"Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."

-Clive Staples Lewis (November 29, 1898-November 22, 1963), British fantasy author and lay theologian, The Screwtape Letters

Chapter Eleven

It was very quiet in the meeting chamber, so quiet one could hear a pin drop and echo through the room. Most of the dignitaries had decamped to send word back to their governments, leaving only Aang and his friends to treat with the representatives of Earth and her allies. The senior of which, he noted, seemed like he couldn't tell if he was excited, concerned or angry.

"Well, Mister Aang," Archer said, leaning forward in his chair to stare at him levelly across his desk. "You seem to have made quite a few waves."

Aang nodded. I did kinda do it. "If I thought I had any other choice I would have taken it, but I didn't. And please note, I didn't force anyone to do this. We voted, the majority of delegates here agreed to it, and we all agreed that we were bound to go through with whatever the majority followed up on."

"Yes, but why did you feel you had to bring this up?" Hernandez interjected for the first time in this conversation. "We would have been perfectly content to just have you as allies."

"Everyone thinks I'm just some naïve kid," he said, years of practice ensuring that the irritation he felt when someone dismissed him as "just a kid" didn't show on his face getting more work than it ever had in a conversation. "But I did get some education before I got myself frozen for a hundred years. Enough to be able to read between the lines of your speech to realize that your relationship with the Vulcans wasn't nearly as good as it seemed to imply."

"Well," Archer began only to be cut off by Soval.

"You are correct," the older vulcan man said softly. "My people had strayed from the true path of Surak. Deliberately attempting to stymie human exploration and warp development efforts was part of our efforts to ensure they could never pose a threat to us. It was a decision born of paranoia and arrogance, not logic."

"Which is exactly why we agreed we had to do this," Katara said suddenly, folding her arms as she stood in front of her desk. "I was as skeptical as any woman in this room, but he's right. A hundred years of our world's history was marred by one man's belief that he could make the world…better on his own. That this was a 'War of Unification' that would lead to an ultimately brighter world in the end."

"And how well did that work out?"

"Well Aang's people were exterminated," Katara said, as though reciting from a list, "my country lost most of its infrastructure, barely holding on to enough of our education system to give my brother and I decent educations, and Zuko…well," sheepishly looking over at him, clearly unsure if he'd approve of her making that point instead of him.

"My grandfather, Firelord Azulon, was a ruthless man" Zuko said, sweeping the room with a look in his pained eyes, "yet he had some form of moral compass. When my cousin Major Lu Ten died repulsing an attempt by Omashu to turn my Uncle's flank, he broke the siege in his grief. Shortly after word arrived home, my father came to his father. He was outraged at my Uncle's 'weakness' and demanded that he be disinherited. My grandfather said he'd only do it if Ozai agreed to kill me in front of him, so he'd know the pain of losing a son. He agreed."

Aang's eyes widened in shock and horror, as his eyes, and everyone else's whipped over to the older boy.

"Dear God," Archer said softly, "And your father agreed to this?"

Zuko nodded. "Things are, at best, unclear, but my grandfather died within hours of Ozai telling my mother. She disappeared that very night. I haven't seen her since."

The room fell into silence as the other's stared Zuko.

"But that's not all of it," Zuko said, "shaking his head. Ozai favored my younger sister over me. What most healers on my world regard as illness, my father taught her to believe was strength. Nevertheless, I was the Prince, destined to succeed my father. When I was thirteen, my Uncle, who still served as one of Ozai's senior general officers, convinced my father to let me into a planning session." He sighed, trying desperately to blink away an uncomfortable memory. Mai walked up silently and put a hand on his shoulder. He grasped her hand silently and took a deep breath. "The plan proposed involved pitting the Forty-First Infantry Division, a newly raised unit that had just been activated against a crack enemy unit, as a diversion to launch a flanking attack on their rear. I couldn't believe it. The unit was newly raised, with no time to actually shake out as a division. I knew it could only end one way. They'd win, but take horrendous casualties doing so. I couldn't let it stand, so I said something. Out of turn. My father declared what I did disrespectful and demanded that I participate in a duel. I couldn't believe that a General of Fong's caliber could so callously throw away so many lives, so I agreed. Only it wasn't General Fong I had to face, but my own father."

"What did you do? Shran said after a long moment, staring at him with clear horror.

"I couldn't do it," Zuko said, "I fell to my knees before him, begging him for forgiveness. And he said," he swallowed a lump in his throat, "he said, 'You will learn respect, and suffering will be your teacher.'" He pointed to his scar. "Then he gave me this and banished me, ordering me not to come back until I had found the Avatar. My Uncle joined me in exile. That was over three years ago, now. Now look at this from our perspective. Your people have every technological advantage. Even with your assistance, as generous as I'm sure it would be, it will take us at least a generation to modernize our industrial and technological base. Building a fleet capable of defending our world on our own will take longer still, and during that period we will be entirely dependent on you for trade goods and defense against other spacefaring powers. It's only a short step from there to deciding that you need to take control of our world for our own good."

"That won't happen," Archer snapped.

Zuko held up a conciliatory hand. "Don't get me wrong. I like you, Captain. You remind me of my best friend," and he jerked his head in Katara's direction. "But you and I both know what I said is true. And if we are going to be economically and militarily dependent on you for decades, with all the risks that entails for both of us, then we have no choice but to at least try for a genuine partnership.

Aang pursed his lips, thinking about what they just said, and he was surprised to discover that, even without his vision of the future, he still probably would have made the same choice.

After a long moment, Archer nodded. "I agree with you, but that decision isn't mine. I'm sure you understand that. And given that this exact situation hasn't come down on us since before the Third World War, and given the fact that you made this decision without putting it to your respective peoples for a vote, there are going to be representatives in my governments legislative branch who are not going to take it…well. They'll see it, as a naked attempt by a bunch of self-serving opportunists to saddle us with a new strategic burden and sell out their own populations for their gain."

"I understand where they'd be coming from," Katara pointed out, "But it's not like we have the time or the mechanisms to organize such a vote."

"I know," Archer said, "and without our knowledge of the situation, that fact in and of itself could be seen as proof you have no business in the same political system as us. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. The other problem is that, aside from the people in this city, no one knows what's going on. If you're serious about this, it'll be in everyone's best interests if we try to get the word out as quickly as possible. If nothing else, your people have the right to know what their heads of state and government have committed them too, and it will spare you from accusations from members of my world's current government that you're just a pack of self-serving opportunists. Which I know isn't true."

"How about," Sokka said, a gleaming light that was all too familiar to his oldest friends in his eyes. "You offer personally to fly the dignitaries back to their respective capitals. It will impress on them just what you're capable of, and strange craft flying over their capitals will let people know something's going on quickly. We can also print and distribute packets of information on your government and legal systems, and that of your allies, to ensure accurate information gets out to them as quickly as possible on the heels of all this."

Archer and Hernandez nodded eagerly. "That is a good idea," Hernandez said, "Now I understand that there is a local parliament in the Fire Nation, and the sub-Imperial Kingdoms that make up the Earth Kingdom. They're weak institutions that no one on my government would accept as legal for the purposes of membership under our Constitution, but they're a start. It would probably be a good idea if they were formally convened and that question placed before them for a vote. If representatives directly elected by the people, even occasionally, are allowed to vote on this issue, it would go a long way to improving the odds of my government taking it seriously. Once that is done, I would recommend appointing an official delegation, one we could ferry back to Earth via the corridor, one empowered to speak for all your governments, that would be the ones to formally present it."

Aang nodded levelly.

"And when we're done here for the day," Archer said, "my science division has completed the approval process for a project that will help us get begin to get at the other question at the root of all this. How you relate to us and when your ancestors diverged from ours."

Katara smiled as everyone else filed out of the cavernous meeting room. She couldn't help it. They weren't reacting anymore, being tugged along by events. They were acting, seizing the initiative somewhere. They still might not win. The Lightning Swords had help from someone out there among the stars after all. That someone could be powerful enough to wipe out even their putative allies. She had told them to go on ahead, that she and Aang needed to discuss a few details before they joined them.

"Katara?" Aang's familiar voice said anxiously from behind her. "Can we talk? Really talk? We haven't had time to do a lot of that lately."

"Sure, Aang."

"I apologize if I was short with you earlier, during the vote." Aang said. "I was out of line."

Katara held up a conciliatory hand, even knowing full well that, however remorseful he felt about that, it wasn't that important, and it wasn't what he wanted, what he really wanted, to talk about.

I suppose I should tell him to mind his own business, she thought, as it really isn't his business who I take into my bed. But I don't think that's right either. All things being equal, who a woman takes as her lover, and she flushed pleasantly whenever she applied the term to Chan, is between her and her lover. But we fought together, I held his dead body in my arms. If ever I owed anyone an explanation for anything, its him.

"It's okay, Aang. Besides I don't think that's what you really want to talk about, now is it?"

"No," Aang said. "No, it isn't. I was a jerk. I was expecting you to want to spend the rest of our lives together on the basis of a couple kisses. And I was out of line with the second one. I don't remember if I apologized for that already or not."

"You were out of line, yes," Katara said, "but I understand why you'd feel tempted, so I'm not going to hold it against you."

Aang smirked mirthlessly. "Let me just say I…know why you were uncomfortable with me. Zuko made that…abundantly clear."

Katara flinched. "I know," she said. "I kinda tore into him for it. Not that he was wrong, of course." She took another deep breath. "I need to be honest with you. If that Lightning Sword with a phase rifle hadn't shown up when she did…I would have told you yes. Because, as uncomfortable as I sometimes feel, I do love you. I do." Because alone out of all of us, you remained untainted by what we had to do.

He saw those gray eyes widen in shock, and no small amount of hope. "But then that…damned bitch showed up." She closed her eyes, and that acrid scent filled her nostrils once again. "I killed her. But I came within a hairsbreadth of dying that day. Closer than I came even when Zuko and I faced Azula in battle. And that rifle, the mere fact that it existed at all, changed everything we thought we knew about the world. And in the face of all that-."

"In the face of all that," Aang completed, with the sound of someone who was emotionally beaten, "you decided you could not overlook the fact that I look much younger than my age after all."

Katara sighed. The ghost of Chan's lips and calloused hands on her bare skin causing a tingle to run down her spine even then. "It's not even really that. Aang, we've kissed twice. Am I the first girl you've ever kissed?" Another thing I've learned since I left my village. In a situation like this, never ask a question for which you don't already have an answer.

"Yeah? Aren't I the first boy you kissed?"

Katara sighed and shook his head. "No, Aang."

Aang's eyes widened, and he sank back into his chair. "Oh," he said after a moment.

"Yeah," Katara responded. "My brother and I oversaw the day-to-day activities we needed to do to survive in our village, even if Gran-Gran was technically in charge. Surely you don't think two people failing to catch one fish was enough to keep an entire village alive for two years."

Aang cocked his head. "Well, now that I think about it," Aang said, "I did kinda wonder at that. Though it does explain why Sokka's always hungry."

Katara couldn't help the laugh that burst out of her. "That's because he's Sokka, Aang. But no, I had my first kiss when I was the age you were when I found you in the iceberg, with a boy about the age I was that day in fact. He was the son of one of the smugglers from the Earth Kingdom who ran essential supplies past Fire Nation patrols. I saw him only those couple days. Haven't seen him since." I hope he's not dead, she thought, memories of that old anxiety flooding over her, when his father's ship arrived and he wasn't on her. I hope there was some family emergency, or he got his own ship or something. I shared a couple kisses with a few others, and I spent quite a bit of time making out with Jet when no one was looking."

Aang stared at her shocked. "W-why are you-?"

"Because how can you really know what you want, and who you want to be with if you don't have anyone else to compare it too?" She put a hand on his shoulder. "Come on," she said softly. "Out of all the girls who glommed all over you over the last year, can you really tell me you were tempted to kiss none of them? Not even once."

Aang's face flushed. "Well…I was tempted. But I was certain that you were the girl of my destiny."

"I could still be," Katara said, feeling a bit like flushing herself. "But the world has changed forever. First when we discovered that rifle. It changed again during the blast, and still again we made first contact with not only advanced spacefaring members of our own race, but two other races entirely." She held out her hand, swallowing the lump in her throat. Please, Aang. We can't do this without you. And neither can I, no matter who's in my bed. "We're taking our first steps into a new frontier, you and me. Let's explore it together. And see where our destinies now lie."

Sergeant Ilara watched from the shadowed upper staircase as the delegates in the conference room filed out. The stocky auburn-haired woman was twenty-four, twenty-six in the years of the world on which her species had actually evolved, and of which she had never heard. She had been a soldier since she was fourteen years old. She'd seen action against the Earth Kingdom's Sixth Area Army. Where she'd seen her twin brother die, crushed into jelly in his armor by a half-ton rock thrown by an Earthbender. When what was left of her division finally settled into its new position that night, only one thing had kept her going. Making sure her brother's sacrifice, and that of all the other men and women on both sides, had not been in vain. Ensuring a human race united under the Fire Nation royal family would rise from the ashes, the fruits of its industrialization modernizing economies and raising the quality of life across the world.

Then it had all came apart in less than three years. The Fire Nation had won, achieved everything Sozin had sent them forth to achieve except take over the North, but it was only a matter of time before they surrendered and everyone knew it. Then the Avatar took out Ozai, and Prince Zuko and that jumped-up Water Tribe bitch beat Azula. Which, if even half the rumors were true, was probably for the best. The problem was, instead of completing the Great Work of three generations of his family, Zuko announced his intentions to sue for peace. To leave the rest of the world independent, in exchange for the colonies they already had and a smattering of unimportant backwater islands like Kyoshi.

Nearly five million people killed, wounded, and missing. Families in every nation ripped apart, and our so-called Firelord didn't even have the decency to make all that blood mean something. My brother did not get crushed to death, and my aunt didn't drown along with nearly five thousand other men and women at the North Pole for…what? An ultimately pointless waste of lives? All those people died, an entire nation exterminated, so everyone could go back to what they had before the war started?

Then came her current orders from Colonel Medora, given before her planned attack on Ten-Mile-West. Her squad of intelligence pathfinders were to slip into the Palace defense perimeter, and monitor the situation inside the palace, especially due to all the rumors of mysterious newcomers with the exact same kind of model weapons that had been delivered to them, and report on their current intentions. At first it seemed obvious. Whoever had delivered them the weapons had now revealed themselves. They had laid waste to and seized control of Ba Sing Se in blood and fire and were now working to cement their control. Perhaps, she had thought, that was the plan; they would work together, with the Fire Nation granted day-to-day control of the administration of the planet in exchange for becoming part of their empire. Which was something she was surprised to find she could live with.

Too many people have died for too long for us to go back to the status quo, she thought.

But one of her people had slipped into the ranks of the court pages supporting the conference, and she had been forced to revise her assessment. There was no indication that the gathered leaders in the chamber were under any sort of duress. And if what she had said was even partially true, the rifle she even now wore slung around her chest had been stolen from the newcomers by someone else. And not by one of the other genuine aliens (and she still had trouble wrapping her head around that?!) either.

Not that any of this could change anything. She was a deserter, as far as the legal Firelord and his government were concerned. The only thing awaiting her if she tried to turn her coat back was being whipped through the streets of the capital at midday on her way to the gallows. So, she was going to fight. Even if it was for a lie.

Abruptly the communication device chirped. She opened the golden metal grille and read the short message, written in her language on the screen.

Pick up "Captain" Lee, the message said, and if you can a certain Lieutenant that shares the Water Tribe girl's bed.

She closed it, opened it again and began relaying orders to her other sections.

Lieutenant Hoshi Sato yawned as she looked over her console. Like most of her crewmates, she hadn't gotten much sleep over the last few days. Dealing with planetary disasters and large-scale military-humanitarian deployments tended to take a lot out of one's sleep schedule. She had spent the last few hours of her shift on the surface, just in case the translation software or hardware hit a glitch and needed to be repaired during the Captain's speech. But that hadn't happened, and she had been sent back to the ship after the results of that shocking vote. Which is certainly what none of them, least all the Captain, thought was going to happen.

Then her console beeped and a pop-up box appeared, with the words in glowing blood red. "Unauthorized network user detected."

She cocked her head and tapped out a command, and her nostrils flared, as the GIS map of the Palace appeared with the glowing dot appeared. She checked the string of numbers next to it against the registry. Shit, she thought. Poor dumb fuckers don't even know to encrypt their systems.

"Commander," she said, and Commander Tucker shot up out of his command chair and walked over to her.

"What is it, Hoshi?" His Deep South accent said softly.

"An unauthorized communicator just pinged in the Royal Palace," Hoshi said, pointing a map. "It's ID code matches the ones from the stolen shipment."

Tucker let out a frustrated breath before looking across the bridge at the tactical console. "Malcolm, get the MACOs and get down there." The older officer nodded, pressing a command into his console before sprinting towards the turbolift. He pressed a button on her own console even as Malcolm's relief slid into his chair.

"Tucker to Captain Archer," he began.

Ty Lee followed a half-step behind the small party heading out of the conference room to the mess hall set aside for the delegates use. Katara and Aang had told them to go on ahead and they would catch up shortly. Presumably after they got done talking about what she was pretty sure they were going to talk about.

Good, she thought, they need to clear the air between them…which is probably the only thing I can feel good about from that last conversation.

"What's troubling you, Captain?"

She shook herself and looked into the eyes Zuko, Mychi, and the rest of the people who'd left with them, who were staring at her concerned. She flushed in embarrassment as she realized she had apparently gotten so lost in her worried thoughts that she had started to fall behind.

For a moment, Ty considered lying to her sovereign, to spare him the troubling implications that had been dancing around her head for the past few minutes. But she'd once counted his sister as her best friend. The sister who had manipulated, abused and lied to everyone around her since she they were little kids. For Zuko the struggle against her sister had culminated in an Agni Kai that had come within a hairsbreadth of killing him, if it weren't for Katara. As for her and Mai, they had been locked in a prison that Azula promptly turned into even more of a waking nightmare than it was for her and the women who would become her sisters by transferring Chan out and transferring in Medora.

And for all we know right now, Azula could very well have been the one who came up with that fake meeting as a means to get you banished and replaced with her. It's the only reason I could think of that a high command without access to any of the technology and equipment Archer has could even attempt to seriously direct army and corps level operations. That'd be impossible to pull off even in the Fire Nation.

Before she could say anything however, Archer's communicator chirped to life. Tucker to Captain Archer, the accented voice of Archer's chief engineer filtered out of his pocket. The senior officer reached into his pocket and flipped it open.

"Go ahead, Trip," Archer responded.

"We have a problem down there, Captain. A communicator from the batch stolen by the orions pinged in the Palace. It wasn't online long enough to localize it, but it was within twenty-five meters of your position.."

Zuko's eyes widened in and he slid into a firebender's stance, balls of fire forming around his fists as soon as Commander Tucker's sentence was finished. Even as Ty stepped back to open the range and her hand went to her sword. A sword, she'd learned, bore remarkable similarities to one used on Earth called the katana. A Kyoshi sword was longer, however, and its spine was sharpened for a third of its length. Something she was going to take ruthless advantage of if she got the chance.

"Get the MACOs down here," Archer ordered, pulling his own pistol out of his holster and whirling about to point his pistol down the corridor.

"Already done," Tucker responded. "I've also contacted General Singh, his MACOs will be on standby if we need them."

Eleven columns of light formed around them, the bright white lights fading to reveal too full squads of MACOs in their mottled gray and brown duty uniforms led by the blue-uniformed Lieutenant Commander Malcolm Reed, Archer's security chief. All of them she noted, carried the exact same rifle. "Malcolm!" Archer began, "They're close. Within twenty-five meters-,"

Then something flickered to Ty's right in her peripheral vision. One of the MACOs saw it too, the same tawny skinned girl not much older then her, who she had seen protecting Captain Archer when she first woke up in his sickbay. The older girl twitched, bringing her rifle up to a firing position down the corridor.

"Contact right!" The girl shouted, squeezing a blue blast down the corridor and catching a hulking man with somewhat fairer skin and dark black hair in the chest. He fell to the ground, staring at them with eyes that would never see anything again, and a pistol clattered out of his lifeless hand. An answering bolt of blue light slammed into the girl's midsection, knocking her to the ground.

The hallway became an explosion of light, explosions, and barked orders as Ty ducked and grabbed the girl by the shoulder in one hand and the rifle and lugged her down the corridor, pulling her against the wall. Archer knelt down next to them to take her pulse. The older man sighed in obvious relief. "She's alive. She's only stunned."

"They're trying to take us alive," Mai said from behind her, her knives in her hand.

"Yeah, but we're not," Archer countered, "which means they've probably taken the gloves off."

As if to punctuate the point two blue blasts came down the hallway towards them, narrowly missing Mychi and slamming into the wall in explosions of destroyed masonry. The soldiers prone on the floor stayed where they were, even as dust from the wall showered over their backs, continuing to send fire down the corridor.

Every tactical instinct in Ty's brain screamed at her. "We can't stay here, sir!" Ty yelled. She motioned at the adjoining corridor. "This corridor doubles back. We can flank them."

Archer stares at her and nods. "Take a fireteam with you."

"Yes, sir," she saw a dark-skinned young man with curly hair and a corporal's chevron and grabbed his shoulder. "What's your name, Corporal?"

"Adeyemi, sir," he said, with a curious lilting accent.

Ty nodded. "Okay, Adeyemi you and your team are with me." She motioned down the corridor behind them. "We're going to go through here and see if we can't cut the people trying to…reason with us off. We're going to pick up a couple of my friends on the way, they'll help even the odds."

He nodded fiercely and motioned to his team. "You heard the lady. Let's move out."

She ducked low and moved forward when someone grabbed her arm. She looked back to see Archer. "We could use some prisoners. Try to bring them in alive if you can. But if anyone else is going to die, I'd prefer it be them."

She smirked. "You read my mind, sir."

Ilara bit out a particularly pungent curse as an enemy shot grazed the arm of the corporal next to her, sending her to the ground, writhing in agony as she clutched at the bleeding, burning gash in her right arm.

This is over, she thought. What was it my Aunt said? Your duty is to go forth and fight for our nation. There's nothing written that says you have to come back. At least here, you can still die like the soldier you used to be. And at least if you're dead you don't have to worry about the possibility that you and everyone else you ran off with is being played.

"All right we're disengaging!" She shouted, gesturing for the wounded team leader. "Grab her and get out of here. I'll cover you."

She threw herself prone to the ground as a gargling scream filled the air. She picked herself up and wheeled around to see Masaki slumped against the wall, a bloody icicle sticking out of both sides of his leg. Towering over her could only be the legendary Katara. The younger women slid into a waterbender's stance, pure bloody-minded determination on her face. Telnori raised her weapon to shoot her only for the corridor to rock in an earthbender's unmistakable foot stamp, a brick in the floor wrenching itself free and slamming into the rifle, knocking it to the ground and breaking her soldier's hand in the process with a howl of pain. Behind her, the enemy fire slackened and died, clearly to avoid hitting their allies. Out of the smoke emerged five enemy soldiers, their weapons pointed at every one of them, and a gray-eyed young woman in the new Kyoshi undress uniform with a Fire Nation Army captain's tabs. She was several years her junior and even she, on the run for half a year, recognized her instantly.

"None of you are going anywhere," Captain Lee said, her hand on the hilt of her sword. "Stun them."

A blue burst of light exploded in her vision and dragged her away into darkness.