Reminder: OC's by the truckful.
Note: The New Horizons trip to Pluto wasn't a success in this universe, unlike in the real world.
Chapter Summary: A trip to the ISS with a side order of sabotage.
Chapter Word Count: 4,846
"Buckle it up people," Santana said, activating the shuttle console. "Next stop, that little rusting vacation spot in the sky some call a space station."
"Is she always like this?" Yamoto asked the Chief, buckling herself in.
"As long as I've known her," the Chief said. "All of the Council of Nine have their little quirks like that. If they weren't slightly crazy we'd think something was wrong."
"We wear our crazy with pride," Brittany said, leaning over and inserting herself into their conversation.
"Lady Shadow," the Chief said nervously. "How are you doing?"
"She's right, you know," Brittany said to Yamoto. "The Dragon Clan Council? We're all slightly crazy, though the others won't admit it. The whole process of turning an ordinary person into a 'demi-god Council member' usually results in a skewed outlook. Occupational hazard."
"Demi-god?" Yamoto asked.
"It's the best description of the end result that I can come up with," Brittany said. "We aren't regular mortals anymore. We'll live a lot longer than normal, even for Clan. Our reflexes and senses are tuned to the limits our genetics can handle. It's like that old movie. We've been turned up to eleven."
"Oh," Yamoto said. "So, you aren't superhuman, but superior human?"
"In some ways, though strictly speaking we aren't fully human anymore, if we ever were," Brittany said.
"If you stick around, you'll probably meet their families," the Chief said. "And when you do, you'll understand what Lady Shadow means. There's just something more about them, and not just the sexy hotness they have."
"I'm just me," Brittany said, winking. "I haven't changed much. The one who changed the most when she joined the Council was Lady Q."
"She's scary, but in a hot chick with super powers kind of way," the Chief said, leaning back into her seat.
"Lady Q has always been scary," Brittany said. "And hot. But pre-Council Lady Q was more Cordelia than Buffy."
"Ah," Yamoto said, nodding at the pop culture references.
"Approaching the station," Santana's voice said from the front. "Seal up those EV suits and hang on."
"We'll go first," Quinn said, indicating her bodyguards, "then Lady Shadow once we give the all clear. Everyone else, please wait until she gives the okay. That means you!" she tossed to Santana across their private comm channel. "No heroics. Let B do her job."
"Bossy," Santana said, her amusement clear, even over the comm. "Just the way I like you."
"San, we're not alone," Brittany said, also on their private comm. "Turn it down a notch."
"They're expecting company," Santana told the others, pretending she hadn't heard Brittany's order, "but not us. So be careful. Docking now."
With a thump even their shields couldn't completely hide, the shuttle attached itself to the outer airlock. "All lights are green," she said. "All yours, Q. Don't get B killed."
Waving at her, Quinn checked the readings on all of the EV suits and her bodyguard's hard suits for anomalies before activating the hatch. With a slight pop, air rushed through the hatch into the small chamber. Stepping into the air lock, she gestured for Pin to join her, leaving Pen waiting with Brittany.
In a direct confrontation, no matter how fancy Brittany's hard suit was, the hard suits that Quinn and her troopers wore could take much more punishment. And though she would never say so out loud, she considered herself expendable. If something happened to her, she'd trained each of her team leaders to the point where they could take her place. But if something happened to one of the others, their plans would implode.
"Hope they know we're coming, Boss," Pin said, as they waited for the airlock to cycle. "And not one of their low tech junk heaps."
"The station wasn't built for combat," Quinn said. "Any weapons would be jury-rigged. Like that." She pointed at the astronauts waiting for them on the other side of the now opening airlock. One was distinctly military in bearing, his close cropped hair sprinkled with grey. The two men carried what looked like long tubes with a tank on one end.
"Who are you," the older astronaut said, not allowing them to enter the station.
"We are here with your equipment replacements," Quinn said. "Your NASA requested that we deliver them."
"They got our message?" the younger astronaut said.
"We were not told of any message," Quinn said, "just that you needed several important communication components replaced."
"Jeeze," Santana said over the comm. "I bet they need something we didn't bring."
"Not surprised," Brittany chimed in. "Somebody in NASA was definitely playing games."
"Spares are always welcome," the old man said, "but that's not our problem. You might as well come in and we can straighten this out."
"We have others who wish to enter also," Quinn said. "Mission Specialist Yamoto is here with the replacement equipment. And several of our techs would like to observe."
"How many?"
"Four others," Quinn said.
"Plenty of room," the younger astronaut said. "If they're short like you. And, I think we'll need Yamoto to translate," he said in a low voice to the other man. "I'm sure our tech looks like rocks and flint knives to them."
Quinn grimaced but told Brittany and Jayne to come through and Yamoto and the Chief to come but leave the package on the shuttle. "They shall be here shortly."
"Introductions, Yamoto?" the old man said, once they were all in the station's largest common area and everyone had retracted their helmets.
"Yes , sir," she said. "On the shuttle, listening in, though she has not desire to join us, is the commander of the Dragon Clan fleet, Lady Air."
"Fleet? We've seen a couple small craft like that shuttle, and there's something large out by the moon, but we haven't seen anything resembling a fleet."
"It's there," Yamoto said. "The craft on the other side of the moon is Lady Air's flagship. Everything else is either cloaked so our equipment can't see it or too far away."
"So, you've been given a tour then," one of the other astronauts said.
"A quick one, there was a problem with the equipment package that needed to be taken care of."
"What kind of problem?"
"Someone intended to use it to sabotage your station," Brittany said.
"And you are?"
"She's Fleet intelligence," Yamoto said, "Lady Shadow. The lady that Jensen can't take his eyes off of is Lady Q, Fleet ground forces commander. The other two ladies dressed in similar suits are her bodyguards, so you might want to stop staring."
"Not much call for that up here," Jensen said. "We're all friendly. That just leaves one person. And you are?"
"She's Chief Fleet Engineer," Yamoto said.
"Quite a high powered group here," the old man said. "What's the occasion?"
"You said the problem is not the comm gear?" Yamoto said, "What exactly is keeping you from communicating with the ground? Why do they think your radio is out?"
"We've been using lasers to send messages," one of them said. "One of the spy satellites out there is set up to relay. We gave them detailed information about the problem. But we haven't gotten any responses back recently."
"They neglected to tell ground control anything other than your radio was out," Yamoto said.
"Which satellite," Brittany asked, pulling out her suit tablet. Tapping quickly, she generated a 3D image of the planet with small dots surrounding it and the space station glowing. "Where?"
The astronauts recovered quickly from their surprise at the device. The one who'd mentioned the lasers pointed at a section of the model. "Here."
Brittany expanded that section of the model. They went through this process for several minutes until the exact satellite was singled out.
"That's the one. We were told to use its relay in an emergency."
"Ah, that explains it," Brittany said. "The ground station controlling that satellite was shut down recently."
"It wouldn't happen to be one belonging to our friendly neighborhood pirates would it?" Quinn asked.
"That would be them," Brittany said. "They were also partially responsible for the problems with the package."
"Only partially? They must be slipping," Santana said to Quinn and Brittany over their private channel.
"Pirates?" the old man said. "Space pirates? Intercepting our communications with NASA?"
"Mostly descendants of pirates," Quinn said. "But yes, real space pirates, though they haven't had true spaceflight capability in a very long time. They've been a problem since we arrived in-system."
"They don't look like anime space pirates, do they?" one of the astronauts asked.
"No…" Quinn said. "Why?"
"Well, your armor looks like it came right out of a cartoon," she said. "I was wondering if we were all hallucinating."
"Ha!" Santana said. "Somebody finally called you on that."
"We may have taken design cues from several cartoons," Quinn said reluctantly. "Our original armor was deemed too close to something from one of your horror movies. But this armor is just as capable and better suited to your environment."
"Ah…" the astronaut said.
"So they're the ones who tried to blow us up?" Yamoto said.
"With a little help from a mole in your NASA's cleaning crew," Brittany said. "Don't worry, we took care of them. We just need to fix whatever damage they've already caused."
"If you can fix whatever is wrong, we'd be grateful," the old astronaut said. "Preferably without blowing anything up.
"All part of the service," Brittany said. "Explosion free problem solutions."
"Service?"
"They're buying NASA," Yamoto said. "The civilian branch."
"Just waiting for your Congress to approve it," Brittany said. "Might be a while."
"So, you're putting us out of our jobs? That's why you're here?"
"Not exactly," Brittany said. "We don't really have the personnel to spare to take over. All of our people are already busy. But we agreed to take over managing the civilian parts of it and upgrade it to our standards and technology, though that might take a few years to complete. And right now it mostly means we'll be paying your salaries. Think of it as a kind of outsourcing. Your government is outsourcing NASA to us."
"That's not how it usually goes," one of the astronauts said. "But we're still employed? And will get to learn your technology?"
"That is the plan, though we won't make you do it."
"What about the other countries involved in this space station," the old man said. "The Russians, Chinese, Japanese, the English, and Indians?"
"Nothing changes with respect to them. At least not at this point," Brittany said.
"So, you're here on an inspection tour to see what you actually bought?" Jensen said. "Why don't we give you the fifty cent tour and you can see our problem."
"It's still your station," Brittany said. "We'll just be paying for NASA's share."
"Does this mean no more dangerous Russian rocket rides to get here?" the female astronaut said. "From what I hear, your shuttles are a lot faster and safer."
"Any of our employees who want to ride on the old chemical rockets are welcome to continue to do so," Brittany said. "But if this goes through, we'd rather not have you risking your lives in that fashion."
"Yeah," Pin said. "There are lots more exciting ways to risk it all than that. Some people like to jump out of shuttles in low orbit for fun. Some of us like sun sailing."
"And some of us are itching to spend the next year on Pluto," Quinn said. "I hear Lady Air has an opening in Security."
"You have a base on Pluto?" Jensen asked. "I've always wanted to see it up close. 'New Horizons' disappeared before it could get close enough to pick out details."
"There you go, Boss, someone who actually wants to go to Pluto," Pin said. "They can have my spot."
"But they don't have your unique ability to put your foot in your mouth while wearing your hard suit," Quinn said. "We wouldn't want our team on Pluto to miss out."
"Gee, thanks Boss," Pin said, before stopping in response to a glare from Quinn.
"This is the problem," Jensen said, stopping in front of a small door. "We have no idea what's causing it and we haven't been able to get past it to use the radios."
Looking over his shoulder, Brittany and Quinn could see a faint golden glow blocking access to the communications panel. "Any idea?" Quinn asked.
"If you attempt to cross it, it'll knock you unconscious. Unless your suits can shield you from it?"
"What do you think, Chief?" Brittany said. "Look familiar?"
"Looks like the shield used on that Red Pirate stasis pod," she said. "How is it being powered?" the Chief turned to Jensen. "Any suspicious power problems? That shield requires more energy than this station uses."
"No," he said. "In fact, we usually have low power issues when we cross over into the Moon's shadow and that hasn't happened recently."
"Okay. So it's plugged into your power grid but it's generating a surplus," Brittany said. "Typical Red Pirate shoddy construction. There must be a generator here somewhere. Just need to find it."
"Can we keep it?" Jensen said. "We can alway use more power."
"Not my station," Brittany said. "We'll want a scan of it, of course, But the physical object? As long as it isn't dangerous, you can keep it, if the committee that governs the station, which we aren't on yet, okays it."
"But first we need to turn it off," the Chief said. "Probably booby trapped, like that equipment package they gave us to bring here."
"If it's booby trapped, we don't want it," the old astronaut said. "We don't need the extra problems."
"Don't worry, Colonel," Yamoto said. "We've fixed it. The Chief here tested all of the components in the package to make sure they didn't do anything extra."
"If you have such awesome technology, why are we here?" an until now silent astronaut asked, in a heavy accent. "Why you even want our Earth technology?"
"Because the world can't turn around in a day?" Brittany said. "Sure, we could start upgrading this station with all of our amazing, awesome, stupendous technology, but if we disappeared? What happens to it? And how long do you think it would take to bring your planet up to our level? Months? Years? Longer?"
"You're aliens, I'm sure you have some way to do it that won't take years," Jensen said.
"We could just ignore everyone outside our little enclave," Quinn said. "Or we can take a slow, steady phased approach. What is that Earth saying about teaching a man to fish?"
"But you have a plan?" the Colonel asked. "For all of us, not just this little escapade."
"Definitely," Brittany said. "It will take a while, several hundred years given our current estimates, but eventually Earth will have advanced to our current levels."
"Hundreds of years?" the antagonistic astronaut said. "None of us will be alive then."
"So, don't do it? You'd rather we went away and came back in several millennia after you've gotten there on your own?"
"Yes," he said. "We'll do better on our own."
"Your governments and smart people don't believe so. They want the tech boost we'll be giving you," Brittany said.
"And you're just going to give it away."
"Of course not," Brittany said. "It won't be a one-way street. Your society will have to grow to deserve the things we'll give it. Grow to be able to handle the things our technology allows us to do. Think of it as infrastructure. You need the mental and physical infrastructure for your society to handle the change."
"So, utopia is going to take years. All of the religious people will love that," he said.
"Let's not discuss religion," Quinn said, grimacing.
"Don't worry Boss, you're safe. They aren't going to be building any temples in your honor," Pin said, smirking.
"Temples?" the Colonel gave them a surprised look.
"What these two, and Lady Air, who's listening to us from the shuttle, and who knows who else, aren't saying, is that they are unique among the Clan," the Chief said. "They are the closest we have to goddesses. They're going to outlive all of us."
"Chief," Brittany said, "you know that's not true. We aren't gods and we aren't immortal. We just have good genes."
"The Cult of the Dragon doesn't agree," Chief said. "And there it is," she added pointing at a small red glowing object on the ceiling. "If we can take that out the shield will collapse. And if we can take that other one out here out first, it won't blow us all up." She pointed at another object, glowing green, also attached to the ceiling.
"Good catch," Brittany said. "Might have to steal you from Lady Air."
"I like what I do now," the Chief said. "But I'm sure someone will be willing to give me a raise to stay."
"I'm sure she will," Brittany said. "So, everybody out?"
"Yes, just in case. And everyone needs to button up their EV suits, or get back in the shuttle," the Chief said. "If it does self destruct it'll take this half of the station with it."
"Can we just leave it?" the Colonel said. "Or can you do something else?"
"We could put the whole station in stasis," the Chief said, "but that doesn't fix your problem. At some point it would still have to be removed and fixed. And a stasis field could set off the self destruct."
"Chief, if this kills you, you can be the one to explain to Lady Air why we let you do this," Brittany said. "Everybody seal your suits," she said. "How long will it take you to get ready?" she asked the four ISS astronauts.
"Ten minutes," Jensen said.
"Go," Quinn said. Surprised at the order, the four hurried out of the communication section.
"Take it easy on them, Boss," Pin said. "They aren't us. They aren't used to your bossiness, right Jayne?"
Quinn's other bodyguard, the normally quiet Jayne, just shrugged.
"San? You heard all that?" Brittany asked sub-vocally. "Think you can get us out of here fast if the self destruct is triggered?"
"If you can get here fast enough," Santana said. "But the Chief is off by a magnitude. If that self destruct goes off, Artie says it will take out the entire station, not just that corner of it. Fortunately, it'll take a few minutes if it's triggered so you should have time to get back here if you hustle."
"As soon as everyone is suited up, Chief will pull the trigger and we'll run for it," Brittany said.
"It'll work," the Chief said. "I'm good at what I do, that's why I'm Chief Fleet Engineer."
"Got a very Scotty vibe going there, Chief," Quinn said. "Though I'm not sure he ever claimed to have your level of competence."
"You're always welcome to find out how good I can be," she said, as she examined the outer sensor.
"You'd have to get past Lady M first," Pin said. "She's got first dibs on the Boss."
"No one has 'first dibs' on me," Quinn said, closing her helmet.
"It's no fun when I can't see your face," the Chief said. "I think the next version of your hard suits need to use transparent adamantium for the helmets. I've got some to play with."
"Not a chance," Brittany said, shaking her head as she watched. "The combat suits won't have transparent faceplates."
"But Lady Shadow, just think how useful it would be," the Chief said. "You could cut down on the number of comm channels needed if you could see the expression on someone's face."
"And whomever you were fighting could see also," Brittany said. "It's an advantage to be able to hide information from your foe."
"Yeah!" Pin said. "Some of us have too pretty faces. If they can see them they won't be frightened enough. Not gonna give up that edge."
"You are a strange people," Yamoto said. "This station could implode at any minute and you're discussing suit design."
"It's important," Pin said. "Most of us are way under two meters, even in our hard suits. We need any edge we can get."
"Are the old people ready?" Chief said. "Sorry, old Earth people," she corrected herself at a glare from Quinn. "Didn't mean you and Lady Shadow, Lady Q. You aren't old. Goddesses never get old."
"You're lucky we aren't goddesses," Quinn said. "Some of the old Earth goddesses had nasty tempers. They weren't mild mannered like ours."
"Speak for yourself," Brittany said. "A goddess needs to rant at least once a week about her incompetent minions and priestesses."
"Brit?"
"Yeah Q?"
"How much did we pay for this?"
"This?"
"The station," Quinn said.
"Why would you think we bought it?" Brittany said blandly.
"Because you like paying for things we might have to destroy," Quinn said.
"Where did you get the money to pay everyone's salaries when you take over?" Yamoto asked. "The Director has to beg for funding every year."
"We have several mining operations for bulk materials," Brittany said. "Anything we don't use we sell. Except for the gold. Dumping too much of that too quickly would destroy your economy. We also have started licensing some of our technology to a few companies who can make good use of them."
"Like what?" Yamoto asked.
"Well, next year a certain electronics company will come out with a tablet that will be a magnitude faster than anything currently available, and will have a battery that lasts a week instead of a day. One of their competitors will come out with a new laptop with the same battery tech. Just as an example."
"What else?"
"Improved safety equipment in your wheeled vehicles," Brittany said. "Things like that will make us enough money to run NASA. And start those improvements we talked about earlier."
"Well, that was exciting," the Chief said, "Not a scratch."
"Good job," Quinn said. "But the next time you feel like showing off? Let's not."
"Now what?" the Colonel asked. "You've fixed our little problem, and we now have spares for a few things."
"We've given them a tour, though they normally aren't that exciting," Jensen said.
"With your permission Colonel, we'd like to scan the entire station for any other signs of potential sabotage."
"What do we need to do?"
"Just give us permission, and Flag will do the scanning, now that we know what to look for."
"Flag?"
"It's their flagship, sir," Yamoto said. "It's an interesting design."
"More anime designs?" Jensen asked excitedly. "What did you use this time?"
"No, that's Lady Q's thing," the Chief said. "Lady Air has completely different ideas about spaceship design."
"And when do we get to meet her?" he asked. "Is she really out in your shuttle?"
"Yes," Brittany said. "But she won't step foot on your station."
"Why?" the Colonel asked.
"Do you really need to see me?" Santana's voice echoed in the common room. "Would have thought you had enough alien women taking up space in there."
"How do we know you're Lady Air?"
"Not very trusting, are you," Santana said. "I like that. For all you know we're faking the whole thing. We could be pirates ourselves."
"We aren't," Brittany quickly said. "But she'd right. Skepticism is a healthy approach. Too many people are taking us at face value, just because they want aliens to come and impress them. And rescue them from a boring future."
"Which we are actually going to do," Santana said. "But you should have seen all those people sitting on broken down pyramids waiting for the apocalypse. It was like that alien invasion movie named after one of your national holidays."
"Independence Day?"
"That's the one," Santana said. "A little unbelievable. For an invasion it was a little much. But, I can believe you'd have people standing on top of tall buildings and mountains waiting for the aliens to say hello. We say them during your so called Mayan apocalypse."
"So, you showing up on that day was just a coincidence?" the skeptical astronaut said.
"Are you serious? Of course it wasn't a coincidence," Santana said. "We picked that day intentionally. It was the perfect opening. All of the planetary defense forces were expecting to hear from all the crazies about aliens landing. So they weren't about to report anything they saw."
"I wondered about that," Yamoto said. "People were expecting something to happen on that day, and you gave it to them."
"It did take a lot of preparation," Quinn said. "Several years of getting everything in place."
"Things go so much more smoothly when you're prepared," Brittany said. "And, the scan is done."
"That was quick," the Colonel said. "Did you find anything?"
"A couple things I wasn't expecting," Brittany said. "You actually have other possible sabotage points, though they look long term. The soonest looks like it'll poison your water in approximately six months. And the furthest away would cause your maneuvering jets to fail."
"Yamoto, Looks like you aren't really the target," Santana said. "It wasn't completely personal. Someone really wants this installation to fail with those multiple points of failure lined up."
"Well, in some ways it was personal," Brittany said. "That spy recruiter she turned down was behind some of it. He didn't realize the Red Pirate faction was pushing his buttons."
"Oh," Yamoto said. "I really didn't want to be a spy. I spent too much time to become a mission specialist to waste it on that kind of thing. Even if the only reason I made it into space was because you gave me a lift."
"Not an issue," Brittany said. "I'm in the business and it really isn't for everyone, though assassinating someone who turns down a job offer seems a bit extreme."
"A couple of those agencies consider a job refusal to be a security risk," the Colonel said. "Though they don't usually bother with recruiting us. They usually have to beat off recruits for space based spying with a stick." At Brittany's raised eyebrow, he added "Used to be in the business myself, before NASA. Flying high altitude camera platforms and suborbital craft."
"We might need to talk at some point," she told him. "If you plan to stick with NASA after the change in management."
"I'll keep that in mind," he said. "How long will it take to clean up the problems you found?"
"Chief?" Brittany said, looking at the Chief who was discussing the report with Santana.
"Yes, Lady Shadow?"
"How long to fix things?"
"None of it's structural," the Chief said. "So, a month, assuming they have the spares to do it. Longer if they have to ship them up."
"And if we supply the parts?"
"A week," Santana said. "We can fabricate everything on Flag. And our warranty is better."
"We'll need to discuss this with Lady M," Brittany said. "She'll need to sell this to all the cheeses involved. The US Pres should be easiest. He'll listen to Sue. And Lady Q can use her influence with the Queen to get that gang to agree. Hardest are going to be the Russians and Chinese. They think the whole thing should be shut down and they'll put up their own space stations."
"They've been threatening to pull out and go their own way for years," Jensen said. "But the Russians need the money they get for providing a shuttle service. The Chinese haven't finished copying everything to be able to build their own yet. They're still researching it."
"And you let them just copy everything?" Quinn asked.
"Only the politicians complain about the Chinese," the other astronaut said. "They take our ideas, make them just that little bit better, and cheaper to reproduce and we buy it back."
"Ah," Quinn said. "I can see the benefits of that. I don't think they'll have much luck copying our tech. Most of it requires equipment and processes you don't have, and won't for several decades, if we give it to you."
"Do we need to vacate the station while the sabotage is corrected?"
"It would work best that way," Chief said. "But I suspect you'll want one of your crew involved in everything?"
"Yes," the Colonel said. "As much as you can."
"We'll make it part of the agreement," Brittany said. "If I were you I wouldn't trust anyone to make repairs if I couldn't supervise them."
"Paranoid Colonel vs Lady Shadow," Pin whispered to Quinn. "I bet he has a man crush on her before we're done."
"Not taking that bet," Quinn said. "Anyone who spends any time with her who doesn't end up impressed doesn't have a brain."
"Time to pack up, ladies," Santana said, interrupting. "Places to be. Yamoto, do you need a lift home?"
"Yes, Lady Air, thank you," Yamoto said.