Epilogue Four - A Held Together Homecoming

Phobos - Nine Months Later

Twenty-Six didn't want to let her excitement show, but... yeah, she couldn't stop herself. Her legs were twitching more than Pixie's whenever Ivil said something scary like 'I have an idea' or 'I saw this on an episode of Estrellas Enlazadas a Través de la Grieta.'

She was at home, which was a weird thing to think about. Weirder was thinking about having multiple homes, and she didn't just mean the heap of vacation homes and stations that Ivil happened to have living quarters on, or the very big, very awesome ships that the Martian Navy spilled over themselves to give to Ivil if she looked interested.

Nah, she was at Aurora's place, which was also home, now. It was a rather nice mansion next to one of the habitation domes on the Mars side of the moon. If she looked 'up' she could see Mars floating above. It was the big red pearl in the sky, still kinda small, but that was just because Ivil had moved Phobos back and away from Mars a long time ago.

Aurora's place had been the Sterlingworth family home, and it still was. The mansion was... well, a mansion. They had a wing to themselves though.

There was also a freaky portal back to the surface of Mars that Ivil had placed there one day because she said it would be convenient. The Martian Navy had claimed that it was a serious vulnerability, and then Ivil had reminded them that annoying her was also a serious vulnerability, and now there was a glowing red hell portal in their living room that allowed them to walk into the master bedroom of Ivil's palace on Mars.

Twenty-Six didn't like using it too much. It made her tummy feel queasy, and she liked riding ships down through the Martian atmosphere anyway.

She was distracting herself.

The reason for her excitement was rather simple. Some old friends were coming over, and she had pulled some strings (she'd asked nicely) and gotten things lined up to be able to visit them. All she was waiting for was...

"Ah, there you are," Ivil said as she stepped into the living room.

Twenty-Six smiled a little wider. Recently, she felt as if she was doing a lot of smiling, which was... nice, actually. "Yup," she said before looking Ivil up and down.

She knew--perhaps better than most--that Ivil's body wasn't real in the way that hers or Pixie's or Aurora's was. It was something that Ivil fabricated with her cores. And yet, despite that, Twenty-Six had gotten good at reading her body language.

It was like listening for a rattle in a machine to know what was wrong. It took some getting used to, and you needed to know the machine... intimately, but once you did, it was easy to tell if things were running well or not.

Ivil was running well. There was a slight relaxation in her shoulders that hadn't been there half a year ago, a loosening of her posture from steel-pipe rigid to something a little less tight.

It was, Twenty-Six thought, probably a good sign.

"Are you ready to head out, then?" Ivil asked.

"Yup!"

"Will it just be the two of us?"

Twenty-Six nodded. "Yeah. Aurora's doing some political thing, with that Martian ambassador guy, and Pixie is tinkering on the Nightstalker."

"You're not helping her?" Ivil asked.

"I did!" Twenty-Six said quickly. How dare anyone assume that she wouldn't help with stuff that was in her area of expertise! "But all that's left is clean-up and putting things back in place, and she told me that if I didn't shower, I'd look messy."

"Ah, a fair point," Ivil said with a nod. "Well then, shall we go?"

Twenty-Six moved up to Ivil's side, and soon they were heading out. She was pulling Ivil along after her, the excitement too much to walk at Ivil's slow, stately pace. Ivil was allowing herself to be tugged along, which was also very fun.

She'd never admit it to anyone, but she liked dragging her girlfriends around, and touching them, and holding their hands. It still made her tummy squirm, but in a good way.

The path from the Sterlingworth estate to the nearest space elevator wasn't all that long. It was a towering edifice right next to the domed city next to the mansion. Ordinarily, access to that kind of thing would be at least a little bit restricted, but the family had their own private route from the mansion to the base of the elevator. It was only a short ride by chauffeured car over. A ride she spent nervously tippy-tapping her feet.

"You'll wear a hole through the floor," Ivil said.

"Sorry," Twenty-Six replied.

Ivil smiled one of those smug, self-satisfied smiles of hers. "No, keep it going, I think it's cute."

They made it to the elevator with a minimal amount of teasing, and only a few kisses. She even had all of her clothes on!

The ride up was fast. She didn't like using her 'I'm with the Empress of Mars and she doesn't understand queueing privilege to cut in front of the line...' but it was kind of nice when it happened.

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The elevator didn't quite connect to a station, since that would be a huge hassle. Instead, there was a landing space with docks for these tiny little automated shuttles. They were kind of cute, in a barebones sort of way.

They took one of these out to a station in orbit high above Phobos, burning pretty quickly to arrive just a half hour later.

This time, when she stepped out of the shuttle, she had to take a moment to fix her jumpsuit, but at least the ride over had felt fast.

The station they arrived at wasn't the cheapest one in Phobos' orbit, but it wasn't far from it. Still, it was in Martian orbit, and they were notorious for keeping the standards of things pretty high, so it was mostly clean and she imagined that most of the equipment was even maintained.

It only took a bit of flying through the station's zero-g corridors before she came onto a window that looked out and towards the docking arms. One of the ships there jumped out to her immediately, and Twenty-Six paused to stare.

The Held Together looked a little banged up, a little rough, and like... home.

"They still haven't replaced the ventral skid plate," she muttered. "And that ring on the port engine looks untouched, which means that they never removed it to check the cowling. It's got to be running so hot. I bet the captain's burning twice as much lubricant as she needs to. If she's even bothering to refill it."

"It does still look like a flying deathtrap," Ivil said. "I'm impressed you had the pull to let it come so close to Mars."

Twenty-Six snorted. "I had to tell them it was coming in for repairs. I don't think leaving's going to take as much convincing. But the refueling crews around here might be too cowardly to want to touch her."

"I'm sure something can be arranged," Ivil said.

Twenty-Six nodded, then after a moment of staring some more, she continued to pull herself along the corridor.

It wasn't long before she was at an airlock door, behind which...

"We could go back, if you want," Ivil said surprisingly softly.

"No, I want to," Twenty-Six said. She reached over, tapped a button, and the doors slid open.

The Captain was there, arms crossed, looking a bit frustrated and annoyed, with the same old jacket on, and the same scowl. There was Hawke, with his very dad-energy smile, and next to him, looking kind of goofy, was Donny. There was a new guy, by the back, that she didn't recognize, and that sent a small shock through her. Had they replaced her? But yeah, of course, the ship needed a mechanic.

And coming over, walking with a sure-footed stride despite the lack of gravity, was Missy. "So, there you are," Missy said.

"Hi!" Twenty-Six replied. For some reason, she felt a little bit like crying.

Ivil gave her a little push, and Twenty-Six stumbled forwards, landing against Missy with a powerful hug.

"Whoa there. I don't remember you being this strong," Missy said.

The Captain moved over, and so did Donny and Hawke. "Twenty-Six. It's good to see you again, and to see that you're still in one piece."

"Yeah," Twenty-Six said. She hugged Missy just a smidge tighter, then pulled away and quickly brushed her cheeks before launching herself at the captain.

Hawke laughed, then ruffled her hair. "Look at little Twenty-Six, you've grown!"

"No I haven't! I was a fully-grown adult when I left!" Twenty-Six said.

"Then you put on a few pounds?" he asked. "Have you found a better cook than me?"

Twenty-Six smacked him on the arm, then gave him a hug too.

It was so very strange to be with the crew again, so close to the Held Together. This had been her home, and it still felt that way, and yet it also... didn't? She wasn't sure she had the words to quite describe how she was feeling, but it was complicated.

She glanced over her shoulder, and found Ivil simply standing there, smiling, accepting.

She knew that if she asked to just... leave, to return to the almost-simple life of a grease monkey, then Ivil wouldn't stop her. But she didn't want that, not really. She had a new home.

"Captain! Why haven't you replaced the skids? You were supposed to do that years ago now! And the cowling! I saw it on the way over!"

For a little while, she'd allow herself to be back on the Held Together with the people she'd once known better than she knew herself, with the ship that she'd almost been raised on, the one she still dreamed about sometimes.

It would be nice, for a moment.

But that ship, with all the nice memories... it wasn't as nice as what she had now. It was nostalgia.

She could afford an hour or two, maybe more, to catch up, and laugh, and share stories, and then... and then she had more to do. With her new family, with every frontier unlocked.

She was going to be something, but that didn't mean she wanted to be the kind of person that ignored their past.

But her future... yeah, that would be impossible to ignore.

***

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