3 days later, their mom disappeared.

They never found out what happened - no note, no car to trace, no camera footage, nobody at her work or any of her friends knew anything. The search lasted months, but ended in failure. 

Her dad - couldn't handle it. Didn't know what to say to her, or her siblings. Stopped going to his work, stopped reading their mail, eventually stopped leaving his room. It was probably the not knowing that got to him, Ami thought privately - the sheer uncertainty. Did she leave them on purpose? Did she want this? Was she okay somewhere? If they had just done something different, would she still be there? 

If she was good enough, would Mom come back?

She did what she could to fill the void. They didn't really have much of an extended family (both parents were only children, no living grandparents - her parents had gotten married pretty late in their own lives, after all), and Matty was so busy at the Garrison (and he couldn't leave, not now, not when he was so close to achieving his dream), but he took some time off and started skipping on sleep, to help her with the paperwork she couldn't do on her own. Together, they got the family unemployment money, cut everything non-essential out of their budget, and found a cheaper (and smaller) place to live where she and Kes could both take transit to school.

She had already been helping mom with cooking - now she made all the meals. She made sure Kes stayed at least slightly on task in school, with a combination of bribing them with their favorite foods and threatening to tell Matty. She went through the mail and made notes and got Matty's help figuring out which ones were important. She made doctor's appointments, troubleshooted the laundry and cleaning robots, and bought the groceries that were cheaper not to get delivered on Tuesdays and Fridays on the way home from school. 

And if her grades suffered, if her social connections wilted, if she cried herself to sleep some nights, well - she knew her dad and her older sibling were crying harder, hurting more, through the walls her room now shared with theirs. And someone needed to take care of them. 

Time passes, simultaneously at a horrendous crawl and an unimaginable blur. 

Matty graduates, and goes straight into the space program. He's busier than ever, but has more money to send home. He finds and pays for a tutor for Ami and Kes, a friend of his named Nuadh who was in the communications program until xi transferred out to go to a normal college, where xi'd have more free time to take care of xir parents.

Nuadh is funny, kind, and a great teacher and motivator - Kes stops failing most of their classes, and Ami's grades make a heroic upswing back towards respectable. Her teachers (well, the ones who know a bit about happened - she doesn't really talk about it) are a bit impressed.

The hole in her heart still defines her life, of course, but - she gets enough sleep most nights, she's feeding the family and handling the chores without any trouble, she hasn't missed a bill or a doctor's appointment or a major homework assignment in weeks, and - she can live like this. She can make this work. She smiles, now, when Matty tells her he's still worried about her, and does her best to reassure him, too.

When Matty is announced as one of the crew on the Kerberos mission next year, Ami is 15 and happier than she's been since she fell asleep with him under the stars. After an hour-long call with him where she makes him tell them everything he can (not much! it's classified! yes, his friend Shiro is going to be there, yes, he'll be sure to tell him that she said he has to take care of Matty for her, yes, he knows she's so proud of him and that he's the BEST ASTRONAUT EVER), she goes out to dinner with Nuadh and Kes, a rare treat.

She even bothers to tell her dad the good news, knocking on his door and speaking loudly and clearly through it, though he doesn't respond. (She shouldn't be surprised. It's been 3 years. He's just Like This, now. She just thought...)

She leaves the box of takeout she grabbed for him when she walks away. She knows that it's not as spicy as he used to like his food. She doesn't care. If he wants something different, he can ask. 

Another year goes by. Keskel graduates high school (wearing tacky class of '04 merch) and gets into a college across the country with their best friend. They're going to be roommates, and want to go into AR interface design together. Ami is proud, and (though she hates to admit it, even to herself) even more relieved; without Kes around, the cooking and cleaning will be easier, and she can finally have a room that doesn't share a wall with Dad's.

The Kerberos mission leaves on schedule, that summer. Ami and Kes fly out to say goodbye and watch the launch. She tells Matty that she loves him more than anyone in the world and is so proud of him, and tells Shiro (who she now knows a little bit, mostly from their video calls) to keep him out of trouble. She cries a little, but they're mostly happy tears. 

He slings an arm around Matthew's shoulder. "Don't worry, I'll get him home safe. I promise." 

(They're joking, lighthearted, but there's something sincere in it too.) 

She makes him shake on it, and then pulls them both into a tight hug, not trusting herself to speak.

The launch is incredible. She's never seen anything that bright or loud in her life, not even close. She watches the rocket until it's a speck in the sky, and stays in the friends-and-family viewing area for hours, listening to the very limited status updates that are cleared for the public, only leaving the 2nd time Keskel threatens to drive off without her.

A few weeks later, she's saying her goodbyes to Kes, too, this time at the airport as they leave for college, on the same flight as their best fr boyfriend, apparently.

The rhythm of her life is easier, now, that the Glass household is just her and the shell that used to be her dad. Her grades get better. She makes a few friends. She has a brief fling with a cute girl, but gets gently dumped when becomes clear that Ami doesn't have the free time or emotional availability for any kind of meaningful commitment. She finds herself actually thinking about her future, and not just the bills and appointments and homework of the next few weeks or months. To her quiet surprise, she can see herself being happy there.

Magini Zils has wanted to go to space since the first time she saw a rocket on TV and knew what it was. She loves electronics and especially robots, and she loves taking things apart and has gotten pretty good at putting them back together, sometimes with improvements.

In school, she's distractable and gets told off sometimes for being disruptive, but tries as hard as she can in every class that her parents can convince her might be relevant for SPACE SCHOOL (which turns out to be almost all of them - Magini is kinda gullible, and she loves learning!) When she gets the acceptance letter to Galaxy Garrison, she doesn't stop grinning for weeks. She tells everyone who will listen to her that going to be a SPACE ENGINEER! (She hopes she can make some friends there! She loves her online friends (especially Thrana and Kani), but the other kids at school are mostly just kinda mean to her...)

The Garrison's workload is tough, and she doesn't have as much time to hang out with people online, anymore. She still talks to Kani almost every day and Thrana whenever they're healthy enough to use a computer (...Magini is worried, but Thrana keeps brushing her off when she asks if she can help), but she struggles to keep up with the backscroll in their larger group, which she's a bit sad about on the rare occasions she lets herself think about it. Learning at the Garrison is everything she ever dreamed it would be, and - well, she's friendly with her classmates whenever they talk to her, and some of them will take turns infodumping with her, which is BASICALLY the same thing as friendship, really, and she's having the time of her life! The next two years go by quicker than they ever have, for her.

She's a third year, now, and she's gotten SO GOOD AT ELECTRONICS and also slightly better at socialization! Thrana is healthy enough to have moved back, which is nice, though mostly Magini only hears about them through Kani. (She's so glad she knows Kani! They've been friends for over half their lives, now!)

None of her school friends are in her period for Intro to Control Systems, though, and so when the first group project rolls around, she awkwardly waits for the instructor to assign her a partner from the other kids in the class who can't find one. Hopefully they'll be nice! Good group project vibes are one of Magini's favorite ways of making new friends.

Somewhat predictably, given the social dynamics of high school, this leaves her stuck with the prickly loner emo kid. Keith Kogane is pilot-track, so he's not in all that many classes with the engineering kids, but he has a reputation for getting into trouble in class and picking fights with other cadets. 

His response to being partnered with Magini is a shrug and a, "Sure, whatever." 

Welp! She will... offer to do as much of the work as she can? Prickly loner pilots sometimes appreciate it when you do that, she thinks.

She tries her best not to get into a fight with him - she really doesn't like those. 

However, before the next time the class meets -

Today's the day Matty and his sidekicks crewmates lands on Kerberos! The broadcast is happening - well, not live, the speed of light is real and therefore there's quite a delay (and Nuadh says xi's heard that the Garrison is probably broadcasting publicly with even more delay - all TV stations do that, it gives them more control). 

Keskel is home from college, and Nuadh took some time off, so the 3 of them are in the Glass family living room, snuggled up together on the couch to watch the broadcast. It's a familiar arrangement for them, but things usually aren't this tense. Ami tries not to think about it, but - in her heart, she knows space travel is dangerous.

Everything looks like it's going fine, and Kes is trading wisecracks with Nuadh about a l i e n s (the little twerp is wearing a retro-design "I want to believe" t-shirt, which Ami has to admit is a little funny), but a tense, excited silence falls on the group as the touchdown counter goes down. 

But then -

Moments before touchdown, the camera feeds from the Orfeo cut out. There's nothing but static on all channels, including audio. 

The broadcast cuts back to a Garrison comms officer at the base in Arizona, who says something bland and reassuring about technical difficulties. She assures viewers that as far as they know, the Orfeo is still on course for a safe landing, and Garrison technicians are doing their best to reestablish communications. There is no cause for alarm. 

   "...oh, that's bullshit", Kes says immediately, the shock evident in their voice.

       "How do you figure?" Nuadh doesn't sound like xi disagrees, necessarily, just like xi wants to hear their thought process.

   "Well, this is coming out on a delay, right? And everything looked like it was fine, and you said yourself comms systems have a ton of redundancy. So a total system failure seems unlikely, which means...  Why would they cut it now?"

       Nuadh nods hesitantly, brow furrowed. "But then... why..."

   Keskel turns to their sister. "What do you think, Sis? ...Sis? Ami? You with us?" 

-oh. They need her. Time to stop dissociating. 

"Yeah, I don't trust this at all. Something went wrong, and they're not telling us."

She pauses, collects her thoughts.

"Kes, you're down as Matty's next of kin - can you call the Garrison and see if they'll tell you anything they aren't publicly broadcasting?" 

She barely waits for them to nod before turning the other way.

"Nuadh, can you reach out to some of your mutual friends with Matty who work there now, see if they have anything they can share?"

Xi looks hesitant and worried, but also nods.

She - could look at rampant speculation online... that isn't actually the most useful thing to do, though. The 3 4 of them need to eat, and if this isn't resolved within the next 36 hours, she wants Kes here, where she can take care of them.

"I'm going to order us takeout, and then - Kes, I'm sorry to ask this, but can I change your flight back to next weekend and work with your partner to get you set up for remote school over the week? I -"

    A series of looks pass over their face that Ami isn't quite online enough to parse, but they nod shakily and then hug her tightly.

She clings back, for a bit, but then lets go. On to the next task.

Keskel calls the Garrison. There's a phone tree, and hold music from Holst's Planets suite, and politely sympathetic junior communications officers who know even less than the Glasses do, having been at work and not watching the news. 

Eventually: "I understand that you're worried about your brother, but while we don't know anything for certain at this point, the best guess of our experts right now is that this is just a technical fault with the waystation satellites, and there's every reason to believe the landing itself went smoothly. Mission control is still trying to reestablish communications so we can get a better picture of what's happening on Kerberos, and you can rest assured we'll be in touch with you and the relatives of the other crewmembers as soon as we have an update on their status." 

Nuadh's efforts don't turn up anything, either.

Ami gets off the phone with Keskel's partner (she's such a sweetheart; she's going to handle everything, and though she's clearly worried about Kes, she trusts Ami to look after them).

The food arrives. They eat it, mechanically, while pouring over the footage and noting places where it seems likely to have been cut and edited.

Kes does actually start looking at rampant speculation online. After a while, they wordlessly walk out of the room, change out of their "I want to believe" shirt, and then come back.

Eventually Nuadh has to go home. Kes passes out on the couch, head in her lap as she absentmindedly strokes it. (The last time they'd fallen asleep on her like this was the first anniversary that Matty hadn't been able to take off. They'd both cried so much.)

Ami falls asleep too, eventually.

The next few days pass in a blur.

The Garrison does, as promised, call them back a day or so after the failed landing. They've managed to narrow down the issue: there's been some damage to the Orfeo's communications systems, and they still can't get any signals back from the spacecraft. There are, broadly, three possibilities the Garrison is considering likely:

1. Something went very, seriously wrong on landing, and the ship was badly damaged. One or more crewmembers might be dead already, or life support systems might be compromised to the point that, even if they survived the crash, they won't live long enough for a rescue mission, which would take just as many months to get out to Pluto as the Orfeo did in the first place. 

2. The crew are safe, and life support systems are still operational, but the Orfeo is damaged enough that they can't make the journey back to Earth. If the crew are in doubt about whether they'd be able to make it back or not, protocol is for them to stay put so they can be found by a rescue mission. (The Garrison is currently putting one of those together, in case of this possibility. The projected timetable is, optimistically, two months until launch.)

3. The crew are fine and are continuing to carry out their mission, with the only significant damage being to communications. The crew might manage to repair the damage, but if they can't do that for whatever reason, the crew are fully trained to take off from Kerberos and fly back to Earth without any further support from mission control. If the rest of the ship is operational, they could still make it home as planned. 

They most likely won't know which of those possibilities is the truth any time soon. Unless the damage is minor enough that the crew can repair the communications system with the tools they have on the ship, it'll be months before there's any confirmation of what happened.

For now, Matthew Glass, along with the rest of the Orfeo's crew, is officially Missing In Action. 

not again

The next time Magini sees Keith, he looks awful. He's hunched in on himself, his lower lip has been chewed bloody, and his eyes are red and have massive dark circles under them. He's even quieter than normal, seeming only half aware of his surroundings unless someone interacts with him directly. 

Oh no. Is he oka- well, clearly not... 

When the mandatory group session starts, she gets a little bag of trail mix out of her backpack and puts it on his desk, then hesitantly asks him if he wants her to cover his part of the project? 

He glares at her. "No."

That does get him to start paying attention to their project, though. He's still quiet, preferring to work on his own part while she works on hers, but he's contributing. After a few minutes, he even hesitantly takes some trail mix, picking out the bits he likes (raisins, sunflower seeds, some of the nuts) rather than grabbing a handful. 

Ah.

She wilts a bit at his reproach, but once he starts working she works in parallel with him, and is happy to see him eating a bit, at least. 

As days turn into weeks, the Garrison keeps its promise to stay in contact with the relatives of the missing crewmembers. Keskel and Ami get regular updates whenever there's any progress to report, always at least a day or two before the same information hits the public newsfeeds. 

(After those first few days, there seems to be a specific junior comms officer assigned to the task. She introduces herself as Veronica; she sounds Hispanic, not much older than Kes, and genuine in her sympathy.) 

By the end of the first week or so, they can rule out that the damage was something the Kerberos crew could have easily repaired. The probabilities of various scenarios adjust themselves accordingly. The Garrison has analysts going over the last few minutes of data from the Orfeo with the proverbial fine-toothed comb, looking for any irregularities. By week three, they've redirected the orbital telescopes around Jupiter to point at Kerberos and finalised crew selections for the potential rescue mission (which some wit has named Heurodis). 

Week by week, more data trickles in: from the Orfeo's final transmissions, from relay satellites, from cutting-edge image enhancing programs run on the photos from cutting-edge telescopes. None of it is conclusive. None of it, despite Veronica's best efforts, is reassuring. 

Ami stops hiding in her room after the first day, when she gets hungry enough to remember that she needs to feed her family.

She listens anxiously when Keskel is on the calls. After the first one, they have a system - Kes on speakerphone, Ami taking notes on a laptop, a second display plugged into it and facing Kes if she wants to prompt them to ask more or clarify some specifics. It works pretty well - they've done this before, when navigating bureaucracy (But usually - Matty was on the phone -). 

Ami doesn't trust them, is what it comes down to. The more she pokes at it, the more she has this nagging feeling that they aren't telling them everything. 

She has a quiet fight with Kes about it, the night they have to leave to go back to college. They - think Veronica is being honest with them, that it's probably not some conspiracy, that the Garrison is doing its best to communicate with them and to get Matty back. Ami - can't agree. It's too shifty. Something happened, something weird, and they are lying. Maybe Veronica believes what she's saying - that just means they're lying to her, too. And that wouldn't be very surprising, really. Kes says she's thinking like a conspiracy theorist. The discussion mostly ends there. She hugs them goodbye, and gets to thinking.

She wants access to the Garrison's secure data storage. She wants to see what happened in the unedited footage that the people she's found online have proved must exist, the one that they concocted this entire story to conceal. And she's not a genius-level hacker, so her most likely path to achieving this by convincing someone to tell her. 

Except Veronica clearly has never seen the actual footage, and Nuadh's contacts don't know anything either (but some of them agree that it feels - fishy) so if Ami wants that info she is going to have to get close to someone vaguely important at the Garrison itself. And none of them spend much time socializing online, what with their busy and secretive careers, so she needs to be there.

Nuadh (seeming unsure of xirself) suggests that maybe Ami could test in as a communications specialist? Xi offers to help her study, says that the next test is next weekend, and that probably isn't enough time, but that Ami will be able to retake it next semester and doing it now will be good practice anyways. 

Ami starts studying.

And then, in early January, there's a call.

"It's...it's bad," Veronica says, sounding shaky. "You might want to sit down." 

And then she lays it out for them. The analysts have crunched all the numbers, the image enhancement software has eked detail out of every pixel of camera footage and telescope imaging, and...they're pretty sure they've found evidence of a crash. A bad one.

They don't think there were any survivors. 

When she's done, Veronica hesitates. "...I know it's just words, and I know it doesn't help anything, but...I truly am sorry for your loss." 

Ami turns off her video and mutes her microphone as soon as it's clear to her what's going on.

Keskel, calling in from their college room, starts crying at about the same time. Their boyfriend rushes over about a minute later (having gotten a text from Ami) and he comforts them throughout the rest of the call.

When Veronica finishes, Ami unmutes, and in a remarkably clear voice, thanks Veronica for everything she's done for their family, and then indicates via the system that she wants to transfer the call to a private one between herself and Kes.

She tells Kes she loves them and that she's so sorry. She's going to come visit them for a few days, no it's not optional, yes she can take the time off school, her teachers will understand. She'll stay in the near-campus hotel. 

Kes, through their sobs, asks her if she can afford it. Ami - doesn't mention that she's already seen the numbers on Matty's life insurance policy, since she helped him with the paperwork - and just says that she has plenty of savings, and needs to be there for them. She picks out flights (arriving in 2 days, staying for a week) while comforting them both over the phone, tells Kes that she loves them again, thanks their girlfriend for taking care of them, and then apologetically ends the call "I need to pack and clean up here, sorry" before either of them think to ask how she's doing.

The thing is - she already knew, in her heart of hearts, that Matty was gone (and Shiro, too, even though - he promised - )

Space exploration history is mandatory core curriculum, and it was one of the classes she was most invested in, so she knows. Non-trivial accidents in spacecraft are almost never survivable. Sure, she hoped - who wouldn't? - but this isn't surprising. The fact that there's footage that the Garrison is hiding just means that the failure was probably something very embarrassing to them. Maybe an obvious equipment failure that would have made them look culpable. Maybe something weirder. 

So. Matty is gone. She can live with that. She has to be able to live with that. Kes needs her. 

But - she can't live with not knowing what happened. She's had enough that for one lifetime. And those bastards at the Garrison know, and if they won't tell her - 

She picked an evening flight so she'd still be able to take the aptitude test to transfer in as a comms student. She spends the next day studying with Nuadh, but when she goes in for the test, she fails, badly enough that she isn't sure if she'll make it next time even if she studies full time. 

She asks Nuadh if there's another way. Xi sees the look in her eyes, and - says xi might know somebody who could help, actually, though it might be expensive...

She leaves for the airport. Hires someone to come by the house and leave food outside her dad's door while she's gone. Wonders, absentmindedly, if he'll notice that anything's changed. 

(She didn't bother telling him. What would be the point?)

Somewhere between Ami leaving for the airport and meeting Keskel at the other side, the news hits the global media. It's even sparser than what the families were told: the mission to Kerberos has been officially declared lost, all crew presumed dead, and the planned rescue mission has been cancelled.

The true cause of the mission failure is unknown, but they've all but ruled out a mechanical fault, so it's been officially recorded as pilot error. 

The news spread like wildfire around the Garrison, of course, and even the cadets knew the Heurodis mission was being cancelled at least a week ago. 

So it can't be that part that has Cadet Keith Kogane getting into a fight with Commander Iverson the day the final announcement, with its finding of 'pilot error', goes public. Their shouting match, which seems to be about the pilot in question—the name 'Shiro' comes up a lot—is very loud, very public, and leaves Iverson nursing a bandaged eye.

Keith is escorted off campus by security guards, not even given time to pack. 

Magini doesn't see him get dragged off (she's been talking a lot to Kani, lately, and trying to stay on top of schoolwork) but when the video starts going around someone sends it to her with a "hey, isn't that your ICS partner?"

Oh no. Poor Keith...

Keith gets a series of messages from her.

Are you okay?

...sorry. dumb question.

let me know if you need anything?

✔ Read 3:27am

...yeah. That makes sense.

She finishes their project on her own, but leaves his name on it. 

Ami extends her hotel stay for another 2 weeks - Keskel is distraught, and she falls back into the old habits of doing everything she can to keep their life running. Their boyfriend is taking it hard, too, so she does what she can to keep them both afloat, emailing teachers, cooking, cleaning, and holding Kes while they cry.

(She remembers to call the man she hired to feed her dad and send him enough money for the extra time, along with a tip for being up for extending the contract on short notice).

 After the the chaos of the first week dies down, she starts working on helping them find a therapist. Lies, when Kes asks if she's getting therapy, which she doesn't like doing, but - they need it, and she doesn't, and there's no way she'll be able to convince them of that.

She doesn't need therapy. She needs answers.

Nuadh sends her the contact info of someone who goes by the alias polar-sky-snakes online. They claim to have a way of bypassing the system that gets used to wipe the storage of omnicalcs that applicants bring into the testing facility. They want - what she's used to thinking of as a lot money for it, but it's nothing she can't afford, now. 

Ami tells PSS she'll pay 10% upfront and the rest after the test, and ends up gets haggled down to 25/75. She leaves the money in an unmarked envelope and hides it at the drop point - they send her a simple checkmark a few hours later to confirm that they've received it. 

She starts studying again, this time for an open-book test. It's still way over her head, for now, but she has until the end of summer; she can tell it'll be possible, as long as PSS isn't scamming her. ("No use worrying about it now", she hears Matty saying in her head. "Either it will happen or it won't, and all you need to do is have a plan for both.")

Months pass. 

Magini is sleeping in (she pulled another all-nighter to finish her homework) when she's jolted awake by her phone ringing. She fumbles with her phone (why is Kani calling her?) and then -

The voice on the other end is clearly hyperventilating.

 "Magini - I'm so so sorry - I shouldn't have left her alone - I didn't know -"

Several miserable hours later, her teachers all get the same email: 

A close friend of mine committed suicide last night.  I am going to be out of school for a week to go to the cremation and be with a mutual friend. I would like to get an extension on homework due over that period, if possible. 

Sorry for the trouble.

- Magini Zils

Her teachers respond with varying degrees of sympathy but, more importantly, most of them do give her the extensions. 

One of the TAs sends:

You may have already filled it out, but in case you hadn't, here's a link to the form you need to submit for an excused absence from this week's classes. (You want section 4b. Fair warning, it's invasively detailed.) My condolences for your loss, and please let me know if there's anything else I can do to help. 

Adam Wheeler

:( thanks

and then 15 minutes later

stars you were not kidding about the invasiveness!! appreciate the warning

The 71 minutes between when Kani finds the body and when she can stop taking actions are burned into her brain, but once her dads bring her home from Thrana's small apartment (she told them very clinically over the phone that she didn't think she could take the bus - she was having trouble breathing right, in a very distracting way), she curls up into a ball, sobbing, and loses track of time completely. (why... why...)

Kani is still curled up crying when Magini slips into her room that evening. 

She sits down on the bed, eyes watering, and does what little she can to comfort her friend. (It isn't enough. She left them both, chasing her stupid dreams of space, and now - now -)

Thrana didn't want a funeral. She wanted her body to be burned, with little ceremony. 

Calu arranges it, supported by her still-living partner. She looks haunted, in a way Magini has only ever seen on actors. 

(In a rare moment of social acuity, Magini notices Kani avoiding Calu. She wonders what happened there, but can't bring herself to ask, not now. Kani will tell her when she's ready to).

(she won't, actually, but it's an understandable mistake for Magini to make)

 Kani isn't surprised that Thrana's family isn't there, besides a  younger sister who lives nearby. She wonders if her parents even know she's dead. (She's always hated Thrana's parents, ever since the hospital days started. She wonders distantly if Calu even told them).

When people start telling stories, they're all about - the things Thrana did for the people she loved. Kani thinks about the note, about everything that she learned in the week before it happened, and feels - empty. hollow. 

(she's shaking, fingernails digging deep into her palms). 

Time passes. Ami takes care of Kes from a distance, studies with Nuadh, tries to avoid getting too lost in the weeds in online conspiracy boards. She lets her grades falter and her social connections wither, and none of her teachers or friends really blame her, though they keep checking in on her, asking gently if there's anything they can do to help her. (She wishes they'd stop. She's fine, and the pity in their faces is starting to make her sick. She's nothing like her father.) 

In the moments she stops to plan out further ahead than her next week (study plan, what to cook, keeping a calendar for Kes - she hasn't had to help them with homework scheduling like this since -), she makes quiet plans for what she'll do once she gets into the Garrison - a list of teachers to try and network with, promising leads, things that she thinks might have happened.

A few months in, once it becomes clear that she's truly committed to this plan, Nuadh asks her quietly what she'll do after she finds what she's looking for. Ami - doesn't know how to answer that. Doesn't like thinking about it at all, actually.

Xi looks at her with that same look of pity that she's growing to despise, and changes the subject. Mercifully, xi doesn't ask again.

School gets out for the year. Kes has gotten back on their feet - they found an interesting summer job with their boyfriend, who Ami is so grateful to for sticking with them this whole time. They're still hurting, of course, but therapy has been good for them. Every small smile and joke they make helps reassure her that everything is going to work out. They're going to be okay. This is going to work out. She's doing a good job. 

Nuadh declares her more than ready for the placement, so she switches to studying the fundamentals she'll need once she's at the Garrison proper. She also spends a bit of time reviewing what she remembers of Matty's social circle - especially the people who he know who are still at the Garrison. It hurts, more than she expected it to, but it feels kind of good, too. She wants to be able to remember who he was, not just - how she lost him.

When the time comes, polar-sky-snakes comes through. Her meticulously-selected notes are right there where she needs them, and she aces the placement test (...she makes a few mistakes on purpose to avoid actually acing it. They determined that would be suspicious, and she needs to stay as under-the-radar as she can).

She pays PSS their due, plus a little extra. She packs, buys a few new things for she'll need there, and spends a hefty chunk of her share of the life insurance to hire someone to feed her dad for the next year, since she won't be around to do it. And then - she leaves.

In August of 2405, Ami arrives at the Garrison with a confident look plastered on her face, and to her mild surprise, she finds it's not just a mask. In her heart, she feels like - she's done with the hardest part. She's been working for this for almost 8 months now, and now she's here, in the place that took her brother from her, and she's going to find out why. She just needs to be smart, be patient, and follow the plan. 

She arrives at the transfer orientation 5 minutes early, ready to take notes. 

Orientation begins with a speech from Commander Iverson, the senior Garrison officer in charge of the cadets at this base. The eyepatch must be new; he doesn't have it in his staff photo in their orientation bundle.

"You've all worked hard to get here," he begins, without any preamble. "The standards for testing in as a transfer are even higher than the regular admissions tests. Just by sitting here, you've proved you're among the best of the best. But don't think that means you can relax. You're a year, two years, some of you even three years behind your new classmates." (Ami, testing in as a senior, is in that last group.) "Our standards are high for a reason: you're gonna have to be the best of the best if you're ever gonna catch up."

His one good eye sweeps over the assembled students. "Welcome to the Galaxy Garrison Academy, cadets. The real work begins today." 

gulp

Ami gets settled, starts her classes, and immediately gets hard confirmation she is, in fact, in over her head. She realizes she needs to make friends for the simple reason of needing people to do homework with, or she's going to flunk out before she can get the answers she need.

How about this slightly younger girl who sits near the back of their shared classes? She seems like she's taking good notes and asking interesting questions, when she isn't exhibiting some achingly-familiar withdrawn-tired-distracted behaviors...

Oh... the moment Ami starts paying attention to her, she's reminded so much of Kes that it almost hurts. Is she okay? Does she need help?

She catches her after a class where the poor girl was really struggling, smiling kindly at her.

"Hey - are you doing okay?"

Kani!!! I made a new friend today!  I think I made a new friend today at school??

-okay actually she did basically all the work (not surprising), came up to me after class and apparently noticed I was sad?

 Her name's Ami, and she reminds me of Thra is really kind and thoughtful and cheerful I think you'd really like her.

We helped each other with homework and she suggested we both say a little bit about what was on our mind, it was really sweet ;-;

I hope you're doing okay getting enough sleep hanging in there.

Sorry again I couldn't be home for the summer. I just - my advisor told me that dropping out of the internship after I'd already applied could make a really bad impression, and - I miss you.

(A/N: strikethroughs in chatlogs represents text that Magini edited after sending.)

(As Magini has grown to expect, the only response she gets from Kani is a belated scattering emoji reacts -  😭s, 🫂s, and a 💙 at the sweet part.)

Ami likes Magini. The poor girl reminds her so much of a mix of Kes and Mat - is someone who Ami is very comfortable with caring for and about. 

They quickly fall into patterns really familiar to Ami - Magini loves teaching people and isn't bad at it, and more importantly, she isn't the type to get suspicious about the weird gaps in Ami's knowledge. With her help, Ami is quickly getting up to speed on the basics that Nuadh couldn't cover. And in return, Magini eagerly drinks up the kindness and praise that Ami long ago learned to generate on autopilot, in the early days when Kes was struggling so much and the parent-shaped hole of person absolutely on your side / in your corner  was something she could tell she needed to fill.

And she listens, as Magini tells her what happened to her friend Thrana (and the hurt and sadness about not being let in), and how much she misses Thrana and Kani both. Holds her, as she cries about them, and tells the poor girl it's not her fault at all.

(It doesn't even register to her that she might be doing something bad or wrong, keeping Magini in the dark about her own struggles and plans in much the same way the younger girl's friends had. Why would it? Ami isn't on the brink of collapse like either of them were, she's fine. She just needs answers. And there isn't time for her to dig into it right now. Even with the help she's getting, she's on a clock before she just can't keep up with the work, and she needs to find out what happened to Matty before then.)

She's no hacker, so her plan for trying to learn more is finding out which teachers are the best vectors / easiest to befriend as a student and going from there. To do that, she's befriending TAs by showing up to TA-run tutoring hours, asking for help, being grateful and sociable and interesting, and seeing what she can learn.

Adam always finds that his tutoring hours are popular this early in the academic year, when a new batch of teenage girls develop giggling crushes on their attractive twenty-something TA and before they discover that he (a) takes his work and their studies very seriously, and (b) is gay. 

So it takes him a moment to notice that this teenage girl is Ami Glass.

(All of Ami's teachers and their TAs got an email at the start of term. Yes, it's that Glass, yeah, she's his little sister, maybe be careful about using Kerberos as an instructive example in your classes, etc. He made a note of the name and face.)

...okay. This is fine. He can be normal about this. He's a professional. Kerberos is not going to come up and therefore his complicated feelings about it are irrelevant. 

"Glass, right? What can I help you with today?" 

Okay! Game face! "Hi! I am kind of struggling with this homework assignment and would love some help with these problems?"

(She's picked out ones where she feels like her gaps in knowledge are noticeable but not confusing. Confusing people is dangerous - when smart people get confused, they prioritize learning more.)

And then she rereads his holobadge, has a visible flash of recognition, and -

- looks at him with a sad expression seems so out of place, on her young face, and says softly  "...I'm so sorry about what happened to Shiro."

Well there goes that plan. 

wait what the fuck why did SHE SAY THAT that was NOT THE PLAN abort abort ABORT

with a face much more familiar to Adam (embarrassed teenager who just said something she instantly regreted), she blurts out "-augh, I'm sorry! That was very inappropriate of me, it's just - I'm Matty's little sister, and - he kept me up to date on his social life, when he called home, and - your name came up a fair bit. He really respected you." 

"...thank you. And—I'm sorry for your loss, as well. I considered Matt a friend."

More Takashi's friend than Adam's, even before Matt took Takashi's side in the breakup, aaaaaand the rest of that train of thought can go in the Feelings Box. 

She should stop talking about this, he's clearly sad and also they literally just met, but she - doesn't want to -  "Thanks. It's - space travel is dangerous, right, the three of us knew something like this could happen. But I -" 

She sighs. "- did he ever talk about what happened with our mom?"

"I think he mentioned it at some point. She's a missing person?" 

"Yeah. She disappeared when I was 12. And - obviously, losing her was horrible for all of us, but - it was the uncertainty, the not knowing what or why, that -" 

She chokes up a bit, then catches herself. "...I dunno. I miss him so much, but - often I feel like not knowing is the worst part of this, too, when -"

Oh no he hates this. Why is this student having feelings at him and making him think about his feelings. Help. 

Hey, no fair, why is the new transfer hogging the hot TA just because she has a tragic backstory? This other girl will interrupt to ask a question about the homework, you know, what they're supposed to be talking about. 

Aaaand during the interruption her brain comes back online. 

Ami???? Hello???? You are fucking stupid???? Why did she say all that what the shit that was so dumb and counterproductive she might have ruined everything aaaaaaAAAA
 

She waits until the other girl is done, and then says  "...I'm so sorry, I really didn't mean to spring that all on you, that was really rude of me. Can we - pretend none that happened and just -" she holds up her assignment in chagrin.

"Of course. So, which problem were you struggling with...?" 

They can both be Incredibly Normal And Mentally Healthy People for the remainder of the tutoring session. 

So Normal! So Mentally Healthy!

(He's an excellent tutor. She thanks him heartily, when they're done, and manages to flee the scene gracefully.)

Kani's fathers bought her a brand-new hoverscoot for her birthday a few months ago, to replace Bippy, her worn-down 'scoot she'd grown up riding. Bippy had been a bit of a Frankenstein-case; built and repaired using parts from the two they'd had as kids. It made funny noises, was almost as heavy an 8-year-old Kana was, and couldn't really handle the inclines and drops well enough for the trails down into the Canyon that the family spent almost every weekend exploring, in those days. When they got to the cliffside, Papa would have to hitch Bippy to his 'scoot while Dad strapped Kani into his, and she wouldn't get to drive again until they were safely on the floor.

Bippy 2 (Kani hasn't had the heart to give it a fresh name - everything she can think of is just a painful reminder), is fancy. It's silent, fast, waterproof and river-safe, and most impressively, it folds up into a safety hoverpack (not the kind that flies, you need a very special license for those, but ones that hikers, climbers, and cavers use to make it all-but-impossible to fall. It's the thing she'd wanted more than anything, 2 years ago, before Papa had gently told her that it wasn't the kind of present they could really afford to get her, not on their Park Ranger salaries.

When she remembers that conversation, she starts crying out of guilt, but Papa pulls her into a tight hug as Dad explains that all 5 of her grandparents and some family friends all chipped in to pay for it, and that they love her and they want her to be okay. (The closest they've seen her she's seemed to okay, since March, was when she came home past midnight after riding Bippy the 1st - she'd speak in full sentences, and even sometimes volunteer information without being asked!)

She'd clung to him and sobbed, feeling - a complicated mixture of pain and guilt and hope and love that was so much better than the dull stabbing griefgriefguiltemptygrief. 

She'd expected Bippy 2 to have a pretty substantial learning curve, but it turned out that the fancy new glove-based control system was exactly as intuitive as Magini had claimed it was, when she'd infodumped about it to Kani and Th 2 years ago. (Magini's uncle is rich, and so when she visits her cousins, she gets to play with some really crazy stuff. Kani had been jealous of that, back when she had more feelings.)

She goes out most nights, now. With her music in her ears, the wind rippling across her skin, the walls of the Canyon on each side of her, and the stars above, she can feel at peace, for minutes or even hours at a time.  

Tonight, she's taking her first trip upriver in years, marveling at how nice Bippy 2 is. Bippy the 1st could handle water travel, of course, every 'scoot built in the last 100 years could, but it was heavy enough that banking at all would risk destabilizing, and the gyrosafeties would lock up in response, keeping her perfectly vertical and painfully slow.

With a practiced slide of her flighthand, Kani tilts almost horizontal, reaching down with her free arm and skimming the surface of the water. From somewhere deep within herself, she feels a tiny spark of delight.

Tonight, she feels drawn to explore...that way. She's never been up there before.

(...mostly, admittedly, because that particular side canyon isn't actually part of the Grand Canyon National Park.)

The gestalt entity that is Kani-and-Bippy 2 has no concept of National Park boundaries, only the ground and the wind and the stark night sky, which looks so pretty in that direction. 

It leads, and she follows. 

The water beneath her throws back shattered moonlight as it ripples, dancing over rocks and rapids. A boat would never make it along here, even going downriver instead of up, but Kani is on a hoverscoot and doesn't have to care about things like riverbeds or gravity. 

She follows the canyon upriver, winding back and forth, to the base of a majestic waterfall several stories high. At the bottom, the water crashes down into a spreading pool, the canyon widening to accommodate it, before journeying onwards to become the river she's been following. The darker patches of shadow along the canyon walls, around the edges of the pool, might be the mouths of caves. 

It feels like the sort of place that's never been touched by human hands, the river left alone to carve away a path through the rock for hundreds or even thousands of years. 

She slows down and then stops entirely when she reaches the edge of the plunge basin, staring up in awe. It's... beautiful.   

After a while, tears begin to run down her face. She - hasn't done any nature photography, since March, because - she'd always send them to Thrana first, and she won't ever ever ever get to do that again. But - something about seeing this makes her realize that - 

Thrana would be heartbroken, if they knew that Kani had stopped doing something she loved, because of her. And - so would Kani, actually. That's - that's no way to remember her best friend.

Ami is up late doing homework with Magini when the other girl gets a message on her phone and then - starts crying? 

"What happened?" she asks gently.

"Kani - she - " but she's crying too hard to talk, actually, and is just going to show Ami her phone.

It's a breathtaking picture of a massive waterfall, and the text "wanted to show u this. i think she would have loved it ;-;"

Oh! It's good crying. 

She smiles gently, gives Magini a tissue and then a big hug. (She - mostly avoids thinking about all the photos Matty used to send her and Kes, in the groupchat she hasn't let herself look at in almost a year now, but her eyes water a bit anyways.)

"Let's stop here for the night, okay? We can work on this before class tomorrow - you should go message her."

They really would have, yeah. 

...She told me once she thought you took some of the best nature photos she'd ever seen, you know.

...thank you. It means a lot to me ;-;

The latest news, according to the few online subcommunities she trusts enough to spend time checking these days, is that the Garrison is hiring linguists, in surprising (which is to say, externally noticable) numbers. Some people are quietly pointing out that the number of things a space agency might want linguists for are... limited.

The thing the regulars she likes are talking about is signal analysis. (And the implications of that, less than a year after a lost spaceship under deeply suspicious circumstances...)

This is important. This is related. This is what they've been covering up. She's sure of it.

If they're analyzing signals... she needs to know more. And -

...well, she's made a friend with some seriously impressive hardware skills, who regularly does maintenance work in the communications array for extra credit... 

She meets up with Magini that night. Finds a quiet place, and explains what she thinks is happening (though not why she cares) and asks the younger girl if this something she wants to look into with her. 

Holy shit Ami thinks the Garrison is GETTING ALIEN SIGNALS??

... she's less excited about what Ami is asking of her, but Magini can sense a bit of the quiet desperation in her friend's voice, and - 

and Ami has been a really good friend, actually. She reminds Magini to eat, listens when she needs someone to talk to, and helps her stay on track with her homework and scheduling, even for the classes they don't share. And though Ami says it's fine and that Magini's tutoring and homework help more than makes up for it... 

She feels like she owes Ami. She wants to help.

So she brings her friend back to her room, where she rummages around until she finds an old pair of light-up earrings she had tucked away. 

She excitedly explains that while the lights are burnt out and the batteries are dead, the paired short-range wireless chips to keep them in sync still work great, which is why she kept them around. She can pull them out, and with a bit of easy tinkering... 

Oh. Magini is a genius! This is going to work.

Ami is a good ADHD project aid  - she holds things, takes notes, keeps track of odds and ends and trains of thought. 

Before long, they've built a tiny chip Magini can stick into the relay circuit she's repairing in a few days, and a paired chip in her phone that will grab a burst of it when she walks by. 

Keith's hoverbike is sleek, red, and fast, and it's by far the nicest thing he owns. Shiro bought it as a run-down, rusty old thing the summer after Keith's first year at the Garrison, and the two of them spent the whole summer break cleaning and restoring it. Shiro asked him what colour they should paint it and let him pick the brightest, boldest red they could find, and Keith was still blindsided when October rolled around and the bike turned out to be his 16th birthday present. 

This summer, with no other demands on his time, he's been taking his bike out into the desert whenever it has enough battery to spare, and driving until he has to head home and charge it up again from the solar panels. If he closes his eyes, sometimes he can almost pretend Shiro is out there with him, challenging him to another race. 

It's getting harder to pretend. 

Today, he's come further north and east than usual, skirting the southern lip of the Grand Canyon. He and Shiro never came up this way because it's private land, but he's finding it harder and harder to care about that sort of thing. If he's caught, at least someone will acknowledge that he exists. 

...his bike's starting to get low on charge. He could just head home, but instead, on some unknown impulse, he parks it near a trailhead and sets up the portable solar panel. He can explore on foot while it's charging. 

The trail down into the canyon is completely unmarked, with barely any signs of human passage. 

That is, until he gets to the caves. There are dozens of cave mouths on both sides of the river, all different shapes and sizes and heights with no two alike. Some are just little nooks, while others are deep caves that wind away into darkness—but not before giving him a glimpse of the walls, covered in carvings. 

When he was a kid, they went on a school trip to see some Native American rock carvings. They just looked like weathered rocks, until the guide pointed them out, tracing the outlines with her finger in the air above them, and then you could sort of see where the lines were meant to be if you squinted. It was a bit of an anticlimax. 

These are different. They're bold, cut deep, and they've clearly been sheltered from the elements down here in this little valley. Humanoid figures, geometric shapes, and other, stranger things stand out stark and clear on the cave walls. Deeper in, there are paintings, too: people and animals, the pigments still bright hundreds or thousands of years after they were laid down. 

Far too soon, the light starts to go from the canyon as the late afternoon sun sinks lower in the sky, and he has to leave. 

He'll come back tomorrow with a camera. And a flashlight. 

There's a distinctive splash pattern at the shore on the way to where his bike was parked, as though someone with a much smaller vehicle was leaving in a hurry.

Magini walks past her eavesdropping earring on the way to and from an advanced comms class she has almost every day, so it isn't long before she has enough data to start doing basic signal analysis. She'd warned Ami that this is not at all her specialty, but she quickly discovers it really doesn't need to be, for this.

When next she sees Ami, she has a gleam in her eyes and some ✨graphs✨. 

She starts by showing off a group of signals from the lunar colony - strong, directed bursts, obviously encrypted but of about the same duration each day, while the moon is in the dish's direct path. These are status check-ins - they've sat in on them in class before, so she knows that they happen daily, are short, and use this dish. (There's much weaker signals, getting picked up the entire time the moon points at the dish - local comm systems on Luna base that the dish is storng enough to pick up, Magini explains quickly).

Next set: the same, but for Mars. Looks very similar - the signals are weaker (Mars is further away), and the duration of the local chatter signals is shorter (Mars is in the dish's cone for less time), but otherwise it's the same thing. She skips through them quickly.

And then she gets to the part she's clearly been dying to tell Ami about the whole time.

"So. Jupiter. Does not have an established space base, or, uh, anything that should be broadcasting radio signals at all. But when the dish faces it -"

These graphs don't look anything like the ones before. Magini starts by pointing out that explains that the signal strengths here are just wrong, for a static installation. They look more like - multiple broadcasting sources, moving between the gas giant's many moons, one about as loud as the Mars base, the others almost too faint to pick up at all. And the signals themselves... even with her extremely limited signal analysis toolkit, it's obvious to Magini that these are just... different. Almost certainly what they're hiring linguists for.

Aliens. In the solar system. Doing ?something? at Jupiter.

Ami - looks more serious and concentrated than Magini has ever seen her, actually. It's pretty intense!

"Okay. They're at Jupiter now... How long have they been in the system? do we have any way to tell? - not directly, obviously, since we only started collecting data a few days ago. We can assume the Garrison has been picking this up for at least a few weeks, since they've had time to start hiring linguists..."

-stars. Magini knew this was really important to her friend, for whatever reason (she didn't pry. People don't like it when you pry!), but, dang, she was hoping for a bit more... excitement?

She thinks about the other girl's question, for a bit.

"Well... it would depend on what they were doing and where? Like - " she pulls up a model of the solar system, draws a line between Earth and Jupiter, and slides time back and forth to show how the distance between the 2 planets has been changing.

"Okay, so we're closer to Jupiter now than we have been for most of the year. And we can hear the big shi-radio source fine now, but 2 months ago it probably would have been pretty weak, hard to distinguish from noise if you weren't looking for it, and - " scroll scroll back in time "around, like, 4 months ago, it would have been impossible. The sun would have been in the way."

Ami nods seriously. "And if they'd been further out... it would be too far away to pick up anything, right?"

When Magini nods, she continues.

"Then it has to be this. This is what happened to the Orfeo, why they suddenly cut the broadcast and then cancelled the rescue mission. It wasn't an equipment failure - they knew. It was aliens."

"Wait, you think the Orfeo was destroyed by aliens? And that the Garrison just... lied to everyone about it? That's -" 

In a jolt, she remembers the haunted look on Keith's face, the day after the initial announcement. How desperate he'd looked, in that video of him being dragged off.

She has to tell him. He deserves to know.

Ami can tell something just occurred to Magini. "What is it? Are we missing something?"

"No, just... My old lab partner, Keith. I think he was really close to someone on that ship. The pilot, maybe? I forget his nam-" 

    "Shirogane Takashi", Ami supplies automatically.

"oh! Yeah, Shiro. Keith got expelled after they blamed Shiro for the crash, he refused to believe it, got into a fight with Commander Iverson."

She fidgets miserably. "I really want to tell him. He deserves to know."

Ami nods, slowly. "...Yeah. He does. Be careful, but - you can tell him."

She stands up, shakily. "I need to get going, I'm already late for class. Thank you so much, Magini. Your help with this means the world to me." 

Keith gets a secured message!

hey, so.

stars. i know this sounds stupid. but I've been looking into it with a friend, and we got limited access to the Garrison comm dishes, and -

...Well, we think that they lied about the Orfeo. Because we're pretty sure there are aliens in the solar system, and they know, we only know because we're piggybacking their dish, and they're lying about that. And the aliens easily could have been in the system for a year. Could have been at Kerberos, last December. Could have -

Anyways. I know you didn't like me much, but - you deserve to know the truth. Sorry.

-Magini

Message sent, Magini goes to read more about the Orfeo, and -

"Matthew Glass, 24, survived by his father and two younger siblings." 

Oh. 

Well. 

At least Ami likes Magini enough to let her be useful. She appreciates that. 

She just thought-

Keith leaves her on read for most of an hour before sending:

I don't dislike you

thanks

!!!

Oh! No problem - want me to let you know if we find anything else out? 

What the hell is he meant to do with this information? He can barely even think about that, his brain too full of Shiro Shiro Shiro—

But. 

you think they might be alive? 

Huh. What does she think?

There's a pause, and then.

...I don't think it's likely? But maybe, yeah. There's too much we don't know.

...Garrison command would probably have a better idea, but. They're obviously not talking.

I bet Iverson knew. shoulda punched him harder

she giggles, at that.

You got him pretty good already! Did you know he's still wearing an eyepatch?

holy shit. maybe I did punch him hard enough

Yeah. 

I wish they would just tell us what's going on. You and Ami deserve better than this. 

...is he supposed to know who that is???

who's Ami

Oh, sorry, Ami is the person I've been looking into this with. Her older brother was on the Orfeo. 

...well now he's having as many as several emotions about the fact that Magini apparently thinks he belongs in the same category as someone who—lost their brother—

(—he doesn't even know if that's what Shiro was to him, but they were something, and nobody else seems to get that—)

He doesn't text back. 

...oh no, should she not have said that? 

Ugh, she so bad at this.

Kani returns to the waterfall again the next day, feeling curious (and... maybe a bit excited? (is she allowed to be excited?)) to explore the caves during the daytime and without company! It's weird, but... she feels like there's something in them that feels like it's calling out to her, maybe? (Maybe she's just losing it. But if so, it's a pleasant sort of losing it, so she's not going to think about it too hard...) 

But as she approaches the plunge basin, she sees a hoverbike, bright red in the daytime sun, and her mood plummets like the water falling off the cliff. He's here again...

Well. He didn't look that much older than her, and she has the advantage of being too broken to be in school. (After the 2nd month of refusing to leave the house, her fathers had pleaded with her until she agreed to do a self-study program, which - hasn't been horrible, if she's being fully honest?)

Tomorrow is Monday. He won't be here then! She'll come back.

The Red Rider (as she's taken to calling him) is apparently a fellow delinquent, because his bike is there all of Monday - she leaves and comes back several times, hoping for some daylight hours to explore on her own. No luck - he's there till past sundown. And presumably he'll be there tomorrow, too. (She gets so frustrated that she cries, the 4th time that she rounds the bend and sees that bright red bike. Why can't the universe just let her have this? Has she not suffered enough?)

That night, she waits until everyone else is asleep, sneaks into the garage, and digs through the camping supplies until she finds an old set of high-powered floatlamps that her fathers use when doing Ranger Activities past sunset. These ones stopped working and had since been replaced, but she remembers Magini saying that she was 90% sure that the controller had burnt out its battery unit but would work fine if it were plugged into power...

Back in her room, she tests it, and - success! The controller beeps happily at her, and lets her set, adjust, and recall the floating orbs as she needs. Magini was right! (She should message her and let her know! (...maybe later...))

Bippy 2 has a power output port, so she doesn't even need to bring a spare battery. 

The next day, Kani wakes up before noon for the first time in a while, rushes through her schoolwork (...as well as Monday's), and then eats a big dinner before leaving for the caves, floatlamps tucked into Bippy 2's storage compartment. This time, she takes the long way around she traced out on a map, and arrives at the top the waterfall, so she can wait for the Red Rider to leave without being spotted.

She times it well, and gets to eat her packed dinner while she watches the sun set, and it's not long before Red leaves and she can finally head back into the caves, a floatlamp hovering behind her head, the other 4 trailing behind her at 5-meter intervals.

The string of bobbing lamps casts flickering shadows on the cave walls, lending the illusion of movement to the carved and painted figures that adorn them. Humans and animals—some recognisable, some not—run and fight and cavort around Kani on all sides. 

One figure repeats over and over: a lioness, sitting or roaring or leaping, sometimes towering huge over the tiny people around her. Wherever traces of pigment remain, she's always some shade of blue. 

It's incredible.

She looses track of how much time she spends there, staring at the paintings, fingers reaching out but never quite touching... 

She doesn't take any pictures. For some reason, it just feels like it'd be... wrong, somehow.

When she finally heads home and sleeps, late that night, she has fewer of her usual nightmares. Instead, she sees that strange blue lioness - impossibly tall, towering above her, keeping her safe.

The next evening, when Keith leaves the caves, sitting conspicuously on his hoverbike's seat, there's a snack bar and an envelope with "To: The Red Rider" written on the front. Inside it, there's a handwritten note:

Hey Red,
This place is calling out to you too, isn't it? I can't think of any other reason why you'd be here now, every day, when 4 days ago it seemed clear that nobody had been here for years and years...
At first I didn't really understand why I kept coming back. I thought I was going crazy, but there's something, here, isn't there? I think it's... friendly? Comforting? Kind? 
I've been going in at night to avoid running into you, but - I wanted you to know it's not just you, or just in your head. See you around, maybe?
Sincerely,
Blue

...what.

He checks the snack bar for tampering, but it looks unopened, and nobody seems to have messed with his bike either. He...puts the note and snack bar in his bag? And heads home?

Why is his life so weird these days. 

Magini hasn't quite been herself since the day they found out about the aliens, the poor girl. Ami sympathizes; she'd probably be stressed or scared about all of this too, but mostly what she's feeling these days is angry at the Garrison, and impatient. She tries her best to be calm and comforting around her partner in crime, but it doesn't seem to help.

Despite her impatience, right now would be exactly the wrong time to try and sneak (or break) into Garrison archives and get the unedited records - security and tensions are high, but it's business as usual, otherwise. They need to wait until things either die down, or get so distracting that record security isn't a pressing concern anymore.

Until then, the pair quietly tries to find out more about the aliens. With their very limited expertise and data access, they don't make any progress on decoding what's being transmitted, but Magini can track where the signals are coming from, tracing a path from Jupiter's moons, to the asteroid belt, to Mars...

The aliens, tracked by the Garrison and therefore also by Ami and Magini, finish whatever they're doing around Jupiter and move on to Mars, chattering over the radios as they go. Towards the end of the second week in November, after considerably less time than they took for Jupiter, they finish with Mars—and start heading for Earth. 

The Garrison higher-ups, very quietly, panic.

They're keeping it need-to-know, and cadets apparently don't need to know, but Ami and Magini know what to look for and can see the outlines. Most of the senior officers are stressed and distracted, twice as busy as normal with classified projects.

Good, Ami thinks vindictively, when she notices. (Matty - trusted them, looked up to them, and -)

She goes to meet up with Magini, who points out that if the aliens come to Earth next, the Garrison is probably not going to be able to keep things secret much longer.

Ami asks if she can estimate how long it'll be until it becomes completely intractable. Magini gets nerdsniped by feeding all the data she has into linear algebra models for about 15 minutes before Ami says "well, they can't censor the sky, right? So at some point, anyone with a good telescope..."

Ohhhh. Yeah, that makes sense! stupid, stupi

Wait, actually, that gives her an idea... (She doesn't exactly like the idea, but that's okay. She wants to help.)

"...I'm scheduled to do some repairs Monday afternoon. The supply sheds are basically always empty - I could sneak out one of the high-end tripod telescopes in its carrying case and hide it, and we could go out later in the night and see if we can spot anything."

Ami is excited enough about the idea that Magini lets herself smile, a little bit. She is helping! 

About an hour later, Keith gets another Weird Message!

Ami and I are going to 'borrow' a garrison telescope Monday night to try and get a glimpse of the aliens.

If you're around, do you want to come check it out? Ami said she has something she wants to ask you about.

...oh no, social interaction. 

Eh, he can always bail if it's terrible. And it's not like he had anything else planned for...wait, when is Monday? He may or may not have lost track of the days and weeks just a little. 

He checks the date.

It's November. His 18th birthday was a couple of weeks ago. 

He knew somewhere in the back of his mind that it had probably come and gone, but if he didn't check, if he didn't look at it—

Since his dad died, he hadn't really had anyone he wanted to celebrate his birthday with. And then there was Shiro. Shiro who actually apologised that he couldn't be there for Keith's 17th birthday, even though that was because he would be in space further away than any human has ever been from Earth, which was so much cooler and more important. (He gave Keith a wrapped present before he left Earth, with strict instructions not to open it until October, and then managed to send him a recorded video on the day itself even though they were less than three weeks out from Kerberos at that point and it had to go through half a dozen relay satellites.) 

And he promised he'd be there for the next one. The big one, because other kids might look forward to the day when they can buy a drink, but foster kids are always counting down to the moment they age out of the system. 

And if he didn't check the date—if he didn't know it was his birthday, even though he couldn't hide from the way the nights were getting longer and the days colder—then he didn't have to face the fact that he was back to celebrating alone. 

...oh no, he still needs to reply to Magini.

After having left her on read for at least an hour, he sends: 

where and what time

!!!

Monday at 2130, on the dirt path that passes by the southern edge of campus.

(there's a latitude/longitude infopoint attached to the message.)

That's actually really helpful of her and he appreciates it. 

ok

Magini spends the weekend fretting. She meets up with Ami, once or twice, but neither of them can really focus on their homework, their plan doesn't actually require much talking through, and the conversation between them doesn't really flow, anymore. 

She tries messaging Kani, but can't think of anything meaningful to say. She settles for non-commital life updates, and gets some delayed emojis but no actual conversation.

By Sunday night, she gives up on doing anything interesting or useful , and ends up taking apart her phone, laptop, and omnicalc all at once, which she's never done before, and puts them back together swapping around as many identical parts as she can.(Turns out the phone and omnicalc used the same power modules, so now her phone has much better battery life!) 

She finishes up at about 1 am, brain successfully fried enough that she can pass out immediately.

Ami, full of suppressed doubts and slowly churning anger, somehow makes it through her classes on Monday with her mask intact. She fills her hiking backpack with her important belongings and a few portable rations, and encourages Magini to do the same. (It's probably unnecessary, she explains, but they might need to be out late, and there's really no telling what could happen at the Garrison, once word gets out. Magini nods seriously.)

After forcing herself to eat dinner, she sneaks out early, and is at the meetup spot an hour before she needs to be. While she waits for the others, she drafts a message to Kes explaining everything, and sets it to send 2 days from now, just in case.

She finishes it with just enough time to start really fretting about Magini getting caught sneaking out before her friend arrives, borrowed telescope kit cradled in both hands.

Keith gets there about 5 minutes late, having parked his bike on the far side of a rocky outcrop and walked the last little bit. 

"Hey." 

Magini has started assembling the telescope, but turns around to wave excitedly at him. "Hi Keith! Glad you could make it. I'm still setting up, sorry, it's been a while since I last took astronomy..."

The other girl (tall, skinny, a warm smile over tired eyes) introduces herself.

"Hi, I'm Ami. Thanks for coming out - I know this is a lot. Hopefully, we'll finally get some actual answers."

"Yeah, I guess." 

Ugh, social interaction. This is terrible, why did he come. Is Magini done setting up the telescope yet. 

...Ah. Better back off, then. 

there's a minute of awkward silence, and then -

Magini gets the telescope set up and connected to the control-view-recording app it's designed to work with on her phone without too much trouble. She plugs in the telemetry from the modeling program she's been tweaking and feeding her stolen commsat data into for the last few weeks, and the telescope begins to whir quietly as it aims itself where she's pretty sure the signal source should be now. 

As it focuses, she casts the video feed over to Ami and Keith's phones via local wireless, so they can all watch on their own phones as the image comes into view.

And when the telescope focuses in the right place—

The lights are the clearest, an odd magenta that no Earth spacecraft or satellites use. From those, the odd, angular shape of the craft can be determined. Its size isn't immediately apparent, until it becomes clear that the tiny red dots swarming around it, like wasps around their nest, are much, much smaller spacecraft. 

Stars.

"...Yeah, that's - that's aliens."

Ami nods as she stares intently at her phone.

(Her fingernails are digging into her palm. She's trembling, a bit, but all 3 of them are too distracted by the image of an ALIEN SPACESHIP to notice.)

Yeah, other people? What other people? 

Aliens are real. 

Then Magini's phone pings with an alert from the telescope software, helpfully telling her that it's picking up... something else?

She peers in confusion, taps a few buttons, and -

One tiny dot in particular, this one purple rather than red, has detached from the main ship. It's heading towards Earth on a collision course. 

They can watch it on the telescope as it comes closer and closer, its trajectory curving towards almost where they're standing. 

As the object approaches, Magini starts poking at her phone furiously, plugging data from the telescope's feed into other apps.

"It's - about the size of a van, I think? And - unless it changes course, it's going to land nearby!"

She turns to look at the other two, unspoken question plain on her face: what should they do?

"How nearby?" 

Keith is dividing his focus between the telescope feed and squinting at the sky, trying to spot the mystery craft as it comes into naked-eye range. 

"Let me..." and she trails off, poking her phone for a bit. 

"... about 5 miles Southeast of here, it looks like. Why?" She shares the location info with the other two. 

Keith starts heading for where he stashed his bike. 

After a moment, he looks over his shoulder. "You two coming?" 

Magini, still squatting next to the telescope, looks up at Ami -

- who nods at her briskly, then moves to follow Keith.

"We should hurry. The Garrison won't be far behind." 

- she glances guiltily at the telescope, weighing options in her head. After a moment, she unplugs her phone from it, stuffs the cables into her bag, and then runs to catch up with the others, leaving the telescope and its case behind. 

Keith's hoverbike is only designed for two people, a driver and a single passenger riding pillion. Either Magini or Ami will have to perch on the back, since there's no way Keith is giving up the driver's seat. 

He barely waits for the girls to be settled before taking off at a reckless speed. 

Magini is shortest, so she climbs on the back, wrapping her arms tight around Ami's waist.

(She's done this kind of things many times before, both with her cousins and with Kani and Thrana, so it doesn't occur to her to consider the contact anything but the obvious safe riding configuration.)

"What's the plan?", she tries to ask, but the wind drowns out her too-quiet voice, and she can't bring herself to ask again. 

In the meantime, the purple dot on the telescope has become a fireball, now visible in the night sky as it plummets through the atmosphere. 

When it lands, it hits the ground hard: probably a survivable crash, but definitely not a controlled landing. 

The three of them are still a few miles out. Behind them, the Garrison base is waking up and disgorging a convoy of armoured trucks, the beams of their headlamps cutting through the darkness. 

Keith floors it. 

She clings on tight, and tries to be excited about a potential first contact situation, but her stomach churns as her anxieties race - they're going to get expelled or maybe even arrested, that landing looked dangerous, is whoever is in that even still alive... 

She hasn't let herself think too hard about the possibilities of what they'll find, all she knows is that they have to get there first or they'll never ever know. 

Luckily, Keith is very good at fast. She smiles grimly.

With Keith driving, they're at the landing site in under five minutes. 

The alien spaceship is an angular black-and-grey wedge with purple running lights, around the size of a van. It's still smoking a little when they get there, and it's left long furrows behind it where it skidded across the ground on landing. 

Keith dismounts, drawing an honest-to-god dagger from under his jacket as he cautiously approaches the craft. 

Ami is right behind him, staring intensely at the craft, waiting for something to happen. 

Alien!! Spaceship!!! 

(The exterior lights are on, so it still has power... is there a visible door? signs of damage? What's it made of?)

She walks towards it to investigate, all caution and anxiety set aside - curiosity is driving now. 

It's scorched from its trip through the atmosphere—but some of these scorch marks look more like damage from weapons.

There's no door visible from the front, but when they circle around to the back there's a set of doors that look like they slide open. Keith starts poking likely-looking bits of ship with the tip of his dagger, looking for a 'door open' button or something.

Magini traces the door outline with her fingertips, then spots a small indent off to the side that looks like it could be a button?

She pushes it.

The doors slide open! 

Inside is more black-and-grey metal, more red and purple blinky lights, and...a remarkably human-looking figure lying in a crumpled heap on the floor? Their face isn't visible from the doorway, just a brown-skinned hand and short black hair streaked with white. 

Wait - is that - 

What the hell?

(—it's not Shiro, there's no way it's him, people don't just come back—)

He's through the doors and crouching by the person's side in seconds. Do they wake up when he prods them? No. Can he turn them onto their side to check their breathing—

It's him. 

He's unconscious, a lump on his forehead speaking of a concussion. 

There's a new scar on his face since Keith last saw him just over a year ago, a broad line straight across the bridge of his nose. Part of his hair has turned white. His cheeks are gaunt, his skin is pale from lack of sun, but he's put on muscle. 

His right arm, to a few inches above the elbow, is made of metal. There are horrible jagged scars where it meets flesh. 

Ami rushes up the ramp moments after Keith, and - 

how 

- but it is, it's Shiro, and he doesn't look like he's okay at all, but he's here and he's alive, and if he's alive maybe -

Magini saw that there was someone in there, but she can't see past the other two and doesn't want to crowd them. She looks around, awkwardly, and -

 - sees the approaching headlamps of the Garrison vehicles -

"Guys? We're going to have company soon!"

Ami's face hardens as her feelings go back in the box. Not the time.

She taps Keith on the shoulder.

"Hey. We need to get him out of here, now. If the Garrison takes him..."

She starts reaching for Shiro's shoulder. "Help me carry him to the bike?"

—right, yes, they need to get moving. He gets his shoulder under one of Shiro's arms and hauls, although not without a glare in Ami's direction for just assuming they're doing this together. 

(She notices Keith glaring, and files it away for later. Neither of their feelings matter right now, as long as they're both doing what they need to.)

Picking Shiro upright and starting down the ramp, she calls out to Magini: "We're getting out of here and taking him with us! Can you get ready to help us get him onto Keith's bike?"

As they're halfway down the ramp, Shiro starts to stir awake, almost making them drop him. 

"...huh? Keith? Where..." 

"You're gonna be okay, Shiro. I've got you." 

Ami - doesn't add anything. The man is in no condition to talk, and she barely knows him, really.

She does quicken her pace a bit, though. She can see the headlights approaching fast, and if Shiro's awake, they can be a bit less careful. 

Magini is really stressed out about this, actually! That man might have a concussion! He looks like he needs medical attention, not to be taken away on a hoverbike??

She could - refuse to help? Interfere? And - get the 3 of them arrested, probably, and her and Ami expelled, certainly, but the rules they've been breaking exist for a reason!

She opens her mouth to object, argue, say something, anything, but - 

...the look on Keith's face stops her in her tracks.

Keith, who'd been so clearly broken when he thought Shiro  was dead. Who'd thrown away his own future at the Garrison because he was convinced they were lying about his friend. And he was right, because the man is here now. 

And Keith is only here now because she invited him. Magini  can't bring herself to betray him (and Ami, who's been so kind and helpful to her, even if they're not really friends the way Magini had fooled herself into thinking they were) now, not when there's no time to even talk about it. She can talk to them about it later.

Her objections die in her throat, and she drags herself over to the hoverbike, ready to help commit further crimes.

Between the four of them, they get Shiro on the passenger seat. He's just about aware enough to wrap his arms around Keith's waist and hold on, but he's still pretty dazed and seems liable to fall off if nobody holds onto him. 

When it becomes clear that the problem isn't immediately obvious to Ami, Magini slips back into Safety Mode and instructs the taller girl to sit right behind Shiro and lean forward, gripping the front edges of his seat to keep them both secured. 

Then she climbs onto the hoverbike's tail (facing backwards for stability), and clings to it like it's her only friend in the world. "Ready!" 

Vrooom. 

Some of the Garrison vehicles follow the hoverbike, but not all: most of them have stopped to actually secure the crashed ship. Keith drives fast and recklessly, taking advantage of the terrain and his bike's manoeuvrability. The cars following them are sturdy all-terrain armoured buggies with wheels, not hovercars, so if he...

There's a cliff up ahead. He heads directly for the edge. He doesn't slow down. 

By the time Ami processes what's about to happen, it's far too late to do anything besides cling tight and hope Keith knows what he's doing. (He wouldn't risk Shiro, he wouldn't, he wouldn't...)

She avoids screaming, but it's a close thing.

Their pursuers screech to a halt at the top of the cliff. Keith doesn't. 

They freefall down, down, down...

...and with perfect timing, Keith kicks the thrusters back on just a few feeet from the ground, redirecting their momentum into forwards movement. 

Magini, facing backwards, doesn't see the cliff until they're already over the edge.

Huh, a detached part of her thinks as the rest of her screams in terror, I think I've literally had this as an applied physics question? How did it go... "Reckless Justina has driven her hovercraft off a cliff of height Y! If the hovercraft has thruster force F⃗, a hoverfield strength H, weight W, and had initial vertical velocity V_y0, solve for Y_max such that Justina and her craft can survive the landing unscathed. Assume negligible drag and standard gravity, and that Justina is a skilled pilot and keeps the craft level the entire descent." 

For most reasonable values of F⃗ and H, she remembers that Y_max was surprisingly large! Hovercraft are much safer than they look, when they're piloted well. 

Weirdly, she doesn't find this very reassuring.

Shiro whoops in delight. He seems more alert than he did a few minutes ago. 

Keith grins when he hears it. He keeps driving; they're not in the clear yet.

Their pursuers seem to have largely given up after the cliff. Once he's sure there's nobody on their tail, Keith heads as directly as he can for his place. 

After driving for a few miles through the desert down barely-there dirt roads, they come to a little shack in the middle of nowhere. There are maybe one or two rooms inside, it's not tall enough to have a second storey, and it doesn't even look like it's connected to the grid—the solar panels on the roof are hooked up to a generator. 

Keith parks out front and turns to help Shiro off the bike. 

Ami straightens up, awkwardly disentangling herself from Shiro - he seems alert enough for now, and Keith obviously wants to take point.  

She slides out of her perch and onto the ground, looking around for Magini. How's her friend holding up?

Magini is - still clinging to the hoverbike's tail, apparently, eyes squeezed shut. 

Oh no.

"Magini?" (No response.)

She carefully approaches the poor girl carefully, and places a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Hey, hey. it's okay. We're safe."

Magini flinches at the touch, but her eyes do open, visibly calming down at least a bit as she takes in their surroundings. 

Wordlessly, she swings off the tail, landing on the ground with a heavy thump.

"Do you want a hug?"

Headshake. 

After a moment, she pulls her phone out and and starts looking something up, walking slowly away from Ami and towards the shack.

...yeah, okay, sure. Keith will just be over here getting Shiro inside. 

"C'mon," he says to Ami over his shoulder. 

Inside, the ground floor of the shack does just seem to be one room. It's furnished enough to be cosy, though: there's a coffee table in the middle, a computer desk in the corner with a chair, and a couch against the far wall that he steers Shiro towards. The entertainment system looks decades old, but at least there is one, along with a couple shelves of books. A ladder leads up to a partial loft; some blankets can be seen hanging over the edge, suggesting that Keith has a bed up there.

Magini's phone can connect to the internet—this is Arizona, not Antarctica—but the signal strength isn't great. 

After about a minute of reading intently from her phone and glancing occasionally in Shiro's direction, Magini looks up and starts talking. 

"I need to ask you some questions about your symptoms. Head injuries can be very dangerous, and the ride here could have made things worse." 

She's avoiding making eye contact with any of them, but her voice is firm. 

"...ugh, yeah, my head does hurt. I don't remember hitting it..." He pauses. "That's not a great sign, huh?" 

Further questioning will reveal that, while he has a nasty headache and doesn't remember the landing, or even how he got into the spacecraft that crashed, Shiro doesn't have many other concussion symptoms. His initial confusion and dazedness on waking seem to be mostly gone and fading fast: he gives coherent responses to Magini's questions, and he can rattle off information like his full name and Garrison rank, his birthday, and Keith's name. He's not nauseous or dizzy, and he reports that his hearing and vision seem normal. He maybe has a mild concussion, but nothing that indicates more serious problems. 

Magini mechanically reads out the recommended recovery instructions: get lots of rest, food, and water, only light physical and mental activity; take acetaminophen for initial pain, add NSAIDs once 24 hours have passed.

Then she slumps down onto to the floor and hugs her knees. 

"What now?", she says the group quietly. 

Ami opens her mouth to speak, but then reconsiders, and turns to look at Shiro.

Shiro seems to notice her properly for the first time.

"Wait—Ami??? What are you doing here?" 

"...I transferred into the Garrison as a senior, this year. I knew they were lying about what happened to you and M-Matty, and - I needed to know." 

She's clenching her fists. "Shiro - is he -" 

He tries to remember, squinting against the pain, but has to stop after a moment. "I know the three of us were all captured together, but everything since then—it's a blur. I'm sorry. I think he was alive when I saw him last, but...I don't even know how long ago that was. Weeks, months? Years?" 

Oh.

"It's been 358 days since the Orfeo reached Kerberos", she murmurs, then looks away, trying not to cry. he promised-

"...thank you. And I'm sorry I don't have better news for you about Matt." 

He starts to say something else, then pauses and looks at Magini. "Hi, I don't think we've been introduced. I'm Shiro." 

He offers a handshake, faltering in surprise a moment later when he realises it's the metal prosthetic. 

Magini is staring at the wall, so it takes her a few seconds to notice that he's probably talking to her and then look up and notice his hand. She uncurls a bit to return the handshake, struggling to keep eye contact.

"Oh, sorry. I'm Magini Zils. I know Ami and Keith from the Garrison, I'm - I was -"

She takes in a shaky breath, fighting back tears.

"I'm technically still a fourth year in the engineering track? But my working assumption is that they're going to expel Ami and I for this, when the dust settles."

it comes out more bitter than she'd intended.

Shiro raises an eyebrow.

"Just the two of you, not Keith?" 

Keith blushes and scowls, not meeting Shiro's eyes. 

"They already kicked me out in January. For fighting." With an instructor. On your behalf. 

At the time, he didn't think he'd ever have to explain himself to Shiro. Which was, in large part, why he did it. 

Keith...

"- they lied to us. Said the Orfeo crashed on Kerberos, and... that it was your piloting at fault. ...Keith thought that was unlikely."

Shiro sighs and shakes his head, but there's a hint of fondness in his expression that he can't quite conceal. "Keith..." 

He straightens. "Alright. Clearly I've missed a lot. What else has the Garrison been doing—and why are we here and not in a Garrison quarantine facility?" 

"So - the Garrison completely covered up what happened with the Orfeo. They cut the video broadcast right before you landed, claimed it was probably just a failure of communications equipment, and then over a month of updates the story changed from that to 'something is wrong, we are investigating and crewing a rescue mission' to 'we have managed to get more information, and tragically the Orfeo crashed into Kerberos, with no survivors'. And -"

she takes a breath, trying not to sound too angry.

"I didn't believe them. Kes and I were watching the landing with Nuadh - xi'd already told us that the public broadcasts were on a delay. And we thought - why cut the broadcast then? The odds of an equipment failure right before a smooth touchdown seemed stupidly high, compared to - them cutting it off as soon as something happened in their live feed. And then their actual story was even less convincing, for people following the broadcast closely! The landing was going great, to crash from when the cutoff point you would have had to manually disengage at least one of safety systems, which - you wouldn't do." 

(Some of this explanation sounds a bit... recited, as though Ami had spent a lot of time on forums where people have argued back and forth on this kind of thing, perhaps to exhaustion!)

"I didn't see any other way of finding out what happened to Matty besides going to the Garrison and getting the info from them directly. So I - got some help passing the entrance exams and transferred in. And then I met Magini, and -"

she looks at Magini to see if the other girl wants to explain her part in this.

headshake

"- about 2 months ago, the Garrison started hiring linguists. Like, a lot of them, and especially ones specializing in signal analysis. Which - you only do if you have a signal to analyze, right?"

"Magini is a genius and does occasional part-time work doing tech repairs for the Garrison. When I asked her for her help to try and figure out what was going on, she built a backdoor into the main commsatt array out of a pair of earrings that would sample incoming communication, store it to a buffer, and then send it to her phone when she walked by."

"She analyzed the signal data, plotted it next to where the dishes were pointing at the time, and - well, there was a cluster of signals coming from Jupiter that were stronger than the signal from the Mars base, despite the distance, and had totally unrecognizable metadata. Which meant it had to be - some non-Garrison ships communicating with each other."

"We kept tracking the source (...Magini did all the work, I couldn't have done any of this), and - once it was approaching earth and the Garrison still hadn't made any kind of public announcement at all, we - borrowed a telescope from the astronomy warehouse to just look at what we were pretty sure was an alien ship. And - the 3 of us were watching that when your pod launched from it, and Keith drove us to the landing point."

"And - we're here and not with the Garrison because - I was afraid that if they took you, Keith and I would never see you again? And - I - "

she stifles a sob, and shakes her head.

Magini is feeling a lot of things right now, but the safest and most comfortable one is curiosity. There's a lot she wants to know about what's going on here!

After a few moments of silence indicate that nobody has an immediate follow-up to Ami's explanation, she raises her hand.

(Then she remembers she's not in class, so she awkwardly puts it back down.)

 "Shiro, I know you said you don't remember how you got on the ship we found you in, but - what's the last thing you do remember? Do you know why the aliens are here?"