The first thing that she saw when she regained consciousness was the face of the nurse. It was a pool of colour in an otherwise sterile world. The nurse's lips moved. Sounds came from their mouth. It took some time before the sounds became words and the words became sensible.

"Hey! Welcome back! Do you know where you are?"

She shook her head and tried to repeat the words she had just heard, but her mouth refused to cooperate.

"Alright. Do you know your name?"

Again, she tried to reply. This time it was easier. "I'm ... ." Her thoughts were like smoke. She concentrated. "I am Lieutenant Terasawa. Kaori Terasawa. My service number is - ." The words tumbled from her mouth.

The nurse stopped her. "Good. That's good."

"Where am I?"

The nurse's expression changed, became concerned. "Alright. Now listen carefully. You were in an accident. We found your trauma pod a year ago. You were in there for ... ."

Memories coalesced from the smoke in Kaori's mind. She screamed.

There was the usual feeling of disconnection as Lieutenant Terasawa'ss returned to the limits of the physical. While she had been plugged into the systems of her craft, everything she saw, everything she felt, everything she experienced had been through her neural interface. She had been one with her craft. Now, bereft of the data overlays, the light-speed reflexes, the world seemed dull and flat.

She waited for the canopy to be undogged and for the hangar crew to lift her out of the cockpit.

"How was the flight, sir?" The crew chief always asked the same thing after every sortie.

"Outstanding, chief." Kaori bowed her head to make it easier for him to remove her helmet. "My compliments to your team on the work they've done. The new compensator arrangement worked perfectly. The ride was as smooth as silk."

The crew chief allowed himself the luxury of a smile. "I'll be sure to pass that on, sir. In the meantime, the CAG has asked that you report to him. As soon as you've freshened up, of course."

"Thank you." Kaori waited for the hangar crew to wheel her smartframe over. It was a construct, humanoid in shape, with myomer muscles and foamed metal bones. Interface ports at the shoulders, hips and neck of the frame mated precisely with the neutral interfaces at the corresponding places on Kaori's body. Once she was inside it, the frame's electronics 'shook hands' with Kaori's nervous system, then adapted its form in response to her desires. Lieutenant Terasawa rolled towards the ready room.

"You have a visitor," the nurse announced.

Kaori glanced in the nurse's direction. "I don't want any visitors." Then she lay back on her bad, her gaze fixed on the sterile, white ceiling above.

"He says he knows you."

"Then he's a liar." Everyone that Kaori had known, had cared about, was long dead.

The nurse tried again. "He said he was here to make you an offer."

"Not interested." Kaori rolled onto her side, so that she was facing the wall beside her bed. The various biosensors trapped under her protested, but she ignored them.

"Oh, I think you might be." It was a deep, masculine voice.

Kaori was curious. She shifted in her bed to look towards the door of her room. It was an effort to do so. Her body had suffered as a result of her time in the trauma pod. Every movement hurt and drained her energy.

In the doorway behind the nurse was a man in a smartframe. The metal and plastic of the frame couldn't hide the crisply-pressed uniform of its occupant. He rolled forward on polymer tyres and extended his right hand. "I'm Commander Harwood. How are you?"

Kaori hesitated, unsure as to what to say. "I'm doing alright."

"Really?" Harwood raised his eyebrows in disbelief.

"Well, what do you expect from someone who spent the last half-century drifting half-dead on long orbit somewhere between Terra and Mars?"

Her visitor laughed. "Kaori - tell me. How would you like to fly again?"

Kaori rolled into the CAG's office. As one of the senior officers on board the carrier, he rated a full cubby to himself. It had all the conveniences: a bunk, storage space, private hygiene unit and a direct datalink to the ship's mainframe. "Sir." Kaori waited for the CAG to look up from the terminal. "Lieutenant Terasawa reporting as ordered."

The CAG acknowledged her salute. "Thank you, lieutenant. Please. Make yourself comfortable."

Kaori's smartframe responded, seemingly relaxing around her. "May I ask what this is about?"

"Of course." The CAG picked up a a data slate and threw it towards Terasawa. She caught it easily. "There's an opportunity I thought you should know about. It's purely voluntary, of course, but I think you are the right person for it."

Kaori thumbed the slate to activate its screen, and scrolled through the open file it was displaying. "Is this a new recruit?"

"A possible recruit. I thought that they could benefit from a personal touch."

"And by personal, you meant - ?"

"Look." The CAG shifted in his seat so he was looking straight into the lieutenant's eyes. "I'm not going to lie to you. This person," he pointed at the slate in Kaori's hand, "has been through their own personal hell. Maybe someone who has been through the same things - "

"It's never the same," Kaori interrupted her superior officer. "Sir."

"Alright. Someone who has had similar experiences." The CAG corrected himself. Maybe someone who has experienced similar things might be able to persuade this person that they would be just as welcome here."

"You mean like someone persuaded me?"

"Like Harwood did? Exactly." The CAG took a deep breath. "Well, lieutenant? Do you think you are up to that?"

Kaori Terasawa examined herself. Her body still showed the effects of nearly fifty years in hibernation, the barest spark of life maintained by a horde of nanomachines. Although the surgeons had done their best to excise the tumours from her flesh and to correct the insults of time, there will still scars and blemishes that marked where the cancers had grown and metastasised. There was no way to restore her withered limbs to what they had once been. They would always be a reminder of the time she had spent on the knife-edge of death, the trauma pod's systems pushed to the limits of their performance.

What the surgeons had done was to weave a pattern of silver threads through her body. These new nerves joined her central nervous system to the neural interface nodes on her neck, hips and shoulders. Through these nodes, Kaori would be able to connect with the systems of her spacecraft; to control it as if it was her; to truly fly.

She remembered the first time the cybernetician had activated her neural interfaces. She had been placed in a calibration rig, a resonant imaging scanner surrounding her. Fine cables had been run from the plugs in her body to an unseen control desk. At first she had lain there, her body numb. Then there had been a feeling of dislocation, a sensation of nausea and -

The pleasure! Oh God in Heaven! The pleasure! For the first time, Kaori truly felt. It lifted her up on a wave of sensation, before crashing over her, drowning her in liquid ecstasy.

She must have cried out.

The voice of the technician-in-charge entered her consciousness, brought there through the interfaces. "Sorry 'bout that. We're just trying to dial the system in. Do you want to keep going, or do you need a minute?"

Kaori took a moment to respond. "Don't you dare stop!"

"You have a visitor," the nurse announced to the sole occupant of the hospital room.

The young man in the bed didn't bother to turn around. Instead, he kept his face turned towards the sterile tiles of the wall beside him. "I don't want any visitors."

The nurse glanced back over her shoulder at Kaori and shrugged. "Sorry," she mouthed.

Kaori waved the nurse aside. "I'm here to make you an offer, Michael." She rolled her smartframe to the bed and extended her right hand.

The young man - Michael - tried to roll over, to face his visitor. Kaori watched as he struggled to control his errant limbs, to impose his will upon his body. Finally, Michael was facing towards her.

"What makes you think I'd be interested in any offer you could make me?"

Kaori remembered the words that had persuaded her. Although she had rehearsed them time and time again, this was different. "Michael, tell me, how would you like to fly? Again?"