Mari Swa:
There was another very experienced fighter pilot also searching for the same Rogue person, and she was also following the ship’s frequency skipping pattern, hunting her down professionally. My mother, but from another timeline, Athena Elizabeth Swaruu, Tina, the one you all know, much younger than my original mother, only five years older than me but already with a lot of training.
So fortunately for me, she detected my ship also trying to follow the Rogue one. She opened up a communication line with me, but I didn’t accept video at first, only audio, as I was a little afraid. Although, I opened up to her immediately when I heard her voice—my mom’s voice. When I finally saw her in video, I recognized her body shape, but she looked not only younger but different.
She was shocked to see how young I was, and she immediately asked to talk to my mother and asked me where she was. Of course, I had to explain everything to her, and she was quite concerned about my situation, knowing I was there in the middle of deep space, in the middle of nothing, alone and clueless as an experienced fighter pilot, although very young as well.
What she did next was to dock both ships together using their ventral hatches, then link the computers of both our Starships so mine would follow hers as a mirror so it wouldn’t get lost again, while I transferred on board her ship where we met for the first time, and I gave her the news. I told her I was her daughter from another timeline.
Of course, I was crying and crying, but Tina said to me reassuringly that she would help me find my way back home, and she told me that she was my mother now while I get back to the one that birthed me. But first she had to catch that Rogue pilot, so she sat me next to her in the cockpit of her ship while mine shadowed us using its AI as pilot linked to Tina’s ship’s computer.
It didn’t take us long before we found the Rogue Pilot’s trace again, and what happened next was a very nerve-wracking sequence of combat maneuvers between Athena and that pilot, both time and space skipping at high speed, taking us all to the star system of Proxima Centaury. Where, Athena managed to foresee and anticipate where exactly the Rogue pilot would emerge from while space skipping, arriving there first and placing my Suzy ship as a decoy so when the Rogue pilot emerged from hyperspace, all her attention would go to my empty ship, not being able to see Athena’s. All in a sequence that lasted only for a few seconds and at very high speed, Athena scored a direct hit on the Rogue pilot’s ship, destroying its engines and disabling it permanently in an action scene that was by far the most exciting thing I had ever lived.
Then Athena, also a martial arts expert like my original mom, boarded the Rogue pilot’s ship and single-handedly arrested the Rogue pilot while I waited, biting my fingernails in Tina’s ship’s bridge or cockpit. Less than two hours later, a Taygetan Toleka-class heavy battle cruiser arrived, and several other Taygetan fighter ships with it, as well as a numerous Centaury-Alfran military detachment to supervise what was going on. After all, it’s their space.
The timeline where all that occurred is this timeline we are on now. We all proceeded to go to Temmer to declare what had happened—all the ships, including our two Suzy and the half-destroyed one the Rogue pilot, now in custody, was using. Although I was back in Temmer again, I never had a chance to go back to the beach, as I was more interested in getting back home to my mother and to my original timeline.
In Temmer, Athena Elizabeth Swaruu, or Tina was awarded an official combat kill—no one died—and to this date, she is still the only fighter pilot who has ever successfully downed a Taygetan Suzy-class starship.
After all that excitement had passed, and while still in Temmer, in Toleka City spaceport, Athena and I, with the help of her ship’s AI linked to my ship’s own, started to research all the data to find from where I had come from in order to be able to decipher the frequency to be able to be reprogram it back into my ship’s computer so I could get back home. But it was all erased, and all the data was lost or tangled beyond deciphering.
My heart sunk, and I was very sad, and I did nothing but cry and cry. Tina insisted that she was now my mother and that I should not worry, but she understood my grief.
From Temmer, we came back here to Starship Toleka orbiting Earth, where Athena’s friends were waiting for her. I met the Taygetans you all know and little Sophia Yazhi Swaruu, who is four years younger than I. To this date, I still can’t get back to my original timeline. I can’t get back to where I came from. So up to this date, I remain here living on board the Taygetan flagship Toleka with Queen Alenym the First and her Taygetan crew, and with Athena as my new mom and Yazhi Sophia as my little sister.
I still miss my original mother very much, even though I’m approaching two years here now. I guess I always will. I’m very sad because of what happened, but on the other hand I also met very nice and loving friends who are now my family—the Taygetan team.
Athena and Yazhi insist that my original mother, being in another timeline, is only suffering my loss in my own head because time is not moving there, not in relationship to this timeline we are all in. So technically speaking, my original mother hasn’t even noticed I’ve gone missing. And if those frequency codes to my original location could be recovered somehow, I could go back there, and my original mother wouldn’t even notice that I was missing.
But of course, she would notice I’m two years older than before. What a mess.
For now, I’m here, and this is my family now, and I love them very much.
