Empire without having to become brutal and vicious," she said with certainty. "When I think about it now, just defeating him and stopping him really won't be enough. There will always be people who think like him and would use whatever resources Dread had to build another Machine Empire. And destroying everything isn't something you can do on your own. It's going to have to be a group effort."

"But Pitcairn said I did it," Jon reminded her.

Jennifer nodded. "Maybe history is wrong and it's more of a case that you led the Resistance's destruction of the Machine Empire? You just got the credit but you didn't shoulder the sole responsibility?"

Noticing the slightly relieved grin on Jon's face, Jennifer knew he liked that view of what they had to do better than the stress of having to destroy Dread and his empire just by themselves.

"Hey, you two!" Hawk's voice called back. "Come on! We're about to show Stuart the other ship in the maintenance area."

Other ship? Jennifer glanced back at her ship, then back up at Jon, quirking an eyebrow in the process. "Other ship?"

"Uh, surprise?" he suggested with a grin.

"We've got a second ship, and you didn't tell me?"

"I sort of mentioned earlier in passing," he said sheepishly. Then, he gathered a little courage. "I didn't want to come right out and tell you news that big when you were recuperating. I know how you are when you get your hands on something new, and a ship? You'd be up and moving around before the doctor let you."

Jennifer saw he was trying not to smile. "Forget my recuperating. What kind of ship is it?"

"Something I think you'll like. It's a ZF sprintship," he said quickly.

"A ZF sprintship? The absolute last type of independent ship to be built before the downfall of civilization? The fastest ship known to have been invented and put into production but was stopped due to performance problems? Can fly three times the speed of sound at mid-speed? Has enough power for a cloaking device? Has half the maneuverability of my TF jumpship, one-third the armaments, only two engines but can outfly anything in the air? Including Soaron?"

Jon nodded, clearly amused by her excitement. "That one. Hawk has had some problems with test-flights because of the cold, and I knew you'd love to get your hands on it. Kirkland's still got you on downtime, and it would have really bothered you if you couldn't inspect it because you were stuck in a hospital bed. Besides, we know how much you love the original ship, and we still fly the old one most places. The new one -"

"Jonathan Power," she laughed, "we have a ZF sprintship?"

He smiled as he hugged her around her shoulders, and they walked on down the corridor. "You have a ZF sprintship," he said, his voice sounding happier than before. "I knew you'd want to get your hands on it as soon as you knew we had one and would want to get it wartime operational, but you couldn't when you were at the hospital. And until Kirkland clears you, you don't do any heavy lifting. You have one of us with you to help you work on the ship while you give it the once-over. Okay?"

Jennifer was so happy, she was almost bouncing.

"You're not mad at me at keeping this a secret?" he asked her.

"It's a ZF sprintship. I've got a new ship to play with while I'm recuperating? I get to completely reroute the operating systems to make it serviceable? I get to make certain every single system is working together? I can take it apart and put it back together to see how it works? Trust me, you're forgiven." She couldn't keep the thrill out of her voice. He grabbed her hand and led her toward the maintenance area where the sprintship was kept. "But we're still flying my ship on missions. Those ZFs are said to be a bit twitchy mid-flight. It's one of the reasons they quit building them."