Through Time, Darkly

[Vogel]

[color=#FFCC00]Pryce.Research.N101
Below Decks

He'd needed time to think about this one. He needed a lot of time, although a millennium wasn't what he'd had in mind. In any case he'd left the ship earlier, refusing to go into the details of what was on his mind without his apparent benefactor, Denise, around.

What was on his mind? It was what was replaying on one of the MFDs in his cockpit right now.

Sensor logs. Nightmares.

It felt like it had only been yesterday; there in Pluto's orbit, surging up to meet the Coalition's waiting funeral detail, only to be abruptly halted by none other than mankind's first extra-terrestrial contact.

Right there. A mix of conflicting signals his Minuteman's sensors were barely able to interpret. A clearly defined, yet somehow amorphous, shape. A pulsating mass of blue tendrils and wild electricity.

Them.

Oh yes, his ship had recorded it all. It had recorded plenty of flights, and battles, in the past. But that last log, the last one he'd taken in the Solar System, haunted him even to this very moment.

"Lieutenant?"

Doyle jolted upright; his nightmares would have to wait.

He quickly shut the fighter's systems off and scrambled out of the cockpit. The hangar was dimmed to a state of near darkness, enough to allow casual movement without aggravating sleep. Only he hadn't done much sleeping last night.

"Right here," he called out, shielding his eyes from the shaft of light that spilled out of the doorway.

Funny, he thought, They still refer to me as Lieutenant. Lieutenant of what...?