Chapter 1

It was days like this that made York miss Carolina. The captain was late for the daily meeting for the third time that week, and no one knew why. Well, the doctors did, but they weren't talking. He had half-jokingly suggested to Florida that they force the information out of someone, but 4-7-niner had overheard them and put an end to that. Carolina would have figured out how to get the information, most likely without force. Carolina would have them out in public; making a statement and making sure all the remnants of Project Freelancer were destroyed. It wasn't like they didn't have the capability; the Captain had just insisted that her ship become a safe haven instead. Larger than the Mother of Invention, or any other ship York had heard of, the good ship Necessity was indeed a sight to behold. Obviously alien in origin, it was unlike anything found during the Great War or the following years. It had taken York's breath away when he first saw it only a few months ago, and while he didn't think it was being used to its full potential, it had yet to cease to both surprise and impress him.

North was discussing the needed repairs to the hangar bays with the pilots and repairmen when Captain Cooper strode into the room. He immediately stood, relinquishing her chair. She waved him off.

"I need you to finish out this meeting. When it's over, send the head pilots and all freelancers to my ready room." There was silence for a beat.

"What?" It was York.

"Her ready room?" "A private meeting?" "She has a what room?" "What's going on?" came the sudden explosion of questions from the gathered people and A.I.

"Those of you whom North gathers will find out this morning. The rest of you will have to wait until the lunchtime announcements. Keep your ears peeled. I have to go," declared the Captain, turning to leave the room.

"Beth..." questioned North, both perplexed and concerned, "is everything OK?"

"Will be," was her only response.

Half an hour later, after a hurried conclusion to the daily meeting, and some directions from F.I.L.S.S.(read: Phyllis), the head pilots and freelancers gathered in the Captain's previously unmentioned 'Ready Room'. To their surprise, it was bright and humming with machinery. Three fourths of the walls were covered in displays, the other quarter was a viewport. There was a hologram table in the middle of the room – round, smooth, and much larger than the one on Mother of Invention. A dozen chairs sat around it.

"Have a seat!" called the captain from her position by one of the large screens placed symmetrically around the room. The Freelancers: Agents North, York, Florida, and Connecticut (aka CT), took one side. The head pilots of the transport (4-7-niner and 2-5-sic) and fighter crews (Harriet, Todd, and Skip) took the other.

The captain finished issuing orders to an AI computer - not the usual one, F.I.L.S.S.; but an unknown one, Ravyen. Then she and Jacksie, the captain's personal A.I., called the start of the meeting.

The Captain, a 20-something of middling height, had her hair cut military short and was dressed in her usual loose T-shirt and jeans. Jacksie's hologram was human-sized, something York hadn't seen before. Normally A.I. holograms were small enough to sit on your shoulder. He had yet to really figure out where Jacksie had come from - all he knew was that she was part of something Project Freelancer had gotten hold of, and the captain had been a Freelancer hopeful until that same something, the Phoenix suit, had caused her to leave.

"Alright," called Captain Cooper, "I'm sure you're all wondering what in the world is going on. Allow me to start from the beginning.

"As you know, I was a recruit of Project Freelancer's in the early days. I was close to achieving the rank of Freelancer, destined to be designated Agent Ohio. In a series of experiments with our researchers, we discovered something that would change that," she said, waving a picture onto one of the screens hanging on the walls. A familiar but alien-looking suit of charcoal and ash appeared.

"The Phoenix suit. An ancient alien artifact dug up a few months before the Great War. We had no idea what it did, but when the war started Project Freelancer was granted research rights. When the scientists couldn't open or activate it, they requested a fighter to put in it, as some previously discovered alien tech was designed to only be worn by someone who was 'worthy'. I, along with many other freelancer hopefuls, volunteered to put it on. I was selected by the scientists because... I was the right size to fit in it."

Another slide popped up, detailing an x-ray of Captain Cooper's upper chest, shoulders, neck, and head. A small orange blip pulsed at the base of her skull.

"Putting it on a warrior activated it, all right. They put the suit on me, and it took a little under 10 seconds for the suit to fire up. It was old, and not calibrated for humans, so it didn't fit right; neither the sounds I heard nor the writing I saw meant anything to me. The suit took a DNA sample from me, injected me with a chip, and started hacking all local databases, trying to figure out where it was and who had it. Then, half an hour later, it shut back down. We couldn't get anything more out of it for the rest of the day.

"But boy, did I dream that night. The race who had created it had left the suit for future races as a way of preserving their history. The first night was background on the creators of the suit, the Naphtali. History and culture. It was an intense cranial download, very painful. Most of the following morning was spent by the doctors trying to figure out what was on the chip the suit had injected in me, and how it was communicating to my brain and the ship. By mid-afternoon, the doctors decided I couldn't take much more that day, told me to go back to my room, and get some rest. I didn't. I figured if I wasn't thinking as much, my brain could process the information more easily. I did some warm-ups in the training rooms, went a couple rounds with Agent Utah, and then went to bed. And I got more downloads."

At this point, she paced, slightly agitated. "This time, the suit spoke to me of the invaders, their destroyers; the Covenant Elite, ironically enough. Back then, the Covenant Elite were much less civilized, and much, much stronger. Funny what 20,000 years of civilian life will do to a race. Unfortunately, at the time, it meant the destruction of the Naphtali. That night, the suit showed me the strategies used by both sides, as well as a battle-by-battle tour of the war. It was a terrible war. A great many planets were wiped off the map. When I made my way to the research center the next day, they decided to put me back in the suit. Upon donning it, I realized it had translated everything to English Standard. This was very exciting to the researchers, but every time they tried to record inside the helmet, it would go black. They gave up on that and started just having me describe it. All. Day."

Another wave of the hand, and video of her in the suit showed up on screen. "That night, I didn't dream. At all. The next day, the scientists decided to give it a short field test. This involved me walking, running, and testing the flexibility of the suit. They decided to put it through a short round of hand-to-hand after lunch. Agent Florida helped us out with that. At first, the suit responded slowly, making any movement hard, but as the day progressed, it seemed to anticipate my movements, making the hand-to-hand very easy. The Counselor decided we were pushing it too hard, and by mid-afternoon, we were done for the day. I chose to head back to the training room. But something had changed."

She gestured to the table. "Those of you with A.I. already know what it's like to have another person in your head. I didn't. At first I thought it was memories of the Naphtalian fighting styles coming more easily to mind; but after the second round, I realized it was too specific, too pertinent to what I was doing. I decided the discovery could wait until the next day, and continued with my evening. That night, I dreamed again, but it wasn't like the other dreams, where everything was third person. This was first person. A little ways into the dream, I realized that not only did I know I was dreaming, I was in control of myself. This was Jacksie, introducing herself from the chip the suit had implanted in me."

This time, it was Jacksie who waved at the screen. "I walked her through more specific parts of my history - the AI research I was designed for, successes and failures at reproducing AI without new coding; as well as the suit's - various wars, the horrendous acts it had been used for, and the types of people that had used both myself and the suit. Later, the suit and I came into the possession of what you humans would consider extraterrestrial monks, and they melded us into a new, hopefully better unit, and preserved it where humanity eventually found it. That night, I tried to impress upon Beth how badly I didn't want to fall into the wrong hands. She didn't grasp most of what I was saying that night, being disoriented by the dreamscape, so we eventually decided we would call it a night and try talking about it during the day, when she would be more grounded and aware."

Beth nodded to Jacksie and retook the floor. "The next morning, I requested a day off. The scientists decided they had plenty of information to go through, and granted my request. I spent the morning training, still intently working towards earning my Freelancer status. After lunch, I went to my room and waited. It took a little while to figure out how to communicate with Jacksie when I was awake. She was distinctly female, but didn't have a name. After initiating contact and getting a steady grip on communicating with each other, I started going through the female names that I knew. Jacksie was my little sister's name, and for some reason, she liked it.

"As you may recall, one of the first things the suit did was try and figure out where it was and who had it. The IT department didn't think the suit had traveled very far, but they were wrong. For one, it was Jacksie doing the hacking, not the suit. And she had managed to get every scrap of information stored on the Mother of Invention. She didn't like what she had found. Even back then, the Director was planning on getting his hands on what you all know as the Sarcophagus."

A picture of the familiar artifact appeared onscreen. "It wasn't something the insurgents had made, as was the official story, but was instead another artifact from the same time period as Jacksie. It wasn't something she had been aware of, but from what she could tell, it was designed to heal broken minds by taking away that which was broken. But that wasn't how the Director was planning on using it. He wanted to use it to splinter the Alpha A.I., over and over and over again, and make the A.I. fragments that you Freelancers would come to use. This would drive the Alpha insane. Over the course of the afternoon, she showed me enough evidence to convince me of this several times over. By nighttime, we realized we would have to do something. But neither of us knew what. Her information-gathering and logic routines were mostly intact, but none of her creative or strategic routines had awoken yet. She knew that she was missing large parts of herself, and had no idea how to get them back."

The large screens went blank, drawing attention back to the Captain. "So the next day, when I went back to the labs, I started lying. Not wanting them to know what was really going on, I made it look like the suit was recharging, that we weren't going to get any use out of it that day. So instead I spent the day making up answers to questions. This was the sixth day since the suit had chosen me. After dinner, I didn't go to the training rooms, nor to the poker game that was being held. I went to my quarters and filled Jacksie in on the day's events, and we decided that the sooner we got out, the better. Jacksie had spent the day prepping the suit for exposure to space, and was confident that we would be able to get away from the Mother of Invention. Where we would go from there, though, neither of us knew. We decided to wait until early morning to make a move, and I went to sleep, letting Jacksie pick my brain for escape possibilities via the dreamscape. By 0230, we had a route of escape. We would stow away on the first outbound ship, take it to Mars, and hide out while she tried to put herself together."

The screens lit back up, one showing a Pelican ship, another screen the route from Mother of Invention to Mars. "Amazingly enough, that plan worked. I had worked with the pilot, 4-7-niner, before and she owed me a favour. Since she was making a quick supply trip, I asked if I could tag along, to get away from the press of people on the Mother of Invention for a couple of hours. She agreed, stating that it would be nice to have the company on a lonely supply run. I knew the hard part would be getting her most of the way back to Mother of Invention before she realized I was missing."

There was laughter from the gathered pilots, who knew how hard it was to slip anything past 4-7-niner. She had earned her place as Head Fighter Pilot since her days as a transport pilot.

The captain continued. "Thankfully, she got into a heated argument with the dock manager about the speed her ship was being tended to. When she gets upset about how her ship is being treated, she tends to be rather single-minded."

This brought more chuckles from the crowd, including from 4-7-niner.

"In conversations over the last couple years since we met back up, I found out she hadn't realized I was gone until several hours later, when a public announcement was made, asking for my location."

"To be fair, you didn't really talk much on the way out; I just figured you were being quiet," 4-7-niner interjected.

"It would be an easy mistake to make," agreed Florida, bringing murmurs of agreement from the freelancers.

"Actually, it's almost easy to forget that you've missed several council meetings lately," commented York. "When are we going to get to that?"

"Be nice," soothed North, "None of us really know what's going on."

"Yeah, and I'm tired of it," shot York.

Captain Cooper cleared her throat. "York, I'm getting there. I have a lot of information to get through if this is all going to make sense. Do you want to know everything or don't you?"

"Yeah, I do. So hurry up," he snapped.

She sighed and nodded to Jacksie, who took the floor again, this time with more confidence.

"Over the next year, Beth and I were on the run. When we felt it was safe to stay in one place for a little while, I would go into a sort of hibernation, trying to piece myself together. After the first six months of having to split my attention between running and rebuilding, I picked up a beacon from a now-familiar ship, the Necessity." She waved to the screens. A picture of the Necessity appeared on one and the previous location of the ship on the next. "It took us another six months to get there; we were still hiding from the military, and it was out in unknown space. We ended up settling for taking a ship to the nearest planet, Chorus. Our next challenge was getting from Chorus to the ship." With another signal to the computer, a third screen lit up with a schematic of Chorus, and a fourth with the relative locations of the planet and the Necessity.

At this point, the Captain stepped forward again. "Jacksie went back into hibernation, and I went about finding a job at a local shipyard. I had helped 4-7-niner with repairs on her ship before, and soon had work. I traded work for an old ship, and then all the parts to make it work again. Five months later, when it was flyable, I woke Jacksie.

"We knew it was time to leave civilization behind and head that way. We filed a flight plan, letting Chorus Federal know we were taking the old ship for a test flight. We didn't want to be tracked so we acquired some explosives, fixed up an old jetpack, and rewired the on-board computer to take over once we had left the atmosphere. When we hit the detonation button, it did just enough damage to open the hull and make the ship crash. We escaped in the suit via the newly opened hole in the hull and went on our way.

"You know most of the rest of the story. We spent six months getting the ship's life support and other systems back to operating well enough that I didn't need the suit full time, and then another year getting the ship mobile. We had no idea what we were doing and no spare parts, but we managed.

"At that point, two years after I left the Project, we decided to check on the outside world. Upon getting communications online, we learned of the Freelancers who were rebelling. CT" the Captain nodded in the Freelancer's direction "was the first to go AWOL and join the insurgents, as you know. By the time I had gotten one of the smaller transport ships up and running, it was almost too late. It took me over a month to get to her, and when I found her, she was dying. I convinced the leader of the insurgents to let me take her with me, and had her back to the Necessity in only a few days. We had gotten some of the medical facilities online, and miraculously, it was enough. She spent the first two months in the hospital wing, and pulled through.

"Having her and the information in her possession changed everything. The situation had gotten more out of hand than I had feared. The Director had been making sure that if he fell, no one in the Project could go home. Within two weeks of her arrival, she and I were monitoring all Project Freelancer communications and preparing to come to the rescue of everyone and anyone we could. The pilot, repair, and medical crews were our first targets, as we assumed the others could take care of themselves. As Project Freelancer started getting investigated by the military's oversight committee, we knew it was a good time for folks to start disappearing. Some of them did so themselves, others we helped out. Within a month we had over a hundred crewmen living in uncharted territory on the surface of Chorus. With their help, we were able to send out teams to rescue the rest. CT headed up these operations, leaving myself and Jacksie to start integrating our new – and old – friends onto our ship.

"Towards the end of the fourth month, we started gathering Freelancers and A.I. Which brings us to a time frame familiar to all of you. Over the last year and a half, we've healed wounds, fixed relationships, learned more about ourselves, and become a community. When we finished gathering as many of ourselves as we could, there was still much that no one understood about our ship or my suit. Jacksie was, and is, still missing parts of herself. They are hidden somewhere in my suit, in parts hidden by age and dust. With the help of all of you, we have learned how to fly the Necessity, make use of almost all her rooms, power up her weapons, use her medical facilities, and fly all the cargo, transport, and fighter ships that she holds. On a more personal note, I've learned how to fight and fly in the suit, with some success. But the functions of the suit don't stop at fighting and flying; it also heals, reads my thoughts via the chip, and, as of the last couple months, changes my DNA. Which brings us to the subject of my missed council meetings. Questions?"

There was a disquieting silence in the room.