* * * * *
The Nightshrike had barely risen two hundred feet above the heads of the embattled giants when, suddenly, everything went quiet. Too quiet! Even the custom-modified engines of the venerable old YT-1000 were no longer sending their tell-tale vibrations to the soles of her captain's feet.
So, he got on the intercom.
"Logunn! Ta'enka'erf! Sit-rep; now!"
No response. So, he repeated his demand.
"Logunn! Ta'enka'erf! Report!!"
Still nothing. So, he looked outside the small transparisteel dome that normally gave him an unfettered view of outer space when he was in the pilot's seat. And, in this instance, he saw all the Imperial TIE fighters...
...frozen in mid-air. Even their laser blasts and proton torpedo launches!
That was when he knew for sure.
"Berna?"
"Thorg Tocneppil! What in the Name of the Force do you think you are doing?!"
She had caught up with him, at last.
The good captain unbuckled his seat belt and climbed down from the topside cockpit. There, at the foot of the ladder, he found her waiting for him. Hands scoldingly placed on her hips.
"Well?" she exclaimed: "I'm waiting!"
He did not answer her, though. Not right away. He wanted to drink in her appearance, first. It had been forty years since they had last been to this planet. From their point of view, anyway. From the view point of the humans called Dan and Steve, it would only seem like twelve months!!
Although, only if the latter were _allowed_ to remember.
The Council of Voyagers had not taken it kindly when Thorg and Berna had handed in their final report on that particular misadventure. Professor Garth (the president of the council), especially, had made it quite clear that it should never have been necessary for the time-traveling duo to play cat-and-mouse with the two Earth men, at all!
"Perhaps," he had added (with deliberate sarcasm): "...we should have sent a more _experienced_ pair of Voyagers to make sure Olds and Fielder had not irreparably damaged that time-line. In any case; the two of you are on forty years probation. Effective immediately! The terms of that probation to include..."
"...each of you working with different partners."
Consequently, a mentally-reprogrammed Berna was sent to a certain American city, on a certain parallel-Earth, where the local crime rate was so bad, it had inspired a certain pair of wealthy individuals to combat it as costumed vigilantes! With Berna assisting them in the belief that she was the local police commissioner's daughter.
Thorg, on the other hand, was sent to a certain galaxy far, far away. There, he became a professional smuggler. And, not just any smuggler. But, one who had the dubious distinction of being the most accident-prone with spaceships! Of course, he, too, had been mind-wiped, so he could be implanted with an elaborate set of false memories. Yet, those memories had eventually been supplanted by the real ones after a close shave, the year before, involving a Dathomirian Night Sister working for a band of Sanyassan space pirates.
And, one of the first things Thorg had recalled was that the forty-year probation had long since ended.
By rights, he should have immediately reported to the prearranged extraction site on the planet Alderaan. Grand Moff Tarkin, however, had made that impossible. So, Thorg resumed his smuggling activities. Nor did he feel any regrets about doing so. For he had to admit to himself that he had grown to like the adrenaline rush of matching wits with the authorities of the Galactic Empire!
Which, in turn, is why he had never gone anywhere near the secondary extraction site prearranged by the Council of Voyagers; the planet Esseles. The so-called "homeworld" of his alter-ego! Still, he had known in his heart that it was only a matter of time before Berna would track him down and confront him.
And, she had proven him right.
"I know you're reluctant to go back to our real line of work," she now remarked: "But, isn't altruistic suicide carrying things just a tad too far?"
tbc
Giantess World
Author's Chapter Notes:
Dedicated to the late, great Yvonne Craig.