Ficathon Fic: Ὕστερον πρότερον (2/2)
Oct. 22nd, 2008 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purple_bugTitle: Ὕστερον πρότερον (2/2)
Pairing: Mel/Ace
Rating: PG-13
Words: ~4000
Summary: The locals of Epsilon Xi have a troubled future ahead of them. Or possibly behind them. Mel's getting a bit muddled with all this, actually.
Author's Notes: Written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
dw_femslash ficathon, for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
glinda_penguin, who wanted crossing of timestreams and mythology, and gave me this quote: "They have not wanted Peace at all; they have wanted to be spared war - as though the absence of war was the same as peace." - Dorothy Thompson. The title is Greek, and translates as "The latter one first". Further notes on a few small bits of Greek used in the fic are under the cut. Sorry again for the delay - RL sucks. Many thanks to agapi42 for her fast and helpful beta work! :o)
Part 1
Additional notes: Greek military ranks are used, without much knowledge beyond what Wikipedia can give me, so I'm sorry if I've completely mis-used them :o)
'Taxiarkhos' is the equivalent of a Brigadier, 'Lokhage' means Captain (and 'Kyrie Lokhage' is how a subordinate addresses his/her captain), 'Ypolokhage' means Lieutenant, and 'Anthypolokhage' means Second Lieutenant. Any other words that look funny are probably names :o)
oOoOo
Location: Temporary holding cells, Camarina, Human colony Epsilon Xi
Four months after the Declaration of War
Local time: 13H 55M
Mel rapped sharply on the door to her cell, and tried once more to call through it.
“Look, will you listen to me? I’m not a spy! Get Ace, she knows me, she can vouch for me!”
Silence.
Mel sighed heavily and slumped against the wall. She was just repeating herself at this stage. How exactly was she supposed to tell Ace about DELPHI if they kept her locked up? How was she even supposed to get back to Glitz? Unless she could get out of the cell, things looked pretty hopeless.
With a clunk, the door unlocked. Mel looked up immediately, and grinned when she saw Ace standing in the doorway. It faded, however, when Ace’s expression remained suspicious and analytical.
“You’re not a shape-changing alien, are you?” she asked bluntly.
Mel made a little noise of surprise, and shook her head.
“Well then, let’s get you back to Glitz and the Nosferatu III,” Ace said with a quick smile. Mel looked askance at her, then laughed as she realised the game.
“It might meet with a horrible fate if it was called that,” she said. “Hence why I called it the Centennial Skylark.”
Ace grinned widely. “Thought so.” She nodded to the sentry outside the door. “She’s human, stand down the alert. I’ll take it from here.” She gestured for Mel to follow her. “Better find you somewhere comfier to sit and tell me what the hell is going on,” she said, throwing a smile over her shoulder.
A few minutes and several corridors later, Ace set down two cups of some kind of hot honey drink on the side table, and sat back in one of the comfier chairs in the empty officers’ mess.
“So. What happened to you last year? You wouldn’t say.”
“Last year?” Mel repeated in surprise.
“Yeah, it was a good nine or ten months ago. Well, sort of - twenty-day months and thirty-three hour days take some getting used to. This is you in the few seconds you disappeared for, isn’t it?”
“I was only gone for a few seconds? I’ve been in the future for hours.” Mel sipped at her drink, and found it wonderfully sweet and warming. Probably loaded with calories.
“You’ve only been here for half an hour,” Ace pointed out, frowning in confusion.
“No, I mean after the war.”
Ace sat up straight, eyes wide, then sat back slowly, folding her arms as if in self-restraint. “Don’t tell anyone else that,” she warned. “My superiors won’t let you leave until you tell them everything you know.” She gave Mel a serious look. “What can you tell me?”
“There are a few things you told me to tell you.” Ace raised an eyebrow and smiled slightly, but said nothing and gestured for her to continue. “DELPHI is evil.”
“Evil?”
Mel nodded. “She’s lying to you. She told you the alien ships would attack Camarina, so you attacked them first.”
“It wasn’t my idea,” Ace said defensively. “I argued with Alexandros for hours to just talk to them, but he’s very stubborn and xenophobic.”
“If you hadn’t fired on them, they would have just passed you by.”
Ace sat thinking for a long moment, a look of dismay on her face. “She’s trying to get us killed.”
Mel nodded. “And she nearly succeeds. You manage to get underground with about a hundred survivors.”
“A hundred ?!” Ace repeated in shock. “There are over fifty thousand people on this planet!”
“Earth sent rescue ships,” Mel hastened to add, and Ace’s relief was palpable. “But some people were trapped, and your enemies destroyed one of the rescue ships before it could get you out of there.”
“So I end up looking after the survivors left behind?”
“I think you’re pretty much in charge, yeah. There are bunkers underground that are safe from DELPHI’s scanners. And daylight is safe too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Future You said something about sabotaging her systems so that radiation from the sun would mask lifesigns. And I suppose the bunkers are lead-lined or something.”
“Hmm. We’ve yet to do that.” Ace’s short fingernails tapped a rhythm on her cup as she thought. “Anything else?”
Mel nodded, taking the red data stick from her pocket and handing it to Ace. “This will disable her long enough for us to use the console that controls the time-jumping. Galen will modify it so it works a second time, in the future, to get me here.”
“Who’s Galen?”
Mel blinked in surprise. “I assumed you’d know him. He’s a computer programmer, I suppose. Possibly a scientist of some kind with a talent for programming, I’m not sure. I think he’s in his late twenties, tall and thin, with a beard.”
Ace nodded, filing the information away in her memory. “I’ll look him up.” She finished off her honey drink and gazed at Mel for a few moments, looking thoughtful. “You time-jumped, right?” she asked eventually. “How did you manage that?”
“Oh, that was DELPHI,” Mel told her, realising suddenly that she’d never clarified this. “She was trying to move you, I think. Something about artron energy signatures. I think you - Future You - said that she knew someone with a strong artron energy signature would have a big influence on the outcome of the war. But I don’t think she knew exactly who she was moving through time, or how exactly I’d be able to influence things.” She chuckled slightly. “I don’t think she realised that her meddling was actually what gave me the opportunity to help things along.”
Ace smiled at that. “She’s not as clever as she’d like us to think, then.”
“She can see the future, but she can’t always understand it,” said Mel, repeating Ace’s words back to her before she’d even said them. She thought about that for a moment, then shook her head with a laugh. “Nothing,” she said in response to Ace’s quizzical expression. “Just giving myself a headache trying to understand it all.”
“It gets a bit nuts sometimes, yeah,” Ace said, grinning. “I remember.”
A few soldiers had started to wander into the officers’ mess and make themselves comfortable. Ace nodded and smiled greetings to a couple of them, then stood up.
“Time for siesta. We should go somewhere else.”
Mel stood and followed her. After a corridor or two, she asked, “If it’s siesta, why are they in there and not sleeping?”
“Some people don’t need as much of a rest as the others do. It’s a long workday, but these colonists have been here for a few hundred years - they’ve adjusted to it.”
“Oh. How long have you been here?”
“About two years,” Ace replied, pausing to open a door. “Give or take a couple of months. It’s a bit hard to keep track of, because I keep wanting to think of it in Earth time.” She waved Mel inside the room. “This is mine.”
Ace’s room was actually a small suite in a housing complex, which mostly housed those who signed up for the military force, Ace explained.
“It’s bigger than the one you had in the bunker. Will have. Whatever.”
Ace chuckled, and pulled off the short military-style jacket she wore over her shirt, draping it over the back of a chair. Facing away from Mel, she stretched her arms upwards, the movement pulling the hem of her fitted shirt out of the waist of her trousers.
Mel watched her with a smile, and was suddenly inspired to take the initiative. She moved up behind her as the stretches subsided, and slid her arms around Ace’s waist, tucking her chin over her shoulder. Ace tensed with surprise for a few moments, then relaxed as her arms came down to rest on Mel’s. She smiled as Mel laid a soft kiss on the nape of her neck.
“This uniform’s quite sexy, you know,” Mel murmured in her ear.
Ace twisted in her arms to face her.
“I knew there was something about the way you said goodbye,” she said with a smirk.
“Goodbye?” Mel frowned.
“Last year. Before you left, with Glitz.”
“Oh.” Remembering that she only had very limited time with Ace, Mel’s mood sank downwards.
Ace leaned in and kissed her, eyes open and intent. “I know. We don’t have much time. So let’s make it count, yeah?”
Mel nodded, and the next kiss was long and intense. At some point they moved to the bed, although she wasn’t sure exactly when. She was aware only of hands and lips and tongue and teeth; was focused on soft curves and warm skin and tangled hair; was lost in lust and heat and urgency.
oOoOo
“When you arrived in the future,” Ace began, not looking up from tying her bootlaces, “how long had it been since the war ended?”
Mel was sitting on the bed, feeling warm and content, yet melancholy at the same time.
“Thirty-two days, you told me.” Anticipating the next question, she added, “29:45, next to the building DELPHI is in.”
Ace nodded. “Right.” She sat back in the chair and sighed. “It’s not exactly peace, is it? They’ve been on about peace for ages now, the colony leaders; win the war, achieve peace... but all we’re going to end up with is refugees.”
Mel didn’t really know what to say to that.
Ace stood up with another sigh and pulled her jacket on. Mel got up from the bed, moved across the room, and slid her arms around Ace’s middle, under the jacket. Ace returned the embrace fiercely.
oOoOo
“You’ve got to listen to me, sir - DELPHI is lying to us! The war would never have started if she hadn’t told us about it!”
“Look, McShane, I know you have objections to this war, you brought them up when DELPHI first warned us of the danger, but I could not just sit there and let them take the first shot! I don’t see why you’re bringing this up again now.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, Alexandros,” Ace sighed. “She’s been bending the truth. She sees the future, so she tells us what she wants us to know - things that will make us destroy ourselves. She’s trying to wipe us out!”
“You’re beginning to sound paranoid.”
“When artificially intelligent computers are involved, healthy paranoia can be a life-saver.”
Taxiarkhos Alexandros sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Okay, Ace. Explain to me, very clearly, why you think DELPHI is lying to us.”
Mel stood to the side of the meeting room, watching the exchange. Ace glanced over to her, and her expression seemed slightly worried.
“First, I need your word that certain things will be kept confidential. And that Mel is not to be interrogated under any circumstances.”
“Ace, you’re not going to tell him everything, are you?”
Ace gave her a comforting smile. “It’s okay, Doughnut.”
Alexandros narrowed his eyes at Ace, then looked over to Mel with suspicious curiosity. “As long as it doesn’t threaten the safety of the colony, you have my word.”
Ace nodded, and took a deep breath before continuing. “DELPHI has been experimenting with time travel. Mel was visiting Camarina about a year ago, and DELPHI moved her through time.”
“To now?”
“To a point after the war.”
Alexandros gaped at Mel, but Ace continued before he could start asking more questions.
“She knows what happens to us. I haven’t let her tell me more than we need to know, and you’re not to question her about it. I’ve got a lot of experience with time travel, you know that, so I’m pulling rank.” Ace folded her arms defiantly, daring him to challenge her authority. He merely nodded, and motioned for her to continue. “So, Mel’s been to the colony after the war, and she’s brought back knowledge which will help us end it. We need to contact the Earth authorities and see what help they can give us. Someone has to talk to the ships up there and try to call a ceasefire. It probably won’t help much, but it might slow things down.” Ace gave him a pointed look. “Do you believe me?”
“I think I have to. And your friend -?”
“Will be going back to where she belongs in the timeline,” Ace told him, in no uncertain terms. “She has to.”
“You’re the expert.” He waved them both towards the door. “Do what you have to. You can brief the rest of them on the situation afterwards.”
Ace took Mel’s hand with a grim smile, and they made their way to DELPHI’s control room. The soldiers on duty stood to attention and saluted to Ace as she entered, and then saluted again as Alexandros followed them in. Amidst the uniforms, in her comfy, practical, slightly worn traders’ jacket, Mel felt like the proverbial sore thumb.
“Greetings, Taxiarkhos,” said DELPHI, her voice warm and acceptably human - a far cry from the acrid tones Mel had heard in the post-war future.
“DELPHI,” Alexandros nodded. “I’m in need of an update on the situation. Would you oblige?” He nodded discreetly to Ace, who turned to one of the soldiers.
“Ypolokhage Vlahos, a word.” She beckoned him to the side, and had a muttered coversation with him, during which she slipped something small into his hand. “That’s all.”
“Are you sure, Kyrie Lokhage?”
“Trust me, Vlahos.” She smiled, and he nodded and saluted once more, then disappeared behind one of the consoles.
DELPHI broke off from her predictions, watching the young ypolokhage approach her systems. “What exactly do you think you’re doing, Taxiarkhos?” DELPHI asked, her digital face flickering gently with dangerous apprehension.
“Just what I have to, to keep my people safe.”
With a more violent flicker, a muted DELPHI mouthed something angrily, then disappeared from the screen altogether.
The remaining soldiers started, turning in confusion to Alexandros and Ace, hands hovering near their weapons uncertainly.
“At ease, men,” Alexandros commanded. “Lokhage McShane, get on with it.”
Ace turned to Mel. “Over to you.” Mel smiled shakily, and moved to the console that Ace would use in the future to send her here.
“Right, you need to remember how I do this, because you have to show me later,” she said.
Ace rolled her eyes. “Of course I do,” she said with a smile, and nodded to the console. “On you go.”
Mel tapped in the sequences, programming in the date she recalled from the cargo slips before all this began, and estimating the time of her disappearance from the time Kris had given her shortly before they arrived at the construction site. She then took her best shot at programming the location, since Ace hadn’t shown her that. She just hoped, from the fact that Ace remembered her reappearing in the same place, that she would get it right.
While she did this, Alexandros gave the soldiers a brief overview of the situation.
“Information has come to light. DELPHI is no longer to be trusted, and is to be considered a threat. It is not safe to attempt to destroy her systems. Is this understood?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Ypolokhage Makris - take this info to the Strategos. Ypolokhage Vlahos, Anthypolokhage Leandros - make sure the area is totally secure. No-one else should be allowed into this room. Anthypolokhage Karra - remain here to guard DELPHI.”
“Sir!”
The Taxiarkhos watched his soldiers carry out their orders for a few moments, then turned to see how his lokhagos was getting on.
Mel was just inputting the final commands, and making sure Ace knew what she’d done, so she could remember it for the future.
“Yeah, I think I’ve got it.”
“Good. Right.” They both watched the loading bar tick towards completion, the console humming in a higher and yet higher pitch.
“Is everything set?” Alexandros asked.
“It’ll be ready in a minute or so,” Mel told him. She looked at Ace, wishing she could have a moment alone to say goodbye. Ace noticed her gaze, and reached out to clasp her fingers tightly. She gave Mel’s hand a little tug to pull her closer, but Mel resisted.
“What?”
Mel nodded a significant glance towards Alexandros, who caught the look. He raised an eyebrow and smirked slightly, then turned and wandered over to Anthypolokhage Karra, facing away from them.
Ace laughed at the bemused expression on Mel’s face, and gave her a quick kiss. “We’re two million years after our time,” she said with a grin. “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell went out a very long time ago.”
Mel nodded in comprehension, then laughed at her own assumptions. She pulled Ace close to her and kissed her deeply, fighting back the tears that stung her eyes. She was still kissing her when the console hum levelled out, and the loading bar sat at ‘full’. Letting her go, Mel noticed a few small lights flickering back on around DELPHI’s main screen.
“I have to go.”
“I know.” Ace kissed her once more, lightly, and nodded towards the console.
“Good luck.” Mel squeezed her hand once more, then let go, stepped away from her, and placed her hand on the brass dome.
Again, the bright lights and high pitched feedback noise blinded her and rattled her head, but she stuck it out, knowing she’d be back to the start at any moment.
“What on Salostophus was that?!”
Opening her eyes a crack, and finding the bright sun only slightly more tolerable than the blinding light of the time jump, Mel saw Glitz looking bemused and astonished.
“Mel, what happened? Are you okay?”
Ace had rushed forward and was holding her up by the arms, and it wasn’t until she did so that Mel realised she was close to collapsing. She let Ace help her to the nearby shelter area, where they sat down and Ace started quizzing her about her disappearance.
“It’s ... complicated,” Mel attempted. Ace raised an eyebrow at her. “I can’t tell you. I’m not sure I fully understand it myself. Was I only away for a few seconds?”
“Yeah, more or less. Did you go somewhere?”
“Sort of. Look, Ace, I honestly can’t tell you. Web of time, and all that.”
Ace seemed a bit hurt, but eventually gave in and nodded. “Okay. You don’t have to tell me. I suppose I’ll find out eventually, will I?”
“Something like that,“ Mel replied with a grateful smile. “Can we just get something to eat, and sit and chat for a bit?”
Ace nodded. “Sure.” She spotted someone hovering nearby, and called to them. “Makris! Would you mind running to the Ram’s Head and getting something for my friend to eat and drink? Glitz, go help him carry, would you?”
“You’re alright, then, Mel?” Glitz asked, seeming concerned and relieved.
“I will be once I have some food,” she told him, smiling. He patted her on the shoulder, and headed off towards the inn with Makris, who began talking to him rather urgently as soon as they were out of earshot.
They returned within twenty minutes, interrupting Ace’s explanation of the building she was working on. Glitz put down a tray holding a few plates of something that vaguely resembled sandwiches, and Makris handed round a few tumblers of water. He then mumbled his excuses and left. Glitz sat on the other side of Mel and munched away at his sandwich with an odd air of disquiet. Ace gave him a few strange looks as she ate, but said nothing.
Mel felt her strength returning shortly afterwards, and as soon as she mentioned this, Glitz hopped up from the bench.
“Well, we’d better be going, then, hadn’t we?”
“Had we?”
He gave Mel a significant look, although she had absolutely no idea what was supposed to be significant about it.
“Do you have to go?” Ace said, dismayed. “You only just got here.”
“Yeah, sorry, but we’ve got other business and stuff to be dealing with,” Glitz said briskly. “Can’t hang around chatting all day.”
From the strange attitude and the significant look, Mel surmised that Glitz had good reason to tear her away from Ace so soon, so she nodded and stood up.
“I guess I’ll have to go,” she said to Ace. “Business calls.” She gave her a small smile. “I’ll see you again, though.”
Ace looked as though she might voice her protests, but she caught sight of Kris checking his watch, and sighed resignedly.
“Yeah, come visit again soon,” she urged, giving Mel a tight hug.
Suddenly remembering what Ace had said in her bedroom in the housing complex, Mel leaned in and kissed her soundly, one last time. Ace looked surprised when she pulled away, but a smile crept onto her face, and she cleared her throat before speaking.
“See you, Doughnut.”
“Bye, Ace.”
Kris gave them a lift back to the Centennial Skylark, during which Mel intended to sit quietly and be morose. Instead, she had Glitz trying to ask her questions.
“I didn’t know you and Ace had a thing,” he said, his eyebrows doing something she couldn’t even describe. “Didn’t know you were off the planet, either.”
“What?”
“Y’know. Didn’t know your bread was buttered that side.” Mel raised an eyebrow at him, and he chuckled. “Listen, I’ve got important stuff to tell you, but it’s gotta wait till we’re back at the ship.”
“Well, we’re almost there. Can you start to tell me?”
“See that guy who helped me get food? He’s not from here. I mean, he’s from Camarina, but not from now.”
Mel turned sharply towards him. “He was from the future?” she asked, in a whisper.
Glitz nodded. “Yeah. That’s where you went, isn’t it?” Mel nodded, and he continued in a low voice. “So, this guy, he came here with a bunch of his friends, and he says he knew you in the future, and they need to stow away on our ship for a bit. Which, y’know, I’m not nuts about, since there’s not gonna be any space once they’re all in there, and the cooling systems are about to pack in as it is, but we can drop them off somewhere soon.”
Once Kris had dropped them off at the edge of the docking port, Mel didn’t wait for Glitz to continue. She unlocked the door to the ship and hurried inside, heart in her mouth.
The Camarinian refugees clustered in the cargo bay looked up as she entered, but apart from Galen and Makris, Mel couldn’t see any familiar faces. Her heart sank, and she sagged in disappointment. Not knowing what to do or say next, she walked blankly through the ship to the cockpit.
“Hey, Doughnut.”
Mel looked up, and beamed. Ace laughed and jumped up from the pilot’s seat to grab Mel and swing her round. There wasn’t quite enough room in the cockpit to do this, and they bounced off the bulkhead and crashed into the console, giggling, making Glitz retreat a few feet down the corridor for safety.
Pulling her to her feet, Mel kissed her delightedly. They were eventually interrupted by Glitz clearing his throat pointedly, and nodding to his watch, smirking all the while.
“Yeah, we’d better get going,” Mel agreed, blushing, as she dropped into the pilot’s seat.
As Mel ran the engine checks, Ace sat in the co-pilot’s seat and said something to Glitz along the lines of making sure her friends were all safe and comfortable. He rolled his eyes a little, but went to do as she asked, muttering about “bossy women” as he went.
“How did you all get back here?” Mel asked, pressing buttons.
“I just decided I was sick of it. DELPHI, the bunker, all that. So I found some supplies, made up some explosives, took out her A.I. processor. Then I just transported everyone back here, one by one, into the cellar of the Ram’s Head, and sent Makris out to find Glitz and fill him in, while we snuck through town to the ship. Simple.” Ace grinned happily.
“Good plan.”
“Well, DELPHI said our time on the planet was almost at an end, so I thought I’d prove her right.” She chuckled, and put her feet up on the glove compartment.
Mel grinned back at her, and fired up the engines.
oOoOo
Pairing: Mel/Ace
Rating: PG-13
Words: ~4000
Summary: The locals of Epsilon Xi have a troubled future ahead of them. Or possibly behind them. Mel's getting a bit muddled with all this, actually.
Author's Notes: Written for the
dw_femslash ficathon, for glinda_penguin, who wanted crossing of timestreams and mythology, and gave me this quote: "They have not wanted Peace at all; they have wanted to be spared war - as though the absence of war was the same as peace." - Dorothy Thompson. The title is Greek, and translates as "The latter one first". Further notes on a few small bits of Greek used in the fic are under the cut. Sorry again for the delay - RL sucks. Many thanks to agapi42 for her fast and helpful beta work! :o)Part 1
Additional notes: Greek military ranks are used, without much knowledge beyond what Wikipedia can give me, so I'm sorry if I've completely mis-used them :o)
'Taxiarkhos' is the equivalent of a Brigadier, 'Lokhage' means Captain (and 'Kyrie Lokhage' is how a subordinate addresses his/her captain), 'Ypolokhage' means Lieutenant, and 'Anthypolokhage' means Second Lieutenant. Any other words that look funny are probably names :o)
oOoOo
Location: Temporary holding cells, Camarina, Human colony Epsilon Xi
Four months after the Declaration of War
Local time: 13H 55M
Mel rapped sharply on the door to her cell, and tried once more to call through it.
“Look, will you listen to me? I’m not a spy! Get Ace, she knows me, she can vouch for me!”
Silence.
Mel sighed heavily and slumped against the wall. She was just repeating herself at this stage. How exactly was she supposed to tell Ace about DELPHI if they kept her locked up? How was she even supposed to get back to Glitz? Unless she could get out of the cell, things looked pretty hopeless.
With a clunk, the door unlocked. Mel looked up immediately, and grinned when she saw Ace standing in the doorway. It faded, however, when Ace’s expression remained suspicious and analytical.
“You’re not a shape-changing alien, are you?” she asked bluntly.
Mel made a little noise of surprise, and shook her head.
“Well then, let’s get you back to Glitz and the Nosferatu III,” Ace said with a quick smile. Mel looked askance at her, then laughed as she realised the game.
“It might meet with a horrible fate if it was called that,” she said. “Hence why I called it the Centennial Skylark.”
Ace grinned widely. “Thought so.” She nodded to the sentry outside the door. “She’s human, stand down the alert. I’ll take it from here.” She gestured for Mel to follow her. “Better find you somewhere comfier to sit and tell me what the hell is going on,” she said, throwing a smile over her shoulder.
A few minutes and several corridors later, Ace set down two cups of some kind of hot honey drink on the side table, and sat back in one of the comfier chairs in the empty officers’ mess.
“So. What happened to you last year? You wouldn’t say.”
“Last year?” Mel repeated in surprise.
“Yeah, it was a good nine or ten months ago. Well, sort of - twenty-day months and thirty-three hour days take some getting used to. This is you in the few seconds you disappeared for, isn’t it?”
“I was only gone for a few seconds? I’ve been in the future for hours.” Mel sipped at her drink, and found it wonderfully sweet and warming. Probably loaded with calories.
“You’ve only been here for half an hour,” Ace pointed out, frowning in confusion.
“No, I mean after the war.”
Ace sat up straight, eyes wide, then sat back slowly, folding her arms as if in self-restraint. “Don’t tell anyone else that,” she warned. “My superiors won’t let you leave until you tell them everything you know.” She gave Mel a serious look. “What can you tell me?”
“There are a few things you told me to tell you.” Ace raised an eyebrow and smiled slightly, but said nothing and gestured for her to continue. “DELPHI is evil.”
“Evil?”
Mel nodded. “She’s lying to you. She told you the alien ships would attack Camarina, so you attacked them first.”
“It wasn’t my idea,” Ace said defensively. “I argued with Alexandros for hours to just talk to them, but he’s very stubborn and xenophobic.”
“If you hadn’t fired on them, they would have just passed you by.”
Ace sat thinking for a long moment, a look of dismay on her face. “She’s trying to get us killed.”
Mel nodded. “And she nearly succeeds. You manage to get underground with about a hundred survivors.”
“A hundred ?!” Ace repeated in shock. “There are over fifty thousand people on this planet!”
“Earth sent rescue ships,” Mel hastened to add, and Ace’s relief was palpable. “But some people were trapped, and your enemies destroyed one of the rescue ships before it could get you out of there.”
“So I end up looking after the survivors left behind?”
“I think you’re pretty much in charge, yeah. There are bunkers underground that are safe from DELPHI’s scanners. And daylight is safe too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Future You said something about sabotaging her systems so that radiation from the sun would mask lifesigns. And I suppose the bunkers are lead-lined or something.”
“Hmm. We’ve yet to do that.” Ace’s short fingernails tapped a rhythm on her cup as she thought. “Anything else?”
Mel nodded, taking the red data stick from her pocket and handing it to Ace. “This will disable her long enough for us to use the console that controls the time-jumping. Galen will modify it so it works a second time, in the future, to get me here.”
“Who’s Galen?”
Mel blinked in surprise. “I assumed you’d know him. He’s a computer programmer, I suppose. Possibly a scientist of some kind with a talent for programming, I’m not sure. I think he’s in his late twenties, tall and thin, with a beard.”
Ace nodded, filing the information away in her memory. “I’ll look him up.” She finished off her honey drink and gazed at Mel for a few moments, looking thoughtful. “You time-jumped, right?” she asked eventually. “How did you manage that?”
“Oh, that was DELPHI,” Mel told her, realising suddenly that she’d never clarified this. “She was trying to move you, I think. Something about artron energy signatures. I think you - Future You - said that she knew someone with a strong artron energy signature would have a big influence on the outcome of the war. But I don’t think she knew exactly who she was moving through time, or how exactly I’d be able to influence things.” She chuckled slightly. “I don’t think she realised that her meddling was actually what gave me the opportunity to help things along.”
Ace smiled at that. “She’s not as clever as she’d like us to think, then.”
“She can see the future, but she can’t always understand it,” said Mel, repeating Ace’s words back to her before she’d even said them. She thought about that for a moment, then shook her head with a laugh. “Nothing,” she said in response to Ace’s quizzical expression. “Just giving myself a headache trying to understand it all.”
“It gets a bit nuts sometimes, yeah,” Ace said, grinning. “I remember.”
A few soldiers had started to wander into the officers’ mess and make themselves comfortable. Ace nodded and smiled greetings to a couple of them, then stood up.
“Time for siesta. We should go somewhere else.”
Mel stood and followed her. After a corridor or two, she asked, “If it’s siesta, why are they in there and not sleeping?”
“Some people don’t need as much of a rest as the others do. It’s a long workday, but these colonists have been here for a few hundred years - they’ve adjusted to it.”
“Oh. How long have you been here?”
“About two years,” Ace replied, pausing to open a door. “Give or take a couple of months. It’s a bit hard to keep track of, because I keep wanting to think of it in Earth time.” She waved Mel inside the room. “This is mine.”
Ace’s room was actually a small suite in a housing complex, which mostly housed those who signed up for the military force, Ace explained.
“It’s bigger than the one you had in the bunker. Will have. Whatever.”
Ace chuckled, and pulled off the short military-style jacket she wore over her shirt, draping it over the back of a chair. Facing away from Mel, she stretched her arms upwards, the movement pulling the hem of her fitted shirt out of the waist of her trousers.
Mel watched her with a smile, and was suddenly inspired to take the initiative. She moved up behind her as the stretches subsided, and slid her arms around Ace’s waist, tucking her chin over her shoulder. Ace tensed with surprise for a few moments, then relaxed as her arms came down to rest on Mel’s. She smiled as Mel laid a soft kiss on the nape of her neck.
“This uniform’s quite sexy, you know,” Mel murmured in her ear.
Ace twisted in her arms to face her.
“I knew there was something about the way you said goodbye,” she said with a smirk.
“Goodbye?” Mel frowned.
“Last year. Before you left, with Glitz.”
“Oh.” Remembering that she only had very limited time with Ace, Mel’s mood sank downwards.
Ace leaned in and kissed her, eyes open and intent. “I know. We don’t have much time. So let’s make it count, yeah?”
Mel nodded, and the next kiss was long and intense. At some point they moved to the bed, although she wasn’t sure exactly when. She was aware only of hands and lips and tongue and teeth; was focused on soft curves and warm skin and tangled hair; was lost in lust and heat and urgency.
oOoOo
“When you arrived in the future,” Ace began, not looking up from tying her bootlaces, “how long had it been since the war ended?”
Mel was sitting on the bed, feeling warm and content, yet melancholy at the same time.
“Thirty-two days, you told me.” Anticipating the next question, she added, “29:45, next to the building DELPHI is in.”
Ace nodded. “Right.” She sat back in the chair and sighed. “It’s not exactly peace, is it? They’ve been on about peace for ages now, the colony leaders; win the war, achieve peace... but all we’re going to end up with is refugees.”
Mel didn’t really know what to say to that.
Ace stood up with another sigh and pulled her jacket on. Mel got up from the bed, moved across the room, and slid her arms around Ace’s middle, under the jacket. Ace returned the embrace fiercely.
oOoOo
“You’ve got to listen to me, sir - DELPHI is lying to us! The war would never have started if she hadn’t told us about it!”
“Look, McShane, I know you have objections to this war, you brought them up when DELPHI first warned us of the danger, but I could not just sit there and let them take the first shot! I don’t see why you’re bringing this up again now.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, Alexandros,” Ace sighed. “She’s been bending the truth. She sees the future, so she tells us what she wants us to know - things that will make us destroy ourselves. She’s trying to wipe us out!”
“You’re beginning to sound paranoid.”
“When artificially intelligent computers are involved, healthy paranoia can be a life-saver.”
Taxiarkhos Alexandros sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Okay, Ace. Explain to me, very clearly, why you think DELPHI is lying to us.”
Mel stood to the side of the meeting room, watching the exchange. Ace glanced over to her, and her expression seemed slightly worried.
“First, I need your word that certain things will be kept confidential. And that Mel is not to be interrogated under any circumstances.”
“Ace, you’re not going to tell him everything, are you?”
Ace gave her a comforting smile. “It’s okay, Doughnut.”
Alexandros narrowed his eyes at Ace, then looked over to Mel with suspicious curiosity. “As long as it doesn’t threaten the safety of the colony, you have my word.”
Ace nodded, and took a deep breath before continuing. “DELPHI has been experimenting with time travel. Mel was visiting Camarina about a year ago, and DELPHI moved her through time.”
“To now?”
“To a point after the war.”
Alexandros gaped at Mel, but Ace continued before he could start asking more questions.
“She knows what happens to us. I haven’t let her tell me more than we need to know, and you’re not to question her about it. I’ve got a lot of experience with time travel, you know that, so I’m pulling rank.” Ace folded her arms defiantly, daring him to challenge her authority. He merely nodded, and motioned for her to continue. “So, Mel’s been to the colony after the war, and she’s brought back knowledge which will help us end it. We need to contact the Earth authorities and see what help they can give us. Someone has to talk to the ships up there and try to call a ceasefire. It probably won’t help much, but it might slow things down.” Ace gave him a pointed look. “Do you believe me?”
“I think I have to. And your friend -?”
“Will be going back to where she belongs in the timeline,” Ace told him, in no uncertain terms. “She has to.”
“You’re the expert.” He waved them both towards the door. “Do what you have to. You can brief the rest of them on the situation afterwards.”
Ace took Mel’s hand with a grim smile, and they made their way to DELPHI’s control room. The soldiers on duty stood to attention and saluted to Ace as she entered, and then saluted again as Alexandros followed them in. Amidst the uniforms, in her comfy, practical, slightly worn traders’ jacket, Mel felt like the proverbial sore thumb.
“Greetings, Taxiarkhos,” said DELPHI, her voice warm and acceptably human - a far cry from the acrid tones Mel had heard in the post-war future.
“DELPHI,” Alexandros nodded. “I’m in need of an update on the situation. Would you oblige?” He nodded discreetly to Ace, who turned to one of the soldiers.
“Ypolokhage Vlahos, a word.” She beckoned him to the side, and had a muttered coversation with him, during which she slipped something small into his hand. “That’s all.”
“Are you sure, Kyrie Lokhage?”
“Trust me, Vlahos.” She smiled, and he nodded and saluted once more, then disappeared behind one of the consoles.
DELPHI broke off from her predictions, watching the young ypolokhage approach her systems. “What exactly do you think you’re doing, Taxiarkhos?” DELPHI asked, her digital face flickering gently with dangerous apprehension.
“Just what I have to, to keep my people safe.”
With a more violent flicker, a muted DELPHI mouthed something angrily, then disappeared from the screen altogether.
The remaining soldiers started, turning in confusion to Alexandros and Ace, hands hovering near their weapons uncertainly.
“At ease, men,” Alexandros commanded. “Lokhage McShane, get on with it.”
Ace turned to Mel. “Over to you.” Mel smiled shakily, and moved to the console that Ace would use in the future to send her here.
“Right, you need to remember how I do this, because you have to show me later,” she said.
Ace rolled her eyes. “Of course I do,” she said with a smile, and nodded to the console. “On you go.”
Mel tapped in the sequences, programming in the date she recalled from the cargo slips before all this began, and estimating the time of her disappearance from the time Kris had given her shortly before they arrived at the construction site. She then took her best shot at programming the location, since Ace hadn’t shown her that. She just hoped, from the fact that Ace remembered her reappearing in the same place, that she would get it right.
While she did this, Alexandros gave the soldiers a brief overview of the situation.
“Information has come to light. DELPHI is no longer to be trusted, and is to be considered a threat. It is not safe to attempt to destroy her systems. Is this understood?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Ypolokhage Makris - take this info to the Strategos. Ypolokhage Vlahos, Anthypolokhage Leandros - make sure the area is totally secure. No-one else should be allowed into this room. Anthypolokhage Karra - remain here to guard DELPHI.”
“Sir!”
The Taxiarkhos watched his soldiers carry out their orders for a few moments, then turned to see how his lokhagos was getting on.
Mel was just inputting the final commands, and making sure Ace knew what she’d done, so she could remember it for the future.
“Yeah, I think I’ve got it.”
“Good. Right.” They both watched the loading bar tick towards completion, the console humming in a higher and yet higher pitch.
“Is everything set?” Alexandros asked.
“It’ll be ready in a minute or so,” Mel told him. She looked at Ace, wishing she could have a moment alone to say goodbye. Ace noticed her gaze, and reached out to clasp her fingers tightly. She gave Mel’s hand a little tug to pull her closer, but Mel resisted.
“What?”
Mel nodded a significant glance towards Alexandros, who caught the look. He raised an eyebrow and smirked slightly, then turned and wandered over to Anthypolokhage Karra, facing away from them.
Ace laughed at the bemused expression on Mel’s face, and gave her a quick kiss. “We’re two million years after our time,” she said with a grin. “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell went out a very long time ago.”
Mel nodded in comprehension, then laughed at her own assumptions. She pulled Ace close to her and kissed her deeply, fighting back the tears that stung her eyes. She was still kissing her when the console hum levelled out, and the loading bar sat at ‘full’. Letting her go, Mel noticed a few small lights flickering back on around DELPHI’s main screen.
“I have to go.”
“I know.” Ace kissed her once more, lightly, and nodded towards the console.
“Good luck.” Mel squeezed her hand once more, then let go, stepped away from her, and placed her hand on the brass dome.
Again, the bright lights and high pitched feedback noise blinded her and rattled her head, but she stuck it out, knowing she’d be back to the start at any moment.
“What on Salostophus was that?!”
Opening her eyes a crack, and finding the bright sun only slightly more tolerable than the blinding light of the time jump, Mel saw Glitz looking bemused and astonished.
“Mel, what happened? Are you okay?”
Ace had rushed forward and was holding her up by the arms, and it wasn’t until she did so that Mel realised she was close to collapsing. She let Ace help her to the nearby shelter area, where they sat down and Ace started quizzing her about her disappearance.
“It’s ... complicated,” Mel attempted. Ace raised an eyebrow at her. “I can’t tell you. I’m not sure I fully understand it myself. Was I only away for a few seconds?”
“Yeah, more or less. Did you go somewhere?”
“Sort of. Look, Ace, I honestly can’t tell you. Web of time, and all that.”
Ace seemed a bit hurt, but eventually gave in and nodded. “Okay. You don’t have to tell me. I suppose I’ll find out eventually, will I?”
“Something like that,“ Mel replied with a grateful smile. “Can we just get something to eat, and sit and chat for a bit?”
Ace nodded. “Sure.” She spotted someone hovering nearby, and called to them. “Makris! Would you mind running to the Ram’s Head and getting something for my friend to eat and drink? Glitz, go help him carry, would you?”
“You’re alright, then, Mel?” Glitz asked, seeming concerned and relieved.
“I will be once I have some food,” she told him, smiling. He patted her on the shoulder, and headed off towards the inn with Makris, who began talking to him rather urgently as soon as they were out of earshot.
They returned within twenty minutes, interrupting Ace’s explanation of the building she was working on. Glitz put down a tray holding a few plates of something that vaguely resembled sandwiches, and Makris handed round a few tumblers of water. He then mumbled his excuses and left. Glitz sat on the other side of Mel and munched away at his sandwich with an odd air of disquiet. Ace gave him a few strange looks as she ate, but said nothing.
Mel felt her strength returning shortly afterwards, and as soon as she mentioned this, Glitz hopped up from the bench.
“Well, we’d better be going, then, hadn’t we?”
“Had we?”
He gave Mel a significant look, although she had absolutely no idea what was supposed to be significant about it.
“Do you have to go?” Ace said, dismayed. “You only just got here.”
“Yeah, sorry, but we’ve got other business and stuff to be dealing with,” Glitz said briskly. “Can’t hang around chatting all day.”
From the strange attitude and the significant look, Mel surmised that Glitz had good reason to tear her away from Ace so soon, so she nodded and stood up.
“I guess I’ll have to go,” she said to Ace. “Business calls.” She gave her a small smile. “I’ll see you again, though.”
Ace looked as though she might voice her protests, but she caught sight of Kris checking his watch, and sighed resignedly.
“Yeah, come visit again soon,” she urged, giving Mel a tight hug.
Suddenly remembering what Ace had said in her bedroom in the housing complex, Mel leaned in and kissed her soundly, one last time. Ace looked surprised when she pulled away, but a smile crept onto her face, and she cleared her throat before speaking.
“See you, Doughnut.”
“Bye, Ace.”
Kris gave them a lift back to the Centennial Skylark, during which Mel intended to sit quietly and be morose. Instead, she had Glitz trying to ask her questions.
“I didn’t know you and Ace had a thing,” he said, his eyebrows doing something she couldn’t even describe. “Didn’t know you were off the planet, either.”
“What?”
“Y’know. Didn’t know your bread was buttered that side.” Mel raised an eyebrow at him, and he chuckled. “Listen, I’ve got important stuff to tell you, but it’s gotta wait till we’re back at the ship.”
“Well, we’re almost there. Can you start to tell me?”
“See that guy who helped me get food? He’s not from here. I mean, he’s from Camarina, but not from now.”
Mel turned sharply towards him. “He was from the future?” she asked, in a whisper.
Glitz nodded. “Yeah. That’s where you went, isn’t it?” Mel nodded, and he continued in a low voice. “So, this guy, he came here with a bunch of his friends, and he says he knew you in the future, and they need to stow away on our ship for a bit. Which, y’know, I’m not nuts about, since there’s not gonna be any space once they’re all in there, and the cooling systems are about to pack in as it is, but we can drop them off somewhere soon.”
Once Kris had dropped them off at the edge of the docking port, Mel didn’t wait for Glitz to continue. She unlocked the door to the ship and hurried inside, heart in her mouth.
The Camarinian refugees clustered in the cargo bay looked up as she entered, but apart from Galen and Makris, Mel couldn’t see any familiar faces. Her heart sank, and she sagged in disappointment. Not knowing what to do or say next, she walked blankly through the ship to the cockpit.
“Hey, Doughnut.”
Mel looked up, and beamed. Ace laughed and jumped up from the pilot’s seat to grab Mel and swing her round. There wasn’t quite enough room in the cockpit to do this, and they bounced off the bulkhead and crashed into the console, giggling, making Glitz retreat a few feet down the corridor for safety.
Pulling her to her feet, Mel kissed her delightedly. They were eventually interrupted by Glitz clearing his throat pointedly, and nodding to his watch, smirking all the while.
“Yeah, we’d better get going,” Mel agreed, blushing, as she dropped into the pilot’s seat.
As Mel ran the engine checks, Ace sat in the co-pilot’s seat and said something to Glitz along the lines of making sure her friends were all safe and comfortable. He rolled his eyes a little, but went to do as she asked, muttering about “bossy women” as he went.
“How did you all get back here?” Mel asked, pressing buttons.
“I just decided I was sick of it. DELPHI, the bunker, all that. So I found some supplies, made up some explosives, took out her A.I. processor. Then I just transported everyone back here, one by one, into the cellar of the Ram’s Head, and sent Makris out to find Glitz and fill him in, while we snuck through town to the ship. Simple.” Ace grinned happily.
“Good plan.”
“Well, DELPHI said our time on the planet was almost at an end, so I thought I’d prove her right.” She chuckled, and put her feet up on the glove compartment.
Mel grinned back at her, and fired up the engines.
oOoOo
