Allison dropped her bag and watched her mother and Zuri hug for the first time in almost a thousand years.  She didn’t get long to appreciate it because soon after she arrived, she had a nargle pouncing on her.  She knelt down and petted Oozie how her nargle liked it.  Apparently the other two minors that made up her family were out, along with the other nargle.  Her father was probably on base.  Her mother probably should have been at the office but had taken the day off to get her sister settled.  Apiyo looked at Allison and frowned slightly.  She knew her daughter well enough to know something was off about her, no matter how much the child tried to cover it up she was her mother and could just tell.  Apiyo spoke to Zuri.


    “Take a look around Zuri, just going to get caught up with Allison.”


    Zuri wandered off.  Oozie seemed content that her adopted human was in one piece and ran off after the new human.  Allison stood up and dusted white fur from her clothes.  Apiyo put her arm around Allison’s shoulders and led her to the backyard.


    “What is the matter?”


    Allison looked at her mother.


    “Nothing, mom, everything is fine.”


    Apiyo shook her head.


    “It is not.  You look sad.”


    Allison waved her hand dismissively.


    “I’m just tired mom.  It was a long week.”


    Apiyo sighed.


    “Allison, please talk to me like you used to when you were a little girl.  Tell me what is wrong and let me help.”


    Allison rolled her eyes.


    “Nothing is wrong mom.  Look, I need to get changed into my armor.  I’m taking Bit out.”


    “You just got home; We’re having a family meal to welcome Zuri back.  You are not allowed to go, I forbid it.”


    Allison patted her mother’s arm.


    “Sorry mom, you can’t stop me.  Have a nice dinner.  I should be back for school in the morning.”


    She kissed Apiyo’s cheek.  She picked up the secure case that held her armor, Qual’sa pistols and newly requisitioned mono-edge combat knife.  She attached the case to her motorcycle via the gravity harness and started it up.  Apiyo watched Allison vanish down the road, heading towards downtown.  The road would eventually lead to the base and then to parts unknown in that blasted starfighter.  The teenager’s mother frowned.  Zuri looked up at her twin sister.


    “Is everything okay, Apiyo?”


    Apiyo smiled.


    “It is fine.  I’m just upset Allison will not be here for dinner.”


    Zuri grinned.


    “You still can’t lie to me.”


    Apiyo made a face.


    “Allison and I used to talk about everything, but now she’s so secretive.”


    Zuri hugged Apiyo.


    “She is like us.  We stopped talking to mom too.  Do not worry, sister.  She is surrounded by good people who care about her.  I saw it on my way here.”


    *****


    Allison had her armor on when she climbed into Bit.  She started powering the fighter up.  Allison was mid-preflight check when the AI woke from sleep mode.


    “Allison, welcome back, I missed you.”


    Allison smiled.


    “I missed you too.  I need to clear my head, so we’re going out.   Please file a flight plan.  Get a launch vector and advise rest of the flight is classified.  That our flight will require wormhole and FTL travel.  All records of the transits should be erased from logs.”


    “Allison, that is against the law.”


    Allison grinned.


    “Which I can break, tell them it is a direct order from the Battlelord.”


    Bit sounded concerned.


    “And if something happens? How will they find us?”


    Allison checked food and blood stores while she spoke.


    “Nothing will happen.  This is recon only.”


    The skepticism in Bit’s voice was very apparent.


    “I have heard that before.”


    Allison started to calculate her wormhole jump while she continued their conversation.


    “Yes, but this time I promise if anything goes wrong, I’m jumping home, I don’t care if I find the Sal’nash fleet.  If you check, we have only hardpoint weapons.  I have nothing else but sensor packs.  We don’t even have am torps.”


    Bit didn’t say anything for a few moments, finally she spoke.


    “You’re plotting a dark jump; Those coordinates are going to put us near the galactic core.  You do you remember there is a super-massive blackhole that is probably going to have a gravitational impact on local space.”


    Allison nodded as she continued her calculations.  Bit was confused.


    “You’re basing your calculations on a probe you sent why not use the probe’s data?”


    Allison paused.


    “The only answer I think you’d understand is, chaos.”


    “That is a terrible answer.  You know you’re not supposed to make dark jumps.”


    Allison shrugged.


    “That was before Aunt Maria’s executive order, now I can do whatever I need to stop the Sal’nash and this is integral to our plans.”


    Bit was still sounding confused.


    “You had your fleet send out twenty highspeed probes with wormhole comm, why is this one in particular the one you’re choosing.  There are much safer systems, much closer systems that you wouldn’t need to use a wormhole for.”


    Allison sighed.


    “It needs to be this one.”


    “You are being evasive.”


    Allison sighed again.


    “That’s because this is all classified.  I’ll read you in when we arrive.  Are we cleared for launch.”


    There was annoyance in Bit’s voice when she responded.


    “We are cleared.  I was advised they are following your orders under protest.”


    Allison’s helmet formed and she tapped it.  She pointed towards the runway.  The ground crew pushed Bit out of the hangar.  Allison taxied and then accelerated for launch with her drone wing.  She followed the standard procedure to get out of the star system’s boundary before generating her wormhole.  They came out on the other side which was just outside the boundary of the target star system.  Once she confirmed their location from probe telemetry data, she initiated the FTL jump that would take them to their destination.


    Allison proceeded with scans of the system and was confused about the results.  The high speed probe she’d sent had indicated there was a star in the system.  She could see it but the gravitational data she was receiving was not matching, in fact she was seeing a yellow main sequence star, but her data indicated there should be a binary companion but she couldn’t see it.  Her probe wouldn’t have detected this because they were built for speed and range.  Their sensor packages were limited.


    “Bit, gravity data is off, I see enough mass for two stars, but I only see one.  Are you reading any failures in the sensor packages?”


    “Checking package integrity.”


    Bit answered several minutes later.


    “All sensor packages are fully engaged and are reading green across the board.  If the sensor packages are in fact working as intended, then it would seem this system does not match standard stellar models.  You would have to approach the center of gravity and move towards the non-visible object.”


    Allison wracked her brain looking for a reasonable explanation for the strangeness.  Astrophysics was an elective she was taking but it is not like they were getting into the weeds on it.  So, she went back to the various shows she’d watched on the subject over the years.


    “Gravastar?  Black hole without an accretion disk?”


    “Perhaps you could engage your fleet’s science teams in this endeavor?”


    Allison shook her head.


    “No, no way but… engage encrypted hyperwave comms, request Hathor.”


    Allison had to wait thirty minutes for Hathor to respond.  Finally, the small white furry alien appeared on her holo-display.  She looked… annoyed.


    “Battlelord I am on leave, please tell me this is important, I was enjoying a meal at your commerce center.”


    Allison bit her lower lip.


    “I am sorry but I’m pursuing the data from our probes.  I have run into an anomaly now that I’m in one of the systems.  The system is a binary system, or that is what my gravity data is telling me but one of the stars is ‘missing’.”


    Hathor’s ears flopped from side to side as she pondered Allison’s information then her eyes narrowed as she started looking at the datastream Allison was sending.


    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    “White dwarf?”


    Allison brought up temperature and radiation data.


    “No.  No emissions from where my math puts the other gravity well.”


    “Your math.  One moment.”


    Hathor leaned close to the console she was in front of and typed several things.  Finally she looked at her results and frowned.


    “Hmph, perhaps you are as intelligent as you seem to think you are.  A warrior versed in math and science, such an obscene concept.  Humans are strange.”


    She started typing again.  After several minutes she leaned back and tapped her chin.


    “Your Alliance net has several possibilities listed in the search I just ran.  Gravastar, Condensed Dark Matter Object, black hole, or black dwarf.”


    Allison shrugged.


    “Well, no to black dwarf they’re theoretical and none could have formed yet…  Dark matter would still emit some form of energy wouldn’t it?  And no one has observed a gravastar so uhh black hole without an accretion disk it is.”


    Hathor tapped her fingers together.


    “Well, the only way to be sure would be to approach the object.  Regardless of our primary mission, scientific curiosity behooves us to confirm it is what we suspect since you are in a position to observe it closely, especially with your starfighter’s current configuration.”


    Allison took a few moments to process the fact that she was being asked to fly closer to a possible black hole.


    “I am not sure that is a good idea.  It would be very bad for the war effort if I experienced time dilation of any amount.  Also, large gravity wells interfere with wormhole and hyperwave comms.”


    Hathor’s ears drooped.


    “As expected, while you have knowledge you lack a dedication to scientific discovery.  You are giving up the chance at being responsible for one of the greatest discoveries of our lifetime for tactical considerations.”


    Allison blushed but then she realized she was being the more practical of the two finally she said.


    “I’ll see how the rest of my time goes here.  If I find nothing else indicating why this system is important to our targets, then I’ll proceed to the source of the anomaly.  If you standby I will send all data we find directly to your station.”


    Hathor shifted in her chair, turned to someone offscreen and demanded a caffeinated beverage be brought to her.  Allison swept her to the side of her main HUD and began her systematic exploration of the star system.  The fifth planet from the system’s center of gravity was a gas giant with several moons that showed evidence of extensive mining and gas mining operations.  The fourth planet out which was in the habitable zone of the system had ancient ruins on it, even some energy readings.  Space debris indicated a progression from primitive species to hyper-advanced technology.  Ship wreckage dotted the surface of its two moons along with the planetary surface.  The planet had suffered a planetary attack of apocalyptic proportions, likely the death blow for whomever lived here had been a weaponized asteroid that had shattered one of its continents.  It happened so long ago that the planetary ecosystem had mostly recovered.  Allison moved on and saw more evidence of habitation.  None of the tech indicated FTL capabilities.  It was strange for a species to have hyper-advanced tech and not FTL, FTL was usually the source of a technological singularity that would propel a race forward.


    Allison frowned.


    “Nothing here is particularly special.  Proceeding to investigate the gravitational anomaly.”


    Bit dumped all the power she could into antigravity plating and shifted all graviton energy into a gravity shield.  Allison proceeded with Ion drives coasting on the thrust she’d built up to propel her towards the dark gravity well.  Allison zoomed in as she approached her target.  If it really was an invisible black hole she’d have no way of seeing it.  She could see reflections though.  Even stranger she saw objects floating closer to the gravity well that her holo-display was projecting in front of her.  The geodesic funnel outlined the gravity footprint.  She lost her hyperwave link.


    “Bit spoke up.  We’ve gone far enough into the gravity well that comms have been disrupted we’re out of sync by thirty seconds due to time dilation.”


    “How close can we get and still have enough thrust to reach escape velocity?”


    Bit took a few seconds to answer.


    “Sensors say three kilometers from the surface of the object provided we have full graviton thrust and antigravs are operating at one hundred percent strength.”


    Allison tapped in a few calculations.


    “Maximum dilation is about three minutes out of sync, its only one standard solar mass.”


    She angled the fighter for a descent deeper into the gravity well of the unknown object.  She started getting data on the small objects.  It was skeletal remains.  She saw a pink glow around them.  She pulled in closer and realized the glow was from the same pink flowers that powered the Phoenix’s main power core and the best LSR scientists believed allowed the ship to fold space.  While she knew how to use the drive, even her best scientists had no idea how it actually worked.  It was some psionic voodoo that no one really understood.  She moved closer to the dark object.  Suddenly her target tracking system lit up.  She was picking up multiple unidentified objects moving at a high rate of speed orbiting the center of the gravity well.


    Allison pulled into a pursuit trajectory and climbed up behind them.  Her eyes went wide when she saw they were the very creatures she’d been trying to track.  They left a trail of pink mist behind them.  They were sweeping into the object’s surface and then out one after another she found that she and Bit were caught in some sort of wake.  It was like the pod of space manatees were assisting each other in escaping the gravity well when they swept down to do whatever they were doing with the object.  She didn’t have to focus on flying because Bit was basically being swept up in the pod’s movement.  Each time they breached the surface of the object there was a splash of material from the objects seemingly solid metallic surface.  Allison tried to get detailed scans of the ejected material.  She succeeded but she had no idea what she was looking at, as she was reminded often, she was a soldier and not a scientist.


    The pod of space manatees didn’t seem to have any concerns about the sleek black starfighter in their midst.  Bit was about the same size as the average member of the pod.  Allison let the wake carry her and Bit through the orbit.  The last one dipped in.  They seemed to be keeping the same orbit even though they’d all dipped into the object.  Allison weaved in and dipped Bit’s wing into object, the wing was coated in the substance.  She swept back out.  The pod waited for her to join formation before starting the spiral out of the object.  Allison turned off her holo-display and made the canopy transparent so she could watch the trail of what appeared to be pink pollen flowing with the pod’s wake.  The pod shimmered as they reached the effective edge of the gravity well Allison was pulled along as the pod rapidly folded space around it repeatedly each microfold seemed to be accelerating them to faster and faster FTL speeds.  Allison found herself carried over a thousand light years in under five hours.   The pod decelerated in much the same way they accelerated a series of microfolds when they came to another one of the system’s targeted by her probes.


    Allison stayed in the pod and this time they dove towards a gas giant and seemed to be doing something similar to what they had been doing at their previous stop.  She kept up and mimicked the pod who seemed to be able to reach relativistic speeds as a group.  They navigated further into the star system.  Allison let herself be dragged along.  She should have been looking at the sensor readings but she was so enraptured by the majestic space manatees and the beautiful stream of pink particles that trailed after them that the sensors were a secondary concern.  After all who knew when she would be able to experience this again.


    Allison and Bit were pulled along as the pod dove into the atmosphere of what had appeared to be a class H planet.  The pod effectively performed an atmospheric reentry as a group protecting each other and Bit.  They swept down.  Allison had to actually pilot now as the air currents were fighting against the wake the pod was using to drag each other along.  Bit’s atmospheric flight systems were stiff.


    “Bit, what is going on?  I shouldn’t be having this much trouble in atmosphere.”


    Bit sounded concerned when she responded.


    “The liquid metal is not adapting like it should.  The highest concentration of non-responding molecules is on the left wing where we contacted the UGO.  It has spread and the more I try to move the metal the more it spreads.  We are now experiencing electrical glitches across all systems.”


    The pod swept down over what was a forest of trees with familiar pink flowers.  Their passage kicked up a massive storm of pink pollen.  Which coated each of the space manatee, making each appear to be a glowing pink color.  Bit seemed to have it clinging to parts of her airframe.  Allison’s eyes went wide when she saw pink inside the cockpit.  She didn’t have time to get her helmet back up before she got a face full of them.  She sneezed and her vision doubled, then tripled.  She couldn’t see a damn thing, but she felt other consciouses near her and somehow she was able to navigate her way out of the atmosphere with the space manatees who were starting to flash bright pink, threatening to drag her with them through FTL once again.  She slammed all graviton power into the thruster directing the gravity wave forward.  The fighter was violently ejected from the pod of space manatees and it started spinning rapidly back towards the planet.  Allison had regained her normal vision and was able to bounce the fighter across the atmosphere of the planet and reach orbit.


    Allison came to an all stop and started to access exactly what systems had been compromised by the strange matter she’d interacted with.  The problem was it was most of them to varying degrees.  She sneezed again.  Her head felt like it did every time she interacted with the fold drive of the Phoenix.  Like her mind was a million different places at once.  Only when she used the fold drive there was a filter.  This time there was no filter.  She could see so many overlapping locations and people that she was in intense pain as her mind struggled to keep up.


    “Allison your brain waves are erratic.  Bioelectrical activity in your body is causing a visible effect.”


    Allison looked down at her skin and it had a glow to it.  She cried out and held the sides of her head.


    “Emergency wormhole Eden Prime.”


    That was all Allison could get out.  Bit sounded concerned.


    “Allison, whatever this pollen is could be a hazard to the planet.  Also the nav system is down and the wormhole generator is not responding.”


    Allison cried out again.  Blood dripped from her nose.  She closed her eyes and tried to focus her mind.  Queen Aryna had trained her to deal with overwhelming psionic input as part of her resistance to mind probe training.  She placed both palms down on the fighter’s console and focused on the Phoenix.  She managed one moment of pure focus and Bit shimmered out of existence.  When it reappeared Allison caught a glimpse of her fleet as they approached the sunward side of Eden Prime.  The sun lit up the Ark Royal’s silvery liquid metal hull.  She smiled before the exertion of the fold knocked her unconscious.  Bit immediately called for assistance with a warning that Allison had been exposed to unfiltered pollen from the same flowers that powered the Phoenix’s core and fold drive.


    Allison woke up shortly after she arrived on the Phoenix.  Leshy and Futara were fussing about her.  Allison shook her head.  Whatever she’d been dosed with was out of her system.  During the time she was on the ship and still under the effects of the pollen she had been able to read the thoughts of everyone on board.  It was a trippy sleep.  Allison waved her hand.


    “I’m fine, whatever it was is out of my system.”


    Futara looked skeptical.


    “You can’t know that we couldn’t even detect it in your system with our scanners.”


    Allison rubbed her face.


    “I’m only seeing here and now; I can’t read anyone’s thoughts. I’m going to go with it is out of my system.”


    She touched her comm to Bit.


    “Bit are you okay?”


    Bit responded.


    “I am fine if a bit naked.  The liquid metal has been placed in a shielded container.  Save for the parts affected by the unidentified matter.  So far even direct particle beam cutters have not been able to remove the metal.  It is too dense.  They are consulting LSR and System Alliance science advisories.  For the moment I’m floating naked in space.  It is very… uncomfortable.”


    Allison blushed.


    “I’m sorry Bit.”


    The AI sounded less upset than her usual self.


    “We could not have known, and we have made several scientific breakthroughs it is worth some inconvenience.”


    *****


    Allison stood in the SCIF after school the next day.  Her Aunt Maria was looking over the data that Allison and Bit had gathered.  Allison was thinking her Science Fair Project had a good chance of winning now that she figured out some of the lifecycle of the space manatees.  More importantly if the Sal’nash used the same kind of FTL used then her mission would eventually lead to them being able to track the Sal’nash.  Especially since they seemed to initiate it with several micro-folds. Finally she now knew how to replenish the Phoenix’s power core and fold drive if for some reason the ecosystem failed on the ship.  Maria looked at Allison.


    “This is incredible.  You have discovered a black dwarf.  Proven the existence of degenerate matter.  We also know that when liquid metal is exposed to degenerate matter it creates a new matrix so strong that we have yet to find something that can harm it.  Sorry, that means Bit will be out of commission for a while.  I’m just replacing the whole fighter and transferring her data matrix.  It will be less than a week, I promise.  You keep this up your name is going to be on more peer reviewed scientific papers than mine.  Good work.  I am sure you have scientists from the LSR and System’s Alliance scrambling to get in touch with you, so I’ll let you go deal with that.”


    Allison blushed.


    “Thanks, Auntie Maria.  I’m glad you’re not upset about my dark wormhole jump.”


    Maria raised an eyebrow at Allison.


    “Oh, I’m furious about it, but given that I removed all restrictions from you, I can’t exactly yell at you for it, can I?  You’re just lucky this worked out.  Based on the report filed by Bit, if you hadn’t been able to fold you were not likely to get help anytime soon.  Having the records of your transits erased was foolish and reckless.  I am assuming you had a very good reason for it.”


    Allison rubbed the back of her neck.


    “I have been trying to compartmentalize intelligence.  The Sal’nash can eat people’s brains as I reported after Mary’s Station.  That means they can get their knowledge and memories.  Also, the corps have ears everywhere.  I didn’t want them exploiting the space manatees or worse, have people who hunt them find them.  I thought the risks of erasing my transit outweighed the possible risks if I did not.”


    Maria tapped the tablet in front of her.


    “Well, I suppose those are valid justifications.  Just so you know I’ll expect you to win your Science Fair with this data you gathered.  Isn’t that this Friday coming up?”


    Allison blushed again and nodded.


    “Yes.”


    Maria looked Allison up and down.


    “I hope a way to track the Sal’nash comes out of this because I have a suspicion you using seven hundred billion credits worth of high speed probes to win a science fair would upset the board a great deal.”


    “They have all been retrieved and accounted for, I am also confident my astrometrics team will find a way to track the Sal’nash.  The fact that the Space Manatees start their FTL sequence with a series of microfolds and that Sal’nash DNA matches the species that formerly crewed the Phoenix point to my hypothesis being correct.”


    Maria nodded.


    “You are right.  I’ll let you go.  Remember, you better bring your A-game to that science fair project after all the money you sank into this.”