Note: National Novel Writing Month 2016

Chapters:

Chapter 1

“So,” Jack told the quiet night.  “You’re following me.”

The night didn’t answer.  It was cool and dark on the porch railing, the light from the windows spilling over the boards behind him and casting the street into shadow.  It would be easier to see if he stepped down, away from the house.

The streets would welcome him if he ran.  Back to places he knew, the edges and the corners where no one bothered to look.  He’d peered through a lot of windows when he was younger, but always from the outside, staring into the light.  Not looking out with a family at his back.

Sky’s family, he reminded himself.  He couldn’t let them be hurt.

“Or Sky,” he said aloud.  “Are you following Sky?  It’s gotta be one of us; no one else has seen you more than once.”

No movement from the shadows, but he heard her voice for the first time.  “No one’s supposed to see me at all.”

She sounded younger than he expected.  Or maybe just less alien.  Creepy woman following him around in the wake of a war that had almost destroyed the planet, and he assumed she was an alien getting ready to attack.  He wasn’t ruling it out or anything.  He was just surprised to hear her sound wistful instead of sinister.

“You tried invisibility?” Jack asked.  “Great power for not being seen.”

“Yeah.”  Just like that, he could see a figure in the shadows.  Still no movement, but the source of the voice was suddenly clear and he hadn’t been able to see it a second ago.  “Got that one.”

Jack raised his eyebrows.  “Nice.  That natural?”

“Depends on who you ask,” the figure said.  Still darkly dressed, but he thought those were different clothes than the ones she’d been wearing at the Christmas party this morning.  “It’s me, anyway.  Not technology.”

“So why’d you let us see you at the party?” Jack wanted to know.  “I assume you’re trying to be stealthy.”

“Too many people,” she said.  “I can’t walk through them, and they’re suspicious enough to notice something they bump into but can’t see.”

Jack smiled.  “We should combine powers.”

The thump from inside the house made him brace himself just before the door swung open, but it had to be Sky, because he didn’t say Jack’s name.  There was a pause, and then the door closed more carefully than it had opened.  “Hey,” Sky’s voice said quietly.

“Hey,” Jack said.  The figure in the shadows didn’t move.  Or disappear.  “We have company.  The woman from the party this morning.”

He could feel Sky at his shoulder instantly, hot and close and just barely not touching him.  Looming, really.  The way only Sky could do.

“You were right,” Jack continued.  “She’s following us.  And she can make herself invisible.”

“Mutant or alien?”  Sky’s gentle tone was gone, and Jack couldn’t decide whether he was sorry or not.  Sky had been weirdly solicitous all evening, but Jack didn’t know how to be sweet and tender for more than a few minutes at a time, so he was left feeling awkward and out of place.

Mostly he wished they were back on the base, where it was okay to joke and order people around and walk out on them when they confused him.  Sky was at home on the base.  But he was also at home here, so Jack was trying.  He was trying hard.

“I’m human,” the voice from the shadows said.  “Like you.  From the future.”

Jack didn’t move.  He was so careful not to react that he almost jumped when he felt Sky’s hand come to rest on his back.  “From the future,” Jack repeated.

“The future of this time,” she said.  “The future of mine, too.  They sent me ahead; they sent you back.  I wanted to… see how you’re doing.”

Sky’s fingers spread out, warm and stabilizing against his lower back.  But he didn’t say anything.  Jack couldn’t tell if it was because he thought Jack knew more than he did, or if he just didn’t want to tip his hand.

Sky had called for backup.  Jack didn’t know when or how, but Sky was never this calm without a weapon or the promise of weapons.  Since even Sky didn’t wear his blaster to a family dinner, there must be reinforcements on the way.

“Who are you?” Jack asked.  He couldn’t say anything else without giving someone away.

There was no hesitation this time.  “Just another genetic mutation,” she said.  “The pretty ones can pass, but eventually the police catch up with you.  Join or die.  So I ran.”

“What’s your name,” Jack insisted.

She sounded oddly uncertain when she said, “Hyanni?”

Sky’s fingers pressed harder against his back, and Jack kept his breath as slow and even as he could manage.  “Hyanni,” he repeated.  “I don’t suppose you have a son.”

The moment before she answered seemed to stretch out forever.  He knew what he was going to hear, but he didn't know what it meant.  He’d never known what it meant.  Not when all the family he had was a sister on the streets, and not now that he’d been adopted by Syd’s parents and engaged to Sky.

“I did,” Hyanni said at last.  “He’s twenty years older than the last time I saw him.”

Jack tried to smile, and found he couldn’t quite do it.  “Twenty-one, actually.”  

Her voice was very quiet when she said, “Three weeks ago, you were just a baby.”

He had no idea what to say to that.  He’d seen himself in the future, when Kat dragged him forward to help rescue both of them, and even he couldn’t reconcile the baby he met with the person he’d become.  How was she supposed to do it when that baby was hers, and a few weeks later they were the same age?

“I’m not trying to be rude, here.”  Sky’s tone of voice wasn’t exactly friendly, and Jack wanted to make a crack about how new that must be for him.  “But what do you want?”

“I just want to know he’s okay.”  Hyanni paused long enough that she was obviously breathing, steeling herself for something she didn’t know how to say.  It still wasn’t enough to prepare Jack for what came next.

“I want him to know he can come home,” she said carefully.  “If he wants to.”

Sky was used to dealing with shadows, and he knew how to fight for what he wanted.  “Jack has a home,” he told the mysterious woman he couldn’t see.  He already knew what she looked like.  He knew why she was here.  And damned if anyone was going to take Jack from him now, just when Sky had finally started to believe he’d stay.

Jack didn’t say anything, which might be good or bad, but Hyanni said quickly, “Of course he does.  That’s not what I meant; I’m sorry.  I just--”

She got stuck there, which Sky was fine with--the less she talked, the better--but it obviously appealed to Jack’s sympathy.  “Hey,” he said.  “Why don’t you come up here on the porch, at least.  If you’re really just here to, what, check in?  You don’t have to hide.”

Sky slid his hand to Jack’s hip, tapping his side just above his morpher.  SPD was on its way.  Jack probably knew or had guessed, but just in case.  Sky didn’t want him surprised.

Jack turned into him and murmured, “Yeah, I know,” which was worth it right there.

“I can’t be arrested.”  Hyanni sounded, of all things, vaguely apologetic.  “If there’s any confirmation I was here, in this time, I won’t be able to come back.”

“We’re not going to arrest you,” Jack said.  “Right, Sky?”

It wasn’t a question, and Jack didn’t bother to look at him this time.  “Fine,” Sky said shortly.  “We won’t arrest you.”  Not tonight, anyway.

She stepped out of the shadows for the first time, and it was strange, but this was the moment he saw Jack in her features.  He’d studied her face this morning, her dress, the way she carried herself, trying to match her to anyone or anything he knew.  But now, seeing her appear casually from somewhere she shouldn’t have been, she looked suddenly and unexpectedly familiar.


“There’s probably gonna be some more people from SPD here soon,” Jack was saying.  “But our word’s good.  No one takes you anywhere you don’t want to go.”

She didn’t tell him how hard that would be, but Sky knew.  Arresting time travelers who could become invisible wasn’t one of the standard training scenarios.  Keeping her from taking Jack where he didn’t want to go was a lot more important to him right now.

“Thanks,” Hyanni said, coming up onto the porch.  She moved slowly and deliberately, and it annoyed Sky that she was so obviously trying not to spook them.  She even held out her hand when she got close enough, offering, “It’s nice to meet you, Jack.”

Sky resisted the urge to follow when Jack took a single step forward.  He was ready for her to try to pull Jack in, to push him off, to make him disappear or crumple or any of the myriad unpredictable dangers that came with shaking hands.  But they just clasped hands, with Jack saying, “Nice to meet you too,” and Sky glared at her over Jack’s shoulder.

“This is my fiance, Sky,” Jack continued.  “We’re here for Christmas dinner, so his family may come looking for us.  Sorry to be rude, but I don’t really want to spring you on them by inviting you in.”

“No, no,” she said quickly.  “Please don’t.  I really just wanted to see you.  I just--they told me you were okay, but I just… I wanted to see you.”

“Yeah,” Jack said, more gently.  “I get that.  It’s not so bad seeing you either, you know.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.  Like she couldn’t stop talking now that she’d started.  “I never meant to abandon you.  I couldn’t get you out, but Jen promised, she said if you weren’t with me you’d have a better chance.  I’m sorry I couldn’t come back and see you before now.”

There was a car turning onto the street.  No sirens, but Sky knew who it was.

“Look, no problem,” Jack said.  “It all turned out fine, right?  I’m okay.  You’re okay.  You are okay, aren’t you?”

Hyanni looked away, but she nodded yes.  She looked like she was trying not to cry, which made Sky suspicious and Jack solicitous.  He didn’t reach for her again, but he did ask, “Are you free?  I heard they were locking people up and experimenting on them.  Was that you?”

Hyanni nodded again, but she mumbled, “Not anymore.  Not in the new time.”

“Good,” Jack said, as the car slowed to a stop at the Tate driveway and crawled around the turn.  “So you have a new home too?”

“It’s yours too,” she blurted out.  “I mean, not like this is, I know; this is where you grew up.  But if you ever want to come forward, Jack, your time is 21 years after the one you left.  That’s how time law works.”

Sky wasn’t convinced “time law” was a real thing, but that number wasn’t arbitrary.  Jack had corrected her on the number of years, and that was what she was using as his new time.  She had come back from exactly the time she said he now belonged to.

It wasn’t an accident that she hadn’t come to see him before this, after all.  And she wasn’t just here to “check in.”

Jack either went for his morpher or Sky’s hand.  It was impossible to tell, but their fingers ended up tangled together even as Hyanni stepped back.  The car’s engine shut off, quiet in the oppressive stillness when Jack said, “This is my time.”

The car doors were opening when Hyanni lifted a hand.  “Be safe,” she said.  “I love you.  I’m so glad you made it.”  And she was gone.

Sky’s hand tightened on Jack’s, but he was still there and he just squeezed back.  “Crazy,” Jack muttered.  “You okay?”

Sky let out his breath in something that was almost a laugh.  “Me?” he demanded.  “Am I okay?  What about you?  What the hell was that?”

“Hey!” Z shouted from the driveway.  “Since when do we have emergencies on Christmas!”  She was leaning on the top of the driver’s side door, Bridge already out on the other side and the rest of the team spilling out behind them.  “I thought you made a rule!”

“Yeah, Cruger jinxed us!” Jack yelled back.  “See if I ever let him make the schedule again!”

“You don’t let him make the schedule now,” Sky said under his breath.

“I’m doing something wrong,” Jack told him.  “We gotta tell Kat.”

“Assuming those two statements aren’t connected,” Sky said, “you’re calling her.  I’ve already used up all my holiday goodwill.”

“What’s going on?” Syd asked, walking up the porch steps like she owned them.  “If the emergency’s over, can we come in for drinks?  We were just about to have dessert.  The emergency is over, right?”

“I don’t think the way you drive is strictly legal,” Dan was telling Z.

The front door opened then, because of course it did, and Sky’s mom just stood there looking at all of them for a long moment.  “Are you coming or going?” she asked at last.

“Coming,” Syd and Jack said at the same time, and Sky had to smile.

“Well, come in then,” his mom told them.  “There’s not room for all of us on the porch.”

Boom had promised his parents, over and over again, that he had Christmas Eve and Christmas off.  He could leave the base, even.  Boom’s own team leader--his real, honest-to-goodness, team leader!--had cleared it with the base commander, and every Ranger squad had two days in a row to visit family and friends wherever they wanted.

Boom’s family wanted to visit him on the base.  He was A Squad Green, now.  He was a Ranger for real.  And not just any Ranger, but the first string!  Whether they didn’t believe he could leave or just wanted to see it for themselves, Boom wasn’t about to complain.  He’d worn his green squad jacket every day since Kat gave it to him, and he was happy to give a tour to anyone who wanted one.


Especially his parents, who were eager to see everything again in light of his new position.

“There probably won’t be anyone in the lab right now,” he was telling them, as they walked up to the open doors of a well-lit and loudly humming lab.  “Unless maybe it’s Sophie, who’s been helping out a lot more since--”

“Oh, look, it’s Kat!” his mom exclaimed.  “Kat, dear, it’s so lovely to see you again!”

Kat didn’t look up from where she was manipulating the main holographic interface, so Boom said quickly, “I think she’s working on something pretty important, Mom; why don’t we just come back later so we don’t interrupt--”

“It’s fine,” Kat said, still not moving.  “Come in, Boom.”

“Wow, I think it’s gotten bigger since we were here last,” his dad said.  “Which makes sense, since it’s clearly the most important part of the base.”

“Well, that’s true,” Boom agreed, “but I think it’s pretty much the same size it used to be.  Although Sophie and I did have to replace the floor after the puppy’s laser turned out to be a little stronger than we expected.”

“No more dogs,” Kat said.  From anyone else it would have been a mutter, but the way she enunciated made her English clear no matter how loudly she spoke.

“Oh, is there a puppy?  Is it like RIC?” his mom wanted to know.  “I do love puppies!”

“Who doesn’t love puppies?” Boom agreed.  “I think Sophie has the puppy tonight; it’s too bad we didn’t see her at dinner.  We’ll have to try to find her after our tour.”

“That would be wonderful,” his mom said.  “I want to wish all of your teammates a merry Christmas before we leave!”

“Or happy holidays,” his dad added.  “If they celebrate something else, of course.”

“We’re all celebrating everything this year,” Boom said.  “Jack decided that all the holidays should be represented.  Of course, when he said ‘all the holidays,’ he mostly meant, ‘all the holidays that his team celebrates,’ so actually we missed some important ones, but none of the aliens can tell so I guess we’ll get them next year.”

“Some of the aliens can tell,” Kat said, looking up as the holographic matrix stabilized and became static.  “Hi Boom.  It’s nice to see your family again; are you giving them a tour?  Did you show them the zords?”

“Isn’t it great?” Boom exclaimed.  “I mean, I told them that I could leave the base but they wanted to come back and see it again now that I’ve been, well, promoted!  Can I show them the zords?”

“No,” Kat said.

“Oh.”  He blinked, then laughed when she grinned at him.  “Oh!  Right.  Yes, I definitely won’t show them the top-secret runner-flyer technology.  Wouldn’t dream of it!”

“Good,” she said.  Before she could say anything else, the scratchy sound of an incoming comm alert interrupted.

“Landors for Kat,” it said, and Boom went for his morpher just in case.  He looked at it while Kat acknowledged, his parents clustering closer.  She didn’t step away from them, so it was probably okay.  He was allowed to listen to his teammates’ messages, right?

Maybe his parents weren’t.  What if it was classified?

“Hey, Kat,” Jack’s voice said.  “Word from Mexico.  Not for you, unless you heard from them separately?”

Mexico.  Boom frowned, until he saw his parents looking at him, and then he nodded wisely.  Mexico, of course.  Jack and Kat had gone to the Mexico base.  Sky had been in charge of the base for two days, and then Cruger had come back and torn SPD Command apart looking for them.

There was no Mexico base.  Kat and Jack had disappeared just after a computer hack into Jack’s file that Boom recognized as Kat’s work.  When they came back, all of B Squad was pretending that Jack’s altered file was real, and Boom was sure that Jack wasn’t the only one hiding from someone.

“No,” Kat said.  “Nothing here.  Boom’s with me, and his parents.”

Boom smiled when she looked over at him, and he waved.  She smiled back, but she looked worried.  A lot more worried than she’d been when they walked in.

“We’re at Sky’s mom’s place,” Jack said.  “With all of B Squad, but there’s nothing they can do.  Right?”

Kat hesitated.  It was so unlike her that Boom wanted to frown again, but his parents were listening avidly and he didn’t want them to be as worried as Kat was.  “No,” she said at last.  “Have you heard anything from Commander Collins?”

“No,” Jack echoed.  “Heard her name, though.  From Hyanni.  Kind of surprised me.”

“Hyanni?” Kat said sharply.  “What’s she doing--in Mexico?”

“Checking in,” Jack’s voice replied.  “Or so she said before she, uh, signed off.  Any reason to doubt her?”

“No,” Kat said, but this time she sounded reluctant.  “Just her?”

“Who’s Hyanni?” Boom’s mom asked.  It was quiet enough that he could still hear Jack say yes, but he knew Kat was listening to them as much as they were listening to her.  She obviously didn’t need any other distractions.

“Oh, Hyanni works at another base,” Boom said.  “I’ve never met her, but she knows Jack.”  That seemed safe, and it made his parents nod in understanding.

“Your team leader,” his dad added.

“Yup,” Boom said happily.  “A Squad Red!  I’ve designed all sorts of technology for him.  I mean, before he was A Squad.  But since then, too.  Less since I started patrolling with his team, but probably more soon, now that Kat needs us back in the lab.”

“Well, of course she does,” his mom said.  “You’re indispensable.”

“Right,” Boom agreed.  “And she’s pregnant, so she can’t test the rocket packs or morpher upgrades anymore.”

He caught Kat glaring at him, and he shrugged.  Was he not supposed to mention that?  Jack had made sure everyone in the lab knew.

“Oh, she’s pregnant?” his mom repeated.  “That must be so exciting!  Who’s the lucky man?”

“Or woman,” his dad said.

Oh, Boom thought belatedly.  Maybe that was why she didn’t want people talking about it.

It wasn’t Boom’s fault that they couldn’t talk about it, since Kat wasn’t going to say anything about Time Force on a comm channel that anyone could overhear.  She assumed B Squad already knew everything.  She didn’t assume they were the only ones who might be listening.

On the other hand, Boom was distracting his parents with news of her litter and probably soon an awkward explanation that there was no “lucky” person.  She wasn’t sure why his parents would care, but they seemed very interested in everything that went on his life.  Even peripherally.

“Nobody’s being reassigned,” Kat told the screen.  It didn’t have Jack’s image on it, but Don had her morpher, so her code was being routed to the nearest active comm.  “You probably won’t hear from them again.”

She said it as much to find out if Hyanni had said otherwise as to reassure Jack.  The only answer she got was a cryptic, “Sky isn’t convinced.”

Sky had hovered over Jack for at least a day after his return from “Mexico.”  She didn’t think Jack had even noticed, with as excited as he had been to be back.  About to propose, though she hadn’t known it at the time.  Sky probably disliked time travel as much as the commander did at this point.

“It’s probably Commander Cruger,” Boom was telling his parents.  His tone of voice passed for a whisper among humans when he added, “But she hasn’t officially said, so better not to mention his name.”

“They’re not Doggie’s,” Kat snapped irritably.

Then she closed her eyes, realizing her mistake as soon as she said it.  She was more tired than she knew if she was letting him get to her like this.  He wasn’t even here and she was still ready to shout at him for the slightest provocation.

Not that the base commander was any good at “slight” provocations.  His idea of subtle was running away after he pulled the pin.  And then gloating from a distance.

“Sorry, what?” Jack’s voice asked.

“Uh, was that directed at me?” Boom asked at the same time.

Kat sighed, opening her eyes again.  “Sorry,” she said.  “No.  It wasn’t directed at anyone.  At least, no one who’s here.  Boom, maybe you and your parents could talk about something other than me.  Jack, I’m sending someone to you.  Did you say you were at Sky’s mom’s house when you got the call?”

“Yeah,” Jack answered.  “We’re still there.  You think we need backup?  The whole squad’s here.”

“No,” Kat said.  “This is something else.  I’ll call you back once I get someone.  Don’t go anywhere alone, okay?”

“Okay,” Jack said easily.  Of course it was easy for him; he and Sky were practically tied together at the wrist.  “You got it.  Anything we can do for you while we’re at it?”

“Don’t go to Mexico,” Kat said with a sigh.

“Copy that,” Jack agreed.  “We’ll bring you back some pie.”

She tried to smile.  “Thank you.  That’s very kind.”

Boom and his parents weren’t talking about something else.  They weren’t talking about anything at all when she turned to them and tried to apologize.  “I’m sorry I interrupted,” she said, as calmly as she could.  “Yes, I’m pregnant, but the children were conceived many years ago.  When they’re born, they’ll be mine alone.  Does that satisfy your curiosity?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Boom’s mom said, even though clearly it didn’t.  “I’m sorry, it’s none of our business.  But we do want to congratulate you, and tell you how wonderful it will be to know there are children around.  I hope we’ll get to see some pictures as they grow!”

“I’ll make sure Boom has pictures to pass on,” Kat promised.  They were at the point where just getting through the rest of the calendar year looked dubious to impossible, but she understood what she was expected to say.

“Great!” Boom exclaimed.  Then he nodded seriously, and added, “I mean, of course.  Because we’re a team, so of course we would share pictures.  Because that’s what teammates do.”

“That’s what friends do,” Kat corrected.  She definitely wasn’t as good at leadership as Jack was if Boom didn’t know that by now.  “I’m going upstairs to make a few calls, all right?  Take your parents to see the zords.”

“Will do!” Boom said cheerfully.  “We will absolutely not look at anything top secret or classified!”

This time her sigh turned into a laugh.  “Boom, that covers everything in this lab.  And probably most of what you saw on the way here.”

“Right, yes,” he agreed.  “Well, but we won’t remember any of it.  I mean, I will, because it’s my job, but my parents won’t.”

“Oh, no,” his mom said.  “And we won’t ever look at the pictures or put them up on our refrigerator or anything like that.”

Kat almost asked if she meant pictures she had taken today, while she was touring the base, or the pictures Kat had promised to send of her babies.  But she didn’t really want to know.  Jack had taught her something about plausible deniability after all, because she kept her mouth shut and just waved as she left the lab.  

Command was empty except for Sophie, taking a shift she’d promised Jack she didn’t mind, but she turned it over to Kat without question.  “I’ll take the rest of it,” Kat told her.  “If Jack asks, tell him I asked you to leave.”

“Understood,” Sophie said with a smile.  She might even do it.  It would probably come out, Kat told me to tell you that she asked me to leave, but since Kat was only trying to hide from everyone other than Jack, it shouldn’t make a difference.

As soon as she had Command to herself, she disabled the alarms on surveillance and recording, then disabled surveillance and recording, started a system diagnostic that would slow any effort to override the shutdown, and called up a secure line.  It was a lot of effort just to contact an out-of-jurisdiction police force.  But then, the Silver Guardians weren’t just any jurisdiction.

“The what guardians?” Syd asked.  “Silver?  Do they guard silver?  What does that even mean?”

“They guard the city of Silver Hills,” Sky said, handing her a drink.  It turned out that his mother’s living room did have enough room for all of them, if there were no other guests and some of them sat on the floor.  Fortunately for Syd’s dress, it had been an early dinner at the Tate house and Bridge and Jack were willing to sit on the floor.

“How much of a city can it be if it has ‘Hills’ in the name?” Syd countered.

“Beverly Hills,” Sky replied.

“Laguna Hills,” Z offered.

“Hillsboro,” Bridge said.  When they all turned to look at him, he added, “It has three times the population of any of the other cities.  And ‘hills’ is right there in the name.”

“Hillsboro,” Syd repeated.  “Okay.  I stand corrected.”

“And what are the Silver Guardians going to do?” Sky’s mom wanted to know.  “Are they going to stand guard outside our door against an invisible woman who can travel through time, on the off-chance that she comes back while you’re not here?”

Cathy Tate was very practical.  Syd liked her.

“They’re just going to look around,” Sky said.  “They shouldn’t get in your way.  They won’t even have to come in; they’ll just scan for chronitons outside and leave.”

“Apparently people traveling through time leave behind some kind of disturbance,” Jack said.  “Kat says the Silver Guardians can detect it.”

“Which kind of makes sense,” Bridge said thoughtfully.  “I mean, we leave footprints as we move through space.  If time is just another dimension, it makes sense that people moving through it would leave a trail.  We just don’t notice because we’re all going in the same direction.”

“How does that make sense?” Z demanded.  “Time is intangible.  You can’t disrupt it.”

“Auras are intangible,” Bridge pointed out.  “They get disrupted all the time.”

Syd lifted her glass in his direction.  “You know, that’s the best explanation I’ve heard so far.”

“Hunters are good at tracking things,” Dan said.  “So they’re good at not leaving a trail when they don’t want to.  Wouldn’t time travelers figure out how not to leave a trail too?”

“But we have scanners,” Bridge said.  “So even if there’s no visible trail, we can detect heat signatures and DNA traces and things like that.  Maybe that’s what the Silver Guardians have, but for time.  Although why they have them in the first place is an interesting question that hasn’t been sufficiently addressed.”

“Yeah,” Jack said, glancing at Sky.  “I got the feeling we weren’t supposed to ask about that.”

“Me too,” Sky said grimly.  “I don’t like how much they aren’t telling us about this.”

“They?” Jack repeated.  “Kat’s the only one who knows anything.”

“No,” Sky said.  “Kat’s the only one who’s told us anything.  No way are there time travelers coming and going from the city--time travelers that Commander Collins is tacitly supporting--without someone else knowing.”

“You didn’t even believe Time Force was real until last week,” Jack said.

“Wait,” Cathy interrupted.  “Time Force is real too?  Is that what Kylee was talking about when she called about conspiracy theories last week?”

Syd looked at her with interest.  “My mom called you?”

“Yes, to let me know she adopted Jack,” Cathy said.  “Which is going to make your wedding invitations really interesting, by the way.  She said something about hiding him from the time police.”

“And you let that go?” Z asked.

Cathy rolled her eyes.  “It was Kylee Drew.  I let a lot of things go.”

Syd could feel Dan eyeing her, so she shrugged.  “I think that’s a good idea.  Bridge says there’s a psychological theory of non-complementary behavior, where you refuse to engage in a social construct by not providing a relevant response?  That’s really the best way to deal with my family.”

She waited just long enough for Sky to raise an eyebrow at her, then smiled sweetly and added, “Present company excluded, of course.”

Jack grinned.  “Present company definitely included,” he said.

“I’m sorry, Jack, were you expecting pie?” Cathy inquired.

“Oh, not you,” Jack hurried to assure her.  “Just these two.”

“Are you planning to conveniently un-adopt yourself whenever you want to make fun of us?” Sky asked.  “That won’t work once we’re married, you know.”

“Only one of us is wearing a ring,” Jack pointed out.  “And you know Cruger’s going to throw up every roadblock he can think of.  I think I have time.”

“Cruger?” Sky’s uncle didn’t look at all sure he wanted to be involved in this conversation, but he was a brave man.  Syd thought Sky could have done worse when it came to father figures.  “Your base commander doesn’t want you to get married?”

“Apparently it’s against the rules,” Jack said.  “Which Sky forgot to mention.  Either time.”

“Either time?” Cathy repeated.

Sky didn’t just roll his eyes; he looked heavenward and might as well have thrown up his hands.  It didn’t stop Jack from saying, “He turned me down the first time.  Too much ego, he said.”

“Which was true,” Sky interrupted.

“It was kind of true,” Bridge agreed.

“Oh, please,” Z said.  “Like Sky wouldn’t have done exactly the same thing if he’d thought of it first.  They’re perfect for each other.”

“I thought so too,” Jack agreed, “but you know everyone on Charlie’s team yelled at me for that?  They seem to think--wait, that reminds me,” he said suddenly.  “Sky, when’s your birthday?”

Syd stared at him.  She wasn’t the only one.

“August fourth,” Sky said.

“Um.”  Dan raised his hand briefly.  “You didn’t know when his birthday was?”

“To be fair, he didn’t know when his own birthday was,” Sky said.

Syd reached out to pat Dan’s knee reassuringly.  “They can’t all be me,” she said.  “Although, now that I think about it, I did share my birthday with Jack.  You’d think that would have made him ask.”

“Not everyone celebrates birthdays, princess.”  Z looked more amused than anything, but the warning was real.  “You made up mine, too, and I never missed it.”

“Happy late birthday,” Jack said.  “Sky.  Z.  Dan, when’s your birthday?”

“September 24th,” Dan replied.

“Bridge?”  Jack looked around the room.  “Cathy, Chris?  How many birthdays am I supposed to know?”

“You don’t have to remember my parents’ birthdays,” Sky interrupted.  “Bridge’s is February 17th.  I’ll make you a list.”

Jack brightened.  “Great!  I’m liking this engagement thing more and more.  Can you get them birthday presents from me, too?”

“No,” Sky told him.

Jack’s “hostess gift” this evening said otherwise, Syd thought, studying her wine.  But maybe more importantly, Sky had just called Cathy and Chris his parents.  She gave Chris a quick look from under her eyelashes and saw him beaming.

That would probably cover every birthday for the foreseeable future.

Chapter 2

“I think we should come back,” Charlie said.  “Next year.  When does climbing season start?”

Rose was relaxing against a pleasant curve of stone while the white water of the hot springs ebbed and flowed around her.  It wasn’t worth lifting her head for the glare she wanted to give her partner for asking that question after they had already completed a life-threatening climb.  “July,” she murmured.

“Good,” Charlie said.  “Let’s come back and visit your parents again in July.  I want one of those walking sticks.”

“Mm-hmm,” Rose agreed.  Charlie got her mountain, and Rose got her onsen.  She had made peace with the team system of trading one activity for another on Dagobah, where no one was allowed to do anything alone.  It continued to work surprisingly well on Earth.

Perhaps most remarkably, even Charlie could relax in snowy hot springs under the stars, which meant a few minutes of peace while Rose thought about nothing at all.  It was strange to think about nothing and not be bored by it.  It felt borderline dangerous, like if she didn’t keep her mind on all the things she hadn’t had access to while they were stranded, they might disappear.

“Hey,” Charlie said quietly.  “Space station.”

Rose opened her eyes.  The sky wasn’t anywhere near as black as the one they’d gotten used to.  It was still dark enough to appreciate the glitter of stars, the glow of the galactic arm… and the shining light of a station climbing steadily through the space traffic overhead.

“You think they’d flash us?” Charlie asked.

Rose rolled her head to one side to look at her partner.  “You don’t have a morpher.”

The corner of Charlie’s mouth quirked upward.  “I have a Ranger code and a comm.”

Rose didn’t ask why she’d brought her comm out to the bath.  “Then yes,” she said.  “I think they love getting random publicity requests from the ground while they’re trying to work.”

Charlie lifted one hand out of the water and shook it off before she reached over her shoulder for her towel.  Rose didn’t crane her neck to see, but the hand came back with a comm in it.  Charlie muttered a station uplink code with her base and badge number, and sure enough, Rose heard a live voice reply within seconds.

“Mite,” Rose said, raising her voice just enough that it would carry around the pool.  Hopefully enough to get people’s attention without disturbing them if they wanted to ignore it.  “Uchū sutēshon.”

Charlie read off their coordinates, and the voice over her comm replied, “Roger that.  Visible orbital maneuver in ten seconds: mark.”

“Thanks,” Charlie told them.

“Have a good night, SPD Red.”

There were whispers around the water, people watching the stars and listening to Charlie’s conversation, so Rose murmured, “Jū byō.”

Charlie had time to hide her comm back wherever she’d gotten it from and float her hand toward Rose.  They intertwined their fingers above the water and let them sink together.  The shining light that was the space station held steady for several more seconds before flaring brightly, flashing and sparkling as its shifting panels caught the sun and tossed the light down to them.

There were murmurs and the gentle splash of water as people pointed and stared.  The station flashed several more times on its way to the opposite horizon, and Charlie whispered, “They gave us a good one.”

“They recognized you,” Rose said.

“Yeah, and you never know if that’s gonna be good or bad,” Charlie replied.

Rose squeezed her hand, under the water where it was obscured by minerals and refracted light.  So far they’d traveled without hassle, largely anonymous in their civilian clothing and discreet SPD ID.  As Rangers from a base on the other side of the world, it was only Rose who drew the occasional second glance when someone in her home country recognized her.

The loss of a front-line team had put their faces on screens the world over, but they’d been gone for the better part of a year.  They were old news.  Their return had seen far less publicity, subsumed as it was by a planet-wide invasion, and given their own role in the hostilities Rose was just grateful to slip in under the radar.

So they didn’t wear their uniforms, and they didn’t try to jump the queues, and for the most part people treated them like the tourists they were.  Except occasionally--once or twice a day--when Charlie got the idea to do something impossible.  She pulled rank like it was her god-given right, Rose thought fondly.

So far it hadn’t gotten them into more trouble than it got them out of, so that was something.

“You know,” Rose said, watching steam rise into heavens filled with far more dangerous things.  “I’m planning to be with you for the rest of my life.”

“Good,” Charlie said.  “Saves me the time of stalking you later.”

“You know what else would save time,” Rose said.

“A tracking bracelet?” Charlie suggested.

“Getting married,” Rose replied.

“We should do that,” Charlie agreed.

Rose turned her head to look at her again.  “Really?”

“There weren’t any rings on Dagobah,” Charlie said.  “I mean, I could have made you one, but most of the time it seemed selfish to propose in the face of certain death.  And it wouldn’t have been fair to the others.”

“So let’s get married now,” Rose said.

“Great,” Charlie said.  “Yes.  When?  I mean, hey, we still have a few days before we have to go back.  You want to get married here?”

“Yes.”  She hadn’t thought about it and she didn’t care.  “In a shrine.  Before we go home.  Can we do that?”

“We can do any damn thing you want,” Charlie said.  “The sky is no limit.  Although considering our recent history, maybe we shouldn’t have the ceremony in space.”

Rose eyed her speculatively, the snow bright behind her colored hair and the onsen lights making her look strangely native to this place.  “Would you wear a kimono?” she asked.

“If you want me to,” Charlie replied.

Rose smiled.  “You just want to get married before Sky, don’t you.”

“Don’t question my motivation,” Charlie told her.  “Just because you’re the best reason doesn’t mean the other ones aren’t good too.”

Rose’s family didn’t hate her.  Rose hadn’t promised they wouldn’t, because she didn’t make stupid promises, and Charlie had been ready to take responsibility for their last disastrous deployment.  Her team.  Her decisions.  She’d almost gotten them killed, and she would live with that forever.

Whether the team itself would forgive her for the worst year of their lives remained to be seen, but Rose’s parents, like Don’s son, had decided that having them back again was worth any price.  If Charlie was the cost, they would pay it.  In paper angels and paint markers, or extended tours and delayed vacations.

Even if it meant dressing her in a wedding kimono and giving her to their daughter.  In a Shinto shrine.  During Kwanzaa.

The fact that Rose’s family was a little strange probably helped as much as anything.

“Want to share?” Rose whispered.

She was stroking Rose’s arm, skin cool atop their futon in the darkened room.  Their pre-wedding shopping spree had been a whole new introduction to Japanese culture… or at least, close enough that an outsider couldn’t tell the difference.  Given the family she was marrying into, Charlie couldn’t guess which parts were “traditional” and which were just Rose having a good time.

“I’m lucky your family is letting me marry you,” Charlie said aloud.  “They seem very resourceful when it comes to getting you what you want.”

Since Rose having a good time was more important to her than anything else, the rest of it didn’t matter that much.

“Everyone should have a nice kimono,” Rose said.

What Charlie was going to do with a red silk kimono, other than wear it for her wedding pictures, she had no idea.  Bring it back to Japan with her next summer, probably.  Or maybe she wasn’t even supposed to wear it again.  Maybe it was like a western wedding dress: one and done.

“Can we wear them again?” Charlie asked.  “Or are they just for the wedding?”  She’d wanted to ask while they were trying them on, but she was tactless enough without trying.  She was really trying to keep her mouth shut when it came to the details of the wedding.

“We can wear them again,” Rose said.  “Although the odds of us going somewhere fancy enough to be worth the trouble are low.”

“Says you,” Charlie retorted.  “If that’s a challenge, you’re on.”

“Oh, please,” Rose said, shifting closer against her shoulder.  “You could barely stand still long enough for them to tie it.  Let alone do anything with your face or hair.”

“No makeup,” Charlie said firmly.  Kimono, okay.  White face?  No.

“Sure,” Rose agreed.  “Then no makeup at all.”

“Deal,” Charlie said.  Like she cared about eye makeup after a year in the jungle.  “I do like the shoes.”

“I like you.”  Rose pressed a kiss against her collar, and then her neck.  It was all a ploy, Charlie thought, to pillow her head more comfortably against Charlie’s body.

“Well, you’d have to,” Charlie remarked.  “To put up with my pronunciation.”

“Oh, what name do you want on the register?” Rose asked.  “I didn’t want to put you on the spot in front of everyone, but it’s a historic document.  Typically it would be your legal name.”

“That’s fine,” Charlie said, lifting her left hand until she imagined she could see the gold glow of her wedding ring.  She could feel its weight, and she ran her thumb over it just in case.  They had both agreed the safest place for the rings they’d bought today was right there on their hands.

Rose shifted until she could free her own left hand.  Holding it up in the darkness, the quiet room pressing in around them, she fumbled for Charlie’s hand until their rings clinked together.  “We’ve got it all,” she murmured.  “You think we should tell the others?”

“What, they can’t wait twenty-four hours?” Charlie countered.  “It’ll take that long just to get a link to Miguel.”

“Tomorrow we can send pictures,” Rose said.

“They can buy us a cake when we get back,” Charlie said.

Rose caught their joined hands with her free one and tugged them down, curling close under the covers.  “You know Cecila will make us one.”

“The woman’s a regular homemaker,” Charlie muttered.

“We could all use a little more of that,” Rose said.  There was only the briefest pause,  her thumb stroking Charlie’s ring finger, before she said, “You know, I miss the base.”

“What, now?” Charlie asked.  But she knew.  Earth was the place they came from, but SPD was the place that had taken them in.  Both had changed drastically in the time they’d been gone, but Earth had filled in and gone on without them.  SPD had kept the empty space warm until they’d clawed their way back to it.

“Especially now,” Rose said, with something that was almost a sigh.  “Everything is so much the same, here.  At least back home it feels like… someone noticed.”

“We didn’t die,” Charlie reminded her.  Reminded herself, really.  Too often, it felt like they were back on that sweltering planet and this was all just a vivid dream.

“Which makes it worse,” Rose said fiercely.  “If we were dead, I would have wanted them to move on.  But we weren’t!”

“No,” Charlie said.  She pulled Rose’s arms in closer and rolled their bodies together, trying to press reassurance into their bones.  “We aren’t.”

Rose pushed her forehead against Charlie’s neck, and she sounded calmer when she muttered, “I want to fly again.  I don’t want to stay on Earth forever.”

“I’m with you,” Charlie said simply.

Rose turned her head a little.  Her voice was clearer when she asked, “Are you with the Rangers?”

She’d asked before, and Charlie hadn’t been able to answer.  The jungle still haunted her--still haunted both of them--but now there was a mountain between them and it.  Maybe that proved the answer was the same as it had always been.

“Together,” Charlie murmured.  “Or not at all.”

“What if we have to be differently together?” Rose insisted.  “Me and you and Don.  We could keep Sophie and Boom until Miguel and Des make up their minds.  You know Jack would love it.”

“Jack isn’t the one I’m trying to please,” Charlie told her.

“I would love it,” Rose said immediately.  

Charlie rubbed her back as she stared up into the slowly lifting darkness.  “Consider it done.”

She must know he was here.  He’d given up trying to catch her in the lab, because that was her territory and frankly too intimidating these days.  Now she was in Command, alone but for the chatter of dispatch, and he had every right to be here.

He had every obligation to be here, in fact.  Jack might say Kat’s presence was part of that obligation.  A sign she was trying to catch him, the same way he had walked past her lab far too many times this past week, though he hadn’t been able to bring himself to go in.

Of course, Jack’s messages on the subject of Kat were mixed, and Cruger shouldn’t be listening to them anyway.

“I wish you wouldn’t disable the surveillance alarms every time you’re in here,” he remarked.  It came out more abruptly than he meant it to, but she didn’t flinch.

She didn’t even look up as she replied, “If I didn’t, they’d go off every time I disable the surveillance.”

He tipped his head to acknowledge the correction.  “I wish you wouldn’t disable the surveillance every time you’re in here, then,” he said.

“Well, I have to,” she told the console in front of her.  “Otherwise everyone would be able to see what I’m doing.”

He didn’t know whether to sigh or smile.  “That is the traditional purpose of surveillance, yes.  It runs continuously in Command for a reason.”

“And I disabled it for a reason,” Kat said.  Lifting her head to look directly at him, she added, “Is there something you wanted?”

Every time they spoke, he had more to lose.  It was unnerving, but it was by definition progress.  And she was here, after all.  She could work in her lab and lock the door if she really wanted to be left alone.

“Yes,” he told her.  “It’s still you.”

She stared back at him for a long moment, and it was as familiar as it was uncertain.  “You don’t even know who I am,” she said at last.  He suspected there were a lot of other things she’d thought about saying instead, but he couldn’t tell if the decision had gone for or against him.

“That didn’t matter last week,” he reminded her.  “It doesn’t matter today.”

She smiled, bright and unexpected.  He didn’t know why the comparison was amusing.  The first day he’d met her, he’d known as much as he would ever need to.  If nothing in the last ten years had changed that, the last week certainly wouldn’t.

“You’re very young,” Kat said.

“You’re very female,” he replied.  “Oh, I’m sorry.  Is this a game where we state obvious things about each other for no relevant reason?  I should learn the rules before I begin.”

“I’m hiding from people who might come after you if they found me,” she said bluntly.

He hoped so.  It would be insulting to be ignored by anyone who was hunting her, for any reason.  “People from the thirtieth century,” he said.

“The thirty-first,” she said.  “I jumped around a lot when I first got my powers.”

“Your Karmanian powers?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, giving him a look he knew all too well.  “You were listening.  I wasn’t sure, that day in Ranger Care.”

He wanted to point out that he always listened to her, that it was just other people he found repetitive and unimportant.  He wanted to apologize for making her think he’d ignored her, or been too worried to pay attention, or whatever excuse she’d constructed on his behalf.

Jack would make a joke about the cup she’d been holding at the time.  Jack had made that joke, and it bothered him that all he could think about was what Jack would do.  What did Jack know about Kat that he didn’t?

What did everyone know about Kat that he didn’t?

“You told my wife,” he blurted out.  It was an unfortunate accusation, and exactly as childish as she had implied he was.  It was also the truth.  “Whatever else I may wish we could be, I hope we’re still friends.”

She gave him a look that was frankly disbelieving.  “You think I trust random strangers who aren’t related to you?”

It was as frustrating as it was meant to be reassuring.  She clearly thought this should make him feel better, while he only found it as confusing as she was.  Who she shared her secrets with seemed determined by a completely arbitrary system of proximity and timing, yet she seemed baffled that he would think it was based on anything other than logic.

“What are you doing in Command?” he asked.  Unfairly and too suspiciously, in hindsight, but she only raised her eyebrows at him with a thoroughly unimpressed expression.

“Running dispatch for C Squad?” she countered, in exactly the same tone of voice.

“Would you tell Jack?” he demanded.  He didn’t even know what he was trying to prove: he’d told her he didn’t need her secrets, and he believed that.  “If Cadet Landors were here, and he asked you the same question.  Would you tell him?”

“Jack is already in trouble,” she retorted.  “You’re not.”

“Anything that threatens my people goes through me,” he told her.

Her expression softened, and with a sudden sense of foreboding, he knew.  He’d just pushed too hard or too long; he’d finally made her see.  She believed him.  Believed in him, maybe.  She would tell him if he insisted.

He shouldn’t have insisted.

“To tell you is to make you choose,” she said, and there was a sigh in her voice that made him think of fondness and apology and a genuine desire to keep him out of whatever mess she was in now.  “You called me a temporal refugee.  You’re not wrong.  But I’m not alone here, and if I tell you what I’m doing I also have to ask you not to share it with Galaxy Command.

“I don’t want to ask you to lie,” Kat added, “but I can’t be responsible for compromising other people if you won’t.”

“Jack?” he guessed.  “After everything I’ve let him get away with, you can’t honestly think I’d turn him in now.”

Kat didn’t smile.  “Not Jack,” she said.

He should walk away.  He knew that, the same way he knew she would let him.  They could even stay friends.  She’d said it herself: I don’t ask you about your past, and I prefer not to talk about mine.  If knowing her didn’t matter, they could go on as they were.

He didn’t take his Sirian military status lightly.  It had defined who he was for his entire adult life, and the war wasn’t over.  It would never be over.  What peace he might find in the wake of Grumm’s destruction would be personal and bittersweet, shared only by those closest to him.

As all of his triumphs and tragedies would be.  It was left to him, then, to define “those closest” as someone other than the chain of command.  He didn’t want Birdie Fowler to be the one life his was most entangled with.

“It’s my sworn duty to hold the line,” he told her.  “But someone I care for very much told me the way we hold that line matters, and I believe she’s right.  I believe we hold that line together.”

She was smiling again, so he added, “If you’ll have me, I’ll stand with you.  You and your time fugitives and your secret society.  If you protect them, I’ll protect them.”

“Okay,” Kat said, and that was it.  Her canines flashed as she beamed at him.  “Welcome to Time Force.”

If someone had asked her if she could fall asleep in the presence of a stranger, she would have told them no.  Well, she would have told them to mind their own business, but the answer was no whether she gave it freely or not.  She needed considerably less sleep than humans did, and she’d suffered for letting her guard down before.

On the other hand, the moment when someone stopped being a stranger was difficult to define.  How much familiarity was required to move someone from “unknown” to “known”?  As far as she’d been able to tell, for humans it was as simple as a face-to-face meeting.  Once they’d been in physical proximity and openly acknowledged each other, they were no longer strangers.

Kat found humans to be unnecessarily gregarious and far too trusting to make reliable allies.

Or she had, until Jen had come through and Jack had come back.  They weren’t strangers.  Jen was family now, and she thought Jack might be someday.  

When she woke up to foreign fabric under her cheek and cool scales against the back of her hand, she had to will herself into stillness.  There were plenty of ways disappearing could make a situation worse.  She wasn’t alone.

“I don’t know what you think is going to happen,” a voice rumbled from above her.  “But you’re safe here.  You’re at home, and you’re safe.”

It was the voice of Anubis Cruger.  A familiar voice--a known voice--and maybe that was the problem.  He wasn’t family, but apparently at some point he’d stopped being a stranger.

Or she was too exhausted to differentiate anymore.

“We’re not safe anywhere,” she muttered into his very Sirian tunic.  She’d adopted the style for the sake of blending in on the base, but she didn’t like it.  She’d never liked it.

“We?” he repeated quietly.

“All of us,” she whispered, closing her eyes against the alien sheen.  She could hear the steady thrum of a heart that beat too fast and feel the strange smoothness of his fingers.  His shirt smelled like metal and space.  

His silence sounded like the darkness between stars.

When she woke up again, there was a pillow under her head and blankets tucked up to her wrists.  She wasn’t in her hammock.  Someone was talking.

She didn’t recognize the sounds at first, and it took her too long to place the English words.  Something about patrol rotations and on-duty time.  Soldiers, she thought.

Power Rangers.  Space Patrol Delta.  The cadet teams on base.

Cruger was telling someone she was sleeping and they should come back later.

Kat opened her eyes.  Not her hammock, but her home.  She was curled up on the sitting cushions that littered the floor.  Not the first time she’d fallen asleep there, but definitely the first time she’d woken up there to the sound of someone else talking about her.

“It’s gotta be now,” Jack’s voice said.  The words were quiet, maybe out of deference to the report of her sleeping, but they sounded firm.  “Believe me, I don’t want to interrupt the two of you not shouting at each other either.  But she needs to hear this.”

Jack was at the door.  Kat pushed the blankets away and sat up, blinking as her perception reoriented itself.  She was looking at Cruger’s back, currently blocking Jack from her sight and keeping him from tripping the time alarms that stitched together every doorway she lived with.

“She can hear it when she wakes up,” Cruger growled.  “Walk away, Cadet.”

Kat sighed.  Their moment of harmony had been short-lived.  She was about to snap at him to get out of her doorway when she heard Jack say, “Sorry, Commander.”  And then, much louder, “Hey, Kat!  Trouble in Mexico!”

“Come in, Jack!” she called back.  She gave Cruger the most disgusted look she could manage when he turned around.  “Don’t answer my door for me,” she told him.  “Don’t make decisions for me, don’t speak for me, and don’t send my guests away because you--actually, you know what?  Just don’t send my guests away.  They’re not here for you.”

“Yeah,” Jack said, pushing past Cruger into her line of sight.  Every time alarm in the house tripped silently, localizing the disturbance at the front door, and she smiled involuntarily.  “We’re really not.”

Hyanni was right behind him.

Kat sat back without thinking about it, and she knew they all noticed.  “What do you want?” she asked bluntly.  She hadn’t expected to ever see Jack’s mother again, and she’d made her peace with that.  She’d even, multiple times in more recent decades, managed to forget about her entirely.

“Jack,” Hyanni said, just as clearly.

Maybe it was because Cruger spoke the same way that she understood immediately.  Of course Jack’s mother wanted him back.  “You can’t take him,” Kat blurted out.  “He’s established here.  They’d miss him.”

“They?” Jack repeated, giving her a look that probably meant indignation.  “If you won’t miss me, Kat, I don’t know who will.”

“Neither do I,” Cruger muttered, still blocking the open door they were all inside.  “May I close the door, Dr. Manx, or would that constitute an unacceptable infringement upon your sovereign territory?”

“I’m not trying to take him,” Hyanni said.  “I just wanted to talk to him, and when I told him why, he said we should talk to you together.  Congratulations, by the way,” she added.  “I hear you’re head of Base Tech.”

“Thank you,” Kat said with a sigh.  “This is the base commander and head of SPD on Earth, Commander Cruger.  Commander, this is Hyanni.  Jack’s mother.

“You can close the door,” she added.  “Thank you.  Jack, they’d miss you because they wouldn’t see you; I would.  How did you know I was at home?”

“You weren’t on base,” Jack said.  “There’s a limited number of places you go.  Also, I had Sophie track that comm you’re carrying.”

“Jack’s mother,” Cruger said, “in the way that Delgado is his sister, or Jack’s mother from Mexico, where Mexico is code for the future?”

“From Mexico,” Jack said.

“I didn’t ask you,” Cruger snapped.

“Oh, my mistake,” Jack said.  “Since you were talking about me, I just assumed I was allowed to participate in the conversation.”

“You are,” Kat said firmly.  “Commander, maybe you’d like to wait outside.”

He gave her a wounded look.  “I certainly will not.”

“How about back at base,” Jack suggested.

“What did you want to tell me,” Kat insisted.  “Jack or Hyanni, I don’t care which, but one of you needs to start talking.”

“She’s trying to bring me up to speed,” Jack said.  “Really fast, like a thousand years in an hour.  She says it’s a better history than the one Time Force is going to give me.”

Even after all this time, a casual mention of temporal police still raised her hackles.  

“Why do you need to be caught up in an hour?” Cruger demanded.  “If you're leaving, surely you have as much time as there is between now and the future.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Hyanni said.  She sounded just irritated enough that Kat gave her a second glance.  Lie?  “They’re coming to him.”

“Who?” Cruger countered.

“Time Force,” Hyanni said.  “Jack’s about to get promoted.  That, and the fact this isn't his native time, makes Time Force conscript him.”

Jack wasn't surprised to find the commander at Kat’s home.  He was surprised to hear she was sleeping while he was there.  Jack had literally never seen Kat asleep, even when they traveled alone together for three days.  He hoped Cruger appreciated his rare status.

Unfortunately, Cruger appreciating things didn't translate into Cruger being easy to get along with.  Today or any other day, as far as Jack was concerned.  It wasn’t as obvious when he wasn’t in a room with three other people who behaved exactly the same way.

“I thought Time Force was already here,” Cruger said.  The only thing that kept it from being insultingly suspicious was the way he glared at Hyanni instead of Kat when he said it.

“Oh, they are,” Hyanni agreed.  “They just don't trust us, so they're going to enlist Jack.”

“Well, that seems counterproductive,” Cruger grumbled.

Which was totally unfair, considering how he’d recruited Jack, but it wasn’t untrue.  “More than you know,” Jack admitted.  “Unless Kat’s been filling you in.”  Since she was more likely to answer him than Cruger was, he asked Kat, “Is it more than he knows?”

“Yes,” Kat said with a sigh.  “I'm afraid he's just being rude.  The irony is, of course, that he picked you as Red Ranger specifically because he didn’t trust you.”

“Thank you,” Jack said, pointing at her.  “I was just thinking the same thing.”

Hyanni was looking from him to Kat and back again.  “I don’t think I heard this story.”

“And you’re not going to hear it now,” Cruger said.  “What does Time Force want with Jack?  What does Time Force want with any of you?  I thought they left this time alone once it was clear of trizerium.”

Jack frowned.

Everyone he’d mentioned Time Force to so far had reacted with disbelief, so it took his brain a second to catch up.  When it did, he looked at Kat to make sure.  Her eyes were wide, and they both turned to stare at Cruger at the same time.

“Wait, you knew?” Jack said, when Kat couldn’t seem to come up with any words.

“Knew what?” Cruger demanded.

“About Time Force,” Kat said.  “You knew they were here.”

“Of course I did,” Cruger said.  “Trace trizerium containment was one of the conditions of Sirian sovereignty on Earth.”

Jack looked at Hyanni, but she just shook her head.  “Trizerium was just the beginning,” she said.  “Rogue Time Force agents spent months disrupting the timeline, and more were sent back to straighten it out.  Some of them are still here.”

“Okay,” Jack said, holding up his hand.  “Leaving aside trizerium, or whatever you just said, I thought Sirians had diplomatic immunity on Earth.  Aren’t the SPD bases neutral territory or something?”

“They’re Sirian territory,” Cruger said.  “Protected by planetary treaty and operated according to native law.  We don’t have immunity on Earth.  We have sovereignty on our own land.”

“When he says native law,” Kat interrupted, “he means Sirian law.  The Earth-Sirian treaty is overseen and adjudicated by Galactic Command, and it allows Space Patrol Delta to operate independent of Earth governments.”

“Okay,” Jack repeated, because he didn’t follow any of that and he didn’t really care.  “So you knew about SPD’s deal with Time Force.  Did you know Time Force was looking for people, not just crystals?”

“Time Force made itself known in 2001 on the trail of escaped criminals from a thousand years in your future,” Cruger said.  “They’ve always been looking for people.”

Jack rolled his eyes.  “I can’t believe I’m getting lectured on my own planet’s history by a dog from outer space,” he complained.  “First off, no one believed that!  Second, ‘criminal’ is in the eye of the beholder, and I know you know that so don’t give me any police bullshit about it.”

“Really?” Cruger said, looking at Kat.  “You don’t want to fire him even a little bit for that?”

“He’s right,” Kat said.  She looked more tense than resigned, and Jack saw Cruger notice.  His ears flattened in alarm, but he didn’t interrupt Kat when she added, “Time Force went to a lot of trouble to erase their presence in this time, and they were very successful.  Part of the reason SPD found such a warm welcome here is because Time Force smoothed the way.  They wanted a distraction and a cover, and they got both.  Time travel was swept under the rug as just another part of the Power Ranger mythos.”

It actually made Jack feel better to hear Kat lecturing again.  She was good at it, and it obviously relaxed her, which made him feel calmer by association.  Bad things happened when Kat was upset.  No one wanted that.

Cruger didn’t look relaxed.  “You know a lot about an organization that successfully erased their presence in this time,” he said.

“I met them in the future,” she said.  “And my sister led the team that went rogue in 2001.”

It took Cruger less than a second to get it.  Jack hadn’t even started counting when he said, “Commander Collins is your sister.”

“Surprise,” Kat said, and this time she did sigh.  “I meant to tell you earlier.  I must have been more tired than I thought.”

Cruger was here because Kat was planning to confess?  Interesting, Jack thought.  He probably didn’t want to know how that had led to her falling asleep while Cruger guarded the door.

“I’m sorry to rush things,” Hyanni said.  “But the part of this that’s important is the fact that Jack escaped from Time Force once already, with Jen and--and Kat’s help.  Now they’re trying to bring him back into the fold, with no idea that some of their most wanted fugitives are working right beside him.”

“She pretends she cares about me,” Jack joked, looking at Kat.  “She’s actually worried about you.”

“I care about you!” Hyanni protested.  “But they can’t lock you up; you’re too important now.  They could make--”  She nodded at Kat, and Jack knew she was trying to remember Kat’s alias.  “Kat disappear, very easily.”

“Over my dead body,” Cruger snapped.

“That wouldn’t be hard for them either,” Hyanni told him.

Chapter 3

B Squad was pinned down by a rocket launcher that definitely shouldn’t have been there.  Too far away for Z to surprise the operator--not without the danger of being surprised herself--and more than Sky’s forcefields could handle, it was turning the outskirts of New Tech into a war zone.  A civil war zone, but a war zone nonetheless, and no one in SPD used the term lightly these days.

Sky had heard dispatch promise backup, but he was still surprised when Jack dropped into the shelter of a burned out car beside him.  “Hey,” the other Red Ranger said cheerfully.  “You know the base has a function hall?”

It was so out of context that Sky actually stopped and thought about it for a moment.  “What?” he said at last.

“I know, right?”  Jack rolled over his right shoulder and peered around the end of the car.  “What the hell kind of view is this?  Are you trying to get shot at?”

“I’m trying to distract the person with the cannon,” Sky said.  “Can you phase through rocket-powered grenades?”

Jack snorted.  “I can phase through anything,” he said.  “Also, why didn’t I know about this function hall?  Apparently there’s a dedicated entrance with gardens and a fountain and everything.”

“Of course there is,” Sky said.  “Otherwise guests would have to have military clearance to use it.  What would you do with a function hall, anyway?”

Jack grinned at him, and Sky recognized the infuriating expression that meant he was about to do something particularly reckless.  “What wouldn’t I do with a function hall?”

Then he swung out from around the car, yelling, “SPD SWAT!”

Sky closed his eyes behind his visor and prayed for his fiance to live so Sky could decide whether or not to kill him later.  Launching himself over top of the car, he was close enough that he saw the strike go right through Jack’s armored form.  It was well-aimed, which meant that missing Jack put it off by a good twenty feet, and Sky had just enough time to get a forcefield between them and the explosive debris.

That was the last they heard from the rocket launcher.  Sophie’s voice came over their morphers a moment later, declaring judgment mode, and then containment.  She gave the all-clear, and no one powered down but it was still a victory.

“You want to chase down the small arms fire?” Jack asked him, privately and without activating his morpher link.

“I’d arrest all of them,” Sky said.  “They’re yours if you want them.”

“Well, they shot at you,” Jack said.  “I’m not gonna be much more lenient.”

“Hey, Jack,” Boom’s voice said over their morphers.  “You want us to clean up here?”

Jack reached for his morpher, and he might not have been looking at Sky through his visor but it felt like he was.  It felt like he was staring.  “Yeah, Boom,” Jack said calmly.  “Sky says he’ll take the help.  Don’t chase anyone who’s not armed.”

“Roger that!” Boom replied, sounding strangely cheerful.

About as cheerful as Jack, actually.  Sometimes Sky thought Jack had found his place on A Squad, after all.  

“So there's a party tomorrow night,” Jack said abruptly.  “I mean, allegedly.  It takes place in this supposed function hall, so I'm not convinced.”

“Sure,” Sky agreed.  “You've always been the king of credible evidence.”

“Yeah, okay,” Jack said.  “My point is, you wanna go?”

“I have to go,” Sky said.  “My family’s sponsoring it.”

He could hear the grin in Jack’s voice even without being able to see it.  “Yeah, mine too.”

He had to smile, because Jack loved having a family.  He loved it so much that Sky couldn’t even mock him for it.  All it made him want to do was give Jack more: more relatives, more holidays, more memories to make up for whatever he thought he’d missed.

“So, what do you say?” Jack pressed.  “You want to go with me?  I could take you, or something.  That’s a thing people do, right?”

Sky blinked, but it was still just the armored visor of A Squad Red that stared back at him.  He couldn’t see Jack’s expression at all.  “You want to take me to the New Years party on the base?”

“Yeah,” Jack said.  “Why, is that weird?”

“Did Syd put you up to this?”  He regretted the question the moment it was out of his mouth.  It sounded mean, suspicious, and Jack only made fun of him in front of other people.  He knew that.  He knew it, and he still went and asked something like this.

“No,” Jack said.  “Is it something Syd would do?  It’s weird, isn’t it.”

“No!” Sky said quickly.  “It’s not weird.  It’s… nice.  We should definitely go.  Together.”

“Great!”  Jack sounded very smug.  “Rose totally owes me money.”

Sky sighed.  He would never learn.  “Charlie put you up to it.”

“No,” Jack said, pointing at him.  Then, “Well, kind of.  I mean, she suggested it.  That it was something you might, you know.  Do.  Or like, I guess.  Rose said taking Charlie’s advice on anything relating to you could lead to divorce.”

“Hers,” Sky said, “or ours?”

“You know, that wasn’t clear?”  He could hear Jack smiling again, and it sounded rueful and happy and sweet.  “They really do care about you, you know.  I got the shovel talk from both of them.  Separately.”

“Yeah, well.”  Sky cleared his throat.  “Rose got it from me, so.  Probably had that one coming.”

“You guys have a weird relationship,” Jack told him.

He wasn’t wrong, so Sky shrugged.  “Welcome to SPD.”

“Sky!” Z’s voice shouted over his morpher.  “I need another containment card!”

“I’m gonna go,” Sky said, hooking his thumb over his shoulder.  “Do me a favor and don’t jump in front of any more grenades today, okay?”

“No promises,” Jack said.  “Try not to be the one drawing fire every damn time, and maybe I won’t have to jump in front of it.”

“We should dress up tomorrow,” Sky blurted out.  He shouldn’t say it now, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to say it when he was standing in Jack’s room surrounded by donation bins for winter clothes and shoes and cadets’ old glasses.  “For the party.”

Jack’s accent was almost a drawl when he replied, “I wasn’t planning to take you to a fancy function hall in cargo pants and a t-shirt, Sky.”

“Uh, Sky?” Bridge’s voice asked.  “Do you have any more containment cards?”

“Right,” Sky said.  “Okay.  We’ll do that, then.”  Tapping his morpher link, he added, “On my way,” and he pretended he couldn’t hear Z complaining in the background.

“Probably Jack should be here,” Z said.  “He’s good at teaching people things he shouldn’t know.”

Even Dan knew that would set Sky off, so she must have said it on purpose.  Z had been needling Sky all afternoon, and he had no idea why.  Unless it was because of something he had done to Jack, or something he hadn’t done to Jack, both of which were equally likely but didn’t narrow down the possibilities much.

“Jack should know how to use a SWAT flyer,” Sky retorted, “because Jack went on pre-upgrade training with the rest of us.  Any of whom can teach Dan to use a vehicle his morpher controls seamlessly.”

“Sky is… not the best teacher,” Syd said, and the sad part was that she was the most diplomatic of all of them.  “He’ll try to tell you otherwise, but that’s because he thinks he’s the best at everything.”

“I don’t think I’m the best at everything,” Sky said testily.  “I am the best at everything.  That’s why I’m the Red Ranger.”

“You can probably imagine how happy he was when Jack was picked to lead the team instead of him,” Syd added, leaning forward to tug on the restraints.  “These are good.  Kiss for good luck.”

Dan gave her a kiss, and she beamed at him before pulling herself up and out of a cockpit designed for one.  “All set,” she called back.  She thumped the hull twice in the traditional “clear” gesture, and Dan sealed the flyer behind her.

“They’re really not that different from the atmospheric jets,” Bridge’s voice said over the comm.  “We all did sims on those controls.  Well, except for Z and Jack.  But they already had morphers by the time they had to fly, and that does something to your brain.”

“I did live training,” Dan said.  “I have a vertigo thing with the simulators.”

“I did live training too,” Sky grumbled, but he was immediately interrupted by Syd.

“Wait, you can get out of the sims with vertigo?” she demanded.  “Why didn’t I know that?”

“Well, this is just a guess,” Bridge replied, “but maybe because you don’t experience motion sickness triggered by sensory conflict in virtual reality?”

“Yeah,” Dan said.  “That.  Regular flight doesn’t set it off, but something about the simulator doesn’t work for me.”

“I wish I’d thought of that,” Syd said.  “Live training is much more exciting than virtual reality.”

“Not that you would have compromised the efficiency of the training process by lying about a medical condition,” Sky said.

“Oh no, I definitely would have,” Syd replied.  “What about you, Mr. Special?  Why did you get live training?”

“Because I was training as a test pilot before I made D Squad,” Sky answered.  “I was flight track during orientation.”

“I didn’t know that,” Z said.

“Well, now you do,” Sky said.  “I assume you’re planning to leave the launch bay at some point?”

“Wait,” Z said, and Dan confirmed his pre-flight and waited.  “Wasn’t Dru a pilot?  Did you guys train together?”

“Dru was two years ahead of me,” Sky said.  “We didn’t train together.”

Dan sent his flight plan to the tower for the sake of form, and also because he knew better than to get involved in any conversation about Sky’s ex-lover.  Z was living dangerously today, but no one had to join her.  That was what individual zord cockpits were for: safety in the face of terrible odds.

“You said you’d be flying if you weren’t a Ranger,” Z was saying.  “Is that because you’d rather be a pilot, or just literally, that’s the track you were on before you made D Squad?”

“What are you, trying to trace my call or something?” Sky demanded.  “If you have a whole questionnaire, write it down.  That’s what Jack did.”

“Did you fill that out?” Bridge wanted to know.  “I mean, he kind of filled it out for you, but he did leave it for you.  Your answers must be important too.”

“They were my questions,” Sky muttered.  “He was just answering them.  Sort of.”

“Jack gave you a questionnaire?” Syd repeated.  “That’s adorable.”

“Guys, I could have flown around the planet in this amount of time,” Sky said.  “Why are we talking about me and Jack?”

“We’re actually just talking about you,” Z said.  “You’re talking about Jack.”

“I was talking about me,” Syd corrected.

“I’m waiting for the okay to launch,” Dan offered.

“I’m not even coming on this flight,” Sky said.  “Is this some sort of weird delaying tactic?  You were the ones who volunteered to teach him.  Not that he needs it.”

“Thank you,” Dan put in, just in case that had gotten lost in whatever was going on.  He didn’t need SWAT flyer training, but it seemed like a better excuse than most for getting out of the city for the afternoon.  

“Maybe I’m trying to get back at you for ignoring us this morning,” Z said.  “Seriously, you couldn’t walk away from Jack for two seconds to hand out some extra containment cards?  Just because you two got the dramatic explosion, you’re excused from all street cleanup afterwards?”

“We probably should have been carrying more cards,” Bridge mused.

“No, we should have been sharing the ones we had,” Z told him.

“That’s what you’re angry about?” Sky asked.  “Really?”

“No,” Z said cheerfully.  “Actually Jack’s going out to get something for his date with you tomorrow night, and he asked me to stall you at the launch so you couldn’t tail him.”

If his head hadn’t been pressed up against the headrest already, Dan would have let it fall back while he rolled his eyes.  “You know,” he said, when the silence had gone on for several more seconds.  “It’s really hard to imagine what this team was like with all of you on it at the same time.”

“You mean, all of us including Jack?” Syd’s voice asked.  “It was pretty much like this.  Only he and Sky yelled at each other a lot more and occasionally they shut each other up by kissing in the middle of the street.”

“I’m sorry I missed it,” Dan said dryly.

“That’s a pretty good description, now that you mention it,” Z said.

“No it isn’t,” Sky said.  “There’s still plenty of yelling.”

“There should be more kissing,” Syd said.  “Do you think the spark has gone out of your relationship?  Maybe you should surprise him with candlelight and rose petals.”

Even over the comm, Dan could hear Z snicker.  

“If I promise not to tail Jack,” Sky said, “will you all take off and pretend you’re doing something remotely productive with your afternoon?”

“Yes,” Dan said.

“I’m ready,” Syd replied.

“We’re go for launch,” Bridge agreed.

“He’s probably got a good head start by now anyway,” Z said.

Jack had no idea how to take someone out, but he figured between Ally and Syd, he had it pretty well covered.  Ally was practical and Syd was fancy, so if he averaged it out, it was probably something like the advice a normal person would give.  Plus Ally knew him and Syd knew Sky.  They were a great combination.

Charlie knew Sky better, of course, but she was also crazy.  He wasn’t going to ask her too many questions.

“Hey, Jack?” Z banged on the door and for once, waited for an invitation before she barged in.  Not that he cared most of the time, but it wasn’t like he wore this stuff every day.  He had to make sure it wasn’t inside-out or something.

“Hey,” she repeated, leaning through the door.  Then she raised her eyebrows and whistled.  “Hey, wow!  Looking good!”

“Yeah?” he said.  “So Ally knows what she’s talking about?”

“Yes,” Z said, grinning at him.  “Thumbs up, across the board, you look fantastic.  Has Sky seen you yet?  Because that would be a great moment for a camera.”

“He’s down the hall,” Jack said.  “I think.  Syd said I had to ‘pick him up’--”  He made little air quotes around the phrase, because when he was uncomfortable it was that or roll his eyes.   “From somewhere that isn’t my own room.”

“Oh, living dangerously,” Z teased.  “Taking advice from Syd!”

“I know, I know.”  Jack smiled because he couldn’t help it.  “I tried not to take her too seriously.”

“I heard that!” Syd yelled from somewhere in the hallway.  She was in the doorway a moment later, and she made a face at Jack’s awkward posture.  “Okay, you look halfway decent for once, but you can’t slouch like that or it messes up the lines of your jacket.  Take a deep breath in and keep your shoulders wherever they end up before you let it out.”

“It’s not worth it if you look stiff,” Z added.  “It’s better to look comfortable and a little wrinkled than perfect and miserable.”

“He won’t look miserable,” Syd said, pushing past her into the room.  “He’ll be with Sky.”

“Yeah, your point?” Z said dryly.

“Well, Jack likes him,” Syd said.  “Do you straighten up when Sky puts a hand on your back?  Or your shoulders?  Probably not your shoulders.  Here, what about this?”

Syd wasn’t big on touching people casually, but she was friendly with her teammates, so Jack wasn’t completely surprised when she pressed her hand against his back, just under his shoulderblades.  It still made him move, just a little, and he saw Z smile.  “I’m gonna go get a camera,” she said.

“There,” Syd said at the same time.  “That’s perfect.”  She patted his shoulder as she came around in front of him, nodding her approval at what she saw.  “You look very nice.”

Another Z appeared in the doorway.  “Smile!” she called.

“How come everyone else is allowed to see you and I’m not?” Sky’s voice asked from just behind her.  “I actually live here.”

“Oh, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” the first Z said.  “Dan’s gonna have to move out of C Wing eventually.  He can have my bed if SPD’s okay with me and Bridge sharing a room, so is there any policy against that?  Sky?”

“No,” Sky’s voice said.

“Okay, then you have to move in with Jack for real,” Z told him.  Her second self pushed past them to show the camera to Jack and Syd, while she told Sky, “I don’t have a lot, but there’s barely enough space in your room for Bridge’s stuff, let alone your stuff and mine on top of it.”

“Have you seen Jack’s room?” Sky’s voice countered.  “There’s barely space for Jack.”

“I’m just storing some stuff for Ally,” Jack called.  “I can make her come get it any time!”

“Why are we talking through the wall?” Sky wanted to know.  “Can I come in?”

“No!” Jack insisted.  “I have to pick you up.  Go back to your room!”

“That’s true,” Syd agreed, catching Z’s arm before she could vanish with the camera.  “That’s what you do when you take someone out.”

“Is that why Dan isn't allowed to meet you at the party?” Z asked.

“Exactly,” Syd agreed.  “I’m picking him up from C Wing.  But I want to see the pictures you take of Sky and Jack, so go.  Jack.  Hurry up already.”

“I’m going,” Jack promised.  “Is Sky still in the hallway?”

Z laughed at him.  “What is this, your wedding?”

“No,” her other self added from the hallway.  “He’s in his room.  Well, he’s in Bridge’s room, which supposedly isn’t his room anymore, even though that’s where all his things are.”

“Flowers,” Syd reminded him, and Jack turned back from his own door.  She picked up the two little buds and handed them to him.  “Do you have any idea what to do with these?”

Jack smiled at her hopefully.  “No, but I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

“Sky can help you with his,” she said, stepping in and tugging on the front of his jacket.  She tucked the blue flower into the top buttonhole and did something magic that made it stay.  “There you go.”

“This is the blue one,” Jack said, eyeing it carefully.

“Yes,” Syd agreed.  She patted his jacket again, then handed him the red flower and pointed toward the door.  “It is.”

“Okay,” Jack said with a shrug.  “Thanks, Syd.”

“You’re welcome,” she called after him.  “Remember to get him a drink when you get there!”

Z fell into step with him in the hallway.  “Here’s what I can’t decide,” she said.  “Should I take a picture of your expression, or his first?”

“My expression is my normal expression,” Jack said.  “What do you need a picture of that for?”

“Oh, you’re right,” Z said, slapping her hand against her forehead in a way that told him he had no idea what was going on.  “What was I thinking!”

The door to the room Sky shared with Bridge--sort of, at this point--was open, but Jack knocked on it anyway.  “Hey, Sky,” he said, grinning when Sky looked up from his book like he’d been sitting there for the last half hour.  “You want to go to a party?”

Sky shrugged, but he was smiling when he tossed his book aside.  “I guess,” he said, standing up.  “I mean, since I have nothing better to do.”

“Huh,” Jack said.  He saw Z hold up her camera and point it at him, but he didn’t even care.  “You look, um... you look really good.”

“Thanks,” Sky said, taking the compliment easily.  “You too.”

He was less embarrassed than Jack had expected, but then, he wasn’t sure why he expected Sky to be embarrassed by this.  “Uh, I got you a--”  He held up the boutonniere.

“Oh, I get the red one,” Sky said.

“Yeah, I guess.”  Sky must have heard Syd talking, right?  “I mean--yeah.”

Sky came closer and held out his hand.  “May I?”

Jack almost took his hand before he realized what that was about, and he put the flower in Sky’s hand quickly.  “Sorry.  I’m not really sure how flowers work.”

“No one is,” Sky said.  “Flowers are usually more about proving you’re willing to go out of your way to get them than they are about wearing them.”

“Well, that’s not true,” Syd’s voice said from the doorway.  “Obviously you wear them to prove your partner was willing to go out of his way.”

“Did you get Dan flowers?” Z wanted to know.

“I told him which flowers to get me,” Syd replied.  “That’s sort of the same thing.”

“Okay, how did you do that?” Jack asked, staring in fascination at Sky’s jacket.  The top buttonhole held a flower that was just as magically attached as his own.

Sky pulled on the lapel enough that Jack could see the inside of his jacket.  The flower was halfway through the buttonhole and held down by a loop at the bottom.  Jack opened his own jacket and inspected it, and sure enough: the thread he’d thought was loose actually had a function.  Go figure.

“I have to tell Bridge what he’s missing,” Z remarked, to no one in particular.  “This whole evening is going to be hilarious.”

“You’re right,” Bridge said, watching the colors swirl through the lights and the holograms and the music he could almost see.  “The ice sculptures are made of crystal.  At least the confetti won’t stick to them this year.”

“There’s confetti?” Z asked, kicking her feet over the edge of the raised platform.  The multi-level platforms thrust out from the wall that supported the catwalk.  They were mostly reserved seating at formal events, but on a night like this it was first come, first served.

“Oh, there’s a lot of confetti,” Bridge said.  “It’ll be like Times Square at midnight.  With glitter and glowsticks and fiber optic streamers.  Not that there’s anything wrong with sparkly hair, obviously, but it turns out glitter doesn’t wash out with water; it just spreads.  Which is fundamentally a contradiction, but also observably true, so you might want to stand underneath something.  For a while.”

Z took this seriously, which was one of many reasons she was so easy to get along with.  “What if we hid under a table?” she asked.  “I mean, we’re already mostly sitting on the floor.  We could sit on the floor under a table, and voila.  No glitter.”

“Well, definitely less glitter,” Bridge agreed.  “It would reduce the surface area of our clothing exposed to airborne confetti and shield us from streamers and flying hats.  I think it’s a great idea.”

“Flying hats?” Z repeated.

Bridge tipped his head.  “Some people throw their hats,” he said.  “Like at graduation.  I don’t really know why, but it does add to the general sense of festivity.  I think some people even get them back afterwards.  I guess it depends how deliberately they throw them.”

“I should have worn a hat,” Z remarked.  “Maybe I could make one out of glowsticks.  Like a crown.”

“That would be fitting,” Bridge said.  “I mean, fitting as in appropriate, figuratively instead of literally, since you won’t really know if it fits until after you make it.”

“I’m collecting them right now,” Z told him.  “You want anything?  I’m going to get myself a drink while I’m at it.”

“Sure,” Bridge said.  “Could you get me some juice from the bar?  Whatever they’re mixing the drinks with?”

“Orange, cranberry, or tomato?” Z asked, and when he glanced across the floor below he could make out a bright beam of yellow from the direction of the bar.

“I’ll have the orange juice,” Bridge said.  “Thank you.”

“You got it,” Z said cheerfully.  “Do you think I’ll need something to hold the glowsticks together?”

“I think they come with bracelet attachments,” Bridge offered.  “You should be able to use those to make a necklace, only shorter.  I mean, so it sits on your head, not so it’s too short to be a necklace.”

“Hello.”  A strange voice from behind them made them both turn: it was at ear level, it came from a violet aura, and it definitely wasn’t human.  Bridge studied the source of the voice while it said, “Uncle Jack?”

He and Z looked at each other.

“Are you looking for your Uncle Jack?” Z asked.  The small… person, looked sort of child-like, but that could be an alien stature difference.  It also had a wide-eyed stare to go with its high-pitched voice when Z’s question confused it.

“Do you speak English?” Bridge added.

The little being at the center of the violet aura shook its head no.  Or in a way that could have meant no, if it had been a human making the gesture.  A human that moved its head left to right to indicate no.

“You don’t speak English?” Z repeated, just to make sure.

It shook its head no again, and she added, “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

This time the violet aura said, “Yes.”

“But you don’t speak English,” Z said, looking at Bridge again.  “Okay.”

“Maybe they just want to watch the party,” Bridge suggested.

“This is a great location,” Z agreed, reaching down for the drinks her other self was handing up to her.  “Orange juice for you,” she added.  “And an orange juice for me.  To good ideas,” she said, lifting the glass in his direction.

“To good ideas, and good company,” Bridge agreed, clinking the rim of his glass against hers.

“Here here,” she said.

“Uncle Jack,” the little voice from behind them insisted.

“You didn’t happen to bring a translator, did you?” Z asked.

“Oh.”  Bridge set his juice down on the floor next to him and patted his pockets.  “Yes.  Um.”  He pulled out his handkerchief, lip balm, glove charm, and miniature sundial before giving up on his front right pocket and switching to the left.  The translator turned out to be two pockets down on the other side, but at least he didn’t waste time searching through the back pockets before it turned up.

Flipping it on, he told the small person, “Hello.  Can we help you?”

“Mom,” the person said.  It was about their height when they were sitting down, and it didn’t look alarmed to be halfway up a wall with a bright and boisterous party going on both above and below.  “Uncle Jack?”

That was the most questioning it had sounded, but Bridge was distracted by the way Z leaned in and didn’t quite touch him.  She understood about the touching, but her aura still overwhelmed his when it got too close.  “Bridge,” she said quietly.  “Do those ears look familiar?”

“What?”  He squinted, but the child--or child-like being--was a blur of purple through bright yellow and the shifting overhead lights.  “Should they?”

“Uncle Jack!”  The small person launched itself forward, toward the edge of the platform and almost flying off into the crowd if Z hadn’t reached out and caught it.  “Hello!” the violet aura added.  “Hello!”

Z got one hand free enough to activate her morpher, and she said, “Jack, I think you have a visitor?”

Bridge looked down at the incandescent red marking Jack’s location on the floor, and he thought he saw Jack turn toward them in the crowd.  “Who’s that?” his voice asked, coming over Z’s morpher and making the child in her arms squirm.

“We’re not sure,” Z answered.  “They keep asking for you and Mom.  That’s all we know.”

“Okay,” Jack said.  “Sky, I’m gonna go say hi to my friend up there.”

“Yeah, that’s a great idea,” Sky’s voice said in the background.  No other conversation came through, which meant he must be standing almost on top of Jack for the morpher to pick up his voice.  “No way that could go wrong.”

Funny, Bridge thought, studying the glow of red.  Even last week, their auras had been different enough to tell apart when they stood side-by-side.  Tonight they were just a single blaze of brilliant red.

“Come on,” Jack said.  “We’re surrounded by Rangers and police officers and fighter pilots.  How much safer do you want to be?”

They were moving while they spoke, but Jack hadn’t dropped the open comm.  His aura was bright and steady and distinctly focused in their direction.  Strange, Bridge thought.  That usually meant he knew something about what was going on.

Of course, Jack often thought that he knew what was going on even when he turned out to be completely wrong.  It didn’t make him any less confident.

“Uncle Jack,” the small person repeated, now sitting contentedly in Z’s lap as they watched Jack’s approach.  “Hello.”

“I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say you recognize Jack,” Z said.  “I don’t know why you’re looking for him, but he’s pretty popular.  I hope you know that getting him gets you Sky, too.”

“Mom,” was the only answer.

Bridge looked at Z and found her looking back.  “You don’t suppose Sky is Mom?” he asked.

“With these ears?” Z countered.  “I’m pretty sure Mom’s on Jack’s team.”

Bridge smile.  “One could make the argument,” he said, “that we’re all on Jack’s team.”

“Hey Kat,” Jack told his morpher.  “How’s it going?”

“No one’s bleeding and nothing’s burning,” her voice replied.  “Which is pretty good around here lately.  Are you in trouble?”

“I’m calling you from a party,” Jack protested, leaning back against the curvy wall while a very kittenish child played with the braids in his hair.  Z seemed to think this was hilarious, and even Sky was smiling, so he wasn’t in any hurry to move on.  “Why would I be in trouble?”

“Because the whole point of having me on duty tonight,” Kat replied, “is so that you can stay as far away from trouble as humanly possible.  Knowing how far that isn’t, and also that you take great pride in doing the opposite of at least half the things anyone in authority tells you to do, I assume you’re in trouble.”

“Well, kind of,” Jack admitted.  He saw Bridge make a “so-so” gesture, and he quickly added, “But not really!  We just wanted to ask you a couple of questions, and this seemed like the most convenient way to do it.”

“We?” Kat repeated, in a tone that said she didn’t think she wanted to know.

“Yeah, funny story,” Jack said.  “I’m looking at a small child who looks just like you.  Right this very minute.”

There was a long and telling pause.  “Really,” Kat said at last.  She didn’t sound anywhere near skeptical enough.

Jack pressed his morpher against his shoulder and whispered, “I knew it!  They can totally time travel!”  He held out his fist to Z, who bumped it back without hesitation.  This was going to make the base hilarious in so many ways.

Tipping his morpher back toward his face, Jack said, “Yeah,” more calmly.  “Also, this child seems to know my name.”

He could hear Kat sigh, even over the morpher.  “They’ve probably met you before,” she said.

“You think?”  Jack couldn’t help grinning at his morpher.  Kat’s kids called him “Uncle Jack.”  That was adorable.  “Only I haven’t met them yet, so.  When I’m older and they’re younger?”

“That’s what it sounds like,” Kat said.  “Are they wearing a guest badge?”

Jack tried to check, just to make sure, but Sky and Z were shaking their heads at him.  “No,” he said obediently.

“Okay, so, probably not Chichi or Janecha, then,” Kat said.

“Wait, you know them?” Jack blurted out.  As soon as he said it, he knew it was stupid, but he couldn’t figure out how it would have sounded better.

“Of course I know them, Jack.  They’re my children.”  Kat sounded… tired.  Not annoyed, not like he’d expected her to be.  Just resigned.

No one should have to sound that way when they were talking about their children.

“Well, can we all adopt them?” Jack wanted to know.  “‘Cause they're awesome.”

“I think you already have,” Kat’s voice answered.  She didn’t quite sound amused, but at least her tone was less sad this time.  “If the number of times I've heard ‘Uncle Jack’ over the last few days is any indication.”

“Kat says we can adopt them,” Jack told the others.  Bridge and Z were still sitting at the edge of the raised cocktail seating, while Sky had crouched down beside one of the chairs.  Jack turned his head when the child beside him made a sound, and he added, “Your mom says we can adopt you.  What do you think about that?”

“They probably can’t make English sounds yet,” Kat’s voice said over his morpher.  “It’s hard with the shape of their mouths.”

“Oh, they definitely can,” Jack said with a grin.  “You’re not the only one who’s heard ‘Uncle Jack.’”

“Can I be Auntie Z?” Z asked.  “That sounds fun.”

“That sounds ridiculous,” Sky corrected.

“Hello,” the child repeated, now hanging on Jack’s shoulder and looking at his morpher with interest.  “Mom?”

“That sounds like Kirlian,” Kat said.  “Jack, can you--don’t hand over your morpher, but can you hold it out so they can hear?”

“I can hand it over,” Jack offered.  “What are they gonna do, go full on battle gear in the middle of the Drews’ New Years’ Eve party?”

“They might disappear into the timestream with it and accidentally drop it somewhere you’d never be able to retrieve it,” Kat’s voice answered.  “Don’t give them anything you want to get back.”

“Right,” Jack said, holding it up so it was closer to the child’s ears.  “Don’t let them take my morpher.  Got it.”

“Uncle Jack,” the child said again.  It might be his imagination, but that little voice sounded exasperated.  And it didn’t try to take his morpher.

“Does that mean they can understand English?” Jack asked Z.  “We just can’t understand them?”

The scratchy, staticky sound of Kat’s native language came over the morpher.  Or at least, it was the language she used when didn’t want them to understand her; he had no idea whether it was her first language or not.  Z shrugged at him, but the child at his shoulder hissed back at the morpher and Jack tried not to jump.

He mostly failed, but he did try.  Apparently they could talk.

Kat said something else, and the child answered, patting Jack’s shoulder at the same time.  As little fingers curled over his arm, he had a sudden vivid image of a cat kneading someone’s lap.  He was glad they didn’t have claws yet.

“Okay,” Kat’s voice said at last.  “Jack?”

“Jack,” the child repeated.

Jack lowered his morpher and said, “Yeah?  Everything good?”

“Well, except for the fact that they weren’t supposed to visit anyone but me,” Kat said, “and their temporal recognition skills won’t get better than this for several years, yes.  Everything’s great.”

“They can visit us!” Jack protested.  “Come on, I was just telling Sky how safe the base is.  You want to talk to him?  He can convince you.”

Sky held out his hand for Jack’s morpher, and Jack smirked at him.  “Not a chance,” Jack whispered.  No way would Sky tell Kat what she wanted to hear.

“They’re not even born yet!” Kat exclaimed.  “They’re not supposed to be roaming the timeline alone, looking for their friends and talking to strangers!”

“Technically they weren’t talking to strangers,” Jack pointed out.  “They know all of us, right?”

“Kirlian is going home,” Kat said firmly.  “Within the next few minutes, I hope.  I’m on my way to you now, but since I’ll be walking, like a responsible adult, I expect them to be gone by the time I get there.”

Mom voice, Jack mouthed at Z, and she grinned.

“Okay,” Jack said cheerfully.  “Understood!  We’ll just wait here, like responsible children.  Bye Kat!”

“Hello Mom!” the child added, which was definitely an echo of Jack’s message even if the words weren’t there.

“Yeah,” Jack said, lowering his morpher and offering the child his fist.  “Do you do fist bumps?  Because if you don’t, we should teach you.”

“We should get Syd,” Z told him.  “And Dan.  Where are they, anyway?”

“Do you know Syd and Dan?” Jack asked the child.  “Kirlian?  You’re Kirlian, right?  Can you say your name?”

The child opened their mouth and made a funny sound.  It took Jack a second, but when he looked at Sky he was getting the same expression right back.  “Kirlian” was the English equivalent, then.  And yeah: the kid definitely understood them.

“Wow,” Jack said, more seriously.  “Great name.  I don’t think we were introduced, even though you obviously recognize me, so hey.  I’m Jack.”  He held out his hand again, this time to shake, and the child curled their fingers into a fist and patted his palm enthusiastically.  

Jack couldn’t help but laugh.  “Yeah,” he said again.  “I can see we get along just fine.”

Chapter 4

“Hmm.”  Syd looked out over the floor, then turned to see the view toward the catwalk above their platform box.  Or platform-with-railing.  Actual box walls, even half-walls, would obscure the careful dress of people who probably paid a lot to sit here during more formal functions.

“Not bad,” she decided, completing the circle to survey the dancing again.  “Bridge picked a nice vantage point.”

“He always does,” Sky said.

“He has a good eye for it,” Syd agreed.  “Are you going to stay up here the rest of the night?”

Kat’s child had lingered several minutes after Jack called her, disappearing just before Kat strode into the function hall, and Sky still didn’t know whether Kirlian was a boy or girl.  No one had asked, and Kat hadn’t said.  Maybe time traveling kittens didn’t have genders.

“Sky?” Syd prompted.

“Yeah,” he said.  “Uh, I don’t know.  I’m waiting for Kat to get done lecturing him before I ask Jack.”

“Sky.”  Syd put her hands on her hips and swung them just enough that her dress flared around her ankles.  “I realize you love Jack.  I even understand that; I mean, he’s very lovable.  But you don’t have to do every single thing together.”

“I’m not asking him--”  Sky rolled his eyes, because even saying it sounded stupid.  “No, I mean, I have a question for him, and I don’t want to interrupt Kat to ask it.”

Syd perked up.  “You have a question?” she said.  “What kind of question?”

He sighed, but there was a reason he was planning to do it here.  Tonight.  “The kind of question all of you will want to overhear,” he said.  “So you might as well stick around a little longer.”

“Yay!” Syd exclaimed, clapping her hands together.  “I’m going to get someone to take pictures from the floor, okay?  Oh, Z!  I bet Z will do it.”

“What?” Z asked.  She was still sitting at the edge of the platform, legs dangling over the side with a pile of glowsticks next to her.  She’d snapped three of them together to make a circlet that Kirlian had been wearing on his head when he vanished, and she was working on a larger circle now.  “What am I doing?”

“That’s what we’re all asking ourselves,” Sky said, watching her try to wind one flexible stick around another.  “You know those are toxic if they break, right?”

“That’s actually not true,” Bridge said from her other side.  He’d moved to put his back against the wall when the platform was invaded by--well, all of them.  But he had his legs stretched out in front of him, feet next to Z’s hip, and he wasn’t complaining.

He was occasionally tipping one foot closer to Z and then away, and Sky recognized the distance.  That was the average space occupied by a person’s aura that he was moving his foot in and out of.  He wondered if Z knew what Bridge was doing.

“There’s a counteragent in the outer casing of the wands,” Bridge added.  “When it breaks, the counteragent is released, neutralizing the irritant in the luminescent chemicals.  So I guess, technically it’s toxic while it’s inside the wand, but by the time it gets to your skin it won’t be.”

When Sky looked up at his face, Bridge smiled at him and wiggled his fingers.  Sky nodded at Z, and Bridge shrugged.  He waved his gloved hand in front of his face, and Sky assumed that looked like an explanation to someone who could see colors moving with it.

“You’re taking pictures for me,” Syd was saying, resting her hand on top Z’s head.  “Please?  I want one of all of us up here, but taken from the floor.”

“Sure,” Z said.  “Right now?”

“In a few minutes,” Syd said.  “Don’t worry.  You’ll know when.”

“Will I know when because of some magic signal only you can understand?” Z countered.  “Or will I know when because someone will give a normal signal that anyone could recognize, like, hey everybody, now it’s time to take a picture?”

“Shh,” Syd whispered to her.  It wasn’t much of a whisper, given the volume of the music, but it was quieter than she’d been speaking before.  “Sky’s going to propose to Jack.  It’s supposed to be a surprise.”

“What did you just say?” Dan wanted to know.  “Was I supposed to know about this?”

“Wait, why would he do that?”  Z hiked one knee up on the platform beside her and turned halfway around.  “Why would you do that?” she asked Sky.  “Isn’t that kind of, you know.  Taken care of?”

“Do you want to see this or not?” Sky demanded.  He didn’t want them watching in the first place, but Jack had given him his private proposal, and now it was his turn to give Jack one in front of his friends.  “Because if you do, you can all just shut up.”

Syd put her hands together in a sign of supplication, and Z raised her hands in surrender before giving Syd a thumbs-up.  Dan looked from one of them to the other, then to Sky, and wisely said nothing.  Bridge nudged Z’s aura again with his foot, and she looked down long enough to drop a glowstick anklet over the toe of his boot.

“Thanks, Kat,” Jack was saying.  “I better rescue Sky’s team before he starts pushing them off the platform.”

“Please don’t introduce them to anyone,” Kat said.  

Presumably the children, Sky thought.  Not B Squad.  

“Or take them anywhere,” Kat continued.  “Or give them anything that might encourage them to come back.  At least until I figure out how to hide them.”

“Got it,” Jack promised.  “We see no kittens, hear no kittens, spoil no kittens, so on and so forth.”

“They’re not kittens,” Kat told him.

Jack shrugged.  “If you say so,” he agreed.  He had his hands in his pockets as he glanced over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow at Sky.  “What did you say before ‘shut up’ that made it actually work?”

“I’m leaving,” Kat said.  “Don’t get in any more trouble.”

“I told them they could watch me propose to you,” Sky said.

It made Jack’s face light up.  “Yeah?” he said, grinning.  Then he added suddenly, “Wait, now?  Kat, hang on.  Sky’s gonna propose.”

“Propose what,” she snapped.  “I have to go, Jack.  There’s probably children in the lab, too, and I don’t even know if badge access will keep them out of Command.”

“Okay,” Jack said.  “If you don’t want to see Sky asking me to marry him, it’s your call.  Have a nice evening.”

This made Kat pause, and she gave them both a suspicious look.  “I thought you already agreed to marry him.”

“Well, really, he only agreed to marry me,” Jack corrected.  “My agreement was implied.”

“Whenever you’re ready,” Sky said pointedly.

“Oh, sorry, is there a time limit now?” Jack teased.  “Does the offer expire at midnight?”

“This place goes crazy at midnight,” Sky said.  He saw Syd make a picture motion at Z and he ignored it.  “We won’t be able to hear ourselves think.”

“Crazy hasn’t been a big problem for us so far,” Jack pointed out.  “And hey, there are parts of this year that deserve celebration.  There was some bad stuff, but there was good stuff too.”

“It had its moments,” Sky said.  “But I didn’t do everything I meant to.”

Jack glanced out at the room, hands in his pockets again as he smiled.  “Well,” he said.  “If you’ve got a list?  Hurry.”

“Just one thing, actually.”  He had a flat box in his own pocket, because apparently Jack thought breakable rings were symbolic.  Sky gave it six months before he demanded they replace them with something more permanent.

Going down on one knee, he held the box without opening it and stared up at Jack.  “It’s been a hell of a year,” he said.  “But honestly?  I can’t imagine meeting you any other way.  You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, and I’m sorry it took me so long to figure it out.”

The box wasn’t that easy to open.  He’d thought he had it down, but he couldn’t do it without looking.  He had to turn it around, making sure the cover would stay where he put it, but Jack still looked breathtakingly happy when he finally held it up.  

“Jack Landors,” Sky said.  He tried not to smile back and failed, and which in retrospect was probably good.  “Will you marry me?”

“Yeah,” Jack said, beaming down at his once and future fiance.  “You know you owe me a questionnaire, right?”

“Oh, sorry,” Sky said, tugging the ring out of its box without dropping either one.  Then he tossed the box on the floor anyway, and Jack laughed at him.  “I thought you filled that out for me.”

“Well, yeah,” Jack repeated, holding out his hand.  “But I’m pretty sure most of it was negotiable.  We should… you know.  Negotiate.”

“What do you think we’re doing?” Sky replied.  He was easing the ring onto Jack’s finger and it felt smooth and cool even when it caught on Jack’s knuckles.  It slid the rest of the way with a little twist, and Sky ran his thumb over it before taking his hand and standing up.

Z had given up pretending she wasn’t taking pictures.  Jack was glad.  He’d gotten the message loud and clear: first from Sky, then from their team, and finally from Charlie and hers.  Some things were supposed to be private.  Jack couldn’t predict which things they were or why, but if someone was willing to tell him he’d do his best to follow along.

Didn’t mean he didn’t want an audience when Sky was okay with it, though.  And pictures, as long as he wasn’t going to have to hide or burn them later.

“I think we’re supposed to face this way,” Sky murmured, putting his other hand on Jack’s arm.  “So your sister can get both of us from where she’s standing down there.”

“Oh, sure, right,” Jack said.  “It’s not like Z can move, so.  We should definitely make it easier for her.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Sky said, smiling at him from very close, “but shut up.”

“What’s the wrong way?” Jack prompted.  “The real way, or the way I--”

Sky kissed him.  Jack assumed that meant the real way was the wrong way.  Looked like he was still allowed to kiss Sky when he said “shut up,” then.  It had been a tough couple of months; he hadn’t been sure.

Syd probably clapped first, but Z and Dan gave them some love too, and Bridge said, “Hey, congratulations.”  If anyone on the floor noticed, it wasn’t obvious from this high up.  Clever way to do it in public without a crowd, Jack thought fondly.

“Congratulations,” Kat echoed.  Her tone made it clear she had no idea why they were doing this, but it didn’t matter.  It was nice of her to stay.

Jack felt Sky push his braids back, out of his face, and somehow that was even better than the kissing.  That was Sky being affectionate in front of other people for no reason.  Not because he had something to prove, or because it was expected, or even because it felt good: just because it was a sweet gesture that Jack appreciated.

“Thanks,” Jack whispered, turning his head and letting Sky’s warm breath tickle his cheek while they stood too close together.  “I love you, you know.”

“Yeah,” Sky murmured.  He sounded like he was smiling when he said, “I noticed that.”

“Hey, just out of curiosity,” Z said.  “Are you going to have two weddings, too?  You got engaged twice.  Are you going to get married twice?”

“Did you tell her about breaking the rings?” Sky asked quietly, running his hand up Jack’s arm and squeezing carefully.  

Jack took a deep breath and tried to straighten up, shaking his head no.  “Why, you need a new one already?” he said under his breath.  “Because I have more.  I know how much you like to destroy things; don’t think I’m not prepared.”

He felt the huff of Sky’s laugh against his skin before Sky murmured, “I love you too.  Just so there isn’t any question.”

“Oh, I’m gonna need to hear that a lot more,” Jack told him.  “Is that one of those things you don’t want to talk about in front of other people?  Because I’m thinking we should go out more often.”

“The real question is when they’re going to tell Commander Cruger,” Kat was saying.  “Married Rangers can’t serve on active teams at the same time.”

“Yeah, he already knows,” Jack said, raising his voice without stepping away from Sky.  “He’s pretending we don’t exist.  Which is a step up for me, lately.”

“I’m not sure the spirit of that rule really applies here,” Bridge remarked thoughtfully.  “I mean, they don’t have any dependents.  Unless you count the cat Jack adopted, and Sophie’s probably willing to be the cat’s backup parent in case of… well, you know.  Disaster.”

“I haven’t even see that cat in two days,” Jack said.  “Is it still with Sophie?  Like it should be,” he added quickly, catching Sky’s fatalistic expression.  “Since it’s her cat.”

“I think Boom has it right now,” Z said.  “They’re trading the cat and the robot dog back and forth.”

“Yeah, I heard that,” Jack said with a grin.  “Smart.”

“I don’t want to know,” Sky said, taking a step back.  “You want a drink?  We should make a toast or something.  To the year.”

“To next year,” Jack said.  “Yeah.  No, wait.  I’m supposed to get you drinks.  I’m the one taking you out, right?”

“But I proposed,” Sky said.  “We’re taking each other out.  And you’ve gotten me plenty of drinks, so I’m sticking to something small and sparkling.”

“Oh, hey,” Bridge said, then, “Never mind.”

“I’m on it,” Z said.  “Sparkling cider for me too.  Anyone else?  Princess?  Dan?  Kat, are you staying?  It’s almost midnight.”

“I shouldn’t,” Kat said.  “The children could be anywhere.  And I do mean anywhere.”

“Don’t you mean anytime?” Jack suggested.  He grinned when she glared at him.  “Seriously, how long have they been showing up like that?”

“Guess,” Kat said.

That was easy.  “Mexico,” he said, but her resigned nod was still a surprise.  “Really?  Wow.”

“Why then?” Sky wanted to know.  “Or any exact time?  You said their temporal recognition’s not that great, and that Mexico trip was only three days.  How do they know to stay on one side of such a thin line?”

Jack tried not to look impressed, but he was pretty sure it didn’t work.  Sky must have paid as much attention in whatever class they taught about time travel as he did to everything else.  Jack couldn’t quite get his head around it.

“It’s because of where we went,” Kat said.  “To someone who travels the way we did, that was like a giant sign.  They don’t have to be good at reading to know when something that big is flashing in their face.”

“Cider,” Z interrupted.  “Coming up.”

There were four of her, handing cider up in pairs and then disappearing.  It made Jack smile to see her using her power so casually.  She was happy around B Squad, bouncing around the base on a whim, but he couldn’t remember the last time her duplicates had popped in and out of a crowded space like this.  And no one even asked.  Some of them looked twice, but they didn’t stare and they didn’t say anything.

“Thank you,” Bridge was saying.  He was echoed by Dan as Z passed the cider back.  Syd got some, and then Sky was handing Jack a glass.  He passed it to Kat and Sky handed him another one.

“Yeah, thanks,” Jack said, a little late.  “Both of you.  All of you, actually.  Wouldn’t be here without you.”

“That’s the truth,” Sky said, lifting his glass.

“Here here,” Syd agreed.

Jack tapped his glass against every other one on the platform.  Some of them more than once.  It didn’t matter: they were all together a thing worth being grateful for.

Z thought maybe she should tell Bridge sometime that his auras were contagious.  He hadn’t asked, and maybe he already knew.  Maybe he just assumed.  Maybe it didn’t even matter, but when he was touching her, skin-to-skin, she saw auras everywhere she was.

It made the dance floor look kaleidoscopic, and the light bounced around so much she couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t.  Bridge would say it was all real, of course, so maybe it was just a question of what other people could see.  Maybe even that didn’t matter, with so many aliens on base and the variety of visible spectrums covering the halls.

“Ten minutes!”  A cheerful and highly amplified voice cut through the music, dampening it just long enough for the voice to add, “This is your ten minute warning!  Only ten minutes left in the year, and at midnight the lights will go out!  For a full minute!  Better find anyone you want to share it with before then!”

Z laughed at the commotion that ensued, catching her own hand and pulling herself toward the other side of the dance floor.  Boom was over there, hamming it up with the lab rats, and they knew how to have a good time.  She hadn’t seen Sophie yet, though… maybe cyborgs didn’t celebrate New Year’s Eve?

“We’re gonna need to meet the kids,” Jack was saying on the platform Bridge had claimed for all of them.  Well, he’d claimed it for himself, but he was always willing to share.  Z squeezed his hand, and he smiled back at her.

“I don’t think you’ll be able to avoid it,” Kat told him.  She didn’t look happy about the idea, and Z wondered if there were rules about children on the base.  The one they’d seen had a guest badge, so they must be authorized in some time, right?

“That’s what I mean,” Jack said.  “We should know who to look out for.”

“The base isn’t exactly overrun with children,” Sky remarked.  “Kat’s will be the ones with pointy ears and limited language skills.”

“Their language skills are fine,” Kat snapped.  “Not everyone grows up speaking English.”

“Z!” Boom exclaimed.  “And Z!  So good to see you!  Both of you!  Do you want to help us construct the longest glowstick chain this party has ever seen?”

Z grinned, holding up two fistfulls of glowing wands.  “Oh, I’m here for this.”

“Count me in!” her other self agreed.

They’d made it all the way down the bar already, running across the floor toward the near wall where the glowsticks were being guarded by Charon, and farther down, Rosablue.  “It’s a science experiment,” she saw Charon tell someone when they tried to pick up a glowstick.  “We put them there on purpose.”

That was all it took, and Z wasn’t surprised that no one asked them what the experiment was.  “Have you considered hanging them?” she asked Boom.

“What!” he shouted back.

“Hanging them up!” she said, just as loudly.  “So that when the lights go out, everyone can see them!”

“That’s a good idea!” Boom shouted.  “Rosa!  Hey, Rosa!  Can you throw your end over the lights?”

Z went after him, ducking through the crowd to Charon, who let Z and Z give her a leg up onto the stage.  The Glowstick Chain of Destiny would be visible to the whole hall from up there.  Z fed it up to her, and they broke connectors and added in extras when they needed to hook it around something.  Her other self headed for the end of the chain to attach the rest of the ones she was carrying.

There was a five minute warning to lights out, the release of paper in the air, and terrible singing.  There was a two minute warning to the end of the year.  Just the end of the year; the other warnings had dropped off by that point.  Z figured by then anyone who was going had gone.

She leaned into Bridge’s shoulder and asked, “Can you see our glowstick chain?”

“I’m watching you build it,” he said.  “It’s very impressive.”

“Should be great when the lights go out,” Z agreed.

“Yeah,” he said thoughtfully.  “I’m not sure how dark it will get if they leave the dance lights on.  But I can’t see darkness with people in it anyway, so I probably shouldn’t guess.”

“Is anyone worried about the fact that we’re on a floating platform with only one wall when the lights are about to go out?” Dan asked.

“There’s a railing?” Syd offered.

“There’s people above us who’ve been drinking,” Dan countered.  “More, I mean.  Well, probably more than us; I guess it’s hard to say.”

“I think the level of recklessness demonstrated at some point by every member of a Ranger squad more than balances out some slight intoxication on the part of other guests,” Kat said.

Z tipped her head to one side.  “Did Kat just say we act like we’re drunk all the time?” she asked Bridge.

“She made a fair comparison of our typical behavior to that of an average citizen,” Bridge said.

Z smiled.  “She did, didn’t she.”

People were starting to count down.  She let one of her selves vanish from the dance floor as soon as they’d helped Charon down off of the stage.  Rosablue was right there to take her hand, and Z yelled for Boom.  Everyone from Kat’s lab was gathering in front of the stage, crossing hands and arms and laughing as they took up the countdown of the final seconds.

“I should be with them,” Kat murmured, almost too quietly for Z to hear.

Jack heard.  “Who, your kids?” he said.  “Kat, they’ll find you.  They’re as safe here as they are anywhere else, whether you’re with them or not.”

“You should be wherever you’re comfortable,” Z said, in case that wasn’t what she meant.  “You’re welcome with any of us, Kat.”

“You’re welcome with all of us,” Bridge added.

Syd and Sky both yelled, “Ten!” at the same time, and Jack was with them by nine.  

Z caught Bridge’s eye, and they shouted, “Eight!”

She had Boom to her right, his crossed right hand in her crossed left, with Charon holding her hand on the other side.  Their auras were steady and bright, green and purple in her peripheral vision as they yelled, “Seven!”

Even Kat joined in at six.  Dan put an arm around Syd at five, and her arm went over his shoulders while she yelled, “Four!” in Sky’s ear.

“Three!” Z shouted.  The lights started to flash, and she almost lost her balance when the auras didn’t change as the light moved.  That was unexpected and dizzying and she was lucky Charon and Boom were pressed so close to her shoulders.

“Two!”  Bridge’s voice was right next to her, and she couldn’t see anything but green anymore.

There was a buzz coming from overhead, the staticky sound of fans as the entire room roared, “One!” at the same time, and “Happy New Year!” was loud and bright and glittering under the confetti that exploded over the crowd.

Z couldn’t stop laughing.  Even when Bridge leaned in and kissed her cheek, she just pulled his hand against her chest and said, “We forgot to sit under the table!”

“You didn’t throw your crown,” he replied, beaming back at her.

She only had one hand free but she made it count, pulling her glowing circlet off and tossing it as high as she could from sitting on the floor.  It came back down out of reach, over the edge of the platform, falling through glitter and flashing lights before disappearing from sight.  That was probably what Kat meant when she said reckless, Z thought, and she popped up under their platform to make sure the glowsticks didn’t hit anyone on the way down.

Three of her made the room disproportionately more chaotic, so she vanished as soon as she saw the circlet on the floor.  She was still holding three hands and pressed against three shoulders, but all she could see was sparkle and smiles in the flashing dance lights from the floor.  So far, she thought the new year looked a lot happier than the old.

Kat’s lab assistants were down on the dance floor, interlocking hands forming some sort of circle, and whatever they were doing made more sense than she could find in the other activities.  She’d forgotten how integral kissing and singing were to the New Years traditions of Earth.  The former was over quickly, but the latter seemed extended, repetitive, and obscure.

“Come sit with us!” Z called, under cover of the song.  Syd and Dan had their arms around each other, while Jack and Sky were both leaning on the railing and singing out at the crowd, but Bridge and Z were sensibly tucked up against the wall and waving at her.

Given no better alternative, Kat lowered herself to the ground beside Z.  “What is this song?” she asked, since it seemed the polite inquiry to make.

“Auld Lang Syne?” Z said.  “It’s about the good old days, I think.  Remembering friends you care about, toasting them, and promising to see them again.”

“It has a lot of the same lines over and over again,” Bridge observed.

“Yeah, the way we sing it,” Z said.  “That doesn’t make them the same, it just makes us lazy.”

“Everyone seems to know the words,” Kat said.

“Some of them are drunk,” Z reminded her.  “Just because they think they know the words doesn’t mean they make any sense.”

That was very much how Kat thought of the Rangers, so her earlier comparison held.  “I see,” she said anyway.  She didn’t want to intrude on their celebration, but right now it was easier to sit here and let the nonsensicalness of it wash over her than it was to sort out a more practical course of action.

“Can you see auras on the floor?” Bridge asked, from Z’s other side.

“Yes!” Z exclaimed.  “It’s funny, I was just thinking about that earlier.  Whether I had told you or not.  I can see whatever I see, no matter where I am.”

“Hi,” Syd said, swishing the hem of her skirt over top of Z’s feet.  “We’re tired.  Can we sit with you?”

“You’re tired?” Z repeated.

“It was a long day,” Syd said.  “You were there.  New year, same old streets.”

“Okay, you should definitely sit down,” Z said.  “This is a party.  We survived!  Worry about the streets tomorrow.”

“Yeah.”  Syd gathered up her dress and sat down with a flutter of skirt and curls.  “I’m putting off tomorrow.  That’s why I’m still awake.”

“I thought you were still awake because you wanted to kiss me at midnight,” Dan said, dropping to the floor of the platform beside her.  “Or to stay on your parents’ good side for attending their party.”

“No,” Syd said.  “Definitely kissing you was the primary motivation.  Wearing this dress was secondary.  My parents were somewhere below seeing Jack in an actual suit and finding out if Boom could drink and not blow things up at the same time.  The final verdict hasn’t come back on the last one, by the way.”

“That sounds like a reason to go, to me,” Dan said.  “Maybe we should just hear about the explosion tomorrow morning instead of experiencing it for ourselves.”

That was one of the most reasonable things Kat had heard all night.  Given where she’d been and who she’d spoken to, the bar was low.  Still, if anything made sense in the middle of boisterous human celebrations then it deserved consideration.  

On the other hand, if Boom was going to blow something up, she should be here to help contain it.

“He isn’t going to blow anything up,” Z said.

Kat glanced at her automatically and was surprised to find Z looking at her instead of Syd.  “You say that with the confidence of someone who doesn’t share a lab with him,” Kat said.

Z grinned.  “I’ll give you that,” she agreed.  “But right now he’s surrounded by people who do.  If anyone can recognize the signs of imminent disaster, it must be them.”

“Okay,” Jack said, crouching down next to Dan.  “So who's the designated driver?”

“Designated walker,” Z said.  “Bridge.”

“Or Kat,” Bridge offered.  “If the only condition is that we haven't been drinking.  Alcohol, I mean.  Although designated implies it was decided in advance, which I guess in a way I was but maybe not Kat.”

“You don't have to walk people home just because you decided not to drink,” Sky said.  “That's the designated part.”

“Well, but I don't mind,” Bridge said.  “We're basically going to the same place anyway.”

“No, wait,” Z said suddenly.  “We can't leave.  Jack hasn't danced with Sky yet.”

“I danced with Sky plenty,” Jack said.

Z rolled eyes like he was being deliberately difficult.  “Yeah, last year,” she said.  “You have to start out this year with a dance for good luck.”

“What, is that a rule?” Jack wanted to know.  “When was that decided?”

“Just now,” Z said.  “Sky, help me.”

“It’s a good idea,” Sky said.  

Jack gave him a look that was definitely surprise.  “Wow,” he said good-naturedly.  “Did you just agree with Z?  This year really is gonna be different.”

“Speaking of that,” Sky said.  “Can we meet back in B Wing before everyone goes to bed?  Or whatever they’re going to do?  Just for a minute.”

“Pretty sure we’re going to bed in B Wing,” Jack said.  “Unless you’ve heard something I haven’t.”

“In the lounge,” Sky said.  “Let’s meet in the lounge.  I just want take a picture.”

“Take a picture here,” Syd said.  “We’re all pretty.”

“And Syd’s sitting on the floor,” Z added.  “That never happens.  It’s worth documenting.”

“It’s not a floor where people walk,” Syd pointed out.  “Besides, this isn’t that kind of dress.  I told you, the swirly ones are good for sitting on the floor.”

“That’s true,” Bridge put in.  “She does say that.”

The music changed--finally--and Jack put his hands on his knees to push himself up.  “Okay,” he said.  “We can dance to this.  No one leave before Sky gets his picture, okay?”

“What makes you think the camera will wait until you stop dancing?” Dan wanted to know.

“That’s fine,” Sky said, holding out his hand to Jack.

“That’s fine?” Syd echoed.  “You’re fine with that?  Z, where’s your camera?”

Z picked up Syd’s hand and put a camera in it.  “What are you, making a scrapbook or something?” she wanted to know.

It was Sky who shrugged, putting a hand on Jack’s hip and turning him gently around.  “You started it,” he said over his shoulder.

“He’s making a scrapbook,” Z said.  “This is the best day ever.”

“That is the point of a scrapbook,” Bridge agreed.  Or he sounded like he was agreeing.  Kat had stopped following the conversation when Z told Jack and Sky they had to dance, but it made a pleasant distraction from the music.

“You should come with us,” Z said.  Kat didn't understand that either until Z added, “Hey, Sky, Kat’s coming back to B Wing with us, okay?”

“No, I'm not,” Kat said quickly.  Apparently she had been participating by her silence.  “I'm going back to Command.  Where I left three very inexperienced officers doing a terrible job of pretending they knew how to celebrate a human holiday and work at the same time.”

“Great,” Z said.  “So that's settled.  You'll come be in Sky’s picture with us, and then you'll go get some sleep.”

It was remarkably hard to frown effectively at someone who was sitting as close as Z was.  “I'm sure that's not what I said.”

“I heard you say Command is fully staffed and you need some rest,” Syd remarked.

“That's what I heard,” Dan agreed.

“Just for a couple minutes,” Z told her.  “So Sky can have his picture.  You want to be in his scrapbook, don’t you?”

“No,” Kat said.

“Jack wants you to be in Sky’s scrapbook,” Z said.  “Isn’t that right, Jack?”

The assumption that she would do whatever Jack told her to was starting to grate, but when she tried to figure out where it came from, she thought she had done it to herself.  Now and later, in their own time: a thousand years from now.  He had expected her to follow his instructions because she had told him she would.

“The kids are following you, right?” Jack said over Sky’s shoulder.  “If they turn up again, you’re safer with us.”

The prickly feeling eased as she sighed.  That was why she did it, of course.  That was probably why everyone did it.  Because as reckless as he might be, Jack’s arguments did make sense.

“So, pajamas or no pajamas?” Z asked the lounge at large.  “Are we not supposed to change before the picture?”

Dan could feel Syd shrug from where she was lying on the couch next to him, head in his lap.  “Who can ever predict what Sky is thinking,” she said.

“Can you copy yourself in different clothes?” Dan asked.  “You’re always wearing the same thing when I see you.  Can one of you be wearing that and another of you be wearing pajamas?”

“Yeah, but it’s harder,” Z said.  “I have to copy myself first, and then have one of me change.  And it gets weird when I uncopy, if I’m wearing different things or holding things or whatever, so.  I don’t usually do it.”

“I like your clones,” Syd remarked.  “They’re fun.”

“Me too,” Dan said quickly.  “Sorry, is it rude to ask?  I didn’t mean to be, I don’t know.  Insensitive.”

“It’s fine,” Z said, smiling at him.  “You’re my friend.  You’re allowed to ask.”

“Okay,” Dan said.  “In that case, I have another question.  How did you all end up on the same team?  You’re the only five cadets with magical powers, and you all ended up on B Squad at the same time?”

“They’re not magical,” Syd said, reaching up to pat his knee.  “They’re scientific.  And I’m cold; can someone get me a blanket?”

“I’ll get it,” Dan said, but Z was already crossing the lounge to the cupboard by the windows.

“Not you,” Syd said, squeezing his knee this time.  “I’m lying on you; don’t move.”

“Well,” Bridge said, “they could be considered magical.  Where magic is anything that can’t be explained by current scientific understanding or the laws of nature as we know them.  Do I see auras because my brain is wired to interpret electromagnetic fields as wavelengths in the visible light spectrum, or do I see them because have some sort of extrasensory perception of people’s moods and feelings that registers as color instead of facial expression or traditional empathy?”

“Here you go,” Z said, shaking a blanket out and sweeping it over Syd’s legs.  Syd lifted her hands immediately and Z pulled it up higher, smiling at Dan as she did so.  “You want a pillow or something?  You could be there for a while.”

“Mmm,” Syd said, curling under the blanket and resettling her head against his thigh.  “No thanks.  I already have a pillow.”

“I was asking Dan,” Z informed her.

“So you’re saying no one knows why you have superpowers?” Dan said.  “That seems weird.”

“Special,” Syd corrected.  “The word you’re looking for is special.”

“You alter your structure on a molecular level,” Dan told her.  “From organic to inorganic and back.  That’s very uniquely special.”

He could feel her shrug again.  “Not uniquely,” she said.  “Sky and Jack do the same thing on an atomic level.”

“Supposedly our parents were in a lab accident,” Bridge offered.  “It may have involved biophysics and top secret carrier genes, and it may or may not have been discontinued after the accident.  Cruger says all of our parents were working on it.  He’s been keeping an eye on the affected families ever since.”

“And, being Cruger, he did such a great job of it,” Z added.

“Well, the results are certainly questionable,” Bridge said.  “But that’s really just the beginning.  I did some research into that story, and there are parts of it that don’t fit as well as others.  Jack’s history, obviously, but neither of my parents ever worked for SPD, and I can’t find anyone in the area at the time of the supposed accident that has any relationship to Z.

“On the other hand,” Bridge added, “the commander definitely manipulated the current composition of B Squad, at least when it was under Jack, and I’m pretty sure he was responsible for last year’s A Squad too.  Both of which are anomalous.  It’s not outside his authority, but it’s not directly his responsibility either.”

Dan had no idea what to say to that, and he wasn’t alone.  The silence lingered for several seconds, until finally Z said, “You think he’s covering something up?”

“Well, the distinction between creating a coverup and perpetuating a coverup is in the level of agency exercised by involved parties,” Bridge said.  “So, yes.  But no.  Depending on how you look at it.  And I don’t actually know, so my guess isn’t reliable.”

“Your guess is more reliable than any of ours,” Syd said.

“Thanks,” Bridge replied.  But he didn’t continue, and Dan couldn’t tell if that was deliberate or not.

“So what’s your guess?” he asked at last.

Bridge looked over at him with what looked like genuine surprise.  “About what Cruger’s covering up?”

“So you do think he’s covering it up,” Z said.

“I think he’s telling us what he’s been told,” Bridge replied, and it was so clear that Dan blinked.  Bridge was brilliant, and he had a level of insight that couldn’t be explained solely by an education in psychology, but he was rarely concise.

“Someone else is covering it up,” Z said.

“Probably,” Bridge agreed.

“I’m not even part of the team,” Kat’s voice said from the hallway.  “Why do you want me to be in the picture?”

“First off,” Jack answered, striding into the room ahead of her, “you’ve always been part of the team, Kat.  And second, Sky doesn’t actually want to take a picture.”

“Hey,” Syd cheered sleepily, without moving.  “Here they are.  Now we can go to bed.”

“I do want to take a picture,” Sky said, following Kat into the room.  Even he wasn’t tall enough to talk over her head, but he was clearly addressing Jack.  “We’re here, and Syd is covered in a blanket; what’s not worth documenting about this?”

“Ha ha,” Syd said.  She still didn’t sit up, and she pulled the blanket closer over her shoulders.  “See if I get you a blanket.”

“You didn’t get you a blanket,” Z pointed out.

“See if I tell Z to get you a blanket, then,” Syd said.

“Should I start taking pictures now?” Z asked.

“Yes,” Jack said, pointing at her.  Then he pointed at Kat.  “Please stay.  Take a night, okay?  I don’t even know when you last slept, and no offense, but Boom isn’t the only one who blows things up when he’s tired.”

She sighed, folding her arms, but she didn’t protest.

“Come sit in front of me,” Syd invited.  “Everyone come sit in front of me.  Then Z can take our picture and I won’t have to move.”

“Do it quick and call her bluff,” Dan added, but they’d already had the same idea.  Bridge and Z lunged across the floor and Jack scrambled around behind the back of the couch, leaning over Dan’s shoulder while another Z held up her camera.

They didn’t quite make it.  Syd was sitting up, leaning prettily against his shoulder in less time than it took Z to call, “Smile!”

“You obviously have more than one power,” Dan told her.

She smiled for the camera, and as soon as Z lowered it to complain at Sky for missing the moment she said, “Don’t be silly.  The blanket was still across my lap.  If I really had a photo op power it would have transformed into a leopard.”

“Really?” Dan said, amused.  “A leopard?”

“A leopard,” Z repeated.  “Okay.”

Sky was circling around behind the couch, and Kat followed him reluctantly when Jack waved her over.  Bridge and Z rearranged themselves in front of the couch, and Syd tossed the blanket over the back while they were moving.  Dan waited until she tucked her legs under her skirt to put his arm around her shoulder.

“Ready?” Z called.  “Say happy New Year!”

They managed to make a reasonable chorus of “happy new years,” but Z didn’t put the camera down until several seconds afterward, which meant she probably got them laughing at themselves too.  Dan figured that would be the best picture.  Being the only one of them who could literally see herself, Z probably knew all the tricks.

“Thank you,” Sky said, from behind him.  “All of you.  We deserve a medal for getting through this year, so.  I had some made.”

Dan looked over his shoulder, and Syd turned too at the sound of clinking.  “You got us medals?” she asked.

“You’re serious,” Z said, bouncing up onto the couch beside Syd.  “What do they say?”

“Well, no one else was going to do it,” Sky said.  “They say you’re the best; what did you expect?”

“They say ‘B Squad 2025,’” Jack said, already holding one while Sky passed them out.  “These are great, Sky.”

“Is this our motto?” Z wanted to know.  “On the back?”

Sky dropped one over Dan’s shoulder, and he saw the team name and year in the middle.  Around the edge of the circle, though, were their individual names.  Looped around the words like a border: Sky, Bridge, Z, Syd, Dan, Jack.

He stared at it for a long moment, too surprised by seeing his own name to know what to say.

“‘When you are strong, I am strong,’” Bridge said.  “That’s a good motto.  We should adopt it.  Unless we already have, in which case, I think that was a good choice.”

“Sky, you don’t have to give me one,” Kat was saying, as Dan flipped the medal over.  The phrase Bridge had read was on the back.

“Not true,” Sky said.  “You don’t have to take it.  But this one is yours, so I don’t know what else you expect me to do with it.”

Dan craned his neck, leaning away from Syd just enough that he could look over his shoulder.  There was another medal sticking out of Sky’s pocket, so the one he was giving Kat must really be for her.  Had he always assumed Jack would convince her, Dan wondered?  Or did he just have extras?

“Thanks for picking the pretty ribbon,” Syd said.  “This drapes much better than most medal ribbons.”

“Oh, because you have so many medals,” Jack said.

“Yes,” she agreed serenely.  “I do.”

Dan smiled.  “Thank you,” he murmured.  “This is really nice.”

“Yeah,” Z said.  “Thanks, Sky.”

“Thank you!” Syd chirped.  “You're no longer the worst team leader we've ever had, so great work.”

“Hey,” Jack said.  “Wait a minute!”

“Well, sometimes you were,” Syd told him.  “But don't worry, you got better.  And we had other team leaders before you.”

“Charlie’s leadership style was… maybe not the best suited to our way of following,” Bridge mused.

“Thank you, Sky,” Kat said.  “This is very kind.”

“We should take another picture with our medals!” Syd exclaimed.  “And by that I mean, Z should take another picture of us with our medals.”

“Everyone hold them up,” Z suggested.

Dan slipped the ribbon over his head and put his next to Syd’s.  Bridge looked back at them, then pushed himself up onto the couch beside Dan.  Mirroring Z, he figured.  They mostly all fit, especially with Jack and Sky hanging over the back behind them, and for a few seconds he was surrounded by a team that pulled together as often as it flew apart.  

“Now say B Squad!” Z called, and that degenerated just as quickly as it had the first time.  But Jack patted his shoulder, and Z hugged him, and Dan turned his medal around so that the back would show in the picture.

When you are strong, I am strong.

Chapter 5

Charlie wasn’t carrying a morpher, but she’d held the Red Power for more than a year.  She knew when there were other Rangers around.  Rose lifted her head as they rolled through International Arrivals, scanning the waiting crowd for the presence that must be there.  They wouldn’t have gotten through customs if there’d been an outstanding warrant.

“Sky,” Rose said, loud enough to be heard over the passengers streaming around them and the families waiting to meet them on the other side of the barricade.  “Two o’clock.  Syd’s with him.”

That was a bad sign.  Sky was exactly the kind of respectful to make things easier on the airport by waiting to detain someone until after they’d made it out of the security zone.  Charlie would like to think, after all the trouble B Squad had gone to for her team, that she would have had some warning.  But she wasn’t going to count on it.

“They’ve seen us,” Rose added.  “They’re moving with us down the barricade.”

“Do we run?” Charlie asked, keeping her expression neutral.  It could be a joke.  Rose was free to take it as a joke if she wanted to, and so were all of the people around them.  None of whom could care less at this point, eager to get home or get out, to keep moving in any case.  She didn’t check her pace.

“Sky wouldn’t do that to us,” Rose said.

Charlie felt the corner of her mouth lift despite herself.  “Sky would totally do that to us.”

“Yes,” Rose agreed, “but Jack wouldn’t.  Did you check your comm?”

Charlie stuffed her ticket with customs scan back into her pocket and pulled out her comm instead.  It was blinking, now, with a message from B Squad Red.  He wouldn’t have messaged an arrest notice, would he?

“Message from Sky,” she said, lifting it to her ear.  She didn’t bother with an earbud; anything he had to say on a non-Ranger comm wouldn’t be secure enough to avoid the casual listener anyway.

“Welcome home,” the recording told her.  “Jack wanted to pick you up, but he had to work.  It was come get you or listen to Des complain, so me and Syd came to get you.”

“He says he and Syd came to get us,” Charlie said, lowering the comm.  “Jack wanted to do it but couldn’t, Des is complaining about something.  Not conclusive.”

“Not ominous, either,” Rose pointed out.  “And I have too much luggage to run.  I say we fight our way out later if we have to.”

“It’ll be harder to find our stuff once it’s been taken away from us,” Charlie said.

“If we have to break out, we’re not going to care about our stuff,” Rose countered.

“Says you.  I have a brand new kimono in my bag; you think I want to replace that?”

She didn’t have to see Rose smile to know it had happened, and they made their way out of the secure area with a minimum of pushing.  Charlie gritted her teeth and didn’t snap at anyone, and Rose didn’t put a hand on her arm to calm her down, so she thought they were doing well.  They probably managed to look relatively calm when Sky and Syd appeared in front of them, their neat pressed uniforms drawing more covert second looks than outright stares.

“Hi!” Syd exclaimed, waving at them like they might not have noticed her yet.  “Surprise!  Do you want any help with those bags?  Because Sky would be happy to pull them for you.”

“You want a ride back to base?” Sky added, ignoring Syd and Rose to hold her gaze.  “It’s easier than public transport, and you can sleep if you want.”

“Can we?” Charlie asked, because she wasn’t planning to draw any more attention than they already had.

“Yeah,” Sky said.  “No surprises.  Well, no more surprises than this one.”

“And Miguel,” Syd put in.  “He said to tell you he wanted to come pick you up, but he’s terrible company when he’s just gotten off an interstellar flight and he’s pretty sure you’re worse.  So actually he didn’t want to pick you up at all.”

“Miguel’s back?” Rose repeated.  “On Earth?”

“Just arrived this morning,” Sky said.  “He’s staying on the base, which is mostly what Des is complaining about.”

“The base, not Miguel,” Syd added.  “Des and Jack are terrible when they’re in the same room together, and I do actually know how ironic that sounds, coming from me.  Do you want anything before we go out to parking?”

“Bathrooms, water, and food,” Rose said.  “If you babysit our bags, we’ll be right back.”

Charlie surrendered her bag but not her backpack, and Rose didn’t say anything.  By the time they came back, Sky was sitting in an airport chair with his legs stretched out in front of him while Syd stood nearby, watching the crowd.  They didn’t look like they were waiting to spring a trap, Charlie decided.  But the best traps were the ones you didn’t see coming.

“Did you get enough food?” Sky wanted to know.  He didn’t stand up as they approached, and Syd had to walk over to him to smack him on the shoulder.

“Oh, sorry,” Sky added.  “Their fragile survivor recovery time hasn’t expired yet?  There’s a difference between post-traumatic stress and being treated like an invalid.”

“We got cookies for you,” Rose said.  “Well, Charlie did, but she told me to say they were from me.  The rest of the food is ours, so it’s a fair question.”

“It’s less about the jungle than it is about Japanese food,” Charlie said.  “I’m tired of rice.”

“I’ll take those,” Syd said, when Rose juggled her drink, sandwich, and fruit to extract the cookies underneath.  They made a good plate.  

Syd ended up holding her drink, too, and she wouldn’t let Rose take either of her bags back.  “Pink Rangers have to stick together,” she said.  “I’ll carry; you eat.  And drink.”  She passed the drink back before she swung Rose’s backpack over her shoulder, and she used her free hand to grab Rose’s other bag.

“Thanks,” Rose said, smiling for the first time since they’d gotten off the plane.  “You know, it’s not bad, having other people around.”

“That’s what we aim for,” Sky said, picking up Charlie’s bag as he stood.  “Not bad.  I’ll carry those.”

Syd handed him the cookies as she pulled past, heading for the way out signs and hopefully parking.  Wherever they were.  Charlie’s wife paced beside her with a smoothie cup and straw in one hand and a pre-wrapped sandwich in the other, and she followed without knowing for the first time in a long time.

Syd was impressed.  Rose and Charlie had looked almost like normal people, swept along with the crowd at the airport.  Sure, they had a military stride, and yes, they were obviously cataloguing threats and assessing possible escapes around every corner.  But they moved like they were human and unafraid.  They handled the change in plan easily and without clinging to each other, and they didn’t flinch at the press of bodies inside or the rush of traffic outside.

If Charlie looked like she was willing to lay out the first person to challenge her, well, Syd remembered her from before the jungle.  Charlie pretty much always looked like that.

“How’s Don?” Charlie asked abruptly, her sandwich halfway gone before they cleared the parking structure.  “He’s doing okay with a morpher again?”

“Yeah, he’s doing great,” Sky said, turning in his seat so he could see her better.  Syd glanced in the mirror, but Charlie was still looking at her sandwich.  “Jack says Sophie and Boom got over their hero worship when he showed them how to flip traffic lights without turning on the siren.”

Charlie scoffed.  “They have street and battle experience, and twice the education of anyone on my team except Rose and Miguel,” she said.  “They should have been over it the moment they were handed morphers.”

“Well, hero worship does occasionally involve actual heroes,” Sky said.  “That makes it less ridiculous.”

“Why, Sky,” Rose said, with a smile in her voice.  “Did you just call us heroes?”

“I ambiguously implied that Don might be a hero,” Sky replied.  “Don’t get any ideas.”

“What about Ally?” Charlie asked her sandwich.  “She still hanging on?”

Syd made a face at the mirror, and then the windshield when the vehicle in front of her failed to signal.  “If you consider wearing anything but her squad color under her exceeding bright and obvious squad uniform to be hanging on, which I personally think isn’t the best representation.  But she’s good at cover fire, and she hasn’t gotten hurt, so yeah.  I guess she’s hanging on.”

“Is she still staying in town?” Rose said.  “Instead of on the base?”

“No,” Syd said.  “She gave in on that one, but only when they’re on call.  She sleeps on base when they’re on call and goes home when they’re not.”

“She’s been counting down the days until you get back,” Sky added.  “Jack promised to replace her if you decide not to take your morpher back.”

“She’s been counting down the days?” Charlie repeated.  She looked up at last, and Syd saw her catch Sky’s eye.  “Or you have?”

Sky shrugged.  “What’s the difference if it’s both?” he said.

“I want my morpher back,” Rose said.  “Just to be clear.”

“Good,” Sky said.  “Glad to hear it.”

“Are you?” Charlie said bluntly.  “What about everyone else?  We had orientation level access when we left.  We couldn’t even open weapons’ lockers.  Can we really just walk back onto a team and no one bats an eye?”

“Yes,” Sky said.

Syd glanced sideways at him, then looked back at Charlie in the mirror.  “We don’t know,” she said.  “That’s the real answer, if you’re curious.  So far Jack’s been able to do whatever he wants, but no one’s sure how long that’s going to last.”

“He created a whole new A Squad by promoting random people who walked past him in the hallway,” Sky said.  “They weren’t even cadets.  They were literally just whoever he felt like handing a morpher to at the time.”

“Well, they weren’t in the hallway,” Syd pointed out.  “They were in Kat’s lab, which implies a certain level of secure access.  And having Kat’s support didn’t hurt.”

“He introduced them to New Tech PD,” Sky said.  “He told everyone they were Rangers, and the entire city just accepted it.  I’m pretty sure you can come back and claim morphers you actually earned without too many complaints.”

“From the city,” Charlie said.  “What about from the base?”

“Jack rules the base with a combination of stupidly charming goodwill and frankly irritating  apathy,” Sky said.  “Right now, his word is law.”

“So decide now,” Syd added, before they could say anything.  “Before Cruger notices that he’s taken over and fires him again.”

“It didn’t stick the first three times,” Sky said.

“He’s been fired three times?” Charlie asked.

“You think he’s joking.”  Syd shook her head at the lights in front of them.  “The commander fires Jack on a near-weekly basis.  The thing is, right now Cruger’s trying to keep Galaxy Command from either shutting us down or trying to prepare us for the next invasion, which hopefully is just a product of their alien imaginations.  Jack is pretty much the only thing that keeps the base running when he’s gone.”

“I hate to say it,” Sky said, and when Syd glanced back again Charlie was staring at him.  “But it’s true.  Jack promoted all the cadet squads to Ranger level, set up an officers’ advisory board, and gave all the departments operational autonomy to follow last year’s schedule and budget.  Anything they want to change they have to get approved by one other department and someone on the advisory board, and then he signs off on it as Cruger’s field commander.”

There was a moment of silence from the back, where all Syd could hear over the sound of the engine was the crinkling of Charlie’s sandwich wrap.

“Are you serious?” Rose asked at last.

“Well, he doesn’t have much experience with organized leadership,” Syd offered.  “Bridge and I helped.”

“He doesn’t have much experience with organized leadership,” Rose repeated slowly.

“No, that’s why he promoted everyone else,” Syd said.  “Because they actually know what they’re doing.  He just made up the board and the approvals process so that someone would be paying attention.”

“Since he doesn’t,” Sky finished.  If Sky sounded more proud than annoyed, Syd wasn’t going to be the one to tell him.

“He pays attention to the Rangers,” she said.  “He knows how the squads work, and how they relate to the city.  That’s enough for one person, I think.”

“How often is Cruger gone?” Charlie wanted to know.

Syd considered that, pushing her sunglasses up as the tunnel loomed ahead of them.  “A few days a week,” she said.  “Probably.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell when he’s around and when he’s not because he spends so much time off the base.”

“He’s been taking reports from the other bases in person,” Sky said.  “And touring the early warning satellites.  The ones that are left.”

“So he just goes and leaves Jack in charge of everything,” Charlie said.

“He left you in charge,” Sky pointed out.

“Of the cadets,” she retorted.  “Not the whole base!”

“Well.”  Sky shrugged.  “It turns out when you repel an invasion force, the rest of the base thinks you’re the answer to all their problems.”

“Military strategy is a terrible basis for civilian leadership,” Charlie said.  “That’s why we have field commanders.”

“Oh, Jack’s terrible at military strategy,” Syd said.  “That’s what he has Sky for.  Good at fighting, bad at people.”

“Thanks,” Sky told her.

She smiled at the windshield.  “You’re welcome,” she agreed.  “Jack’s the opposite, so it works out.”

“We’re really here, right?” Charlie said.  When Syd looked back, she was looking at Rose.  “This is Earth?  Crazy planet with alien military and designer water?”

“And pre-made sandwiches,” Rose said, holding up her empty wrapper.  “Let’s not forget what’s important here.”

“Yeah,” Charlie said, popping the top of her empty drink container and putting her wrapper inside.  She held it out for Rose’s, and they combined their recyclables as efficiently as they’d watched each other’s back at the airport.  “I guess we’ll get used to it.”

“Before we go back to the base,” Sky said.  Charlie was already eyeing the exit with suspicion, and all Syd had done was put the signal on.  “Quick update on Time Force.”

“Can’t wait.”  Charlie glanced at Rose, and Sky leaned around the seat to see her reaction.  She just shrugged, as far as he could tell, but they’d been stranded together on a deserted planet for almost as long as he’d known Jack.  They could probably read each other’s minds by now.

“Jack’s mom was rescued by the time rebellion,” Sky said.  “She came back to see him last week.  She says Time Force is going to try to recruit him.”

Charlie rolled her eyes at him.  “Have you considered the possibility that sending Jack into space might solve a lot of your problems?”

“Yes,” Syd said from the driver’s seat.  “But not as often as we consider doing it to Sky.”

“He’s basically holding SPD Earth together,” Sky said.  “Apparently that got some attention in the future, especially since one of their agents brought SPD to Earth in the first place.  Since they’re interested in keeping it here, they’re also interested in Jack.”

“They’re interested in Jack because he’s helping SPD?” Rose said carefully.

“Not because they know who he is,” Sky said.  “Yeah.  We’re pretty sure.”

“How sure?” Charlie wanted to know.

“What, you want a probability?”  They were gliding down the exit for the park, a rest stop for travel-weary flyers and drivers alike.  “That’s more Bridge’s thing than mine.”

“Ninety-five percent,” Syd said.  “We have to take Kat’s word for it, but she likes Jack, so.  She probably wouldn’t lie.”

“They’re pretty close lately,” Sky agreed.  “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  We all like Kat.”

“But?” Charlie prompted.

“She’s been hiding a long time,” Sky said.  “And she has kids now, which she didn’t tell us--”

“Wait, she has children?” Rose interrupted.  “Already?”

“She’s still pregnant,” Syd said.  “But she’s a native time traveler, and so are her children.  Or they will be.  They’ve been born in the future, and now they’re coming back to visit us in the past.  Their past.  Our present.  It’s sort of confusing.”

“They’re coming back to visit you?” Rose repeated.  “All of you?”

“Mostly Jack and Z so far,” Syd said.  “And Kat says she sees them all the time, but she didn’t tell us until one of them appeared at the New Year’s Eve party and wouldn’t go home until Jack called Kat so she could scold them over his morpher.”

“Jack?” Charlie said with a frown.

“Just the kid,” Sky said.  “Kat says they don’t have human-equivalent genders, so we’re not supposed to call them he or she.”

“Actually, Kat says we can call them whatever we want,” Syd put in.  “But Bridge doesn’t, and Jack only calls them by their names, so the rest of us are just guessing.”

“You do whatever Dan does,” Sky said.

“Dan uses ‘they’,” Syd agreed.  “Bridge does too, most of the time.  Sometimes he forgets and calls them ‘it,’ which Kat says isn’t offensive but sounds kind of rude, really.”

“Okay, whatever,” Charlie said impatiently.  “Kat’s future children are time traveling to visit Jack and Time Force is trying to recruit him because he can help them keep SPD here on Earth.  Is that all?”

Syd finally picked a space and parked, letting the engine idle while Sky said, “That’s the problem.  Time Force isn’t supposed to know the kids exist.  They’re not even supposed to know Jack exists, but I guess it’s too late for that.  Jack’s mom came back to warn him.”

“What, warn him not to talk to them?” Charlie said.  “That’s not gonna work.  I thought the whole point of him going to the future was to disguise his identity.”

“Kat says that part worked,” Syd replied.  “His mom says he’s not the one in danger.”

“He’s a Time Force refugee and he’s just going to work for Time Force without being in any danger?” Rose said.  “I want that identity protection plan.”

“It helps that he’s not an alien,” Sky said.  “He’s human, and he grew up in this time, and on top of that his weird phasing superpower alters his genes and his appearance so it’s harder to identify anomalies.”

“He blends in,” Syd translated.  “Kat doesn’t.  And her kids definitely don’t.”

“I thought Kat had been hiding here for years,” Rose said.  “Can’t she just stay out of their way?”

“She’s been staying out of their way,” Sky said.  “With the help of the only Time Force agent assigned to this time.  Now they’re sending someone else, and they don’t want Commander Collins to know about it.”

“You’re kidding,” Charlie said.  “This is a military soap opera.”

“It’s definitely a spy game,” Syd said.  “It would be more exciting, except that Jack’s mom said Time Force might kill anyone who gets between them and Kat.  Which includes all of us and probably most of the base.”

Charlie gave Sky an uncomfortably assessing look, and he knew she was about to say something he wouldn’t like.  “You’re not this worried about Kat,” she said.  “Where’s Jack’s mom now?”

“Back in the future,” Sky told her.  “Where she’ll hopefully stay.”

“If she’s telling the truth,” Syd said, “she’s our best source of information outside of Kat, and Kat only knows that they’re hunting her, not how.”

“Which means we don’t have anyone to corroborate Hyanni’s story,” Sky said.  “Jack’s mom,” he added, for Charlie’s benefit.  “Maybe they want Jack, maybe they don’t.  Maybe talking to them will put Kat in danger, maybe it won’t.  We don’t know anything yet.”

“So they haven’t tried to contact Jack?” Rose said.

“Time Force?” Sky said.  “Not that we can tell.  Unless they’re so deep undercover we can’t recognize them.”

“You think Jack’s mom is making it up?” Charlie asked bluntly.  “How do you know she’s Jack’s mom?  Maybe she’s Time Force.”

“Kat vouches for her,” Sky muttered.  “She has some sort of time sensors at her place.  Hyanni stopped by, and Kat says she can prove she’s who she says she is.”

“Sky’s afraid Hyanni wants to take Jack back to the future with her,” Syd said.  “Jack says he wouldn’t go for long, but it might be the best way to get objective information about what’s going on.”

“It’s the worst way,” Sky snapped.  “I don’t want Jack to go anywhere; I’m not denying that.  But you don’t use a mode of transport controlled by someone else, that you know nothing about, and expect to end up somewhere you can get back from.  Let alone somewhere that has unbiased information!”

“Yeah,” Charlie said, surprising him.  “That’s bad procedure, and it doesn’t gain you anything you can use.”

“Thank you,” Sky said.  He was too taken aback to do anything more than give Syd a see? look.  That was exactly what he’d said.

“Just because you’re emotionally compromised doesn’t make you automatically wrong,” Charlie said.  “Jack shouldn’t go anywhere with Hyanni, and he should assume anyone he meets could be representing Time Force.”

“Kat told him not to go anywhere alone,” Sky said.  “So far he’s taken her seriously.  She’s not following her own advice.”

“Typical,” Charlie said.  “Doesn’t she have teammates?”

“They’re out with Jack,” Syd said.  “A Squad’s down two Rangers if Boom and Sophie take turns guarding her.”

“What about Miguel?” Rose wanted to know.  “What’s he doing that’s so important?  Other than being mean?”

“You said Des was back?” Charlie added.  “I’m sure they can find something to do in Kat’s lab.  And she has assistants; aren’t the lab rats around?  Do they take holidays?”

“What are Kat’s assistants going to do if she’s attacked?” Sky said.  “I’m sure they’re capable of, I don’t know.  Running the lab.  But if Time Force shows up, she’s going to protect them, not the other way around.”

“If the conspiracy theories are right,” Rose said, “Time Force doesn’t want to be verified.  I think you underestimate the power of witnesses.”

The engine powered down when its designated idle time expired, leaving the interior of the vehicle even quieter than before.  “I can see why you don’t want to talk about this on base,” Charlie said into the sudden silence.  “But maybe Rose is right.  Maybe you want witnesses.”

“Witnesses to what?” Syd asked.  “If Time Force does anything, it’s already too late.”

Sky saw Charlie and Rose exchange glances, and Charlie smiled first.  “Conspiracy theories come back around, right?” she said.  “Everything old is new again.”

“Think how great it would be if a secret Time Force agent arrived on a base that was talking about Time Force all the time,” Rose added.

“That would be hilarious,” Charlie said.

Rose actually laughed, and the sound was so surprising that it made Sky smile.  “There you go,” Rose said.  “Charlie thinks it would be funny.  That’s a reason to do it right there.”

“It’s not that easy to start a self-sustaining rumor,” Jack said.  He liked the idea a lot, but the problem with it was that the people most likely to be believed were also the people they least wanted to implicate.  “Believe me, I’ve tried.”

“And succeeded,” Z reminded him.  “Where are they, by the way?  Did you drop them off on the side of the road, or what?”

Sky looked surprised she would even ask.  “Who, Rose and Charlie?”

“No, Time Force,” Z said, rolling her eyes.  “Of course Rose and Charlie.  The people you went to pick up at the airport.  You did pick them up, right?  You didn’t just swap spy tactics from afar?”

“Ooh, afar,” Jack said with a grin.  “Retro.”

“Like Time Force,” she agreed.  “I’m trying to get in the spirit of things.”

“What if we have a Time Force themed party?” Syd suggested.  “I think that would be a great first step.”

“Yeah, cause what we need around here is more parties,” Jack said.

Syd shrugged.  “It’s been working so far.  Things are more like we want them to be today than they were this time last month, aren’t they?  Don’t mess with success.”

Z raised her eyebrows at Jack.  “She’s not wrong.  In fact, I kind of like her reasoning.”

“Insofar as parties are a morale-building effort sorely needed among a group of people that fought forces both within and without,” Bridge said, “and continue to be under constant assault while attempting to keep the peace on the streets, which, let’s face it, we are, I think the prosocial outcome of such gatherings far outweighs the disruption to schedule and productivity.  And really, neither of those things have been at their optimum levels lately.  So further disruptive effects are negligible.”

“I think it’s interesting that you automatically ruled out the parties themselves as the cause of current non-optimum productivity,” Sky said.

Jack thought it was interesting that Sky not only followed that, but weighed in while Jack was listening.  Everyone told him that Sky and Bridge were two peas in a pod, and the only one who didn’t know it was him.  Only recently had he started to realize he didn’t see it because Sky didn’t do it around him.

“Oh, Sky,” Syd said.  “The parties make us happy.  Being happy keeps us from quitting.  Not quitting makes us more productive than we would be if we quit.”

“So I ruled them out as a negative effect,” Bridge finished when she paused.

“Parties are keeping us from quitting?” Jack asked.  “Is that true?  Should we be having more parties?”

“Yes,” Syd told him.  “Let’s have a Time Force sock hop this weekend.”

“They won’t have finished cleaning up the function hall from New Years by this weekend,” Jack said.  “I still have glitter in my hair.”

“It makes you look magical,” Syd told him.

“Why does it have to be in the function hall?” Z said.  “It might be better if it was just a cadet thing.”

“To welcome back the orientation levels,” Bridge said.

“Yeah, to--”  Z paused, then turned to Bridge and grinned.  “You know, that’s a great idea.”

“That’s a perfect idea,” Syd declared.  “That’s genius at work.  Jack, we have to have a welcome back party this weekend.  And it has to be a sock hop.”

“I know I’m going to regret asking this,” Jack said, “but why does it have to be a sock hop?”

“Because she’s tired of wearing heels,” Z put in.

“No,” Syd protested.  “Because the orientation levels are teenagers, and a sock hop is a perfectly appropriate social outlet for them.  And also because I’ve worn far too many heels in the past week and my feet are no longer used to them.”

“Good enough for me,” Jack agreed.  “Who’s organizing this?”

“You are,” Sky said.

“Do you know what I know about Time Force?”  Jack held up one hand and started counting on his fingers.  “One, I don’t like them, two, they know really weird things about me, and three, they’re after my friends.  Not exactly a solid foundation to base a party on.”

“I can do it,” Syd offered.  “Are you aware that I haven’t gotten to plan any parties this winter?  None!  I can definitely take this one.  I don’t want my party-planning skills to get rusty.”

“Are you sure?”  Jack looked at Z, who waved back.

“I’ll help,” Z said.  “Don’t worry, we’ll tell everyone it was your idea.”

“I plan to use Jack’s name at every opportunity,” Syd agreed.  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Jack, but you can get us almost anything we want right now.”

He’d noticed.  He was trying not to look directly at it, because it was weird and creepy and the opposite of everything he was used to.  But all he wanted to do was help, and Sky told him he was, so he kept going and tried not to think about it too much.

“Yeah,” he said at last, when it looked like they expected him to answer somehow.  “Sky’s pointed that out a couple of times.”

“It’s good,” Z promised him.  “It’s working, Jack.”

“Okay,” he said, shrugging.  “If you say so.”

“We do,” Syd said firmly.  “We definitely say so.  Hey, can we call this party the Time Force Time Warp?”

“Why?” Z wanted to know.

Syd shrugged.  “I don’t know, why not?  It seems like something that would stick in people’s minds.”

“It’s alliterative,” Bridge said, “and most people associate the phrase ‘time warp’ with a parody, which is a good juxtaposition with something more serious that we’re trying to get people to take lightly.  Namely, Time Force.”

“Bridge says you can do it,” Jack told her.

“Are you sure you want to say it’s Jack’s idea?” Sky asked abruptly.

Jack looked at him, and he wasn’t the only one.  Z looked surprised, and Bridge looked thoughtful.  Syd just looked bemused.

“Of course,” she said.  “Weren’t you listening when I said Jack’s name will get me holograms and free refreshments and live music?”

Z laughed.  “I don’t think you’d gotten to that part yet,” she said.  “At least not out loud.”

“But isn’t that suspicious?” Sky said.  “The idea is to not associate Jack with Time Force.”

“It’s suspicious if they’ve already contacted him,” Z said.  “They haven’t, have they?”

“Not that I know of,” Jack said.  

“So let’s tell everyone right away,” Z said.  “The more often we say the words Time Force, the less likely anyone is to take them seriously.”

“No one takes them seriously now,” Syd said.

“Yeah, not until they start popping in and out of the timeline and predicting the future with pinpoint accuracy,” Sky said.  “We didn’t believe Sam at first, either.”

“I think it’s more about them not taking us seriously than it is about us not taking them seriously,” Bridge said.  He tipped his head, weighing one hand against the other, then nodded.  “Right, because we want them to think that we think that they’re not real.  I mean, mostly we want them to think that we’re not avoiding them, because if we were we’d probably be doing it for a reason, which we are.  Since we don’t want them to wonder what that reason is, it’s better if they don’t think that we’re avoiding them, and why would we avoid them if we didn’t think they were real?  So if they think we think they’re a joke, then obviously there’s no reason for them to wonder who we are and how we know about them.”

“Or why we’re scared of them,” Syd said.

“Which we’re not,” Z added.

“Right,” Bridge agreed.  “Both of those things.”

“Okay,” Jack said.  “So what I got out of that was it’s okay if you say the party was my idea as long as we tell everyone about it as soon as possible.  Am I on the right track?”

“I’m in the mess hall,” Z said.  “Telling all of C Squad right now.  Which day is it, Friday or Saturday?”

“Saturday,” Syd said.

“Apparently it’s Saturday,” Jack told her.

“C Squad wants to help,” Z reported.  “Can they help?”

“Not with the music,” Syd said.  “They can decorate if they want to.  Actually, you know what we need?  Announcements.  Graphic design.  See if any of them want to make virtual posters.”

“I’m gonna go warn Kat,” Jack said.

“I’ll tell the commander,” Sky said, and Jack pointed at him.

“Thank you,” he said.  He wasn’t kidding.  Cruger liked Sky, and as entertaining as it would be to hear Sky explain that they were holding a retro teen dance party in the name of protecting his girlfriend’s children, Jack figured it would go better if he wasn’t there.

“You’re not going to do something embarrassing when we see them, are you?” Charlie asked.

“Yes,” Rose told her.  “I’m going to be as childish and gleeful as you wish you were.  Don’t stifle me.”

The doors to the A Wing lounge were locked open, and Rose didn’t even have to push Charlie out of the way.  She stood back and let Rose peer in, then throw up her arms when she saw Miguel and Des.  “Miguel!” she shouted.

He mirrored her immediately.  “Rose!” he said, standing up with his arms in the air.

She laughed and ran forward, hugging him as hard as she could.  “I missed you,” she mumbled against his shirt.  “I’m so glad you came back.”

“It was too long and not long enough,” he said, and then his translator kicked in and echoed, “I missed you, but I miss home too.”

“Hey Charlie,” Des said, looking back at the 4D game console.  “How the hell did you beat my high score while you were on vacation?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Charlie said, dropping down onto the couch beside him.  “Remote access.  Next time I’ll play as you to make it more fair.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Des said, but there was no heat in it.  “I see you’re wearing a ring.  You finally make an honest woman of our darling Rose?”

Charlie snorted.  “You know, you’re the first person to notice that.”

“He’s the first person to say anything,” Rose corrected.  “And I asked her, not the other way around.”

“Of course you did,” Miguel agreed.  “It was clear Charlie would never be brave enough to ask you.”  The translator rendered that exactly the way he said it, but Charlie didn’t move.

“That’s probably true,” she said from the couch.  

Rose squeezed Miguel a little tighter before letting go.  “We were going to tell you,” she said.  “I mean, we just decided a couple days ago, but we were going to tell you after the wedding.  There just wasn’t time.”

“We still expect a cake, though.”  Charlie didn’t sound apologetic at all, but she never did.  “Preferably not made by either of you.”

“You got that right,” Des agreed.  “Cecila will make it for you.  If she doesn’t excommunicate you for getting married behind her back.”

“I don’t remember anyone giving Cecila an all-access pass to every wedding we have,” Charlie retorted.  “I think she’ll get over it.”

“Until you got married, she did have an all-access pass to every wedding we’d had,” Des pointed out.  “And look at you, talking like someone who’s never met her.  She’ll get over it?  When has she ever gotten over anything?  You’re going to be hearing about this until the day you die, my friend.”

“There are worse things,” Miguel said, patting Rose’s head affectionately.  “Already being dead, for example.  Is congratulations an appropriate expression of solidarity in this case?”

“Yes,” Rose said.  “Congratulations are good.”

“Condolences,” Des said.  “To you, for having to put up with our team leader for the rest of your life.  The jungle must have messed you up more than we realized.”

“You’re not getting any of our cake,” Charlie informed him.

“Try and stop me,” he countered.  “My cake reflexes have not been dulled by time.”

“Where’s Don?” Rose asked.  “Is he out with Jack’s team?”

“Nah, he’s at school today with Stone,” Des said.  “They’re having some kind of New Years re-enactment, and Don volunteered to be one of the actors.”

“The actors in what?” Charlie wanted to know.  “What are they re-enacting?  New Years isn’t a historical event.”

“Sure it is,” Des said.  “Happens every year.  Very historical.”

“You have no idea, do you,” Rose said.

“Not one,” he agreed.  “I might’ve had to go with him if I’d shown too much interest.  Better not to ask.”

“Tell me the truth,” Rose said, settling down on the arm of Miguel’s chair.  “Are you just visiting us, or are you back to stay?”

Des glanced over at them, and Charlie slapped the “hold” command before the ship on his console could crash.  He looked down at the console, then up at her, and Rose smiled when Charlie just glared at him.  She didn’t appreciate competition that didn’t take the game seriously enough.

“Well?” Des asked her.  “Are we staying?”

“Yes,” Charlie said.

Rose felt Miguel turn his head as he sat down next to her, and she leaned into his shoulder as soon as he stopped moving.  “Yes,” she said.

Des shrugged, looking back at the game console.  “Then yes,” he said.

“Yes,” Miguel said, which his translator turned into, “I agree.”

“Great,” Charlie said.  “That’ll make Rose happy.”

“True,” Rose said, folding her arms so she could brace her shoulder against Miguel’s.  “All of you make me happy.  And Don, whatever he’s doing.”

“Can we stay?” Des asked.  “I mean, you say we’re staying, then I’m not going anywhere.  But I remember a not-so-warm welcome a little while back, and I haven’t been around much since.  Tell you the truth, I was a little surprised my badge still let me into A Wing.”

“We can stay,” Charlie said.  “Jack says our morphers are waiting for us, and Sky says he’s telling the truth.”

“Yes, but why?” Miguel wanted to know.  “How can he say that?  Jack doesn’t own those morphers.”

“Not that you’d know it,” Charlie said.  “With how he passes them around.”

“Jack is the field commander in your absence,” Miguel said.  “This I understand.  What does not make sense to me is his ability to both absolve and reinstate us after actions that still have not been explained to my satisfaction.  And if I am not satisfied, then why would Commander Cruger be?”

“Look, I don’t like it either,” Charlie said.  “I don’t know why we’re here, why we’re suddenly okay, or even why we weren’t okay to begin with.  I do know a lot of Rangers have come forward in our defense, and I’m not planning to let them down.”

“If we couldn’t stop what happened the first time,” Des said, “how can we promise that?”

“How can anyone promise anything?” Charlie asked.  She didn’t snap, Rose noticed.  She didn’t even sound tired.  She just sounded sort of… earnest.  Not a tone they were used to hearing from Charlie.  “Sometimes things happen that we don’t understand.  Be nice if they were all good things, but I guess we used up our luck getting off that damn planet in the first place.  Now we have to pay it back.”

“Universal balance,” Miguel said.  His translator said, “Karma,” and Rose figured that was close enough.  “Is that what you’re talking about?  We do good to be good?”

“Sure,” Charlie said.  “I don’t know; talk to Rose about fate and morality.  All I know is, I wanted that morpher a year ago, and I still want it now.  If Jack’s willing to give it to me, I’ll take it.”

“Not without us,” Rose said.  “You said you didn’t want it without us.”

Charlie shrugged it off like it was a given.  “You’re all my family now,” she said.  “You’re more important to me than any morpher.  You don’t want them anymore, I’ll move on too.  But if you’re here, I’m gonna be here.”

There was a moment just long enough for Rose to wonder who would break first: would one of them make fun of her, because that was how they dealt with their feelings now, or would Charlie do it herself because she didn’t like to wait?

No one said anything.

“Okay,” Rose said at last, and it came out more gently than she’d meant it to.  “We love you too, you know.”

“Some of us more than others,” Des added.

“Some of us differently than others,” Miguel said.  “Not more.”

Rose looked at Des, and he lifted his game controller in a faux toast.  “So say we all,” he agreed.

Chapter 6

“I can only assume,” Cruger announced to the mostly empty lab, “that I’ve threatened to fire you once too often.”

Kat didn’t look up from the student workstation she was using, alone, for no obvious reason.  “You’ve threatened to fire me a hundred times too often,” she said.  “What does that have to do with anything?”

“It has to do with the Time Force posters in the mess hall,” he said.  “And the admittedly clever co-opting of their slogan to announce what I’m assured is a legitimate base-wide morale exercise.”

“Of course it’s legitimate,” Kat told the interface in front of her.  “The orientation levels get a welcome back party every year; you’ve never objected before.”

“I’ve never been consulted about it before,” he remarked.  “The fact that it was Cadet Tate who brought it to my attention, rather than you, suggests that either you’re angry with me, or someone on B Squad thinks you’re angry with me.  Either way, I thought I’d better come see how you’re doing.”

“I’m fine,” Kat said without moving.

Cruger studied her.  She clearly didn’t want to speak to him, but that wasn’t unusual.  She might be working on something she didn’t find worth interrupting, though the chances of that happening at a workstation other than hers were low.  She might actually be angry with him, except that typically that involved less ignoring and more yelling.

“Shall I go away?” he asked at last.

“No,” she said with a sigh.  Sitting back from the interface, she stared at the wall behind it instead.  “What’s wrong with the party?”

“Nothing that I know of,” Cruger said.  “On the other hand, considering how much I’m trying not to know about it, that’s probably very little indication.”

“Then why are you here?” Kat asked, turning around so he could see her pale face and frightened expression.  “This is the last place anyone on the base should be right now.”

He knew there were times that had been true in the past, but she had sophisticated containment systems for a reason.  She could have at least closed the door.  “Here in your lab?” he said, just to make sure.

“Here with me,” she said.  “Anywhere I am is dangerous.”

“I thought Jack talked to you,” he said, alarmed by her appearance as much as by the words.  She was alien, certainly, but he thought he’d become somewhat versed in the good and bad of her expressions over the years.  This one was definitely bad.

“Oh, right,” Kat said.  “Of course.  Because Jack solves everything, doesn’t he.”

Cruger put his hands behind his back in as non-threatening a stance as he could manage.  “I’ve had the exact opposite experience, personally.”

“Then why do you let him turn this base into a funhouse!” Kat exclaimed.  “Why do you let him do whatever he wants until it blows up in his face, and then you roar at him for slightly inconveniencing you over something you couldn’t be bothered to handle yourself!”

“There’s the shouting,” he said.  “So you are angry with me, then.  That explains why B Squad sent someone other than you, but it doesn’t explain why it had to be Tate.”

“You like him,” Kat muttered.  “They always nominate the person they think you’re least exasperated with at any given time.”

“Yes, I’d noticed that,” he said.  “But as you say, I’ve never disapproved before.  Why am I hearing about this one at all?”

“Because it’s Time Force,” Kat snapped.  “Obviously.  Even they know this one is going to blow up, so for once they’re doing you the courtesy of warning you in advance.”

“I understood they were making an effort to prevent it from blowing up,” he remarked.  “Tate seemed quite determined that invoking the parody of Time Force throughout the base would make any actual Time Force agents less suspicious.”

“Sky believes anything Jack tells him,” Kat retorted.  “His opinion is hardly independent.  Or objective.  Or even relevant, as far as I’m concerned.”

“He has been swayed by Jack in the past,” Cruger agreed.  “In this case, though, I find some logic in his reasoning.  Surely any attempt to identify a few individuals with anomalous knowledge of a secret society will encounter difficulties when everyone is pretending to know everything about the society in question.”

“They’re from the future!” Kat exclaimed.  “They can see what will happen!  Why doesn’t anyone understand that!”

“How can they see what happens?” he asked calmly.

“It’s already happened!” she shouted.  “They’re time travelers, Doggie!  They can literally read about what happens tomorrow yesterday!”

“Only if it’s written down,” he pointed out.  “Or otherwise recorded in some form that survives until they look for it.  I realize the thirty-first century doesn’t seem so distant to you, but in terms of information storage, that’s a tremendous gulf to span.  Do you know how much I know about what happened on this planet a thousand years ago?”

“They travel through time,” she hissed.  “I don’t know how to be more clear about the fact that they can go whenever they want.  They don’t need to rely on records!”

“No,” he said sharply.  “You can go whenever you want.  They are limited by technology and energy, like everyone else.  And unless they have unfathomable numbers of people dedicated to the sole and lifelong task of archiving every single second of a single person’s day, multiplied by 30 billion on this planet alone, in this lifetime alone, then yes.  They do need to rely on records.  And more than that, they need to rely on native records.  I don’t keep a journal.  Do you?”

She stared at him, but she sounded noticeably less panicked when she said, “There are cameras everywhere.  There’s a base journal being recorded all day every day.”

“That’s junk data,” Cruger says.  “We don’t even keep it; who would want it?  Most of our cameras operate on a loop.  They don’t save any information past 30 days, and anything that is there certainly isn’t searchable.  That’s hundreds of thousands of hours in a single month.  It would take someone 15 years to watch it all straight through without stopping, and at the end they’d have to start over because they wouldn’t be able to remember what they’d set out to do.”

She didn’t smile, but her expression was now more amused than afraid.  “You think the fact that they could have everything there is means they don’t have anything useful.”

“No one knows or sees everything,” he told her.  “And if they did, why would they care?  It’s too much information to process for any reason, let alone one as relatively mundane as apprehending a fugitive.  Especially for something that, twenty years later, isn’t even a crime.”

Kat raised her eyebrows.  “You must have been talking to someone other than just Sky.”

“Commander Collins,” he agreed.  “She’s very helpful when she’s lecturing me on why I should stay away from you.”

Kat frowned, and he added, “I don’t want Time Force to find you.  I don’t want them to know about your sister’s role in the resistance, and I don’t want them to know your children exist.  Most days, I don’t even wish they’d take Jack Landors back to whenever he came from.

“But I also don’t want you to spend so much time hiding from them that you forget why you escaped in the first place,” he continued.  “I don’t like seeing you afraid, Kat.  I’m not saying these aren’t dangerous people.  But anyone and anything can be beaten.  If the last year proves anything, it proves that.”

Kat sighed, but she did look reassured.  Somehow.  “Keep fighting,” she said.  “Inspiring words as always, Commander.”

“No, Kat.”  He had kept fighting, and more times than he cared to remember, the cost of victory had been too high.  “Keep living.”

“Are you taking me to the dance?”  Jack flopped down on the chair next to Sky, because Sky was holding something that looked delicate and he knew better than to get too close.  “Tomorrow night?”

“No,” Sky said.

“Why not?” Jack wanted to know.  “I took you to the last one.  Aren’t these thing supposed to be reciprocal?”

“I’m not taking you to the dance because you’re on duty tomorrow night,” Sky said, “and therefore you will not be available.”

“How do you know?” Jack countered.  “Aren’t you supposed to ask me and find out if I’m available?”

“I made the schedule,” Sky said.  “If you don’t want to be scheduled during Syd’s sock hops, you should tell her to plan them a little farther in advance next time.”

“It’s not about knowing,” Jack insisted.  “Charlie says I’m not supposed to assume you’re not available; why should you get to assume I’m not?”

Sky lowered his tiny and probably very expensive tool to stare at Jack.  “What have I told you about taking advice from Charlie?”

Jack grinned.  “That I should only do it when I’m bored and want to start trouble?”

“Cadets,” Cruger’s voice boomed, and Jack stiffened instinctively.  Sky, he noticed, set his delicate-looking thing down carefully on the table before standing up.  Jack followed more slowly, though they managed to coordinate their salutes.  He figured it made Sky look good by comparison or something.

“As you were.”  The commander had stopped just inside the doorway, and he very obviously looked around before addressing them again.  “Cadet Landors, I understood you were going to discuss the nature of tomorrow night’s social event with Dr. Manx.”

Jack glanced at Sky and caught his equally baffled expression in return.  “Yes, sir!” Jack said.  “I did.  She’s aware of the theme and the reason behind it.”

“She’s terrified that she’s being covertly observed,” Cruger said.  “Presumably by time travelers, maybe by historians.  I wasn’t clear on the specifics.”

Jack couldn’t help it.  He looked at Sky again and this time he got a tiny shrug.  At least if the rest of the base was going crazy, he’d be with Sky when it started.

“I guess it’s hard to know what vocabulary they’ll use in the future,” Jack said, since it looked like he was supposed to reply to that somehow.  “You want me to talk to her again, sir?”

“No,” Cruger said.  “I want to make a suggestion.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to hear this,” Jack said without thinking.  “Sir.”

Cruger was giving him the same skeptical look he wanted to give Sky.  “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, Cadet, but just adding ‘sir’ to the end of any given sentence doesn’t make it respectful.”  

“Totally aware of that,” Jack agreed.  “Sir.”

“Even Kat is telling me I let you get away with too much now,” Cruger said.  “And coming from the single most insubordinate person on this base, that’s a significant statement.”

“Well, it takes one to know one, sir,” Jack replied.

“So I only see one option,” Cruger continued.

“You’re gonna fire me again,” Jack said.

“No,” Cruger said.  “Quite the opposite, in fact.”

“Oh, no,” Jack said, suddenly realizing what this meeting was about.  “No, don't do that.  Can we just pretend we didn’t have this conversation?  As soon as you say it, I’ll know.  Then they can talk to me.  I thought we agreed that them talking to me is something we should put off as long as possible.”

“I think they should talk to you,” Cruger said.  “Once they’ve shown themselves, at least we’ll be able to see them coming.”

“That makes perfect sense,” Jack told him.  “I mean, as soon as my mom showed up, we knew her motives and her timeframe and she’s been completely predictable ever since.”

“I want you to consider a promotion,” Cruger said.  “You’ve tried unsuccessfully to resign from two Ranger teams now, and you’ve told me repeatedly that you don’t consider the morpher you carry yours.”

“It’s Charlie’s,” Jack replied.  “I’ve already talked to her about it.  I’m not giving it to anyone until she’s ready to say yes or no.”

“Her team is back,” Cruger said.  “She told me she wouldn’t stay without them, and I don’t believe she’ll leave without them either.  If you plan to honor your word, you may find yourself without a morpher very soon.”

“So you want to promote me?” Jack said.  “You should be celebrating, Commander.  You could finally have me out of your hair.  In a manner of speaking.”

“It's been pointed out to me that this base wouldn’t function without you,” Cruger said bluntly.  “Besides, I already offered the position to Charlie and she wouldn’t take it.  It’s you or no one, Jack.”

“And you’ve seen how well we do with no one,” Sky remarked.  There was a deliberate pause before he looked at Cruger and added, “No offense, sir.”

For that alone, Jack thought, it was worth it.

“Think about it,” Cruger advised.  “I need an officer who can supervise and resolve a variety of emergency base issues in my absence.  You lack appropriate credentials, but you’ve done a decent job of it the last month or so.  With some training, it could be more like a job and less like an ongoing crisis response simulation.”

“Wow, way to sell it,” Jack said dryly.  

“Your experience with Rangers and as a Ranger is the most qualifying aspect of your background,” Cruger told him.  “If not you, think about who you see supporting them in the future.”

With that warning, he turned and left, and Jack saluted half-heartedly when Sky did.  “Great,” he said, even though the commander could probably still hear him.  “Our schedules are never going to match again, are they.”

“I want you around,” Sky said.  “Not more than I want you to be happy, so if you have to leave, you have to leave.  We’ll figure it out.  But if you’d at least think about this, that would mean a lot to me.”

Jack stared at him for as long as he dared, but Sky just stared back.  If he was joking, then he wasn’t breaking character.  And Sky usually wasn’t a jerk about these things.  Everything else, yes.  But not things one or the other of them cared about.

“Are you joking?” Jack finally asked.  “Because it sounds like you’re joking.  We know how this turns out.  I get promoted, Sam joins the academy, and he spends his formative years calling me ‘Commander.’  A habit he refuses to give up when he jumps back in time 15 years to keep us from destroying ourselves.  Again.”

“We don’t know that,” Sky corrected.  “You guessed that, based on a practical joke Sam played on me and an uncorroborated story your mother told about how special you are.  It’s not exactly something to hang your destiny on.”

Jack blinked.  “Okay,” he said, pushing his braids out of his face.  “That’s… one way of looking at it.”

“It’s as good as any other,” Sky told him.  “Cruger made you an offer; he didn’t tell you how it is.  This is B Squad Red all over again.”

That made Jack smile reluctantly.  “Well, I guess that one turned out all right.”

“This one will too,” Sky said.  “You’ll see.”

“Not that I’m complaining,” Jack said, eyeing him.  “But you’re very optimistic all of a sudden.”

Sky just shrugged.  “It’s a new year,” he said.  “I have a good feeling about it.”

She shouldn’t be crying.  She knew it was upsetting Janecha and Auri.  It wasn’t their fault, and they shouldn’t see her like this.  She didn’t know why they’d come to see her at all, and she couldn’t ask them now.  There was someone in the hallway.  She hadn’t even closed the door.

“Knock knock!” a familiar voice called from the other side of the lab.  It was a cheerful singsong that should have made her smile, but today it just made her close her eyes so she couldn’t see the emergency button above Auri’s head.

“Hi, Kat!” Jen’s voice called again.  “Are you in here?”

Jen knew she was in here.  Her mutation let her sense things like Kat from farther away than she was now.  Kat didn't know why she was pretending, but it couldn't be good.

Auri hissed, just a tiny, distressed noise, and Kat hugged the child closer to her.  “Shh,” she whispered uselessly.  “It's all right.”

She heard the doors close, and then Jen’s voice sounded more concerned.  “Kat?  Are you okay?”

No, she wasn't okay.  Time Force wanted to destroy her, and her children would be an unlooked-for bonus.  There was nowhere else to run.

“I’m going to come around the desk,” Jen was saying.  “Please let me know if you or anything else is going to fly out and attack me.”

Kat let go of Auri with one hand and laid it on Janecha’s shoulder.  Don’t move, she said silently.  Janecha’s ears flicked forward in acknowledgment, and she heard Jen saying, “I’ll take that as a no.”

Then her sister was carefully behind the desk, wary and worried as she paused and then knelt down.  She looked at the three of them, huddled underneath it, and Kat just stared back.  She probably looked terrible.  It really didn’t matter.

“Can I come in?” Jen asked at last.

Kat slid her hand around the other side of Janecha and tugged, the child scrambling obediently closer until they were almost in her lap with Auri.  Jen squeezed in alongside, ducking her head and putting a hand on Janecha’s shoulder to avoid squishing anyone.  “What’s this?” she asked, pointing at the emergency button.

“Don’t touch it,” Kat said at the same time.

“Okay,” Jen said.  “So is there anything I can do?  Is someone dying?  Do you want me to just be quiet for a while?”

“No,” Kat said.  She tried to take a deep breath, but it shook and she was sniffling and both her children were hugging her too hard.  “We’re trapped.”

“Okay,” Jen repeated.  “Do you want to be un-trapped?  You’re not trapped by this desk, are you, because there is a lot more space under here than I realized.”

“Time Force is coming,” Kat whispered.

“Yeah,” Jen said slowly.  “That’s what I came to talk to you about, actually.”

This time it was Janecha who hissed, and Jen added, “Can you feel them?  They’re not supposed to be here until tomorrow.”

Kat shook her head no.  She couldn’t feel them.  She didn’t need to know where they were to know she would never be free.  They would never stop coming.

“No?” Jen said.  “You can’t feel them; that’s good, right?  I came to let you know they’re on their way, and they won’t be here before tomorrow.  You have plenty of time.”

“I can’t leave,” Kat whispered.  “Janecha brought Auri.”

It wasn’t their fault.  They couldn’t have known.

“Hey, Auri,” Jen said.  “Hey, Janecha.  Are you keeping your mom warm?  I think she needs a blanket.  Kat, there’s a blanket in the first aid kit, right?  Can one of them go get it for you?”

“I don’t need a blanket,” she murmured.  Auri’s fur was soft against her cheek, and Janecha’s fingers dug into her arm.  She didn’t want either of them to move.

“Why can’t you leave?” Jen asked gently.

“Auri gets timesick,” Kat said, closing her eyes.  “No travel for another two days.”

“Oh.”  Jen didn’t sound at all alarmed.  “No time travel, right?”

Kat didn’t answer.

“There’s other kinds of travel,” Jen told her.  “I think you should take a train.  See a national park or something.  Just for the weekend.”

“They can find me,” Kat said.

“I don’t think they can,” Jen replied carefully.  “Are you still wearing the anti-trace?”

“The children don’t have them,” Kat said.  “They’re leaving fingerprints every time they visit.”

“But they’re not on file,” Jen said.  “Their prints don’t mean anything; no one will recognize them.  Yours are the only ones that raise the alarm.  And you can’t jump anyway, not with Auri.  Just leave the base for the weekend.”

“They want Jack,” Kat said.  “If they get Jack, there won’t be anyone.”

“Anyone… to protect you?” Jen guessed.  “We’ll all protect you, Kat.  Me and Wes and Jack and Hyanni.  And your commander.  Even your children are helping; did you notice?  They’re overwriting your jump to Mexico.  Every time they show up, they blur the trail a little more.”

“My children shouldn’t have to protect me,” Kat whispered.

“Well, you shouldn’t be hunted,” Jen replied.  “But you were, and they will.  You could make it easier for them by getting on a train.”

This time when she tried to draw in a breath, it didn’t shake as much as it had before.  She made herself loosen her grip on Auri and Janecha, but Jen was right.  She didn’t want to lose their warmth any more than she wanted to let them out of her sight.

“I think I’ll take that blanket now,” she murmured.

“I’ll get it,” Jen promised, shifting Janecha closer against her again and she scooted forward.  “Darn it.  What--is this the thing you told me not to hit?  Sorry; is something terrible going to happen now?”

“It’s fine,” Kat said, smiling a little through her tears.  “He’s used to it.”

“Okay,” Jen said, pulling herself out from under the desk.  “Be right back.”

Kat leaned forward enough that she could put her hand on top of the desk and trigger the comm.  “Kat for Commander Cruger,” she said.  She didn’t realize how much she sounded like she’d been crying until she tried to speak at a normal volume.

“Kat!”  That was it, just her name, and she was pretty sure he was running.

“It’s okay; I hit it by accident,” she said.  “Nothing’s wrong.”

“You’ll have to prove that,” he replied, and the link cut out.

“The commander’s on his way,” she said, in case that wasn’t obvious to Jen.

Can we stay? Auri asked.

Yes.  She hugged them both closer even as Jen crouched down in front of them again, and it was easier to smile the second time.  “Thank you,” she murmured.

“You might have to come out so I can wrap it around you,” Jen said.  “Unless you want to just hide underneath it, which sounds kind of fun.”

Kat sighed, reaching for one side of the blanket as she edged forward.  “I guess I’d better go hide somewhere else for a while.”  She pulled the blanket around behind her, then turned until she could catch it with her other hand.  

Janecha crawled out from under the desk behind her, and she let Auri go when she pulled the blanket closer.  “You can get up,” she said.  “If you want to.”

Auri scrambled off of her lap and into Janecha, clutching close and batting at the silver blanket where it wrinkled.  “You’ll have to stay,” Kat told them.  “With me, a little longer.  We’re going to go see some trees and mountains.”

“And waterfalls,” Jen offered, tugging the corner of the blanket higher.  “I think there’s waterfalls.  And cliffs.  You like cliffs.”

The fact that the doors slid open was something of a surprise.  Not because they opened, but because they opened so calmly.  There was no pounding or cursing, just open doors and the same voice she’d heard over the comm.  “Kat?”

“Over here,” she called, smiling again when Jen rolled her eyes.  “Behind the desk.”

He was there before she finished speaking, and she saw him take in the children and the blanket and her sister all at once.  Given that, she was reluctantly impressed that the first thing he said was, “More visitors, I see.”

“I bumped into the panic button by accident,” Jen said, pushing herself to her feet.  “My mistake.  But I’m afraid I’m going to need to borrow Kat again.”

“Of course you will,” Cruger said with a sigh.  “The Mexico base, I presume?”

“I was thinking Yosemite,” Jen said.  “Or Yellowstone.  She needs a break, and she’ll be taking the kids with her.”

“The kids,” Cruger repeated, eyeing them.  “I see.”

“Janecha,” Kat said.  “Auri.  This is Commander Doggie Cruger.  You know him, but I don’t think he’s met you yet.”

“Janecha,” he repeated, and she put a hand on Janecha’s head.  “And Auri.  How pleasant to meet you.”  She touched Auri’s head when he said the name, and he nodded his thanks.

She mouthed thank you in return, because he clearly knew.  He knew from looking at them, and he just as clearly wasn’t asking.

“Will you require security?” he said instead.  “Partner policy won’t apply if the head of Base Tech goes on vacation.  You should take someone with you.”

“She will,” Jen said unexpectedly.  “I’m going too.”

Kat looked at her in surprise, and she shrugged apologetically.  “If you’ll have me,” she said.  “I’m not supposed to be here when Time Force shows up either.  Not this time.”

“Not this time?” Kat repeated.  “Didn’t they tell you they’re coming?”

“Not officially,” Jen said.  “I still have some friends in the Force.  I don’t want to compromise them, so I’m leaving too.”

“Leaving?” Cruger repeated.

“We’ll be back,” Jen said.  “Monday.  Try not to lose anyone while we’re gone.”

Cruger looked, if anything, more alarmed.  “Do you have someone in particular in mind?”

“Jack,” Kat said, pulling the blanket closer around her shoulders while she sat on the floor.  “Please don’t lose Jack.”

“Of course,” Cruger said.  He sounded very neutral, and she supposed it said something about how fragile she must look that he didn’t complain.  “I’ll make sure Jack is here when you come home.”

“Can you even do that?” Z wanted to know.  Two of her were helping to carrying Dan’s storage trunk across the great room between wings, but the part that got his attention was her question.  Sky found himself wanting to ask Jack the same thing on a daily basis.

“Yeah,” Jack said, turning away from not helping at all to follow her into B Wing.  “Do what?”

“Requisition double beds,” Z replied.  “That seems sort of… I don’t know.  Against the spirit of cadet living quarters?”

“The spirit?” Jack echoed.  “What spirit?  The spirit of not having sex?  Have you met any other cadets?  I’m surprised the default room configuration is singles.”

“Thank you Z!” Syd called as she slipped past them in the other direction, heading back toward C Wing.  “Thanks Jack!”

“Jack isn’t doing anything!” Z called back.

“Thanks for the bed!” Syd shouted before she disappeared.

“No way,” Z said.  “You’re serious?  Sky, that’s mine, stop moving it.”

“I can see it’s yours,” he replied, pushing her trunk aside to get into his own room.  “That’s why I’m moving it.”

“Well stop,” she demanded, both of her selves pausing in the hallway outside the door.  “I put it there for a reason.”

“And if you want it to stay there,” Sky said, “you’ll let me into the closet where I left the rest of my stuff.”

“Oh,” she said.  “Okay, that’s fine.”

“Thank you,” he said, rolling his eyes.  Z was very possessive of a room that wasn’t technically hers yet.  On the other hand, she’d been living with Syd for most of a year, so it was understandable.

Annoying, but understandable.

“Hey, you want any help?” Jack asked, hanging on the doorframe while Sky fought his way to the closet.  “I’m happy to lift and carry.”

“All evidence to the contrary,” Sky said.  Jack had yet to pick up a single thing while Sky was watching.  “I told you before, this relationship only works as long as you don’t touch my stuff.”

“You got it,” Jack agreed.  “Hey, just out of curiosity, can I do that?  Get double beds for all my friends?”

“You have done that,” Sky said.  “Why are you only asking now?”

“Well, just in case it’s impossible,” Jack drawled.  “What can I say.  I like to appreciate my accomplishments.”

“Anyone can request any type of bed they want,” Sky said.  “It’s not against the rules.  It’s just a question of how much Supply likes you and what kind of priority you get with Facilities.”

“The answer is usually ‘not much’ and ‘very little,’” Dan agreed, looking into the room long enough to add, “Thanks, Jack.”

“No problem,” Jack said.  “Me and Sky shouldn’t be the only ones who benefit from our battlefield promotions.”

“In order for it to count as a promotion,” Sky said, “I’m almost positive there has to be someone promoting you.  Otherwise it’s more of a power grab.”

“It’s an assumption of duties left vacant in the absence of other more qualified candidates,” Jack corrected.  “Besides, I promoted you, so you’re okay.”

“Technically, Commander Cruger promoted Sky,” Bridge said, walking in with his arms full of yellow shirts and uniform pants.  He dropped them all on his bed and added, “As an indirect result of your actions, yes, but not at your direction.”

“Really?”  Sky looked over his shoulder in time to see Jack frown, and he wondered which part of that Jack had a problem with.

“I guess,” Jack continued.  “I don’t remember much of that morning, to be honest.  I think I slept through most of it.”

He slept through crucial parts of it, leading to Sky being given Jack’s morpher in the first place.  Since Sky didn’t want to talk about it, he picked up what he could and walked out, heading down the hallway to where Jack’s door was also locked open.  His door too, soon.

Sky still wasn’t sure whose idea it had been to move all of B Squad at the same time.  It was chaotic but frustratingly practical, given that they were mostly shifting rooms among themselves.  No one could move until someone else did, so they didn’t have much choice except to do it all at once.

“Hey,” Jack’s voice said.  He was hanging on his own doorway now, knocking on it with his free hand even as Sky looked up.  “Should I not have said that?”

Sky shrugged.  “You did sleep through it,” he said.  “I just don’t feel like thinking about it right now, so.  Go lift and carry things if you want.”

“Maybe I’d rather stay here and harass you,” Jack said.  “Do you feel like being harassed?”

“Most days it’s my only functioning emotional state around you,” Sky replied.  “So no, but that’s never stopped you before.”

“Aw,” Jack teased.  “I can almost pretend that’s romantic.”

“Your standards are slipping,” Sky told him.  “And they weren’t far off the ground to begin with.  You should demand more.”

“How To Be Sky Tate In Two Easy Steps,” Jack said with a laugh.  “Raise your standards and demand more!  Also, don’t let your husband put away your clothes, because god forbid he mix up the royal blue and the cobalt again.”

“And we should actually get married,” Sky said.  “At some point.  Before I come to my senses.”

“Whenever you want,” Jack agreed.  “You notice Charlie’s wearing a ring, now?”

He’d noticed.  “She and Rose got married in Japan,” Sky said.

“Damn it,” Jack said.  “We have to throw another party, don’t we.”

Z was in their doorway before Sky could remind him that he had an unnatural fondness for parties.  She didn’t knock, but she did laugh at Jack, and tonight that was an even trade.  “Jack, just watching Sky move doesn’t count as helping any more than watching me do it does.”

“I’m a facilitator,” Jack told her.  “That’s my contribution.”

“Yeah, well,” she said.  “All joking aside, thanks for facilitating our bunk situation.”

“You guys didn’t want a double bed, right?”  Jack sounded suddenly worried, and he added, “I figured, but I checked with Bridge too, and he agreed.”

“Yeah,” Z repeated.  “We’re gonna keep it the way it is.  But we know you’d get us whatever we wanted if we wanted it, so.  Thanks.”

Jack smiled at her, and Sky couldn’t help but watch when Jack said, “Anything for my team; you know that.  Glad it’s working out.”

“Same to you,” Z said, and when she glanced at Sky this time it couldn’t have been more obvious.  “In case I haven’t said it enough, congratulations.”

“In case I haven’t said it enough,” Jack countered, “I love you.”

Z beamed at him, walking the rest of the way into the room to hug him.  “You can never say it too much,” she said.  “Love you too.”

The official story was illness, which Jack thought was weird but didn’t question.  He’d heard it from the commander and from Boom, separately, and he didn’t ask either of them who’d come up with it.  Since the cover baffled him as much as the explanation baffled anyone else, he didn’t have to fake agreement when other people were surprised to hear Kat was out sick.

He headed for Kat’s lab before A Squad’s scheduled patrol rotation anyway.  Sophie and Boom still worked there, and it gave Don and Rose a rally point away from the rest of their team.  Or it would have, if the rest of the team hadn’t followed them there.

Jack surveyed the scene from the doorway: one screeching child, a barking dog and a hissing cat, all on surfaces that probably weren’t meant for sitting, let alone fleeing or fighting.  Surrounded by five adults, plus one alien and an android, none of whom seemed to be making any progress toward containment.  In fact, at least two of them were actively making things worse.

He didn’t mean to laugh.  The fact that Kat’s lab instantly fell to pieces without her--every time!--probably shouldn’t be funny.  But it was.  It was one of the most reliably slapstick scenarios on the base.

The screeching changed, and anyone who wasn’t trying to rescue fragile equipment, help balance an unsteady child, or keep something from catching on fire turned to look at him when they heard the words, “Uncle Jack!”

The room didn’t get quieter or less terrifying, so Jack stayed where he was and yelled back, “Kirlian!”

This prompted a piercingly loud chittering sound, repeated several times and interspersed with more cries of “Uncle Jack.”  Jack squinted at the counter the child was jumping on, decided Kirlian hadn’t had tawny ears the last time they’d met, and guessed, “Not Kirlian?”

The chittering sound came again, and Sophie managed to stop the robot dog from knocking over something important-looking by virtue of holding its tail.  The kitten landed on top of the thing and it wavered, but Jack was not wading into that fray.  “Cheech?” he guessed, based on the sound the child was making.

He tried to remember what Kat had said when they called about Kirlian.  “Janecha,” maybe, but that sounded a little more rhythmic than--

“Chichi!” Jack exclaimed.  Chichi was the other one.  That was almost definitely, possibly something vaguely close to the sound the child kept making.

“Uncle Jack!” the child agreed.  Or at least, the chittering sound stopped, so Jack was going to take it as agreement.  The crash of Boom rescuing the important-looking thing and, as a result, knocking an entire stack of lab reports off the counter, was a nice climactic flourish to the identification.

“Oh my god,” a voice said from beside him, and Jack looked over to see Charon staring into the lab with something that could have been amusement.  “Was it like this when you got here?”

“Maybe a little louder,” Jack said.  “You taking over for Sophie and Boom?”

“I was going to,” she said.  “Now I’m reconsidering.”

Chichi started to scream again, and Jack looked over just in time to see Charlie swing the cat-eared child off of the counter.  She didn’t let go of them, just carried them, screams and all, through the chaos to Jack in the doorway.  “You know this one?” she said.

“Yeah, it’s one of Kat’s kids,” Jack said.

“Uncle Jack!” Chichi shouted, reaching for him and Charon at the same time.

“Might as well put them down,” Jack said.  “I don’t know if they like being carried.”

“Not from what we’ve seen,” Charon offered, and Jack grinned.

“Visited you before, have they?”

“Well, visited Kat,” Charon said.  “But yeah.  Pretty much the same thing.”

“Why aren’t they visiting Kat now?” Charlie wanted to know.

“Kat’s sick,” Jack replied automatically.

Charlie gave him a disgusted look.  “I’ve heard that,” she said.  “The question stands.”

Chichi had stopped struggling in her arms, and behind them, Sophie had managed to catch the cat and turn off the dog.  She was directing Don and Miguel to move the important-looking thing while Des picked up reports and what looked like pieces of glass behind them.  Rose was putting the fire extinguisher back, so Jack assumed they had her to thank for the lack of automated fire suppression protocols.  

“Are you looking for your mom?” Charon was asking Chichi.

“Uncle Jack,” Chichi replied, and Charlie rolled her eyes.

“Do they know any words other than your name?”

“They understand English just fine,” Jack said.  “They just can’t speak it very well.  Or at all, I guess.”

“Oh, we’ll have to vent that,” Boom was telling Rose.  “Can you get it into the hood?”

“What do you do with broken glass around here?” Des wanted to know.

“Most broken glass we recycle,” Boom said.  “That broken glass we decontaminate.”

“There’s a decon box at the other end of that bench,” Sophie said.  “Put the brush and that lab report inside with the glass, please.”

“You don’t want to deal with this mess alone, do you?” Jack asked Charon.

“Not tremendously,” she said.

Jack raised his voice.  “Hey, Sophie.  Boom.  On a scale of one to ten, how much do you want to give your morphers to Miguel and Des right now?”

“Eight,” Sophie replied immediately.  

“Wait, is ten wanting to do it a lot?” Boom said.  “What does giving them our morphers mean?  We really shouldn’t leave the lab right now, even if it wasn’t a disaster, which, let’s face it, it will be until Kat gets back.”

“Giving them your morphers means you don’t have to leave the lab,” Jack said.

“What about it?” he added, catching Charlie’s eye.  “Is that why you’re here, or were you just interested in the popular spectator sport of laboratory work?”

“We were going to offer to patrol with you,” Charlie said.  “Get us back up to speed on the streets.”

Even Charlie flinched when Chichi dug in and launched, shoving out of her arms with enough force to land hard against Jack’s chest.  He staggered under the impact, but he got his arms around the cat-eared toddler before either of them could fall.  “Hello,” he said.

“Uncle Jack,” Chichi replied.

“That’s me,” Jack agreed.  “Boom?  What’s your number?”

“Six?” Boom said.  “I guess?  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I really like being a Ranger.  But this is my calling.  I can’t let criminals stand in the way of genuine scientific advancement.”

“Spoken like a true scientist,” Jack said, shifting Chichi to one side so he could reach the morpher on his hip.  “Why don’t we leave Rangering to the Rangers while the four of us hold down the fort.”

Looking at Chichi, he added, “Sorry, my bad.  Five of us,” and Chichi gave him a tiny grin full of very pointy teeth.  

Yeah.  They understood everything.  He should remember that.

“Here,” Jack added, holding his morpher out to Charlie.  “Surprise.  Nothing like an independent patrol to bring you back up to speed.”

She held out her hand, and he slapped the morpher against her palm.  For just a moment, the Red power tingled under his skin and he could see both their fingers sparkle.  Then it released him, more gently than the last time, and he wondered if it liked being handed off to a previous owner better than a new one.

“We still don’t have weapons’ locker access,” Charlie said.

“I’ll come with you,” Jack said, putting his other arm around Chichi again.  “Me and Chichi will come with you, and then I’ll get your access fixed.  You’re good with A-level again, right?”

She didn’t answer immediately, and he followed her gaze when she looked over her shoulder at Rose.  “Maybe you should make it B-level,” Charlie said, not looking back at him.  “Give Sky’s team A-level access.”

Sky’s team already had A-level access, but Jack didn’t tell her that.

“Okay,” he said instead.  “Let me know if you change your mind.”

“You’re just gonna change our access level?” Des demanded, looking from him to the morpher Boom had given him and back.  “Just like that?  Who the hell do you know, man?”

“Don’t swear in front of the children,” Jack told him.  “It sets a bad example.”

Des gave him the finger behind Chichi’s back, and Jack grinned at him.  “I know everyone,” he said.  “Boom, Sophie, Charon?  You okay here for a while, or do you want standby firefighters until you get all of this under control?”

“Oh, it’s never under control,” Boom assured him.  “Kat just acts calmer about it than we do.”

“Great,” Jack said.  He boosted Chichi higher in his arms as he led the once and future A Squad out of the lab and back into the rest of the base.  “Good luck with that, then.”

Chapter 7

Sky had seventeen minutes between the time he finally got away from containment testimony until the time he’d promised Syd he would be in the mess to help with party preparations.  Despite the ongoing disaster that was the current state of B Wing, it was worth it to him to hide in Jack’s room for ten of those minutes and pretend to read.  Or at least lie down with the book on his chest so he could reach it if he wanted to read.

He really didn’t want to read.  He didn’t want to do anything except not listen to people saying stupid things, not see people doing stupid things, and not think about whether or not sleeping would be a better use of his evening than attending Syd’s party.  He already knew the answer to that, after all.

Three minutes into his quiet reflection on things that weren’t stupid, there was a perfunctory knock on the door.  It slid open immediately, and he frowned up at the ceiling.  Jack was the only one who--

Jack walked soundlessly into his peripheral vision, and Sky turned his head to stare.  “I thought you were on duty,” he blurted out.

“Oh, hey.”  Jack smiled, but he looked a little awkward about it.  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“I wasn’t asleep,” Sky said, sitting up.  “Is everything okay?”

Jack straightened, and so many things went through Sky’s head in the second before he spoke.  He must have gone through every variation of I have to leave and I’m sorry, it’s over and he knew that was bad.  He wasn’t jumping to conclusions.  He could let Jack say it.

“Officially not a Ranger anymore,” Jack said, his eyes flickering over Sky’s expression.  “Still love me?”

It was another moment where he thought of too many things to say and almost didn’t say any of them.  But he consciously passed over what? and of course and he managed to get out, “Always,” before Jack looked away.

Jack’s smile looked more relieved than happy, and Sky didn’t bother being offended.  They both had their reasons.  Jack knew enough of his to worry, and he knew enough of Jack’s to understand.

“Glad to hear it,” Jack said.  “And hey, good news.  Now I can go to Syd’s party.”

“Tell me the truth,” Sky said.  “That’s why you finally quit, isn’t it.”

“Oh, sure,” Jack agreed.  “She gets the best caterers.  Can’t miss that.”

“Why is she even having it catered?” Sky asked rhetorically.  “We live on a military base.  There’s plenty of food here.”

“Pretty sure you just answered your own question,” Jack said.  “And I didn’t quit, by the way.  I just gave Charlie her morpher back.  And, sorry, I’d rather stay here and watch you not read, but I have to get back to the lab.”

Since that answered the question of why, Sky didn’t argue over the definition of quitting.  Jack was still here, after all.  And if he was going back to the lab, he wasn’t packing.  They could figure this out.

“What’s going on in the lab?” Sky asked, because it sounded normal and not like him panicking over something they’d all known was coming.  Jack wasn’t leaving.  Everything would be fine.

“What isn’t,” Jack said with a smile.  “It was literally on fire when I left.  That’s actually why we recruited Charlie and Des and Miguel: Kat’s lab needs way more supervision than it has without her.  So in our best interests, to keep it from self-destructing, we need Boom, we need Sophie, they probably don’t need me but they’re getting me, and one of Kat’s assistants is recruiting some friends.”

“Sounds dangerous,” Sky said.

“The lab or the people in the lab?” Jack countered.  “I’ve never been sure.”

“Yes,” Sky told him.

Jack smirked.  “Want to come help?  One of Kat’s kids is there; I’m just the babysitter.  They’ll probably find something more fun for you to do.”

“Yeah,” Sky said, putting his book aside and swinging his legs off of the bed.  “Let me just tell Syd I’ll be late to the mess hall.”

“Oh, were you gonna go help Syd?”  Jack made a face.  “Sorry; that’s right, go.  We’re covered in the lab.  I just figured, if you were tired of not reading or sleeping.”

“I wasn’t tired of not reading or sleeping,” Sky said.  “I just came from testimony, which was as infuriating as usual, and I had exactly three minutes of peace before you came in.

“Not,” he added, holding up his hand, “that I wish you hadn’t come in, because I do.  I’m glad you’re here.  I’m just saying that the only thing I feel less like doing than babysitting Kat’s hyperactive geniuses is going down to the mess hall to supervise even more manic teenagers while Syd tries to decide whether the punch should be three inches to the left of wherever it is.”

“Wow,” Jack said.  His apologetic look had vanished, but there was something like sympathy in its place.  “You really don’t want to be around other people right now.”

Sky raised an eyebrow at him.  “Which part of hiding in a dark room with a book I’m not reading gave it away?”

“You don’t have to come to the lab just because I’m there,” Jack said.  “And you don’t have to help Syd just because she asked.  You used to be good at saying no,” he added, smiling a little.  “What happened to that?”

“I found things I don’t want to lose,” Sky answered.

“Yeah?”  Jack apparently took that at face value.  As Sky had meant it.  “Sure, I get that.  But you know what I’ve learned recently?”

“I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” Sky said when he paused.

Jack smiled at him, and it was a happy expression: more fond than smug, even if Sky could have forgiven him either one.  “You don’t lose the things worth keeping just because you say no sometimes.”

“Profound,” Sky told him.  “Not gonna carry a lot of weight when Cruger kicks you off the base or the time police kidnap you to the future, though.”

“Aha!” Jack said, pointing at him.  “You’re not being nice; you’re just spying on us.  I see how it is.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sky said.  “I’m not spying on anyone except you.”

Jack laughed.  “Well, why don’t I make it easier for you,” he suggested, patting his pockets and then glancing around the room again.  “I’m gonna need a regular comm.”

Sky unclipped his morpher and offered it without a word.

Jack only paused for a second before he took it.  “Landors for Drew,” he said, catching Sky’s eye and then looking away.

“Go for Drew,” Syd’s voice replied, then added, “Jack, why are you using Sky’s morpher?”

“Great story,” Jack said.  “I reinstated Charlie as A Squad Red.  She and the rest of her team have B-level access on base and the best part is, they’re out on patrol for me right now.  But I’m short a comm and the lab is a disaster without Kat, so I’m recruiting Sky.  Please say you can spare him from party planning in the mess hall?”

Her sigh was audible even over the morpher.  “I suppose,” she said.  “Make sure he puts out an actual fire for me, okay?”

“Rose got the first one,” Jack said.  “Boom is still trying to contain the second, but I promise, I will definitely offer the third fire to Sky.”

“Okay,” Syd agreed, sounding less put-upon now.  “Do you need more help?  I have two lab rats I could send up.”

“Nah,” Jack said.  “We’re all right.  Wait ‘til we sound the fire alarm, at least.”

“I’ll be listening for it,” she replied.

Sky could hear his smile even if he couldn’t see it.  “Thanks, Syd!”

“Get a comm, Jack,” she replied.  “Bye!”

Sky opened his mouth, but Jack held up one finger and said, “Landors for Boom.”

There was a noticeable delay this time, and then Boom’s voice said, “Uh, hey, Jack.  Um, you might want to wait a few minutes before you come back, you know?  Maybe get a snack or something?”

“What have you done,” Jack said, in a tone that wasn’t a question.

“Well, we kind of evacuated the lab,” Boom said.  “But it’s okay, really; it’s just for a few minutes.  Everyone is fine, we’re just hanging out here in the hall while we wait for the fire suppression systems to re-pressurize the room.”

“Is Chichi with you?” Jack wanted to know.

“Oh yes,” Boom said quickly.  “Right--uh… right over there.  Yeah, no problem.  Everyone’s accounted for.”

“Including the kitten,” Jack said.

“Including the--wait, what?” Boom asked.  Then, before Jack could say anything he added, “Just kidding.  Come on, Jack, do you think we’re monsters?  Charon is holding, in her right hand at this very moment, a tiny kitten oxygen mask, just in case it shows the slightest sign of smoke inhalation or chemical asphyxiation.

“Which it hasn’t!” he added.  “Just to be clear!  The kitten is perfectly fine.  As is everyone else.”

“Okay, okay,” Jack said, holding up his free hand.  “I’m sorry I doubted you.  Great work, Boom.”

“It’s a pleasure to be of service,” Boom replied cheerfully.  “We should have the doors ready to open in, oh, ten minutes or so.  We have to add the oxygen last.”

Jack’s free hand went to his face, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, but Sky could see him smiling at the floor.  “Okay,” he repeated.  “Take it slow, keep it safe.  I’ve still got some more people to see about A Squad’s access, but I’ll be back as soon as I can, okay?”

“Sure, of course!” Boom said.  “Don’t worry about us.  We are A-OK here.”

“Thanks, Boom,” Jack said, closing the link before he looked at Sky again.  “What are the chances of them actually blowing up a significant amount of the base before Kat gets back?”

“Bridge tried to calculate it once,” Sky said.  “Maybe a few times.  There were too many variables.”

“But low,” Jack said.  “They’re low, right?”

“They’re probably lower when Kat’s not here, actually.  She doesn’t have the same sense of mortality as the rest of us.”

Jack shook his head, tossing Sky’s morpher back to him and then running his hands through his hair.  “Well, good news,” he said.  He was smiling when he looked up again.  “You now have two great excuses for staying right here in this room.  The only question is whether you want me to stay too.  I won’t be offended if you say no.”

Sky stared at him just long enough to make his point.  “Oh, sorry,” he replied at last.  “I thought you said there was a question.”

Jack’s smile widened, and Sky leaned over to grab his book and move it out of the way.

“Excuse me, Ms. Drew?”  Someone with an appropriately deferential tone was talking in her ear, and she turned with her eyebrows raised.  “We’re having an issue with power consumption at table two; I wonder if you’d be so kind?”

“Oh, of course,” she said with a smile.  Leaning closer, she pointed toward the nearest wall.  “Do you see the individual in the red tie with the garishly colored hat?  That’s who you want; Hikyaki’s in charge of all things catering.  Thank you!  Bye!”

“Clever strategy,” Dan murmured, when she turned back to her drink.  “Did you delegate everything, or are you just pretending you did so they stop asking you things?”

“I assigned everyone a task,” Syd told him.  “Once they completed it, they naturally became the person who knew the most about that particular aspect of the party.  I’m promoting efficiency and respect for the experience of everyone involved.”

“Very democratic,” Dan said, raising his glass in her direction.

She picked hers up and clinked the rims together.  “I have no intention of missing my own party,” she said, taking a small sip.  “That’s what minions are for.”

“Hey,” Z said, sliding into the chair beside her.  “Great party, princess.  Where’d you find coasters shaped like Time Force badges?”

“You should ask Ruby that question,” Syd said, leaning around her to frown at the movie space.  “Over by the projector, I think.  She handled all of the thematic accessories.”

“Hi Syd!”  Jack took a seat next to Z, kicking another one out for Sky.  “Are the people doing the food and the people doing the drinks the same people?”

“I think so,” she said, taking another sip and considering the longevity of the flavor.  “I made some suggestions, and the results seem satisfactory.”

“Yeah, they’re great,” Jack agreed.  “Hey Dan.  Did you know three separate movies have been made about the Time Force conspiracy?  Actual mainstream movies that played in real theaters.  I had no idea.”

“I’ve seen at least two,” Dan said.  “I think that’s where the costumes come from, right?  One of them was pretty big with the kids.  You can still order the movie-version uniforms and party supplies.”

“To be fair, you probably didn’t spend a lot of time going to movies when you were younger,” Sky said.  “I saw all of them.  Including a fourth made-for-TV sequel and two video games with movie backgrounds.”

“Okay, first off, I snuck into plenty of movies,” Jack said.  “It’s like you have this huge blind spot when it comes to the long list of incredibly obvious uses for my power.  And second, did you ever have a Time Force birthday party?  More importantly, are there pictures?”

“No,” Sky said, “and yes.  There was a Halloween costume.  I don’t think you’d have a hard time convincing my mom to find the pictures for you.”

“One Halloween costume?” Syd repeated.

“I wore it a couple of years in a row,” Sky said.  “When I was six.”

“And seven,” Syd said.  “Right?  Maybe eight too.  It always clashed terribly with my much more sophisticated choices.  I think I refused to stand next to you at apple bobbing one year.”

“Is that the first one?” Dan asked, squinting that the projector.  “I get the first one and the third one mixed up.”

“Akume would be the one to ask,” Syd replied graciously.  “She’s dealing with the media aspect of tonight’s entertainment.”

“One,” Z said, pointing at Dan, “your priorities are very wrong, and two, Syd, did you hand off this entire party to C Squad?”

“You said they wanted to help,” Syd reminded her.  “With some coaching and supervision, I think they’ve done an excellent job.”

“It’s the third one,” Sky said, turning back around.  “With the dinosaurs.”

“Excuse me.”  An unfamiliar woman had paused on the other side of the table, her hand on the back of the empty chair and a friendly smile on her face.  “Do you mind if I join you?”

“Yeah, of course,” Jack said, because that was what he did.  “Have a seat.”

“Do you need something?” Syd asked.  “Because if this is about the party, I can tell you who to talk to.”

“Oh, I’m definitely enjoying the party,” the woman told her.  She seemed unnaturally earnest and much too happy for someone spending Saturday night at a cadets’ “welcome back” party.  “I’m with Time Force, so I have an unusual perspective on it.”  She put a badge on the table and pushed it toward Jack.

Syd exchanged glances with Dan, and they both put identical badges on the table at the same time.  Next to the woman with the first badge, Sky tossed down one of his own, and Z added hers to the collection a moment later.  Syd nodded in satisfaction.  Ruby was clearly doing her job.

“Really,” Jack said, holding up a badge of his own and smiling at the woman across the table.  “What a coincidence.  Us too!”

The woman surprised Syd by laughing.  “That is so fun!” she said.  “I love that we’re the team everyone pretends isn’t real!  Eric must be so angry.  Do you know Eric?  Because if you do, you should send him a picture of all of this.  Especially that dinosaur over there.  Is that inflatable?  Oh my gosh, I have to get a picture with it before I go!”

This time Syd looked at Sky, and he raised an eyebrow.  They had all expected Time Force to corner Jack somewhere isolated, when he was alone or at least closer to it.  In retrospect, maybe they’d made it easier for Time Force by providing them with cover?

“Who’s Eric?” Z asked.  “Was he part of Time Force too?  I’m not really up on my conspiracy theories.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the woman said, lifting her hand in a cheerful wave.  “I’m Katie.  But if you don’t know Time Force, that won’t mean anything to you.  Jen?  You’ve probably heard of Jen, even if you don’t follow the old teams.”

“Team leader,” Sky said.  He never could resist a challenge, Syd thought.  “Supposedly.”

“Yes,” Katie said, suddenly more serious.  “The new leader of a rogue team that chased a criminal into the past to avenge their former leader.  He was never brought to justice, and she lived out the rest of her life in the time he escaped to.”

“That’s a good story,” Jack remarked.  “More than I ever knew about Time Force, personally, but I can see why people like it.”

“What about the rest of her team?” Z wanted to know.  “Did they stay with her?  Or did they go home?”

“Yes,” Katie said.  “That’s one of the great mysteries of Time Force.”  She beamed at all of them in a way that Syd found irritatingly smug.  “Even in the future, they don’t know the answer to that.”

Z had expected Cruger to be keeping an eye on Jack, so when he wasn’t in any of his usual mess hall observation haunts, she had to go farther afield than she’d planned.  She copied herself again and went to Command and Kat’s lab at the same time.  Katie was making up some story about teamwork across millennia, a little too abstract and much too saccharine for Z to even pretend to pay attention.

She found him in Kat’s lab, of course.  It was a busy place, with robots repairing one of the walls and no less than five people trying to work while the commander sat at Kat’s station and ignored them all.  She could smell chemicals in the air, and she wondered what was serious enough to make him put up with that for more than the few seconds it would have taken to walk in and walk back out again.

“Commander,” Z said, stopping in front of the desk and pulling a salute he didn’t see.  “Jack is talking to the Mexico base right now.  Or rather, they’re talking to him.  Sir.”

Cruger sighed, but he didn’t look up from the screen at Kat’s station.  “Tell me, Cadet,” he said.  “Does anyone on your team actually know what the word ‘sir’ means?”

“Sir, yes sir,” Z snapped.  “It’s a word meant to reassure people that we’re listening when they talk, even when our information is vastly more important than theirs.  Sir.”

Cruger’s expression did something Z couldn’t interpret, and then he was turning Kat’s screen around so she could see it.  “Do you know what that is, Z?”

She blinked, caught off guard by the use of her nickname.  Katie was going on about the self-correcting nature of a timestream, and listening to her compare it to a living organism was sort of like listening to people who weren’t Bridge make fun of the way he talked, so Z frowned down at the screen.  It looked like it was showing some kind of personnel tracking program.

“It looks like a biosigns program,” she said.  

“Close,” Cruger said.  “I’m relatively certain it’s a temporal activity detector with a bias toward heat signatures of a certain size range.”

Tracking time travelers, she thought.  “We’re all moving through time, sir.  It would need to be able to identify anomalies in order to be useful.”

He tilted the screen so that he could see it at the same time, and then he tapped the brightest dot on the left side of the field.  “It’s identifying an anomaly,” he said.  “I assume you just came from the mess hall.”

“I’m in the mess hall,” she said.  “You know who else is there?  Jack.”

“Jack Landors has proven himself perfectly capable of not only surviving but exploiting for personal gain every situation in which he’s found himself,” Cruger told her.  “I’m not saying I’m not concerned.  I’m merely curious as to what exactly you expect me to do.”

Katie was telling them that the future had better transportation, and Z was done here.  “I don’t expect you to do anything, sir.”  She lifted her fist and punched out a salute without waiting to be dismissed, then collapsed into her single mess hall awareness.

“Well, I’m glad you have nice cars,” Syd said, in a condescending tone that Z appreciated right now.  “But we have nice people.  Don’t we, Jack?”

“Yeah,” Jack agreed, making Z relax a little.  Cruger might not be any help, but Jack wasn’t as distracted by shiny things as he once was.  “We have the best people.”

“You’re not the only one who thinks so,” Katie told them.  “I love this time.  And all of you have made it so much better,” she added, with a smile that looked ridiculously sincere.  “Thanks for the party and the conversation.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a picture date with that dinosaur over there!”

“You do?” Syd asked.

“She said she did,” Sky replied.  Z saw him give Syd a warning look she totally ignored.

“But you haven’t tried to convince Jack to do anything,” Syd protested.  “Why bother coming all the way here if you’re just going to say hi and take pictures of fake dinosaurs?”

“Well, I convinced Jack to talk to me,” Katie pointed out.  “Now he’s had direct interaction with an active member of Time Force, and no one tried to make him do anything.  Don’t you think that makes him more likely to listen to someone who identifies as Time Force after today?”

Z didn’t realize she was about to fold her arms until she saw Sky do it, and she clenched her fists under the table instead.  “That sounds pretty manipulative, considering people who travel through time should be able to get whatever they want,” she said.

“How do you think they do that?” Katie asked, holding her gaze steadily.  “Get whatever they want, I mean?”  The words were ominous when she stopped smiling, and Z couldn’t tell if she was doing it on purpose, to warn them, or if she was just a creepy person working for a creepy organization.

“Is that a warning?” Jack asked bluntly.

“Yeah,” Katie said with a sigh, and just like that she was earnest and cheerful and impossibly not creepy at all again.  “It is.  But Jack, we like you.  We’re all rooting for you, okay?  And all history says is that you worked on behalf of Time Force while you led SPD Earth.  That could mean pretty much anything, don’t you think?”

“While he led SPD Earth?” Sky repeated.

“Oops,” Katie said with a blinding smile.  “Did I say that?  Why don’t you just pretend it’s something I made up to make you trust me a little more.”

“Is it?” Dan asked.

“No,” Katie said.  “Tell Commander Collins I said hi!”

Z looked at Jack, but no one said anything until she’d actually left the table.  Syd barely waited that long to lean in and whisper, “Okay, is it rude to call someone creepy?  What if it’s not to their face?  Can I just say that she acted creepy?  That’s not really the same thing.”

“Yes!” Z whispered back.  “That’s just what I was thinking!  Except I didn’t worry about whether it was rude or not.”

“Oh, neither did I,” Syd promised.  “That part was just to make me sound nicer.”

“She might have sounded creepy on purpose,” Dan said under his breath.  “Did anyone else think that?”

“Yeah,” Jack said.  “But she was really, unnecessarily friendly.”

“Is that a vote for or against deliberate creepiness?” Syd wanted to know.

Jack shrugged.  “Honestly?  No idea.”

“Well, she’s got a point,” Sky said, uncrossing his arms so he could lean forward and put his elbows on the table.  “No one tried to make Jack do anything.”

“Except talk,” Dan said.

“But that was part of the plan,” Syd protested.  “That was the creepy part!  They didn’t try to make him do anything so he’ll trust them more next time!”

“I really don’t care,” Sky said.  “If they’re not doing anything right now, that’s time we don’t have to spend trying to figure out what it is and what to do about it.  We can deal with next time when it happens.”

“Yeah, Sky’s not gonna be any less suspicious of them next time anyway,” Jack added.

“Since when are you Mr. Let It Be?” Z demanded.

“Since my future husband turned out to actually be from the future,” Sky told her.  “For someone, all of this has already happened.  We either messed it up or we didn’t.  I prefer to think we didn’t until there’s a reason to believe otherwise.”

“Wow, Sky,” Syd said.  “That’s almost profound.”

“That sounds kind of familiar,” Z said.  “Maybe it’s in the Red Ranger handbook.”

“I think he’s just getting nicer,” Jack said.

“I think we should all take our Time Force badges and go stand in front of that dinosaur,” Dan said.  “Seems a shame to miss a photo op like that.”

Z looked over at the dinosaur, where there were now groups of people waiting to take a turn under the giant creature’s tiny arms.  She didn’t see Katie with any of them.  

“I’m never one to turn down a photo op,” Syd said, bouncing to her feet.  “Z?”

“Why not?” she said, standing up beside her.  “Maybe we can have a banner made.  As a warning.”

“Don’t threaten the dinosaur people?” Jack guessed.  He didn’t wait for Sky to get up to follow her, but Sky did get up.  Z headed up to the balcony to look for Bridge while her other self went with the others to hold their place in line.

“No,” Syd was telling them.  “Obviously it would say, ‘Time Force is watching you.’”

Charlie didn’t think attending another base party was a good idea.  But as Rose was quick to point out, she didn’t think attending any party was a good idea.  Ever.  

Charlie was outvoted.

So they came back from patrol and walked into the dying embers of the party in the mess hall.  There was cold food and quiet music, a few people still dancing while others were clearly on cleanup duty.  Someone from C Squad seemed to be supervising, and her team was careful to steer clear on its way to the board.

No one called them on it.  No one called out or after them at all, although she met unaverted eyes.  They received nods, the occasional salute, and no more censure than they had faced since Solstice.

“Okay,” Des said, facing the Civilians Helped board comparing A Squad to B Squad from one patrol to the next.  “So what counts?  What about opening that road; do we get all the traffic that went through there afterwards?”

“How about all the people the Jan Street shooter didn’t shoot?” Rose wanted to know.

“It’s not ‘will be helped,’” Don told them.  “It’s how many people’s lives did we concretely, in this moment, improve today.”

“Everyone who isn’t dead,” Rose said promptly.

“Traffic was stopped,” Des added.  “We made it go again.  What’s not helpful about that?  In the moment?”

“Okay, fine,” Don said.  “You asked, I told you.  Do whatever you want.”

“Great,” Rose said, adding “+283” to the board.  “Des, traffic estimate?”

“About eight thousand,” he replied.  “Give or take.”

“Are we sure about this?” Rose asked all of them.  “Because we’re going to crush them.”

“Good,” Miguel said.  “I’m tired of watching this board.”

“No mercy!” Des crowed.

“Don’t say that,” Charlie muttered.

“What?” Des asked.  “No mercy?  That we’ll dominate the war on this board until there’s nothing left to come back from?”

“Des, shut up,” Rose said.

“It’s fine,” Charlie said through gritted teeth.  “I’m gonna go.”  When Rose turned to follow her, she snapped, “It’s fine, Rose.”

She made it back out of the mess hall alone, and it was worse to succeed than it would have been to fail.  Probably.  In the short term, anyway, she would have preferred a real fight.  In the long term, though, not laying someone out with her newly resurgent strength was definitely better.

She sent I’m sorry to Rose, but she kept walking.

A few seconds later, she got back, Want company?

Gonna go find some, Charlie replied.  Just for a while.  I’ll tell you when I’m heading back.

Want more company? Rose retorted immediately.

It’s okay, Charlie said.  I’m fine.

There was no answer this time, and she resisted the stupid urge to repeat, I’m sorry.  She was sorry, but not sorry enough, and Rose knew it.  No use trying to pretend it was anything except what it was.

B Wing was shadowy and quiet when she arrived.  Not regulation.  Corridor lights were supposed to be left on, even in the residential wings.  She wondered if someone on the team had complained, leading Jack to break the rules on their behalf, or if someone had been inspired by his constant rebellion and turned off the lights on their own.

She knocked on Jack’s door.  Not quietly, but not loudly either.  Ignorable, even if she knew it would wake a Ranger.  She didn’t knock twice.

She wasn’t surprised when the door opened to reveal Sky on the other side.  He was wearing sweats and an SPD t-shirt, and he looked as sleepy as she’d ever seen him.  Which was to say, not much, but enough to count if one was familiar with his usual look.

She held up the Red morpher without a word.

Sky stared at her, a small frown his only reaction.

She waited.

“What?” he said at last.  His voice was a little rougher than usual, so maybe she really had woken him up.  “Is it broken?”

Charlie rolled her eyes.  “Does Jack want it,” she said.  It was the obvious question.  He must not be as conscious as he looked.

“Why?”  Sky sounded more defensive than baffled, but that was typical of him even under the best of circumstances.  “It’s yours.”

“Hey,” Jack’s voice called from deeper in the room.  “Everyone okay?”

Sky raised his eyebrows at her.

“Yes,” she muttered.  

“Yeah,” Sky called back, voice low but pitched to carry.  “Charlie’s just being weird.  What else is new.”

“Okay,” Jack’s voice agreed, but there was the sound of movement and he appeared in the door next to Sky a moment later.  He was wearing white pajamas.

“Hi,” he added, squinting at her even in the dim light of the hallway.  “Why are you holding your morpher?”

“Do you want it back,” she repeated, as clearly as she could.

“No,” he said.  “Why, are you trying to get rid of it?  I think Sky wants it.”

“No, I don’t,” Sky said.  Because with Jack you had to spell things out.  Charlie understood that.  She even appreciated it, most days.

“I’m not sure we’re safe on the streets,” she said.

“You’re not,” Jack said.  “No one is safe on the streets; that’s why you’re out there.”

“I mean I think we might be making them worse,” Charlie said.

“Why?” Jack asked.  “You think people are scared of you?  We’ve been wearing your uniforms out there for weeks and we haven’t had any trouble.”

“Maybe they should be scared,” Charlie said.  “What if we turn on civilians?”

Jack exchanged glances with Sky, who said, “Do you think that’s likely?”

“How do I know what to think?” she snapped.  “None of us know what happened the first time!”

“Look,” Jack said.  “I’ve been told I’m too--well, everything, but you seem fine to me.  Don’t turn on anyone who doesn’t deserve to be turned on, and keep going.  That’s all we can do.”

“Are you still in therapy?” Sky asked, before she could sneer at them.  “Because you probably should be.”

“You think just because we’re walking the halls we got out of counseling?” Charlie countered.  “Please.  We’ll have mandatory sessions until we’re fifty.”

“Take something to color,” Jack advised, lifting his hand to cover a yawn.  “Therapists like that.”

“Yeah?”  She hadn’t thought of that.  “I keep trying to make them let me do work during our sessions; at least that way they’d be good for something.”

“I think they figure work is like denial,” Jack told her.  “Go for something mindless that keeps your hands busy but still makes them feel like you can talk to them.  Tell them it’s self-actualizing.  They love that.”

“Cecila says I should to learn to knit.”  She didn’t know why she said it, but Jack grinned at her like it was the world’s best inside joke.

“You could keep them off your back for months with that,” he said.  “It’s a combination of two of their favorite things: hobbies and friends.  Or like they’d say, a chosen non-professional activity and strong social bonds.”

“Jack’s known a lot of therapists,” Sky said.  He probably meant it sarcastically, but it just came out sounding fond.

Jack shrugged.  “Everybody wants me,” he said.

“But nobody gets you,” Sky finished.

Charlie stared at them.  “You’re appallingly perfect for each other.”

Jack actually laughed.  “I’ve been saying,” he agreed.

“This isn’t normal for you, right?” Sky asked.  He was already back in bed, propped up on both pillows because he was rude like that, watching Jack hunt for his old comm.  “People dropping by in the middle of the night to receive your words of wisdom?”

“Uh, not that I’ve noticed?”  Jack frowned at the bottom of his knapsack, which definitely didn’t have a comm in it.  “I mean sometimes they drop in, and sometimes we have words, but usually they’re more aggressive than wise.”

“What are you looking for?” Sky wanted to know.

“Some sort of communications device.”  Jack looked around the room for inspiration and he smirked.  “Hey, can I borrow your morpher?”

Sky just waved at it, which Jack took to mean yes, so he climbed back on the bed and crawled over Sky to grab it.  “Thanks,” he said, rolling back onto his own side and propping his head up on Sky’s shoulder.

“Is this what I get for stealing your pillow?” Sky asked.

“Oh, did you take my pillow?” Jack countered, entering Kat’s comm code.  “I didn’t notice.”

He wanted her to get the whole message at once, so he set it to transmit his recording rather than a live link.  “Hey Kat,” he said.  “We gave the rest of the morphers back to A Squad, and now Charlie’s knocking on our door in the middle of the night to talk about her problems.  Mexico’s been and gone.  We may have convinced them we’re too delinquent to be trusted with top-secret information.  This is what happens when you leave us.”

“Hi Kat,” Sky added when he paused.

“Sky says hi,” Jack said.  “Feel better soon.”

He lifted the morpher over his head after he sent the message, and he felt Sky take it out of his hand.  A second later it clicked against the table, and Sky said, “I’m sure that won’t alarm her at all.”

Jack shrugged as much as he could without lifting his head.  “I didn’t tell her about the lab fires or the runaway children.  I thought I was very reassuring.”

“Comparatively speaking,” Sky said.

“Sure,” Jack agreed.

They lay like that for a long moment, but as soon as Jack closed his eyes Sky said, “You know, you can have your pillow back if you want.”

Jack didn’t move.  “Why would I want that when I have you?”

The lights were voice-activated, which Jack hadn’t known for several days after moving in.  Sky turned them on and off like he was talking to a human being: rudely, and without thinking.  It may Jack smile into the sudden darkness.

“Sure you don’t want the blanket?” Sky asked, more quietly.

“Nah,” Jack said.  “Rather have you.”

Sky’s voice sounded both amused and serious when he said, “I’m not going anywhere.  You might as well get comfortable.”

Jack opened his eyes and stared in the general direction of the ceiling.  “Speaking of that,” he said.

Sky didn’t answer, so he continued, “I’m not a Ranger anymore.”

There was another long pause, and while he was trying to figure out if he wanted Sky to say something or not, Sky said, “Yeah.”

It was weirdly encouraging.  “So, if Cruger promotes me.  What does that mean?”

Sky was quiet for a few seconds.  “I don’t know,” he said at last.  “But.  I think if Cruger promotes you, after the last two months?  It probably means he wants you to keep doing what you’ve been doing.  Except with less patrolling and more meetings.”

“Oh, yeah, meetings,” Jack said.  “That’s my favorite thing.”

“If Cruger doesn’t promote you,” Sky said, and then stopped.

“I’m free?” Jack joked.

Sky didn’t say anything, and Jack made a face.  “Not from you,” he told the darkness.  “Not that I’m not--I mean.  Being with you is good.  I don’t want anything different.”

“But you’re not free,” Sky said evenly.

“That’s not what I meant,” Jack said.  “SPD has a lot of rules; I just meant it as a joke.  I didn’t mean it to be about you at all.”

“Okay,” Sky said, more quietly.  “Okay, sorry.  I’m just--I’m still scared of losing you, I guess.  It makes me… say things I wish I hadn’t.”

Jack nodded a little, moving his head against Sky’s shoulder and reaching up to fumble for his hand.  He managed to find it without too much embarrassment.  “I get that,” he said.  “Me too.”

“Not planning to disappear to the future?” Sky asked.  His voice was even quieter this time, and Jack was careful not to scoff.

“Not a chance,” he said.  “Come on, what’s good about the future?  I spent the first six months of my life trying to get away from it.  Not real eager to change that now.”

“Even if you have friends there?” Sky asked.

“No friends like these friends,” Jack countered.  “Barring a long and much safer life than the one we currently lead, there’s only one way I end up in the future.”

“Relative velocity time dilation?” Sky suggested.

“By following you,” Jack told him.

This produced another long silence, but he could feel Sky’s chest rise and fall with the depth of his breath.  His arm was warm against the back of Jack’s neck.  Their fingers tangled together, and Jack squeezed back when he felt them tighten.

“Promise?” Sky said at last.

“Yeah,” Jack said without hesitation.  “I promise.”

Chapter 8

It was a foolish thing that led to his unprecedented decision to contact her while she was on leave.  He meant to greet her when she came back, as poorly as that had gone for him in the recent past.  He intended a friendlier welcome this time, but he was uncertain as to how best this could be accomplished.

Cruger was also very much aware that Kat was returning to a disaster scene masquerading as SOP in her lab.  To say nothing of the Time Force presence or her errant children, still popping up despite her absence whenever he turned around.  She might not even be aware that her temporary team had disbanded while she was away.

He didn’t know how much the reinstatement of A Squad would affect her.  He should have asked.  There had been plenty of opportunities to say, how do you like being a Ranger?  He hadn’t taken them only because he wasn’t ready to know her as a soldier, and even then he had known how selfish that was.

He probably should have let Panda Coon talk him into counseling.  Isinia seemed to be doing better with someone more reliable than him to talk to.  Even Charlie had mentioned therapy in a not-entirely-negative light today: apparently she was learning some sort of craft related to her sessions.

Human therapy options seemed very different from Sirian.

“Are you still listening?” Kat’s voice asked.

It shouldn’t make him smile, but it did.  His main reason for contacting her had been that he didn’t know what to say when she came back.  So they talked about it at a distance instead.

“Listening,” he said, “yes.  Following?  No.”

“It’s really very simple,” she said, in a way that meant she was about to re-launch a lecture she’d already given.  Only this time with smaller words and a more exasperated tone.

“I’m sure it is,” he agreed before she could continue.  “But I have someone here who’d like to say hello first.”

He didn’t know for a fact that this was true.  He did know that it would interrupt her explanation of--whatever she was explaining.  He also knew that calling the children seemed to provoke enough interest that they could be coaxed into trying a new activity, so that was what he did.

“Chichi,” he called.  “Come here, please.”

He couldn’t help noticing that just calling them didn’t work for everyone.  They definitely knew him, whenever they came from.  He’d asked why, but the translators were terrible with their language and the children had demonstrated no significant grasp of any other.

“How long has Chichi been there?” Kat demanded.  “They aren’t supposed to visit this weekend at all!”

Chichi had paused at the sound of Kat’s irritation, but Cruger said, “Only a few minutes.  I think they got lost,” and suddenly the child was all teeth and enthusiasm, bounding over to the comm screen and pushing up from underneath his arm.

“There you are,” Cruger added unnecessarily, since Kat could see them perfectly well.  “They’re wearing a familiar necklace.”

“Show me,” Kat said, and Chichi pulled the little blue circle out from under their tunic.  They leaned in very close to the screen, holding it up until it filled half the camera view and Cruger couldn’t see anything.

“Okay,” Kat said.  She was almost laughing when Chichi sat back in Cruger’s lap, relief and amusement in her words when she added, “Finally, someone noticed.  I don’t know how I could have missed the fact that they’d started visiting me for so long, especially since I knew it was happening!”

The necklace Kat wore, like the one Chichi now had, contained some sort of thirty-first century technology designed to prevent the detection of time travel.  Cruger knew nothing more about the theory or function of the device, but he’d never seen Kat without it.  He could only assume that she’d given similar devices to her children when she realized they’d started traveling to the past unsupervised.

Chichi was saying something in the strange and chittering language that contrasted so oddly with English, and Cruger saw Kat flick one ear and then the other.  She replied in kind, but afterwards she added, “No, this does not mean you can stay with Doggie until I get back.  Go home, Chichi.”

Chichi’s head tipped slightly, and Kat added, “Because Doggie can’t understand you.  Or me.  Unless we speak in English.”

“Or any one of a multitude of other languages the translator handles just fine,” Cruger said.  “But not yours.  Why is that?”

“Too few remaining speakers,” Kat said.  “There’s no good translation algorithm because there isn’t a big enough sample size to base it on.”

Chichi said something else, and it was oddly relaxing to hear Kat reply and then translate again.  Cruger would never be able to pronounce a language like that, but should be able to pick up some of the basics.  Enough for some minimal understanding, at least.

He still hadn’t ascertained whether it was her native language or not.

“I’m glad to hear the lab’s not on fire,” Kat was saying.  “I’m sure Doggie will tell me why that was a possibility after you’ve gone home.”

Chichi said something else, then turned and climbed higher on Cruger’s lap.  “Mom,” Chichi said, very seriously, and then laid a cheek against his shoulder.  

The next scratchy sound was softer, but Kat said, “I heard that.  Not until tomorrow.”

“What’s not until tomorrow?” Cruger wanted to know.

“Chichi said ‘see you soon’,” Kat told him.  “Tomorrow, okay?  We can all be in one time tomorrow.  And in the meantime, so you can go ahead and be in one time today.  With hoverboards.”

“Hoverboards?” Cruger repeated.

“They’re popular with the kids,” Kat said.  “Or at least they were.  I guess I don’t really know what the new future is like.”

That way lay headaches and confusion, so Cruger didn’t push it.  Chichi got both feet on the floor, almost fell, and waved.  Before Cruger could nod in return, the child was gone.

“Chichi has disappeared,” he remarked.  “I hope that’s in accordance with your instructions.”

“Well, my first instructions were ‘don’t be here,’” Kat said.  “But I can see there was some sort of mysterious interference that prevented those from being received correctly.  We’ll have to wait and see if the latest instructions suffer the same fate.”

“I’d like to learn the language you speak with them,” he said.  “Enough to understand some, if not to articulate.  Is it acceptable to you if I ask them to teach me?  Or is that taboo?”

He thought he’d startled her into silence.  It hadn’t been intentional, and it was certainly rare.  He waited to find out whether or not he needed to apologize.

“It’s not taboo,” Kat said slowly.  “I mean… I could teach you some of it.  If you don’t mind an adult teacher.”

“I prefer it,” he said.  “Thank you.”

There was another quiet moment.  He didn’t know if it was awkward or not.  If she said she was willing, he had to assume she was willing.  He second guessed enough of their communication without including the actual words they said.

Then she said, “So tell me about the lab being on fire.”

“So, A Squad,” Jack said, setting his tray down at the table next to Bridge.  “I'm thinking medal ceremony.  What do you think?”

Bridge wasn’t surprised by the question or Jack’s alertness.  Jack was never the first person to breakfast, but he always arrived awake.  Bridge assumed he used the adrenaline caused by almost being late to propel him to full consciousness without the aid of artificial stimulants.

“I think medals are a way to commemorate events and recognize distinction,” Bridge replied, setting Z’s orange juice back down on the table.  “Both of which seem appropriate considering what they've been through, and what they've accomplished if you think about it.  Presenting them as part of a ceremony would be a tangible symbol of SPD’s support, which would benefit their social standing and rank-based authority on the base and in town, as well as providing some form of emotional comfort to members of the team itself.”

Sky sat across from them, swapping his and Jack’s identical red jello cups.  “I think this can't possibly be the only thing Cruger’s assigned to you,” he said.

“But it is a thing he assigned to me,” Jack said, pointing at him.  “He specifically told me to find a way to give Charlie a medal and make it stick.  I suggested strong magnets or safety pins, but he didn't appreciate my efforts at creative brainstorming.”

“Is Charlie getting a medal?” Syd asked, easily picking out the difference between Jack’s thoughts and the commander’s instructions.  “For what?  Surviving?  Leadership?  Rescuing Earth?”

“It's hard to choose, isn't it,” Jack agreed.  “The commander just said Charlie, but I'm thinking the whole team.”

“Most of what they've been through lately has been as a team,” Bridge offered.

“Most of everything a squad goes through is as a team,” Sky said, and Bridge nodded.  Together or not at all: the unofficial motto of Space Patrol Delta.

“Great, guys,” Jack told them.  “Way to rub it in.”

It was only then that Bridge realized Jack wasn’t wearing red.  Probably.  He tilted his head, trying to trick the aura into not moving while he shifted his perspective.  That was almost definitely a white shirt that Jack had on.

“Oh, Jack,” Syd was saying.  “You'll always be part of our team.”

To his right, Bridge saw Z nodding vehemently.  She seemed more reluctant to talk and chew at the same time since she’d met his family, but maybe that was just a coincidence.  He hadn’t been able to find any particular pattern to when she copied herself and when she didn’t: sometimes what she had to say was important and other times it wasn’t, sometimes she was excited and other times she was bored, sometimes she was too tired to do it and other times she was too tired not to.

“Z seconds that motion,” Bridge offered, voicing what he guessed was the intent of her nod.  Then when he heard how that sounded he added, “As do I, of course.  Except I guess I third the motion.  And we probably don’t need to ask Sky what he thinks, unless he doesn’t want his solidarity with you to be taken for granted.”

Jack looked at Sky.  “I take your solidarity with me for granted,” he said.

“Of course you do,” Sky said, dropping his empty jello cup back on his tray.

That seemed to be that, so Bridge glanced at Dan.  He didn’t realize everyone else was doing it too until Dan looked around at all of them.  “What?” he said.  “Don’t get me wrong, I’m flattered.  But I was never actually on his team.”

“Don’t worry,” Syd said, patting his hand while she reached for her glass.  “You’re on my team by default, and my team is Jack’s team.  So it counts.”

Z set down her fork and picked up her orange juice.  “Squads may not last forever,” she said, lifting her glass, “but friendship does, so here’s to us.”

“Here here,” Bridge agreed, taking Syd’s water glass and tapping it against hers.

“Why are you taking my water?” Syd asked, even as Jack leaned across him to tap his glass against Z’s.  Sky stayed where he was, but he lifted his glass when Z caught his eye.  “Bridge, why don’t you have anything to drink?”

“Well, it’s a funny story,” he said, returning her glass.  Z reached out to clink her glass against Dan’s, and Bridge added, “Actually I didn’t get anything to drink, and I don’t feel like going back for it now.”

“How is that funny?” Syd asked.

“I don’t know,” Bridge admitted.  

“So,” Z said.  “A medal ceremony.  Is that like what Sky did for us, but with more people watching?”

“Exactly,” Jack said.  He lifted his glass to her again, adding, “Medals are great.  Plus I figured Sky could give me some pointers.”

“No,” Sky said.  “I’m not ordering the medals the commander told you to give to A Squad for you.”

“You don't have to order them,” Jack protested.  “Come on, Sky, I can totally do that myself.  Just tell me where to get them!  And what they should look like, because I know you designed the ones you gave us.  Oh, and how do you think we should present them?  I really liked the secret late-night lounge meeting, but that’s probably not what the commander has in mind.”

Sky gave him a look that meant he hadn’t missed Jack trying to pass the entire assignment off to him.  “Do you even have a job?” he asked.

Jack just grinned at him.  “More or less,” he said.  

“Depending on who’s asking?” Sky suggested.

“More, depending on how many times I see Cruger in a day,” Jack said, “and less, depending on how many people I can recruit to help me at any given time.”

“So pretty much like always,” Z said.

“I have a good feeling about this year,” Jack told her, and Bridge saw Sky smile fondly at him when he wasn’t looking.

“I’m starting to see the benefit of putting cadets together in squads,” Kat said.  She had her travel pack on her back and she was trying to get Auri to carry the smaller bag of kitten-sized entertainment.  Eventually she just swung them down from the loft and handed them to Jen with the strap over their shoulders.

“Just now?” Jen asked, making a face at her for the child and bag together.

“Once or twice before,” Kat admitted, taking Janecha for herself as she followed Jen down the aisle.  “But they always pick each other up from the airport.  Right now that seems pretty useful.”

“That’s why you like having cadet squads,” Jen said over her shoulder.  “Because they always have someone to pick them up from the airport?”

“You’re saying it like it’s ridiculous,” Kat told her.  “Now of all times you should see the value in teamwork.  People to travel with, talk to, carrying things for.  What’s bad about that?”

“I’m literally talking to you while carrying your child off the train we were both just traveling on,” Jen said.

“Of course you are,” Kat told her.  “Because you’re my team.  I’m not saying I don’t have one.  I’m saying our team needs to be bigger.”

“So we have someone to come pick us up from the train station,” Jen said.

“Well, I don’t feel like driving,” Kat said.  “Do you?”

“Kat.”  Jen turned and waited on the platform for her to disembark.  “You have a bigger team than just me.  And I’m pretty sure you get paid a reasonable amount of money to keep Base Tech running.  Spend some of it for once and pay someone to drive us back to the base.”

“Like you do, I suppose,” Kat said, setting Janecha down and nodding to Jen that she could do the same.  They held the children’s hands even after they’d stepped off the platform and into the station proper.

“No, I just call Wes,” Jen said.  “If he’s busy, he sends someone else.  The same way your commander would if you called him right now and said you need a ride.”

“I am not calling the head of SPD Earth to get a ride home from a transportation hub, which he will remind me is by definition a place where people go to get rides.”  The hub was busy with constant commuter traffic and holiday travelers returning home, by the children were mostly uninterested.  It didn’t change much with the passage of hours or even years, so the temporal sights were limited.

“First off,” Jen said, “he’s as much your boyfriend as he is the head of SPD Earth, and boyfriends are practically required to drop what they’re doing to help you when you ask.  Second off, he won’t say that.”

“He will say that,” Kat replied.  “I can hear him saying it in my head right now.”

Janecha tugged on her hand, and belatedly she realized that Jen was carrying the bag she’d given to Auri.  “Here, give me that,” she said, motioning for the bag as she looked down at Janecha.  “I can carry their toys.”

“So can I,” Jen agreed.  “Call your boyfriend, or I’m getting us a car.”

Your beacon is here, Janecha said.  At SPD.

“Yes, Chichi came back with one while we were gone,” Kat agreed, but even as she said it she knew what they meant.  “Now, you mean?”  Would the commander have told her if Chichi had come back?  The children were all alarmingly independent, as evidenced by the fact that her future self clearly wouldn’t know they’d started time traveling until they’d each made dozens of trips.

Yes, Janecha said.  It’s Kirlian.  Can I go?

The irony of the anti-trace technology that made them invisible to Time Force was that it was blindingly obvious to Karmanians.  They could see a single anti-trace from days away, and the closer it came, the easier it was to tell who was using it.  Janecha was right: the bright shimmer of reflective time illuminated Kirlian’s prints in the same moment they shared.

“You can go,” Kat said, letting go of their hand.  “Watch out for cameras.”  She wasn’t sure there was any use in trying to keep them out of recorded media, but she wouldn’t give up on the idea just yet.

“Kat,” Jen said.  “Auri’s talking to you.”

She looked over in time to see Auri complain, I want to go!

“No,” Kat said firmly.  “When you go with them, you end up jumping.  You get one jump today, and I need you to jump home.  You can go there if you’re ready, but the only other choice is to stay with us.”

That’s not fair, Auri protested.

“No,” Kat repeated.  “It isn’t.  Jaycee, either give me the child or give me the bag.”

“Call your boyfriend,” Jen insisted, turning so both of them stayed just out of reach.

Kat sighed, but it was clear they wouldn’t be getting a car until she let Doggie make fun of her some more, so she pulled out her comm and entered her Ranger code for a base link.  “Kat for Cruger,” she told it.

She had to wait a few seconds, but it didn’t offer to record or reroute, and it was a live response that came back.  “This is Commander Cruger.”

“I’m at New Tech Regional Transportation Hub,” she said with a sigh.  “I’m sorry to ask this, but is there any chance you could spare someone from the base to pick me up?”

“Did you say the New Tech Transportation Hub?” his voice asked.

She caught Jen’s eye and pointed at her comm, mouthing, See?

“Yes,” she said aloud.  Here we go, she thought.

“Understood,” he replied.  “Expect a flier at commuter pickup in half an hour.”

She blinked.  Looking at Jen again was a mistake, because Jen just smirked at her and mimicked, See?

“Oh, and Kat?” Cruger’s voice added.

“Yes?” she said warily.

“Welcome home,” he told her.

Of course they hadn’t seen the last of Hyanni.  She turned up at Jack’s medal ceremony, of all things.  It was supposed to be formal invitation only, which meant guests should have been screened, but apparently invisible time travelers thought the rules didn’t apply to them.

Everything about her visit irritated Sky.  For one thing, the entire event was recorded and broadcast, including the audience, which meant there had to be multiple “confirmations of her presence.”  Either it no longer mattered, or she’d been lying when she said no one was supposed to know when she was.

For another, she never even spoke to Jack.  Sky wouldn’t have seen her himself if she hadn’t been watching from the riser he walked past on his way to the stage.  If he had come that close to missing her, and Jack didn’t even know she was there, how many other times had she been--or would she be--spying on them without anyone the wiser?

He would have liked to set security on her, right there in the middle of the function hall, but he knew how badly that would go for everyone involved.  Him especially.  They wouldn’t be able to catch her, their security would look ridiculous on an international video stream, and Jack would know immediately who he’d been after and be disappointed.

Or angry.  It was hard to tell how far Jack’s protective streak extended, sometimes.  His biological mother from the future didn’t seem to be outside of it, exactly, but he wasn’t going out of his way to find or help her, either.

And for Jack, helping someone who needed it was the minimum acceptable standard for basic decency.  Even if that someone was the enemy.  So who knew how he thought of her, really.

“You look angry,” Bridge said, under his breath as they joined A Squad on the stage.  “Or is this your new serious face?  Because Jack’s not going to like it.”

Sky wasn’t sure how everything he did had become subject to Jack’s judgment, but he hoped the novelty wore off for their friends soon.  He knew perfectly well when Jack wasn’t going to like something.  He didn’t need to hear about it from everyone else too.

“Jack’s mom is in the audience,” he muttered.

“Really?”  Bridge immediately started to scan the path Sky had taken when they all split up to converge on the stage from different directions.  C Squad was doing it now, filing down through the audience to line up in front of them, so it was easy enough to retrace their steps.  “I’d like to see her.”

Sky wanted Bridge to see her, too, but that probably wasn’t a good enough reason to point out into the audience.  He would have done it anyway if he could find her.  The lights were too bright and the room too full to make it easy to pick out anyone, let alone a woman who could become invisible when she didn’t want to be seen.

“I think Hiyaki just passed her,” Bridge murmured.  “Is that her on the left, under the lowest box seating?”

Sky stared, ignoring Z’s hiss for them to stop whispering or share, but he couldn’t pick her out.  “I don’t know,” he muttered.  “How can you tell?”

“She’s the only purple aura in the room,” Bridge whispered.  “I think time travel does something to shift aural spectra higher.  Kat’s kids have it too.”

“Does that make it harder to read her?” Sky asked softly.  He wanted to know what Bridge saw when he looked at Hyanni, but he wasn’t sure what he wanted the answer to be.

“No,” Bridge said.  And then, with two words, he summed up everything Sky wanted to know without the long and detailed explanation Sky would have preferred, but limited the trouble they’d get into with the camera close-ups.  “She’s okay.”

C Squad was lining up in front of them, in a staggered formation that nonetheless provided a distraction for the cameras.  D Squad was following in their footsteps, and Sky heard Bridge whisper something to Z.  It sounded like it ended with, “Pass it down.”  Sky probably didn’t want to know.

He chanced a look over his shoulder, searching for Jack in the wings, and he caught Charlie’s eye by accident.  She winked at him.  She wore the A Squad men’s dress uniform he’d never seen her in, and he felt his mouth quirk up at the corner.  Maybe squads didn’t last forever, but some things--and some people--never changed.

Maybe Jack would include Hyanni in the circle of people he cared about enough to look for.  To worry about.  There were enough people in that circle already to fill the entire city, and Sky had stopped being surprised by it months ago.  Maybe it would be stranger if Jack didn’t accept someone who so obviously cared, even when they couldn’t be sure of her motivation.

Charlie hadn’t let a year in the jungle change her.  Sky had managed to let go of Dru without changing who he was.  Jack would be able to accept his futuristic birthright without it changing him, too.

Jack had no idea what he was doing.  Which was too bad, since he had planned most of the short medal ceremony.  Unfortunately, he hadn’t been paying a lot of attention when they told him Ranger squads traditionally presented from all corners of an audience, in rank order, and one at a time.

It took forever.  Half of the ceremony was going to be the cadet squads walking from one side of the room to the other.  One after the other, after the other, after the other.  He wasn’t complaining: it was a great way to waste time.  The problem was that he didn’t know exactly when this part finished.  He was supposed to go out and call the room to attention, then direct their attention to the flag for a moment of silence in memory of the fallen.

He had no idea when to do that.  Was there anyone coming in behind D Squad?  Did the squads have to do anything special once they all reached the stage?  Would anyone tell him if he goofed something up, or would they just awkwardly pretend he’d planned it that way?

“Hi,” Kat’s voice whispered behind him, and he honest-to-goodness jumped.

“Kat!” he exclaimed, as quietly as he could.  He was so glad to see her that he reached out to hug her before he thought.  She let him, so he went with it, but he let her go as quickly as he could.  “I’m so glad you’re here.  When am I supposed to go out there?”

She looked over his shoulder and shook her head.  “Not until D Squad gets up here and they read off everyone’s names.”

“They read off everyone’s names?” Jack repeated.

She grinned at him, wide eyes and sharp teeth, and he laughed.  “Never mind.  I thought you’d be in the audience; did Cruger con you into saying something?  Speaking during the ceremony?” he added, when her look turned curious.

“Oh, no,” she said.  “I just thought I’d offer to hand you the medals.  If you want company on stage, that is.  And a height advantage.”

“Yes,” he said quickly.  “I do.  Thank you.”

She smiled again, and he wondered if Sky had said something to her.  Maybe she just knew what it felt like to stand next to Rangers after the Power had come and gone.  He could do it, no problem.  But he wasn’t sure he wanted millions of people watching him try to make it look normal.

“A Squad Red,” a voice from the stage speakers announced, and Jack turned around to watch.  All four squads stood to military at ease, offset across the stage such that everyone was visible to--probably the main camera angle, actually.  “Charlie Carrera.”

Not him.  It was funny, but he hadn’t realized how much being squad leader--first and best to B Squad, of course, but A Squad too, in its way--had meant to him.  Until he wasn’t anymore, and he was watching an audience clap for someone else.

“You did a good thing here,” Kat said softly.

He looked back at her.  “What, with the ceremony?”

“A Squad Blue,” the voice continued.  It made a sound that wasn’t entirely human, and Jack wondered how long they had to practice pronunciation.  The alien name was followed by, “Miguel.”

“Not just the ceremony,” Kat said.  “This.  Them.  The fact that they’re out there.  They have their morphers back.  They… they’re human again, in a sense.  To us.  To themselves.  To everyone.”

“A Squad Green,” the voice announced.  It was slow and booming, and Jack wondered if his mic would sound as good.  “Des Sena.”

“They never stopped being who they are,” Jack said, watching Des lift his chin.  Jack saw his fists clench at his sides, and the cameras would probably pick it up, but he just looked proud, and grateful, and a little relieved.

“Some of us stopped seeing it,” Kat said.

“A Squad Yellow,” the voice continued.  Don’s kid was out there too, in the crowd.  With his mom, and everyone who’d never stopped believing this team would come back.  “Don Cooper.”

“That’s why we have each other,” Jack said.  “To remind us of who we want to be.”

To his surprise, he heard a little laugh from behind him.  “It’s funny you’d put it like that,” she said.  “A while back, I told the commander that that’s what you do for us.”

Jack turned and fixed a look on her.  “Kat, did you get me promoted?”

“A Squad Pink,” the voice announced.  That was why it was odd to see them standing in rank formation, he realized belatedly.  Because Rose usually took the number two position at Charlie’s shoulder.  “Rose Carrera!”

The applause from the crowd got louder, but somehow he could hear Kat over the noise just fine.

“No, Jack,” she said with a smile.  “You did that all on your own.”