The Top Gun Of All Our Futures Is A Girl Called Calamity
She would be the greatest fighter pilot ever known, but to live her dream she must make one heartbreaking sacrifice
“Gus, you darling, you made me these!”
Krista crushed one of the pastries into her mouth, simultaneously thrusting a thumbs-up over the buffet table. It came so close to the Petty Officer’s face, as he was laying out other canapés, that he flinched to one side.
He eyed her ill-humouredly, taking in the wings on her dress shirt, as she continued to beam at him around the messily disintegrating delicacy.
“Glad you like them, Sir,” he observed, the gravel of his voice conveying precisely metered annoyance across the rating-officer divide.
“Glad my arse,” Krista shot back, ejecting flakes of crust. She swallowed dramatically, another pastry already in hand. “You know I can’t resist these. And don’t ‘sir’ me, you daft bone.”
The chef’s scowl deepened. “First time I made them. Sir,” he concluded, and turned away in disgust.
Krista stared at his back, disconcerted. Gus was a rough old dog — their friendship was one of the social mysteries that can arise on long deep-space missions — but for no obvious reason, he seemed genuinely offended.
“Lieutenant.”
Krista glanced towards the voice; and then, within a single second, she had scanned the table for napkins, and seeing them out of reach, had wiped her mouth swiftly with the back of her hand, before turning.
“Commander Munroe,” she stumbled out. In the back of her mind she wondered how long the XO had been standing there. Perhaps that explained Gus’s weird formality.
“Sorry to disturb your enjoyment of the chef’s work,” said Munroe, a clear warning in the set of his teeth. But he had already lost Krista’s eyes: they had strayed inevitably to the executive officer’s companion, tucked slightly behind his arm — and stayed there, enraptured.
“Lieutenant,” Munroe repeated sharply. Krista snapped somewhat to attention (making her slightly, but significantly, taller than him). He stepped a little aside and addressed the small, beautiful, lightly attired woman. “Xie, you wished to meet Lieutenant Krista Davidson, one of our aviators.”
The alien, Xie, moved forward, raising an arm. Xie was the reason for this reception: one of a pair of spacefarers recently rescued from a spacetime anomaly by the patrolling strike group of the carrier Elizabeth.
“I am happy to meet with you,” she said, her voice as ethereal as her appearance. When she blinked her greeting, long lashes fell and rose like dark feathers over her crystal-blue eyes.
Krista could barely breathe. The alien was stunning for sure, but that couldn’t account for the sudden cascade of confused images and emotions pouring through Krista’s mind — some inescapably pornographic. Trying to maintain some decorum, she lifted her hand to match the greeting — then she paused, confounded, when she realised her fingers were still grasping her second helping of pastry. She thrust it towards the XO, who took it without thinking.
“Call me Cal,” she said distractedly, oblivious to Munroe’s furious look. At the alien’s politely cocked head she explained, “Short for Calamity — my callsign.”
“You have so many titles,” observed Xie, her fingers resting softly in Krista’s palm.
“I need you to accompany our guest for a short while,” Munroe interjected quickly. He turned to address the alien. “Please, enjoy our buffet. I’m sure Lieutenant Calamity knows… the very best selections.”
Xie glanced at him and offered another graceful, deferential blink. There was a pause, until Krista looked at him too — and when she did, he silently but very clearly mouthed the single word: ‘No.’
Krista raised her eyebrows in mock confusion. For the briefest moment she wondered what emergency could possibly have forced the XO to leave an alien but very female guest with the Navy’s most notorious skirt chaser.
She grinned, and returned her eyes to Xie’s — and at once, one of the images that had ambushed her mind came into extreme focus. She was looking down at the alien, who was not standing before her but kneeling, her chin tucked between Krista’s legs. And an orgasm was exploding from below, up Krista’s naked torso, making her back arc away, until her voice cried ecstasy to the high ceiling of the hangar deck.
“I am grateful for your company.”
Krista broke eye contact to glance apprehensively around the bustling deck. The imaginary orgasm was still with her: hot and raw in her loins. Had she screamed out loud?
“I’m sorry,” she managed. “I’m nervous. Thank you.”
“It is expected. You are meeting me for the first time, and you find me sexually attractive.”
Krista blinked dumbly. The general clamour of the party in the echoing hangar continued unabated, but there seemed to be a hush close at hand. An arm’s reach away, a midshipman was smirking as he turned away from the buffet.
“You are thinking that perhaps we could find a quieter place to associate,” offered Xie, once again cocking her head slightly and capturing Krista’s gaze — and her tongue was just cupping Krista’s erect nipple, the fine blonde hair at the back of her head held gently in one of Krista’s palms. Krista’s other hand was keenly encouraging alien fingers onto her slick and heavy vulva.
This time Krista recognised the illusion, and fought it loose with a shake of her head — though a part of her immediately regretted the loss.
“You know your effect on me,” she stated, going on the offensive.
“Yes, that is so,” countered Xie calmly. “You are a warrior, and the speed and efficacy of your resistance does you credit. However, it is not necessary. You are experiencing a by-product of your own consciousness, and it causes neither of us any harm.”
Krista focussed on the iridescent freckles that bridged the alien’s nose. “I’m an officer, and I’ve been given a duty,” she insisted. “Can you stop this?”
“No. Besides, your duty is to accompany me. So long as we are together, it is correctly discharged.”
There are five primary dimensions of the universe: three of space, one of time, and one of information.
Krista could not tell whether the alien was speaking out loud, or even if the words were just a memory. They had crossed to the centre of the deserted dojo with the seriousness of a sacred ceremony, leaving their clothing at the lower seat. But now, without transition, Krista was bucking and screaming as another orgasm tore through her. Only her feet and head were in contact with the tatami floor; but her awareness was centred on the exquisitely placed fingers upon and inside her.
The rapture did not fade; but the room began to pan vertiginously around, in a way that seemed disconnected from her own frenzy. She found her mouth was agape around bitter, contracting warmth; in her sight, the length of Xie’s exquisite naked body rippled in clear reflection of Krista’s ongoing orgasm, now mediated by her own hand between her legs.
Sentient beings are travellers in the fifth dimension. Brains shape and traverse the information of the universe.
Then they were simply kissing, kneeling together on the floor — although the sensations seemed magnified by the surprise of their appearance. Krista’s awareness discovered and delighted in each in turn: the gentle frictionless pressure of Xie’s tongue on her’s; the movement of air, some warm, some cool, as their mouths slid apart and pressed back together; the softly urgent clasp of arms under hers and hands on her back; the press and rub of nipple on breast, of thigh against thigh, of nose swapping with nose.
Awareness is not a property, it is a place. It moves.
Krista laughed. “What the fuck are you talking about,” she said, and in the cascade of her own words she thought to wonder why she was not terrified. In fact, she had never felt so relaxed and affectionate, not in a hundred dalliances with brave-faced Navy jennies, or awed adventurous civvies. She kissed forward without waiting for an answer, Xie’s delicate back arching to accommodate her much taller frame. “Make me come again,” she added —
And in some darkness they were tucked together, on a thin mattress, sweating with exertion, sheets thrown somewhere around them, cold ship’s steel gripped for leverage, shouting out their hard-won mutual orgasm.
Some places are comprehensible to a biological brain: like the visible frequencies of light. These places are called ‘memories’. The clearest, we call ‘consciousness’.
Krista gasped air, a confused swirl of the musky warmth of sex and the dry rush of air conditioning. Somehow, she knew they were in her ship’s cabin. And somewhere in the fading of burning pleasure to dazed contentment, her reasoning was finding a foothold in Xie’s bizarre words. Though it was utterly dark, she looked down at her lover.
“It’s you. You’re moving me.” She sucked another breath, releasing the bulkhead above to drop her hand onto the alien’s body. “You’re taking me. To places I come.” Her palm found Xie’s breast, and curled to feel its shape; while her eyes screwed shut to hold in the vestiges of ecstasy.
When they opened, she was back in the dojo.
“No,” replied Xie. Her head was resting on Krista’s outstretched arm; their naked bodies tightly spooned on the tatami. “These are the places you remember. I only inspire your awareness to move.”
Krista’s free hand still cupped Xie’s perfect breast — like punctuation in this prequel to their togetherness. The clarity of Krista’s thoughts seemed to have dissipated, as if they had only made sense in that vision of the cabin. Now, the summation of multiple orgasms was a simple, effortless enchantment that filled and completed her.
Was this love?
And suddenly, Krista was laughing again. This time, it prefixed no defensive barb; its source was pure joy. Here, in a battleship’s small dojo attached to the sickbay, deep in interstellar space, she had finally found love, with a beautiful alien who messed with her mind. Xie had turned to catch Krista’s eyes, and now she was laughing too, a sound like the tinkling of falling icicles loosened by a spring breeze.
Krista leaned her head so their brows touched, laughing ever louder, noticing that despite the total fulfilment of the moment, the blood still ran hotly to her loins, where Xie’s bottom moved softly against her. She laughed at that too. They would make love again, and again, she thought — and every time, it would matter.
But now, something was disturbing the wonder. A sound, breaking over their mirth. Krista lifted her head in alarm. A piercing whistle from the intercom.
“General Quarters, General Quarters.”
“Holy shit!” Krista’s muscles had already responded, cranking her torso upright, and she flailed awkwardly to rescue Xie from toppling away.
“All hands, action stations. Set condition Zebra. Hostiles inbound and engaging.”
Krista found her feet, sprinted aside to where their clothing lay, and hurled Xie’s bodysuit back onto the tatami.
“Dress! Move!” she cried, tugging on her knickers. The ship bucked slightly, its engines briefly overcoming the artificial gravity as it manoeuvred. A sock escaped her grasp, and she exploded, “Fuck!”
Her shirt was still unbuttoned when they exited the dojo. The sickbay was alive as crew arrived and cleared for action. The medical officer paused only momentarily on seeing them, then called “Gangway! Let the Lieutenant through!”
“Thanks, Scabs,” Krista nodded as she passed, leading Xie by the arm. The superior officer gave her a black look.
In the corridor, Krista scanned the hurrying personnel; then singled out a Marine by grabbing his shoulder. “Corporal,” she barked. “Take this civvy to the XO.”
When he gaped at her, she added. “Now!” He was no doubt thinking that civilians should be mustering on the mess deck. The XO would be in the operations room, and certainly not appreciative of Xie’s presence — not to mention that the Marine Major would definitely kick Krista’s arse later, for suborning his bootneck. But Ops was the safest place on the ship.
She pecked Xie on the lips, adding to the Marine’s confusion. “He’ll take you back to Munroe,” she explained. “I have to get to my fighter.”
She turned and ran expertly through the tight corridors, hazardous with moving people and equipment, and arrived in the ready room just as the squadron commander was snapping, “… the fuck is Calamity?”
“Sir,” she gasped out.
“Right,” continued the commander without further pause, though her look conveyed exactly what she thought of Krista’s tardiness and appearance. “It’s a swarm of alien bugs called Brachiarchs. Spacefaring hive species. We can only assume they’re out for blood, plain and simple. Back when we came across them, our diplomats were just straight up killed. If you’re up to date with your training, you’ll have met them in the sim.
“Diamond was closest. They’re engaged; taking heavy damage. Our alert fighters are en route to help.
“Your job is carrier defence. We’ll need every space-fit fighter launched, so help your crews and we’ll coordinate formations ad hoc. Your RoE is: kill anything ugly. But remember to keep your distance from Liz. The Saws are going to get super-busy if any bugs sneak past you.
“Calamity, Budgie — you’re on winkle duty. They have a Queen, which does the thinking for them. Find it. Kill it.”
She scanned for questions. “Get out there. Stay alive.”
Krista hurried to the gear room on the heels of Budgie, her wingman. “Nice bra,” he teased, over his shoulder. “Were you already getting your flight suit on? Seeing the future, huh?”
“First time you’ve ever seen one,” Krista shot back — though something about the interaction felt jarring. As she fixed her ponytail in front of her open locker, she realised what it was.
Budgie was dead.
She gasped at the sudden nausea. She had seen him die: his tiny icon on the situation display snuffed out, not even an ejection marker to show where it had been.
Krista grasped the locker door, both to steady herself and to try and look beyond it. The man there was shrugging on his flight suit. She tried to speak, but no words came. She remembered his funeral service. She remembered packing up his belongings. Tears welled in her eyes, as she remembered crying at the memory of his dumb jokes.
Budgie had glanced at her; raised an eyebrow. “Cal?”
Krista was gazing through him. Some places make sense to the traveller. These are memories.
“Budgie,” she said, her voice level, but brittle. “How long have I been on this ship?”
“The fuck, Cal, you need to get suited.”
“How long?”
“Two weeks, one-eye,” said Budgie, buckling his suit and looking at her suspiciously. “You can’t need more R&R yet. You boned everything in sight on Callisto.”
Krista wasn’t listening. Gus said he made those pastries for the first time, today. He wasn’t playing formal for the XO’s benefit. He didn’t know her.
Seeing the future?
“Shit!” she exploded. She grabbed Budgie’s sleeve, shaking him hard, as more tears fell. He was still alive.
“Budgie, don’t launch,” she shouted at him. “You can’t launch! The Brachiarchs, they don’t beat us. I’ve been on this ship for years. Fucking years. But you, you’re dead. They do kill you.”
Budgie mimed tapping his ear. “Request urgent medevac. Lima, gear room. Terminal case of sick dick.”
Krista’s mouth was wide, teeth bared, ready to scream at him. But she knew it wouldn’t help. Only an order would stop him.
Only Xie could stop this.
“Fuck you,” she concluded. “Do not launch. I’m getting you taken off this mission.”
She spun, raced for the door.
Outside, she pushed roughly past a suited and helmeted pilot to reach the stairs to the next deck. At that moment the ship rocked again; she compensated easily, naturally; but somehow, her head bounced violently off something cold and unyielding. She fell, seeing stars.
Just before she passed out, she saw the visored face of the pilot, standing over her.
“Krista, remember,” said the mouth. And the callsign on the helmet read:
CALAMITY
She was woken by another lurch, more violent than the previous manoeuvring side-effects. Her blurred vision reported no-one nearby, to a mind that still pounded with pain; the steel of the ship reverberated with groans of structural stress, and on the air came distant klaxons and voices raised in alarm.
She raised a hand to her head; flinched at the sharp pain. She remembered. Immediately, she was on her feet, swaying for balance, clutching at the walls, the bare pipes, the handrail of the stairs; willing her feet to run before she even knew they could support her.
The adrenaline kept her going, despite painful ricochets against the cold hard insides of the tortured vessel. Any other spacefarer would think that the ship was dying; but she knew better. It would survive.
Budgie would not.
No-one seemed to even look her way as she stumbled into the high-contrast, focussed environment of the operations room. But she immediately saw Munroe, hunched over a display, snapping an order to someone. She forged towards him, pushing past the dark silhouettes of seated operators.
He detected the disturbance, looked her way; and his expression froze in shock.
“Sir!” Krista called, though her voice felt like gravel. She did not have the chance to continue.
“Calamity?” cried the XO incredulously.
He seemed to come to some internal realisation. “Shit!” he exploded, raising his fingers to his ear. “Major Sanderson!” he paused for a heartbeat while the connection was made. Then: “Where the hell is the Commodore?”
Krista had reached his side. She had not understood, and did not care why he was talking to the Marines. She cried urgently, “Sir, you have to stop Budgie.”
Rather than answering, he thrust a finger at the display.
Krista looked; read the content in an instant; and the room seemed to collapse inwards around her.
There she saw a swarm of flickering, uncertainly-identified enemies, overwhelming the defensive lines of fighter symbols, even breaking through to attack the carrier directly. But there were two other fighters, far more deeply engaged, alone and fighting for their lives. Like all the friendly symbols, these two were clearly marked.
One read, ‘Budgie’; the other, ‘Calamity’.
“It’s an imposter,” she said automatically, even though she knew it was impossible. “Someone attacked me outside the ready room, wearing my gear.”
“It is not an imposter,” said a voice at her side, soft and ethereal, but clear as the ship’s bell. “It is you.”
Krista gaped at Xie. Her crystal blue eyes glimmered with reflections from the surrounding screens.
The XO explained, “It’s the other survivor we rescued. We didn’t believe it at first. But we tested her DNA. It’s you. From the future. That anomaly, it was some kind of wormhole.
He paused, then grumbled, “Makes no sense to me, how you get to be a Commodore.”
“She has taken your place in that fighter,” said Xie gently, touching Krista’s arm — and Krista flinched at the echo of love.
Her lips formed the sound, “Why?” but at that moment, a priority transmission was broadcast over the hubbub of the busy operations room:
“Elizabeth, Whisky-one. We have tally on the Queen.”
Krista blinked at hearing her own voice, but her eyes jumped automatically to the display again.
“No firing solution possible. I repeat, no firing solution.”
It was easy for a pilot of Krista’s calibre to see why: there were too many Brachiarch drones defending the Queen for the two fighters’ weapons to make any impact. The drones would just get in the way, with no regard to their own survival.
“You’ll have to chuck me a marmaduke,” the voice concluded, with sudden, poignant informality.
A nuke. To simply erase that area of space.
Krista looked at Xie. Her future self had taken her place to die, saving the ship.
But something did not make sense, and Krista frowned at the display again, trying to reach into her confused memories.
Munroe was responding, “Whisky-one — Commodore — received request november-mike, your lima. Friendlies in radius. I need an authenticate and verify from your wingman.”
“Makes no difference who I am, Munny,” responded the Commodore immediately, but gently, as if addressing an old friend. “Budgie can burn out of here. I’ll keep this bitch pinned. Do it.”
“No!” interrupted Krista. She was stabbing her finger at the display. “It won’t work!”
Munroe stared at her.
“We’ve fought these little shits a hundred times. We never get the Queen. She’s too well shielded. All a nuke in the local area will do is give her whiplash.
“The only way to kill her is a bullseye.”
“What are you talking about, Lieutenant?” said Munroe, perplexed. “We’ve only just met the damn species.”
Krista looked at Xie for support. “XO, you’ve got to believe me. Ever since we rescued these two, I’ve been having memories: of things that haven’t happened to me yet.” She returned her eyes to Munroe. “I’m seeing the future.”
She didn’t allow him time to object. “Xie was trying to tell me. I thought she was giving me illusions. But I was just remembering. She and I, we’re going to be together — ” she sucked a breath at the clarity of her memory, and the power of its implications — “for my whole life.”
“Her mind sees the information brought into this time by her future self,” said Xie, and the quiet authority of her voice seemed to calm the XO’s furrowed expression.
At that moment, the ship thumped sideways, its hull shrieking with stress; across the room, a console exploded as its electrical systems shorted out. Over shouts of alarm and pain, and the hiss of fire extinguishers, Munroe snapped, “Where are those Saws?”
“Fighters fangs-out at close range, Sir!” called a voice.
“Then go manual,” he responded. “Qualify your targets. Short bursts — leave some sky for our jocks.”
He rounded on Krista and Xie. “I don’t know what that all means, Calamity, but if you can kill me a Queen bug, I don’t care. What do we do?”
“Our radar looks for spaceship-like objects,” explained Krista, business-like. “It can’t get a lock on the bugs.”
“I can see that.”
“So, to hit the Queen, you have to put a target on her.”
Despite the urgency of the situation, there was a momentary hush in Ops. Fighter controllers exchanged glances.
Munroe turned aside. “Commodore,” he began gravely. “We need paint on the Queen. How close can you get?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me, old man,” spat back the comm. “We’re just about staying in one piece as it is.”
“I could do it,” said Krista quietly.
Munroe frowned at the odd remark, but his eyes showed that his mind was already made up. “Damn it,” he said to himself. Then: “Fire control! Get me a solution on Whisky-one.” He touched his ear. “Commodore, we’re getting hammered. November-mike is in the tube.”
“I could do it,” said Krista, louder. But she was talking to Xie.
Her mind was racing with the inevitable, insane realisation. “The Commodore said to me, ‘remember’. I can go out there.” She was pointing to the display screen. “That’s my future.”
Xie’s expression was neutral; but a tear had formed in one eye, where it glistened harshly. “I can help you,” she said, and Krista noticed how beautiful her voice was. “But I can’t bring you back.”
The only way to live a lifetime of love, was to miss it.
Of course, Krista knew she would choose to save the ship. Her own future demanded it. But still, she touched Xie’s cheek in desperate longing, and asked, “I do it, don’t I?”
Xie only smiled, gently. “I love you for it,” she said.
Krista leaned down, and kissed her. As their lips fell together, she heard Munroe bark, “Godspeed, Commodore. Fire!”
At once, that kiss was in her cabin, as the ship’s bell sounded another watch on the carrier; and then again, at night, when they lay down together. It was behind the hanging drapery on the flight deck, as the Captain called for her — twice, three times, with rising irritation — to receive her Victoria Cross.
In that kiss she tasted jubilant tears, on the day she and Xie were married, her ears ringing with the cheering and cat-calls of her friends.
They were kissing among a billion stars, floating free of the ship’s gravity, the recreation deck below hidden in a projection, Xie’s lips tight with vertigo but gently reassured by Krista’s confidence and adoration.
Then again on the flight deck, upon Krista’s return from the Brachiarch home planet, knowing that with her next word she would announce to the gathered crew: peace.
They kissed under the colonnades of the old Victory building, clutching between them Krista’s command flag, never to be flown. Xie was the same as ever, beautiful and ageless; but the laughter lines in the corners of Krista’s eyes were softened once again with tears — because that day, they would seek out the wormhole.
The kiss was broken.
Against her face, the cold, harsh bite of oxygen; the pinching seal of a mask, the tight, rough padding of her helmet. Her eyes snapped open, to a disorientating swirl of furious Brachiarch drones overlaid by flickering symbology.
There was no pause, no instant of realisation. She was the same veteran pilot who had been in the cockpit the previous second. The same fighter pilot who knew, from a lifetime of experience, that there was no possibility to close on the Queen. The same —
And yet, not the same. This Krista was both young and old. Her awareness, her memories, her very self, were formed of the whole, undiluted thread of her life, unbiased by time, laser-sharp in the fifth dimension of the universe. She was the best fighter pilot humanity had ever seen.
She was Calamity.
“Budgie, get out of here,” she ordered. “You’ve got five seconds.”
The fighter snapped to her command, peeling aside and upward at the edge of — and beyond — its serviceable capability. Brachiarchs floundered in surprise. She held down the trigger to dispatch one that could not dodge in time, heedless of ammunition; she would not need it for much longer.
A warrior drone opened fire, vaporising one of its own kind before the energy sprayed towards Krista; but she was already in full burn to pass it, manoeuvring impossibly at the same time. She saw its scale armour whisk by, inches from her canopy.
She was already instinctively plotting her path beyond, past several more warriors, to the Queen, a hunched, iridescent blue-green creature. A drone appeared from nowhere; she was spinning in space to bring her cannons to bear.
From beyond the explosion, a warrior bore down on her. Not even she could have jinked away in time.
A yellow fireball sent it spinning aside.
“Five seconds my arse, winger.”
Of course, she already knew that Budgie would save her; and so, lose his own life. At that moment, she was seeing it on the situation display, back on the carrier. But still, her mouth gaped for oxygen as she saw his fighter disintegrate under simultaneous attack from two warrior drones, whose recklessness saw them actually collide in space and tumble out of control for the half-second Krista needed to burn past them.
Now, there was only instinct. The Queen’s point defences had opened fire; those drones and warriors not sawn into pieces by the shimmering, indiscriminate arcs of her rage were filling space with their own desperate blasts of energy, all to bring down that one frenziedly manoeuvering human fighter.
First one, then more of these attacks found their target. But it was too late.
Whisky-one, what remained of it, was carried by its own momentum to a single, miraculous point of convergence. In the same microsecond that it collided with the Queen’s shielding, the nuclear missile, travelling at relativistic speed, punched directly through the explosion and impacted the Queen’s armour.
White.
Those Brachiarchs nearby that were not instantly turned to plasma by the radiative blast were annihilated by the constituent particles of their fellows, contributing to a sphere of destruction expanding at almost the speed of light, tearing everything in its path to white-hot fragments. But eventually, eventually, the vastness of space would overwhelm its energy. Some of the fighters defending the carrier were hit by shrapnel racing through the vacuum; their luckier fellows chased away the remaining Briachiarch drones, suddenly panicked and mindless. The carrier itself was holed in many places; but it was designed to take such damage. It survived.
Krista’s lips touched delicate softness; her flesh felt closeness. For a moment, she simply accepted it.
When the kiss paused naturally, she opened her eyes.
She was sitting on the tatami again, naked, entwined with Xie, who was smiling shyly at her. But the dojo seemed to have no walls: the matting continued to infinity in all directions, beneath a clear blue sky.
As she watched Xie’s beautiful eyes in wonder, Krista could not help but ask: “Who are you?”
“Your love,” said Xie gently. Before Krista could protest, she went on: “You were the first human to escape the limits of a mind. All of the information in the universe is yours to explore, to experience — and to create.”
Of course, Krista knew this already. Her awareness was free. The only boundaries of this dojo were those she created for herself, deliberately, to frame her sight. She could be anywhere, in any mind, or any fantasy. And when she remembered her own story, of Gus and Munroe, the carrier Elizabeth; heroic Budgie; and Calamity and Xie and their lifetime of love, which she could never lose — she began to laugh.
She held Xie close, and laughed. And, when their laughter was exhausted, she whispered: “Make me come again.”
This story is dedicated to the brave Jennies and Jacks who risk their lives to protect our little island. Sorry about the silly callsigns 🥰
