Chloe Parker Week 2 Part 3: Interlude

Tess woke up on pristine ice. The cliff caught the sun near Enceladus's south pole, and it let her drag herself out of the fog of travel between worlds on the most powerful mirror in the solar system.

Tess gathered herself into a form suited for the conditions of the moon. The links between travel through mirrors, choosing her form, and waking up were always hard for her to explain to anyone but her sister, Melody. Ariadne had done tests and proven that Tess was conscious during this phase, but neither of them knew what was doing her thinking for her when she lacked a brain. Quantum physics had been suggested, but Tess rejected the claim on the basis that it explained nothing.

Tess became a metal tube. The body only needed to break the modest gravity of Enceladus and keep Tess alive. The fuel was metallic tritium. Radioactive, unstable, but perfect when you only needed it to exist for a few minutes. Tess launched from the moon's south pole and into the orbit of Saturn.

The timeline designated Phi-54 was a normal case of clandestine intervention by Audience operatives. The stability of the last thirty years stood out. Daedalus Black had established a small power base in the collapsing Soviet Union, using it to control the coups that would have otherwise triggered a nuclear war with the United States. Observation had been handed to his sister-in-law, who wrote reports that no one had reason to read.

Tess felt little emotion as her rocket-body entered Saturn's orbit. The heat and force of her escape tickled what senses she kept active around her reinforced brain, but nothing was out of place. She had made the trip several times before.

The tritium was entirely depleted within minutes as Tess blasted it with hydrogen gas, protium instead of tritium. The exhaust that resulted was hot, but not hot enough to destroy the chamber holding the fuel. Much of the tube was shed in the process, vaporizing tungsten and titanium that Tess could manifest without cost. A telescope that happened to be watching would have good reason to argue that an alien spacecraft was near Saturn, but no instruments of the type that would notice were focused on the matter.

The return trip was longer than the one leaving had been. Escaping Saturn's atmosphere had been simple, while returning to it safely required a long ballistic drop followed by aerobraking. She could have done it faster if she had been willing to work harder, but she was close enough to Atlas to make contact with communication relays, so she had no reason to be bored.

"You're late," Ariadne's voice said, smug. "How was the rock?"

"Angry mobs, locked rooms where scared men pretend they have a plan, concerningly cheerful future stepchildren who asked if they could be turned into giant snakes. Jasmine asked after you." Tess reported, "How's the rape camp?"

"People have finally started snapping at each other, so our ratings might go up. Natalia started taking the pills Vivian gave her. Alan's cracked just enough that we might be able to get some work started. Nothing else has unexpectedly caught fire."

"You might survive this job, A." Tess laughed over the communicator line.

"Meh. Dying would be good for ratings. I think a sexy dracolich might appeal to the monster girl fandom better than the giant snake." Ariadne sounded thoughtful.

"Ariadne, you know I adore and trust you. Trust me, a dracolich will not be widely seen as sexy." Tess sighed dramatically.

"Oh, c'mon! There has to be some form that is appealing as well as practical." Ariadne sulked with equal drama. "It's a hot mic, by the way."

"Of course it is." Tess would have rolled her eyes if they weren't embedded in a reinforced wall of tungsten alloy inside a falling javelin. "Joseph Smith was a con artist, the Armenian genocide happened, Jesus didn't come back after being executed, the king of Thailand sucks, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were equally bad, Muhammad and Donald Trump both-" Tess would have gone on if Ariadne didn't cut the mic, giggling.

Tess groaned. No one else worth talking to had a radio on or near Saturn Phi-54. These would be two long days.