The Trinity Sitch - Book 3: Blade of the Fury

Hidden Relatives

For the first time since joining the expedition to the mysterious planet she had dubbed 'Black Hole Deep', Jo Stommble managed to keep from throwing up when the U.S.S. Reynolds emerged from telewarp. It was only the fourth time she had endured such a jump, but it had more to do with the thoughts occupying her mind rather than becoming accustomed to the mind and body wrenching experience.

The small ship dropped into normal space, reported in to the nearest traffic control center, then immediately jumped into 'normal' hyperspace for the rest of the ride back to Earth. The ship was fast, but it would still take over two days to make the journey. Despite growing experience with the galaxy spanning telewarp technology, they were still making baby steps with it, choosing to warp into empty tracts of space lest they make some small error in their calculations. They were getting better at it, considering it took them two full weeks to reach their starting point on the first attempt.

They were using the smaller ship to shuttle personnel back and forth to 'BHD' (as the crew had begun to refer to the planet) instead of the cargo ship. Since she was the first ship equipped with a telewarp drive, the Reynolds was the logical choice to use as she had plenty of room for crew, if not for the equipment that was needed. Marsh Industries, the owner of the ship and financial backer of the expedition, was racing to convert as many of their ships as they could to the new drive before the technology was locked down by the government, basically on the pretext they needed as many ships as possible to unlock the secrets the newly discovered gate held.

The Reynolds herself was due to suffer the same fate so many Hendrickson class corvettes had succumbed to. No, she was much to valuable a space frame to be broken up for scrap, she was going to be converted into a luxury yacht! The particular model, despite not having many places to put large observation lounges, basically big windows, proved to be especially popular for conversions. Jo had no idea whether it was for Kilroy Marsh, the president of the company, or for his older brother Jason, a former Special Forces commando become company executive. She suspected the former, as the latter, a tall, hulking brick wall of a man, wasn't given to such forms of extravagance. At least he wasn't during their short time together during the war. Maybe exposure to all the money and power his family afforded him had changed him.

A brief but intense relationship with a man trying to distance himself from a powerful family was not what occupied her mind. Instead it was the long, narrow plastic case sitting on the bunk of her stateroom. More sophisticated tests had been run on the human remains once they were back on the mother ship. The ship's doctor had been called in to review the DNA data, comparing it to Jo's own sample. He made the same conclusion that Teep had earlier; the remains were definitely her ancestor's, a direct ancestor at that.

Before the discovery, Jo had never shown much interest in her family history. She knew her parents, knew 3 of her four grandparents and knew the names of her great-grandparents. That was about all. She had always been about the living, not the dead. That attitude was reversed the instant she learned who the skeletal remains had been. Now that they were back in Terran controlled space, she had access to the central library.

Researching her family history was slightly more difficult than she first thought. Not every record had been kept in the same form over the years. Instead of just being in a familial database, much of the data, even only a hundred years back, had been transposed from other types of documents, such as 'hard data' recordings. She couldn't just tell the computer to spit out her whole lineage. It took a bit more direction than that.

Then there was the problem with her name. Apparently, over the last two or three centuries, it had changed. Slightly at first, but over that amount of time it had become quite different. Sometimes that sent the computer off into dead ends, but in the end, she was able to trace he history back almost five hundred years. The name changed, sometimes by one letter, sometimes more. Somewhere in the distant past of the home world land of Poland they had been known as the Stopolvovskis. Throughout most of her family's history, though, they had been known as the Stoppables. It was when she traced her family to one Ronald Stoppable that she made the most amazing discovery.

She simply had no idea!

To learn that one of the popular legends taught to children was real! It was like learning that Robin Hood was an actual person, that King Arthur actually sat with his knights at the round table.

That she was actually the descendent, a direct one at that, of one of the greatest heroes of the Twenty First Century!

Yet here were actual photos of her! Save for the lighter color of her hair and her brown eyes, Jo even resembled her forebear! For a moment, she was distracted from her search by the fact her great, great (many times removed) grandmother was Kim Possible herself.

How did that get left out of the family history?

There was literally a ton of stuff to sift through, and not all of it could be trusted as actual fact. Birth dates and such seemed more speculative, especially considering it seemed a good part of her career she was actually somewhat younger than Jo. True, she had signed up for the Starforce at sixteen, but it seemed Kim Possible had started her career at the tender age of twelve! That even in a day and age where people weren't considered adults until they were eighteen to twenty one!.

Nearly five hundred years was a long time, and it would take a real historian to figure out what was fact and what was just part of the legend. She almost didn't want to know the real truth, if it meant destroying her vision of her childhood hero. Still, if she wanted to get any idea of the true identity of the bones, then she would have to dig. As she perused the library files, it occurred to her that perhaps she could let the professionals do the work for her.

She downloaded the first text she could find: Kim Possible: Fact of Fantasy? The book was over two centuries out of date, but it perhaps could separate some of the pertinent facts.

One thing perplexed her. Possible must have had children, if she was a direct descendant, yet there was almost no mention of her husband or children or anything for that matter. There were rather detailed accounts of her exploits but there never seemed to be any mention of her personal life. She gave up on the book, figuring it to be more sensationalized garbage and went back to her search.

The family tree was clear. Possible had married a man named Ronald EugeneStoppable. It was his name that, over the centuries, had evolved into Stommble. Two children were listed -a son, then a few years later a girl, theelder being her direct ancestor since she still carried the name. She listed all of her male lineage on the screen, trying to think of some clue as to who that might have been back on 'BHD.' There wasn't much to go on since there wasn't much information except actual names. There were birth dates listed for many, though not all and only a couple had a death year.

Frustrated, she started sorting through images. There were hundreds of grainy (to 25th century standards) 2D photos. Quickly growing bored with the search, she started flipping through them faster and faster.

One stopped her cold.

There was Kim Possible, standing with two other people. One was a slightly taller woman with dark, shoulder length hair pulled into a long ponytail, her arm around Kim's back with two fingers protruding over the top of her head. To her other side was a blonde haired man who was five or six inches taller than Kim. He too was making the rabbit ears, competing with the raven haired woman for position. Interestingly, all three were wearing what looked like ancient battle armor, despite their cheerful expressions.

It was what was peeking over the blonde haired man's shoulder that caught her rapt attention.

Showing clearly, even for such an old photo, was the carved gold grip of a sword. Apparently the weapon was being worn across his back instead of on his hip as one would expect a sword of that type to be. She rushed back to her bunk and opened the case, comparing the grip with the image she was seeing.

They were clearly the same! The sword she had discovered had belonged to her distant grandsire!

Were those his bones lying there?

That was assuming the man in that picture was Ron Stoppable. Why was it that he was referred to so little in the texts? Was there some great and terrible secret surrounding him?

Could it actually be that he was only married to Kim long enough to have the two children, before something happened that left him dead on the far side of the galaxy? Wanting an answer, she dove back into the materials with a new zeal. Another thought started forming in her mind. What if he didn't want to be remembered? What if he was the type of man who always liked being in the background?

That image did not seem to mesh with the goofy grin from that one picture.

Eventually she found a few more pictures, mostly of the man in his younger years. Chief among them was a picture of him kissing Kim at a dance of some kind, apparently when they were much younger as he was only slightly taller than her at the time and much more slightly built, despite the odd ruffled outfit he was wearing. It was here she finally found confirmation. The photo had a caption; Voted – Best Couple – Middleton High School Yearbook 2004-2005: Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable.

This was indeed Ron Stoppable, Kim Possible's husband and the father of her children.

She picked up the sword again. It looked as if it were brand new. Once the dust from the demon's remains had been cleaned away it shown like the day some long forgotten master sword smith had forged it. Jo ran her fingers down the carved runes, symbols none of the computers had been able to identify, let alone translate. Despite its appearance, it was obviously not of Japanese origin. The metal was different. The blade itself was slightly different and the grip was wholly wrong for an ancient Japanese weapon.

Oh, how she wished she could keep it. Unfortunately, it was now the property of her employers. It wasn't even supposed to be out of the hold. It was most likely going to end up hidden in some forgotten warehouse, or even hanging on Kilroy Marsh's wall like some trophy. There was always the chance that later, Jason could get it for her, but that meant actually having some contact with him, and that would be too much like crawling back to him with her tail between her legs.

She wasn't ready to do that.

Still holding the ancient weapon, she sat on the bed and pondered what she was going to do.

The crew disembarked from the ship, straight into a customs quarantine center. Considering their point of origin, they were not so much interested in contraband, but instead making sure the crew wasn't carrying any kind of pathogen. In fact, that had become the Customs Service's most important mission. That meant the crew had to go into decontamination and isolation for a few days. They were prepared for it and were being compensated more than fairly for the inconvenience. They had done this before, and likely would again.

Jo walked into her temporary apartment carrying only her duffel bag. Even that had to be checked in as every individual item was scanned meticulously. A few days later, she went home, carrying on her credit meter enough money to pay off her creditors.

A crew met their ship the day of their arrival. The cargo, most of it various scientific finds from their expedition, was going to get much the same scrutiny as the crew, only with special care not to damage anything of special value. Every single piece was checked and rechecked against the inventory. A long plastic box was checked off against the list. It was then transferred to a special lab where it could be examined for any kind of biological or non-biological pathogen.

One technician employed by the Customs Service called his superior in. He had been given the task of examining a strange sword found during the ship's journey. Where it came from and what significance it had was not his concern. It was simply another item that would need the proper scanning and clearance before it was turned over to its rightful guardians. All he cared about was the fact it was nowhere near as delicate as most of the items he was tasked with clearing. It was something he could do and do quickly before moving on to the next.

The fact he was given an empty case troubled him deeply.

That meant investigations. He was investigated, the workers who had unloaded the ship were investigated. Everyone in the chain of custody eventually were heard from. The final report – the weapon in question had simply vanished. The crew of the ship were questioned, as were the workers at the customs center. Eventually it was either deemed unimportant or it was becoming too much of a distraction considering all the other interesting artifacts coming to 'light' from that dark world.

Nobody ever questioned why Jo was so visibly upset when she learned the Reynolds disappeared during a telewarp, not long after her refit. It was written off as one of the many accidents that would occur with the new technology while it was in its infancy.