Changed Destinies

"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood,"

-Daniel Burnham

Daniel Fenton sighed as he sat one of the seats/storage bins of the Specter Speeder as it boosted through the space towards the Arctic, wondering just what was so urgent that his parents pulled him and Sam, and everyone else out of their beds, at five in the morning no less, and why they were heading out here. This meant he found himself stuck in the Speeder's with six other people in the cramped passenger compartment as his live-in girlfriend and his sister piloted the Speeder through orbital space.

Still, he thought, as he watched Sam's hands play over the board. I do enjoy watching her work, be it fighting ghosts or piloting, or, as frequently happens, both. Yet and still, he couldn't help but notice the bags under her eyes. One of the consequences of spending a night knowing someone "in the Biblical sense" was it left both people quite tired enjoyment aside. They were both tired, but he wasn't the one flying the aircraft. Luckily Sam's (and, incidentally, his sister's) skill as a pilot was phenomenal, however, and he had no doubts that they'd get to wherever they were going on Hephaistos in one piece.

He turned to look at Valerie, the dark-skinned woman was staring at the deck plating, something obviously consuming her thoughts. He was concerned about what, precisely that was. Under any other circumstances, he'd wonder if those lingering feelings he knew she still had for him were getting to her again. Danny could hardly blame her, he didn't like how that had ended between them either and a small part of him wished they could have let that relationship run its course normally. It almost certainly would have ended sooner rather than later, but it would have been a "natural" ending, not one foisted upon them by the demands of their double life and had hurt them both, far more than either of them cared to admit.

However, there was something to that. On the exceedingly rare occasions she dwelled on those feelings, she deliberately pretended nothing was wrong. That she wasn't doing.

Something's happened or she's learned something, something so disturbing she's hesitant to inform the rest of us.

He opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, when he heard Danielle's voice come in from behind him. "So, Sam," she said, looking up from the copy of the Iliad she was reading to pass the time. "Have any idea where we're going."

"Nope," Sam said, drawing out the N slightly. "I'm just following the nav beacon Maddie told me to follow."

"I do wonder why they're being so secretive about all this though," Paulina chirped up suddenly. She looked over at him. "No offense to you and Jazz, but your parents seemed to be the type of people who would have had difficulty restraining themselves from revealing something so big they couldn't even tell us over an ostensibly secure link."

"I agree," he began, only to be interrupted when both Sam and Jazz's consoles began beeping frantically in a simultaneous panic attack.

"What is it," Danny ordered sharply.

"Stand by," Jazz said. "Holy shit."

Danny's eyes widened. Jazz didn't swear that often, and she only rarely used swears stronger than damn. Danny slid off his seat and walked over to the ECO station to peer over Jazz's shoulder. It was at that point he saw the radar return she'd seen. His eyes widened. [There was a docking berth out there, thousands of miles from Hephaistos. The ship in that berth was massive, just over a mile long.

"Jazz, Jazz, are we far enough out still to get the whole thing on one of the telescopes?"

Jazz froze as if she hadn't heard him for a moment, then shook herself violently and tapped a button on her console. "Yes," she said. She entered the relevant commands and the digitized image, gathered with the latest-generation optical telescopes filled up the navigational display. He heard feet crossing the short distance as Paulina, Tucker, Danielle, and Starr converged behind him to view the display, their shocked intakes of breath seeming to come in at once.

The radar return certainly had suggested the profile, but there was a difference between seeing a radar return, and seeing the object responsible for the radar return in an image constructed from visible light. Her hull was wedge shaped vaguely reminiscent of an Imperial Star Destroyer but lacking the distinctive conning tower protruding from her aft section, and the three or four other decks that struck out like sore thumbs from the primary hull. Tucker leaned forward, staring at the row of massive double-barreled gun batteries that just appeared on the smooth armored hull in the refreshed image.

"Are those," the former mayor of Amity Park began his tone incredulous, "gun batteries?"
"Looks like," Sam said from her station. "But are they conventional weapons or anti-ghost?"

"Does it matter?" Tucker responded. "Not even a ghost could survive a hit from one of those mothers, in our realm or theirs"

"Can you imagine what it would cost to operate even one of those ships for an extended amount of time?" Dani said. "And we're not even talking about supplies, but the crew? Not even the most sophisticated automation system we have could run a ship that big without an obscenely large crew to operate and maintain its systems, not to mention the million and one other things a warship's crew finds itself doing.."

"I agree," Danny said, shaking himself enough to actually be able to talk. "It would be in the thousands at least."

"About ten thousand I'd wager," Sam said, awe on her voice. "When that ship is fully crewed and manned she'll be like a small town in space."

"Um, guys," Starr said, the suspicious tone on her voice of someone who realized something no one else seemed to be considering. "Can you imagine how long it must have taken to build her? I mean you're parents are good, but to throw together that in twenty-four hours is impossible even for them."

Shit, Danny said, shocked, and wanting to yell at his parents for building something that awesomely cool and not tell him about it. They must've have been working on that project for over a year, and didn't breathe a word about it to anyone.

Sam's board rang abruptly. "We're being hailed," Sam said. "It's coming from that ship out there, and it's your parents."

"Are we within real-time range?"

Sam looked at one of the many navigational displays on the starboard bulkhead. Finally after a few moments she nodded. "Unless God's changed the rules on us in the past few minutes, then yes."

"All right, punch it up on the speakers," Danny said.

Sam nodded and ran her hands over her board.

"Hey, Danny," Jack Fenton's usual exuberant voice flooded over them. "So, how do you like our little pet project?"

"'Pet project?,'" everyone said in response to what had to be the understatement of the millennium.

"Yes of course it's a pet project," he heard his sister say dryly. "Spending billions of dollars is normal for things like that. Haven't you heard?"

Danny couldn't help but stare around him as he walked through the darkened corridors of the ship behind his parents, both of whom were turns pointing out rooms and other ways as they winded their way from the starboard docking bay on what was presumably a tour of the ship. He sighed, shaking his head, in both annoyance at the fact that they weren't actually explaining why they built her in the first place, and affection over the fact that he enjoyed seeing his parents happy, and they were always happiest talking about their work.

All she needs is some sort of FTL capability and she'd be perfect, she thought. Unfortunately not even Vlad and his research teams came up with that. Least so far as the members the FBI and MI5 rounded up in the sweep of all his enterprises after his attempt to take over the world failed. Some of them are still fugitives, having no doubt crawled into the deepest and darkest hole they can find. Including all the scientists we're sure were involved in growing Danielle and destroying or taking the records about her before we and the British closed in.

"…we're estimating once she's fully crewed and operational she'll need a crew of about ten thousand," Jack said blithely, as if that were the most normal thing in the world, even in an era of advanced, economical spaceflight. Danny sighed. They needed answers, and more than the ones they'd been providing.

"That's all well and good," Danny found himself saying. "Now perhaps you could explain why you built it and why you built it without informing us."

Jack and Maddie looked over at him, their face's having the decency to redden at the very least as they were reminded of their out of character duplicity.

"Let's discuss this somewhere else," Maddie said after a minute. "The conference room is this way."

"Let me get this straight," Danny said, staring incredulously at his parents in the conference room that, as far as she could tell, was the duplicate right down to the carpeting of the one on Hephaistos. They were sitting around the u-shaped table. "You didn't tell us about one of the most important engineering projects in human history because you didn't want to get us distracted from ghost-hunting?!"

"Times were tense there for a while," Maddie said. "We couldn't risk bringing you in on this when there was a major ghost attack every other week."

"Times are tense now," Sam said from next to him, giving an all-encompassing wave to Danny and Valerie, "I'm still expecting Aragon or Walker to take advantage over the fact that we've effectively lost our heavy hitters."

Danny bristled, somewhat irrationally, at the slight barb, and made to put his hand on Valerie's shoulder to keep his fiery, argumentative friend from exploding at his girlfriend. His eyes widened when his hand didn't end up on Valerie's shoulder pushing her back into her seat. She looked over to see, to his surprise, and mounting terror, that she was sitting in her seat, playing with the capped pen in front of her. Clearly lost in her own world. A bigger contrast from the usually diligent, passionate, hyper-focused Valerie Gray that had wormed her way into the hearts of everyone in the room he couldn't imagine.

"And that's another thing," he heard Sam say. "You know the United States is signatory to those treaties preventing the militarization of space. I'm fairly sure this is a pretty big breach of that. Granted, I've test flown those experimental space fighters of yours so I'm not going to hypocritically defend the treaty despite the fact that I'm already party to violating it, but this is just flat out abandoning the treaty entirely."

"That treaty's days of preventing space militarization were numbered," Maddie pointed out sharply, " and the spirit of that treaty was pretty much broken as soon as-,"

"Everyone be quiet!" Danny suddenly shouted, his voice breaking over everyone else's, also serving to knock Valerie out of whatever reverie she was in. When everyone's voices had died down and they'd all turned to stare at Danny with annoyed looks on their faces, he managed to ask, "Something you want to tell us, Val?"

She saw Valerie take a deep breath. "Last night when I was walking home from dinner…"

"God," Paulina heard Sam say softly. "Sweet merciful God is this true Val?"

In all the years they'd known each other, even when they've, rather ridiculously, been on opposite sides, she'd never seen Sam with her face drained of all color like that. She'd seen her enraged beyond all measure yes, even momentarily terrified during ghost attacks, though she quickly hid it from her face in order to get her job done, but never scared to the bone.

Then again, she'd never seen her when someone had taken a sledgehammer to how she saw the world, to how everyone in the room understood the world.

"Did she actually say that, Val?" Danny said, picking up Sam's thread.

"She said that our meeting that alien in New Mexico was no accident, Danny," Valerie pointed out. "There's really only one way to interpret that statement."

"I doubt it's quite that…cartoony," Starr said suddenly. When everyone stared at her, she continued, "I mean, I'm sure they're colluding with the enemy, but I'm not at all of the opinion they're colluding with them knowingly. Not unless they've all forgotten what species they are."

"I agree with her that is stupid," Danni said. "The only thing I can see them doing is exploiting popular sentiment against ghosts for some sort of massive uprising."

"And while they're doing that these aliens swoop in and gobble us up while we're busy slitting each others throats," Starr responded grimly.

"You two read a lot of political and spy thrillers, don't you," Sam asked pointedly, it wasn't a question.

"Oh, yeah," his cousin responded from her seat while Starr nodded vigorously next to her. That's true, she thought. Starr read voraciously when she had the chance, but the science fiction and spy genres held special places in her heart.

"Figures," Danny said. "I'm not saying you're wrong though," he put in hastily at his cousin, who was looking like she was about to snap at him. "In fact, tend to agree with you. The question is, what are we going to do about it?"

Silence descended upon the room. Paulina leaned back in her chair. "That's the million-dollar question isn't it?" She said softly as she fought to keep her hands from shaking as she thought of what could happen, of the civil wars, the world war, that would divide and ravage humanity right when it needed to unite the most. "What do we do about it?"

"We get this ship up and running," Danny said with a voice that could blister steel. "That's what we do."

"This ship'll need a crew," Paulina found herself saying a second later. "But there's the problem. This isn't the Age of Sail, where you could dredge up untrained people off the street and have them learn by doing. We're not just going to be able to pick up random people and be reasonably sure they can learn the care and maintenance of a fusion reactor if we shriek at them long enough."

"I understand that," Danny said. "It will take quite a while before she's fully operational if we train a crew as large as the one this ship will require largely from scratch. Not that we won't put priority on absorbing as many former military and current ghost hunters as we can, of course. "

Paulina sighed. She'd been waiting for this. Her one previous mission had relied mostly on skills she already possessed to begin with, and they weren't all that good. Oh, sure, she had basic technology skills, most people did, but there was a world of difference between being able to touch type and running a ship such as this. Or hitting a skeleton with a stick and being a ghost hunter.

Or being a soldier, as she had the distinct sensation that the "soldier" aspects of her new career were about to become dominant relatively quickly. Nothing wrong with being a soldier though, it just wasn't what I had in mind coming in.

Paulina could see the same realization playing itself out on the faces of everyone else. She sighed. "Which," she said aloud, "by definition, would include us."

Valerie made to open her mouth before the realization that, compared to them she didn't know jack about this career came over her.

"It'll take a bit before we can establish a system to recruit large numbers of people quickly," Danny said, leaning back in his chair. "We are however, more than equipped to start training people in small groups, and we should."

Therein lies the rub, she thought. What, specifically are we going to be trained for? Ghost hunting wasn't just going to be about running around shooting up things anymore, if it ever was to begin with. Even the "youth hunter groups" which had sprung up like dandelions after the Antarctica crisis (and states lowering the minimum age for ghost hunting, in, she suspected, in recognition of her newfound friend's achievements) had started specializing in various areas as soon as they realized just what it took to be genuinely effective over the long-term.

An idea occurred to her though. It would be a waste of time to just focus on the two of them for starters. Even if the aliens and the rogue GIW elements were willing to wait before they did anything else major, the ghosts were not going to be minding their own business forever. Sooner or later someone in the constantly seething mire of political alliances that made up the Ghost Zone was going to attack the human world. When that happened, it'd be better if it wasn't just the nine of them. Hell it was something of a minor miracle that the four of them had managed to contain and repel the threats they'd faced, even with superpowers. She thought she had a solution though.

"Out of curiosity," she asked. 'Define 'small groups.'"

"Well," Sam said. "We were thinking about twenty to twenty-four at any given time?" She gave her a quizzical look. "Why?"

"I was thinking," Paulina said. "We could start out by trying to sign up the rest of the people who fought with you two against Youngblood. I like to think we did a good job considering are lack of skills, imagine what you can do once you have us trained." That's assuming we can get them of course.

Danny seemed to be thinking the same thing. "If you think you can get them onboard then fine," he said, nodding. "Well, we have a lot of stuff to work out, all of which we shouldn't worry about right this second. Let's return to the surface, get something to eat and-,"

"Excuse me, Danny but there's one last thing we should bring up," Maddie said suddenly, from where she'd been sitting, not moving for the past few minutes. "We need to be absolutely clear on something right now. What you're about to face now is going to be unlike any threat you've ever dealt. The human race, if even half of what Val's contact said is true, is about to face a threat unlike any we've ever faced. If you have any hope, any hope at all, of surviving this, and making a difference, you can't just ally temporarily until the threat has passed and then all go your separate ways. "The continuation of a quarter million years of human existence depends on this alliance becoming permanent. You must not only come together, but stay together to whatever end awaits you all."

"I'd second that," Danielle said. "And if history has taught us anything is that this will exact a heavy price, not in money but in our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."