What woke Helios up was a blaring alarm. Again.
Then, a thud and a scream of pain.
"Goddamit!" Lestat must have forgotten that she wasn't sleeping in her own bunk and hit her head right into the ceiling, when the wailing sound of the alarm slapped her awake. Helios would be amused by that if his tired senses wouldn't have taken him already into his shoes and halfway to the door, before Lestat grabbed him by the arm.
"Stop, you idiot!"
"We have to go, it's…" he tried to protest and free his elbow, but the woman punched him in the side. Hard.
Helios saw stars. Sudden hit made his lungs contract from the force of it and then expand fully, to provide him with needed oxygen. Adrenaline started to be pumped through his veins, preparing him to enter the battle, later with the Colterons, now with huffing Lestat, still holding him by arm and observing his face. His exhausted mind suddenly gained a few liters of air to breathe and Helios chocked, coughed and… felt more awake.
"We are grounded!" Lestat called, trying to shout through raging alarm. "The twins, remember?!" she added, when Helios looked at her blankly. She let him go, jumping into her own shoes and grabbing jacket from the top bunk.
That was true, now that Helios thought about it, relaxing slightly. They were grounded, because of the mistake with Selene and Carmilla. What meant that they couldn't get into their ships and actually didn't have anything important to do during the attack. But there was something…
"Then let's go to the Bridge!" he yelled into her ear, when they stormed out to the corridor, joining crowd of people running in every direction.
"What for?! We might be needed in the bay!"
"Just come!"
Helios could see one or two unfamiliar faces of Faraday's fighter among other members of the crew, but right now he strictly needed only Lestat. Grabbing her hand, he dragged her after himself, weaving through the crowd.
/
The Colterons attacked out of nowhere. Their ships weren't picked by the radar, they didn't give off any heat or leave any magnetic trail to follow. Abel assumed malfunction of the system before actually thinking about a sabotage, but right next second all such thoughts vanished from his mind, when the Red and Black teams encountered the enemy. The Kepler had quite strong shields and they should be enough to keep the rest of them safe, before off-shift crew would take off into the space.
If they worked, that is.
On his left, Abel could hear a gasp and violent swearing, when at least half of shields' monitors suddenly greyed out. The Bridge became even more noisy, when the shots, up until then held back by magnetic force, hit them with full power.
"For the love of…! What's going on?!" Someone fell heavily into the chair by his right and Abel saw in the corner of his eye oddly colored hair of Selene, already bent over his own station and hitting the keyboard furiously. He sighed with relief and concentrated on his task, not even bothering to answer that question. It must have been rhetorical anyway.
Something was blocking the shields' software and Abel had to literarily pierce through their own firewall to get them green and working once again. A loud cheer hit the Bridge, when he succeeded, but the joy lasted only a few seconds, before the navigators focused on what was going on outside the ship.
Black team was broken through, Red team was backing off to take advantage of the ship's now working shields. Some of the ships were badly damaged and navigators called the command to receive permission to land in the dock, afraid of the state of their life support. The calls were going over and over, shouting data, yelling in pain or simply praying to their gods to somehow let them live. Cacophony of sounds was deafening and the constant boom of Colterons' shots on the shields wasn't helping.
Commander Hayden was giving orders so fast that he needed three navigators to keep up with him.
"What in the world is that?!" Abel could hear Phobos from his seat across the room, his shrill voice cutting through all the screaming. On reflex he looked at the other, as some did and found him pointing at the main screen, where they all could see huge foreign object appearing from nothing, just in front of the Kepler.
"Brace up, men!" they heard Commander Hayden. "This is the Hive of Colterons! Prepare for more of them coming!"
Abel stiffened in his seat, not wanting to believe in what he was seeing on his screen. The Hive must have opened, releasing a crazy number of new Colteron ships. They looked like an asteroid belt on the radar.
"Look!" navigator from his left called. "The reinforcements!"
Screen, crowded with raging red points of the enemies, was slowly filled with advancing blue dots of fighting squads. Abel could hear Encke in the communication channel, ordering the teams to flank the Colterons and get them in crossfire, but even to an untrained eye it would be obvious that the Alliance had too little force to actually push the aliens back. Abel felt a cold feeling of dread sitting in the pit of his stomach, completely unrelated to his own struggles in keeping the shields up. The situation looked really bad and they couldn't even escape.
"… right, from right!..."
"… disengage and do not pursue, I repeat…"
"… while they're distracted!...
"… fire at will-!"
Somewhere higher, on a technical balcony Lestat elbowed Helios, almost pushing him off the railing.
"We don't have ion cannons? I thought every Alliance unit has them!"
"Stations!" Helios yelled back. He couldn't find Selene and began to fidget nervously in place. "Not ships!"
Lestat said something more, but Helios couldn't be bothered, since he finally noticed his navigator running through the door and taking his place by a monitor. Was it a matter of lighting or did Selene look really sick? His face looked a bit greenish, dark bags easily distinguishable under his eyes. But elbowed brutally once again, Helios turned his gaze to outside screens.
They observed with worry as Black and Blue team combined and took the Colteron blast head on, only to scatter at the last possible moment and avoid the fire, but succeeding in luring the first rows of the aliens behind battered shields. The field flickered back on when they retreated, imprisoning some of the Colterons with the Allience ships.
"Great!" Lestat howled with some fighters. Helios looked at her as if she was stunted.
"How is that great? They're here with us now! INSIDE the shields!"
"So we have a chance to kill them, now that they're seperated from the main forces! Wait, wha...?"
Helios watched, as confused as the rest of the crowd, as suddenly a huge blast bloomed near the Hive, with some small ones littering now retreating alien forces. Even though Colterons were winning, in just another second they lost half of their ships and the base, causing the rest to panic and become easy targets for the Allience fleet. With renewed vigour, Black, Red and Blue teams started attacking.
"What just happened?" Helios asked Lestat, but he was talking to himself, as Lestat disappeared from his side in the commotion that rised after the unexpected but successful attack.
People were cheering loudly, when the navigators worked on bringing everything safely online and Helios ran downstairs, wanting to find Selene and hug him with all his might.
/
"I think we have him."
Lestat frowned at Castor, standing in another small machine room somewehere below the bridge, where she had been pulled from the crowd. Several other people of their group were there as well, all looking at the navigator with tablet.
"How?" she just asked. Two navigators to her right engaged in heated whispered argument.
Castor waved his tablet at her.
"Djinn pulled some interesting information from the infranet. Kepler's firewall is nonexistent! No wonder it's so easy to sabotage this damn ship. Now we just have to give it to codehackers and wait for results."
"How suspiciously convenient." Muffin mumbled somwehere in the group. Lestat had to crane her neck to see little redhead, only to see she still had a sling and looked rather battered.
"Of course." Castor smiled, his sharp icy features contracting into strangely wrong expression. "It's suspicious. But it's worth a shot, because Faraday should appear here in four to five days and we simply don't have time."
The group murmured in distress, before one of the fighters, Sinbad spoke:
"Do we have to stick to first schedule? It could be too short."
Castor shrugged.
"Can't be helped. We need Commander just for the finishing touches, in the middle of operation it could be disastrous. Not to mention that Carmilla's health detoriates quicker than we anticipated."
That made the murmurs go full volume.
"Why did we take her on then?" barked one of the fighters. Lestat rised an eyebrow at him. "Isn't she jeopardizing the operation?"
"We need her." Djinn interrupted him, shaking her head. "And Commander decided about it."
"That's right. " Lestat decided to cut in, standing in the middle of the group, beside Castor. "And Commander apparently knows what has to be done. Let's talk about the plan for a moment. Someone knows where is Chronos?" she asked.
"In space." came immediate reply. "He is a part of Black team."
"And Gasket?"
"Same."
"Alright. How is snooping going, Djinn?"
"We're getting somewhere Lestat, but Carmilla is busy deceiving that Selene navigator and Theseus and I can only do as much alone."
"I'll take her to you, when it's possible. Does Lead Navigator suspect you?"
"He may, but we are careful."
"Good. What about Lead Fighter?"
Pollux snorted loudly.
"He focuses on his sanity not snapping when the captain mocks him, so the poor man has it hard. He is a good guy for this job, holds us rather strictly. Not very observant, though."
"Okay, I'll take care of him when the time comes." Lestat nodded in thought. "Just make sure Chronos doesn't cross him."
"Sure thing."
"That's it for now. Go back to your posts and be on standby. Don't draw attention and wait for the signal."
The group dispersed quickly, leaving Lestat and Castor alone.
"You think we'll be on time?" the navigator asked quietly, uncertainty evident in his voice.
Lestat sighed.
"We have to. We just have to."
/
After the battle, even though the ship was safe, the crew experienced very nervous times. Commander Hayden with the Lead Fighter and Navigator made sure to get on everyone's nerves by issuing constant checks and patrols to ensure that Colterons were really gone. Navigators were worked much harder than usual with engine and ship configuration and system test-runs, while fighters were run around controlling away ships and their own battle readiness until they dropped.
Thanks to that, one of the scouts sent on recon mission flied across abonded alien ship on his way home.
Decision to get aboard the derelict was taken surprisingly fast, considering how much Commander Hayden stopped anything that could cause them to actually meet the aliens in the past, such as faster pace of the engines.
The whole crew waited impatiently for results of the sweep that a group of people went to do, getting all excited and a little nervous as what this ship was supposed to be. There was no more subjects for conversation going around, when Lestat and Carmilla marched through a corridor in direction of the Second Navigational Lab.
"Ugh." Lestat pretended to gag, when she heard another theory about suspicious derelict. "don't those people have anything else to think about?"
"Certainly not like us." Carmilla stated calmly. Taller woman looked at her with a frown.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing." Carmilla shrugged, putting her access card to the reader. Inside however, instead of relative silence interrupted only by soft humming of machinery, the two encountered a metaphorical storm.
"I- captain, how dare you-!"
Keeler's voice, high-pitched from anger, caused Carmilla to twitch nervously and Lestat to frown more. Shorter, more fragile frame of the Lead Navigator was trembling in front of a stronger one towering over him and Keeler looked only one step away from banging his fists on Chronos's chest. He was as pale as if he had seen a ghost.
"Lieutenant, I assure you that-"
"Enough!" Keeler shouted hysterically. Either he must have been unaware of audience or he just didn't care, because he slappped Chronos loudly across the face, turned around on his heel and stormed outside, barely stopping to open the door. Carmilla had to jump out of his way not to be removed by force.
"Erm.. sir?" Lestat tried, watching with awe as the man brought hand to his cheek, as if not believing what'd just happened. Keeler's hand was small and feminine-like, but it left a nasty red mark that already started to swell. "Goddamnit, Chronos, the fuck was this?!"
"Haven't seen the Lead like that in a while." Carmilla said slowly, still looking at the door which Keeler disappeared behind. Lestat didn't care for lieutenant's moods, because she shook the captain by his arm to kick him out of a different world he seemed to slip into. Light came back to Chronos's dull eyes and he smiled.
"Hello, ladies. How's the sweep going?"
"I'm going to kill you one day." Lestat promised.
"Everything alright, captain?" Carmilla handed the man her tissue, which he took with grateful grunt when the fabric touched his irritated flesh.
"Splendid, little one." even though half of his face was covered by the frilly thing, it could be easily seen that Chronos was grinning. And that wasn't a nice smile. "I think I've just stumbled over something interesting."
"Pollux will be keeping an eye on you." Lestat threatened, but Chronos just laughed.
"Thanks, but I don't like threesomes."
Before Lestat could do something she would later regret in the brig, two other navigators entering prevented her from doing it.
/
Helios couldn't find himself a place to sit down and think properly.
Since coming back from the derelict after that strange light accident his head started to hurt and the pain accompanied him through later hours, when he tried to lie down and sleep. And after two hours of restless turning from side to side, he decided it would be a great idea to take a walk. Somewhere, no matter where, just to clear his thoughts and calm down his mind enough so it would stop hurting him so much.
He turned around the corner and, of course, he had to run into sombody. Hard.
"Oof!"
"I'm sorry!" he exclaimed, taking in softness and light weight of the other person. "It's my fault, I'm very sorry!"
"No problem." the navigator woman said, massaging her head in slow circles. She was black skinned with short, curly, dark hair and she would be cute if she wasn't so tall for a woman. "Oh. It's Helios, right?"
"Yes, I am? Why?" Helios asked, astonished that he had been recognized even though he had no idea who the navigator was. The woman laughed and Helios liked the sound, low and refined.
"You are Carmilla's brother's fighter, am I right? Muffin described you quite well." she said, kneeling down to gather scattered pads and discs that littered the floor. "I'm Djinn, by the way."
"Nice to meet you."
Helios was confused. He kneeled too, helping the woman, furiously thinking how was he so famous among the Chronos' squad? Okay, they would know Selene, since he was a mirror image for his sister, but him? Not that he minded. Djinn was good-looking and apparently she didn't mind that he had run into her a moment ago.
"And how exactly did 'Muffin' describe me?" he asked, suddenly curious, but that only made Djinn laugh harder.
"'Tall, dark hottie with rooster hair'." Djinn answered immediately and her grin widened when Helios blushed and sputtered. He would have argued with her, good-naturely, that his hair wasn't as bad, but he felt himself being lifted by his collar and momentarily lost his breath.
"The fuck you're doing with my navi?" came in voice clearly indicating that its owner maybe was a nice person, but right now he was extremely pissed off. "You having a death wish?"
Helios managed to weave his fingers through the other man's fists, freeing himself and finally managing to catch a breath.
"Are you an idiot, Sin? We were just talking! He helped me gather my things!" Djinn yelled, stepping between them. She was so tall that she could look her fighter directly into eyes.
"That's not what it looked like." Sinbad grumbled viciously, but his complaints quietened under woman's heavy stare. Helios coughed and she turned to him with worry.
"I'm really sorry for this dimwit." Djinn said, ignoring Sin's outraged 'hey!'. "He is quite protective sometimes and...
"Sinbad! Djinn! Something happened?"
Helios, still confused as to what was exactly going on, turned his gaze away from Djinn's chocolate eyes only to meet Carmilla's, grey and troubled. Right behind her, Selene was walking in their direction, eyeing the other fighter with a frown.
"Nothing, Carmilla. Just a little tiff is all."
"That's good." the girl nodded to the others and watched as they made their way to another turn of the corridor, arguing constantly. "Are you alright, Helios?" she asked miserably.
"Yeah. What a grip this guy has..." Helios said, rasping a little. His throat felt raw and pulsing. He was considering going into the bathroom and pour some cold water on it, before he felt cool fingers touching him and he shuddered. Selene's hands were gentle, when he examined Helios's injury and Helios would get swallowed into this feeling without protest, but he could still hear Carmilla talking.
"Well, he overreacted, that's for sure..."
"Overreacted? Look at his neck! That could be dangerous!" Selene got really angry and Helios couldn't believe how happy it made him.
"Actually, that was his wife Helios was 'flirting' with..."
"Wife?" rasped Helios with amazement.
"Flirting?" Selene exclaimed, immediately getting redder. He tried to hide his face behind his bangs, but Helios could clearly see how cute he was, as his hair was held by a bandage. That caught his attention.
"This?" Selene defined, asked about it. "It's for my ears, Helios. The bleeding stopped, but the MO told me to keep it on, just in case. That's why Carmilla had to come get me from the Med Bay."
"I could have done that." Helios said, a little put off. He was happy that the twins were finally on good terms, but why didn't Selene want him to take care of his navigator?
"You needed your rest, Helios." Selene said, his voice suddenly soft and caring. He stroked Helios's cheek with his finger, looking him in the eye sweetly. "I didn't want to bother you."
"You'd never bother me." Helios also started to talk in a hushed voice, not able to break their locked gazes. Carmilla had to cough rather loudly to pull them back into the real world.
"So. I can leave Selene with you?" she asked, smiling. While Selene's smiles were soft and elegant, Carmilla smiled as if someone had just switched on a lightbulb. Helios couldn't say no to that and soon after Carmilla gave her blessing, they went to their bunk, hugged together, as Helios didn't want Selene to fall.
Carmilla smiled blindingly for a moment more, before her expression turned much more serious and tired. She frowned deeply, loosing all her sunshine and young look. She directed her steps to the nearest corridor, just to step into first room on the right side.
"Was it okay?" Djinn asked, getting up from a crate she was sitting on. Sinbad was leaning on the wall near her. "I didn't know if that was what you wanted, so I tried to provoke a talk with him."
"That was okay, thank you. I think it was enough, so you can write the rest."
Djinn got out her tablet and hesitated.
"What should I..?"
"'Phase I complete. Prepare for Phase II."