Tonight.

[Girlactic]

NOW

Jane flopped down on her bed, grateful for the silence of the room. She pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers and pressed down hard, remembered to exhale. Brightest Sun has been relatively quiet tonight; the constant screaming pulse of the Kheldian soul intertwined with hers had subsided into the proverbial "dull roar." It lapped at the edges of her conciousness, like the phantom pain of an amputated limb; an ache that refused to part with the core of her. If he left her, he would die. She just could not bear to be alone let him go. They would bear the pain together. She drew off her socks, tossing them into the corner as she stared at the ceiling chewing at her lip. That song. That fucking song had stuck in her ears and it was driving her crazy. She allowed herself to mumble a few choruses before she drifted off into an uneasy sleep.

The memories nightmares were back in full force tonight. She knew it was Brightest Sun that did this to her. She had first imagined he was sharing memories of his former hosts with her, or punishing her for refusing to let him go. But lately...lately, she had realized that although he could not speak to her directly, because of the choice you made his injuries...he was trying to help. It had always felt like a story. A story he was telling her, to allow her to sleep despite the pain they shared from his damaged soul. Tonight, however, was different.

It was a story...her story.

A memory. A memory that felt like it rushed up from the base of her spine and made her nauseous, caused the fine hairs along her arms and back of her neck stand, electrified. It hurt, it choked her, and although she knew she was asleep, her eyes began to water and she felt herself cry out in the anguish of it all, the loss.

[Girlactic]

THEN

The chorus of excited voices, an acrid smell of burnt metal and circuit sheathing, sweat and desperation. Illumination was set to battle-blue, and she felt all eyes on her, even as they rattled off status reports for their failing vessel.

"Maneuvering circuits eleven through ninety-six offline!"
"Poly-Dee at thirty-six and falling!"
"Escape pods nine through thirty damaged!"
"Aft plating still at one-hundred percent ~ Fore plating at eleven percent ~ Flank plating is...gone."
"The Shining Corona and Searing Star will be unable to reach our position for another eighteen hours."

All eyes on were on her as this last piece of information sealed the fate of every member of the crew. Her crew, it was her crew now. Brightest Sun crabbed her fingers into the railing of the bridge and bit her lip, holding back tears. "I'm just supposed to be an observer..." she whispered. Her first day on the bridge, and now this. She caught herself looking over at the row of bodies stacked below the astrogation screens. The Captain was there, and the First Officer. So was Sunlit Nova, the only other Kheldian aboard the vessel as well as her mentor; Sunlit who had stepped between her and the initial volley of the Quantum Cannons that had torn through the Poly-Dee fields and the Bridge Crew. With the bridge crew gone, as the only Ascended member onboard, she became the de facto Captain of this doomed vessel.

Another burst of Quantum energy from the pursuing Nictus vessel soared by, kissing the Poly-Dee and dropping them into normal space. She screwed her eyes shut and for a moment, she saw Sunlit Nova enveloped in that awful-awful, terrible-terrible black light, his scream etched into his face as half his soul was ripped away into the ether like so many cobwebs.

"Captain?" questioned one of her crew, a cadet really. An observer, just like her, now manning fire control alone. "I'm only sixteen," she replied, averting her gaze. Delicate fingers white-knuckled over the bridge railing and she had to swallow to keep from sobbing. "I don't know wha..." she stopped herself short, and raised her eyes to tell them, tell them all she was only sixteen and it's not fair, it's not and....

Again all eyes were on her.

She saw, reflected in them, the same words. It was not fair, no. Not fair to any of them. They were all in this, now, a concurrence of events that brought them, each of them, to this moment. And no one....no one, really knew what to do. Except her. They were all just regular people. They didn't need a crying princess from the War College. They needed...someone strong. So did she.

"...aft plating is intact, you said?" The words came out harsh, confident. They were answered by a moment of stunned silence, then an affirmative. "Ye...ye...yes, Captain." She glanced at the command screen. "Take the remaining energy from the PolyDimensional Matrices and shunt it all to the rear emitters on my order." She eyed the Sensor Screen. The Nictus vessel was directly behind them, eager for her crew. Eager for her. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes. "All stop, shunt Poly-Dee! Brace for impact!"

It was jarring, although the Poly-Dee diverted most of the impact of the Nictus vessel colliding with theirs into a million possible causalities. As the ships colocated, she slipped briefly free from her physical form into the realm of possibility and observation, a quantum field. Intangible now, bulkheads raced past her, the Poly-Dee...

[Girlactic]

She nearly retched as she regained physical form aboard the Nictus Vessel. The shock of passing through the Poly-Dee had nearly torn her matrices apart. The enemy vessel was surprisingly aseptic, though dark, darker even than her own ship in battle-blue. The crew of the Nictus vessel was in shock.

Brightest Sun had every intention of taking advantage of the element of surprise at the collision. Calling to the memory of the long-dead Kurukt, her body exploded into the white-hot light of re-alignment, her armored body instantly filling the small bridge, crushing one crewmember against his console. The deck shook with the fury of her blows, crushing bodies and tearing controls from their moorings. When she was done, the bridge lay in shambles. Drained, she sank to her knees for a moment, then stood shakily and prepared to leave the crippled vessel.

The quantum cannon caught her in the back as she deassembled her quanta to return to her ship, sending her causality back through the Poly-Dee field in-phase. A terrible scream tore it's way out of her mouth from her core, as she felt the Kheldian half of her tear and fragment, but she refused to let him go. Without him...she would be alone, and she needed that now, to be more than just...herself. She drew them both screaming, two voices as one through the Poly-Dee and returned to the bridge...

[Girlactic]

...HEAT! It was so, so hot! She was burning, one of the crewmembers had apparently already combusted and what had happened? Re-entry? The Polydimensional? Failed, and the autocorrection routines had dumped them into orbit near the closest inhabitable probability. Only the wreckage of the Nictus vessel still contained working engines, engines which had failed to disengage during her rampage. Those same engines which now bore the ship into the atmosphere at velocities sufficient to superheat the superstructure, and with no Poly-Dee remaining to protect them...

She instinctively drew on her energies, shielding herself from the worst of the heat, despite the screaming of her Kheldian soul begging her to set him free. A quick glance showed that although the bridge crew were now all dead, there were others still alive aboard the ship...and the emergency beacon had activated, calling out across the dimensions to their Sister ships, the Shining Corona and Searing Star. If only they could adjust their attitude, pitch up a few degrees, the Nictus drive would carry them to safety.

It really wasn't fair, she thought. Neither of us deserved this, Brightest Sun. She marshalled the energies of her being one final time, and passed through the floor of the disintegrating ship. She braced herself, and poured herself into the shining light, her namesake, her Brightest Sun. Burning white-hot, and so little time, minutes? Less? SHe willed her quanta upwards, her light surrounding the forward aspect of the vessel, as it imperceptibly began to raise. Was it too late? Had the planet's gravity caught them too tightly?

...no...no, it was...
...she felt herself fading, disassembling into photons and constituent parts...
...it was...it was just enough...

Brightest Sun resumed her human form with a thundercrack and the blinding light of kheldian energies. Unable to form a complete shield, she dipped and spun, caught in the troposphere, slowed but still falling, a broken leaf or a feather, falling...but the ship...no longer a fireball but a tiny light, sparkling, lost among the stars.

The wind howled at her. She turned over, to see the ground rushing up at her, impossibly fast. For a moment, she forgot about the keening of the Kheldian inside her.

Black.

[Girlactic]

NOW

Jane awoke. It was still night...or early morning. She sat up slowly, upon the edge of her bed, and drove the palms of her hands into her eyes; she could not stop crying. She felt herself devolve into great wracking sobs that shook her whole body and made it difficult to catch a full breath. Face buried in her hands, she wept.

"I'm sorry, Sun, so sorry...I didn't...I didn't know."

Which was a lie, because all this time, she had known, and she had kept him here, locked within her, using his pain to punish herself. To isolate herself...to hide. She could hardly breathe, and her face felt swollen. There was something...a bubble, in her chest, and it grew and grew until it felt as though she might burst, it hurt, hurt so much, all that pain she had caused herself, caused everyone, had pushed aside her friends, her love...she thought that perhaps she might die from this, even as she felt it let go, and she merely felt as though she were pouring out of herself. She cried and shook until she was exhausted, and empty; fatigue overtook her, and she slept.

With no nightmares regrets.

In the morning, she knew he had gone. She had released him. The only Sun in the room came in through the window.