The Only Constant...

Lieutenant Josephine Schmidt sat on the edge of her bed looking around at the room she had called home for almost a year. While that wouldn't seem a very long time to a normal person, to a Starfleet officer serving in a fighter wing out on the edge of the frontier it was almost forever.

The room looked sad to her, but that was probably just a reflection of her own feelings at the moment. The shelves were bare of books and knickknacks, the closet was empty of clothes and shoes, the drawers were devoid of junk, the walls were stripped of pictures. Everything was carefully packed in a few smallish cases and one large duffel bag lying in the middle of the floor.

Jo was very much looking forward to her new assignment, but she would miss this place a lot. The planet Serenity may be on the wrong side of the Briar Patch, but the sun was warm and the weather was nice. No... it was more than that, Jo realized. Much more. She would miss her friends and wingmates of so many years. Most had already left. Kimberly Tycho had gone off and gotten married. Maxine Vasser had quit Starfleet and joined an adventurer named West. Samantha Beckett had returned to Earth to study medicine. Alexandra Dalton and Dexter Gray were living on a sentient planet. Matthew Cross had retired. And Jazz... Well, Jazz had died a long time ago. Twice.

That left only herself and her wing commander, Lee Carter, to carry on the proud legacy of the infamous Banshee Squadron, an elite Starfleet fighter wing that had been putting the fear of God into the hearts of evildoers for more than a decade!

But that was the past. The present was peacetime. The Dominion had ceased to be a threat years ago. The Cardassian Union had mostly collapsed. The Romulans were once again quiescent behind their Neutral Zone. The Mullurans had returned to ways of peace with the death of their insane leader. The Klingons were... well, the Klingons were still Klingons. The only notable remaining threats were the Breen and the Tzenkethi, and they were so far away. The only immediate threats to life and limb nowadays were random pirate attacks and boredom it seemed. Starfleet had decided that the Banshee Squadron was obsolete.

It was time to move on.

She and Lee had both been assigned to positions on the new *USS Eternity*, a science vessel that would be spending the next five years cruising around the Briar Patch Sectors exploring the unknown.

Jo's daydreaming was interrupted by a shock of unruly brunette hair poking through the bedroom door followed by the rest of Lee Carter's head. There was a big smile on her friend's face.

"Our ride's here," she said.

Jo's melancholy dropped away like discarded ballast and she rose from the bed. She ran her fingers through her short blonde hair. "I'm ready," she replied with growing anticipation and excitement.

Carter stepped the rest of the way into the room and tapped the communicator pin on her chest. "*Eternity*, this is Commander Carter. Two to beam up."