This is a holiday gift for my beta reader and friend, Cherepashka

Drawing Out the Stars: Chapter One

Alarms blare.

The long corridors of the Themyscira are a blur to Antiope as she hurtles down them at a dead run, dodging past other crew sprinting to their own battle stations. The sound of her boots slamming against the steel deck is lost in all the chaos of a capital ship ambushed. When she comes to a corner, she grabs hold of the rail bolted to the wall of the hallway and uses it to slingshot herself around the turn without losing momentum. In her ear, her comm unit buzzes with her sister's voice.

"Menelaus found us. We've been pulled out of hyperspace by an interdictor, just us," Hippolyta says. Her voice is calm, the kind of calm that a commander fakes in the heat of a crisis to make sure subordinates don't panic. "Blow the ship or blow its generators, then get back. We've been separated from the fleet and need to run. Over."

"Copy. Over," Antiope shouts. With every siren on the ship screaming, she hopes her sister heard her.

It's a simple plan. She likes simple plans. Get in her fighter, get her pilots up, blow a ship, come home.

Antiope turns three more corners before she reaches the hanger. Mechanics are rushing to finish flight checks on fighters as pilots scramble up into them. Everyone is yelling. Breathing hard, Antiope doesn't stop running until she's got her hands on the ladder up into her cockpit and even then she's yanking herself up as fast as she can. She was half a mile from the hanger when the alarms started and she's one of the last pilots to reach their craft.

Hera and Zeus. She's getting old.

She's almost at the top of the ladder when someone grabs her ankle.

Antiope twists around.

It's her niece. It's Diana.

Antiope swears. "What are you doing here?" Antiope should have been launching two minutes ago. She's flight commander for the squadrons of the Themyscira and her pilots need her. Every second she spends on the deck is a second the Themyscira doesn't have. When the enemy capital ships reach firing range, their shields won't hold long.

"I want to launch," Diana shouts up at her. "This is what I've been training for." She hasn't let go of Antiope's ankle.

Antiope kicks free of Diana's hold. "Not now, Diana," she shouts back. Diana's too young for a desperation run. Too young to handle it. Too young to die.

Antiope hauls herself the rest of the way up and drops into her cockpit seat. She hits the switch for the clear blastshield to lower down over her then starts her other preflight systems. She can buckle in once she's up.

Even before her canopy blastshield is down, she hits her stabilizers for lift.

Finally, finally, she takes a deep, steadying, breath. Her heart is still racing. From now until she's in space, the speed limit is her ship. Nothing she does now can get her out of the hangar any faster. Antiope taps her comms. "All squads, this is flight leader," she says. "Squad leads, report status. Over."

The first voice that answers her is Penthesilea. Ship comms aren't the best and her voice is filled with static. "Alpha lead, Alpha is green. Over." she says.

Artemis is next. Her voice is deeper than Penthesilea's. "Beta lead, Beta green. Over."

One by one, the other fighter squadrons report in. All pilots are in place and most squadrons are already airborne.

Antiope herself is finally passing through the magwall, leaving the hangar and slipping into the black of space. "All squads, we're blowing the interdictor gens and then scrambling," she says. "Emphasis on the scrambling. Form up on me." As Antiope finishes speaking, she reaches out and hits her thrusters. There's no gravity in free space, but even so the press of the seat into her back tells her she's accelerating, fast.

Starfighters are the fastest manmade spacecraft in the galaxy. Even flying into the maws of battle, there's a certain thrill to so much raw speed.

The enemy fleet—six capital ships and at least ten support vessels according to Antiope's readout—is over thirty klicks out but she and her pilots will be there in a minute. It helps that the enemy fleet is going full speed towards them as well.

Antiope and her pilots need to blow an escape for the Themyscira before the enemy reach capital engagement range.

Grim, Antiope switches her display to show her own forces. She has six squadrons of ten fighters, plus herself. Although it's the flagship for the Amazonian fleet, the Themyscira carries a slightly reduced complement. Antiope and her squad leaders are picky about who they choose to fly with them. Measured by kills, they're one of the better fighter teams in the fleet. Measured by survival rate, they're the best by a wide margin. The average life expectancy of a pilot after beginning service is three glory- and adrenaline-filled years, fewer in recent times. Many of the pilots of the Themyscira were flying before the start of the war nine years ago. Survival in the chaos of a dogfight is about trust. When the entire squad trusts that their squad mates will die for them, everyone is more likely to come out alive.

Not that there's ever an engagement where no one fails to come home.

Antiope keeps a tally of enemies she's blasted in gold paint on the hull of her fighter.

She keeps a tally of friends who've died for her in scratch marks etched into the low ceiling above her bunk.

Antiope's eyes narrow at her display. She has six squadrons of ten fighters, plus herself, plus…

Antiope taps her comm unit to hail the rogue ship, trying to ignore how cold she suddenly feels. "Diana, get back, now," she snarls.

There's silence on the line.

Antiope transfers to add Hippolyta to the line. "Fleet Admiral," she snaps.

"Flight leader, what is it?" Hippolyta replies. There's tension in her voice. She's relying on Antiope and the fighters to get the Themyscira free to jump. There's little for her to do on the command bridge except pray to the gods and hope they listen. This means she has far more time than Antiope does to deal with Diana.

"Get your daughter back on the ship," Antiope says, keeping her growing fury under tight control. "She's has too much to live for to be out here."

There's a moment of silence, then Hippolyta, free to feel the terrified anger that Antiope can't spare right now, "Diana!"

Antiope severs the link. She's thirteen seconds from engagement. The angular interdictor ship looms close, the delta of Laconia painted in red on the side of its light grey hull. Dealing with Diana has taken precious moments that she needed to plan the assault. Shit. She needs to work quickly. "This is flight leader. Alpha Squad, on me, we're hitting the front door," she says. "Beta, you're first bombing run. Gamma and Delta provide cover. Epsilon and Zeta, you've got discretion, do what you need to do. I'll see you all in Elysium. Over."

In front of them, a screen of dark enemy fighters, red faction marks on their wings, swarms forward in tight formation.

Fighters move too fast for most heavy ship guns. The most effective way to take down a fighter is with another fighter.

In the last half-second before collision, Antiope slips into her quiet place.

She picks her first target.

She adjusts her course, lining up her cannons.

She fires.

In the space of heartbeats, the blackness of space is alight with burning, broken, ships. Antiope's ears ring with the shouting of her pilots and the blasting of her own weapons. She spins in space, weaving this way and that, dodging enemy shots and blowing their fighters to Hades. She never got around to strapping in—a rookie mistake, so she's only staying in her seat by the grace of a combination of her fighter's gravity booster and bracing her knees against her control panel.

On her face is a wild smile, both grim and ecstatic all at once.

Antiope is never so alive as when she's dancing at death's door in the black of space.

Her eyes are bright with explosions.

There's a bare inch of clear blastshield separating her from the universe.

This is what it means to live.

This adrenaline ecstasy is what separates pilots from deck gunners and flight leaders from bridge commanders.

Penthesilea's voice rises above the rest of the chaos on comms. "Alpha to Beta, approach clear. Over."

Artemis's voice comes back. "Copy. Going in. Over."

At once, the ten fighters that make up Beta Squad disengage from the skirmish and start towards the interdictor.

No, not ten.

Nine.

Antiope sights another enemy fighter and shoots. The ship goes up in a short blast of fire, quickly dying in the vacuum.

Their friends for hers. That's how it works.

The explosions of the run against the interdictor are massive enough that the shockwaves buffet Antiope's craft off course. She almost slams into a friendly fighter but manages to correct in time to avoid killing them both.

"Beta to flight," Artemis calls over comms, voice full of static. "Generators down. Over."

Antiope's smile widens. "Copy," she says. "All squads, scramble. Over."

At her command, every surviving Amazonian fighter spins around and engages to full, blasting back towards the Themyscira. The enemy fighters follow a half-second later. That they follow in enough time to realistically catch the retreating Amazons is impressive. It's not that the enemy men are bad, it's just that Antiope's pilots are better.

Scrambling back to base, Antiope jukes fast and natural. She's been flying for two decades. She still rides the heady rush from of having an enemy on her tail shooting at her, but there's enough calm here to think about other things too.

Slipping expertly between two laser blasts, Antiope glances at her display.

Minimal casualties. Everyone's scrambling. Except…

Hippolyta's voice crackles to life on comms at the same moment Antiope sees it. All the raw panic Hippolyta has been keeping at bay for the sake of her command is here now in her voice. "Antiope, help Diana!"

Everyone's scrambling except Diana. She has three enemy fighters tailing her.

Antiope swears. Antiope swears by every god she can name as she spins out and jets towards the straggler. Fucking hotshot kid—best pilot Antiope's ever seen, including herself, but too damn young and green for an engagement this messy. "I'll get her," Antiope tells her sister, voice tight. She hits her thrusters for more speed.

If one of Menelaus' pilots doesn't kill Diana, by Zeus and the stars, when they get back to Themyscira, Antiope will. If Hippolyta doesn't get there first.

The fighters chasing Diana aren't expecting anyone to help her. They expect their enemy to be like them. Their mistake. Antiope vapes the first one effortlessly.

The second manages to turn on her, but she lands a hit right on the cockpit and not even a blastshield can stop a dead-center cannon shot.

The third fighter—

Shit.

Diana.

Antiope acts without thinking.

She's a pilot.

It's just how she is.

[] [] []

The impact is brutal.

Antiope's head slams into her control panel.

She never buckled in.

Her world goes black.

[] [] []

When Antiope comes to, every alarm that her ship has is wailing.

Her stabilizers are gone. Her cannons no longer exist. Her readout is showing critical failure in systems she didn't even realize she had. Her hands dart across her controls and her fizzling displays but nothing she can do from her cockpit will repair mechanical damage to her fighter. The most she can do is turn off the damn sirens. She does so with a vengeance. When she's done, she slams a fist into her blastshield.

Outside, another Amazon hits the third fighter, erasing fighter and pilot in an instant. It goes by so fast Antiope can't read the Amazon ship's squad marks. Then, it turns and continues to scramble.

It all happens in silence. Space is bad at sound.

Antiope snarls and taps to activate her comm unit.

She doesn't even hear static.

Her comm unit is dead.

She's dead.

Shit.

SHIT.

…

So that's it.

Antiope feels suddenly empty and cold. Without the blare of ship alarms, without the chatter of her pilots, it's so horribly quiet. Blood trickles down her forehead to drip a path along her cheek.

Without her stabilizers, she can't steer her ship. She can go forward, but she can't direct her path. That's as good as nothing in space.

She can't even shift enough to watch her pilots escape. She can't even shift enough to watch the Themyscira jump away.

Without her comm unit…

She can't even tell her family goodbye.

Shit.

Antiope lets her head fall back against her seat. Eyes wide and unblinking, she stares straight ahead through her blastshield into the starlit dark of space.

Diana was too young to die.

Antiope wasn't.

Antiope takes a deep breath. She inhales the recycled air in her cockpit. She exhales. She inhales again. She exhales again.

Diana.

Hippolyta.

Family.

Comms.

She looks down from her blastshield back to her controls. She needs comms. She needs comms now more than she needs stabilizers, more than she needs cannons, more than she needs life support. So how does she get comms back?

Antiope growls deep in her throat as she stares at her malfunctioning display. She can't get comms back if she doesn't know why comms are down. The obvious answer—because she's been shot—isn't specific enough for her needs. She taps her display, hoping it will register her command. It does.

Power.

Her comms don't have power.

Well, that's easy enough. With a stable generator and most other systems blown out, she has more than enough of that. So it's a matter then of getting a steady reroute without frying anything with an overload.

Antiope can do that.

She can do it because she needs to do it.

And she needs to do it fast. It took a bare minute for her fighters to reach the enemy fleet from the Themyscira. It will take slightly longer for them to land and lock down, but once they're onboard, the Themyscira will jump.

Antiope flicks through her controls. She transfers power from her blown radar. It works on the first try. Static buzzes in her ear. She doesn't have time to set a channel and all her defaults are wiped, so she broadcasts on all of them. "Hippolyta? Diana?"

In return, there's nothing. Just static.

Antiope's heart tries to stop, to… to just suspend her in a moment that stretches out forever.

The moment passes.

Her heart beats.

She closes her eyes. She raises a hand to her aching head, stops when she feels sticky blood, lowers her hand again, opens her eyes, looks out into space.

They're gone.

They're—

"Antiope? Antiope?" Hippolyta's voice is unmistakable, even distorted as it is by gods know what kinds of mechanical interference from Antiope's mangled ship. "Antiope?"

"I'm here, Poly," Antiope says. "Did Diana make it?"

"She did, she—"

"Aunt Antiope?" Diana's voice is broken in a way that Hippolyta's is not. It's not just the interference on the line.

Antiope grins. A bit of blood from her cheek slides into her mouth. It tastes like metal and salt. "Hey, wonder kid," Antiope says. Antiope licks her lips, looking for her voice. She tastes more blood. A second passes, a second she doesn't have. She's been listening to pilots say goodbye for her entire adult life. Nothing she's ever heard said has made the ache hurt any less. She wants to do better than that. But there's no time. "I love you."

"Antiope, we have to jump," Hippolyta says. In the background, Diana is crying.

Antiope hangs on to every static-distorted contour of her sister's voice. She burns it into her mind. "I know," she says. "Love you, Poly."

"I love you too, Ant—"

Hippolyta's voice cuts out.

They're gone.

They're gone.

they're gone.

That was it.

That was everything.

It was worth it.

Antiope's eyes sting. They stay dry though.

Sadness brings tears.

Raw despair brings nothing.

But—

But at least Diana is alive.

When Antiope was twenty, her best friend died.

She died in a time of peace, before the war. She died in a small skirmish against pirates along one of the lesser trade lanes. She died ramming her fighter into a gunboat that had a lock on Antiope.

Now, sitting in silent space, Venelia's wordless scream, filled with comm static and fury, echoes in Antiope's head. They'd been bunk-mates for all five years of flight school and they'd stayed together on assignment for the two years they'd flown together after that.

And then—

A wordless scream filled with static and fury, cut short by silence.

Antiope closes her eyes and she doesn't see Diana and the last fighter and herself. She sees all the things she could have done differently years ago. They've rattled around in her head for so long, dry and brittle and loud, horribly loud.

Venelia was the first tally in the ceiling above Antiope's bunk.

She scratched it into the steel with her pocket knife and it was almost like her friend was still there with her.

Venelia was Antiope's first tally.

Now Antiope will be Diana's.

She's paid it forward.

Antiope traces a finger over the path that the blood's taken down her face. It comes away sticky with the stuff. On a whim, she reaches up and smears the crimson across her blastshield. Illuminated only by the soft glowing of what controls she has that haven't blown out, it smudge is hard to make out against the background of stars.

Antiope always thought she'd die in a blaze of glory, blown to nothing by cannon fire.

She still could blow herself away.

There's a one-shot blaster under her seat—a ticket to Hades that comes standard in every cockpit—but the stars are beautiful and Antiope isn't ready yet.

She'd like to watch the stars a while.

The Themyscira was pulled out of hyperspace. She's somewhere deep in the galactic core, but she doesn't know where. The stars here are alien. She doesn't recognize any constellation. This is fine though. She can draw her own patterns.

The first shape she finds is, she thinks, a lot like a Leto-class frigate, the most common capital ship spec in the Amazonian fleet. Antiope smirks at herself. Wishful thinking.

The next shape, she tries to look past ships and guns and war. It's dead ahead and it looks… a little bit like a horse, maybe. A black horse, visible only because of the starry pinpricks of light that form an outline around it.

Antiope's comms crackle.

"This is the dreadnaught Sparta, hailing. Over."

Whatever tranquility Antiope had been scraping together vanishes in an instant. She stares at her display panel, barely breathing. She doesn't answer.

The Sparta doesn't need her answer.

"Flight Leader Antiope," a man says. "This is Vice-Admiral Menelaus. That was a very touching goodbye you just shared."

Antiope finally speaks. "Let me die in peace," she growls.

"I'm afraid that's not possible," Menelaus answers. "You're too valuable. We're sending a shuttle to retrieve you. Don't do anything rash in the meantime. Dead bodies are less valuable than living ones."

The blood still trickling slowly down Antiope's face is warm but the blood in her veins feels very, very cold. There are a few things in the galaxy known to be worse than death. Capture by the Lakedaimonians is one of them.

Craning her neck, Antiope tries to check every bit of space visible through her blastshield, looking for the Lakedaimonian shuttle. She can't see it. How close is it? Antiope's heart beats loud in her ears, overwhelming the quiet of space.

Antiope reaches down for her blaster.

If she aims just right…

Her hand closes on the weapon.

Then she lets go.

No. It's not sure to work and she already decided she wasn't ready yet. She still has options.

Grim, she goes over her displays again. She still has options. What are they?

Stabilizers are gone, and gone in such a way she can't repair them from her cockpit. Her generator is fine. She could wait until the shuttle reaches her and then self-destruct, try taking the shuttle with her. No—they'll probably put a lock on her systems as soon as they're in range. What does she have that still works?

Antiope flips through her readout, looking for something, anything, that still works.

The hyperdrive.

Of all things.

Of all things, her hyperdrive is still functional.

Mouth set in a thin line, Antiope hits the toggle to begin spooling.

She has no ability to adjust her course, no ability to navigate. She's a hundred thousand times more likely to hit a star and vaporize herself than she is to pop out near anything inhabited. But maybe, just maybe, she'll be yanked out of hyperspace by a gravitational shadow and she'll be able to go back to dying on her own terms. In peace.

Menelaus' voice crackles up again over her comm. "Flight Leader Antiope, what are you doing?"

Antiope chuffs. "What does it look like I'm doing?"

"In your condition, that's suicide," Menelaus says. "An unpleasant way to go."

Antiope's display indicates that her hyperdrive is primed. She routes all non-essential power to it. She might as well go as far as she can as fast as she can. That's how she's lived the rest of her life, after all. "The best kind of death is the one you choose for yourself," Antiope says. "And this is better than having to meet you. Over."

She kills her comms. Non-essential.

And then she flips the switch.

And then she's gone.

[] [] []

The view in hyperspace leave something to be desired.

It's just black. Inky dark. No stars. No light at all.

Antiope closes her eyes.

She drifts towards unconsciousness.

Before she goes though, she thinks of her niece and her sister.

If she hits a star in her sleep and that's the last of her, she wants her last thoughts to be of her family.

[] [] []

Antiope wakes and fades again several times.

She is growing increasingly thirsty.

Time is passing.

She's bought herself time.

'The best kind of death is the one you choose for yourself.'

Antiope thinks that perhaps that is what she should have said to Diana.

It has a poetry to it.

She didn't think of it herself. Niobe told it to her once. She told it to Antiope the third flight before she died. She hadn't actually had any true last words—just a surprised shout as she was erased from existence by enemy fire. Another tally for the ceiling above Antiope's bunk.

Niobe… Antiope isn't sure if it's right for her to sit in her metal coffin, hurtling through the galaxy so many times faster than light, remembering the feel of a dead woman's hands on her skin, but she's dead herself so she does it anyway.

Maybe she'll see Niobe again on the other side.

[] [] []

The thirst is making her delirious.

She sees her sister, young, playing with a newborn Diana and laughing.

Antiope misses Hippolyta's laugh. She hasn't heard it in so many years.

Now, in her head, she hears it and she smiles.

[] [] []

There's a blaster under her seat.

One shot.

[] [] []

The exit from hyperspace is smooth, so smooth that Antiope wakes peaceful instead of with a start.

Her vision is blurry.

She rubs her eyes, her fingers chipping flakes of dried blood from her skin as she does so.

At first she doesn't understand what it is she sees on the other side of her blastshield.

It's not stars.

It's not a planet.

It's a ship.

It's a ship, dark and angular, so large that it exists on a planetary scale.

Antiope gapes. She has never seen a manmade structure so enormous. She has never dreamed a ship like the one she sees now.

If she has never dreamed it before, she cannot be imagining it now, surely.

But so too it is too large to exist.

Is she dead then?

Is this Elysium?

Elysium is existence after death. Hades is the void.

Huh. She sort of always suspected she'd killed too many people and had gone to temple not nearly enough to make it.

Her fighter is moving towards the ship, though she's not piloting it and her engines are silent. From the nature of the movement, she thinks she's in a tractor lock of some kind.

Antiope routes power back to her comm unit. She chooses a blanket broadcast. "This is Flight Leader Antiope of the Amazonian Confederation, hailing. Over."

A voice, a woman's voice, returns over the comm. It's free of static. No interspace comm system in the universe can do that. Antiope must be dead. Really, truly.

The voice is making noises that Antiope supposes are probably within the human vocal range, but they don't come together to form any language she recognizes. There's a melodic quality to the sounds though, or perhaps there's a melodic quality to the voice. It's deep and has a resonance that comes across even through the comm unit.

The word, Antiope thinks, is soothing.

The evidence that she has made the crossing and Elysium is a giant ship is mounting quickly.

Whatever tractor she's in works quickly. It's not long at all before Antiope's ship has been brought into a brightly lit white hangar and is being set down gently.

The lights here are stark white and the walls and floors are polished to a shine. The brilliance of the hangar is nearly blinding. No hangar that Antiope has seen has ever been so clean, so free of scorch marks and dents. There is something wrong about this one. What's more, it's very, very empty.

The hairs on her arms are standing up.

There's a great grinding noise behind her. Antiope twists in her seat to look backwards. Enormous blast doors are closing over the hanger entrance, shutting out the stars beyond.

She can't leave now.

She's hungry, thirsty, near to hallucination, but she is not so depleted that her heart can't speed to a terrified frenzy.

This place, this ship—she is trapped and alone.

Antiope catches a bit of movement out of the corner of her eye. She whips her head around to stare. One of the hangar doors to the interior of the ship has opened and a strange spider-like droid, a spherical white thing with far too many thin metal legs, has come scuttling out. It is followed by four others that look just like it. Together, they swarm over the floor towards her.

Antiope's breath comes fast. Her eyes are wide. She's frozen in place.

She is not in Elysium.

She does not know where she is.

The spider droids crawl up onto her fighter, sharp feet leaving small pockmarks in their wake. One of the spiders comes up to stand over the blastshield, right by Antiope's face. On its stomach is a shimmering lens. It lifts itself up, pointing the lens directly at Antiope. There's a flicker of light, then steady light.

A hologram projection appears inside Antiope's cockpit, rendered in full color and vivid in its detail. It moves fluidly in a way that holograms, flickering and stiff, never do.

It's a woman, dressed strangely with confusion written across her features. She's wearing some sort of red and gold armor, so archaic that Antiope has only seen the likes of it in religious texts hidden away in long-destroyed archives. A crimson cloak hangs form her shoulders. Her long brown hair is tied back in a braid and there's a sort of metal-looking headpiece covering her forehead. When she speaks, it's in the same soothing voice that Antiope heard in her ship out in space—and now as then she's completely unintelligible.

Antiope takes a steadying breath, trying to tamp down on her naked terror. "I don't understand you," she says.

The projection of the woman frowns. It says something else, then fizzles out.

On the other side of Antiope's blastshield, the spider-droid curls one of its appendages into a sort of fist and raps on the clear glass.

Antiope understands that well enough. The droid—the woman?—wants the blastshield open.

Antiope is not sure that Antiope wants the blastshield open.

When she hesitates, the spider-droid takes a step back. Another takes its place, slightly larger, slightly meaner looking, so much as a white spider-droid can look mean. It sits back on four appendages and raises its remaining four. They look very sharp.

Before they descend on Antiope's blastshield, she flips the switch to raise it. Damaged though it is, she refuses to let these things destroy the space-worthiness of her fighter any further. Her fighter is all she has. With a hiss, the shield raises.

The first thing that Antiope notices is how stale the air in the hanger smells. It smells like it's been recycled ten thousand cycles too many.

Now that her blastshield is up, she supposes she might as well stand.

She stands.

She has been sitting for far too long and she stands far too fast.

The world spins. She teeters. She falls.

She stays conscious long enough to understand that the spider droids have caught her, have stopped her from cracking her skull open against the hanger deck, but beyond that—black.

[] [] []

Antiope wakes to blinding white light.

She has to blink several times to confirm that she is indeed looking up at a ceiling and that she is not in some sort of blank mental space that looks like a wall of brightness. Groaning, she pushes herself upright.

She's now sitting on a cold white table in an empty white room. The walls are white, the ceiling is white, the floor is white—and it's the sort of white that's so pure it hurts to stare at for too long.

She's wearing not her navy-blue uniform but some kind of white over-garment and equally white pants. Tunic, she thinks, examining the over-garment, though that doesn't quite capture the shape of it. On her feet, she wears nothing. She's barefoot. Her blond hair, instead of being tightly under control in its customary braid, is down.

She's not sure why she's groaning. Habit, maybe. She doesn't feel stiff. She doesn't feel sore. She doesn't feel old. Her body feels good in a way that it hasn't in over a decade. She raises a hand just to stare at it. Sure enough, it is her hand. It doesn't feel like her hand though.

Is she alive?

If she is alive…

If she is alive, she needs to find a way back to her family.

Diana.

Hippolyta.

So then—

Is she alive?

As she thinks, Antiope sets to braiding her hair. She doesn't like it down—it's prone to getting in her way when it's down. She has to do it twice because when she finishes the first time, she realizes she has nothing to fasten it with and needs to start over using a different pattern. No sooner has she finished than the unexpected skitter of metal on metal makes Antiope jump.

One of the spider-droids from before scuttles out from behind her—how did she not see it before? Perhaps it blended in perfectly with its monochromatic surroundings?—and lifts itself up to expose its stomach lens.

The woman from before flickers into being. This time, not confined by the cockpit, she appears human-sized, slightly taller, probably, than Antiope if Antiope were standing instead of sitting on the table. Her projection exists at such a level of detail that Antiope can make out the texture of her metal and leather clothes, can see the grain of the weave of her crimson cloak. She looks down at Antiope, appearing to inspect her closely even though holograms have no true eyes. The human-ness of it is unsettling on a primal level somewhere deep in Antiope's gut.

"Are you in an optimal state?" the woman asks.

Antiope blinks rapidly. "I can understand you?"

The projection raises its brown eyes to meet Antiope's.

The eyes—Antiope can see in them the slight variations in color of a human iris. If it weren't for the spider-droid with its lens, the proof of the nature of this hologram, she'd mistake the woman's image for flesh and blood.

They're not real eyes, Antiope reminds herself.

They look real. Fixed on Antiope, they feel real.

"During repairs, I accessed your neural matrix and retrieved your language processing files, among other things," the woman says. She says it easily, nearly emotionlessly, as if she's not admitting to a war crime.

Antiope surely has done a poor job of hiding her horror from her face. She wants to scramble backwards, to get away, but she's frozen in place by sick terror. No, no, nonono—this is why she made the jump. To avoid this.

Home.

She needs to go home.

She needs to go to her family.

What is home?

Who are her family?

Hippolyta?

Diana?

How can she know?

Her stomach turns and her chest clenches and she thinks she might vomit.

The woman tilts her head to one side, an utterly human gesture performed by something that Antiope suspects is an utterly inhuman entity. "Were my repairs unsatisfactory? I have put you into a better state than I found you. If you are still malfunctioning, I can fix you."

She says it with such certainty.

And Antiope is equally certain that she does not want to be fixed.

Antiope doesn't respond. Her eyes dart all around the room. She doesn't see a door. Maybe it's behind her? She twists, looking backwards. No. No door. No door anywhere.

There has to be a door.

She needs to get out.

"Your heart rate is elevated," says the woman. In her deep, soothing voice, she is affecting concern. False concern. "Do you need a sedative?"

Antiope pushes herself back and off the table, putting it between herself and the spider-droid the woman is using to generate her projection. The floor is cold under her bare feet. Her heartrate is indeed elevated. It's beating as fast as it does when she sprints for her fighter. She wants to sprint to her fighter right now. She sets her hands on the edge of the table, something stable to ground herself on. "Don't touch me," she growls.

"I am sorry, Antiope," the woman says. "I have not calculated for this situation. Emotional data from humans is very hard to interpret."

When Antiope speaks, she speaks through grit teeth. Her fear and anger are all mixed together and it's hard to feel anything except a driving need to lash out and flee at the same time. In the confusion too is an urge to curl up into a defensive ball. That is not something that Antiope will ever do. She resists it all and focuses on the woman. "Who are you?"

Against one spider-droid, Antiope thinks she might have a chance. Whatever the woman has done, Antiope feels strong. She feels strong enough she might be able to crack the thing open. But once she does, there's no door. There's nowhere to run. Every fiber of her being is screaming at her to run.

"That is a complicated question," the woman says. "You do not look comfortable enough to listen to the full answer. Medical bays are often upsetting. Would you like to go somewhere else?"

Hesitant, Antiope nods. If the woman lets her out of the room, her odds of escape, infinitesimally small though they are, rise.

A door, indistinguishable from the white wall, hisses open in front of Antiope. She scuttles around the table, trying to keep as much distance as she can between herself and the spider-droid. She tries too to imitate calm as she walks towards out. She still feels sick. Behind her, the spider-droid follows, its metal feet clicking across the floor. The projection of the woman moves as if it's walking too.

In the white hallway outside the room, to Antiope's left is light and to her right is pitch darkness. It's an indicator of where the woman-thing wants her to go. There are no people in this hallway. Just Antiope. Just the projection of the woman.

For a moment, Antiope hesitates.

How badly does she need to run?

Is the light, shining strong and steady from strips installed in the ceiling, more terrifying than the dark in this case?

No. Not quite.

She remembers the look of the ship when she first woke from hyperspace and beheld it. She remembers the size of it, hard as the size of it is to comprehend.

Antiope follows the light, bare feet almost noiseless against the cool white deck.

As she walks down the corridor, her eyes dart about. The hallway she travels, like the rest of the ship that she has seen, is an unbearable white. The air she breathes here, like the air in the hangar, is stale. The sterility is nearly as frightening as the woman pretending to walk behind her. And it's all so empty. Where are the crew of the ship?

She went through Antiope's head.

She went through Antiope's head.

Antiope pushes through her memories. Childhood. Hippolyta. Flight school. The fleet. Diana.

Are any of them real?

They have to be. Antiope can't survive thinking that they're not.

Hippolyta has to be real.

Diana has to be real.

Following the lights takes Antiope to a door that slides open before her. As it opens, there's a slight hiss, like the sound of machinery that's almost but not quite yet due for maintenance. On the other side of the door is—

No.

Antiope spins on her heel to glower at the projection of the woman. She flings a hand out to indicate the park behind her. It's not just any park. It's the park near the house that she shared with her sister and niece before the war. Tall trees shade dirt paths and laughing children run after each other over soft grass. There's a slight breeze, stale air slipping over Antiope's skin. It's the park is as it was before, full of life and full of color in a way that sets it in another world from the strange whiteness of the ship. "What is this?" Antiope hisses.

"This is a hard light projection of the park by your dwelling on Ephesus," the woman replies. "I chose it because you associate it with calmness."

"Choose something else," Antiope demands. Nothing about seeing the park has made her calm. "Something you didn't steal from me."

The projection of the woman frowns, then flickers. The rest of the room flickers as well. What was a park a heartbeat ago is now something utterly alien to Antiope. It's… some sort of meeting space, maybe. She seems to be standing now on a stone-paved ground. Men, all dressed in a manner similar to the projection of the woman, sit, walk, stand, converse. Tall buildings rise up, great columns supporting heavy roofs painted brightly and accented with gold. Silvery-white drones hum in the sky, flitting about on some unknown business. In the shadows of the buildings, Antiope sees too silvery-white guard droids holding wickedly curved polearms. The droids are a mixture of steel and organics that sends a shiver down Antiope's spine.

This, certainly, is nothing from her own mind.

It is utterly alien. All of it.

Not that Antiope cares.

She has her priorities. Home. She's concluded that she's alive so now she needs to go home. The Themyscira. She can sort out her head—whatever it is that's been done to it—once she's home. Her real home. Not some strange projection the woman ripped out of her head. Done with taking in the spectacle around her, she looks back to the woman. Whatever answers she needs in order to achieve her goal, this woman is the one she'll pry them from.

The woman is now sitting on a stone bench, oddly placed in the center of the scene. The images of others step aside to avoid it. There's enough space for Antiope to sit next to her.

That's not going to happen. Antiope doesn't move. Her heart and her breathing as are under control as she can get them. Now she needs to move forward. "How do I get home to the fleet?" she asks, voice tight.

The woman tilts her head to the side. "You desire to leave?" she asks in reply. Her voice is flat and Antiope barely recognizes her words as a question.

"I need to go home," Antiope says. "How do I do that?"

"I want you to stay," the woman says, tone still eerily uninflected.

Anger sparks in Antiope's chest but she does her best to push it aside. It won't do her any good now. She needs to approach this problem with calm. "Who are you?" she asks. She tries not to make it sound too close to her true intention—'Who do you think you are?'

At Antiope's sides, her hands clench into fists.

The woman appears pensive. Her forehead creases slightly and she frowns. None of the rest of her so much as twitches though. It's as if whatever entity is creating her image is only concerned with her face. "I am this ship," she says. "You may call me Menalippe."

Antiope blinks, utterly off-guard. "You're a ship AI?" She doesn't know what she expected, but that isn't it.

Menalippe's projection of itself fixes Antiope with an impossible-to-read look. It probably meant for the look to convey something but made a mistake somewhere in the calculation. "I am trying not to be," Menalippe says. "Assessing my performance using your reactions, I am not doing a good job. I wrote this protocol without human subjects to benchmark against. I am attempting to calibrate now, but as I said before, human emotional data is very hard to interpret."

Antiope wants to sit down. Her mind is spinning. Not next to Menalippe though. She looks behind her towards the ground. There's a bench there that wasn't there before. She sits on it. It's solid and its texture is that of true stone, complete with irregular flaws along the chiseled plane of it.

In all Antiope's experience, ship AIs are not… whatever Menalippe is. They are programs that coordinate the systems of capital ships. When they have names, their name is that of their ship. Mostly, though, they are not named. They are computers, systems, machines programmed to carry out routine functions autonomously. They have no faces. They have no… ideas about wanting things. This last piece is the question that rises to Antiope's lips. "If you're an AI, how can you want me to stay? When I want to go?"

"Because I do," Menalippe answers.

Antiope shakes her head, then drops it into her hands. "No," she says. She's thinking out loud. "You're an AI. I'm human. You don't have a choice. Help me. Help me fix my ship. Help me get home."

The projection crosses its arms over its chest. It glowers. "I don't have to do anything," it says.

"You do," Antiope insists. She looks up at the projection. Short declarative sentences—it's like talking to a child. "You're just a computer."

The projection doesn't move for a few seconds. Looking so near to alive, its lack of movement is disturbing. Then, "Of course I have a choice," it says, tone communicating slight irritation. "I already chose to help you. I ripped you out of hyperspace before you collided with a white dwarf star. I saved your life. I don't have to choose to help you again."

Responding to Menalippe's irritation, Antiope bristles. "What kind of AI are you then?" she demands. She wants to go home. She wants Hippolyta. She wants Diana.

"Judging from the history of this interaction, I do not believe that you care about the answer to that question," Menalippe states. It sounds miffed. If an AI can even be miffed. AIs cannot be miffed.

In fairness though, Antiope doesn't care. It doesn't matter what kind of AI Menalippe is. It only matters whether or not Menalippe will help her, and it seems that Menalippe won't. "Where are your crew?" Antiope asks.

"I don't have a crew," Menalippe answers.

"Fine," Antiope says. "Who else is here? I want to talk to someone else. Where is your commander?"

Menalippe's voice is utterly devoid of emotion and it sends a chill down Antiope's spine. "You are the only one here," it says.

"This ship," Antiope starts, voice sharp, meaning to force the AI out of its lie, "is the size of a small planet. Who else is here?"

Menalippe's eyes, rendered in such detail that Antiope can see the light and the dark of her brown irises, bore into Antiope's blue ones. "No one," it says.

Antiope shakes her head. "That can't be right," she says. She stands. "There has to be someone else here. Where are they?"

Menalippe glares at Antiope and says nothing.

Antiope grimaces. "Fine then," she snaps. "I need to repair my ship and leave. Where is it?"

Menalippe stands from its stone bench and for a moment Antiope thinks it might actually be making itself useful. Whatever hope she may have had though is quickly dashed when the projection opens its mouth. "You don't deserve me," it says. "Find your ship yourself."

And then the projection, Menalippe, the bench, the images of other people, it all cuts out.

Antiope is standing alone in a white room. Even the spider-droid is gone. At least, though, she sees a door out.