It was the middle of the night, and Emma lay in bed, watching the video on her screen for what seemed like the millionth time in the last few days. She knew exactly what it was now, and what her sister was telling her. The message came from an intermediary, a corporate executive named Jason, who had been in contact with her a few times over the last month or two about potentially being a pilot in space with Lena, but this was a giant step in accomplishing that. It also carried the implication that she would no longer be a part of the Space Force but would be living in space with her sister instead.

"Is this for real?" Viv asked from over her shoulder.

"Yeah," she whispered back, letting the flight instructions sink into her brain. Honestly, she loved to fly, and the ship that Lena was on looked like the kind of thing that she could live in forever. It was gorgeous, and like something right out of a movie set. "Do you feel like going into space with me?"

"Seriously? Like the people that went out to Uranus?"

That was a big topic on the base lately. Their commander had them going over any information they could find on the ships, be it on long range cameras when they were docked at the PASSpace station, to from radar when they were in range. There were other teams looking over the damaged ships in orbit too, but she wasn't privy to that information, it was all about the working ones for her. She also didn't like the way they were talking about the crews up there.

Lena and Emma had never mentioned being related before. They had nothing to do with each other professionally, having been in different branches of the military, and with different last names because of their different fathers, so nobody ever suspected it. The love of flight and their innate skills were things that many pilots had or aspired to, but it was nothing that would be thought of in comparing them to one another. They didn't even look too much alike, with Emma having taken more after her father, while Lena looked more like her late father.

At times like these, she was thankful not to be known as a relative, because there was a lot of crazy talk about going up and attacking the ships, and that seemed foolish from the start. What had they even done? They had given the Earth a lot of what they found, and now that wasn't enough? It sounded like the leaders on the planet were just being greedy considering her sister's mission had taken all the risks and done all the work. She just laughed at the people claiming to be prophets too, that seemed like such a bullshit thing that she didn't even pay them any mind, and she was thankful that Viv felt the same way.

But how would she like to leave the Earth behind and live up in the stars with her sister?

"Yeah, just like that. If I wanted to go up there on one of those ships, would you go with me?" She turned to look Viv in the eye at that. Normally, Emma took charge in bed, and Viv loved it. But it was one thing for her to tell her baby girl what she was going to do to her that night, and an entirely different thing to ask her to leave the planet. This wasn't something she could do any more than hope for, and she hoped quite a bit. And what would she do about her sweet little Bree? She'd have to call Child Protective Services at a minimum. It wasn't like she could take her with her! Could she? She was terrified while waiting for Viv's answer, until her lovely girlfriend nodded.

"We're in the damned Space Force, and you're asking if I want to go to space? Seriously? You know I would! But you're talking about going up on one of their ships, right? Wouldn't we be deserting to do that?"

"I know, I know. We both took an oath. But look at what's happening! How many times have you heard people talking about going up there and taking over their ships, or attacking them for no reason? I'm not talking about idle crap in the mess hall either, I'm talking about the people we report to." Emma shook her head sadly. "I didn't sign up for that shit. The government is just jealous and wants to have the fancy car, you know? That company hasn't done anything wrong."

"Do you really think we could go?"

Emma pointed at the screen. "See the hot blonde? The one you're gonna keep away from cuz she is a major horn dog? That's my sister. Well, half-sister."

"You're joking!" Viv said while comparing the two women. "I think I'm good. I can tell you must be related because you're never satisfied either!"

"Yeah, and you love it," Emma growled, rolling over and pinning Viv to the bed. She had just grabbed the younger woman's ass when her phone rang with the tone of the base alert text at the same time that Viv's did the same.

"Fuck!" They said in a chorus as they scrambled out of the bed.

Luckily, Emma had chosen her apartment well, and they were on the base in under twenty minutes. Viv was doing the preflight inspection on Emma's plane while Emma got her flight suit on, and then they met by her old F-35F Lightning. It was an aging bird, though the latest model did have upgraded avionics, but Emma still loved it.

"How does she look?" Emma asked Viv when she got out there. "Any issues?" Emma had fallen for the girl the first day she'd met after Viv had been assigned as her ground crew chief. Emma took care of the plane in the air, and Viv while it was on the ground. Emma always gave the plane a once over before she flew it anyway, but every pilot did out of habit. She trusted Viv with her life every time she flew, and she knew she was in good hands with the girl she'd quickly grown to love.

"Nah, you're all good. Go get it BB." Viv said with a smirk. It took all of Emma's willpower to not kiss that smirk right off her face, but she knew that she couldn't do that while on the base.

"I'll be back as soon as I can, then I'm gonna take you home and make you remember who the BB is." Emma quickly scaled the ladder to the cockpit, slapping the Big Bad insignia that was her callsign, and settled herself into the seat, making sure she was all buckled in nice and tight. Once that was done, she started to go through her precheck routine, while listening to the chatter over the radio.

She didn't pick her own call sign, no pilot ever does, and for a while she didn't like it. It was a joke, really. With a last name of Wolfe, her fellow pilots went with Big Bad for a nickname, thinking it would be fun to haze the female pilot. Until she kicked their asses in every training mission they flew. After that, she kind of liked the call sign. If anything, she used it to pick on them. Because when one of the other female pilots asked once Emma had topped the flight class, who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolfe, Emma simply replied, 'everyone'.

After that, she wore it with pride, because fuck those other guys.

Of course, Viv just called her BB, because she thought it was cute, and Emma was fine with that. Just like Emma kept reminding her that in the fairy tale, the hunter was supposed to kill the wolf, not let it fuck her all night long, but Viv preferred their retelling of the classic. So, when they were in bed, the Big Bad always turned the table on her Hunter and ate her right up. The mere thought of that had her salivating, and she shook her head to clear it. She couldn't be airborne while soaking her panties!

"Raptor flight 21, spool them up. Runway 2, heading north! We have a bandit airborne at high speed." Came the call.

"Copy that," Emma replied. She looked out the cockpit window, seeing Viv backing away with a thumbs up. She gave her one in return, and then fired up the engines, quickly taxiing towards the runway. "Muscle, you take my wing. You good to go?" Muscle was another pilot, a skinny guy who was trying to bulk up to fit the call sign he'd been given but was also a steady pilot that Emma liked to work with.

"I've got your six, no worries." Muscle also had a soft voice, at odds with the moniker, and always got a chuckle from Emma.

Just a few moments later, they were rocketing down the runway, the g force slamming her back into the seat as she let out a whoop of excitement, pulling back on the stick to get airborne. She still had no idea what the target was, where it was going, or where it was now, but at least she was in a position to do something if it was called for.

"Raptor flight 21, head bearing 270, max speed. Target approaching Los Angeles." Emma frowned at the new directions. Approaching LA? It was just reported to the east! As soon as she said that she realized it must be one of the ships aligned with her sister. Hell, for all she knew her sister could be the pilot!

"Bearing 270, acknowledged." She turned her jet, seeing Muscle doing the same on her scope, and then accelerated. Fighter jets are much faster than airliners, and the F-35 was travelling at Mach 1.5 to try and catch up to the spaceship that she knew would be impossible to do anything to. Just based on Lena's video she knew they couldn't catch it, and she doubted their weapons could do anything to it, but it still worried her that they were even scrambled to meet it.

Her nav computer beeped as new coordinates were sent, evidently the ship had landed. She was directed to orbit and observe but was also told that pilots from both Vandenberg Space Force Base and Los Angeles Air Force Base were on the scene for offensive action. Her heart clenched at the thought of that, but she quickly acknowledged the order. They set up their station a mile out from where they could see a huge ship that was down on the ground in the middle of a school football field. It was hard for her to even believe such a thing could fly, but yet she knew it could.

It was odd, having this mission when they didn't know what was actually happening. She'd heard something about sanctions against the company, but didn't know how that would affect things, though they evidently had. Flying a spaceship around the country was probably violating several FAA laws, so the sanctions had obviously caused them to do something a little desperate if they were on the ground here.

"Raptor flight 21, weapons free. If that ship gets airborne, engage." Emma's mouth dropped open when she heard that. Why would they fire? They certainly hadn't been fired upon by the ship, so what was the justification? It made no sense! She quickly replied in the affirmative but had no plans on firing her weapons anyway. Besides, she highly doubted any of her missiles were going to be able to catch that ship while it was moving.

"Big Bad, what the hell is going on?" Muscles asked over their flight comms. "We're seriously shooting that down?"

She had a sudden inspiration and spoke up quickly to mitigate the possibility of them damaging the ship. "Those are the orders, yeah. But that thing is so big that it could do a lot of damage if it crashed into the city, so hold your fire until it's over water, okay?" As every pilot knows, a plane is most vulnerable when taking off and landing, so giving a reason for Muscles to hold off on the attack would give the other ship a better chance of getting out of there unscathed.

A second later, she was horrified to see one of the jets from one of the other bases swooping down in a strafing run, its cannons firing close to the nose of the ship as though firing across the bow to make them stop. Dirt and grass fountained into the air, but there was no visible damage to the alien craft. A second jet got into position to either repeat the maneuver, or actually shoot the craft, but then the larger ship started to move. It started rising rapidly in the air, and then as soon as it was above the football goal posts, it accelerated like nothing she'd seen outside of a movie.

Emma let out a soft sigh of relief, and then did her best not to cry. As much as she loved flying, she hated her latest mission.