The charge nurse is getting nosy. I saw her through the window talking to Doctor Ashra when she went to get a dermal regenerator, throwing glances across the sickbay to my biobed. Her fine whip-like tail waived back and forth as she hissed through her tiny needle-like canines. I could almost hear her, deep rolling purrs informing the Deltan medical officer that I was back with another series of bruises. Reminding her that only a few days ago it was a fractured elbow and, before that, a dislocated shoulder. She thinks she knows best, that she can see an unhealthy grief in me. I can see it in the way she’s looking at me, her pupils floating in a sea of amber pity, looking out from her dark fur in misdirected sympathy. ‘Sssuch a ssshame, ssso angry’ I can hear her hiss. She feels sorry for the wrong person. They all do.

Everyone is obsessed with the loss of the symbiote, they’re all out there wringing their hands and trading maudlin sighs about the loss of a stupid little slug, barely 3 lives in the making. The commission even released a separate obituary on the newscasts, announcing the loss of the Tyll symbiote, a ‘grievous loss to the Trill people’. I punched the bulkhead when i saw it, that was the first of the injuries and the first of many bulkheads. They barely mentioned Helena other than to say she was the host at the time. They didn’t mention her service jacket or her achievements; they didn’t mention her laugh or her wicked sense of humour; they didn’t mention her perfume or the warmth of her hugs. They didn’t even call her Commander, she’d worked a lifetime for that, she deserved to be recognised as much as the thing in her belly.

Don’t get me wrong, losing the symbiote is a shame but that thing wasn’t the woman I had come to admire, to love. It wasn’t the woman who showed me the wonders of the universe, who had skated clouds and danced through asteroids with me, who had laughed as we buzzed villages and bulkheads, flexing our wings with expert grace. It wasn’t the woman who had saved me on Titan, who had reached into the wreck of my Valkyrie and lifted me out, held me close against the wind chill till the SAR birds found us. It was just a pale shadow to the goddess who had led me into battle, whose mast would forever hold my colours.

Helena was my sister, the symbiote was just along for the ride.

And it feels like nobody cares that she’s gone.

“Are you shitting me?”

“I’m not sure what that means.” Helena smiled as she lifted her finger from the switch that had instructed the aerodrome’s metal shutters to roll away.

“It’s something my aunt used to say.” Merope clarified as she stepped forward reverently taking in the elegant shape of the antique plane sitting on the tarmac, its dark grey skin shining in the noon sun that reached through the cloudless blue sky.

“I presume it means something good?” Helena’s smile grew even wider as she watched the young woman creep forward, her eyes the size of dish plates.

Merope’s hand hovered over the plane tentatively, fearful to touch it less he hand passed straight through. “Where did you even find it? It must be almost 500 years old.” She let her hand alight upon the surface of the fuselage, feeling the warm metal beneath her long fingers. Her stomach jumped in excitement at the feel of the artefact.

“I’ve got lots of friends across all four quadrants.” Helena took a few steps to join her at the side of the plane, leaning gently on the round body. “A trader friend mentioned they had seen one on Crinnick prime during a visit, a project that someone had never finished. She was in a pretty bad state when I found her. Sat in the corner of an old house in the hills, don’t think she’s left the ground for several hundred years.” She rubbed the thin metal hull reassuringly. “Had her moved back here to Earth a few years ago, been working on her every time I get leave.”

Merope slowly moved along the plane, allowing her fingers to bounce over rivets and screws, each perfectly formed before they stumbled on a large jagged line in the metal. It was long repaired by forgotten hands and masked slightly beneath the paint job but clearly visible by the change in patina. “What’s this?”

“An old scar, no doubt from some adventure or another. It felt wrong to get rid of it.” Helena tapped the narrowing fuselage where she leant, taking in the elegant form of the antique. “Like us all she’s got her fair share of tales to tell.”

Merope turned back, her attention suddenly drawn back to the woman who stood only a few metres away, falling into her reverent contemplation in the presence of this elder of flight. Helena’s gaze reached through the craft, her attention fixed on some distant sky; a million lightyears away, lost in a memory of her own, or of someone else’s.

“It’s stunning boss. Some really nice work.”

“Getting it to fly hasn’t been easy at all.”

“No. Way.” Merope’s stomach jumped again in excitement. “It flies?”

“In theory. Everything is working, structural integrity is sound and I managed to get the engine working last time I was here.” Helena’s attention returned to the young woman, who seemed to vibrate in excitement at the implied offer.

“Combustion?” Merope nodded to the large propeller and engine array at the front of the plane.

Helena nodded, “I needed to replicate a lot of parts and synthesising the fuel involved a couple more favours.” Silence fell on the pair, the distant swaying of the open fields that surrounded the small private aerodrome the only sound for miles. Helena waited, seeing Merope buzz with visible anticipation. “I thought you might like to test drive her.”

Merope turned back slack-jawed to see a proffered padded leather helmet, two large goggles seated on its brow, the small chin strap fluttering in the gentle wind at the mouth of the aerodrome.

“But you did all the work, you should get to be the first,” Merope whispered.

Helena threw her head back in a laugh before pushing the helmet into the young woman’s hands. “I remember when you first applied to join Heliades, I asked you to tell me your favourite flying moment?”

“I remember.”

“You said, flying over the cornfields of your grandparent’s farm in Kansas. The feeling that there wasn’t an edge, that the sky went on forever.”

“I did.”

Helena lifted her arm and pointed confidently towards the south, her finger indicating beyond a small hillock in the distance. “Well Kansas is about four hours that way, a sharp right turn and we can be over those fields in time for the sunset.”

Merope’s eyes began filling with unbidden tears as she accepted the leather helmet, lifting it to her head and sliding it down over her short pointed ears. “I didn’t think you would remember that.”

“I will always…” Helena smiled, reaching up to wipe away an errant tear that had rolled down Merope’s dark cheek, “…always remember.”

The two women shared a quiet giggle and a sniffly hug, their love lingering in the gently wafting breeze, carrying their contented sighs on gentle gusts across the tarmac, as neither pulled away.

The dark green of the forest landscape beneath the trio of craft gave way suddenly to endless open fields of swaying grains and corn, as the flight wing cruised at supersonic speeds over the open plains of Helena’s childhood home. Endless golden fields of delicate stalks reached onwards towards the horizon as the mountainous terrain fell away and in all directions there was flat open space and blue skies. Endless, open, free.

The tapered arrowhead of the shuttlecraft that was the focus of their cortege at the lead began to decelerate, slowing to a more respectfully sedate speed as a complex of brick buildings came into sight in the distance; a small group of figures waiting in it’s large brick clad square, their teary eyes raised towards transport. In the twin Valkyries, weeping pilots pulled on their controls, fighting every instinct as they are forced to leave their commander behind. As the pair bank away, their last duty to their sister finally complete, Merope set her eyes on the horizon and dreams of boundless blue skies.