“...I know you all have questions regarding the mission,” Pièrre Ngô, Corsair, Captain of the Katabasis, and leader of the expedition said, “and I apologize for the secrecy. The last thing we wanted was for anyone outside of the Clans to get wind of what we were up to.”

“And what is that?” asked one of the Valkyries.

“I’m glad you asked,” the commander replied, earning chuckles all around. “When the Yīqún first invaded we and the other races dispatched scout ships to determine the enemy’s size, point of origin, anything that might help us. Many never returned, but one found its way back to Earth, just before the invasion. The vessel’s records were lost soon after, so we didn’t know what the pilot learned. Until now.”

“What did he find?” Maggie blurted out, blushing as Master Schnoebelen gave her a pointed look.

“The Holy Grail,” he said quietly. “The data we recovered isn’t intact, but what we’ve been able to piece together seems to show that he found...a planet.” He grinned at the stunned group. “Habitable...and unclaimed.”

“New Terra?” one of the Knights whispered. “Is it possible?”

“That’s what we’re hoping,” Ngô answered. “The pilot couldn’t escape the system when the Yīqún attacked, but he managed to park the ship in a geostationary orbit over Earth, before succumbing to his injuries. We’re hoping it’s still there and can tell us where the planet is located.”

“And if it isn’t?” Mallus...the Avatar representative...asked from his monitor.

“Then it’s a long trip for nothing, I’m afraid,” the Corsair shrugged. “The ship’s last transmission seems to confirm it had reached orbit and was shutting down to avoid detection, so there’s still a chance.” He nodded as the group glanced at one another with dubious expressions. “I know...it’s a long shot,” he sighed. “But it’s the best chance we’ve had in over a hundred and fifty years. Maybe there isn’t anything there. Maybe we’re chasing a ghost. But I can tell you this much...if we don’t go, we’ll spend the rest of our lives wondering if we’d passed up an opportunity to find ourselves a new home.”

The silence that followed was deafening as the group mulled it over. Finally, one person stood up...Chikere, the Protean. “Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have nothing else planned, and I always wanted to see the homeworld.” She smiled at the commander. “Count me in.”

One by one the others stood as well, voting to take the chance, as Maggie shared a grin with her Master. “All right then,” the Corsair smirked, “lay in a course for Earth.”

Staring at the Clan leaders, Maggie felt a bone-jarring flash of Déjà vu. She had a nasty feeling she knew where this meeting was headed, but with the exit guarded there was nowhere to run. Even if she could somehow sneak out with Diggs in tow, there was still the not-so-minor problem of getting off Freya. “God fuckin’ damn it,” she snarled. “There’s only one reason you’d come lookin’ for me after all these years. You wanna go back.”

“Damn right we do,” Commandant Zakiyya growled, puffing on her cigar.

“If there’s even a chance to locate that planet, how can we ignore it?” Grand Master Makar asked. “Think what it would mean for our people.”

“I don’t know what’s crazier...wantin’ to go back to Earth after what happened the last time...or thinkin’ I‘d be stupid enough to sign on.”

“What is it you want?” Princeps Jibril asked, still twirling his pen. “Name your price.”

“I wanna go back to my old life, before you dragged me into this,” she snapped, holding Diggs close.

“A bit late for that, I’m afraid,” the Sibyl KriZ/AliZ replied, blowing another smoke ring. “We need you. Without you the odds for success go down rather significantly.”

“Well, I don’t need you,” Maggie fired back. “Send somebody else.”

“Don’t force me to make this a Clan issue,” Diplom-Ingenieur Svéd advised her. “With the backing of the other Clans, I can and will hold your feet to the fire if need be.”

“Go to hell,” she hissed. “I’ll go it alone if I have to. Been doin’ that most my life, anyway.”

“Maggie...this is important,” Admiral Van Aalst said, trying to be reasonable. “If there was anyone else to ask, we would. But there isn’t.”

An aura of foreboding seemed to fill the room, as she turned to the last Clan leader. “Why are the Dharmists involved?” she asked. “I thought you’d all checked out of the human race.”

“A common misconception.” the Dàifu Khatsakhox trilled, her voice filled with strange inflections. “The Yīqún handed Humanity a fait accompli when they destroyed our homeworld. We believe that living among the other races, those that will have us, is the only rational choice for long-term survival. However, were Humanity to discover another planet, one we could colonize, that position would need to be re-examined.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” she muttered, shaking her head. “All of you agreein’ on somethin’. That’s gotta be a first.”

“A second,” KriZ/AliZ pointed out, “or had you already forgotten your last trip to Earth?”

“I wish,” Maggie snorted. “And what if I refuse to go?”

The Valkyrie drew her pistol and slammed it on the table, making the others jump. “Oh, you’re going,” she barked. “One way or another.” Diggs snarled at the Commandant, earning him a growl in return as Maggie pulled him back.

“Gerel, please,” the Knight admonished her. “I would hope we can do this without resorting to threats.” The Commandant glared at him but said nothing, reholstering her weapon instead.

“Damn you,” she spat, “damn the lot of you! It ain’t enough I almost died the last time? You bastards are just gonna kidnap me at gunpoint and force me to go back to that fuckin’ nightmare?”

“Maggie, get over yourself,” the Tinker leader groused. “We’re talking about a new home. You tell me how anything is more important than that.”

“Have any of you read our reports?” she shouted. “The mission was a failure! The ship’s navigational log was wiped!”

“We have read the reports,” Admiral Van Aalst told her, “and we think there’s a chance your team missed something.” He tapped a control on the built in console as an image appeared on the monitor. Maggie winced and looked away, shielding Diggs’ eyes. “I take it you recognize this?” he asked her.

“Yeah...it’s a dead guy.” The desiccated corpse of the scout, still in his pressure suit, gazed back at them through his helmet’s faceplate.

“Actually, I was referring to this.” The image zoomed in, focusing on a steel-gray box at the helmet’s rear. “Do you recognize it?”

Maggie blinked, then took a step closer to the monitor. “That’s the SAR transponder,” she said. “It was so Search and Rescue could find them if they got blown out the airlock.”

“That’s right,” the Admiral nodded. “Besides sending out a homing beacon, what else does it do?”

She turned to him, as a light slowly dawned above her head. “It’s an auxiliary data storage for critical systems,” she intoned. “Engines, Life Support…”

“...and Navigation,” he finished for her. “The information may have been wiped in the Core...but what if there’s another copy of the planet’s coordinates in the transponder itself?”

“...how did we miss that?” she whispered, turning back to the monitor. Tracing her finger across the screen, she followed the wiring harness, double-checking the pathway for herself. “I don’t see any breaks,” she said at last, “but if there is a backup copy, then we have another problem.” Maggie looked back at the Clan leaders. “If you read our report, then you know we buried him in space. Full honors. The body could be anywhere.”

“I know, it’s a needle in a haystack. It’s even possible it was pulled into Earth’s gravitational field and destroyed on reentry. If that’s the case...then we’ve lost our chance. But we…” The Admiral indicated the other Clan leaders, “...have been going over every scrap of information for years now, and we believe there’s an excellent chance the body is still in geostationary orbit.”

“And what if it is?” Maggie snorted. “Still gotta find it.”

“We’ve been working on that,” Kalina Svéd answered, picking up where the Admiral had left off, “and we think we’ve come up with a solution. We designed an emitter to send out an active pulse on the same frequency as the transponder. In theory, even without power, it should carry enough energy to send a return signal we can track.”

Maggie stared at her in horror. “You wanna go to Earth and start hollerin’ at the top of your lungs? Are you crazy?”

“What’s the matter?” the Valkyrie asked. “Your report says the Yīqún drones you spotted in orbit had been deactivated. Only the ones on the surface were still online.”

“We don’t know that,” she fired back. “Sure, they looked dead, but we made damn sure we didn’t do anythin’ that might get their attention. You start throwin’ around active pulses and you could find out different.”

“It is a risk,” the Dharmist conceded, “but one we feel is worth taking.”

“Great…you go.” She folded her arms as she glared at the Clan heads. “You got a plan, and you got the tools. You sure as fuck don’t need me.”

“You were there,” KriZ/AliZ pointed out, “part of the mission. It’s possible there’s some detail you’ve forgotten, some bit of information you might recall at a crucial moment. Your presence could very well mean the difference between success and failure.”

“I don’t care!” she shouted. “I ain’t doin’ it!” Diggs looked at her in alarm as she raised her voice, but she failed to notice.

“What will it take to convince you?” Jibril asked. “You want your own ship? Done. A command? It’s yours. Would you like to be young again? We can make that happen too. Just name your price.”

Maggie shook her head. “You don’t get it...none of you. I. Ain’t. Goin’. Almost got myself killed the last time, and you want me to go back? There’s nothin’ you got to convince me.”

“That’s a shame,” Grand Master Makar sighed. “We’d hoped you’d see reason and recognize the stakes involved. But crude as she is,” he continued, nodding in the Valkyrie’s direction, “Gerel is right. This is too important. Whether it’s voluntary or not, you’re going. Because we need you to...and so does Humanity.”

“Besides,” the Admiral pointed out, “now that you’ve surfaced after all these years, you’re vulnerable. Whoever was gunning for your crewmates is still out there. You’ll be a great deal safer going to Earth than you would be anywhere else.”

Maggie laughed at that. It was a bleak, ironic laugh, without a hint of amusement to be found anywhere. “You fools,” she hissed. “You don’t know. You have no idea.” Her eyes narrowed as she met their gaze. “Or maybe...you do. Maybe this is the plan, how you aim to tie up that last loose end,” she said bitterly, pointing to herself.

“I’m certain I don’t know what you mean,” her Clan leader replied. “No one here has any ulterior motives.”

“Yeah…right,” she muttered, her shoulders sagging in defeat. “Well, if you’re gonna march me to the airlock with a pistol jammed in my ribs, then I have a few conditions of my own.”

“Name them,” Jibril said.

Her answering expression was as cold as space itself.

“This is insane,” Sergeant Kai retorted. “Earth?” He glanced over at Rúna, looking for support. The redheaded corporal just shrugged in return.

“I can’t believe this,” Blye said with wonder. “All my life, I’d hoped…”

“I can’t get out of this mission,” Maggie said, “so I need people around me I can trust.”

“You barely know us,” Rúna pointed out, as Prash nodded in agreement.

“I reckon I’m a good judge of character,” she replied. “Besides...the more I can stack the deck in my favor, the better the odds.”

“Why?” the Valkyrie sergeant asked. “What is it you’re worried about?”

“I...can’t tell you that. Not just yet,” she mumbled. “Like Rúna said, I don’t know you that well. Just keep your eyes open and assume everyone’s workin’ an angle. Cause they probably are.”

“And the rest of the crew?” Blye asked.

“Reckon we’ll find out soon enough,” Maggie said, casting a worried eye towards the hatch.

“So this is all you requested? To pick your own team?” Prash asked her.

“That...and one other thing,” she whispered, gazing down at Diggs.