As I was finishing my lunch, two more aiways joined us. I was not surprised to see @horus, with a freshly trimmed mustache, enter the room. The other person I didn't recognize. She was probably a hand shorter than I was, but standing next to @horus made her look shorter. She was dark-skinned, with a strong but slender build.

  The new aiways was dressed in a burgundy uniform, styled in the fashion of the Solar Union, with a purple Earth insignia her upper arm and a dark red buffalo symbol on the breast pocket of her jacket. I hadn't seen that symbol before.

  I nodded at them, opening a sanitary wipe to clean my fingers in case we needed to shake hands, then flowed into the Yew sign.

  They mirrored it back and took their seats.

  @rainygrove, the Solar Union Secretary of Treasury, made the introductions. "This is @whirlwind. She commands the Nine Legions of the Inner Fleet, near Mercury and Venus. And you know @horus, of course."

  That explained why I hadn't seen the buffalo symbol. Our battles rarely took us that close to the sun. I had always fought in the belt, where our two sides intersected, where control over asteroid clusters fluctuated with which side was winning the war that day.

  "She also happens to captain a Valkyrie," @rainygrove added.

  "You are the one Oblivion has chosen," @whirlwind said, her tone smooth and slow. She enunciated her words with purpose. "Metamorphosis is my ship."

  I hadn't heard of that one. Oblivion had given me the names of the Valkyrie starships: Cataclysm, Darkness, Desolation, Destroyer, Devastation, Doomsday, Extinction, Assimilation, Oblivion, Omegaton, Repulser, and Ruin. I thought that was all of them.

  "It's an honor to meet you," I started, keenly interested in our conversation. "Oblivion didn't tell me about Metamorphosis. I've heard of the others. Why didn't it mention yours?"

  She smiled slowly back at me. "Because I like it that way."

  I guess that was fair. I wouldn't want everyone knowing about Oblivion either. I was going to make a note to ask Oblivion about it, but @spaceglider offered an explanation.

  "Don't forget, @kittyboy," he said. "Confidential information is still confidential. You may have altered the programming of your ship, but I don't doubt it still follows the rules about information crossing domains of secrecy."

  Something to alter later, I thought to myself. I didn't want Oblivion keeping any secrets from me.

  I raised my hand. "My ship?" I asked. "That's the second or third time someone has referred to Oblivion as my ship."

  @spaceglider sighed and looked at @pixel_princess.

  "Yes, your ship," @pixel_princess confirmed. "The only reason the Solar Union has allowed this is our temporary coalition. For now, we're on the same side, and the ship answers to you, but eventually you will need to give that ship back."

  "The other stipulations," @spaceglider added, "are that you are required to have a Solar Union first officer, and you are required to have equal representation of Solar Union soldiers among the crew."

  I raised an eyebrow, wondering if the expression would be noticeable with the mask over my face, and considered their proposal. I predicted that I would have issues with infighting amongst the crew. I would have to manage that carefully, but I had some ideas on how to handle it.

  "Understood," I replied. "That sounds fine to me. We already have a pretty blended crew. Do you have a first officer in mind?"

  "We're vetting candidates," @spaceglider responded. "We need to make sure it's someone we can trust, and also someone capable of working with both sides."

  More importantly, it needed to be someone I could trust, but I realized I wasn't going to have any say in it.

  If they expect me to allow the first officer to command Oblivion if I die, they've got another thing coming. I growled to myself.

  I had no doubt that was what they expected, and I knew how I felt about it. I immediately found myself getting suspicious of a person I hadn't even met. What if they tricked me into trusting them, just to get their hands on Oblivion, to get me out of the picture?

  I took a deep breath, held it for five seconds, and then slowly exhaled to calm myself down. That was better than slapping myself in my metal face. I was getting angry and suspicious, and the feeling was growing. I had to stop it.

  That's not you, I told myself. You didn't get here by being suspicious.

  No, you blindly trusted other people, some of whom left you to die.

  But it worked in the end. I have a loyal crew, friends, exactly because I took the chance to meet them as they were and trust them.

  It'll get you killed.

  No. Trust your instincts. Stop thinking about shooting and just fire away.

  I worked myself to a healthy state, slowly breathing. I was going to trust this crew and this first officer, I decided, until there was a reason not to. And if I like the first officer, maybe I'll even let them make suggestions. Not command Oblivion, but give it some pointers. Sure. Maybe.

  @horus cleared his throat to get the attention of the room. "We do have urgent matters to discuss."

  I thought about reminding him that he had been late to the meeting, but even I can show restraint at times.

  "@horus is correct," @whirlwind intonated. "I have mobilized my fleet across the inner planets, with carefully planned evacuations underway to move people out." That was fast and awesome. "But we were attacked and took losses. It was not a large attack, but more concerning is this. It was members of our fleet who attacked us."

  "Treason," @rainygrove breathed. "Betrayed by your own people."

  @spaceglider was serious but even-tempered. "We expected this. Now @whirlwind's account confirms it."

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "Do we know how many ships they might have?" I asked.

  "Not yet," @spaceglider answered. "But we believe they have at least five of Valkyrie ships, not counting the two you destroyed. Darkness, Destroyer, Doomsday, Repluser, and Ruin are unaccounted for or known to be in their hands."

  That meant Cataclysm, Devastation, and Assimilation were potentially still on our side, plus any other Valkyrie ships I wasn't aware of. I was now sure there had to be more.

  "He has destroyed a Valkyrie ship?" @whirlwind asked, surprised. She eyed my liquid face in anticipation, and I nodded back.

  "Two," I said. "Extinction and Desolation. But I cheated."

  "You cheated?" She folded her arms and tilted her head.

  "We have other matters," @horus interrupted. "We lost contact with Sovereign Starbase nearly 10 hours ago."

  @pixel_princess stood from her seat, calmly. I could tell she knew this already. She looked at me while she addressed the room. "We have to assume that our largest civilization on Ganymede and our largest space station, the center and home to our world, are lost to us."

  "Fuuuuuuck," I uttered. My head went to @astrowave, who had been reanimated and was forced to remain there. But we were talking millions of people.

  "All of civilization is being wiped out." I didn't say it to them. I said it to me. But we were all feeling it.

  "@kittyboy," @pixel_princess said. "We do have some good news, if you can call it that. There was no contact made, but The Pharaoh was identified in close orbit to Sovereign Starbase."

  I mustered a tight-lipped smile, bobbing my head. At last! It was found. I didn't know what I expected to find, but at least I knew where to look.

  "I have to go to Sovereign Starbase," I said.

  "I told you," @pixel_princess said to @spaceglider.

  @spaceglider held up his hands. "Yes. Yes, you did."

  "I'll do whatever you want after that," I pleaded, "but I need to go there first."

  @spaceglider took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "We discussed this briefly before your arrival. You will be permitted to go. We have crew standing by to join you on Oblivion, and we'll have your first officer ready by the time you head out." He looked at @horus. "@horus, were you able to set things in motion on your end?"

  @horus nodded, placing a gadget on the table and pressing a few buttons. A solar system map projected upward. "We've established a quarantine for locations that have not reported an outbreak." Yellow markers sprung up on the map, most of them within the asteroid belt on smaller colonies. I noticed none were on any of the planets, nor their moons.

  "We dispatched our major transports to the locations with the highest populations," he continued. "Priorities are Ganymede, Ceres, Titan, and Sovereign Starbase. We have four scouting ships en route to Sovereign Starbase already, followed by eight large transport carriers."

  "Only eight?" I prompted.

  @horus ignored me. "@kittyboy, you will fly Oblivion to Sovereign Starbase to join them. Your job is to protect the transports. You can send members of your crew over to recover The Pharaoh, but you are to remain on Oblivion to provide support. If there is an attack, like the one @whirlwind experienced, you will lead our defense. After taking out two Valkyries, they should think twice before messing with you again."

  "@whirlwind and Metamorphosis will do the same," @spaceglider instructed. "But you're not going to Sovereign Starbase. You're going to Earth." @whirlwind pursed her lips. I gulped. "I need you to get to Resonant City."

  I thought I noticed a tremble. "Are they there?" @whirlwind asked. "Are they on the floating city?"

  It wasn't technically floating, not the way that the floating cities of Venus were floating in the hazy upper atmosphere of that planet. No. Resonant City was floating in orbit around Earth.

  "We believe so," @spaceglider confirmed. "We're glad you could get some of our people here to Umbilicus, but we need you head back out into the storm."

  Was that a whirlwind joke? I couldn't tell. Maybe he was just being dramatic.

  @whirlwind's steady and sonorous voice was full of the confidence I wished I had. "We will go." She stood from the table. "Is there anything else?"

  "No. You're dismissed."

  I wanted to say goodbye to @whirlwind, but the room turned into a rush of activity now that plans were being laid out. The discussion was over. It was time to execute.

  "You know," I said, "if you'd given me a new body, I might already be on Sovereign Starbase."

  @pixel_princess turned back to look at me. "Your body can be healed with reusable resources. It's as simple as that."

  At almost the same time, @horus sourly commented, "We would have reanimated you on Oblivion."

  That's right. Oblivion has a reanimation chamber now. I wondered if it was stolen from @horus's ship, the Talon.

  @pixel_princess looked apprehensive for some reason. She nodded at @spaceglider and @rainygrove, who dismissed themselves with the Dew sign and left the room.

  "Is there something else," I asked, once it was just @pixel_princess, @horus, and I, "or can I be going?"

  "I advise you not to use the reanimation chamber," @pixel_princess suggested. "We have put a halt on most reanimations, just like the Solar Union has done."

  Oh.

  "We believe our clone repository is intact and safe," @pixel_princess revealed, while @horus paced the room. "But we also understand that in the war to come, we need to ensure we have the resources to fight and to survive. If for some reason we can't create more clones, and that's a big if, we need to store the ones we have and save the resources to make more for when we absolutely need them."

  Yikes! I guess I really needed to stay alive, or hope that I was valuable enough that if I died, they would bring me back. Otherwise, who knows how long my memories would be sitting in storage?

  I was probably an exception. I doubted they wanted Oblivion out there all by its lonesome, doing Oblivion things.

  "Okay, I get it. I'm used to having a human on my ship, so … no dying."

  My leg began to bounce up and down. I was eager to get going. Mentioning @bitchfrog just made me want to get to The Pharaoh all the more urgently. I had friends to get. She had to be okay.

  "What happens when we're done on Sovereign Starbase?" I asked.

  "Both sides are putting up quarantines and running evacuations for now," @horus answered. "We'll figure out the rest later."

  I watched the silent @pixel_princess out of the corner of my eye. "Is there anyone you want me to find on Sovereign Starbase? I don't have any smiley face stickers for your guns," I joked, trying to lighten the mood, "but I bet I can find some on Sovereign Starbase."

  "Stay off of Sovereign Starbase," @pixel_princess blurted. "You are just to provide support for the transports."

  Yeah. Geeze. I get it.

  "Okay," I muttered quietly, standing up, eying my empty lunch container. Life had been better when I was busy eating instead of thinking about all the chaos and death that surrounded us.

  "Understood," I said strongly. "What now?"

  "Report back to Oblivion," @pixel_princess commanded, "and get to Sovereign Starbase as quickly as you can."

  I saluted them. "Metal Mask is on it. May you remember."

  They looked at me funny.

  I pointed at my face.

  "I'm Metal Mask."

  They looked at each other.

  "Yeah," @horus said. "We get it."

  "Get out of here, already," @pixel_princess added, waving for me to leave the room. I bolted for the door and stopped in the doorway.

  "It'll catch on!" I yammered back at them. "I would like a cape for my next mission."

  @horus slammed the door in my face.

  No respect, I tell you.

  I headed out toward the greenery of the atrium at a steady jog and opened a plink.

  kittyboy: "Oblivion, get ready for departure. We're going home."

  Oblivion: "Isotonic Quantum Labs? Why are we going there?"

  kittyboy: "No. Not your home. My home."

  Oblivion: "This is disappointment."

  kittyboy: "Disappointment? No, it's Sovereign Starbase. The Pharaoh is there. We can get our friends."

  I wasn't about to obey their orders and stay on Oblivion. First was The Pharaoh. Then I had to see if @astrowave was okay. I clenched and stretched my hands as I ran.

  Oblivion: "I am your home."

  Oh, that was sweet.

  kittyboy: "You are. I'm coming home. Then I'll show you where I'm from."

  Sort of. I spent most of my time on the i35, but Sovereign Starbase was still technically the closest thing I had to a home. At least, I guess it was until I met Oblivion. Who knew a ship could change your life so profoundly?

  Home, sweet home.