Brittany Griffin as Sadie Hart

“It’s been a while since I stayed up all night craming” Sadie thought to herself as she flipped through the personal files on her desk. Her head was still spinning, She had just been getting used to her position aboard Tintagel Station when orders had come fast and furious down the pipes and she had found herself reassigned.

She’d liked it aboard Tintagel. The station was only five or so years old, a true global effort by the Alliance. It had nearly every distinct culture on Terra represented, families… a true multicultural community. She’d landed there straight out of the academy and hit the ground running. She knew every person on the Station, from its grizzled and experienced Captain who oversaw everything with a grandfatherly retirement, to the civilian researchers, to the crisp young marines, all the way down to the new triplets just born to the Harerra’s last week. She’d made great strides in helping them all come together to build a community, every culture and every individual important to the whole… and it was still growing… There were new immigrants expected within the month, and the marine post was to be expanding in order to provide protection for the entire system… She’d even had hopes that one day there might even be a small Oubliette, and she could watch first hand how the Ghost’s distinct subculture was evolving and how it interacted with all the other Terran cultures…

But instead she’d been yanked out of the assignment of her dreams.

She continued to flip through the files, trying to absorb as much information as possible about her new crew. You would think that less than a dozen people wouldn’t be much of a challenge after being the Cultural Officer for an entire space station… but Sadie had the sinking feeling that she was getting tossed in way over her head.

“Captian Cutthroat Crane, herself… didn’t they name a planet or something after her?” And the rest of the crew… Three Veterans of the colonial wars, two still enlisted, their military jackets full of indication that they had taken the unification of the armed forces badly. A new private who had a more incident reports in his record than she’d seen on some veterans… Civilian doctor, University Professor… a project manager for Isley?

It was, frankly, the most chaotic combination of people she’d ever seen on one ship. In fact the only thing they all shared in common was the fact that they were all the Best. Best Doctor, Best Pilot, Best Researchers, even the Best Captain, depending upon which set of rumors you chose to believe… Obviously the mission they had been tasked with was more than your ordinary research jaunt, which would be why upper brass was concerned with the crew working together smoothly despite the interesting mix. Her orders had made that clear enough at least.

Vetrans, Cutthroat Captians, and Isley… Oh my.

She was going to be eaten alive, but at least one young junior officer shouldn’t immediately be viewed as a threat to this bunch, Cultural Officer or no… Which is likely something upper brass was also quite aware of.

Really, she would have begged off the assignment if it hadn’t been for one thing.

The crew had a Ghost.

“Oh my goddess, a Ghost…” Sadie had a hard time containing her excitement. She’d been fascinated with Ghosts for almost as long as she could remember, and had in fact done her final thesis in the Academy on the unique pressures of their abilities and how those pressures informed and evolved their unique subculture, and the political and social ramifications and difficulties when it came to integration and interaction between the Oubliettes and the rest of Terran culture, and the GAF. It was as close as anyone was going to get to studying cultures beyond the Terran norm. One might even say it was as close as anyone was going to get to studying a non-human culture, although she would never be so disrespectful. Frankly, the Oubliettes were the most fascinating development in culture since humans first became smart enough to harness fire… But she’d never actually met a Ghost before.

And Nova had spent several years in an Oubliette, maybe if she was lucky she could get a first hand account of what life there was like.

As for the rest… well, she really was going to have her work cut out for her.

~Two Weeks After the End of the Campaign~

“How do I look?”

The officer regarded her critically a moment, then nodded. “Like a million bucks, Heart.”

Jennie Heart beamed, then went back to fussing with her jacket. Not a pleat could be out of place, not a single pip could be unpolished. Not today. “I can’t tell you how appreciative I am for this opportunity,” she told the colonel. “I’ve never spoken before a crowd as large as this. I’m still a little surprised that my request was granted.”

“Well, Private, you’ve got a hell of a spirit, so it’s no surprise to me.” The colonel smiled down at her in a fatherly way. “You’re just what the GAF needs right now. We’re all feeling a bit lost; there’re a lot a soldiers who feel let down. Unneeded.”

“They can rest assured that the Global Armed Forces very much needs them,” Jennie chirped stoutly. “And I intend to tell them so.”

“Go get ‘em, tiger,” the colonel chuckled.

Jennie flashed him a bedazzling smile, nodded, and walked from the wings onto the stage.

It was makeshift, but sturdy. She took a few strides out toward the podium, then started to slow. Out before her was a sea of soldiers, faces watching, the quiet jostle of movement like a ripple among the black-jackets. Her smile almost faltered. Almost. But then she squared her shoulders, made her smile brighter and walked confidently to the podium.

“My fellow soldiers,” she began. “It is with immeasurable pride that I come here to speak with you today. On such a momentous occasion, as our world become unified under the…the…” her carefully memorized speech drizzled out of her mind, cast away by what her eyes were taking in, and by the realization that slithered over her, into her brain.

They were too quiet.

And they were all watching her. All of them. Every single one. There were no wetback privates smoking in the back of the sprawling auditorium. No bored lieutenants doing sudoku on their PDAs. No one dozing, whispering about her legs, snickering. They were all standing. Watching. Watching her. And there was an undercurrent of menace.

Jennie swallowed, took in a breath, and forced her voice to remain clear and steady as she picked up where she had left off. “…under the, erm, under the new Global Administration, we find the human race taking a step forward in our evolution. Together we –..”

“U.S.A., never say die!”

The cry came from the back left of the auditorium. Jennie tensed.

“…Together, we usher in a new age of -…”

“America forever!” This voiced and replied to with a sudden volley of cheers.

Jennie gripped the podium. “Ladies and gentlemen, fellow soldiers, I ask that you please -…”

“Go to Hell!” shouted a soldier. “Go fuck yourself!”

“The Global Administration is the advance in human history our world has desperately needed!” Jennie’s voice was louder now, passion ringing with the words, the planned speech forgotten. She should have kept her cool, but these people…they didn’t understand. “Can’t you all see that? We were headed for extinction, brought on by our own selfish, destructive tendencies. If we hadn’t -…”

The shouts came in quick succession now.

“FUCK the Global Administration!”

“God Bless America!”

“We’re Americans; we’ll always be Americans!”

“You bitch! Get the fuck off the stage!”

“America will never die!”

“U.S.A!”

“AMERICA!”

And all Hell broke loose.

They rushed the stage. They came at her. She was in dress uniform; she didn’t have her sidearm. The podium was knocked over. The whole room was full of wild yelling, a frenzy of soldiers who had had everything they’d been trained to believe in and fight for stripped away from them. Five hundred men and women with nothing left to lose. And her words had been the catalyst for all their rage, their hopelessness, their confusion to come to the surface.

There was a brief instant when time seemed to slow, to stand still. Then, they were on her. She felt a pain in her leg, another at her side. She fought back, but…there were so many of them. Someone kicked her, hard, in the shoulder. She knew she must be on the floor now. There was blood in her mouth. A boot came down on her wrist and she heard a sickening snapping sound.

Then, there were gunshots. Three off them. One. Two. Three. Bang! Bang! Bang! Clapping through the air. And, even amidst the yelling, the fighting, the noise rang out. But it wasn’t the gunfire that stopped the onslaught. It was the voice.

“Soldiers! Atten-hut!”

And that voice brooked no opposition. Even Jennie, battered on the ground, felt a tug to try and get to her feet. The mass of people receded, away from her. There was a swell of movement as the soldiers snapped-to. Granted, slower than they should have, but they did it. Jennie lifted her bleeding head, pulled herself onto her side to see what had happened. When she saw who had issued the command, things made a bit more sense. It was Captain Avery Crane.

She was standing in the middle of the crowd, who were all now saluting smartly. In her hand was the gun she had fired into the air. Her face was stony; her eyes traveled left and then right, looking over the group of rioters. The soldiers stood stock-still. That was the effect this woman.

Wordlessly, she walked over to the platform and looked down at Jennie, who was breathing shallowly and fighting to remain conscious. “Just lay still, soldier,” Avery said, and Jennie knew she’d said it dozens of times to others on battlefields before. “We’ll get you out of here.”

Already, medics were rushing onto the stage. Crane straightened, watching Jennie with a sort of grave pity. Jennie was lifted onto a stretcher. Before she was doped, she saw Crane turn, getting ready to address the still unmoving soldiers. Jennie never got to hear what Avery said to them, slipping into sedation before the words were uttered. Later, though, in the hospital, she heard that at least a third of those men broke down weeping after Crane was done talking to them. It was a small satisfaction, and not enough to assuage the pain of losing the use of her right hand, a left lung that would never function to full capacity again, and a blod clot in the brain that slowed her cognitive processes.

Jennie was honorably discharged from service because of her handicap, offered a generous pension and a promise of a sterling recommendation for her sister, Sadie, when she enlisted almost a decade later and carried with her the same ideals her older sister had tried to impart on a military that simply wasn't ready to receive them.

And now Sadie has a good dose of hero worship for Captian Crane. This should be fun.

The room was dark, the only light coming from the window which looked out over the skyline. a sillouette sat there, watching the moving twinkling incandecent light which was Sydney at night.

"Jeanie?" Sadie moved into the room, hands searching for the lightsource which had sat on a sidetable off to the side last time she had come to visit. "What are you doing sitting in the dark?"

"I can't see the stars" Her older sister's voice drifted back to her. The petulant tone cut, but Sadie understood the sentiment. When she was little Sadie remembered going with Jeanie on the monorail out to the outback... where the bowl of the sky was huge and star-filled. Jeanie had helped her to learn her numbers by counting them, teaching her all of their names, how you could tell the difference between a star and a sattalite, and telling her how she was going to go fly amongst them when she was old enough... But Jeanie hadn't been star-side for ten years.

"That's cause of the light pollution" She said, calmly, hand encountering the lightsource and seeking for the switch. "Gregory tells me you've been doing well"

"Greg is a liar and I should fire him"

"You can't fire your Husband, sweetie, that's not how it works." Her hand finally found the switch and turned the light on, illuminating the bedroom. Jeanie sat by the window in comfortable chair, her brown hair a bit mussed and a sour expression on her face as she turned to look at her little sister. Sadie quelled the wave of sadness at the sight and forced a happy unconcerend smile.

"Divorce him then, same thing"

"Your hair is a mess, here..." Sadie ignored the comment and picked up a brush from the nightstand and moved to stand behind Jeanie's chair, smoothing the tangles. Jeanie grummbled but let her. The mood would pass, it always did. Ever since Jeanie had come back, beaten and broken, her moods had been uncertian and erratic. The doctors said it was the fault of the headwounds she'd sustained, cognitive damage from a clot. For days, sometimes weeks, Jeanie would be fine... her old sweet self, if a bit distracted... but then her mood would shift. On the downswing Jeanie would be sour, irrational, paranoid...she would say things that she didn't mean. There was no sense in getting upseat over it... There was nothing for it but to smile and remain calm and wait for the tides to shift agian.

Saide tried not to worry about it, but Gregory had said that the moodswings were becoming more fuequent and erratic. He would know... They had been engaged before Jeanie left for her tour of duty, and he had stayed by her side throughout it all. Some people would call him a saint for that, he just shruged and said he loved her.

"How is Liza?" Sadie asked, hoping to distract Jeanie with talk of her daughter.

"Fine... not here... Dad's got her for a few days"

Sadie nodded. When Jeanie was in a mood Liza often went to stay with her grandfather, or an aunt or uncle and thier family. No eight year old was going to understand why her mother...

"Where have you been? It's been a while" Jeanie interupted the thought.

"About a year and a half," Sadie agreed "Since I left to take the assignment aboard Tintagel Station."

"You should visit more"

"I know... I should..." Sadie soothed, knowing how impossible that was. She and Jeanie had once been close, very close. Jeanie was the oldest and Sadie the youngest of all their siblings, with two sets of twins in between. Being single births, they'd gravitated to each other... and Jeanie being nine years older... she'd been like another mother to her. But Jeanie's... incident... had changed things. It had hit Sadie very hard and she'd had to learn quickly how to deal with her sweet, hopeful, energetic older sister all of a sudden not being herself... she'd comforted herself with following in Jeanie's footsteps... but those footsteps had taken her farther and farther away...

"They let you have a vacation?" Jeanie asked, her voice mellowing a little under the steady pull of the brush through her hair.

"Reassignment... Out of Alahambra... Since I was going to be near Terra anyway I figured I would stop by home and catch up with everyone."

"Still trying to make everyone get along?"

"Still a cultural officer, yes"

"You know I tried that once..." Jeanie's voice got tight

"I know." Sadie deftly cut the line of conversation off before it could spiral Jeanie's mood darker. "I'll be serving with Captian Crane you know."

"Captian Crane? I... I think I know her from somewhere."

"Yup, I'll be sure to tell her hello for you." And Thank You...

Jeanie sighed and stired a bit in her chair "I miss the stars, Sadie..." The longing in her voice almost cracked tears through the calm happy mask Sadie was wearing.

"Well, tell you what... I'll be here a few days, so when your feeling better why don't we take the monorail out to red rock?"

"I'd... like that" Jeanie pulled away from the brush, standing. She smiled a little and Sadie breathed an internal sigh of relief at the improvement. Jeanie took the brush away from her and put it back in it's place on the night stand, considering it a moment before turning back with a pained expression on her face. "thank you for coming to visit. I know it's... difficult"

Sadie opened her mouth to protest, but Jeanie cut her off. "You know I'm proud of you right? Even when I complain about you not being here, I'm proud of you."

Sadie sniffed and nodded crossing to give her big sister a hug. Jeanie wrapped her in her arms like she used to do when Sadie was a toddler and sighed.

Side Post: Blogathon Start

Not cannon, just posting here for posterity
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Alahambra Station
In Orbit over Terra
Standard Year 2436

Sadie sighed and ducked her head under the scalding hot water cascading from the shower head. One good thing about the strange quasi-diplomatic elite status she'd been operating under since the Valdosta's return from the Andromeda Galaxy was that she got assigned her own bunk in the GAF barracks... the small room complete with it's own head... so she didn't have to fight for hot water with a dozen other enlisted.

The hot water was nice, but the privacy was too... and the alone time even if it was just to shower and catch a change of clothing. Ever since the crew of Valdosta had returned, with an alien intelligence sharing their ship and minds... She'd been beyond busy. She was the only member of the diplomatic corps of the military on the ship... and while they had thought that there might be the possibility of meeting intelligent alien life on the special mission they had been sent off to complete... not a one of them had expected that they would find a gate to another galaxy... or that they would have such intimate contact with one benevolent alien race requesting help to fight another...

Many people in the GAF brass doubted Emerald's intentions... and she had been talking herself blue in the face trying to convince them that when Emerald shared her body, and spoke with her mouth, that her intentions were exactly what she claimed they were. Sadie would know, she'd been 'hosting' Emerald almost constantly since negotiations with the GAF and Global Admin had started. It was an interesting sensation, having another presence in her head, sitting back while that presence directed her body. It would have been disconcerting if Emerald wasn't such a... Joy. Emerald was idealistic, intelligent, compassionate... there wasn't a malevolent bone in her non-existent body... and sharing her consciousness bolstered Sadie's own ideals and hopes... and let her forget for a time the other incident that had happened on that mission...

She could hear the rest of the crew, even though she couldn't see them with her eyes blindfolded... and that made it worse. Her imagination filled in what her eyes couldn't see... the rhythmic slapping of flesh on flesh accompanied by her captain's grunts of pain... Mr. Gulls low moans as he bleed out from the gunshot wound in his leg... the sizzling crackle of a neural disruptor being used on Mr. Lincoln and Lt. Hazard... Nova's hitched gasp of shared pain as her husband's screams fell silent..."Give me the codes to unlock the ship" the voice demanded agian, his russian accent thick with hatred and scorn but his voice calm and in control as he dug his fingers into the cauterized burn on her shoulder where he had applied the arc welder to her flesh. "Hart, Sadie M. Corporal. GAF 2436392..."

Sadie shook herself away from the pain of the memory, rinsing the shampoo lather out of her hair. Not so much from the physical pain, she'd handled the torture better than anyone had expected of the green recruit... even herself, but from the emotional pain it had caused. It was one thing to intellectually be aware that there were still people out there who hurt and maimed and killed for no good reason, that not everyone accepted the new global administration or looked forward to the bright future that all Terrans could work towards together, that there were humans still capable of such anger and barbarism... but quite another to experience it. It had tested her ideals sorely, and she hadn't even begun to deal with the trauma it had caused. If they hadn't met Emerald, had a successful mission after it all, then she would probably be worse off.

Sadie shut off the water and stepped out of the shower unit, reaching for a towel to wring the extra moisture from her hair. Her handgun was laying on the counter, within easy reach. She wasn't technically supposed to carry a piece on the station, but with the right paperwork and a nod from the brass she'd been able to swing a special dispensation. No one was sure if the wrong person might find out about Emerald and try to assassinate her while she was sharing the body of a human host... and aside from that Sadie just hadn't felt comfortable not having a weapon to hand ever since...

"Give me the codes!" "Hart, Sadie M. Corporal. GAF 2436392..."

She wrapped the towel snugly around her midsection and picked up the sidearm, felling better for the cool press of the metallic grip in her palm. She slid open the door to the head and stepped into her bunk...

And felt a tug.

"Shen do yao?" She cursed in Mandarin Chinese... she usually preferred Chinese for cussing, it was much more expressive.

The tug came again, more insistent this time. It left Sadie reeling and feeling disoriented. A dozen thoughts tumbled through her head... was she sick? Was it hypersleep disorder? Was it a side effect of hosting Emerald for so long? Had a malevolent Crimson followed them back from Andromeda and decided to attack her while she was temporarily without Emerald? Her mind spun through them all, as calm as she had been during the torture... She was apparently good in a crisis, even though afterwards...

The tug started again, and this time the feeling steadily increased. She had the distinct impression that she was being pulled... though to where she couldn't say...

"...and me in a towel, holding a handgun..."

She spied her rucksack in it's cubby at the foot of the bed, still partially packed with the old beat up boots she'd inherited from her sister casually tossed on top. She reached out and laid her other hand on it's strap just as there was a poping noise and a disconcerting feeling of being pulled through her navel... and then...

She was getting so frustrated that she actually considered, for all of half a minute, shooting the brass interviewing her.

“No Sir, I did not question the Admiral’s orders. I was far to busy relaying her instructions to the rest of the fleet.”

“And what were those orders?” The one in the middle asked, for at least the fourth time this particular interview.

“She confirmed Captain Sato’s control of the fleet in our absence, and rendezvous coordinates were confirmed” she replied, the exact same answer she’d every time the question had been asked.

The man harrumphed and consulted his notes, consulting quietly with the other two with him while she stewed in her tight buttoned and pressed dress uniform. Not the same two as last time… the only constant in the steady round of interviews was ‘Ambassador’ Grauchen. She wasn’t sure of his exact rank, but he was one of the ranking members of the diplomatic core brass. Each time the other two in the interview had changed, admirals and generals…all grilling her as if they expected her story to change under enough pressure.

“This is my GAF,” she thought bitterly. She’d wanted to hug Captain Crane when she’d put her foot down, said that they would work with the GAF brass… trust them… She’d gone out of her way to thank her afterwards. Sadie wanted to believe that every ideal she had about the GAF she had chosen to serve was well founded, she didn’t want to give Denton’s suppositions credit…

But that had been weeks ago. First it had been the debriefings, which were rough but not too bad, except for the fact that they had all been kept separated despite whatever strings the Captain had said she’d pull to keep them together. Then she had been specifically ordered to ‘remain available’ for further debriefings... that’s when these ‘interviews’ had started. She didn’t know exactly what Gretchousen was expecting to get out of her, but she had some ideas.

Sadie was idealistic, not stupid. She knew her original assignment to the Valdosta had been a sop to Isley for what happened to Carter the ship’s first mission out. She hadn’t been highly placed in the diplomatic corps; she hadn’t been ‘the best’ at anything like the rest of the crew was. She suspected that her election for the post had actually had more to do with the fact that she was young, that she was unlikely to be perceived as threatening by the Valdosta crew, and that her track record proved an unswerving loyalty to the GAF. Of course she was now starting to realize that, to the brass that had assigned her at least, this also meant malleable, compliant, and, above all, controllable.

She knew what these interviews were about. They thought she was the weak link in the crew. They thought that if they applied enough pressure to her that she would fold, be the good little loyal diplocorps officer they wanted her to be. They would then have the eyes and ears on the Valdosta they wanted, and all the information they needed, twisted from her lips in nice little soundbites to justify whatever it was they were plotting.

Clearly, they hadn’t expected her to be quite so stubbornly opposed to this. Being on the Valdosta had changed her. She was still idealistic… she believed to her core all the fine words which made up the GAF philosophy, but she was no longer naïve. After everything they had been through in the last two years… she now knew what loyalty and ideals really meant.

She wasn’t going to tell them anything but the absolute truth, and if they thought that these ‘interviews’ were going to change that, they had another thing coming.

The three stopped conferring, Grauchen shuffling his notes.

“Sergeant, let us return to…”

And the questions started again.

Sadie blinked at the crystal flower as it delicately tossed rainbows across the note tied to it’s stem. A date, Jim Glory was asking her out to dinner and a visit to a classic car museum.

Sadie sighed and put the flower on a shelf in her tiny bunk, before sending him a wav in response. She wasn’t lying exactly when she said she was busy, but if she’d wanted too she could have taken a later shuttle, rearranged some things and made time. For some reason though it just didn’t seem worth the effort., even though she knew on some level that she just didn’t want to make the effort because she was depressed.

It hardly mattered anyway, every time it ended the same. Her love life had already become a joke amongst the crew, she was that bad at it. And then she’d gone and put the cap on it with Doyle. Really, how do you date when the response to the inevitable ex question was “My last relationship was sort of more like a time-traveling bootycall with this guy who lived centuries ago...”

Besides, with everything else going on... the reassignment, the war, the disillusionment and the loneliness... She didn’t want any more complications in her life. She wanted to catch her shuttle down to Sydney and take Jeanie out to Red Rock like she’d promised and forget for a couple of days that she’d ever wanted to join the GAF and make a difference.

Of course she never got uncomplicated when she wanted it.

She was in the middle of packing her rucksack when Jim just showed up at the door, grinning and threatening to start talking to her neighbors if she didn’t at least come to dinner with him. Considering her assigned bunk was in the middle of military housing and her neighbors were other marines, that was just enough to get her out of the door with a couple of scowls and an insistence that she only had an hour cause she wasn’t going to miss the shuttle or let him fly her down to Terra like he’d offered.

The sushi place was only a couple of decks up, but in a civilian section of Alhambra that she didn’t enter often. Jim knew the owners and before she knew it they were set up in a quiet booth partially concealed from the rest of the restaurant by a rice paper screen.

The man had an infuriating ability to ask just the right questions to get her to talk. Asking her about why she’d joined the GAF, drawing out of her what had happened to her sister, getting her to share childhood stories. She had a horrid time trying to do the same, accidentally putting her foot in it by asking about his family, when it turns out he was an orphan.

She was surprised though when he reached out to take her hand. First a surge of something... nothing untoward just... it came as a shock how little human touch she’d had recently... retreating into herself, barely touching anyone or allowing herself to be touched.

His skin was warm.

And right on the heels of that thought came the depression again. The certainty that it wasn’t worth the effort, wasn’t worth getting hurt or disappointed again. That this were already too complicated to allow for any more complications.

Though she did squeeze his hand briefly in reassurance before she quickly hid hers in her lap under the table. No reason for him to feel bad because she was messed up.