"What'll it be Miss?" the bartender leaned on the counter somewhat, his calloused hands wiping the inside of a glass with a towel.

Caldwell blinked, pushing away the stream of information that had been passing behind her eyes, forcing her attention on the bartender.

Field agents hated to use biomechanical technology and with good reason. Agents required more than just a comprehensive list of facts about an area.  For the mind to sort such a large amount of data effectively, a person needed to know intuitively what was important. This came best from living in a society. If that was not possible one tried for the slight advantage of learning the basics the old fashioned way: memorization and subliminal teaching programs.

Further, agents were very likely to spend a great deal of time in some barely charted place on the edge of known technology, where routine maintenance and checkups on equipment were difficult.  It was one thing to futz around in the field with a piece of machinery until you got it working, quite another to mess around with your own brain. So most felt it best to do without, leaving their nodes on standby the majority of the time.

Unfortunately, Caldwell had lost that option. This alternate was far more brutal than she could ever have imagined. One by one teams had disappeared, captured or worse. One or even two teams being careless she could understand, but the string of accidents had put her on edge. The intelligence they'd received hadn't been much use and progress slowed to a crawl. Commodore Braeden seemed more and more harried each time she reported in until finally she had gotten no response to her last report.

Until she awoke to the sound of falling bodies and exploding glass as a cheap vase shattered over the bleeding remains of her team. Flashes. Return shots. Brief whispering and running feet drowned out by pain lancing her shoulder. The next shot, she was sure, would have been her head. Caldwell still didn't remember how she'd gotten out before someone came to investigate, grabbing their tags, shorting out all the equipment she couldn't carry, taking only the essentials.

She was alone. Her commander was probably dead and her instincts lead her to believe someone had compromised the chain of command. Which meant she'd be compromising herself as well as her mission if she reported in before the leak was plugged. With only one week until the automatic retrieval from the station, Caldwell had no intentions of sitting idle.

Urgency leant itself to quick and dirty methods, so now Caldwell was constantly drowning in a sea of data she was hardly used to dealing with. Which was part of the reason she was here. Hopefully she could get her gray matter more familiar with the land and culture while and gather some more useful information at the same time.

Caldwell smiled at the bartender as her mouth ordered what she assumed was an appropriate drink. She hoped she could stomach it.

"You can always tell, you know." The bartender said softly, as he reached behind the counter for a bottle, pouring a portion of the contents into the glass. "Old soldiers."

"What?" Caldwell felt the hair on her neck rise.

His lips quirked, a half smile, but his eyes hinted to something deeper, "You hide it well miss, but there's the faint hint of readiness, the way you scan the room as if you are looking for something threatening."

Caldwell sighed as reached into her jacket pocket, taking out a well worn photo of a young girl. Hair short, blond, and barely framing her face, the girl stood with one hand wrapped around a wrench, her eyes twinkling with laughter as she pointed at the car she had obviously been working on. Reconstructing those antique monstrosities had been a hobby of hers, Caldwell remembered, that one a Shelby Cobra something or other.

"I'm looking for my sister. She ran away. I think this way. Her name is Stephanie."

He looked up from the picture, one eyebrow quirked slightly.

 She's adopted." Caldwell added in response to his skeptical glance at her bronze skin and close cropped brown hair. She didn't have to fake her concern "I'm worried something might have happened to her. We haven't been as close as I'd like..."

"Well miss, the only thing of importance around here is the Preventer's Headquarters. It seems the girl was pretty handy with machines; she might have gone out that way to see if she could find a job fixing their stuff.

'Preventer headquarters.' For a nanosecond Caldwell was lost in a tidal wave of data, statistics about locations, average rainfall, their mission statement, it all washed over her, staggering her mind. The Preventers were a worldwide organization with the vague purpose of stopping another war. They were also only group in this area with the resources and manpower to even attempt what had happened to the station, and certainly her best lead so far.

'Odd this organization didn't count as important in our reports.' Caldwell mused as she exchanged a few more words with the bartender, even managing to take a few sips of the repellent concoction he'd prepared before leaving.

***

Voices.

"Take a look at this. My drunk houseguest was holding it before he collapsed on my doorstep."

"Collapsed?" The woman's tone held a teasing edge.

"I'm serious, Sally."

So that was her name. They had been arguing before, he remembered.

Silence followed by the rustle of something changing hands. 

"That has to be the oddest clock I've ever seen! Look, it's set for two months ago, and the day is wrong too. Wait...what's with the year?"

He remembered and feeling sleep call him, forced himself to remain awake, to listen.

"Do you think it could set off a bomb?"

"Naah...no signaling devices. Maybe it's something religious, I don't know. If it is a detonator, it's like nothing I've ever seen."

"Two three nine seven. It has to mean something."

Too long. How drunk had he been last night, his fingers slurred as he punched numbers?

Fading.

He remembered it all. His work. Gone. His memories had haunted him, sitting in the corner of the docking bay nursing a bottle of Jack Daniels. At the end of the worst day of his life he'd actually listened to the humming of the station and wondered how he'd be able to stand it's lack. His gaze had avoided the stars...too painful. He wondered at how easily his dreams had withered and died without his even noticing.

Time.

Their words grew farther away, distorted.

"Maybe you should ask him."

"I will, but I also want to send this to the lab to be analyzed independently."

Twenty Three Ninety Seven.

'No' he thought desperately, trying to get his mouth to move, his voice to speak.

He needed it back.

It was his only link to space.

***

Silence.

His eyes opened without pain, though he still felt a dull ache in his chest and head. In the bulky shadows he could make out what appeared to be furniture, a table, chairs, some other unidentifiable shapes. Order. Even under the dim light of false dawn it was apparent whoever lived here was meticulous; everything was put away properly, excessively neat, almost as if they too were also a visitor.

Turning his head, he noticed a woman sprawled across a chair. Light brown hair fell over her face obscuring most of her features. Her chest rose and fell quietly, the curve of her body apparent even beneath an oversized robe. He wondered which one she was.

He shifted his weight, attempting to rise.

The woman awoke at once. A gun appeared in her hand as she scanned the room.

He froze for an instant feeling the room lurch as fear and nausea fought for dominance. Trying to raise his arms, he realized only the left would move. The other was cuffed beneath the sofa. Whoever had done it had some experience, no blood was obstructed from reaching his fingers. He hadn't even noticed. Now he hoped it didn't get him killed.

"I'd have put both hands up." He half smiled nervously, barely moving, eyes darting to his bound arm.

"I'm sorry."

Her hair framed her face as their eyes met.  She was young. Younger then had he expected, she could hardly be out of her early twenties though her manner held the air of someone forcibly aged by circumstance.

"Miss?" He spoke quietly, not wanting to startle her.

Her eyes didn't waver as she settled the safety on the gun back into place. Placing the gun on her lap, she didn't remove her hand from the weapon.

"Give me your word." She told him, seeming surprised, as if she had expected to say something else.

"My word?"

"Yes. That you won't harm me or mine." Her eyes unfocused for a second, a mixture of emotion he couldn't quite place passed briefly over her features.

"What is it?" He asked, attempting to hide the nervousness from his voice as he studied the woman in front of him. He didn't know a thing about psychology, but even he could tell that handcuffing a guy to a couch because he'd passed out on someone's doorstep was not very rational. Still, if his memory was to be trusted, he might be further from anything he understood than he could possibly imagine.

"I remember being on the other side of this conversation." She responded after a moment.

"What happened?" he asked without thinking, morbidly curious.

"It took me two hours to pick the lock."

The man's eyebrow's rose, shocked.

 He kept asking me questions." She added at his incredulous look, seeming offended, as though the man had somehow questioned her competence.

"Oh."

Her glance turned inwards again. "I gave him my word afterwards. Then he transferred me to his command."

His command? But there hadn't been any major conflicts in the world for the past ten years. Either she was older than she appeared or...

Or maybe it had actually worked.

He could feel urgency building beneath his skin once more.

"Listen, I couldn't pick a lock with both hands and a manual, alright. You can just have my word." Keeping his voice calm, he smiled, sincere. He had no intention of harming anyone, he was at least certain of that. The sooner he was able to convince her, as close to the edge as she was, the sooner he could figure out how to go home.

She nodded, reached into her pocket, pulled out a key and removed the handcuffs. "I'll show you to the bathroom. You'll probably want a shower."

Thrown again by her complete change in attitude, he rubbed his wrist, shifted his weight and pushed himself up, pausing for a minute to wait for the room to stop swaying. When the nausea eased, he stood and followed her down a wide hallway.