The Near of Edge of Space: Premonition

You know those dreams that always seem to crop back up when you sleep? The ones with the same house, the same town, the same plot, and it's usually some sort of wish fulfillment?

Tink was having one of those. It was actually nice for her. Given her sleeping habits, getting good dreams was nice. This one was that good recurring dream. The one where she was back in her kitchen with her mother and father. And with all four limbs. It was a Saturday, which was her favorite day-she was always a comics girl, and loved to read about adventures and superheros-and then go out to her workshop in the garage and work on some new device in the garage. What was wierder is, sometimes she has this type of dream and managed to wake up and create something new...

But this time...something was off. When she went out into the garage, there was no project on her worktable to finish....one was already done. It was her prosthetic leg, the one she had perfected as an adult...but she...was a child? She looks down at her legs, and sure enough, they're both there...so why is her prosthetic leg here...?

The answer is pretty obvious, as an all-too-familiar screeching crash comes from the garage ceiling above her-she hears it in too many nightmares. The sound of laser fire taking the house above her down and burying her in rubble, rubble that will trap her for eleven hours as she clings to life and waits to be rescued, only to pass out and wake up in the hospital a few days later with two amputated limbs...

But the rubble from the ceiling never falls as she slowly reopens her eyes. The crack in the ceiling is there, but instead of a rescue crew of concerned ponies, she can see the entire Aetherian fleet above her. A giant, silvery-white plated arrow-esque space cruiser with teal lights all over, several miles wide, and flanking it, small cruiser after cruiser, ready to drop hordes of automata onto the surface of the planet to pillage. She isn't sure WHY this is in her dream-she knew the Earth was doomed when she travelled across universes. They'd failed. This wasn't even a nightmare, this was just...her guilt hunting her subconscious. Still, she had to fight, even if it was a dream, so down her eyes went to her console. Should see summon her whole fleet? All out last stand? Should she....

Everything in the dream slows to a near standstill as her eyes fall on the date on her arm console. This date wasn't in the past. It wasn't even in the present.

the date was a few months in the future, and this is her father's house in this universe. She's in a different timeline, and so are the Aetherians. Tink's screaming melds perfectly with the alarms going off in the ship's cabin as she flies out of bed. It's not scared screaming, it's panic, and half of it is swear words as she stumbles to the bridge in a delirium, stumbling over alloy plates and steps before reaching the bridge's console. She only barely manages to switch off whatever sirens are going off before retching all over the floor. <<Captain your heart rate is extremely high and you are displaying odd distress reactions. Are you ill?.. "...Kat...alarms...what were they..." Tink doesn't even pay any mind to the onboard AI scanning her vitals, that's something she can worry about later. <<...sensors at the asteroid belt out near rim system 73. Far out. But they definitely are in this sector now. Captain? Your blood pressure.>> The entire bridge seems to be reeling. They're here. That's what the dream meant. It wasn't anything subconscious, it was a premonition. Months after she had finally stopped worrying that the end of the world was coming at the hands of the Aetherians that might not even exist in this universe, here it was. "...they're slightly off schedule. By quite a few months." in typical Tink fashion it takes her all of a minute or so to serious the fuck up, she can have panic attacks later. "But we know they're coming, and now we can do something about it. Send the drones out with the messages. You know where I have them saved. Add an annotation to the end stating that a tentative invasion date is pending within the next three months of we don't engage in action, and make sure you attach enough Aetherian Footage to scare the world leaders. I'm going to go shower, and...get in touch with some old friends." <<Understood Captain. Does this mean I should get the portal warmed up?>> "Yep. And get my old EDC jacket ready. I think we could use some nostalgia today." she manages a crooked smirk as she trots off for her cabin. Today was going to be hell...