Allison and Rebecca were about to head out onto the flight deck when they were intercepted by Admiral Birken. He looked Rebecca up and down then looked at Allison.

  “You’re ready to take off already?”

  Allison shook her head.

  “No sir, I am not, but I cannot wait for the capacitors to get a full charge. It took hours for one percent; The power drain on the ship is too much and you do not have that much time. I have a plan to get more, it is untested tech and a bit risky, are you sure, you want someone to come with me?”

  He looked at Rebecca who at this point was looking a bit pale at the prospect of going into an AI controlled fighter, into space with a teenage girl. He asked.

  “Are you up for this Agent North?”

  Rebecca nodded.

  “Yes, sir. Just a bit uncomfortable in this suit.”

  He nodded then looked at Allison.

  “Are you going to need another emergency landing?”

  Allison smiled.

  “No, I added a hook, I should be able to land like any of your fighters, hopefully I won’t need to because I’ll be able to land with antigravs but better to be prepared and not need it…”

  Admiral Birken looked the pair over one last time and spoke.

  “Be careful, both of you.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Allison saluted him firmly. She wasn’t even sure why, it just seemed right, the man had a commanding presence about him. He smiled at her and returned the salute. Allison led Rebecca out onto the flight deck and sent the command from her AR HUD to form the liquid metal ladders. She climbed in and strapped herself down this time. She gently moved the tesseract core under her seat and started prep for takeoff. Even the wireless comms with her holo-phone were draining the capacitors. She was feeling ill at ease about this choice, but she was sure she could do it. She’d decided on a catapult take off so she could conserve power for the antigravs when she needed them, which was to get out of the atmosphere.

  She was slightly amused when she realized the catapult system was a lot like the backup ones on her System’s Alliance ships. Usually, fighters would be shot out of a railgun-like launcher but if those were offline, they used a more conventional system. Rebecca white knuckled her way through the launch. Allison hit the conventional jet thrustors using the antigravs as more of an assist than the source of her lift. Then she hit the scramjets to punch out of the atmosphere. The ride was bumpy apparently the planet had very high winds in the upper atmosphere. Allison cut the antigrav power as soon as she was in orbit and shifted to the ion thrustors for space maneuvering. She released the controls and started programming the wormhole beacon like she’d done a hundred times before at this point. She initiated the antimatter-matter intermix and then released it in high geo-stationary orbit above the ad-hoc flotilla. Rebecca was very quiet throughout the whole process. Allison looked back past the seat.

  “Are you alright back there?”

  Rebecca nodded. She was just staring at the two moons that were visible just past the planetary horizon. Finally, she spoke after looking down at the water planet below.

  “You see this all the time?”

  Allison laughed.

  “Yes, pretty boring planet actually.”

  Allison tapped her fingers on her console impatiently while she waited for the wormhole beacon to fully reboot and start providing telemetry data. Rebecca looked back down at the clouds.

  “Boring? It’s beautiful.”

  Allison shrugged.

  “Sorry, I forget some people aren’t used to seeing things like this. Yes! It is connected to the network, and it is giving me telemetry data. No, wait… This can’t be right. Closest beacon… fifteen billion light years? What the hell?”

  Allison glanced at her power levels; They were going to go critical soon, but she had to confirm. She forced a reboot of the wormhole beacon. It came back up and gave her exactly the same data. She started shaking her head.

  “No, this isn’t good. No way I can boost a signal that far without antimatter and I’d just use a wormhole then!”

  Rebecca was confused.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Allison pointed at the beacon in front of them.

  “That thing is telling me the closest beacon is 15 billion light years away, and it is also saying the prime beacon, that’s the one by Earth is slightly further away. If I had an FTL drive that would take me seventeen hundred years to get home. We should move. If they send help, we do not want to get hit by the wormhole. We’re also running out of power, so I need to find a storm.”

  Allison pulled away with maneuvering thrustors and the power drain from the ion thrustors was too much. She angled the fighter so she could look down at the planet. She pointed to the equator.

  “There, look at the storms! It’s like a wall of them across the equator, there’s lightning, that’s perfect… I hope.”

  Rebecca winced at Allison’s I hope statement. Allison started an orbit of the planet she was going to do a couple of orbits to spiral down towards the equator. It would conserve power and fuel. As she was about to plunge into the equator spanning storm wall. She laughed to herself. Rebecca was now very worried and spoke up about it.

  “What’s so funny?”

  Allison laughed again.

  “Bit would say I’m being a chaotic organic… Here goes nothing, this is going to be rough hold on tight.”

  Allison plunged into the atmosphere keeping the fighter angled so she didn’t burn up. She used her antigravs and ion retro-thrustors to slow her descent. With that the last of the power in her weapon capacitors gave out. She sure hoped pulling the power link to Bit would protect her from this nightmare, but she was sure her friend would approve of the decision if it could get them home and help all these lost people.

  She had her hands firmly on the stick and her feet on the rudders as the fighter was tossed around in the storm. With no power or antigravs and Allison trying to conserve her chemical thrustor fuel they were basically a kite on the wind. Allison cried out over the noise of the storm outside.

  “Keep the shade mode up on your visor. I’m pretty sure without it the lightening would blind you.”

  They were tossed around by the hurricane force winds for what seemed like an eternity but was probably only minutes. Finally, one, then two, then three blasts of lightning struck the fighter. Allison could tell it had worked because once she hit the manual control to shunt the absorbed power to the fighter all kinds of alerts started screaming at her. She hit the antigravs, thrustors and powered up her shields immediately and blasted out of the storm and up into space. She let the fighter orbit the planet while she assessed the damage. A few blown power-interlinks, nothing she couldn’t replace with spares on hand. There was some scoring on the liquid metal skin, the capacitors had not been able to absorb all of the energy, but Allison would take it.

  “Let’s go back to the ship and remind everyone not to try and cross the equator.”

  Allison flew to the wormhole beacon, but nothing had come through yet. She angled the fighter down towards the planet and used her ion thrustors, then her antigravs. She came in for a gentle landing after getting clearance. The flight deck crew were staring at the damage to the liquid metal armor. Allison winced when she saw it. She could see the energy lattice in a few parts. It was fine though, still airtight, just not a fighter she’d want to take into combat. She had a tub of liquid metal back at her hanger that would replace this skin in a few minutes. Rebecca climbed down out of the fighter, she gave Allison a nod and headed off to get changed.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  *****

  Thirty minutes later Rebecca was standing in the empty ready room in front of Admiral Birken who was sitting in one of the seats going over a list of the sick and the dead. He’d worked with the other captains to combine their lists as Allison had requested. He looked up at Rebecca.

  “How did it go, Rebecca?”

  Rebecca ran her hands through her shoulder length hair, it was oily and unkempt, now matted with sweat from her recent trip in an environmental suit that did its best to keep her from boiling alive on the sunny side of the planet but could not fully protect her from the heat.

  “Her fighter can leave the atmosphere, and she dropped something she called a wormhole beacon in space. She told me that it indicated we were fifteen billion light years from Earth. She is a good pilot. Navigated a hurricane level storm with ease, didn’t even seem nervous when she was trying to get us hit by lightning. Also, the fighter has some kind of force shield. I saw rain bouncing off of it. I think she’s not going to be able to help us though. She said something about not having enough power to boost the signal without antimatter. She is hoping someone notices her beacon and investigates. If she’s worried, she’s not showing it.”

  Admiral Birken nodded.

  “She seems resourceful. What is she doing now?”

  Rebecca pulled a stray clump of hair out of her eyes and behind her ear.

  “Making repairs. She said: The lightning fried some power-interlinks. I assume she’s replacing them. My main concern is she’s about to power on this artificial intelligence. Allison seems quite... pliable at the moment. This AI seems like an almost parental figure for her? It may cause us some resistance when dealing with her once it is online.”

  Admiral Birken tapped his pen on the clipboard he was working off of.

  “Do you think we should stop her?”

  Rebecca sighed.

  “Honestly I don’t think we could, but if it is an option, yes.”

  Admiral Birken frowned.

  “What kind of armaments did you see?”

  Rebecca frowned.

  “She has a full payload of missiles and her plasma gatlings as she called them. I saw them show up on her display. Given her level of technology, I would guess our ships and fighters would fair about as good as the men on the Enterprise did. The AI can apparently take full control of the fighter. I would expect if she got it online we’ll lose any ability to contain Allison because the fighter could launch itself and threaten us with damage…”

  Admiral Birken frowned deeply.

  “It rubs me the wrong way to put that child in the brig. Did she mention what she hopes to gain by using power on the AI?”

  Rebecca nodded.

  “She mentioned something about an idea, but she’d need the AI to make it happen. She didn’t go into specifics.”

  Admiral Birken sat in silence for several minutes then shook his head.

  “At this point, if we go the way of the Japanese crews, we’re looking at a one hundred percent mortality rate on anyone under the age of thirty, which is seventy percent of our crew. Let her do what she thinks she needs to, continue to provide support, but monitor her, please. She is obviously well trained, and military, we have to trust she knows what she is doing. She seems to respect my authority, and I think that says something good about her.”

  *****

  Allison waited impatiently for Bit to boot up after she routed power to her neural net. She could have cheered when she heard Bit’s voice through her earpiece.

  “Allison, did you take me offline again? What have you done this time?”

  Allison groaned.

  “It’s not my fault this time! The tesseract core dropped us fifteen billion light years away from home and drained all of our antimatter and fusion reactant. We only have limited power so be gentle, I can’t really charge the absorption capacitors again I seem to have overloaded the energy weave.”

  Bit responded after a few moments.

  “I have verified your data. Yes, you did. How did you do that?”

  Allison smiled.

  “I flew into a storm, and we got struck by lightning.”

  Bit made a sound of indignance.

  “You are going to be the death of me. How are you planning on establishing communications with the System’s Alliance? It seems like we will not be able to use the hyperwave, there is not enough power available to boost it”

  Allison nodded.

  “Yep, but I do have a wormhole beacon in orbit, I was hoping you could link up with it and uh, translate a message into code or something…”

  Bit seemed confused.

  “Code? How would I do that?”

  Allison shrugged.

  “Binary or something… you know off on, off on…”

  Bit paused before speaking again.

  “Ah I see, I know of something called… morse code, but I have no idea what or how it works. It is an ancient Earth communication technique. If we had someone who understood I am sure the President would be able to translate it.”

  Allison bit her lower lip and looked around herself.

  “I don’t know it either… oh wait… we’re surrounded by people from ancient Earth!”

  She noticed Agent North approaching. Allison bounded over to her. Without greeting Rebecca she blurted out.

  “Do you know what morse code is?”

  Rebecca nodded slowly.

  “Why?”

  Allison grinned.

  “That is how I am going to send a message! I just need someone to translate it. Bit and I aren’t trained in it.”

  Rebecca nodded.

  “Come with me.”

  Allison nodded.

  “But we need to hurry, powering Bit is not cheap, and I’ll need her to do the turning off and on thing with her Electronic Warfare Suite. It will take too long to shut it off and reboot it.”

  Rebecca hurried her walk and led Allison to the communications officer of the watch. She addressed her.

  “Lieutenant, this is Lieutenant Allison Wanjala, she needs assistance translating a message into morse code, could one of your people assist her.”

  The lieutenant looked around to her almost empty comms area. She was in her thirties and had been spared the brunt of the infections going around her team, not so much. She sighed.

  “I can help. What message do you need to send?”

  Allison bit her lower lip.

  “Ma’am… my AI and I don’t really understand morse code so we’ll need to know what the different symbols mean.”

  The lieutenant looked Allison up and down.

  “How did you become a pilot without knowing it? I thought that was basic training for you sort.”

  Allison blinked a bit.

  “Uh, well, that might be for pilots from your time but from the thirtieth century we have umm more important things to learn like… how to fix our FTL drive if it breaks down. Kind of bad if you get stuck light years from home. Uh, so, time is short my fighter is running on capacitors I cannot refill.”

  The lieutenant raised an eyebrow but nodded.

  “Morse code is an alphabet; You spell out words and the silence is just as important as the beeps and dashes. What do you want to say?”

  Allison nodded then relayed her message. The lieutenant came with her to bit and her skepticism of Allison quickly evaporated when she saw the holographic controls lit up in the cockpit. Her eyes grew wide with wonder when Bit discussed the ins and outs of morse code with her.

  *****

  Maria was sitting in her office at her desk which had recently been replaced after she broke it when she realized Allison was in the past. She was reviewing several intelligence briefs on the state of suppression of the Ratoan rebellion, Sal’nash hive sightings and finally a very odd blip in the wormhole beacon network. One showed up fifteen billion light years away out of nowhere about three hours before. She was annoyed that they’d waited three hours to tell her that. She pondered how someone had breached her network security past the visible edge of the universe, by at least two billion light years. She stood up and brought up the network layout. Yep, there it was so far away when she zoomed out the beacons in andromeda seemed like they were sneezing distance from Earth. She frowned. She would have noticed sooner herself if she wasn’t trying to figure out where Allison had ended up.

  “Monica! I need the wormhole beacon network director now!”

  Her aide rushed off. Maria quirked her head to the side when she saw the beacon going off and online it seemed random. The beacon network director, an older gentleman with a thick brushy grey mustache appeared on her wall holo beside the beacon network hologram.

  “Madame President, what can I do for you?”

  Maria pointed at her holo and swept it over to him.

  “Why did you wait three hours to notify me our wormhole beacon network has been breached? We could be attacked at any moment!”

  He looked deeply embarrassed.

  “I… I thought you’d sent a probe with one, ma’am, I’m sorry. Whatever it is seems to be failing now it is going off and online randomly.”

  Maria suddenly realized the off and on it was experiencing wasn’t random at all. It was a repeating pattern. Someone was using it to communicate. She held up one finger to the director.

  “I’ll call you back. We’ll discuss a process change, the wormhole beacon network is our most sensitive network, if it is compromised anyone with wormhole tech could use it to invade our planets in minutes.”

  She ended the call and started writing down the code on a tablet. As it formed, she realized what it was, a morse code message. It was short and to the point. Shadow One Alpha-Six-October-Papa-Omega lost in space no antimatter no fusion reactant no comms need fuel resupply need broad-spectrum nanite antivirals many earth sick hungry. Message repeats.

  Maria wrote it down four more times to make sure she got it right. Shadow One was Allison’s callsign, the security code was hers. How did she end up fifteen billion light years away from home? It didn’t matter. If she had no power, she couldn’t open a wormhole comm, or wormhole home. Maria smiled.

  “Clever kid, I had no idea she knew Morse code. The only confusing part was the nanite antivirals, many earth sick.”

  She frowned. She trusted Allison wouldn’t ask for something she didn’t need. She was a teenage girl, but she tended to not be too demanding. Maria sat down. She could not send someone into an unknown situation that far away. She sighed and opened a link to the wormhole comm network and reached out to the League.

  *****

  Allison sighed as Bit powered down. The capacitors were completely drained. Bit had been sending the morse code for six hours straight and it had wiped out the remaining charge. Allison had no choice but to make sure she was heard. She had managed to get four hours’ sleep but Bit woke her up to let her know she was powering down. Allison felt alone all over again. Sure, she was surrounded by humans but none of them truly understood her. She was about to curl up in the cockpit and fall asleep again when she heard Rebecca calling her name. Allison popped up and leaned over the edge of the cockpit. Rebecca ran up to the starfighter.

  “Allison, there was a flash now we’re getting a request to land, it’s a woman?”