A/N: Let's hear it for insanely long chaps! Whoo! Also, I should mention that yes, I should have edited this more and I know it, but if I can't wrap this sucker up by 9/18, I'll almost certainly never finish it at all. 9/18 is when I go to college, and where I'm going, physics is lord and writing is witchcraft, more or less literally. I'd rather be a good student than a witch, plus I'm a physicist at heart, not a writer. Anyway, long story short, if you don't want this story to be unfinished forever, please review! It really does help, and you guys have been awesome all throughout this hideously doomful tale.

Mars

By JadeRabbyt

"We called him Miracle Boy. I never knew how he survived or where he went, but the kid was amazing."
--Dr. Heller Petrury

The welder's roar grated on Danny's ears. It was a strange sound, a hissing and deep chinking, a cross of the tiger's blistering roar the sheering whine of a buzz-saw. It wouldn't damage the hearing, but its fantastic noise reminded the mechanic of the seriousness of his work. The welder itself consisted of a pair of large, heavy metal pliers which held a thin straw of carbon pinched between their jaws. A thick cable connected the pliers to a generator, charging the carbon straw with sparking electrical power. When the straw was touched to a plate of metal, the deadly voltage liquefied both the carbon straw and the metal it touched. That was how the welder worked, and Danny, hunched over a wing plate he'd anchored against a work bench, wondered if this would be his last time operating one.

They were shipping out. Danny would have to spend the next two days packing, listening to various briefings, preparing some jets for the transfer. He wouldn't have time to fool around with old Zeev any more, which was regrettable. He'd miss Zeev, but Danny had gotten to the point where he could handle the routine problems without asking a single thing of the old man. He'd miss Zeev, but Danny wouldn't need him anymore.

"You're going out of line," somebody was shouting. Danny almost missed it over the welder's considerable racket.

"Hm? Oh!" Idiot. He'd welded the thing crooked. The metal wasn't irreparably damaged, but if Zeev hadn't stopped him, it might have become so. Danny flipped up his face mask. "Ah, geez. Sorry about that, I guess I wasn't—"

"You weren't paying attention," Zeev finished. He rested one arm against the table, leaned over the metal plate and scowled. "Eh, you can still fix it, but I think you'd better let one of the others do it. If you're too distracted."

"No, I can finish it." Danny slipped off his gloves and took a closer look at the wrinkled seam in the metal. He could finish it.

Zeev glanced over his shoulder. "Alright. Just keep your mind on your work this time." Glaring once more at the plate, he turned to leave.

"Zeev," Danny stopped him. "I won't be coming in after this Thursday. They're moving me and some others to the coast."

"I know." The old man looked evenly at him. An inch or two shorter than his impromptu apprentice, Zeev had to look up to make eye contact with Danny, and his balding head and blue coveralls didn't lend him much dignity. Unlike many others in the military, those with their starched uniforms and various pins of rank and accomplishment, Zeev's authority lay in the hard lines of his face, the skeptical, case-hardened point of his sharp nose and squinting eyes, eyes capable of seeing through humans and machines alike. Professional mechanics, Danny had discovered, were capable, dependable, and knowledgeable people, and Zeev was their king.

"I know you'll be leaving." Zeev picked at the welded seam, scuffing the cooled metal with the blunt tips of his fingers. "And I want you to remember what I taught you here. Got that?"

Danny nodded. "Got it."

"I won't be around to tell you why and why not anymore. You listen to your commanders, and you do what they say. Got that?"

"Yes, sir."

"You've learned to be a mechanic, but never forget that what you are is a pilot, and pilots are not supposed to be mechanics."

Danny smiled. "Thanks. I think I get the point."

"Mm. You make sure you do." Zeev paused, his face to cracking in a sardonic half-smile. "Because I want to hear that you got a medal someday. Not that you got your tin-can birdy shot down somewhere over North Korea by those Godforsaken Communists."

"You'll hear only good things about me, Zeev. And you will be hearing about me."

The old mechanic smiled warmly and clapped him on the back. "Excellent. If I had a dozen people like you I could retire and watch sitcoms all day."

Danny laughed. "Thank goodness you don't, then."

"True enough. Now get back to work on that wing plate. I like you, but I won't have you slacking."

XXX

The parting with his parents had no such grace or goodwill. To his family's regret and Danny's disguised relief, he had dropped farther and farther out of touch with them over the years. Back in Amity, his parents' standard of living had slowly risen as Jack got promoted and Maddie joined the state university, but in spite of their success, whenever Danny returned to his childhood home he found the same puzzling cloud of doom and defeat. It repulsed Danny, and he did his best to avoid it.

Jazz was another story. She had just gotten out of medical school. The last Danny had heard, she was working an internship in a psychology lab at an East Coast hospital studying Down's syndrome, and she visited Amity regularly. Jazz was the draft horse that kept the family going, dragging the muted shame of her parents and Danny's own stubborn alienation behind her. She called up her brother every Thanksgiving and towed him into Amity for Christmas, and to her credit, she made him enjoy it. As much as Danny loathed the old days of ghosts and spooks, there was something funny in them when you looked from the right angle. Like how a ghost posing as a psychiatrist would try sucking the misery from a high school, and why hadn't anybody thought of that before? You could probably power New York for hours on the average high-schooler's self-pity. Mostly though, she drew the conversation toward other, more modern things, funny accidents that had happened on her internship or in Dad's garage. She certainly never brought up Taiwan.

Danny had one week of vacation time to use before his departure, and in that week he returned home to his parents. He hadn't particularly wanted to do it, but it was the only appropriate thing to do with the international hostilities being what they were. Unfortunately, the visit went nothing like Christmas, although he probably should have expected that. His parents clung to him like barnacles, which was understandable but irritating. They were just so proud of him, proud and worried and terrified that he wouldn't come back, though they never mentioned that last part out loud. After the first couple days, Danny began to wish he'd joined Greg in Los Angeles.

There was nowhere to go when he tired of his parents. He wasn't interested in visiting anyone. Many of his classmates had moved away, and most of those still around lived with their parents. Dash Baxter worked as a valet for some two-star restaurant out of town, a fact which made Danny smirk. Kwan had played football in college and gone on to the minor leagues, Jazz told him. That was good to know. Kwan always was a pretty cool guy.

Mostly, Danny hung out around home, trying not to think too hard about anything and doing his best to enjoy his parents. In pursuit of those goals, he watched television—lots of television. On his fourth day, his mother approached him and relaxed into an armchair. It was obvious she wanted to talk, so Danny put the TV on mute and waited.

"Danny, you know I love you." She paused, folding her small hands in her lap. Her hair had grayed since he left, and lines of age flowed along her forehead, under her eyes. "I want you to know that. I love you."

She'd been hinting at this kind of thing all week. It was driving Danny crazy. "Mom, I'll be fine. Really." He sat up from his stretched-out pose on the couch. "I was the best pilot they had in training, and I know more about the jets than just about anybody else who's ever flown one. I'll be back in a year or two and it'll be like I never left."

Maddie wrung her hands, folded in her lap. She looked so upset and fearful, trying to find words for unspeakable things. She couldn't say that she'd lost him once already, not without pushing her son completely from her reach. "I wish you wouldn't go."

"Well I kind of have to at this point." Not that Danny would have turned the job down if he could have. He couldn't wait until this whole family mess was over.

Much of the visit was indeed gloom and doom, and certainly elements of that lurked beneath every kind wish and gesture, but his parents did their best to show him a good time, and Danny, for his part, tried to play along with it. They took him to the movies, a place he hadn't been in almost six months. It was a stupid comedy, and all three of them laughed too hard at the jokes, eating popcorn like the salted crunchy stuff was endangered. They tried the amusement park, which was a dumb idea from the start because all three of them were adults, and the atmosphere brought his parents back to the days when Danny was a kid. The roller coasters gave all of them the creeps, for one reason or another, and the park visit was messily and awkwardly truncated shortly after their arrival. Jazz showed up three days before Danny's departure, and she was furious when she found out the state of things.

Danny had been staying in his old room. He was reading a manual and listening to some music when his door crashed in. That was his first clue that Jazz was home.

"You," she seethed. Her red hair bristled, almost on fire, and her formal work suit gave her the air of an angry judge. Jazz had grown taller and filled out over the years, but her confidence and—Danny thought—arrogance had grown with her education. "What do you think you're doing?"

Danny pulled off his headphones, clicking off the rock music. "Waiting."

"For what?"

He shrugged. "To leave. This place is dead."

"It's dead because you killed it." Jazz pushed the door shut so the parents couldn't hear. She flicked on the overhead light, since Danny had been using only the desk lamp. "I thought you had changed. You were supposed to be this big-shot star at the camp. Why can't you entertain your own parents, who don't think they're ever even going to see you again?"

"Jazz," Danny said, fighting his own rising anger. "That's just… wrong. They are going to see me again. They're just being paranoid parents."

"Wrong. They're worried you're going to die." The last word hung off her tongue like a drop of poison. "They think you're going to die again, for good, and they don't want it to happen."

"Now what do you mean 'die again'?" Danny rose out of his chair. "Tell me about that. What am I supposed to be doing for my failure parents?"

"Being sincere would be a good start."

Danny blinked. "Really. Oh, really. Sincere? Is that some kind of canned answer they taught you at Harvard?" He stopped and caught his breath, lowering his voice. "Jazz, if this is all you have to say then why don't you get out of here."

Jazz ground her teeth, resting her lowered head on her knuckles. "Danny, I don't want to fight with you." Her voice came muffled from between her arms. "I just don't want our family to be a wreck. And I hate to say it, I really do, but you're the one who's wreaked." She dropped her arms. Danny felt mildly sickened, and a little indignant, to see the shine of tears in her eyes.

"I… didn't make it that way. It happened. Mom and Dad screwed around with too many things they couldn't control, and it happened." He scraped for more. "You, you're looking for someone to blame, and you pick me because I'm the one in the army." Military, he corrected himself. "You've always been… thought I was…" Danny wanted to say Jazz had persecuted him, criticized him since day one, but that wasn't right and both of them knew it.

Jazz swiped roughly at her eyes. Her lips parted for air, and she looked at the floor. "Can you answer one thing for me? Then, I promise you, I will not make any more trouble."

"Shoot." Danny put a finger on the play button of his radio.

"What happened to you when the house collapsed?"

Danny clicked on his music. "I don't know what you're talking about."

XXX

His send-off at the airport mirrored the hideous misery of the entire visit; it was awkward, tearful, and nauseatingly melodramatic. His mother cried. His father spoke bravely, but his voice wavered in a miasma of hope and pessimism. It was Jazz whom Danny remembered as the flight attendants moved up and down the aisles, running one last check before take-off. Jazz hadn't said much at all. She had leaned in and squeezed him in a hug, her arms tight across his back. She pulled away and looked him square in the eye.

"Don't screw up."

Danny adjusted his legs in the cramped space in front of him. All things considered, that was the most positive piece of advice he'd gotten over that entire lamentable week. At least she had decided not to hate him. He'd miss Jazz, but she'd do well in life. His parents had hinted that she was seeing somebody—well, good for her. Psychiatrists made insane amounts of money, so she would have no financial worries. All things considered, the future of his family was safe and secure, and it would continue that way, even if he never came back.

XXX

The day he shipped out, Danny made an astonishing, gratifying, amazing and astounding discovery: aircraft carriers are BIG. Bigger than anything. City-big. Big and busy and gloriously full of duty and responsibility and fun things like engines and levers and doors that had twirling metal wheelie-locks on them, and when you sat down or laid down, you always felt the very faint rumble of the nuclear engines deep in the ship's dark, wet-smelling bowels. The first thing everybody learned about aircraft carriers was this: no touching, and no wandering. Big, expensive, out-of-this-wordly cool military ships were not toys. All the pilots nodded solemnly at the instructing officer, all the while doing cart-wheeling tap-dances in their minds.

Danny got his own room, just as efficiently designed as that back at training camp, and in the days that followed he ate in one of several different crowded noisy mess-halls, relishing the fact that he was not behind the service counter, and ran drills drills and more drills regarding the launching, maintenance, and landing of the planes. They had taught this in training, but here there was a big difference. The big difference was, naturally, that now they could physically practice launching military jets off the insanely large aircraft carrier. They could, and they did, and later in mess hall, everybody agreed with a socially acceptable level of jaded ambivalence that it was, without a doubt, right up there with the most record-breakingly awesome things ever done by anybody.

This, as Danny discovered, was because any sane person being launched toward the endless depthless ocean at upwards of a hundred miles an hour is liable to think that life as they have known it is ending. The first time Danny had done it, they made him report his fuel and line up his jet, then he took off. The jet shook under him, the acceleration mashed him back into the seat, and he held his breath in the breathing mask as two horizontal stripes of blue crashed toward him as the runway ended and then he was in the air, the horizon sinking from sight as the jet shot up, and the people on the radio asking how he'd done.

"Fine," Danny replied. "Take-off successful." He wanted to do it again.

They let him buzz around a little bit, making passes over the ship and generally exploring the air over the sea before calling him down. If there was one thing more stimulating than take-off, it was landing, landing on an insanely big ship that turned out to be insanely small once you looked at it from the air and thought about landing your supersonically speeding jet on it. Naturally, that was only an initial impression. Once Danny brought the jet around, remembering every word of his training to do so, and he touched its bouncing rubber wheel to the thick white stripe on the carrier's runway. The control tower and various personnel shot past him, giving Danny a scare before the arrestor cables caught the jet and safely stopped it. Everything went off without a hitch.

Those manning the arrestor cables smiled as Danny peeled himself off the pilot's seat and jumped off the jet. "First time?"

Danny shook his head clear, breath whistling between his lips. "Oh yeah."

XXX

Any aircraft carrier of the supercarrier class weighed over seventy-five thousand tons, and in all the world there were only twelve of them. They had angled flight decks for easier take-off and landing. Planes launched with the help of steam-powered catapults and landed with the assistance of arrestor cables, wires laid across the runway to be caught by the landing jet's tailhook. They hosted many more planes than the smaller carriers, the escort and light aircraft carriers, and their flight decks were built larger to reduce the risk of an accident, allowing the pilot of a damaged, wobbling jet a much better chance at surviving his landing. Their populations typically ranged from five to six thousand.

The new supercarriers surpassed this. Nuclear powered and built for stealth, they carried more planes and required less personnel than the older models. Electromagnets had replaced steam in the catapults, and modifications to the cables strengthened and reinforced their effectiveness in landing. Of this newer kind there were only three operational, and the USS Washington was one of them.

The USS Washington weighed ninety thousand tons. It carried over one hundred of the U.S.A.'s best jets, bombers, and cargo craft, housing just under five thousand military personnel. The Washington was one of the three most advanced supercarriers in the world, and the United States owned all of them. The world's oceans floated only twelve supercarriers of any make, and of those, the United States owned seven. Four older models, plus the three stealth types.

China kept an old Russian supercarrier that had been in the shop since the nineteen forties. A popular joke aboard the Washington was that the Chinese would be fighting with torpedo-strapped fish. The new recruits laughed. The veterans didn't.

XXX

To have been chosen for the Washington Danny was only a little more than lucky. As part of the very small new recruit population on board, he had been chosen for his skill and eccentric mechanical knowledge. None of his fellows back at the camp had followed him here; they had been assigned to smaller, less agile carriers. So when Danny was told to jump, he jumped.

His euphoria over being on the carrier lasted all of a week. The ship was big, yes. It was amazing and high-tech, yes. But it was not roomy. Two people going opposite directions in the hallway had to flatten themselves against the ship's cold metal walls to pass each other, and the living quarters were nothing spacious. As an officer and a pilot, Danny was allowed his own room, but others slept in massive sardine-can rooms filled floor-to-ceiling with bunks. The decks were dangerous, and an enlisted crew member could spend weeks without seeing the sky. Few complained, as complaints overheard by superiors could land a person in mess duty faster than the catapults could snap. Hours were irregular, and a person could be called to duty any time. And when they called, you came. Such was the case one Tuesday at three in the morning.

Danny slapped off his buzzing alarm and rolled out of bed, punching his light on and stumbling to the rack for some clothes. Pajamas came off and a pair of black slacks went on, along with an informal work shirt and his heavy black pilots' boots. He was supposed to be in the hangar below decks for an inspection of his jet. Every pilot had to do it; it was only a question of when. Somehow all the new recruits ended up with the miserably early morning hours, while the veterans enjoyed inspection times that ran from afternoon to early evening. Danny ran a hand through his hair, smoothing it, and glanced at himself in the small mirror above his dresser. A little dark under the eyes, but otherwise alright. He pushed open the door and started through the ship, his boots thumping on the thin, rough brown carpet. These weren't even official inspections. A handful of grease monkeys hooked the ship up to a truckload of sensors and checked its pulse and glanced in his ears, hardly ever finding anything wrong. It walked the line between mindless and precautionary, the kind of process pilots loved to hate.

Hart appeared around a corner in the hallway. Danny knew him from lunch and flight practice. He'd been in the service about five years and had an excellent sense of humor. They exchanged wry smiles as he and Danny angled their bodies to pass in the narrow hallway. Hart had put an excellent little twist on the inspections for Danny several days ago.

"So, y'know, most guys," Hart had started, raising his voice over the clatter in the mess hall. He had his thin elbows on the table, a turkey sandwich dangling from one hand. "They go to a bar or something and they complain about their boss, or their paperwork, or their taxes…" Hart paused, wiping tomato juice from his lips with his other hand. The other guys at the table had already begun to snicker. "Am I right? I mean, what do we complain about? What do we get to tell chicks in bars?" He leaned back, imitating a relaxed pose on a barstool, conversing with an imaginary looker at his side. "Mmmmyeeaah, I was up all night inspecting the hardware on my GX-2000 Air Force jet. Just a little look-over before launch next day. Do it all the time."

Danny had to admit, it was an appealing comparison, and it really took the sting out of the job. He climbed several flights of staircases, arriving at the hangars. After the tight hallways, the wide-open warehouse of the jets was a relief. Lights shone down from above, casting the metal hulls in gray shadow, and a wind brushed the open bay doors. A hundred people bustled among the jets, clothed in the white mechanic's coveralls. Danny spotted his own post and strode over.

"Any problems yet?"

Baker came out from under a wing, his hair blonde and lightly spiked and his eyes masked in yellow goggles. "Looks good so far. You need to get in there and give us a fuel reading." Danny hopped into the cockpit and fired up the electronics, reading off the fuel level to Baker down below, who chewed a pencil between his teeth as he tapped in the data to a small black laptop. "Kay. Looks good, looks good." He had Danny check several other things, testing the engines and the missiles in the belly of the jet, all of them coming out clear. Fifteen minutes later, Danny's job was over with time to spare. He only had to wait a couple more minutes for the mechanic to give the all-clear, then he could go back to his room.

In the meantime, he ambled over to the bay doors and squinted into the salty cold of the wind. The jet lift blocked much of his view, but around its square shape he glimpsed blackness, peppered with a handful of shining stars.

"Hey." Baker had sneaked up on him, following Danny's gaze. "You want to go up?"

"Up, you mean on the flight deck?" The deck must be nearly empty at this hour, and Danny had always gone up with at least a dozen other people.

Baker grinned. "Why not? I should check the cable clasps up there anyway. Come on with me." He ducked under the wing and weaved his way past fellow mechanics to a cramped stairwell in the side wall, mounted the clanking staircase, and turned a door open onto the wide expanse of the brightly lit flight deck. Baker gave Danny five minutes max, and pointed out his own station at a shed-like protrusion near the control tower. "I'll get you when I'm finished. If anybody asks, you're helping Baker with the jumpers."

"Got it."

With a final snide grin Baker turned to his business at the shed, his grimy white coveralls shifting under the lights of the control tower. Danny turned his attention to the deck, a vast gray surface of polymer, its surface slightly tilted to let the planes land more easily. An iron railing lined its edge, marking the line between the safety of the busy ship and the death of the frigid Pacific, a sixty foot drop from one to the other, and an easy one from the tearing wind and slanting surface of the deck. Danny walked out, taking care with his balance, and leaned against the rail, its cold bar pressing his arms, the chill wind biting into his skin. The ocean stretched out in rippling shadows under the ethereal starlight, and Danny wondered who had first seen it dark like this, the horizon clear of land and city light with only the stars above for company. The celestial lights were out in force tonight. Those constellations familiar to Danny, the Big Dipper, Orion, and Draco, he couldn't find any of them in the bright abundance above him. The shining points speckled the sky like salt, sparkling grains against a sheet of black, forming the powdered band of the Milky Way and dispersing independently around it.

The wind needled more insistently, the salt-smelling air growing icy on Danny's bare arms. He closed his eyes and felt the ship growling in its hulls, the freeze of the iron pressing his arms. He let the wind blow and relaxed into it, silently surrendering, and its chill ceased to bother him. Danny raised his eyes to the star-spangled night above him.

"Hey!" Baker shouted and grabbed Danny's shoulder. "I said you could look around, not toss yourself overboard."

"I wouldn't have been tossed." Baker rolled his eyes and shoved him back towards the stairwell. "I was just looking."

"You're lucky the wrong guys weren't looking or it would have been trouble for both of us." Baker slammed open the door and shooed Danny inside. The sudden heat of the stairwell brought goosebumps to his arms. Behind him, the mechanic pulled the door shut, eliminating the last traces of the wind and the sky. "For an officer, you don't have much common sense."

XXX

"Because Taiwan," Uden Dirk groaned, heaving the barbell onto the rack. "Is five miles from China. They don't need aircraft carriers because they've got a base in the island's backyard." He sat up from the bench and wiped his hands together, having finished his bench presses for the day. Metal clinked and clamored in the weight room as others worked out on the various weight machines. Taylor Caiman and Danny Fenton sat on a parallel weight bench. Dirk glared and the two of them and shook his head. "New recruits."

"Hey, we're both pretty good and you know it." Caiman brushed his shock of blonde hair. "Best of the noobs, if that's what you want to call us."

He looked to Danny for agreement, but his fellow pilot wouldn't rise to it. Unlike Caiman, Danny's ego had never outgrown his talent, and he was willing to acknowledge his desire for the older man's opinion. "Okay, so what's the story according to you? I agree that they have the home field advantage, but a serious war seems… distant." Danny had been on the carrier for several months, and throughout that time the pilots had been training and preparing, enduring constant drills and exercises which all anticipated war. He didn't know the typical routine, but the commanding officers were taking their work very seriously. That could be expected in the military, but an odd string of tension ran through the work that just didn't feel right.

"I think we've got too many like your buddy Caiman," Dirk sighed. "Everybody thinks that the United States is invincible, and this decade has been a series of reminders that we're not. China's been lurking around for too long, and they've had it with us. That's what I think. They've been picking this fight for a long time now."

"True enough," Caiman agreed. "But we're still the world power, and we've got Europe backing us this time."

Dirk rolled his eyes. "Like that means a lot. Europe is backing us, but none of those Old Worlders are going to interfere unless they see that it's necessary. Unless the U.S. gets its butt kicked. They figure that won't happen, so they'll throw a couple guys our way, but I doubt anybody else will bother to get really involved."

"I don't know. China's a pretty big deal." Danny scratched his arm. "They aren't exactly the Middle East. If something serious breaks out, it could easily involve others."

Caiman punched his arm. "Aw, you're no fun."

"You're both untrained nitwits." Dirk stood up. "I've got duty. See you later."

XXX

The sun rose on the Atlantic. It shimmered as polished gold across the water, rising on the East Coast, washing away night's somber tones of blue and gray, rinsing them in white light that let the reds and yellows glimmer. A hundred thousand birds chirped across North America as the first beams struck the Washington Monument, cascading over the Appalachians, flowing past Mount Rushmore into the grasslands of the Midwest, flashing gold against its dry grasses and rich farmlands, the dew on the leaves evaporating as the light brightened and warmed the dark earth beneath. As the hours passed the light danced across the land and vaulted into the Pacific, beginning its long journey to Asia over the chilled and choppy waters.

It touched on the USS Washington and the USS Nevada, the Langley and the Lexington, it touched on an island off the coast of China, and as the first bright rays touched on its high mountains, a city on Taiwan's west coast exploded in a flower of bright orange, mortal gray, and the starving flame of scarlet.

XXX

Caiman banged on Danny's door and shouted the news. Danny bolted to the door and threw it open wide, but by that time Caiman had long since vanished. Danny stood, looking at nothing and seeing too much. Flight manuals mechanics instructions the thin flame of an acetylene torch and the grand roar it made as one applied it to metal. Ships of gray and white and pure pitch black flashed past, he thought of much but considered very little. He skipped over things. Academics stuck faster than the social, but of all things he remembered his parents. Danny saw that Caiman had gone and that he was alone, and he saw the faces of his parents, and something else behind them.

Danny clenched his teeth and slammed his door shut, the echo banging in his room and the hall outside.

So, he would fight. Danny fisted his hands at his sides, imagining the sticky rubber of a jet's control sticks between them, forcing out the static of family. He could and would fight well. The war didn't change a thing for him. Simply, it meant that he would finally have a chance to fight.

XXX

When the first alarm came it was dark and raining hard outside. Red lights flashed as Danny thudded through the narrow halls, jamming himself between two others at times to squeeze past, trying desperately for the main hangar. He scrolled through a list of things he had been told and taught, the special flight procedures for aircraft carrier takeoff, the need for the grease monkeys to get his fuel readings, his order in the lineup of pilots to be launched. He could have recited all of it in his sleep, but sleep and combat were two very different states of mind.

As Danny pushed his way through the halls, it surprised him how little anybody else thought of warnings. Nobody panicked or looked about to crack. They were soldiers, and they had been trained to do their duties well. His own ambition aside, it did make Danny proud to be a part of such an efficient machine, all five thousand people, being exactly where they needed to be exactly when they needed to be there. He couldn't wait for the sky. Let the Reds come.

Danny reached the cold and noisy hanger, and in spite of the room's huge size it seemed packed to capacity. The crowded conditions belied urgency rather than chaos. Rain pattered down through the holes used by the lifts to get the jets to the runway, and the air filled with the hissing of hydraulics and the sharp orders of mechanics and officers. A dank, metallic-scented warmth hung over all the activity over the place, and pipes steamed and hissed along the walls. Danny weaved among the people and hardware toward his own jet, thankful for the traction of his heavy boots on the floor, slimy with oil residue and rainwater. All around him other mechanics inspected planes, declared them good, and boosted them onto the deck where they took to the sky. Becker spotted him in an instant.

"Danny! Good. Your jet is all set, and we've got your readings, so go ahead and jump in." Becker glanced at the clipboard in his hand, its pages wrinkled by humidity, then squinted back up at Danny. "Good luck!"

Danny hefted himself into the cockpit and slammed the hatch. The echoing thunder of shouts and clanking machinery softened and muffled, reduced to a dull roar inside the cockpit. Danny adjusted himself and buckled in, snapping the face mask to his helmet and checking the electronics, making sure everything was perfect, in top operating condition. Everything looked good. He patted down his jacket, checking for all the standard gear. Was he forgetting anything?

"The designers have it down so that the engine adjusts itself to operate at maximum efficiency for progressively higher altitudes, and a half-open twist makes it chafe." Of course, good ole' Zeev. Communication and obedience were paramount, and if Danny misused either he'd get himself killed. The cockpit jerked as the lift began hefting his to the top deck. He rose above the busy frenzy of the hangar and into the soupy atmosphere of the outside. Danny would remember the old man's advice.

Static crackled in his headset, followed by the voice of one of several men in the Washington's control room. "Echo six, are you reading?"

Danny checked his engines one last time. "Reading you loud and clear and ready to go, Echo Base."

"We have you cleared for takeoff. Go ahead."

"Acknowledged."

Danny made the engines roar. The plane shot forward into the darkness and took flight, the hard drops of rain smacking and racing off his window, the tumbling wind shaking the craft just enough to make him nervous. Danny scowled at the bad weather and checked his radar. The other pilots circled, waiting for their fellows. The actual battle would happen miles away, keeping the Washington from unnecessary danger. Danny waited and circled with the rest of them, feeling very much like a tiger in a cage.

At last everybody was in position. They aligned in formation, a triangular fighting pattern, and took off across the ocean. The radar buzzed with reports and the talk of the other pilots, but Danny kept his attention on his jet. He would have no screw-ups, because he was dealing with his life and he didn't take that lightly. Practice and duty, the one thing they had never taught him was how different those things were. Practice had been drills and imaginary enemies, but reality was the worm in your stomach and the adrenaline in your veins, sharpening the senses, anticipating the strike. Danny reminded himself once again of Zeev. No. Heroics.

A warning came through from command before anybody saw anything. Danny looked at his radar and saw nothing, seeing the same in the thick darkness out his rain-spattered window. He altered his course with the others, and after only a couple seconds a strange blip showed up on radar, then two more. Five more, and a squadron. The radio heated with barked commands and shouted observations of strategy, and Danny dived with his section as they met the oncoming enemy, invisible to the eye in this night. This would be a battle of the radars, but Danny was comfortable with that. The stakes had been raised for both parties, and Danny gripped his controls like they were the hands of a savior.

The order came. "Echo group, break formation and destroy enemy targets!" Danny peeled off with the others, the neat triangular formation disintegrating into its parts at the order. They were matched evenly with the enemy, but Danny would have preferred a majority.

"Echo Six! You've got a tail."

"Roger that." Danny spotted the Chinese jet on radar and slammed the controls down, making the plane dive almost to the water before pulling it into an upward curve, all the while tracking the dot behind his dot on the radar screen, trying to plot a course through the chaos above him. Something exploded in the darkness overhead, but Danny was out from under it before he could see what had happened.

"Echo Base, Echo Four is down! I repeat—" Danny clenched his teeth, tuning out of the rest of it. He had his own problem, a problem which had begun to get dangerously close, and he had to keep on his toes if he didn't want to be the next casualty. Bolts of fire, gunfire, shot past his window. Once that guy got a lock, it would be rockets instead of bullets.

"Echo Six requesting immediate assistance," Danny said, louder than he'd meant to.

"Echo Seven here Danny why can't you do anything right?"

Danny pursued his lips at Caiman's taunt, throwing his plane in rollercoaster curves as his tail tried for a better angle. "Echo Seven, can the chatter and give me a hand."

"Sure thing." Somebody zoomed down farther back and started shooting the harassing jet, forcing it to drop the chase and allowing Danny to escape. Caiman laughed in the radio. "There we go."

Danny didn't worry about a response to that. Instead, he looked for and immediately spotted a target of his own. A plane down low, close to the ocean, heading away from the fight. Danny narrowed his eyes and dipped down, dropped back a bit, and slunk after the low craft, blending with the waves as his enemy did. He got the enemy jet in his sights and squeezed down on the gun triggers, carefully, slowly. As the bullets shot forward, the enemy jet shot up. Danny grimaced and followed after, laying on the heat, blasting up into the sky in pursuit of his target, dodging both foes and fellows with the help of the radar screen. His prey kept weaving, keeping just out of lock. Danny had to hurry, or it would call for backup just as he himself had done. Danny tensed, taking in everything about the controls, the noise of the engine, the barely audible prattle of the gunfire. He let the twitch of his hands guide the controls, moving naturally, dodging and weaving impeccably.

The missile sight locked. "Echo Six, Rex Two!" Danny announced to the others, punching a button and dropping a rocket. The sharp point streaked forward into the air, directly toward the enemy jet, which turned on a dime and sped away in a panic. The rocket struck. The plane exploded. Danny smirked, his humor inverted the next moment by a single rap of gunfire on his ship. He'd caught another tail.

Danny sighed slowly as he began evasive maneuvers once more, letting the breath catch between his teeth and the tension flow from his body. He took in the controls and the radar, the tremors of his jet and the wet darkness beyond his cockpit, factoring as much of it as he could into every move he made. His jet skirt the waves, sliding between swells, and he kept his breath in sighs, feeling the jet move as if it was a third limb. The enemy craft pulled up and away, and Danny gunned his jet upwards, picking a new target, answering a fellow's call for help.

The enemy had arrived in force. Danny fought like a wounded animal as did many others, but slowly, the balance of power shifted. Slowly, they began to los jets faster than the enemy, to everybody's suppressed astonishment. Jet after jet blew, one American, two Chinese, three American, one Chinese. Orders over the radio became purposefully calmer and more demanding, but the crime of underestimation had already been committed. The dark day turned darker, and the pilots fought for their lives. But nobody could touch Danny.

More than one of Danny's own Echo Group had spotted him weaving ahead of one or two pursuants, but none of them could take him down. The sky buzzed with enemy craft, and the battle went slowly and painfully, but where Danny became was involved thing worked out like a charm. It puzzled Caiman, who continued to check on him every so often. For a closer look at the guy, and to raise his own chances of survival, Caiman got Danny on the radio and talked him into a team-up. With the right skills and a truckload of luck, Caiman believed that this costly battle could yet be won. He came into line behind and to the side of Danny, each running clean-up for the other. When Caiman was chased Danny would circle around and pick them off, and Caiman did the same when Danny caught a bogey.

"I'd high-five you if I could reach you man," Caiman chuckled. "We'll send these guys packing yet."

"Hunh," Danny replied. Caiman wondered what that meant and glanced over at his partner.

"Echo Group, hang in there. The USS Nevada is on its way."

"Oh goody." Caiman glanced at the radar. He'd entered a quiet spot in the fight, meaning they had about four seconds of free time, so Caiman took a closer look at Danny's ship, checking for damage. Cockpit area looked fine, as did the smooth metal of the wings, but… He blinked, dragged a hand over his eyes and looked again, but he hadn't been mistaken. Caiman transferred to a private frequency. "Echo Base, come in." He wondered what they'd say. They might call him crazy, or maybe they'd simply explain that Dee was using a different kind of fuel.

"Go ahead Echo Seven." The background was quiet. He was talking to a single person now. "We read you."

"Ah, crap…" He and Dee had company. "Echo Six is burning green. I repeat, Echo Six is burning green."

When Caiman had looked out his window, he'd seen emerald jets streaming from Fenton's engines. Jet fuel burned orange, or pure blue when it was really hot, but never had Caiman seen, in picture or practice, a jet that burned green.

"Please explain, Echo Seven, we're listening."

"Negative Echo Base. Six and I have engaged, and I need the public frequency."

"Acknowledged. Keep your information quiet. You will be debriefed upon your return."

XXX

Back in the control room, an astonished communications officer yanked off his headphones and set several documents to print. Beside him, others spoke authoritatively into their headsets, commanding the pilots and organizing the attack, relaying the orders given by Commander Reese, who walked behind them, overseeing the operation. The young officer glanced again at the array of computer screens and quickly channeled Caiman's private line to a trusted friend of his. He grabbed his printouts, scanned them, and jumped up to the commander.

Reese glanced his way. "What is it, Lyman?"

"Intelligence for the general, sir."

"Don't you think you had better let me see it?"

Lyman began to quote a code section, which specifically stated that valuable information must first be reported to the general. Reese stopped him before he could start. "Alright, go ahead. Get back here on the double." Lyman nodded and continued down the hall, climbing a short stair to arrive at the general's. After explaining the matter briefly to his assistant, they buzzed him in.

Inside, General Hardesty and several others stood over a table, its surface covered with a digital map of the Chinese coast and Taiwan. Marked were all U.S. and known enemy positions. "Yes?" Hardesty peered up at the communications officer. "What do you have?"

Lyman glanced at the others around the table, lesser colonels and lieutenants. "I have something you may want to see, General."

Hardesty nodded for the others to leave. They did, quietly and with little talk, shutting the door behind them, leaving Lyman alone with the general. His silver hair fell sternly around steel-grayed eyes that may once have been blue, and he stared evenly at Lyman. "This had better be very, very good."

"Right. It is, sir." Lyman had never had to do anything like this before. "I just received a report from Echo Seven that another pilot is experiencing trouble with his fuel output."

The general's mouth hardened into a line. "You know we can't send out for repairs." He turned away.

"Sir, Echo Seven said that the jet engines on Echo Six were releasing some kind of green exhaust." Hardesty paused, his back to Lyman. "I'm not privy to all matters of this type, sir, but communications is supposed to be aware of unusual situations like this. If Six is burning a new kind of fuel, we need to know—"

"Did you get any details about the type of green that it was? What else did Echo Seven say?" Lyman had his full attention, now. "Don't get this wrong, soldier."

"That's it. Caiman engaged an enemy, and he needed to return to the public frequency. Nobody else knows about this," Lyman added. "I have Echo Six's fuel readout here, and everything checks out. Apparently, it's just… green."

General Hardesty looked at his tactical board and the crafts spread out across it. He pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking, and looked up sternly. "Listen up. Nobody is to know about this. You face court martial if you disobey, and Echo Seven is to be sent to solitary for interrogation the moment he touches this ship. The same with Echo Six Is that clear?"

Lyman nodded curtly. "Crystal clear, sir."

"Call Six and Seven back to the ship as soon as you can afford to lose them. I'd have them back sooner if I was sure the Reds wouldn't follow." He paused, thoughtful. "Give me that." General Hardesty took the fuel report. "Dismissed."

XXX

"We got these guys by the nuts!" Caiman crowed, trying to get a response, any human response, out of Fenton. He didn't take the bait, and Caiman got worried. Echo Six was still trailing small green flames from its engines. "Hey Dee, everything okay over there?"

The response came curt, mechanical, and automatic. "Yes."

"Alright buddy, just checking." Caiman split off, chasing an enemy who'd locked onto Danny. He had a bad feeling about this. Caiman shot a glance at the radar as he followed his man, and a flurry of red dots appeared, converging on the scene of the battle.

Caiman swore frantically into the microphone. "They got reinforcements!" And loads of them. If the Nevada was going to send help, it had better send it quick. "Dee! We're going to have to split up."

"Acknowledged."

Acknowledged? That was an awful last word. Caiman split off, the flood of enemy jets giving him more than enough to think about, but still he worried about Danny Fenton and Echo Six. The guy never had been very lively, but this was weird, even for him.

XXX

Danny watched the Chinese jets race toward him on the radar. The omnipresent rain lashed harder with their arrival, and the ocean rose higher. That was the sight of fear, and intimidation. He was afraid, because he would die on a foreign sea in a blast of heat and fire that would incinerate his body before his nerves could register the pain. But if Danny thought like that, of course he would die. The trick, he thought, tongue extending slightly from his mouth, was to think like a jet, to feel the jet and touch the enemy. He couldn't command a hulk of metal alloy, but he might be able to move his own wings and fire his own guns, operating the controls on a more personal level.

He felt down into the plane, the fuel pumps, the missile bay, the ultra-sophisticated ailerons and their many integrated circuits. He called to mind the blueprints, filling in their empty places with imagined controls, gears, and chips. This was just like his old models, when it came right down to it, the models he flew as a kid, standing under a lazy afternoon sun with a black plastic controller in his hand, its spindly antenna weaving in a light breath of wind.

Danny imagined he really could feel the plane. On a metacognitive level he knew it must be an illusion, but the hard physical reality seemed different. He didn't see the radar with his eyes as much as he sensed it with his brain, manipulating a three-dimensional picture of the surrounding space within his mind. His veins pumped motor oil, and he exhaled the light exhaust of incinerated nitrogen. Danny moved his big jet as smoothly as a sparrow in the wind, seeing through the darkness, hitting his targets with incredible accuracy.

Gradually, it caught up with him. The enemy planes swarmed around him, boxing him in, and no matter how many tricks and rolls Danny tried, the enemy continued to close in, and no other friendly pilot could afford to help him. Danny struggled and strained and threw all his power into the effort, trying everything he could and neverminding how many gears he ground in his maneuvers, but still they closed. A red screen bleeped. "Missile Locked On." He saw a smaller shard of matter break off from one of those jets behind him, watched the shard grow closer, and with a jolting shock of ripping metal and exploding fuel tanks, Danny felt the missile hit.

XXX

"Echo Six is down!"

XXX

The cockpit ejected him into the thick darkness, throwing him up as the heat of his jet billowed upward. It was like being thrown into nothing. Danny lost all sense of direction as the pilot's seat shoved him up and out of the explosion; other jets shot past and around him close by and at a distance. The cockpit's seat reached the end of its acceleration, peaking near the clouds, and began to fall, pulling Danny down with it. He felt trapped, and if he could just get out of this millstone chair he thought he might fly, but that was impossible, he knew, because nobody could fly. The seat turned upside-down, pointing Danny's head at the water, and he knew then that even if he could fly, he would choose not to. At what he guessed was the right height, Danny pulled the parachute.

He hit the water and the heavy pilot's seat dragged him down. He tore himself free and struck for the surface, hardly sure of its direction so much did the ocean roil, but at the last moment he broke through and gasped a mouthful of air, salt-spray, and rain. Danny ripped off the remains of the parachute, struggling with the buckle, and let the whole mess droop down to the depths. He kicked off his boots and his heavy flight jacket, both of which tugged at him, adding more weight to the bundle he had to keep afloat. Danny kicked at the water, trying to ride the massive swells without somersaulting beneath the water, and when he thought he could spare the effort, he glanced up at the battle above. He could see some things, the flash of gunfire or, once in a while, the explosion of a craft, but the darkness allowed very little, and the rain shot hard in his eyes.

They would think he was dead. They would think he was dead, unless he… Danny reached in a compartment attacked to his belt and tugged out a small waterproof box. He entered a code on its keypad, activating his locator signal. Fighting with the other arm to keep above the frigid water, Danny replaced the box in its holder. Now, as soon as the weather cleared and the battle was either won or over, his people could find him. Danny figured that shouldn't take more than a week or two. The cold of the water dug into his skin like the claws of a lion.

What had gone wrong? Danny didn't think it was something he'd done, but maybe that didn't matter, because whatever had gone wrong, he would surely die because of it. Somehow, that didn't make any sense. He'd been doing alright in the jet, hadn't he? He'd been fighting better, much better, than any of the others… Danny hugged his chest and kicked his feet harder, his green Air Force shirt sticking to his chest, his pants feeling like tarpaulins around his legs. He didn't know… what had gone wrong…

That wasn't any way to think and he knew it. This couldn't be as bad as it looked. If he had a compass, he could at least try to drift toward the main fleet. But of course, he remembered, the compass had been in his jacket, which was now on its way to the bottom of the ocean. Danny glared up at the sky. None of the planes acknowledged him, and the rain kept coming down. The cold of the water and the darkness above were both oddly distant from him. None of this could be happening; it was impossible.

"If I could fix it…" he told the storm. He was having trouble speaking; the cold froze his throat, and his teeth chattered. "I'd fix it." Danny tightened his lips. "I would have fixed it!" he roared, throwing his fists at the water. "I would have killed them all." The salt water flowed in his mouth. Danny gagged and spat it out, the chill freezing his anger from him, reducing it to bitterness. A swell tumbled him underwater, and Danny clawed his way back up, gasping.

Time passed, Danny didn't know how long, and the cold dug into him. He lost feeling in his feet, and his fingers followed suit. The waves tossed him under, and each time it got harder to rise to the surface, but Danny did it, time after time after time, until the cold froze his legs, and then he used his arms. More of the water swept in his mouth, and Danny gagged as he swallowed more of it. But no matter what, he wasn't going to give up and sink. Danny had decided that first with himself. He didn't care about the creeping numb or the crashing swells, tumbling him time after time underwater, each plunge requiring more of his strength to survive. Danny fought all of it. He was going to break the surface until his best wasn't good enough.

And eventually, it wasn't.

XXX

"You listen to me. This is Admiral Thackary of the USS Washington."

"This is the USS Nevada. Go ahead, Admiral, and we'd like to congratulate you on your victory. That was some fine work out there."

"First of all it was a team effort, second of all we won by the skin of the skin of our teeth, and third of all that's not important right now. We lost a pilot whose well-being is a matter of international consequence, and we've picked up a signal from his tracker. We're sending out a small scout ship to retrieve him, and we'd like one of yours to help out."

"Roger that."

"Thanks."

"…It's been almost three days. He's dead for sure by now."

"Yes. We know."

XXX

Chief Medical Officer Petrury threw a small kit of supplies to the men on board the speed boat and climbed the ladder down to them. He worked under General Hardesty and he hated missions like these. "All right boys," he told the others on the boat. "Let's go get that corpse."

One of them laughed. The other three kept their filthy mouths shut. Petrury slicked back his hair and ducked beneath the wind shield as the boat sallied forth into the ocean, bumping along the small swells under the noonday sun, leaving the hulking shape of the Washington far behind. Petrury didn't know why they had to do this. A whole disgusting war for them to worry about, and they had to go disturb the peace of some unlucky pilot. They'd probably reach his signal and discover the transmitter attached to a floating shard of the man's jet. He must be a senator's son, or some such thing. Petrury couldn't believe the pull some senators carried. Two of the fleet's best aircraft carriers on a mission to fetch out one miserable dead man.

But of course it wasn't Petrury's place to question orders, no sir. His job was to heal people and follow orders, so here he was, fetching the corpse of a senator's son under a healthy afternoon sun. Some days, he really loved his job. This was not one of those days.

One of the men announced that they'd reached the source, or gotten as close as they could to it, anyway. Farther off, Petrury could see the Nevada's scout ship. "Can't you get a smaller signal range?"

"Sorry sir. The water is interfering. We're lucky to have this accuracy."

"Super," muttered Petrury. "Let's get started, then. I'd like to get back to the ship in time for dinner, if that's okay with you people." He didn't usually nag the underlings, but this was such a rotten job. And on a clear-blue sky like this, too. The body, assuming anybody could find it, would stink like a septic tank full of spoiled meat, and the reports had said this guy was young, just twenty-six years old, a blasted kid. He scanned the ocean with the other three, looking for the odd bob of fabric on the waves. He'd be astonished if they found anything. Water-logged bodies eventually sank.

"I think we've got something, sir."

Petrury started. "Alright soldier, let's see it." He looked over where they were pointing. A wrinkled green lump floated about ten yards away, about the length of a man, and unmoving. Petrury turned away. Just a kid. "What are you all waiting for?" he shouted. "Go get the poor slob!" They turned the boat around and came along side the thing. Petrury waited as they hooked it with a scoop hauled the thing on board. The bedraggled lump hit the deck with a morbid thud.

Grumbling to himself, Petrury bent for a closer look, bracing himself in anticipation of the smell. Strangely enough, there was no smell. The body hadn't decayed in the slightest. "Turn him over." Petrury snatched a paper from his jacket, comparing the picture with the face of the limp body on his deck. In the picture the kid had thick black hair, a stern, angular bone structure, and sharp blue eyes. He wore his uniform, and he looked as serious as any other military man.

The man on the deck lay on his side, his arms flopped up and to the side where they had fallen, legs tangled awkwardly at the deck. His hair was wet, and face hung expressionless, eyes closed. Nothing had decayed. He hadn't swollen, as every drowning man did, and if he smelled, it was only of the salt water still dripping off his clothes. If anything, he looked badly drunk, but certainly not dead.

"Apparently he just jumped in for a swim." The humor fell flat, and Petrury's companions remained purposefully silent, unwilling to issue an opinion one way or the other on the subject. Petrury glared at them. "Are you sure this is our man?" One of them reached for the man's neck, inspecting the nickel plates, the dog tags, which identified the bodies of dead soldiers.

"This is him." Another reached in a case on the dead man's belt and pulled out a blinking black box. "And here's the transmitter."

"Well then, call HQ. Tell them we found their body." Petrury kicked away the body bag and pulled his medical kit from under the seat, selecting a thin flashlight. He bent over the body and inspected the face more carefully, searching for a sign of normality, but he found none. Even the fish had left this one alone. It was a modern miracle, and if they let him talk about it, which Petrury didn't suppose they would, it would make him famous. He crouched down with the light and lifted the drunk or dead man's eyelid. The pupil was dilated, and the iris was iridescent green.

XXX

Danny woke up with the world's nastiest taste in his mouth. He squinted at the blast of light and tried to shade his eyes with a hand, but he couldn't move his hands, for whatever weird reason.

"If I hadn't seen it myself I wouldn't believe it." A wrinkled, slightly overweight man in a white coat leaned over him. "You, Mr. Fenton, are one lucky guy." He turned to a blurry shape at his side, possibly a nurse. Or a huge powdered-sugar-covered doughnut. Danny was really hungry. It took him a moment longer for the whole 'should be dead' thing to sink in.

"WHOA!" He jolted, trying to escape the bed, but the straps on his arms, torso, and legs held him tight. "What HAPPENED? Am I okay? Did we win? I mean…" He paused as the memory of the fight returned in force, him crashing and being in the ocean, but after a certain point, he couldn't remember a thing. Danny fought with the memory but returned nothing that made any real sense to him. He settled back on the cot, releasing a gale-force sigh of exasperation. "Can I get some food here?"

"Henry, make a note that his pupils are now blue…"

Nurse-boy, now known to Danny as the Henry, grinned cheerily as he scribbled on a clipboard. "…pupils… now… blue…" The pen scratched on the paper. The noise made Danny insane with irritation.

"Come on, I mean, I'd settle for oatmeal at this point. With brown sugar. And raisins. Cream would be great…" Danny would have been drooling if he wasn't totally and completely out of that particular substance. He shouldn't be talking this much, but his head felt light, and he could hardly help it. "And water! A big old cup of icy… wait, no. Make that warm water. Or coffee. I'd settle for tea…" God was he ever happy not to be dead. Danny had a vague feeling that there was something horrible he should be concerned about, but until he was forced to remember what it was, he was going to fantasize about oatmeal.

"Henry, shut the man up and get him some decent food," the doctor snapped.

"Right away." Danny rejoiced as Henry zipped away down a corridor.

"Hi," he told the doctor. "I thought I was supposed to be dead."

"Yeah," said the doctor. "Me too."

Danny laughed, and his gloriously undead-chest shook with the action. "I," he announced quietly. "Am a very happy camper. Thanks, for whatever it was you did."

The doctor smiled and shook his head, keeping his attention on a clipboard. "Let me tell you, I didn't do much."

XXX

"Petrury!" barked General Hardesty. "How in all of holy hell is that man still alive?"

In the general's office, Hardesty sat glaring at his medical officer and friend, but this wasn't a friendly meeting, as Petrury well knew. Hardesty had something against Daniel Fenton, Miracle Boy, but he could hardly imagine what it was. "I have no earthly idea, General. I gave him a little juice from the defibrillators, just for kicks, and he started right up."

"You talk like he's a car," Hardesty grumbled.

"I am sorry I don't have a good answer for you, but the fact of the matter is that I fished this kid out of the water green-eyed, brought him back to life blue-eyed, and it's beyond me how any of it worked."

The general tented his fingers on his desk. "It may be beyond you, but do you think it's beyond him?"

Petrury knew Hardesty to be a little eccentric, but he was a good commander and a competent person. If he was asking a question that stupid, there must be a reason. "I'm not sure I know what you mean."

Hardesty stood from his chair and began to pace. "I mean," he said. "Has our Lazarus said anything about how he came back to life? Anything at all about that, or about his jet?" He glanced about the room, visibly disturbed.

"No sir. He just seemed happy to be alive."

General Hardesty chuckled. "Yes." He glanced at a picture on the wall, of a jet speeding on a runway. "Yes. I imagine he would. But you're sure he's said nothing? Nothing at all about his methods?"

Petrury shook his head. "Not a peep."

Hardesty frowned. "Bring him down to interrogation, then. He's fit for it, isn't he?"

Petrury laughed. "Sir, he's fit for an Olympic sprint."

That opinion didn't make Hardesty any happier. "Hurry up. I want him down there in five minutes."

Petrury nodded. "Understood. I'll have him ready for you." He rose to leave, more than a little disappointed with how the meeting had gone. The kid should be welcomed back, not shouted at. But then, orders were orders, and Hardesty was the general—a good one at that.

"Petrury."

The medical officer paused at the door. "Yes?"

Hardesty stopped pacing and pinned him with a look, hands in his pockets. "Nobody breathes a word of this to anyone. Not even a telegram to the parents. As far as everybody knows, Fenton is still dead."

Petrury supposed he should have expected something like this. "Yes sir."

XXX

Danny walked between two armed soldiers, both holding rifles and armed with pistols at their sides. Their gear clinked lightly as they walked down the otherwise empty hallway as they escorted him to interrogation. Danny, at a material disadvantage, wore only black slacks and a plain t-shirt, which the medical officer had given him before the two guards arrived. Things were going a little fast, from his point of view. The two soldiers had arrived just after he'd finished eating, and he'd started eating roughly ten minutes before they arrived. All in all, Danny guessed he couldn't have been conscious for more than a half hour, and for somebody who had been declared legally dead three days ago, he thought they were taking some extraordinary precautions with him.

They wouldn't tell him anything about his situation, either. Doctor Petrury had told him that he was under orders to keep mum, and as to the battle, Danny was told only that it had ended in victory. He asked about Caiman and the rest of Echo Group, but the escorting soldiers merely grunted for him to follow them. And here he was now, walking along the narrow hallways, being treated like a prisoner of war at his own station. Who knew survival was a crime?

He arrived at a door, which the first soldier opened with a key. Inside there was a table and a barrel-chested man who was, apparently, the one who would be asking the questions. A mirror was set into the wall on the right, and Danny felt it was safe to assume that the mirror was two-way. He didn't speak as they pushed him in, and he sat down quietly at the table. His own issues could wait. Right now, he needed to worry about giving the right answers so he could get out of this and back to normal duty, assuming they would allow such a thing, which he doubted, as soon as possible.

The two soldiers left and locked the door behind them. A cursory glance at the building material showed no other exit. A bomb might go off and do little more than scratch the mirror in this iron box. The man across from Danny remained standing, his brow furrowed in a mix of thoughtfulness and blatant fury. The guy was a gorilla, and had his beefy arms crossed across his chest. Danny was strong, but he was no bodybuilder. Baldy here wouldn't have a problem kicking his butt.

"If you answer right, you'll get out of here no problem. Answer wrong and you'll stand trial for life. Got it?" He had a voice like sandpaper in a wind tunnel.

Danny nodded, trying to be respectful without sucking up. "Got it."

"Give a full report of everything that happened, starting from the time you took off from the ship."

Danny proceeded with his account, starting with Baker and the fuel check, describing the engagement of the Chinese crafts, ending with his horrific crash. "I swear I don't know how I'm still alive. I thought I was dead. I don't remember anything between being in the water and waking up in sick bay." He didn't describe how he had moved with the ship. It was irrelevant, since the whole thing had surely been in his head, anyway.

"That's all?" The man's brown eyes pinned him. "Nothing else? Echo Seven reported green flames from your jets."

"I don't know how that happened. Baker gave me the same fuel as everybody else, and all my instruments read normally at the time."

"So you just magically get shot down, spend two and a half days in twenty-degree water, and come out looking like you've just taken a long nap. Is that it?" The interrogator put his hands on the table. "That's it?"

Danny met his eyes. "Yes sir. That is all."

The man grimaced and looked up and over Danny's shoulder. He had a radio in his ear. "Alright. General Hardesty will see you. I suggest you give him a better story than you gave me."

Several minutes later, Danny found himself facing another man in another room, this one in an office. He saluted the general, and Danny's two armed escorts slipped out. General Hardesty acknowledged him with a nod, his silver hair glinting in the fluorescent light above. "So you really don't think anything unusual happened?"

"No sir," Danny replied. He remained standing, keeping his posture in order. "If something unusual happened, I wasn't aware of it."

"I might believe you," muttered the general, seated at his desk. "Who are your parents?"

That was an odd question. "Madeline and Jack Fenton."

The general nodded. "And what did they do before they became a car mechanic and a college teacher?"

Danny licked his lip, taking a moment to prepare a phrase. "They engaged in… unusual branches of science, sir."

"Correct." The general smiled. "Ectoplasmic research, or 'ghosts.' Isn't that right?"

"Yes sir. That's right." Danny didn't like where this was going, and if that wasn't bad enough, he was starting to feel a little ill. Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea to eat so soon after being dead.

"You grew up in Amity Park where, for a certain time, there was some kind of unusual ghost vigilante. Called himself Danny Phantom. But." The general crossed his legs, picking a pen off his desk to wave it at Danny. "After a certain explosion at your house, all sightings of the ghost boy stopped." He quirked a tight smile. "Apparently several freshman were killed. Anything you want to add to that?"

Danny was feeling really nauseous now. He had trouble paying attention, and it was all he could do to hide his discomfort. He just wanted to go sleep somewhere until it passed. "Nothing to add."

"And now," continued General Hardesty. "Apparently you mysteriously have green fuel coming out of your jet." He chewed his lip. "So you can understand if I am a little concerned over this, especially since the military application of ectoplasm is a top secret project."

"My apologies, sir, I didn't know." Danny felt himself swaying, losing his balance. "May I sit?" The general waved to a chair across from the desk. Danny mumbled his thanks and took it.

The general rolled his eyes, tiring of the run-around. "Officer Fenton, what is your connection to the Amity ghost?"

"He's me," Danny grumbled. He'd broken out in a cold sweat, holding his head between his hands.

The general blinked. "What?"

"He's me and I'm him! It's this whole stupid thing that happened years and years ago… My parents had a broken device, a ghost portal or some dumb thing, and I messed with it and got… powers." He ran a hand over his head. "If my jet was turning green it's probably because I accidentally tapped into them during the battle, alright?"

"Watch your tone," snapped General Hardesty. "Why don't you use these powers more often? Why aren't you in the private sector?"

"I don't know. I got tired of it."

The general squinted at him from across the desk. "Listen here. People die, and that's just the way it goes. It's no reason to kill yourself."

"…don't know what you mean by that."

The general stood. "I'm not here to entertain your stupidity. I have a proposition for you, and you can either take me up on it or spend the rest of your unnatural life in jail. Understand?"

"Yessir," Danny was starting to feel a little better, but not by much.

"Have you ever thought about becoming an astronaut?"

Danny's head snapped up. "What?"

The general sat forward, looking right at him. "I'm going to tell you some things, and if you repeat them, I will personally rip your nuts off."

"I won't say a word."

"Good. Listen, several years ago the United States established an experimental base on Mars."

Danny's mouth dropped open. "Holy—!"

"Indeed. It's a small installation, only five rooms, but it's a base nonetheless and four people work and live in it."

Danny sat up, all trace of his sickness gone. "Why doesn't anybody know about it? What about the eight months it takes to get to Mars? How do they eat, or—"

Hardesty stopped him with a hand. "That's not your concern. What is your concern is that several days ago we lost contact with one of them, and we need a team of people to get up there and fix whatever went wrong before the public catches wind of it.

"This is insane. You're pulling my leg, sir. An operation like that would take millions."

"Billions," corrected Hardesty with a half-smile.

"Fine, billions, and then there's the matter of the, I mean…" he stuttered. "Isn't NASA dead? Who started this thing?"

"A group of people with too much money on their hands who think humanity needs to move out before Earth goes up like a Fourth of July firecracker." Hardesty glanced at a plaque on his wall, showing twenty or thirty men standing arm-in-arm. "That's a picture of the benefactors."

"But, why hasn't anybody…"

"Because nobody would believe it, and if this fails, then that's the final nail in the space program's coffin. I'm not going to philosophize to you, but there are those of us who think that the future is in space. With the new nuclear engines Taiwan created, we can finally go there. Those engines have enough power in them to take us clear to Jupiter."

Danny rubbed his temples. "Alright. Assuming that's all true, what do you want me to do?"

"I want to volunteer you for a team of people to go up and fix things. There would be three of you, and you'll be provided with ample equipment to solve any technical malfunction. You're a good choice because it's apparently extremely difficult to kill something like you, and you're pretty much the best pilot we have."

"There are other good pilots out there, and I'm definitely not invulnerable. I usually turn all the way human whenever I pass out. I don't know why this time was any different."

The general nodded slowly. "Granted. However, we have reason to believe that something up there is using ectotech. I'm not sure if your parents ever got this far, but we've discovered that ectoplasmic substances carry enormous power. There are theories that, on Mars, some such technology is still active. If there is something moderately alive out there…"

"You want me to be able to take care of it."

"Correct." The general shrugged. "It's that or life in prison."

Danny blinked and shook his head furiously. "Gah! There are so many problems with this, I can't even believe it." He knew he was going to take the job, but it was too bizarre and strange. It was like finding out that Santa Claus existed after all.

"People have been looking at the stars for millennia. For the last two or three hundred years people have written and theorized about human life in space, and now it's finally happened, and, like you, nobody would be able to believe it." The general lowered his voice. "That's exactly why nobody has been told about it. The first attempt must succeed, or every one that follows will be mocked into extinction before it has even a chance of success. Imagine if we could take the focus of the world off its own pathetic disputes and put it into space. It would be the New World all over again."

Danny considered the things he'd learned in history about the New World. As he recalled, it had encouraged slavery, started wars, and caused the local people incredible amounts of strife. The United States had come out of it, so it hadn't been all bad, but the general's argument didn't sound as grand as it was made out to be. In spite of those doubts, the mission did have a strange appeal to Danny. He'd wanted to be an astronaut when he was little, and he couldn't say he was anxious to get to prison. Plus, it wasn't for him, a formerly dead man, to say what sounded strange. In a world as insane as his had always been, why not go to Mars and battle alien ghost things?

"Alright," he said. "I'll do it."

"Good man." The general grinned as he stood to dismiss him. "You transfer out at oh-five-hundred tomorrow."


A/N: Howzat for a doosie, eh? Remember, reviews make me giggle with childlike glee!