Reunion

One of the oldest sayings in all of recorded history was "expect the unexpected" or "there's always a surprise waiting", and I can tell you that is absolutely correct.

Overdid it in Nyx, I was at Levsky and found myself absolutely surrounded by gangs and got myself incapactitated for the first time in my life. It took the team less than thirty minutes to find me and my gods they cleared that place out QUICK. They said they got me up and drugged me so I can walk back to the C8R but I don't remember any of it. Medical records showed I was at a T1 EVERYWHERE because the bastards were grenade obsessed with heavy trigger fingers.

By all accounts I should have been regenerated. That greycat gear has to go, Morozov or nada.

I was home on Microtech, sitting in the medical bay of a Polaris that a friend needed help crewing. Jumps to pyro, bunkers, my orgmates insisted I do light desk work until I was back at 100% but honestly that's kinda what med beds are for, right? I had been sitting here for hours on end with NOBODY coming through, this group was probably as efficient as mine was, and then I finally got a visitor. She was shorter than I was, prostetic arm, decked out in Inquisitor Raven gear and something about her just...rang out to me. Couldn't put my finger on it but dammit she looked familiar until she spoke.

"Hey, I'm Kreyla. You must be Callie of the Spacemoms?" She says.

She speaks like she's known me her whole life. "Yup, that's me. The original Spacemom and person making sure this whole crew on this ship is good. And why do you look so familiar? I feel like I've seen you somewhere before."

Any semblance of a smile in her soul dissipates.

"My mom used to be one of the Spacemoms. One of your closest friends, you were like the aunt I never met." Kreyla says softly. "When I heard you were here I had hopes of finally meeting you."

There's only 10 of us at one point, and nobody quit. Pearl, Kat, Jojo and Kite are dead...

"Honey I have a few names in mind but...I don't see who could possibly be your mom." I say, trying to put her face to the faces I'm thinking of."

We're all in our mid-late thirties, but none of us mentioned having a freaking kid. I got an adopted one running around somewhere but everybody knows about her.

"Honey how old are you? I can see you watching me struggle to figure out who's kid you are."

In a deep sigh she inhales and looks at the floor.

"My mom. Katherine, she was killed in combat on your ship." She says meekly and my heart stopped as my jaw dropped.

Oh...oh no...I uh...

"Honey first why are you on this Polaris?!" I say in bewilderment. "Secondly, if you're here for revenge you're dead where you stand. You have no chance in hell!"

She looks up and there are tears coming down her face.

I'm in medical scrubs, she's fully armored, and for once I feel out of my element here.

"I run the Deadrig Dolls, this ship belongs to a member who founded a subsidary and we're just making money." She's so close to just heavily weeping and I don't know how to cope with this.

"And um...I don't want revenge." She says with a storm of emotions on the horizon. "I just um...mom said that if anything happened to her, no more regeneration, that you were going to be my mom."

My mind and body completely disconnected from each other. In my head I'm trying to process all of this while my body is getting up, walking around the front desk with arms open wide. Without hesitation she jumps in and holds me and the two parts of me get together in agreement: Protect this one.

For once my body operates on its own and murder isn't the end result.

"Wait, you have a subsidary? At your age?!" I say while trying to process this all.

She nods into my chest, and she's lost in the hug.

I'm trying to figure out what this means. For me, for Arcantha, let alone the team and where she fits into my wedding next year. I then get a silent ping in my lense.

<Ran records, dug through everything, and sorry to step on the toes of this moment but she's right. She's Kat's kid.>

I don't doubt it, Ravi. When Kat was alive and not junked up on Maze she was a very huggy and loving person.

"So um...I guess I'm your mom now?" I say shyly. I've never been in this situation before and not to mention way out of my league.

"I mean, if you wanna be. I've been doing fine these past few months on my own, the crew takes care of me and I take care of them."

It's now eating at me. Fuuuck it's killing me and I feel like shit...

"Do you, know what happened to her?" I ask fully feeling I should regret it.

<Callie DO. NOT.>

She lets me go and nods. "Yeah, I do. And honestly if I were in your place I would have done it too, and I don't blame Ravja at all for it. I loved mom with everything but she...uh...she fucked up. Badly."

My right hand is throbbing, and I can still feel the impacts on Kat's head in my mind.

I send a message right back to Ravi. "Don't tell the crew, I'll talk to them myself when I get home."

Loudspeaker comes on in the medbay and Kreyla jumps.

"DMAN IS DOWN, WE HAVE HIM ON MOM'S PISCES AND INBOUND! PREP A BED!"

Without a word Kreyla and I take off through the door and into the hangar.

"Let mom do her job, honey. Tend to the bridge." I say watching the pisces come in from above.

"This is my crew, let me help!"

I look at her with a smile. "And I'm the infamous Spacemom, he's in good hands, trust me."

Kreyla looked like she wasn't sure if she should run or fight me, but she was smiling wither way.

She sprints off and I hustle to the ship as the hatch drops. His gear is riddled with bullet holes and burn marks from a few grenades, clearly a bad motherfucker on this team but his teammates are picking him up from the shoulders and legs then putting him on a stretcher. I start pushing him to the medbay and looking him over with my medical lense. If there was anybody to have an identical fate like I did a few days ago in Nyx, it's this guy. Green flare on his chest, Red Alert Morozov gear, and T1 everywhere with a T0 on his arms. The gangs are getting more aggressive lately and it's actually starting to scare even me.

I roll the stretcher up alongside a bed and Kreyla who pops out of nowhere is helping me move the merc over.

"Defiant one, aren't you? Did you give Kat this much trouble?" I say with a smile. She smiles as we roll him over and I jump on diagnostics. We can drug him up but he needs full medical to survive.

"Do you have any stations in mind? He needs a full-care facility and I can only think of one off hand but it's a trip. Where are we? Hurston?" I say as I have the auto-doc start up.

"I'm not taking him to Lorville, our guys deserve better than that nasty shithole." She says as she sits at my desk.

"Well, our new Terra HQ is fully operational and we have space. But that's at Terra. The space station isn't ready either, it's still under construction."

She looks at me with wide eyes. "You have an HQ in TERRA of all places? And you can afford a space station?!"

I nod sheepishly and smile. "Yeah, Helene Memorial is-"

"THAT'S YOURS?! YOU OWN THAT MONSTER?!" She shrieks.

Dman groans and we step outside the door.

"You own that thing?! It's freaking massive, where did you get the funding for that?!" Kreyla says in a near-whisper.

I explain everything that had happened in recent months, skipping over the parts involving Kat directly and I think she noticed because she thanked me for it.

"So...the Idris incident, Terra Gateway, that was all spacemoms?"

"Well the Idris was pretty much exclusively me and it caused a lot to snowball. But yeah it's all us."

"Where is the new HQ? Terra?" She says and I picked up immediately.

"It's nowhere near the beaches, fair warning." I say cautiously.

Her arm comes up and she taps the mobi a few times, then the ship changes course.

"That's where we're going, aren't we?" I say.

She turns and walks out, presumedly to head for the bridge, so I sit at the desk and keep an eye on my first and probably only patient.

<Prep a T1 bed, we got a bad one incoming>

<How bad?>

<Remember my trip to Nyx?>

<Oh shit, okay.>

I lean back in the seat and start to nod off but the thought of Kat keeps me awake. How the hell did she have a kid and NONE of us know about it? She was affectionate as hell so I guess that could have been it but still, a whole-ass kid.

A ping on my mobi pops up.

<I never knew my mom, I was told when I was younger that she died but never stopped to qustion it, just accepted it and raised myself.>

My mind turned back to the recent revelation about Leonard and Anvil, but then again he didn't really matter now either.

<I never knew mine either, I was adopted and just have a dad.>

<What's he like?>

Woof, that's a lot to process.

<He adopted me when I was a kid, but a REALLY long story short is he came back into my life recently.>

<I hope I get to meet him sometime :) >

Yeah...me too...

Stanton has a direct jump to Terra, I felt that bump in the road and we should be home soon. Hope everybody is prepared for what's going on.