EPILOG.

Dan Ridgeway stood quietly as he watched the final entry of the Ascension logbook. The odd perspective and organic camera motion reminded him of a telepresence.

"Gunderson is dead." The narrator uttered the words with a note of detachment, as if Gunderson's fate was somehow less than tragic. "We tried everything, but the burns were too severe. There was just nothing alive left to build on."

An arm reached forward from beneath the camera and grasped a marker. The hand scrawled a thick, black line across a grim face on the faded group photo, the second figure to be obscured in such a manner. Only ten members remained. Mechanical fingers snapped open with a soft clatter as the narrator tossed the picture on the table.

"Seven hundred and eighty years," The voice muttered, thin and weak. "So long, so d.a.m.n long."

His view fell to crumpled papers scattered across a desk. Stained drawings lay everywhere, diagrams covered with scientific notation.

"Consolidation is now complete. Colonists and crew were extracted from cryogenic stasis. His voice broke, the hoa.r.s.e noise barely understandable. "They didn't recognize us anymore. Some died--" he sobbed once "from fright."

The camera bobbed slowly to the sound of a mournful sigh, and the voice resumed. "Unable to sustain the bodies intact, we have preserved samples of each genetic. What is left," he stumbled as though trying to avoid the phrase, "will sustain us as we carry on our vigil. We've been so hungry for so long that even this has lost its abhorrence. We have our duty, we must go on.

The view shifted momentarily, odd sc.r.a.ping sounds audible in the background. The camera looked down at the floor for several moments and trembled. A thick, wet sniff preceded another deep sigh before the monologue resumed.

"Where candidates had viable EEGs, we downloaded cerebral engrams in hopes of salvaging memories, personalities, the things that make us--" he stalled, unable for a long moment to choke out the word, "human."

The camera perspective rose oddly, then rotated in a lurching fashion to a rectangular framework of dark metal on the floor. The complex cube shimmered with a pale emerald light.

"It's come down to this."

The camera view leaned forward over the cube and fixed on one of thousands of gla.s.s cylinders. "A handful of cells," he muttered, "a few strands of DNA. The tiniest spark of life frozen away against the ravages of time. But hope burns in a spark, hope that one day someone will find us. We will stand our guard until then."

A blurred shape moved across the bottom of the rack. The image shifted further out of focus for a moment before resolving into clarity. The face that stared up from the polished metal plate was barely recognizable as human. The few remaining patches of hair were little more than stubble on islands of jawline. A lone eye peered down from the cadaverous face.

"They told us we might live forever," he mumbled absently. A mechanical hand rose and gently touched the mottled expanse of pale skin, wrinkled and spotted by the centuries.

"Oh G.o.d," he sobbed, "please not forever."

The image broke into static and Dan Ridgeway removed the headset, gently placing it on the polished granite table. Although seven months had pa.s.sed since the RAT Squad had been hauled from the depth of the Balrathan cave, he had carefully avoided the final entry until now.

Ridgeway looked at the five Marines who stood at the far end of the table. Clad not in armor but razor-creased dress blues, the RATs stood quietly, sharing the poignant mix of emotions that the event represented. Ridgeway picked up his hat and walked to the wide balcony that overlooked the courtyard. The first glimmer of sunrise broke over the far mountains, bringing a magical stillness to the lush valley.

The Eridani Governor stood at the podium below, addressing the crowd in reverent tones. Stretched out in rows before the stage, nearly six thousand people sat in matching shirts, their very existence a marvel of genetic resurrection. They were surrounded by a crowd easily four times the size. Banners fluttered in the growing sunlight.

"They did it." Monster said softly as he stared at the ranks.

Ridgeway only nodded, knowing full well that Monster wasn't speaking about the a.s.sembled host in their star-spangled shirts. He spoke of the faces portrayed on huge banners across the front of the stage, black bands on the corner of each frame. The Twelve, the guardians who saw them through.

No mention was made of the depths of suffering they endured in centuries of service. They were remembered instead as smiling faces filled with hope and promise, as pillars of duty and strength. They were remembered as heroes, and their story would be the stuff of legends.

The six Marines snapped to a formal salute as a lone bugler played taps while twelve U.S. Flags were raised behind the stage. Just as the truth behind the Twelve had been contained, so had any hint of the Marine's involvement. The RAT Squad remained as it had begun, a carefully guarded secret.

As the national anthem filled the dawn air, Ridgeway quietly savored that secrecy, having no desire to become the focus of the media frenzy that followed the Ascension's discovery and the return of her long lost crew.

Ridgeway lowered his right hand as the anthem's last notes faded away, flexing the once shattered appendage with painless ease. Balratha had changed him in so many ways.

The RATs were only beginning to understand the odd awareness they now had of one another. Their tendency to give answers to questions yet unasked had pa.s.sed from unnerving to commonplace. They healed at an incredible rate, their endurance multiplied. Under an exhaustive battery of tests they had proven stronger by almost every physical metric.

And yet, Ridgeway knew that his own most profound change could not be timed or measured. The weight lifted from his soul had not been moved by physical might, but by acceptance. He looked across the throng of cheering civilians who hugged and cried below. Acceptance, yes, he thought, and perhaps at last a measure of forgiveness.

Fireworks erupted across the sky and Ridgeway caught his own reflection in the window. Amid the ranks and rows of color that covered his chest, a platinum star glimmered for the first time in the rising sunlight.