Author's Notes: At long last…

Disclaimer: I do not own Sailor Moon.

Date: 10.3.11

Warning: Language.

C

Subject to Change

Season 3

Chapter Three: Star Maker

C

"System shows irregular gamma emission from red star zero-niner-sigma. Evidence of space stretch evident along given orbit path, indicative of Chaos's new gravity-warpers. Sensors read black matter degradation at 70 percent with an hourly increase of 0.35 percent. If degradation continues at this rate, black hole mass will be reached within 20 hours."

A brief crackle of aura-static, like a tickle in her temporal lobe. "Maker, we read you. Relay the space stretch coordinates to Control and await further orders."

Sailor Star Maker packaged the sensor data scrolling across her mask-screen into a file and converted it to photon-format for control. She sensed more than saw the beam of data as it arced along the trail her aura had left to the Control ship three systems away. Aura-band beaming was a system of her own devising, and permitted long- and short-distance communication in systems that were too primitive to have established beam-band communication – such as this one, a system outside of Magellan that was so small its reptilian inhabitants were barely aware of life outside their planet, much less of how to construct intergalactic communication systems.

The beaming was, for the most part, only accessible to Senshi, who were the only ones with auras powerful enough to leave such a strong trail, but considering that Senshi were the ones undertaking missions most in need of such communication – rescue, reconnaissance, battle – that was hardly a shortcoming. Still, if Maker lived through this war – if it ever ended, Healer would have corrected caustically – she would like to see if there could be a way to expand its applications to non-Senshi. Such an invention might finally bring Kinmoku some good publicity, for once.

Maker shifted, adjusting the diameter of her aura-field, and brought up the sensor data on her mask-screen again. She had been sent to the system because the High Council's sensors had picked up Chaotic activity near its red star. Logic had said it was probably a fluke – there was nothing this tiny system had that any Chaos forces could possibly want. There were a few gas giants composed of halogenic gases too volatile for any practical use (although, Maker thought suddenly, keying a quick memo into her notes as she thought of it, there could be a fluoroscopy application) and a few satellites, none life-supporting, so Chaos could not even harvest any slave labor from them.

Now, however, having seen the system and run a few scans and calculations of her own, Maker understood exactly what interest Chaos had in this system. Somehow, the red star at the system's center was slowly turning into a black hole. Normally, this would not merit High Senshi concern, especially because this one was in an uninhabited system. But this uninhabited system's gravity wells were ancient, deep and tangled, traces of the more powerful star that red-zero-nine-sigma had once been, and, moreover, located at the center of a spiral galaxy. Its collapse into a black hole was over eighty percent likely to initiate a chain reaction of destruction, starting with the closest spiral arm –

Which was where Magellan was located. Magellan, the planet that housed the starship yard where four Council battleships were being built. Four precious, nearly-finished battleships that were sorely needed to punch through the chokehold Pharaoh 90's siege had put on Phi-Chi territory so that the twin planets could continue to ship weapons and soldiers to the Council fronts. If Magellan and its shipyard were sucked into this imminent black hole, the war might be as good as lost.

Static tickled Maker's senses. "Senshi Star Maker, you are to rendezvous with us. Control has sent orders for us to take you to Magellan."

"Acknowledged," Maker said, already following her aura trail back to the small reconnaissance shuttle. She climbing through the depressurized port, feeling the shudder of the shuttle accelerating into hyperspeed even as the port doors shut behind her and air began to hiss back into the port's bay, pressurizing it so that she could lower her aura-shield. Thanks to their ability to generate such a powerful aura field, Senshi were capable of moving through space, even hyperspace, without the temporary space suits non-Senshi required, but not indefinitely, and certainly not without a great deal of energy expenditure.

She shuddered tiredly despite herself as she tore open an aliment bar and began to chew it methodically, her eyes on the hyperspace blur visible through the viewport. Magellan was only a short distance away, close enough to reach by using the sublight engines. The fact that the shuttle was hyperjumping to reach it was proof of how urgently her services were needed to help evacuate the planet. She began to wolf a second bar down, then a third, even though the taste repulsed her, knowing she would need as much energy as possible to maintain her aura-field.

Some sleep would have helped as well, but there was no time. She gave herself a quick-acting stimulant instead, grinding the syringe to powder beneath her boot because the bay had no sharps container and she dared not spare the energy to simply incinerate it with a blast of power.

A low chime from the speaker was her only warning before the shuttle fell out of hyperspeed. Through the viewport Maker saw that they had dropped out just outside the shipyards, the four hulking battleship skeletons there looming up like huge planets themselves. Ships swarmed in the space all around them: ships rising from the surface, ships darting through the battleships' metal skeletons, ships disappearing with winking flashes as they burst into hyperspace, escaping the now-doomed planet.

News traveled fast, she thought, more grimly than wryly, but any further thoughts were cut off by a sudden weight crashing onto her mind.

It was as if the ship's inertial compensator had suddenly malfunctioned, making her feel twenty times heavier than she was. Her knees buckled, hitting the metal floor. This was no technological malfunction, though; she had felt this sort of thing once before, the time that she and the others had gone before the High Council. All those collected huge auras bearing down…

"Ship Kinomoku," came a voice over a hailing aura-channel, audible to Maker because her aura was still linked to the shuttle's communication frequency. "This is Sailor Moon. What's your condition?"

"We – we are undamaged and at sixty-five percent fuel, Your Highness." The captain's voice stumbled slightly, betraying his awe at being addressed by the legendary Moon Princess. "Senshi Maker is–"

"Coming," Maker finished shortly, and burst through the port before anything more could be said.

The Moon Princess's presence unsettled her. The girl had come burning into the public sphere like a meteorite, faster than one could trace and brighter than one could bear to look at. Since her formal introduction by the High Council four years ago, she had streaked from galaxy to galaxy, leaving behind afterimages of benevolence and god-like power. One could hardly turn on a holo-channel without encountering footage of Chaos fortresses she had laid waste to or crowds of bloodied, grateful refugees whose ships she had saved from Chaos attacks. Deliverer, the masses called her, Goddess, and Messiah. Maker did not know how much of it was propaganda created by the Council to make it look like the Senshi were winning the war and how much was genuine, but she knew that all meteorites, no matter how bright, eventually met a fiery end.

She had never been able to look at holos of the somber-looking princess without wondering how soon that end would come.

There was a gleam of bright hair visible in the same vicinity as the tremendous aura Maker sensed. She veered away from it, heading toward one of the other Senshi auras she felt. Darting beneath two speeding cargo ships, she came up on a Senshi she recognized as Sailor Lanai, the High Council warrior who stood beside the princess in every holo-cast. The older woman had her shoulder braced beneath the bottom one of the battleships' hulls, her face oil-streaked and eyes dark-circled, but she spoke briskly, as though they were just in the middle of a simulation.

"Senshi Maker. We've been ordered to transport these three ships to Proxima Cereus."

Maker examined her face closely, thinking that Lanai's brain must have suffered oxygen deprivation if she thought they would possibly be able to transport four satellite-sized ships, that quite obviously all still lacked their hyperspace-drives, ten light-years away. "Beg pardon, Senshi Lanai, but that is impossible."

Lanai tiredly nodded at her shoulder, which was still braced against the ship's dwarfing hull. "Senshi Phi said that by extending our aura-fields to envelop the ships we should be able to transport them through hyperspace with us."

"There is no way for one aura field to extend far enough to encompass even one of these behemoths."

"Not one aura field. Four." Lanai nodded toward the Princess's and other Senshi auras.

Maker looked toward them. "No. It is not possible for separate minds to synchronize the hyperspace jump to the deci-second that will be necessary to keep the ships from being shorn apart –"

"Which is why you will be opening your mind to a mind-meld," Lanai said shortly. "Take your position just aft of the starboard gunner's station, Maker, and get ready."

Stunned, but drilled since her earliest memory to follow orders, Maker flew to the indicated spot. Carefully, she braced her shoulder against a gigantic steel girder. She ground her teeth and forced herself to open her mind, stubbornly keeping her mind on mundane, impersonal thoughts by noting that this part of the ship's hull was almost finished, the expensive weaponry and gunner's stations already installed.

It was the last private thought she had. At that moment, three other minds rushed into hers. It was like being at the ocean shore, sitting on the sand right where the tide came up, and feeling sand and shells rush against her, spilling inside her fuku; she recoiled against it–

Maker! came Lanai's sharp mind-voice. And something else, a gentler soothing, like cleaner water shielding her from the detritus…

But there was no time to focus on that, for then Lanai's voice was counting down, and Maker had to shove her aura out, out, out, and it felt terrible, like someone grabbing hold of her hair and yanking it as hard as they could, felt her eyes watering –

One! and they surged forward into the mottled colors of hyperspace.

Nearly as quickly as it began, it was over. The cold blue light of Proxima Cereus's dwarf star washed over them, making the battleship's metal hull gleam icily.

But Maker was trembling as though from shimmer-stim withdrawal. Her hands shook, her mouth was slack. Hot mucus pooled in her mouth and nose. Lanai, a few meters away, was not in much better shape; she clung to the hull, retching, and her own sick would have floated into her face if not for the long-haired Senshi who flew up behind her and pulled her away. It was the Moon Princess.

She was very pale but did not look in anywhere near as bad a shape as them. "We can't do that again."

"We have to. Three more times," said a voice from behind Maker. She turned shakily to see Sailor Lethe wiping her green-tinged mouth. The Sailor Lethe. What sort of celebrity team-up had she been pulled into?

"No," said the princess. Her eyes went to her side, and for the first time Maker realized that there was someone behind her, a male, dressed all in dark clothing stitched with tiny gems, who had been all but invisible against the starscape behind her. "Sapphire thinks he has a way to capture the black hole."

"No," Lanai said immediately. "We have our orders, we will follow them."

"Even if we move the battleships, the people of Magellan are still going to die!" said the princess. "If we can't stop the black hole, then we should at least be trying to evacuate them instead of wasting all our energy on these empty ships!"

"We have our orders," Lanai repeated. She sounded as if she were reciting a speech she had memorized. "If these ships are destroyed, we will lose the potential to save many more planets than just Magellan."

The princess's fists curled at her sides. "And if we find a way to stop black holes we'll be able to save many more planets than just saving the battleships would."

"As usual, you seem to be having a problem understanding how reality works, Princess," said Lethe silkily. "There is no way to stop black holes, much as there is no way to bring back to life children who never existed."

Something dark lunged through the princess's colorless eyes. For a moment, the empty vacuum seemed to become substantial, heavy with coppery bloodlust. Maker's hands shook harder, dark spots traveling across her vision.

Then the weight disappeared.

So had the princess.

"Fool!" Lethe hissed. But before she had a chance to say anything more, the princess had reappeared, and with her, not one or two but all three of the other battleships.

"There," she panted, eyes poison-lit. Then she vanished again, this time with the man Sapphire.

Lethe glared at the ships floating silently in the starscape with a hatred that could only come of jealousy. It tinted her eyes dark like a bruise. "Galaxia will have her head for that."

Lanai released a sound like a sigh. "We have to go after her."

"We were told to report to Entinas when we were done transporting the ship," Lethe retorted.

"What about the evacuees?" Maker heard herself say.

Slowly, clearing saying something she did not agree with but had to say, Lanai said, "Magellan's importance is as a shipyard. With that objective taken care of, we must go to the next highest priority. Entinas is under attack by one of Chaos's ice demons."

Entinas was an agricultural planet whose crops fed a whole swathe of sectors, so Maker knew choosing it over Magellan was a tactical decision. She did not disagree with the soundness of the decision. It was just that…

"Damn it, Serena," said Lanai suddenly, with a harshly expelled breath, as though giving in to an unwelcome decision. She slammed her wings open.

"Don't – !" Lethe began sharply, but Lanai had already disappeared into hyperspace, streaking in the direction of Magellan instead of Entinas.

Lethe cast Maker a commanding look. Maker immediately obeyed it, diving into hyperspace in pursuit of Lanai –

Only to be slammed right back out of hyperspeed by a blinding white light.

As abruptly as it had become visible, the white light disappeared, revealing the red star, with none of the swirling in its gas giants that the black hole's gravitational pull had caused. Maker whipped out her sensors, scanning the vicinity, and saw that the pull of the gravitational well had disappeared. But there was a new energy source in the system…

"There," said Lanai sharply, and Maker looked up to see the princess and her male companion hovering near the third planet. Their hands were clasped, and the princess's eyes were glowing bright silver; the man's dark, dark blue. As Maker watched, the princess's wings began to droop, and the glow of her eyes began to fade.

Then they rolled back in her head, and she crumpled.