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Among New Dalton’s more exotic species were the vaguely arachnoid Striped Devils, bulbous-shelled beetles the size of an ice cube, with red-lined carapaces that came to twin points like horns. One of these scuttled up over the low balustrade surrounding Tom Rougan’s cousin’s deck, noticed by virtually no one at the party.
Except by Rougan, who froze instantly at the sight of its segmented legs, their flowing, overlapping, inhuman strides, and thought instantly of the Arathran demons who’d overrun multiple decks of Tenacity.
“I mean, they can’t beat us,” exclaimed Tom’s elderly Uncle Kadmus, whose snowy eyebrows and hair stood out against his dark brown complexion. “They can’t!”
Rougan gulped down the entirety of the whiskey he’d been nursing and consciously avoided looking at the Devil—or his loudly-drunk uncle. “They gave us a hell of a chase,” he replied and reached for the bottle on the table at the middle of the deck, poured himself a fresh one—tried not to notice the shiver of his hand.
“But you got out!” Kadmus was going on in so loud a voice that others on the deck were glancing his way uncomfortably. “Tenacity got out!” He shook his head so violently the gin in his glass spilled over onto his wrist. But he didn’t seem to notice. “They can’t beat Republic grit, I tell you!”
Rougan chuckled, a little uncomfortably, and gestured at the glass. “Maybe you ought to slow down on that a little.”
“Tom’s right.” A man younger and slimmer than either of them, but sharing resemblance to both, joined them. “Sheesh, Dad!”
“I’m fine.” Kadmus yanked his elbow back as the younger version of him reached for it. “And I won’t have you man-handling me today, Eli. No, sir!” Squirming out of his son’s reach, the old man raised his sloshing gin glass to the partygoers. “The Republic stands!”
Tolerant responses echoed the acclamation, a few glasses lifted in response.
Rougan chortled and took a long pull on his drink, watching Kadmus stumble back into the midst of the party. “I see he hasn’t changed.”
Eli laughed back. “He tried to re-enlist.” He nodded after his father. The back of Kadmus Rougan’s sweat-stained, poorly fitting t-shirt read DD-172-A Voracious. “They turned him away, of course.” He sighed. “Fool acts like he missed his big chance.”
Rougan grinned tolerantly at that. Uncle Kadmus had been the Voracious’ Tactical Officer and destroyer crews were selected for their daring. They had to be; earlier generation destroyers were narrow-hulled deathtraps strapped onto single Void Drives.
His grin slipped as his eye went back to that Striped Devil, working its way along the railing closer to him. They weren’t venomous, weren’t particularly aggressive. But the way it walked...Rougan saw one of those tarantula-like Arathra, scuttled, leaping, biting...
Eli flicked the bug from the deck with a contemptuous finger before arching an eyebrow at him. “Maybe you ought to slow down a bit, too, Tom.”
Rougan took a long drink, let the whiskey burn all the way down, till its fire slowed the hammering of his heart. “I’m fine.” He cleared his throat and gestured around the deck. “Thanks for the invite.”
The family reunion crowded the long back decks of Eli’s palatial estate, overlooking a deep, jungled gorge. A waterfall whispered from below and mist rose up from it, catching sunlight through a break in the drooping canopy and scintillating into rainbows. Huge bulbs of mega-mangos hung from the branches, just overhead. While Rougan watched, a white-clad cook snapped one of these loose and began chopping it up on a stone-block food preparation table. Backgrounded by this, three generations of Rougans and their extended families mingled while a grill smoked and added its own redolence to the haze.
“Of course,” Eli replied. He was a good-looking man, ten years younger than Tom. Fit, smart, and wealthy off those smarts. “Glad you could make it. Got to admit, I was a little surprised.” He hesitated before going on. “We do this every year. This is the first time for you in eight.”
Rougan shrugged. “Been in space for most of them.”
“Not all of them.”
Pinching his lips together, Rougan accepted the jab. He and Eli had been as close as the brothers neither of them had had, once. “Yeah, sorry. Look, it’s just...” he glanced across the crowd, some familiar faces, some not so “...suddenly seemed important that I see everyone.”
Eli’s gaze lingered for a moment on Rougan’s off-duty fatigues—he had civilian garb, but seemed to have misplaced it. A spacer’s getup was the only thing that fit well these days, anyway. “I think I understand.”
Rougan nearly drained his glass. “Did you, um, invite Clarissa and the kids?”
“I did,” Eli replied noncommittally. “You haven’t seen them already?”
“I haven’t had a lot of time. In fact, I’m due back for Sanctuary at week’s end.”
Eli’s eyebrows arched incredulously again. “Tenacity’s been in dock for three months. You couldn’t find some time in all of that?”
“I was working, obviously,” Rougan replied too quickly. “You can’t leave those dock hands alone with a ship for long. Damned fools don’t know a Singularity Shaft from a toilet bowl!” He glowered at his cousin, insisted, “I had to be there.”
“I’ll bet.”
Annoyed, Rougan pressed on. “Did Clarissa respond to you, at all?”
“She didn’t...” Eli’s eyes darted across the reunion to the far side of the deck “...but it looks like someone got the word.”
As if on cue, a part formed in the crowd and Rougan could see through it to the corner of the deck where patio doors from the living room offered access. A young man in the blue-trimmed grays of Solace Academy stepped out into the sun, looking like an echo of his father at that same age. Only his green eyes belonged to his mother and these scanned their surroundings until they locked with Rougan’s and flared with recognition.
“Well, I’ll be...” Rougan downed the remainder of his drink and reached for the bottle again.
Eli snatched it clear. “Maybe you’re done with that.”
“Maybe mind your own business,” he snarled at his cousin and smacked the empty down on the table, left him behind as he strode across the deck. “Well, how are you” he called out “Cadet Rougan?”
“Dad.” His son halted and half-amusedly pressed his fist to his chest in salute. “You’re looking well.”
“Not as good as you, kiddo—sorry, Kevin.” He extended his open hand—salutes be damned! “Fourth year,” he went as the hand was accepted and they shook. “I remember that. Hardest, best year at the Academy. That means you’ve had Bliss with Void Field mechanics already.”
“He was terrific,” Kevin replied, releasing his grip. “I managed to pass, somehow. I’m...wondering if there’ll actually be a full year four.” He glanced around before taking Rougan by the elbow and leading him off to a semi-deserted corner. The hiss of the waterfall swallowed some sound. “There’s talk,” he whispered, “of emergency mobilization.”
“I hadn’t heard that,” Rougan replied, then frowned at the eager light in his son’s eyes. “What? Are you hoping for it?”
“It’s what the Fleet is for,” Kevin replied with a faint tremor of zeal.
Chill gnawed at Rougan’s bones as he looked over his smiling, young, foolish boy, fiery with the energies of youth and all the confidence that brought. “The Fleet is an instrument of peace,” he said finally, and grimaced—it sounded as rote as it was.
“Through strength,” Kevin replied and shook his head vehemently. “Dad, I’m not afraid.”
That’s because you don’t know, Rougan thought. An Arathra scuttled across the back of his mind while Tenacity burned and screams echoed. He’d stopped waking up with the cold sweats, finally, but only because he kept a drink waiting on the night stand.
“I’m sure you’re not,” Rougan said and cleared his throat. “How’s your mother?”
Kevin looked like he wanted to continue with the previous topic, but smiled tolerantly at his father’s evasion and shrugged. “Pissed.”
“That you came here?”
“Pissed all the time, at everything.” He shook his head. “She’s driving Regina crazy. I keep telling her to move off Dalton, take a ship to one of the Outer Worlds, a contract with a settlement team. Of course, that’s kind of out of the question right now. Anyway, Mom’s...well...she’s how she’s been for a long time.”
Clarissa had thought Rougan would just be a single-tour guy. Just one ship, one voyage, and then home to take a private sector job as an engineer and provide her kids and a nice flat. But Rougan had caught the bug. And he’d found success like he’d never known. And then they gave him Tenacity. He understood his son’s fervor to get to space.
Clarissa never had.
“And your sister?”
“Pissed,” Kevin snorted. “But just at you.”
Rougan winced and nodded, accepting it. He didn’t really know his daughter. It’d almost be right to say he’d picked the Void Drives of Tenacity over her. “Well, I can’t say I blame anyone,” he muttered. He forced himself to brighten and clapped Kevin on the arm. “Glad you could make it, son. It’s good to see you. Really good.”
“Yeah.” Kevin sounded like he meant it and his eyes warmed momentarily. But a seriousness cooled them. He leaned in close. “Dad...I...I’m considering dropping out.”
Rougan blinked and the chill nibbling at his guts returned. “What?” He glanced around, saw looks, didn’t realize how loudly he’d blurted out. “Look” he took Kevin by the arm, firmly “if it’s the pressure or the grades—”
“It’s none of that,” he cut him off. “I’m passing everything.” He pulled free of Rougan’s grasp and faced him, eye-to-eye, shoulders squared. “It’s the war, Dad. Look, I know a few guys who already have, are already on ships. That’s where the difference is being made. I could pre-qualify as a Specialist now.”
“Academy drop-out?” Rougan sneered. “Are you hearing yourself?”
“You want me to stay in school while the rest of you are out there, fighting?” He jabbed a thumb skyward. “This thing will be over in six months!”
Rougan chuckled humorlessly and shook his head. Arathra danced murderously through his skull. “Now you listen here,” he growled, feeling the sweats now, prickling across his brow, under his fatigues. “I don’t know what they’re telling you at the Academy, or what they’re saying in the holomedia, or even what idiots like Kadmus over there are saying.” He pointed a finger, jabbed it into his son’s chest. “But I do know this thing’s not going to be some pushover.”
“The Golgos are a bunch of backwards religious nuts!”
“That’s so,” Rougan agreed with a shudder. “More than you know. And there is a hell of a lot of them and they don’t give a damn about losses. They hate us. The hate the whole galaxy.”
“All the more reason to be where it matters now.”
The cold in Rougan’s bowels crystallized to an icy desperation. He knew that smolder in his son’s gaze, knew the youthful stupidity, the obsession. It had dragged him back out to space, over and over again, even as Clarissa begged, and then threatened, and then stopped saying anything, at all.
“I’m telling you,” Rougan rumbled, “finish.”
Kevin held his jaw pridefully high. “It’s my decision.”
“And it would be a damned stupid one.”
A flinch deformed Kevin’s composure. “Well, you’d know a few things about that, wouldn’t you?” he snarled, then paused as looks from the others flickered their way again. Lowering his voice to a rasp, “Now you decide you want to go and be a father?”
“My God,” Rougan groaned. “You’re going to throw that in my face, here?”
“It’s not like you’re ever around to hear it.”
Rougan looked away sharply, as though reacting to a slap to the face. The party, the lovely late afternoon, the familiar faces, all curdled around him, became something strange, and he out of place in it. He hadn’t seen most of these people, as Eli had said, in years. Their jabber merged into a grating hiss in his ears, like the crackle of circuitry blown out by battle damage. The scent of the grill soured into the greasy, burnt-fat stink of bodies caught in a fire. And every movement around him twitched like the lunge of an eight-legged horror.
He needed another drink. He needed to get back to his ship.
“You didn’t come here for a party,” he rasped at his son as he looked at him again, right in the eye. “You’ve never liked any of the family, just like your mom. You came, knowing I’d be here, knowing this is the wrong thing to do.” He edged right up into the boy’s face, realizing Kevin had, at some point, grown a couple centimeters taller than he. “You just needed someone to tell it to you.”
“I...” Kevin gulped “haven’t decided completely, yet.”
“Stay at the Academy, son,” he told him. “Finish and get your commission. The Fleet needs brains, not more bodies.” Rougan turned away from him, sought a bottle and a glass. Soon, he’d seek an escape.
“Believe me, kid, you’ll get your chance.”
***
“JAXAN! LIEUTENANT JAXAN!”
Khiry Jaxan rolled her eyes at the familiar voice, but couldn’t help a little smile as she held up a hand to hold the hatch to the orbital flitter open. Half-turning, she looked across the small, planet-side boarding gate to see an officer in duty blues dragging hover-luggage and rushing to reach her. Behind him, Fleet Port Solace bustled with the uniforms of a dozen different departments and branches and a dozen-dozen different races—all the species of the Republic, mobilized in its defense.
“Better hurry,” she called with faux-malice.
The brown-haired, green-eyed officer grinned his annoyingly perfect-toothed smile at that and dodged a last cargo droid before reaching the hatch. He sidled in past her, jostling her shoulder, despite the fact there was plenty of room for them to pass each other in ease.
“Oh, sorry.”
She rolled her eyes again, let him see her do it, and paused at the hatch, looked out into the gate again. No one else appeared to be joining them on the flight up to Tenacity. Great. Grudgingly, she stepped into the shuttle and let the hatch slide shut, hiss with pressurization. Just great.
“Thanks for that,” the officer said, slumping onto the bench seat lining one side of the cylindrical flitter compartment. He reached for a holo-wafer panel that lit up at his touch. “Commander Scott Varley, Lieutenant Khiry Jaxan; due for Tenacity at Dock Fourteen.”
“Understood, Commander,” the flitter’s AI pilot replied. “Beginning pre-flight checklist. Departure for orbit in six minutes.”
“Thanks.” He removed his hand from the control and sagged even further on his bench, kicking out a foot to rest it upon his luggage, the weight of that giving it a wobble. His gaze settled upon Jaxan, didn’t wobble a bit.
She sighed at the presumptuous glimmer in his stare. The man was just so arrogant. “Commander,” she made herself say, “it’s agreeable to see you again.”
“Agreeable?” He visibly feigned disappointment. “We’re already settling back into old patterns, I see.”
“Did you expect a party?” She snorted. “Dinner made for you?”
“I did actually.” He sat up straight suddenly, smiled blindingly. “I know you’ve missed me.”
“Yes,” Jaxan drawled back at him, “because what else is there in life” she raised her eyebrows at him “other than cleaning up after your messes?”
“Ha,” he responded, but with a slight cooling of his enthusiasm that told her he recalled the state of affairs as they’d existed between them when last he saw her.
Khiry Jaxan was the only daughter of a former South Solace policeman who’d given up the force to become a private detective because it was easier to enforce the law in the slums when you weren’t part of what was just another gang. Security had come as naturally to his daughter as walking and she was damned good at it. Good enough that she’d begun sniffing out a smuggling scam aboard Tenacity that had its First Officer, Scott Varley, at its center.
“You’re looking well,” he said when her vaguely hostile silence dragged.
“Not as rested as you,” she replied, noting his rich tan and general atmosphere of sunniness and ease. “Was it leave on the family estates for you? Was it dances and yachting on Lake Silver?” She couldn’t help the edge to her voice; the only lake she’d known as a kid was a toxic waste-choked reservoir whose water the South Side kids had to boil before consuming. “Did you have servants waiting at beck and call while you sipped drinks in the sun?”
Varley accepted the barbs with a good-natured shrug. “It wasn’t quite as cheerful as all that, no. My parents have been in a foul state since the elections.”
“I would have thought the state of the war would occupy their attention.”
“Politics. War.” He waved his hand dismissively. “It’s all part of the same thing to the Braddocks and their patrons. Losing the majority of the Archonal seats was a bitter pill, especial losing it to those neophytes, the Mosles.”
The Republic of Sanctuary had come a long way towards a truer representative government since the days of the Hegemony and its oligarchical rule. Hideously inbred and self-interested clans of obscene wealth and utter detachment from the consequences of their decisions had forced the change. The people had demanded it. And the challenges of galactic statehood had required it. Affairs of a star-spanning nation could no longer be left to kakistocracy.
But those clans lingered, the First Families—first, they insisted, in the affairs of the new star nation. And while the people—not just humans; species who’d rarely had their own voice before—had more say in how they were governed than in centuries, the Firsts still wielded disproportionate power, through their money and influence.
“I can’t say I follow any of it,” Jaxan lied.
“I wish I didn’t have to,” Varley grumped. “Might be one of the reasons I took a commission with the Fleet. Get as far away from it as I could.”
The flitter clanked and wobbled, was obviously firing up its anti-gravs and taxing into position for the skip to orbit. Jaxan slid down into the bench opposite Varley. “Just sounds like more First Family crap to me.”
“It is at that,” Varley agreed and stared at the curved wall before him for a moment, seeming lost in some thought that made his features crinkle briefly into ugliness. But it passed as he looked at her again, eyes flashing mischievously. “You’re saying you didn’t miss me, at all?”
For the third time, Jaxan’s eyes rolled. “Commander, this is hardly appropriate.”
“What can I say?” He held his hands out to either side and shrugged grandiosely. “It’s going to be good to be back on Tenacity, with you.”
She folded her legs and her arms and glowered at him. “And perhaps good to have a starship handy in order to resume your various side-hustles?”
His flinch was unmistakable. A look away and a quick nod barely hid it. But that damned smile persisted. “You know,” he resumed, “I’d been expecting an inquiry from Fleet Security, considering your suspicious nature. But I never heard anything.” He still didn’t look at her, but laugh lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled. “Would it be you couldn’t bring yourself to press your theories further?”
“More likely a lack of hard evidence,” she replied with harshness in her voice. “You cover your tracks well, Varley. But I’ll have an eye on you, this time.”
His smile was blinding as he turned to face her once again. “Then I’ll consider this trip a success already!”
Jaxan groaned noisily. “Does this actually work?”
“What?”
“This act.” She waved distastefully at him, like she would a pile of garbage left to rot in the sun. “Does anyone with a real brain ever fall for it?”
“Constantly.”
The flitter shook and Jaxan had a moment of queasy imbalance as the little ship’s inertial compensators adjusted for what would otherwise be a crushing leap for the sky. She still set a hand upon the bench at her side to steady herself as its hull thrummed with sudden speed and the strain of its small drives. There were no viewports in the passenger compartment. Had she wanted a sense of their progress, she could’ve moved up to the empty and automated pilot’s cabin.
But her target was right here.
“Well, consider that pattern broken here, Commander.” She leaned forward and pointed a finger at him like a blaster muzzle. “We’re at war now and smuggling will be treated as the crime it is. As will any other illicit dealings.”
He held up his hands as if to show they were empty. “Glad I’m not involved in any of those things.”
Jaxan hated that she smiled back at him—even if she didn’t believe him. “And I’m glad to hear that. It’d be a hell of a stain on your First Family lineage if I had to bust you to the brig.”
The hint of ugliness returned to his expression and he sighed. “It would hardly be the nastiest stain on my family, I can assure you.”
“Oh?”
“Let’s just say navigating the rocks and shoals of a Great House is less pleasant than you’d imagine,” he replied. “There are expectations and schemes and...all manner of insanity.” He shrugged. “You have a family. I’m sure you get it.”
“Actually, I don’t.”
Varley met her stare. “Thought your dad was a cop?”
“He was.”
“Oh. Sorry.” To Varley’s credit, he sounded like he actually meant that. And to Jaxan’s annoyance with herself, his reaction softened a bit of the resistance she’d erected against him. “Didn’t know.”
“It’s alright,” she said. “You didn’t ask.” She thought for a moment of that gray, soaked day at a South Solace cemetery, the first shovelfuls of dirt being cast over Dad’s casket while rain hammered its cheap synthe-paneling lid. “No, it’s just me.”
“Sounds lonely.”
“I’ve got the Fleet and I’ve got Tenacity.” Jaxan shook off the funereal memory and raised the inner shields of her personal defenses once more as she glared at Varley. “And I don’t have some void in my life that needs filling, if that’s what you’re going to add.”
His smile was faint, now, and without the mischief of before. “Maybe I’m the one with a void, Khiry.”
“Then that sounds like your problem, Scott.”
***
“CAPTAIN RAKER,” THE administrative shuttle’s AI voice announced, “we will make dock with Tenacity in two minutes.”
The notice wasn’t really necessary. Seated in the copilot’s seat of the otherwise empty and automated vessel, Dath had a glorious view across the curve of Sanctuary to Tenacity, clamped now to the skeletal outline of Dock Fourteen, where a couple other, smaller ships clustered. These would be last-minute provisions going over to his ship, readying her for what could be months away. “Thanks,” he replied, equally unnecessarily.
A text box hung across the lower-right corner of his vision—the hologram literally plastered across the inside of his artificial eye—partially-obscuring the outline of the battlecruiser. The characters glowed hatefully within it as he considered them, once again, perhaps for the thousandth time since he had brought Tenacity home. The “transmit” button pulsed beside them. A single blink would command his onboard augmentations to send via the shuttle’s subspace relay.
This isn’t what either of us wants it to be, anymore, the words read. And I’m not going to be your prop at parties, Kerina.
He sighed and blinked multiple times, a different command, and sent the many-times edited but never-sent message back to his onboard storage.
Kerina...
It couldn’t be said that she’d moved out. All her things were still at their place in the suburbs of North Solace, a ludicrously-palatial estate her late father’s money had bought them. But she’d likely bought herself new things, and he knew she’d rented a place uptown. That was where the night life was, the high society she craved, had wanted him a part of. That was where she kept getting holo-recorded with different male friends. Friends, he sneered to himself. Gah! I’m sure that’s what she’d insist on calling them.
Not that they’d spoken or even exchanged a communique since his return.
“But still...” he murmured out loud. “Married.”
“Captain?” the AI chirped at him.
“Nothing.”
He’d had the paperwork completed, the divorce documents, in secret, by lawyers he could trust. He couldn’t use the resources of his House Mosle patrons—they’d try to talk him out of it. Kerina’s daddy’s money was at least partially tied-up with Dath and they wanted to make certain that capital didn’t flow elsewhere. And he couldn’t consult somebody at Fleet. He loved the Service, but it leaked like a sieve.
The documents were ready, queued up, aimed like a blaster—he just had to blink.
And he had backed down again.
Tenacity was filling the view port by now. The shuttle was gliding up along her starboard flank, giving him a view of her triple Void Drives, two flaring out to aft from her dorsal surface, a third bulging from the ventral one. The former two gleamed all the way down their struts, only just starting to accrete the smudge and pockmarking of use. Those had been a complete rebuild. So had one of the particle cannon turrets, seated further forward along the sloped upper surface as it narrowed towards her blunt bow. Dath knew the ship well enough that he didn’t have to look hard to find the seams and welds and fresh plate where repairs had taken place.
Like her Captain, Tenacity had taken a beating.
“Docking in twenty seconds,” the AI noted in its artificially-cheerful voice.
Rather than take the shuttle into through the aft bay, currently crowded with activity, the computer was bringing them alongside one of the auxiliary hatches on C Deck, which he knew would lead straight to the central turbolifts and a quick trip up to the bridge. A rush of excitement filled Dath as the shuttle slowed and drifted in close to the circular portal. A dizzying lurch of perspective followed as the vessel pivoted on its axis and presented its portside flank for the link-up.
Home.
A thump passed through the hull. His ears filled and he worked his jaw to pop them as the pressure in the cabin equalized. A ping followed and he rose from his seat, scooped up a duffel bag as he moved aft to the hatch. Most of his belongings were aboard, but he’d grabbed a couple oddities from the estate—most of which clanked together, their contents sloshing, and were not regulation. Shouldering this, he stood before the hatch and waited, stiffening his spine to his full height before it opened.
Synthesized bosun’s pipes skirled from the air as Dath stepped into the short passage from shuttle to ship. A small honor guard waited, two files of five Security toughs in duty grays at attention to either side and an officer in blues waiting, facing Dath as he entered. Olive-tanned and graced with a mop of blue-black curls almost too long to be regulation, the little man had a smile big enough to outshine his small stature.
“Captain Raker,” Sergio Alvarez announced and thumped a clenched fist to his chest, “welcome back aboard!”
Dath paused to return the salute. “Lieutenant.” His eyebrows arched expectantly; Alvarez was Tenacity’s Tactical Officer. “Commander Varley’s back?”
“Just came aboard, like you, sir,” the younger man replied cheerily. “I took it upon myself to see to your arrival.”
“Glad for it,” Dath replied, meaning it. He took a deep breath, grinned; the air smelled the same. Metal, lubricant, but also the faint tang of life crowding its passageways. His senses knew this was where he should be.
“Senior staff are gathering at the conference room,” Alvarez noted. “I’ve notified everyone you’re on your way.”
“Meeting’s postponed.” Dath smiled tolerantly. “Bridge, first, Lieutenant.”
Alvarez shared the expression. The oversized earring dangling from his left lobe winked blindingly in the light. “Very good, sir.”
A gesture from Alvarez to the Petty Officer in command of the detail—Cho, Dath recognized—stiffened the men and women to attention. Dath and the Lieutenant moved on with the sound of their dismissal at their backs. The whirr of the hoverdroid bringing Dath’s belongings followed them up the passageway, towards the turbolift.
“You took advantage of leave to get down to Sanctuary, Lieutenant?” Dath asked.
“Not much, sir. I have to admit, I spent most of my time up here. The installation of the new particle cannon proved to be a bit more of a hassle than anyone anticipated.”
“I heard,” Dath replied and paused at the lift, turned to the sled-like droid. “My quarters,” he told it before touching the panel to open the lift chute and stepping in. “Difficulty with the Reflex Furnace hook-up, I understood,” he continued.
Alvarez notably waited until the lift door hissed shut before answering, “More than that, sir. Cheap parts.” He shook his head. “The Admiralty may have splurged on her new Drives, but Tenacity’s been receiving the bottom of the barrel for everything else.”
Dath nodded, jaw clenching as he thought briefly of Gunderson’s disdain. “Well, there’s a war on, Lieutenant.”
“One that I assume we’ll be rejoining shortly, Captain?”
Dath’s jaw tightened further. “More on that in a bit.” He cleared his throat and raised his voice. “Control, bridge.”
“Of course, Captain Raker,” the ship’s AI replied in its faux-cheerful tone. The lift thrummed for the upper deck. “Is there anything else I might help you with?”
“Ship’s complement,” he said. “Do we have everyone aboard and accounting for yet?”
“Yes, sir,” the machine answered. “The last dozen from the planet’s surface just unloaded. All senior staff are aboard. Lieutenant Commander Rougan is just arriving now, ship-to-ship transfer from a fast packet from New Dalton.”
“Thank you.” Dath glanced at Alvarez. “So, there wasn’t any play for all that work, Lieutenant?”
The little man shrugged. “Can’t say there’s a whole lot for me, planet-side, these days.”
Dath nodded, mood darkening as the words of the unsent message to Kerina came back to him. “I completely understand.”
The lift door slid back to reveal what was more home to Dath Raker than the plush interior of any Solace mansion. Relaxing, he stepped out onto the bridge of Tenacity, breathing of its curiously-welcome recycled, metal-tinged air; listening to the cheerful hum of its crew at work; taking in the dizzying glimmer of holograms at stations and the main screen.
Fashioned into the pattern of an elongated hexagon, the lift opened into the bridge from its left-aft corner. To Dath’s left, a low tier ran along the wall, granting access to the Communications and Tactical stations, respectably. Lieutenant Alice Clemmens sat at the former, a dusky-hued, light-brown haired woman with one hand on her controls and the other pressing an earbud close against her head as she listened to something, too focused to notice their entry.
To the right, the tier ran across the aft face of the bridge and the auxiliary control station there, passing the entrance to Dath’s ready room at the opposite rear corner before wrapping around the other side. Systems and Operations stations occupied corners there. The tier left off at the front of the compartment, where a wall-sized hologram projected, at the moment showing only the tangle of Dock Fourteen encompassing the ship and the blue-green glow of Sanctuary beyond.
Stepping fully into the bridge, Dath set his hand upon the low handrail that circled the upper tier. It unfolded into a lower pit occupied by the Helm station, where sat Ensign Zovga, the craggy-skinned Korthan almost too large for the broad arch of his consoles. Situated directly behind him, on a low dais, the command chair waited, empty. Not bothering to suppress the eager grin crinkling his scarred face, Dath took another step and set his hand upon its back fondly.
“Captain on the bridge!”
Dath jolted, not so much at the expected, but sharp acclamation, but at the voice, which he hadn’t expected to hear quite so soon. Looking up from the chair, eye lingering momentarily on Ensign Regal at Ops—her burnt-honey features pinched into a vaguely uncomfortable grin as she rose to attention with the others—he blinked in surprise at who he found standing up from the Systems station.
“Lieutenant Aval,” he managed without it sounding too surprised. “It is well to see you. I’d heard you were already aboard.”
“Just this morning, Captain.”
She never seems to change, Dath thought. The Morvena had a kind of timeless grace and smoothness of features that rarely hardened, even into extreme old-age. It made her very human blue eyes a surprise against the decidedly non-human purple of her face. It had always caught him off-guard, ever since they’d first met aboard Tenacity’s sister-ship, Fenris, namesake of the class of battlecruisers.
He, of course, had changed a hell of a lot. Skin prickling, itching at his scar and at the edges of his artificial eye, he gave himself a mental shake. Gah! Need to knock this off. Kerina scowled somewhere from the dank corners of his memory. Can’t have this, now. I already agreed to leave it be.
“I was expecting you in main conference,” Dath forced himself continue. “We’re all looking forward to your briefing.”
“And I will begin shortly, of course, Captain,” she replied, and glanced fondly over her shoulder at Regal, “but it sounded like you needed some help up here, when I arrived.”
Dath frowned and glanced at Alvarez who shrugged and chortled, “It’s not just parts we’ve been short on, sir.”
“Right.” Dath stepped around to the front of his chair, took it slowly, enjoying the familiar settling under his weight. Fingers worked around the armrests before stilling. He grinned and leaned back, let out an indulgent, and loud sigh.
Alvarez cleared his throat quietly from behind him.
“Right!” Dath repeated, glancing about. “Stations, everyone, please.” He waited a moment then called over to Clemmens, “Lieutenant, signal Dock Fourteen our intent to depart. They should be expecting it.”
“Aye, sir.” She turned to her instruments and began murmuring into her headset microphone.
“Systems,” Dath ordered, looking over at Ylura, determined to make this business, nothing awkward. “Retract and secure all moorings. Zovga!”
“Sir?” The reptilian helmsman replied.
“Sub-light drives at the ready.”
“Already warming up, Captain.”
“Terrific.” He touched the inter-ship communications control on the right armrest. “Control, locate Lieutenant Commander Rougan.”
“I’m here!” a voice crackled from the overhead speaker. “You didn’t give a lot of warning, Captain!”
“Neither do the Golgothans, Tom,” Dath replied with a hint of admonition. “Are we going to have Void Speed once we’re clear of the planet’s gravity well?”
“The Fleet didn’t give us these new Drives just to leave them at idle, Captain.”
“Good man.”
“Dock Control reports they are clearing connections and traffic,” Clemmens reported from her station. “Should only be ninety seconds, sir.”
Dath stared at the holographic view of Sanctuary for a lingering moment. Far, far below, partially obscured by a storm system blown in from Silver Lake, the lights of Solace glimmered. Kerina would be down there, perhaps already out for another night, perhaps in a hoverlimo already doused by those inbound rains. He hid a clenching of his teeth. Perhaps sharing that limo with someone.
Gah. Didn’t matter. The stars waited beyond the curve of the world, jewels against the endless dark. He’d lose himself in that. And, with the preternaturally wide and precise focus of his right eye catching Ylura at her station, maybe all wasn’t lost.
“Dock Control signals clear, sir,” Clemmens said.
“Zovga,” he ordered the helmsman, “take us out!”