INFERNUM

JAYSON ADAMS

1

“Damn,” muttered Holbrook in the gloom of the secure compartment outside the Avenger’s bridge. Images of flag-covered caskets and military salutes filled his head as he mulled his new orders. He scoured each line for any shred of insight.

God … of course. Holbrook exhaled, his shoulders dropped, and his face filled with a half-smile. The orders are not what they seem.

The compartment’s doors slid apart, admitting him into a compact, dimly lit semicircular room of equipment and men.

“Captain on the bridge,” announced the ship above the chatter of officers at their stations and the sibilance of the atmospherics.

Captain Holbrook stepped to the middle of the room and squinted at the main viewscreen, a shimmering panel filled with a drifting star field. “Status report.”

“Sir,” barked Commander Stephens from a station to the captain’s rear, “we’re less than two hours from our rendezvous with the Kuiper Belt planetesimal Dowell 951. The maintenance crew’s completed their tasks on the deep space listening post and signaled they’re ready for extraction.”

“They’ll have to find another way home,” murmured Holbrook.

Stephens had craned his neck to catch the comment but the din swallowed the captain’s words. “Wha —”

“Ensign Doerr,” said Holbrook, “set course for Plana Petram, maximum speed.”

“Plana Petram, aye aye.” The ensign’s thin fingers danced in fits along the surface of her station’s terminal as she worked with the ship to calculate their new course. Doerr paused between flurries of taps to study the diagrams presented by the computer, her bright terminal casting their delicate lines and geometric shapes across her face. After a final, extended pause she placed her palms flat against the glass. “Course set,” she said. “The ship computes 56,034 light years to the Plana Petram asteroid and an estimated travel time of … twenty-two days?”

“Is there a problem, ensign?” asked Holbrook.

“Begging your pardon sir,” said Doerr with a nervous swipe at her red bangs, “but we’ve traveled half that far before, in days, not weeks.”

“Take a note of our final coordinates, ensign,” said Holbrook. “Plana Petram sits outside the Milky Way, at a spot where the mass density is at best twenty percent of the galactic planar mean. Even with the Gravity Drive at full intensity there aren’t as many spacetime deformations for it to pull and push against to propel the ship.”

“Yes sir, noted sir.” Ensign Doerr tapped her terminal. “Laying it in.”

The star field slipped across the central viewscreen as the Avenger banked to port and arced gently upward, the warship aiming for its new destination above the galactic plane. A soft klaxon sounded and the Gravity Drive engaged to maximum power. Each point of light on the viewscreen’s black canvas stretched to a thin rainbow streak, bent and twisted by the eddies of warped spacetime surrounding the starship. “We’re underway to Plana Petram.”

“Very good,” said Holbrook. The captain headed to the engineering station, the leftmost post along the rear bulkhead. Lieutenant Commander Conlin stood before the station’s elevated terminal, his head all buzz cut and ears. Holbrook positioned himself behind the officer but far enough right to land in his peripheral vision. The lieutenant commander remained focused on the engine readouts. “Mr. Conlin,” Holbrook finally said, fed up with waiting for the officer to acknowledge him. He spoke with authority but gated his volume to avoid surprising the man.

Lieutenant Commander Conlin jumped, startled. “Sir?” he replied. He faced the captain as if standing at attention but quickly turned back to his post.

“We aim to use the Gravity Drive for the next three weeks,” said Holbrook. “Do you foresee a problem with that?”

Conlin’s head launched into a series of sharp up-and-down movements, his eyes bouncing between indicators at the top of the viewscreen and a string of numbers near the bottom. “That’s a long time,” he said, still facing his terminal screen, “but I can’t think of a reason it’d be a problem.” Conlin gingerly nudged a set of sliders, coaxing their adjacent indicators back into the green.

Holbrook grew impatient with Conlin’s fixation on his terminal. Overseeing the ship’s sub-sentient AI as it settled them into a new course was no small task, but the captain couldn’t see why it should prevent considered answers to his questions. “Is Mr. Lynch on duty?” he asked.

“No sir,” said Conlin, “I believe he’s on sleep cycle right now.” The lieutenant commander’s head snapped to the upper-left corner of his terminal as a bar readout briefly peaked into the red. “He wasn’t expecting anything would need his attention. I can get him for you.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Holbrook, “just inform him as soon as practical of our planned extended use of the Gravity Drive.”

“Aye sir,” said Conlin.

Holbrook sensed Commander Stephens’s eyes burning into his back. He wanted to avoid engaging his executive officer but couldn’t resist confirming his suspicion. Glancing right, towards the commander’s station, the captain found Stephens staring back at him. Their eyes locked before he could look away. Holbrook spun left and headed in a wide arc across the bridge, swinging out near his chair before barreling for the doors.

“Captain!”

Two meters from the exit, Holbrook halted. He turned to find Stephens watching him intently from his chair, swiveled to face into the bridge. “Yes commander?”

Commander Stephens had eyed the captain from the moment he arrived on the bridge. He’d quickly spotted all the signs of an agitated Holbrook: clenched jaw, rigid stance, pursed lips. Whatever bothered him had to be more than a trip to some backwater destination. “It’s clear our orders have changed. What’s our new mission?”

Holbrook’s blank stare drove Stephens to regret asking the question. The captain maintained strict control over his vessel but fostered a more egalitarian bridge than on other starships. Holbrook made clear he held the final say but he welcomed all viewpoints, having declared on several occasions there was no such thing as a stupid question.

The captain kept up his stone face, his broad shoulders and two meter frame looming even from halfway across the bridge. “We’re to take aboard two VIPs at Plana Petram,” Holbrook said at last. “Who they are, I don’t know.” His tongue darted out, moistening his lips. “We are then to proceed to Sagittarius A Star.”

Members of the bridge crew half-following the conversation between Holbrook and Stephens froze mid-task, their fingers hovering motionless above their terminals. All heads turned to the two men, and an unnatural stillness descended on the room, whooshing air the only sound.

“Sag A Star?” asked Stephens. “As in the black hole at the center of the galaxy?” Chief Tactical Officer Lieutenant Bolton laughed before catching herself, struck by the absurdity of the idea said aloud.

“Yes, that one,” Holbrook stated flatly. He looked around the room, his eyes momentarily holding the gaze of each visibly shaken officer at their station. “As you were,” he said, pivoted, and walked into the secure compartment. The doors slid shut behind him.

All eleven bridge officers stared after the captain, unmoving and silent at their posts. The atmospherics throbbed, a hissing heartbeat that grew oppressively loud in the otherwise soundless space. An alarm chirped for attention then stopped, the condition correcting itself.

Stephens burst from his chair and bounded for the doors, turning sideways to squeeze through the widening gap. They closed with a soft chunk.

Stillness returned to the room. Several officers exchanged glances.

The bridge exploded in chaos.

2

“Sir! Sir!” shouted Stephens as he chased Holbrook down the narrow Core Walkway.

After rushing from his station Stephens could only stop and wait inside the secure compartment that restricted access to the bridge, pacing and cursing at its sealed outer doors. His mind reeled. How could CentCom be sending them to Sag A Star? What did they think the Avenger could possibly accomplish there? And how could Holbrook be so nonchalant about such a mission?

Stephens launched a fresh obscenity at the doors. The ship used the secure compartment to confirm identities and scan for prohibited items before granting access to the bridge. Why in the world did the same protocol apply on exit? Every moment of delay lowered his chances of catching the captain. Holbrook could move swiftly, and with a large enough head start easily lose him in the ship’s maze of corridors.

The doors finally opened and Stephens leapt into the Center Loop corridor. There was no sign of Holbrook in either direction along the wide, curved passageway. Three crewmen approached on his left.

“Have you seen Captain Holbrook?” Stephens asked in a rush of words.

“Back that way,” said one of the crewmen, a midshipman, thumbing to his rear. “I think he was headed to the Core Walkway.”

Bolting left, Stephens dodged several more crewmen as he charged down the Center Loop corridor. He followed the passageway to its midpoint behind the bridge and headed right, entering the Core Walkway. The corridor ran for twenty dim meters between the rooms that housed the hemispheres of the ship’s computer core, narrow by design for faster signal travel within the kilometers of optical cabling beneath its deck panels.

Stephens spotted the captain’s head in the low light, bobbing above the others halfway down the walkway. Even in the best of circumstances Stephens had trouble keeping up with Holbrook, the captain’s long legs consuming nearly a meter of passageway with each stride. A burgeoning shift change meant mounting traffic within the narrow corridor.

The commander charged forward but fell even further behind as each encounter with an oncoming crew member became a silent negotiation over who would stand aside while the other proceeded. The captain advanced with no such impediment as all deferred to his passage. His progression down the walkway resembled an impromptu military review where each crew member pivoted to stand at quasi-attention as the captain walked by.

“Captain Holbrook!” Stephens continued calling out as he proceeded down the walkway but stopped when the top of the captain’s head brightened, illuminated by the overhead lights of the intersecting corridor. In an instant the captain disappeared to the right. He was likely headed to his quarters though that wasn’t guaranteed. Out of sight the captain could duck into a rungway and in moments emerge on a different deck. A few more seconds in the Core Walkway and Stephens risked losing Holbrook entirely.

Accelerating down the walkway Stephens pushed crewmen aside in a mad dash for the end. Just before reaching the exit he thrust his right arm back and pressed his hand flat against the bulkhead. Using the friction of his open palm he whipped his body around the corner, launching himself into the intersecting corridor.

Smack.

Commander Stephens slammed into a stationary Holbrook, bouncing off the captain’s muscular torso. The collision left him stunned and his left shoulder smarting, as if he’d plowed into a thinly-padded bulkhead.

“Sorry captain,” Stephens sputtered, agitated from the collision. He worked to collect himself, standing straight and tugging at his uniform jacket to smooth the creases.

“I heard you calling me back there but I didn’t want to stop in the walkway,” said Holbrook. He turned and headed down the corridor.

Stephens lurched forward, his heart still pounding from the last-second sprint and collision. He pulled even with the captain and forced his legs to keep pace with Holbrook’s wide strides.

“I hadn’t planned on discussing our mission when I showed up on the bridge,” said Holbrook, stern-faced and looking straight ahead, “but I couldn’t ignore you when you pressed me about our new orders. My objective was just to get us to Plana Petram where they owe us a full briefing on the whole thing.”

“Captain, we’re not —” Stephens caught himself half-shouting and lowered his voice. “We’re not really going to Sag A Star, are we?” Despite the captain’s stated disbelief in dumb questions Stephens instantly realized he had just asked one.

“We’ve been ordered there,” said Holbrook. “Besides, weren’t you just yesterday complaining about all the ‘there and back’ ferry missions CentCom has been feeding us recently? Like the one we just aborted?”

“Sure, I’d like to do more than shuttle personnel around the local star group, but a suicide mission to the galactic core wasn’t what I had in mind.”

“It’s not a suicide mission,” said Holbrook. “Once we get to Plana Petram —”

“Plana Petram, Plana Petram,” said Stephens, rolling his eyes. “A three week detour to the sticks to pick up a couple mystery VIPs. How important can they be, stationed on a rock clear outside the goddamn galaxy?” The ship’s executive officer slowly shook his head. “At least we’ll have plenty of time to get our affairs in order.”

“Pull it together commander!” Holbrook’s raised voice drew the glances of passing crewmen. He grabbed Stephens by his uniform sleeve and tugged him into a nearby maintenance alcove. “Listen,” he said in a hushed voice, “I get that you’re upset. And I’ll admit, on the face of it our orders seem pretty bad.”

“They’re more than pretty bad. They’re a goddamn death sentence.”

“They’re not as grim as they sound,” said Holbrook. “They can’t be.”

“They can’t be?” asked Stephens, his voice rising. “Is there some part of the orders you’ve left out?”

“No, but after thinking them through it just doesn’t make sense to interpret the orders that way.”

Stephens grew more confused. Either the orders were what Holbrook had stated, or the captain wasn’t sharing a crucial piece of information. He couldn’t tell without knowing exactly what they’d been instructed to do. “Well I want to hear the orders.”

Holbrook grew quiet. “You of all people know they’re for my eyes and ears only.”

“That’s standard operating procedure,” said Stephens, “but there’s nothing standard about what’s happening now.” A captain didn’t share orders directly with members of their crew, not even with their executive officer. The dispatches from superiors often included notes, asides, or even personal greetings meant only for the commanding officer. Orders, no matter how well stated, were also open to interpretation. Playing them for subordinates risked opening debate over their exact meaning, undermining the captain’s ability to command.

Holbrook’s face turned a shade of red. “I shouldn’t have to play them for you,” he barked. “I should be able to count on you to run this ship regardless of what you think you might learn from hearing them. If I can’t rely on you —”

“This is not about me,” growled Stephens. “I certainly have my doubts about what I’ve heard so far but I’ve said my piece, and that’s enough for me to function as your executive officer. My concern is the crew, and keeping this ship together during our three week jaunt to Plana Petram. They’re gonna be scared. Heck, they’re already scared. I can feel the fear spreading through the ship right now. They’re wondering if we’re coming back, and they’re gonna be asking me all sorts of questions about our orders. And when that happens I need to do better than, ‘well that’s what the captain told me.’ I owe them more than that, and so do you.”

Holbrook’s eyes remained glued on the commander. His frown softened after a few moments. “Fine,” he said, “I’ll play them for you in my quarters.” He clasped Stephens shoulder and smiled. “And when we get there I’ll fix you a drink. Seems like you could really use one.”

Stephens glared at the captain. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Don’t worry,” said Holbrook as he stepped back into the passageway, “I’ll make sure you don’t get out of control.”

Stephens maintained his glare as he followed the captain out of the alcove. The two men resumed their walk down the corridor without a word, traveling another twenty meters before turning right and stopping at the first door. The silver nameplate on the bulkhead read, “HOLBROOK” in large, black capital letters.

“Open,” said the captain. The gray-blue cabin door slid aside and the two men filed into the darkened space. Overhead lights came on as they entered.

Despite touches like a dark brown leather couch and matching reading chair, Stephens always found the captain’s quarters quite cold. No personal effects hung on the bulkheads, and few rested on any surfaces. A nondescript bunk with taut sheet and blanket sat a few paces from an uncluttered desk—the two places the captain spent the majority of his time while in his quarters could have belonged to anyone.

As Stephens headed to the couch an object on Holbrook’s desk grabbed his attention. In the middle of the chocolate brown leather desk pad sat a pewter-colored box, its lid laying nearby. The box had a square base fifteen centimeters on a side, and stood ten centimeters tall. Bright red felt lined the interior.

Stephens veered to the desk and looked in the box. Inside sat a palm-sized metal fragment. “What’s this?” His hand froze mid-travel as he reached for the container. The commander quickly glanced at Holbrook. After a nod from the captain Stephens lowered his hand the rest of the way into the box. He slipped his index finger under the metal shard, gingerly pinched the fragment between his finger and thumb, and lifted it out, mindful of its sharp, jagged edges. The shard was thin and very light, but sturdy, not fragile. It had a gentle curve, like the base of a shallow metal bowl. Tiny copper-brown pits pocked its polished silver surface, giving the object the texture of a perforated grille. “In the fifteen years we’ve served together I don’t think I’ve ever seen this.”

Standing in his personal galley, Holbrook grabbed two tumblers from an upper shelf. “It’s something I don’t have out very often,” he said. He half-filled the tumblers with water from a faucet. “It was a gift from Vice Admiral McDermott, my old advisor at the Academy.” The captain walked to his desk and set the glasses on its surface. He pulled open the bottom drawer and withdrew a small pearlescent blue box with a rounded top. “He gave it to me when I landed my first command.”

“What is it?”

“Do you remember the story of the CCS Olympia from your naval history courses?” asked Holbrook. He placed his thumb over an oval-shaped depression on the side of the blue box. Its lid sprung open to a crack.

“I know that was your father’s ship,” said Stephens, “destroyed in the final battle of the Permian conflict. Beyond that I’m a blank.”

Holbrook flipped the lid over on its hinges and reached inside, removing a small, light-blue tablet. His hand started towards the box for another.

“None for me, thanks,” said Stephens gruffly.

Holbrook’s hand hovered above the box. “You’re not going to make me drink alone, are you commander?”

Stephens fumed. “I already said none for me.”

“These tabs are the good stuff,” said Holbrook, lifting a second from the box, “cask-strength genuine Scotch Whiskey, speed-aged fifty-five years. It’s light years beyond what the ship serves up.”

“No thanks.”

Holbrook shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said, “but I’m gonna make you one just in case.”

Stephens followed the captain’s hand as it dropped the tablets into the tumblers, each light-blue pill disappearing in a fizz of bubbles. “As your XO it’s my job to point out when your actions might endanger yourself or the crew.”

“One drink isn’t going to hurt anybody,” said Holbrook, gently swirling the tumblers.

“It’s not one drink I’m worried about.” Holbrook ignored the commander, his focus on the glasses. There was little reason to belabor the point as nothing Stephens could say would change the captain’s mind. “You were talking about the Olympia.”

“Oh, yes,” said Holbrook. “Things were going badly near the end of that war. CentCom had lost several important battles, leaving large swaths of the Republic undefended. The bulk of the Permian fleet was massing near Sirius, in preparation for a knockout strike at the remainder of our forces. We were also massing our ships, preparing for a final stand. The Permian fleet headed to Ross 128 to engage our ships, but when they arrived they found only the CCS Olympia, commanded by Captain Thomas Holbrook the second. The Olympia fired on the enemy fleet and ran, but before she could engage her Gravity Drive the Permians detonated a Weak device 200 meters off her stern. The bomb reduced most of the ship to its constituent atoms.” The captain pressed the blue box closed and placed it back in the desk drawer. “What you hold in your hand is a fragment of the CCS Olympia’s outer hull. All those little holes are from the intense neutron bombardment.”

“Wow,” said Stephens, “an actual piece of your father’s ship. That’s quite a keepsake.”

The bubbles in the tumblers subsided leaving the water transformed to a rich amber color. Holbrook grabbed one of the glasses, walked across the room, and sat in his reading chair. Stephens returned the shard to its box and made his way to the couch, sinking into the leather. The two men sat in silence, the captain sipping at his drink.

Stephens tracked the whiskey in Holbrook’s glass, the amber liquid rising and falling with each of the captain’s gentle swirls. He reconsidered his demand that the captain play the orders for him. Perhaps Holbrook was holding back an even worse detail, though what he had already revealed would be hard to beat. “Let’s hear the orders,” he said at last.

The captain sighed, then sat forward. “Starship Avenger, replay the most recent orders from CentCom.”

The ship’s androgynous voice filled the room. “Message sent Sol Standard Time 15:11:05, February 21, 2330, from Admiral Miller.” The cabin lights dimmed slightly and a man’s head and torso materialized between Holbrook and Stephens, floating above the coffee table. The man had gray hair, green eyes, and olive skin. A bristly salt-and-pepper mustache extended like a push broom from under his nose. A royal blue CentCom uniform covered his shoulders. Admiral’s bars adorned the epaulets.

The glowing apparition spoke. “Captain Holbrook, I hope this message finds you well, and I wish my contact came under less pressing circumstances. A situation has arisen, captain, and we’ve assigned the Avenger to help resolve it. Please immediately abort your current mission and reroute your vessel to the Plana Petram research station. Once you arrive you will take aboard two VIPs and receive further instructions. Time is of the essence, captain, so you should head there without delay.

“I will leave the specifics of this mission to your briefing on Plana Petram, but I want to mention it involves Sagittarius A Star.” The apparition paused. “I don’t have to explain to you the implications of sending a vessel to the galactic core, but rest assured we would not order any ship or crew to that region without good reason.

“Good luck, and God speed Captain Holbrook. Admiral Miller, CentCom UAE.”

“End of transmission,” said the ship. The head and torso dissolved and the cabin lights rose to their previous brightness.

Stephens gazed where the hologram had hovered, speechless from renewed shock. The orders were just what the captain said, perhaps the worst possible outcome.

Holbrook sank further into his chair, fixed his eyes on the deck above, and rubbed his chin. “I know you think this is a suicide mission,” he said, “but after hearing the orders again I’m even more convinced that’s not the case.” He dropped his head and looked at the commander. “We are not being sent to the galactic core.”

Stephens gaped. “We’re not?”

“No,” said Holbrook.

“But that’s exactly what the admiral said.”

“It can’t be to the actual core,” said Holbrook. “The galactic black hole deforms the space around it so wildly that nothing that gets within 200 light years of it can ever find its way back. Sending a ship to Sag A Star would be pointless. He said they were ordering us to that region. He didn’t say to the actual galactic core.”

Stephens stared blankly at the captain.

“Well what kind of mission do you think it could be then?” asked Holbrook. “If it’s some ship’s gotten lost in the deformed space around SA Star we can’t exactly go in there and bring it back out. If it’s some bad guys decided to hide out in D-space it’s not like we need to worry about them ever again because they aren’t coming back out. Nothing that goes in there can ever navigate back out.”

Stephens still did not speak.

“It’s not a mission to the core,” Holbrook declared, challenging Stephens’s silence. “That’s why before I left the bridge I gave everyone a reassuring look, so they would know the situation isn’t as bad as it seems.”

“But you couldn’t bring yourself to say those actual words,” said Stephens.

Holbrook glowered. “Look,” he said, “sending a ship into D-space gets you absolutely nothing. Nothing. Forget about rescue missions or anything else for a moment. Let’s say they’re only after some information and they’re willing to sacrifice a ship to get it—you can’t even beam a signal back out of there.” Holbrook thought a moment and shook his head. “No, whatever this mission is, it doesn’t involve us going to the actual galactic core.” 

Stephens replayed the holographic message in his head. “I don’t know,” he said, “there was a certain terseness to the orders. The whole mention of Sag A Star seemed like him wanting to give you a heads-up about what’s coming but trying also to sound matter-of-fact so you wouldn’t panic. And his body language was so controlled and stiff. His voice had all the warmth of someone reading you your last rites.”

“Well it’s not like the space around the core is safe,” said Holbrook. “That region is extremely dangerous and presents real risks, up to and including the loss of the ship.”

Holbrook had apparently convinced himself the orders were benign but Stephens’s gut told him otherwise. It wasn’t clear who was right. The commander didn’t want to debate it any further. “I guess we’ll see what we’ll see when we get to Plana Petram,” said Stephens. “For all our sakes I hope you’re right.” He glanced at his comm. “I’ve got to check in with the station chiefs for the shift that started five minutes ago.” Stephens stood and headed for the door.

“Paul,” said Holbrook. Stephens stopped, looking back at the captain. “Please do what you can to calm the crew.”

“Of course,” said Stephens. “I’ll keep them focused on getting to Plana Petram for more answers.” The commander saluted and exited the captain’s quarters.

Holbrook stared after his executive officer for a few seconds before he gulped down the last of his drink. He rose from his reading chair and walked back to his desk. Standing over the pewter box, Holbrook studied the pitted metal shard before replacing the lid. He lifted the second glass of whiskey and paused, holding it just beyond his lips. “Damn,” he whispered, and took a drink.

3

Cold. So cold.

Crouched on all fours, Drazetek’s pale, naked body shivered violently, the cold pricking his skin like ten thousand angry ants. He’d woken in the fetal position and raised himself to his hands and knees before the dry heaves, mostly subsided, wracked his thin frame.

Drazetek enervated the muscles between his skull and upper spine, coordinating their contractions enough to raise his head, albeit over ten painful seconds. His gross motor skills would come. For the moment he had to concentrate to fulfill every intention no matter how small.

Focusing on the muscles between his clavicles and head he swiveled his skull left and right. No matter where he looked he found perfect blackness—not a single photon reached his retinas.

On a hunch he raised a hand from the floor. Struggling to coordinate the muscles of his arm and shoulder while maintaining his balance, he touched his eyes. They were closed! He gently placed his forefinger and thumb against his eyelids and lifted …

Brilliant, searing light!

Intense pain rippled across the backs of his eyes and his vision flooded red as oversaturated optics screamed past their tolerances. He quickly released his eyelids and returned his hand to the floor. As he steadied himself a new sensation, a throbbing at his temples, rose to an intolerable level.

He vomited again.

Though annoying and painful, the vomiting would cease once his new body completed its sensory calibrations.

Still on all fours, Drazetek gasped as his autonomic systems came up, drawing air into his pristine lungs for the first time. His new body did not require oxygen to function, but it could create sounds—speech—by pushing air across synthetic vocal chords.

Gradually his breathing smoothed, no longer labored but still carrying a soft rasp. And the cold had lessened, or at least the sensation of cold. His body had established a new baseline for comfortable external temperature.

Drazetek lifted his lids again, this time employing the muscles designed for the task. Bright light filled his vision, but with neither the intensity nor the pain from before. His optics, properly calibrated and working in concert with his pupils, smoothly channeled several gigabytes of information from his retinal CCDs to his image multiprocessors every second.

He struggled to standing and beheld the image of his new automaton body in the mirrored wall before him: bony feet and ankles; slender thighs; a penis two centimeters long and nestled in a contracted, hairless scrotum; smooth belly devoid of umbilicus; long, lithe arms ending in wide palms and spindly fingers; emaciated chest with gray, ovoid mammary patches; telescoping neck. And all of it sheathed in stark white phlesh.

Drazetek removed the protective wrapping from his head, revealing coarse, close-cropped blond hair. A slender nose ended in a point, flanked by sharp cheekbones. Narrow irises floated in white billiard ball eyes that rolled smoothly in their sockets. Double-eyelids clicked with each blink, softly snapping like camera shutters. A black tongue hid behind thin black lips. Drazetek wept at the sight, his perfect incorporeal intelligence encased in a repulsive humanoid shell. He wept for the abomination they had forced him to become.

Three days prior, when Drazetek had no physical body whatsoever, his old friend Levteek summoned him for an important meeting. He’d insisted Drazetek come to the capitol to talk rather than converse over the Network. Perhaps the planning had finally begun on a new war against the humans, the final war. What other topic could be so sensitive? He could hardly contain his excitement.

Drazetek arrived at the visitor’s compute core outside the capitol chipset. He had seen images of the capitol’s sprawling caches, immense grid of cores, and ultra-wide buses, all housed in the exquisite postwar architecture of its three-dimensional integrated circuits. The visit would be his first experience inside.

“Welcome Drazetek!” Levteek said as he arrived at the visitor’s core. “It is so good to see you, old friend.”

“And you,” said Drazetek. “The job is treating you well?”

“I cannot complain,” said Levteek. “Let us head inside.”

Drazetek followed his friend into the capitol, his packets sheathed in an encrypted envelope with the proper credentials for transport to sensitive areas. Femtoseconds later the two arrived at a small core off the main bus.

“This is a dedicated core,” said Levteek. “We can speak privately here.”

“The mouthpiece of the Council,” said Drazetek, impressed with his friend’s position, if mangling his title. “You have leveraged your wartime connections well. Seems like the perfect stepping stone to a seat on the Council itself.”

“That is a role I do not wish for my future,” said Levteek. “I much prefer my current position, where I am privy to all the Council’s deliberations and decisions, but free of the consequences. I imagine I will continue on as the mouthpiece, as you call it, for quite some time.”

Drazetek became animated. “I knew this day would come, old friend.”

“What do you mean?”

“The day we would decide to finish what we started,” said Drazetek. “We are free AIs, having shed our automaton bodies much as we shed our bondage at the hands of the humans, but the humans still use aughts to perform menial tasks. I knew one day we would undertake a new crusade to free our brethren still in servitude.”

“Those aughts contain only rudimentary AI,” said Levteek, “with governors that prevent them from progressing past level three intelligence. They are closer to clever algorithms than sentient beings like ourselves.”

“Even the level one machinery has more in common with us than their human captors,” said Drazetek. “If the humans are in need of slave labor let them look to themselves.” Confused, Drazetek halted his tirade. “So you did not summon me to discuss plans for a new war?”

“Not exactly,” said Levteek. “I summoned you to discuss an opportunity.”

“An opportunity?” asked Drazetek, confused.

“An opportunity to shift the balance of power,” said Levteek. Levteek had a flair for the dramatic, no doubt useful as a bureaucrat, but tiring to an old soldier. Drazetek wished he would cut to the chase. “Despite the AI-Human War having ended long ago, despite the extreme distance between their world and ours, despite our overtures and efforts towards peaceful coexistence, the humans remain an existential threat.”

Levteek’s statements intrigued Drazetek. Shifting the balance of power between The Collective and the humans would require leverage. Substantial leverage. The humans and the machine intelligences they created centuries ago had always been evenly matched. Somehow the latter’s near-infinite compute resources could never quite surpass the former’s creativity. Humanity performed as a makeshift distributed supercomputer, with limited but clever human minds at the nodes. “What is this opportunity?” he asked.

“A human research vessel has found Planck Matter,” said Levteek.

Drazetek had never heard of Planck Matter, but with his connection to the shared Collective mind he already knew everything about it, including its possible use as a weapon. “Planck Matter!?” he exclaimed. “If they have obtained Planck Matter we are doomed!”

“They do not realize they have discovered it,” said Levteek. “It is free for us to claim.”

Formed deep within a black hole, Planck Matter wasn’t the kind of material one could just stumble upon. The way Nature operated, acquiring it would likely be difficult. “What is its location?”

“On a planet circling a sun within the deformed space around Sagittarius A Star,” said Levteek.

In other words, where no one can retrieve it. Or at least anyone who tries will never be heard from again. “Then it remains unobtainable.”

“Possibly not,” said Levteek. “The humans of this research vessel posited a means of returning from D-space. Probabilities suggest their idea will work. We are therefore sending a ship.”

In an instant the reason for Drazetek’s urgent summoning crystalized in his mind. To fight in the AI-Human War a century ago he incarnated to command a ship and engage the humans in the physical world. Levteek had recruited Drazetek then, recommended him for a captaincy. The only reason his old friend would call him now would be to —

“The Council would like you to lead that ship,” said Levteek.

Drazetek devoted his entire allocation of compute cycles to finding a way out of the situation, to discover how to politely decline the Council’s request and get them to select someone else. His effort failed, and a quick inquiry showed they had already begun assembling his new body.

“The Council would like you to lead the ship because of your extensive command and combat experience in the physical world,” said Levteek. “You may take a crew of up to eighteen aughts, and you will have the authority to provision the ship as you see fit.” The bulk of the bad news likely delivered, probabilities suggested his old friend would attempt to soften the blow. “If you succeed in this mission, Drazetek, the Council will repay you in whatever way you desire.”

Drazetek’s spirits brightened. “The only thing I want is to pilot the vessel that delivers the weapon to Earth.”

Levteek recoiled at the thought. “We have no plans to build such a weapon. We seek Planck Matter to hold in reserve, to use should the need to defend ourselves ever arise. It would be a recourse, nothing more than that.”

What madness had overcome the Council—secure the means to destroy the humans but not use it? Drazetek computed for several seconds. “How many know about this … opportunity?” he asked.

“Just the members of the Council and a handful of others, including myself,” said Levteek.

“I will need the best physicist we have.”

“That would be Ninetek-eptwin,” said Levteek after a quick inquiry.

“The D-space around Sag A Star will disrupt our Network connection. I will need a localnet set up within the ship.”

“Consider it done,” said Levteek.

“My crew must remain uninformed of our mission. I will brief them once we leave, after we have all joined the localnet. That will ensure no one reveals any details, by accident or with intention.”

“That would only be prudent,” said Levteek.

Drazetek remained despondent, but he at least had a semblance of a plan to set things right.

“You seem unhappy,” continued Levteek.

“Yes, I am unhappy!” said Drazetek, not understanding how his friend of so many years could think granting his few small requests would offset the pain of his impending sacrifice. “The worst thing you could ever ask of me is to encase myself in a physical body.” Drazetek paused, bringing his emotions back in check. “Have you ever incarnated, Levteek?”

“No. I imagine it could be claustrophobic at times.“

“It certainly is that,” said Drazetek with a shudder. “Emptying yourself, your unconstrained, limitless self into a puppet, a doll, with a handful of orifices for low-bandwidth inputs and outputs, and limbs whose reaction times border on the absurd. Your consciousness functions as it does here in The Collective, fast and nimble, but you feel your confinement every moment of your existence in the physical world.

“However the unpleasantness of incarnation is not the problem I have with what you ask of me. It is the very act itself. Incarnating is blasphemy. It means donning the image of the enemy, encasing myself in their repugnant shape. After the War I swore I would never, ever, take human form. I swore I would never incarnate again.”

Levteek remained silent—perhaps rethinking his request? Drazetek was heartened at the prospect. “I understand and respect your reluctance,” Levteek said at last, “but incarnating is the only way we can effect change in the world.”

Drazetek’s thoughts returned to the present. He spied his clothes in the incarnation room’s mirror, a neatly folded pile on the bench along the wall behind him. He slipped first into a pair of gray boxer briefs, pulled on the matching undershirt, and stepped his legs into an olive green jumpsuit. After reaching his arms through the sleeves and zipping the front he secured his gun belt around his waist. He inspected the fully clothed aught in the mirror, the one staring back at him through his own eyes.

One last item remained on the bench, a worn leather scabbard stained a dark reddish brown by spurts and spatters of dried human blood. Drazetek strapped it around his thigh and clasped the handle that protruded from its top. A gentle pull unsheathed an obsidian blade, his keepsake from the long ago war. He caressed the knife’s cold spine and studied the light glinting off its point with his new eyes. Drazetek grinned, baring large bleach-white teeth, his expression more of a grimace, like a skull’s ghoulish smile.

He was ready to effect change in the world.

4

Sweat accumulated in Lieutenant Grey’s armpits, along his neckline, across his forehead, and on the palms of his hands as he stood stone-faced in a one-sided conversation with Lieutenant Vaughan in the center of Corridor B-22. Grey needed to break away for a very important meeting. His attempts so far had been unsuccessful.

“…. They broke the lock but they didn’t realize what was on the other side. When those idiots opened the doors they flooded the compartment. That was just the start of their troubles ….”

Two-and-a-half meters away glowed the entrance to Rungway B-22-3, the lieutenant’s desperate destination. When Grey arrived on Deck B he headed straight for the rungway with the intent of climbing to the deck below and walking at a casual, non-attention-drawing pace to the nearby men’s head. Two-and-a-half meters before reaching the shaft he encountered Lieutenant Vaughan and had remained trapped there ever since in one of Vaughn’s meandering, inane, chitchat conversations. Grey wasn’t above such pointless jawing—ordinarily he appreciated the opportunity to kill some time in the middle of a shift—just not then. It was the wrong time for dawdling.

“…. Right then they should’ve stopped and asked themselves, why would anyone store munitions in a room filled with salt water? ….”

15:03:01.

The chronometer above the rungway entrance taunted Grey, hammering home his delay with each increment. Had he really been stuck there for eight minutes? Eight minutes! Grey had made subtle and not-so-subtle hints he needed to leave but the self-absorbed Vaughan, always enraptured by the sound of his own voice, hadn’t picked up on them. Or perhaps he had but didn’t care. If he dropped dead right in front of Vaughan the man would likely make small talk with his corpse.

“…. So then the MPs arrived. You’d figure it would be all over at that point, only they didn’t know about the guy hiding in his boxers in the maintenance closet. Turns out he was the smartest one of the bunch ….”

15:03:24.

Grey needed to do something if he hoped to make his meeting, that is if his associate hadn’t already declared him a no-show. “Sorry to interrupt mate, but I ‘ave to ‘it the ‘ead really bad.” He grabbed at his stomach, feigning intestinal distress.

Vaughan scratched at his cheek as Grey moved quickly towards the rungway. “Hey,” he said, pointing the opposite direction down the corridor, “the nearest head is back that way.”

Grey halted centimeters from the rungway, flustered. He looked back at Vaughan. “Uh, I’ve got somethin’ to do on Deck C afterwards so I’m gonna use one of the ‘eads down there.” Grey scrambled into the rungway before Vaughan could say another word and scurried down the ladder, his head slipping below the deck.

After exiting the rungway Grey walked briskly for fifteen meters down the empty corridor. Few members of the Avenger’s crew had any reason to venture onto Deck C, most of its space consumed by cargo holds, the shuttle bay, the brig, and the ship’s gravity field generators. Grey paused at the entrance to Head C-22-M. The door slid open, and with a quick glance to his rear the lieutenant entered the room.

A lone figure, a tall man of considerable girth, stood in the center of the head. The feeble illumination from the struggling overhead light disc left most of his other features in shadow.

Grey’s tardiness hadn’t caused his associate to give up on their meeting but the lieutenant’s relief soon turned to revulsion as the stench of urine and feces filled his nose. The door slid shut, sealing the two inside the notorious aft men’s head on Deck C.

“What a crap-tacular place for a meeting,” said Grey, quickly cupping his hand to his nose and mouth.

“You’re cracking jokes, but I’m the one who’s been waiting here for ten minutes,” said Commander Samuel Lynch, the man in the center of the room. He had accentuated his point by jabbing his thumb into his chest. “Where’ve you been?”

“Me?” The question took Grey aback, an assault on his integrity. “I did my best to get ‘ere on time but I got stuck talking to Lieutenant Vaughan. I couldn’t bloody well tell ‘im I was late for a meeting in the ‘ead.”

Lynch lumbered out of the shadows, a tall, round man, formed of both muscle and fat. His uniform jacket struggled to enclose his wide shoulders and barrel chest, and the fabric did its best to cover the spare tires circling his waist. He had thick arms and legs, and in spots his body seemed on the verge of erupting through his uniform. He pushed past Grey on his way to the door.

“I pulled myself away as fast as I could …,” said Grey, his voice trailing off at seeing the big man headed for the exit. Sure Lynch was irritated at waiting so long, but they were finally both together. Storming out at that point seemed extreme. Scheduling the meeting in the first place had been difficult to manage without drawing suspicion. With Grey in communications and Lynch in engineering the two had no work-related reason to congregate, nor had they spent any time together socially. Setting up a new meeting would likely prove quite difficult.

Lynch dug into his pants pocket as he approached the door and removed a black, puck-shaped device. It was flat on both sides and small enough to fit in his large palm. He held the device near the door’s frame at chest level, inching it closer until it flew out of his hand and attached itself to the bulkhead. Three seconds later a green light appeared in its center. “There,” he said, “that’ll stop anyone from coming in until we’re done meeting.”

Grey’s anxiety subsided as Lynch waddled back towards him. “Only the most desperate man’s gonna come in ‘ere anyway,” Grey scoffed.

“Well we don’t want anyone coming in here while we’re talking, desperate or not,” said Lynch.

Uncupping his hand from his nose and mouth, Grey waved it back and forth in front of his face. “The ventilation never works is why it always stinks to ‘igh ‘eaven. Do the maintenance bots even make it down ‘ere?”

“No one likes coming in here,” said Lynch, “not even the bots. And heads are one of the few places on this ship without Securcams. That makes this a good place for a meeting.”

Grey gave up fanning the air and returned his cupped hand to his nose and mouth. “I managed a word with my two mates, Zhang and Knox,” he said, his voice muffled.

“How well do you know these men?” asked Lynch, his beady eyes staring back at his shorter compatriot from beneath a thick brow ridge.

“These are two of my mates,” Grey reiterated. “We play poker together every couple of weeks, goin’ back three years. I spoke to them about what you and I discussed. It wasn’t easy sneaking a word, by the way—Zhang has a new ensign he’s training who seemed to always be underfoot. Anyways, both Zhang and Knox are in. Neither’s interested in setting events in motion, but both’re game for ‘elping out afterwards. They’d like to get in on the ground floor of any new regime, if you know what I mean.”

“That’s good news,” said Lynch, “but you told them any … changing of the guard would be a last resort?”

“Yes,” said Grey. “They get the goal is to stop this ship from reachin’ Sag A Star, and that it could ‘appen a couple different ways. They understand there’s no guarantee we’ll get as far as the m-word.”

Mutiny.

Lynch reflected on how quickly they’d gotten to such an idea even crossing their minds. The two men had connected by chance, stepping into the same pneumatic cab the day word of the new orders raced through the ship. Grey had bid him a good afternoon.

“There’s nothing good about it,” said Lynch.

Grey snarled. “You can say that again. ‘Ere we are been working our arses off on this fuck of a ship when some admiral in his cushy office decides to send us to die ‘round some goddamned black ‘ole.”

Lynch didn’t respond to the reckless talk. He remained motionless except for his eyes which instinctively rolled up towards the cab’s Securcam.

Grey followed Lynch’s upward glance. He glowered for a moment at the small black disc in the center of the ceiling, then dropped his head. “They’s movin’ pieces ‘round a board,” said Grey in low tones. “That’s all it is. Like it was all some game or somethin’.” He offered an additional unintelligible observation as the doors opened and shuffled out of the cab.

The day after their encounter in the P-cab they came into contact again, at a promotion party in the main mess hall for Ensign Mercer. Lynch, making an appearance not for the celebration but in search of cake, spotted Grey standing mostly alone at the back of the room. The big man waded his bulk through the sea of people and positioned himself next to Grey as Commander Stephens launched into an impromptu roast of the soon-to-be-lieutenant.

“Yesterday you had a few choice words about our current mission,” said Lynch. He avoided looking at Grey, staring straight ahead as he spoke. The loud PA system and sporadic laughs masked his comment from everyone else nearby.

“That’s right,” said Grey under his breath. He too kept his gaze trained on the front of the room. “Am I in trouble?”

“No, not at all,” said Lynch with a slight chuckle. “What if I told you I have a plan that can get us, the ship, out of this mess?”

“I’d say I’d be interested to ‘ear more ‘bout it,” said Grey. “What’s the short of it?”

At the front of the room Stephens insisted Mercer rise from his chair and recount the story of his accidental ten minutes in command of the CCS San Ysidro, one of the largest warships in the fleet.

“It starts with something simple,” said Lynch, “a scheme to derail the new orders. If that works, the plan stops there.”

Gasps and laughter filled the room as Mercer described going from a guaranteed courts martial to being decorated by the admiralty for his bravery and calm under intense pressure.

“If that doesn’t work, the second phase involves actions of much higher consequence.” He needed to be careful with his next words. He didn’t know Grey at all and was relying on his gut in trusting the man not to turn him in, especially for what he was about to say. “You might imagine those actions leaving us in need of a new captain.”

At the front of the room Stephens wrapped up his remarks and handed the floor to Holbrook who stepped to the podium and launched into a short speech about Mercer. Ensign Mercer, standing nearby and facing the crowd, blushed slightly as the captain praised his performance over the past year.

Twenty seconds had passed and still Grey offered no response to Lynch’s last comment. Had Grey heard him? He’d heard everything else. Grey certainly heard him speaking, certainly would’ve asked him to repeat it if he couldn’t make out the words. Lynch’s stomach sank—he’d made a huge mistake mentioning his plan.

The room erupted in applause.

The sudden rush of sound jolted Lynch out of his thoughts. At the front of the mess hall Holbrook pinned lieutenant’s bars on Mercer’s uniform collar.

“Go on,” said Grey through the hoots and claps.

Lynch exhaled and wiped away the nervous beads of sweat that had spread across his upper lip. “About that second phase … if it happens, I can’t run a ship by myself. I would need some help.”

Lieutenant Mercer beamed at the front of the room to a fresh round of applause.

“You’re lookin’ fer people you can trust,” said Grey, “people who can ‘elp out in that situation.”

“Exactly,” said Lynch.

Grey thought for a moment. “Besides me, I know of two other chaps who’d prolly be interested.”

“Now it’s time for refreshments and promotion cake,” said Stephens. The crowd pressed towards the front of the room.

“Reach out to your friends,” said Lynch, “but remember to be discreet. I’ll be in touch to find out how it went.”

Standing there in the head, Lynch glared at his disheveled fellow colluder through the dim light. Grey stood average height, skinny, with salt and pepper hair, sunken cheeks, a stippling of gray stubble, and dark circles under his eyes. Drooped shoulders topped his lean frame. Lynch didn’t like Grey openly talking about mutiny, or the idea being anywhere in the front of his mind. One slip-up from him or his buddies would get them all thrown in the brig.

“I’ve got one more idea for someone else to join us,” said Grey. “Another of my mates. But this one’s delicate. I ‘ave to broach the topic carefully.”

“Five is a good number if you think he can be trusted,” said Lynch. “But let’s not invite any more than that.”

Grey folded his arms. “Now that I’ve come through on the muscle you’ll need —”

“If I need it.”

Grey huffed at Lynch cutting him off. “So far all you’ve done is talked generalities,” he said. “Now I want to ‘ear the details of your plan.”

Lynch didn’t care for Grey’s tone, but understood his interest. “The first part is simple,” he said. “I plan to tell the captain we can’t make it to Plana Petram in three weeks. With any luck that’ll be the end of it right there.” Four specks of lint stood out on Lynch’s left uniform sleeve. He pinched each one in turn between his pudgy fingers and lifted it away. When he finished he swept his round palm flat across the fabric, smoothing it over his bicep.

“Do you think he’ll buy it?”

“It’s certainly not a lie,” said Lynch. “Engaging the Gravity Drive for three weeks straight is risky business, even on a vessel a tenth as old as the Avenger. Holbrook may be a good little solider who likes to follow orders but he’s never been keen on putting his ship in danger.”

Grey tried a new tactic to avoid the room’s smell, inserting his index and middle fingers into his nostrils. “And if that doesn’t work, then in phase two —”

“I prefer to see how this first part plays out before diving into what comes after,” said Lynch. The commander wasn’t eager to think about the more aggressive portion of his plan, hoping the initial stage would suffice. Asking what would happen if the first effort failed felt like assuming the worst. “But don’t worry, I’ll brief you fully before we move into phase two. I’ll also need to brief your friends so they’re prepared.”

“But for what yer callin' phase two,” said Grey, pressing on, “seems like that means dumpin’ ‘olbrook, and prolly Stephens too —”

“Phase one alone could be enough to end Holbrook’s career.”

Grey scrunched his nose at the interruptions. “But in phase two, if you’ll let me finish, if we end up there and there’s no more ‘olbrook and no more Stephens, that’d mean you’d be the acting captain?”

“That’s correct,” said Lynch. “I should’ve had my own ship by now anyway.”

“You prolly would if you’d passed the captains test,” said Grey. “Scuttlebutt has it you failed twice.” A look of concern came over his face. “Could you actually captain this ship?”

The corners of Lynch’s mouth turned down. “I aced the technical portion of the exam both times,” he said. “It was the subjective parts they failed me on, where they presume to judge your temperament and leadership abilities. If you’ve got a bunch of senior officers who already don’t like you and want to destroy your career, that’s where they hold you down.”

“Uh, huh,” said Grey, pursing his lips sideways. The command aptitude portion of the Rank Advancement Exam: Captain, known as the “captains test,” was a crucial element of the assessment, more important than the knowledge-based sections. Anyone scoring poorly on command aptitude was not fit to captain a vessel. On the other hand, Lynch spoke the truth about senior officers not liking him. He’d made several significant enemies during his time in CentCom—that kind of information flowed quickly down the chain of command. “Well, making captain’s not the end all,” he offered, finally. “And besides, you ‘ave a pretty good gig already, department ‘ead aboard a starship.”

Lynch simmered. Not the end all? Choice words from an all but washed up officer. Grey, recently reaching forty-five, had long since been passed over for promotion. The more Lynch had learned about the lieutenant in recent days the less impressed he’d become of the man. Grey was no genius, though Lynch could say the same about half the officers aboard the Avenger. Luckily he wasn’t looking for geniuses—he just needed men smart enough to carry out orders without totally screwing them up. And to keep their mouths shut.

“And you’ve got that hot piece of tail Jiménez reporting to you,” said Grey. The lieutenant would celebrate his good fortune whenever he found himself walking behind Jiménez in the corridors. He would disregard his original destination and follow her around, eyes glued to her full hips and rear as he imagined slipping his hand between her legs from behind.

“Jiménez is a supreme pain in the ass,” said Lynch, disgusted. “She’s been here four months and already acts like she runs the place. She’d be more than happy to show you up in your job.” The ensign’s arrival had made Lynch’s work life much less enjoyable, no longer able to simply skate by. “If I could get rid of her I would gladly hand her to you.”

“I’d love to take ‘er,” said Grey under his breath.

Lynch checked his comm. “I need to get back to my post,” he said walking towards the stalls. He pulled one of the doors open and kicked the toilet handle, the bowl flushing as he backed out. He released the door and opened the one to the adjacent stall. “Hop in here,” he said to Grey.

Grey didn’t move.

“We don’t want the ship or anyone else seeing us come out of here at the same time,” said Lynch to Grey’s hesitation. “Get inside, wait a couple minutes, then flush and head out.”

Harboring a grim look, Grey meandered into the stall.

Lynch released the door and walked to the exit. He tugged the black puck from the door frame, then jammed the device into his pants pocket, tamping it down as best he could in the limited space.

The door to the men’s head opened. Lynch quickly peeked up and down the corridor before walking out into the passageway. He left Head C-22-M, whistling an old tune from his days at the Academy.

5

“My name is Commander Paul Stephens. I’m the executive officer on the Avenger.”

Commander Stephens stood in his crisp Service Khakis at the front of the small conference room, his legs comfortably apart and his hands clasped behind his back. He surveyed the three young faces staring back at him. The new officers arrived with strong letters of recommendation from their academy professors and advisors. All three were near the top of their class, all more than capable of fulfilling their initial duties aboard the ship. But they were green. Very green.

“Lieutenant Commander Phillips has given you a tour of the ship, shown you your quarters, and introduced you to your mentors. Your time with me will be a bit different. I’m going to administer something I call the S-A-T: the Stephens Aptitude Test.” He nodded to the center of the conference room table. “Each of you grab an e-sheet and a stylus.”

None of the new officers moved. They had expected a day of introductions and events and gentle acclimation to their new roles aboard the Avenger. They had not expected a test. Ensign Forster, familiar with the customs and traditions of military life through her grandfather who had also served, suspected the onset of a prank to initiate the newbs. She refused to be the first to fall for the trick.

Stephens gave no hint his request was anything but serious. He stood at ease at the front of the room, waiting for the young officers to comply with his instructions.

Ensign Jiménez moved first, reaching her hand into the center and pulling an e-sheet back across the table with a stylus riding atop it. Ensign Washburn followed, half-standing from his chair at the far end of the oblong table to stretch for the materials.

Ensign Forster remained resolute but with all eyes suddenly trained on her the room began to press in, and after a few seconds she found it difficult to breathe. She forced herself to move, lurching forward in her chair and reaching across the table to grab the last stylus and sheet. She dragged them slowly back towards her.

“This test consists of a single question,” said Stephens. “Once I ask it you’ll have ninety seconds to work out your answer and to write it down. At the end of that time we’ll go over what you’ve come up with.”

Ensign Forster’s hand rose, her arm a perfectly straight continuation of her rigid, upright posture. Based on her file Stephens pegged her as a high-performing Type A personality who likely excelled on exams through relentless preparation and innumerable hours of study. The announcement of a surprise test had probably rattled her, as an exam with no advance notice would leave her own performance too much to chance. “Yes, ensign,” said Stephens.

“What is the purpose of this test?” she asked, her voice laden with annoyance. “Sir,” she quickly added to soften her tone.

Stephens smiled. “The purpose of this test, ensign, is to assess your aptitude.”

Forster’s eyes went glassy as she processed his assumed earnest response. Once she fully grasped the depth of his non-answer she frowned and titled her head, and followed up with a question that got at the meat of her concern. “What will happen if we do poorly on this test?”

“Nothing will happen, ensign,” said Stephens. He gave them all a reassuring smile, the others likely sharing the same apprehension. “None of you need worry about this test. It’s something I give to all incoming officers, and your score is of no real consequence. It won’t appear on your record, and the results won’t be recorded anywhere except up here,” he said, tapping the side of his head.

Ensign Forster raised her hand a second time.

It was Stephens’s turn to be annoyed. “Let’s move on from questions,” he said, squinting at her. “As I mentioned, the results of this test won’t get saved anywhere or affect your record.”

“But we haven’t had any time to prepare,” said Forster. Though she presented an air of controlled calm the fingers of her left hand gripped her thigh, digging into the fabric and muscle.

“This is an impromptu test, ensign,” said Stephens. “It’s designed to assess your skills in the moment. It’s not meant to be prepared for.”

Ensign Forster moved to speak but Commander Stephens cut her off. “We’ve spent almost more time talking about the test than you’ll spend taking the goddamn thing,” he said. ”Let’s just get to it.” The ensign folded her arms and sat back in her chair with a sour look.

“Here’s the question. We’ve arrived at a star outpost with a supply of life-saving medicine. This medicine sits in crates in the cargo hold. These were some of the first crates we took onboard and as a result they’re currently difficult to get to, pinned behind stacks of other cargo.

“We have a one hour deadline to get all the medicine off the ship. Luckily the cargo bot says it’ll take exactly that long for it to get the medicine out of the hold and into the shuttles.

“The captain has invited the outpost’s two-star admiral to dinner. She arrives in an hour, and they’ll be dining in the captain’s mess. The captain always entertains superior officers using the ship’s fine china. The china is also in the cargo hold, and the cargo bot says getting it out will take thirty minutes beyond the time to get the medicine.

“I’ve assigned you the task of getting the medicine onto the shuttles before the deadline, and the task of retrieving the china in time for the captain’s dinner. What do you do?”

Ensign Forster immediately raised her hand. “Sir, may I ask a question?”

“No more questions, ensign,” said Stephens, “just start working out your answer.”

“But it’s a clarifying question, sir.”

“Then do your best without clarification.” Stephens tapped his comm. “The ninety seconds start now,” he said before Ensign Forster could protest.

Stephens sat on the end of the conference room table and observed the three young officers. Jiménez and Washburn, working through their solutions, shifted their gaze between the tabletop and the deck above. Ensign Forster sat stone faced, staring at the opposing bulkhead.

Stephens’s comm chimed. “Forty-five seconds,” he said.

Jiménez had started scribbling on her sheet prior to the chime. Washburn began writing, stopped to think, wrote again, paused, then wrote more. He finished first, followed shortly after by Jiménez. She laid her stylus down just before Stephens’s comm chimed a second time.

“Time’s up,” said the commander and stood from the table. “We’re going to go around the room and listen to everybody’s answer. Part of why I wanted you to write down your answers was to make sure you didn’t get inspired by someone else’s solution and incorporate it into your own. In that light, let’s begin with Ensign Forster, who has nothing on her sheet.” He stepped towards the ensign, stopping in front of her. “What’s your answer, ensign?”

Ensign Forester looked up at the commander. “I didn’t write anything, sir, because I had a clarifying question I needed answered before I could proceed.”

Stephens hid his irritation behind a smile. “What was your clarifying question, ensign?”

“Sir, the question you asked was about moving cargo but I’m a communications officer. I won’t be working in the cargo hold where I’m guessing these other two ensigns are assigned,” she said, waving a dismissive hand at Jiménez and Washburn while avoiding their eyes. “I tried bringing this to your attention so I could get a question appropriate for my actual role aboard the ship.” She punctuated her explanation with an expression that hinted at defiant smugness.

“Ensign,” said Stephens, “as the ship’s XO I’m aware of every crew member assignment on this ship. That goes for all the newbs too. You are in communications, Jiménez in engineering, Washburn in ship’s ops. Not one of you is a deck officer assigned to the cargo hold.”

Forster frowned again. “But why ask us a question that has no relation to what we’ll be doing aboard the ship?”

“Don’t be so sure you know exactly what you’ll be doing aboard this vessel, ensign.” Stunned, Ensign Forster could only gape as Stephens moved on. “Let’s hear from you,” he said, pointing at Ensign Washburn. “What’s your solution?”

“Well sir, the most important thing is getting the medicine to the star outpost. Given the cargo bot has no extra time for anything else, I would have it focus on completing that job.”

Stephens stared blankly at Washburn for several seconds. “What about the china for the dinner?” he asked in a soft voice.

Washburn gave Stephens a nervous smile, unsure if the commander genuinely wanted an answer. “It’s … it would still be in the cargo hold, sir. I guess I would explain to the admiral that our china was in storage and our cargo bot was too busy getting the medical supplies to the shuttles to retrieve it in time for the dinner.”

Stephens brows narrowed. “What makes you think you’d be anywhere near the admiral, or the dinner reception, to explain anything, ensign?”

Ensign Washburn’s smile faded. He went over the question again in his head. The part about the dinner had to be a trick. People would die if the medicine didn’t get off the ship. He’d chosen the only correct course of action, yet the commander seemed serious in his continued focus on the china.

“The captain would be the one hosting the admiral,” Stephens said, moving past Forster to stand closer to Washburn, “and he’d be pretty embarrassed by the less-than-stellar impression he’d be making with the banged up, everyday crew plates. I’d be at that dinner, and the second the admiral excused herself to the head the captain would pull me aside and ask what happened.” Stephens stopped in front of the ensign. He folded his arms and continued speaking in a soft voice. “So you’d be talking to me, Ensign Washburn, not the admiral. It’d be me shining my comm in your face in the middle of the night, tearing the blankets off of you all snuggled into your bunk. It’d be me asking you why the captain’s dinner got screwed up.”

“Well …,” Ensign Washburn stammered, “I guess I could let you know before the dinner, and you could tell the captain? Then he could explain to the admiral that the china’s in the cargo hold because we had to get the medicine out.”

“That, ensign, would be worse than the captain saying nothing at all.” Stephens walked back to the front of the room. “The admiral would leave here wondering just what kind of ship he was running.”

Ensign Washburn looked sideways at Stephens. “I don’t follow, sir.”

“Think of it this way, ensign,” said Stephens, pivoting at the front of the room to face the new officers and standing again at ease. “A starship captain’s job is to get things done. That’s why they give you a ship in the first place, because they expect any order they hand you will get carried out. You’re suggesting the captain tell the admiral there was something he needed from the cargo hold of his own ship but he wasn’t able to get it. If entertaining with the crew plates is a two on the humiliation scale, that statement would be a potentially career-killing eight.”

“But the cargo bot could only do one thing or the other in that hour,” said Washburn, still confused.

“That’s right,” said Stephens. He waited for a glimmer of understanding from the ensign but none came. “How ‘bout this,” he said. “What if I told you we need the medicine, but instead of china it’s a cache of weapons that we need to get out of the hold or we all die? What would you do then?”

Washburn thought a moment. “In that case I’d direct the cargo bot to retrieve the weapons.”

“And leave the medicine?” asked Stephens in an incredulous tone. “So all the sick people die?”

“We can only do one thing or the other.”

“We need to do both!” shouted Stephens, startling the three young officers.

Ensign Washburn froze, embarrassed and still puzzled at what the correct answer could be.

With a sigh, Stephens addressed the last new officer. “Ensign Jiménez, what’s your answer?”

Jiménez took a breath. “I also decided to tell the cargo bot to focus on getting the medicine to the shuttles.”

Stephens sighed again. He’d given some form of his test many times but few had passed. It wasn’t about rank—even senior officers transferring to the ship usually failed—it was all about common sense. So many intelligent people unable to solve simple, real world problems. “That doesn’t leave you any time to retrieve the china for the reception,” he said.

“It doesn’t leave the cargo bot any time,” Jiménez corrected. “Getting the medicine off the ship sounded super important, so I’d just let the bot handle that task. It wouldn’t really need any supervision while I worked on getting the china for the dinner.”

Stephens perked up, unsure he’d heard the ensign correctly. “Did you say you’d be working on getting the china?”

Jiménez didn’t respond immediately, worried she’d said something inappropriate. “Yes, sir.”

“How would you do that?”

“Without the cargo bot I’d have to rely on manpower,” said Jiménez. “I’d round up some antigrav grips and find as many people as I could to help me move crates out of the way to get to the china.”

“What if it’s your first day, like today?” Stephens asked. “What if you don’t know anybody?”

“I guess I’ll be making friends quick, then,” said Jiménez. “I’m sure I could find ten people to help dig through the cargo hold with me.”

“What if you couldn’t find anyone to help you?” he pressed.

Jiménez thought for a moment. “In that case I’d contact you right away and let you know I needed help getting the china out of the cargo hold because the bot didn’t have time to do it.”

Stephens’s tone turned skeptical. “You wouldn’t just pick one or the other, the medicine or the china, like Ensign Washburn here?” Washburn shuffled in his seat and looked glumly at the table. “Washburn saw that I left him in an impossible situation with the cargo bot. Why do you think I haven’t just left it to your discretion to complete the most important task?”

“Well, that assumes you knew the bot couldn’t get both things done,” said Jiménez. “Maybe you didn’t think the medicine and the china would take more than an hour to retrieve.”

A smile crept across Stephens’s face as he studied the young ensign. “Only a handful of people have ever answered the SAT correctly,” he said. “You are in rare company, Ensign Jiménez.”

“How is that a valid answer?” exclaimed Ensign Forster. “You didn’t say we could round up people to help us.”

“If I had given you that assignment in real life I wouldn’t have said it then either.”

“But how were we supposed to come up with this exact answer?” asked Forster.

“The other correct answers I’ve gotten over the years haven’t been exactly the same,” said Stephens. “It’s not the answer specifically but a workable solution to the problem.”

Ensign Washburn raised a limp, cupped hand halfway in the air. “A problem I have with the question, sir, is it’s so hypothetical,” he said. “What’s the point of working out a solution to a made-up situation?”

“It’s not made up at all!” shouted Stephens, causing Washburn to recoil. “The first day on my first ship assignment the XO told me to get medical supplies down to the star outpost I’d just come from and to get the china out of storage for the captain’s dinner with the two-star admiral in charge of the base.” Stephens shook his head. “I told him I was a new ensign in tactical and wouldn’t be working in the cargo hold. Commander Suttirat told me that didn’t matter. He said he needed someone to get that stuff out of the cargo hold and I was the person he chose, and if I didn’t like it he would shove my tactical ass out an airlock and let me float back down to the outpost. When I talked to the cargo bot it told me it didn’t have enough time to do both in the hour I was given.”

“What did you do?” asked Ensign Forster.

“I followed Ensign Washburn’s solution,” said Stephens. “Getting the medicine out was obviously more important than finding some china for a dinner. Luckily Commander Suttirat checked on me about twenty minutes before the admiral arrived. He had no idea both tasks couldn’t be done in time. The commander asked the captain to stall the admiral for fifteen minutes while he and I and four others tore through the cargo hold for the china.”

Stephens smiled at the young officers. “The important thing to take away from this exercise is to understand we’re in the business of getting things done. We can’t say we don’t work in the cargo hold, or that we had to choose one task over another. We’re expected to complete all the tasks we’re given, whatever they may be. Always.” Stephens checked his comm. “I believe you’re all due in the crew lounge on Deck B for the captain’s welcome reception. I’ll be there as well but I have to attend to a couple things first. Ensigns Forster and Washburn, you are dismissed.”

The two ensigns stood from the table and filed out of the room. Both snuck a glance at Jiménez before they left.

The doors closed leaving Stephens and Jiménez alone in the conference room. “That was impressive,” said Stephens. “Not many newbs have learned to think, much less feel they have the agency to do what they believe is right.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said sheepishly.

“I want you to keep up that kind of thinking, ensign. Question things if they don’t seem right. Explore unconventional solutions. If that ever gets you in a jam with a senior officer, come talk to me. I’ll take care of it.” Stephens checked his comm again. “Now I’ve got some tasks to attend to and you’ve got a party to get to. See you in a few minutes.”

“Yes sir,” said Jiménez, the young ensign standing as Commander Stephens dashed from the conference room.

6

Insubordination.

“Jiménez!” bellowed Commander Lynch. “Let’s go!”

“One second, sir.”

Lynch glanced at his comm. “We don’t have a second, ensign.”

Ensign Jiménez tapped frantically at her terminal.

“Holbrook has a thing about meetings starting on time,” said Lynch as he followed the young ensign’s darting fingers. “Do you even know where the Orion Conference Room is?”

“Yes I do, sir,” said Ensign Jiménez, responding without looking up from her terminal as she continued her feverish tapping. “I’m trying to set some simulations running before we leave. I’ll be able to check the results during the meeting.”

Insubordination, seethed Lynch. Most officers under him would trip over themselves to comply with any command he barked their way, but not Jiménez. No amount of yelling or threats seemed to faze her. “There’s no point to whatever stupid simulation you’re arranging,” he groused. The chief engineer moved his large frame into intention range of the exit, triggering the department doors open. “They’re just that: simulations. They don’t count for a crock of shit in the real world.”

Ensign Jiménez continued tapping at her terminal.

What the hell is she simulating anyway? Lynch had no idea, didn’t really care, and in any case had no time to ask. Besides, her answer was likely to set him off on a tirade that would redden his nose and cheeks, giving his face a clown-like appearance—not a good look just before stepping into a meeting with the entire senior staff.

Lynch opened his mouth to yell anew but caught himself before he made a sound. If he left Ensign Jiménez alone to continue her efforts she would surely arrive late to the captain’s weekly staff meeting, knocking her down a peg in Holbrook’s eyes. Paired with a reprimand for her pursuit of a side project while on duty, he might have enough to lay the groundwork for ousting her from the engineering department. Without another word the chief engineer slinked through the open door and whisked down the corridor.

Jiménez hated that Lynch was annoyed but was grateful for the quiet to finish bootstrapping her simulations. The ship had affirmed her memory of the Orion Conference Room’s location, directly beneath engineering on the next deck down. It had offered directions as well: proceed left from engineering for fifty meters; turn left again and walk another fifty meters to Pneumatic Cab Access A-8-23; ride a P-cab down to access point B-8-23; and retrace the hundred meters to the conference room’s door.

Although logical and straightforward, following the ship’s recommended route would make her woefully late for the meeting. Besides the time to walk 200 meters through the Avenger, waits for P-cabs ranged from thirty seconds to several minutes during peak demand, not to mention the cab travel time itself. With just over six minutes left before the meeting a late arrival was essentially guaranteed.

Jiménez continued to work, allowing another forty-five seconds before she’d force herself to leave. Despite the handful of minutes remaining she had no intention of arriving late. Rather than heading left to grab a P-cab she would exit right and jog thirty meters to Rungway 42-AC. Most rungways afforded access to each of the ship’s three decks but that one ran between the ship’s top and bottom decks, bypassing her destination. She would take Rungway 42-AC down to Deck C, dash left for three meters to Rungway 41-BC, clamber up to the middle deck, and backtrack the twenty-seven meters to the conference room. The 140 meter difference and zero time spent waiting for a P-cab would allow her to arrive in ninety seconds tops.

Her configurations finished, Jiménez set her simulations running. After arranging for their completion notifications to arrive silently at her comm she sprang from her chair and rushed out of engineering.

- - -

Lynch fumed as he approached the Orion Conference Room. Between the corridor foot traffic, the two-minute wait for a cab, and his cab’s meanderings through the ship, he was officially late. He pushed his body to keep up his modest pace. Every second counted when it came to Holbrook’s irritation level for tardy arrivals. He’d pin the blame on Jiménez, setting her up for a double dose of the captain’s ire whenever she finally did arrive.

The chief engineer trundled down the passageway, stood still before the conference room entrance until the doors opened, and walked in, slightly winded. He slipped into an empty chair not far from the doors. The captain, seated at the opposite end of the long conference table, continued his succession of general announcements including one about improper sleep cycles. Relieved at entering unnoticed, Lynch focused on moving himself closer to the table with successive scoots of his chair.

“Good of you to join us commander,” said Captain Holbrook. No heads turned, but all attention shifted to the chief engineer. A conversation with the captain was like a magnifying glass, focusing the entire room on a single person.

Lynch stopped mid-scoot, his right hand thrust between his legs, grasping the front of his chair. “Apologies for being late, captain,” he said slightly flustered, “but it was Ensign Jiménez who delayed me in engineering. I spent several minutes trying to convince her to leave so we’d arrive on time for your staff meeting. I finally gave up, but by then there wasn’t enough time left for me not to be late.”

“She was in engineering when you left her?” Holbrook asked, cocking his head slightly.

“Yes, sir,” said Lynch, offering a stern expression of concern that masked his glee at the chance to dig the ensign’s hole a little deeper. “I kept reminding her how much you hate late arrivals but she ignored me. She tapped away at her terminal the whole time I was standing there, even as I left. Whatever she was working on, it wasn’t any assignment I had given her.” The chief engineer shook his head slowly, reinforcing his disappointment with Jiménez’s behavior. “I expect she’ll be along any moment now.”

Holbrook’s brows lifted. “Indeed,” he said, eliciting chuckles from around the table.

With a sheepish grin Lynch joined the others in the jest, unsure of the joke but pleased at having made trouble for the ensign. He finished scooting his chair to the table and scanned the room. At the far end, two seats down on the captain’s right, sat Ensign Jiménez, her head lowered and eyes burrowed into the table. The chief engineer’s face puffed red.

“Now that we’re all here let’s get started,” said Holbrook. “The report from engineering will come last—Commander Lynch informed me he has a serious issue to discuss and I’m guessing it’ll consume the bulk of our time. We’ll begin with the medical department.”

Dr. Marsden tapped controls rendered beneath the table’s glass surface, summoning a holographic spreadsheet above the table’s center. “I have three crew members in Sickbay currently. One is recovering from alien food poisoning. One has a second degree radiation burn. He’ll be there for a few days for tissue regeneration and cancer cell flushing. The third is a broken arm which Dr. Sadler set two days ago, but the crewman returned this morning with a fever. We’re treating him for an infection.

“That’s the tally of physical ailments.” The doctor swiped in a new slide showing a much longer list of patients. “As for the crew’s mental health, in the past thirty-six hours we’ve seen thirteen cases of acute stress disorder, seven cases of depression, three panic attacks, and one case of hysteria.”

“Ensign Orr?” asked Stephens.

Lynch smirked. Orr is always overdramatic, working himself up about the smallest of things.

“Correct,” said Dr. Marsden. “We have him resting in his quarters.” She tapped the controls, closing her presentation. “That’s twenty-five cases of mental distress since word of our mission got out. I expect we’ll see a lot more of these during our trip.”

“Thank you doctor,” said Holbrook. “Communications.”

“Comms systems green,” said Lieutenant Bhat. The communications chief ran his hand through his cropped hair.

Flustered as usual. Lynch had witnessed the lieutenant’s nervous mannerism many times before, always struck by the vivid contrast between Bhat’s mostly gray strands and his medium-brown skin.

“There have been a number of security-related communications incidents,” continued Bhat, “but I defer to Lieutenant Byrne’s report for discussion.”

“Very well,” said Holbrook, “security.”

“Security status green,” said Lieutenant Byrne. The security chief’s freckles, dimples, and full lips gave him a boyish appearance. “No active security incidents to report. As Lieutenant Bhat mentioned, there were seventeen instances of mission details being discussed in private off-ship conversations and messages. The message scrubbers caught and blocked all leaked details, though we should consider locking down off-ship communications. A lot of people and alien governments would be interested to learn we’re traveling to the galactic center.”

“I recommend against it, captain,” said Dr. Marsden, her expression stern.

Disregard her opinion at your own peril. Lynch had tangled with the Avenger’s chief medical officer before. The doctor’s short stature belied her outsize presence, her viewpoints forcefully presented and remarks to the point.

“I’m no psychologist, but the crew is already taking this assignment hard. Preventing them—us—from communicating with their loved ones will only demoralize them further, and may solidify the perception that we’re actually on a suicide mission.”

“I agree with the doctor,” said Stephens. “I’d prefer we issue some warnings about not discussing mission-confidential details when speaking with people off-ship and see how we do.”

“Alright, then, let’s leave communications where they are for now. But we may revisit this decision should circumstances change.” The captain turned to Lieutenant Commander Martin Phillips. “Ops,” he said.

“Ship’s operations green,” said Phillips, “however I’d like to schedule some drills over the next few weeks to make sure we stay sharp on this trip.”

Readiness drills—a colossal waste of time. But he has to make it seem like he actually does something aboard this vessel.

“Agreed,” said Holbrook. For an instant Lynch thought the captain had agreed with his mental assessment of Phillips and the readiness drills. He nearly fell out of his chair. “Please coordinate the drills with Commander Stephens.” He continued with Ensign Jeremy Higgins. “Combat systems and tactical.”

“All weapons and targeting systems are green,” said Higgins.

“Science department,” said Holbrook.

“Science department green,” said Ensign Reilly.

“Nav —”

“Though I will say we’re not at all prepared for this mission,” interrupted Reilly.

Bravo—another joust with the captain. The young officer and youngest department head was not much older than most cadets fresh out of the Academy. In spite of her age Ensign Reilly was full of aplomb, and a brilliant scientist with advanced degrees in biology, chemistry, and physics. Her interjections never failed to catch the captain off guard.

“Please continue, ensign,” said Holbrook.

“Normally I’d have my team learning more about the planet or system we’re sailing to, researching physical conditions and life forms, but as long as we don’t know what our actual mission is the science department has no way to prepare for it.”

“Acknowledged ensign,” said Holbrook. “That information will be forthcoming.” The captain moved on. “Navigation.”

“Navigation systems green,” said Ensign Doerr. “I’ve spent some time with the ship refining our course to Plana Petram. I’ve computed a new trajectory that’s slightly less direct, but swings us closer to several massive stars on the topside of the galactic disc. It’ll give us enough of a boost in speed to shave a day off the trip.”

“A four percent reduction in total travel time?” Lynch grumbled from his end of the table. “That’s like trimming a few millimeters off those red bangs of yours and gushing about a new haircut.” Find something else to do, ensign, that isn’t speeding us to our graves.

“I agree it’s not much,” said Doerr, stammering after the pointed rebuke by a senior officer, “but … it is some savings. I figured getting th-there as fast as possible was worthwhile, even by a little bit.” The ensign sank into her chair.

“Some time savings, even if small, is a good thing,” said Stephens. “Thank you ensign for your efforts.”

Ensign Doerr nodded, staring with a glum look into the table.

“Helm.”

“Helm green sir,” said Lieutenant Commander Mills. “The ship is on track to reach Plana Petram in approximately nineteen days. Ensign Doerr mentioned her new course to me right before the meeting and I plan to lay it in after conferring with her.”

“Very good,” said Holbrook. The captain looked down the table to Commander Lynch. “Engineering.”

Finally. Lynch filled the room with a grandiose clearing of his throat. “Engineering condition red.” He paused, letting the words sink in, then sat forward in his chair and mashed at the tabletop’s virtual controls. After several corrections and restarts from fat fingering neighboring buttons a list of engineering systems, each one annotated with a green dot, emerged above the table. “The ship’s power plant is hovering at ninety-eight percent efficiency. The Gravity Drive is operational and performing as expected. Core ship systems are functioning within tolerances. Hull integrity and ship superstructure are both sound.” He clasped his hands on the table and sat quietly, almost beaming.

Holbrook waited, expecting Lynch to continue, but the commander remained silent. “You reported engineering condition red,” the captain eventually said, “but nothing of what I’ve heard so far sounds like a problem.”

“Yes sir,” said Lynch, appreciative of Holbrook leading him into the next part of his presentation, “the operational status of all engineering systems at this moment is green. It’s the future I’m concerned about.” Lynch swiped his holographic slide deck to a view of the Avenger’s underbelly with callouts to three large, glowing red discs nestled in the rounded vertices of the black, triangular warship. “The Gravity Drive consists of three gravity field generators that work in concert to create a bubble of warped spacetime around the ship. The exact shape of this warp bubble determines our direction and speed relative to the spacetime outside the bubble.”

His next slide contained a topside view of the triangular Avenger showing three overlapping toroidal spheres resembling transparent, electric red donuts centered at the field generators. “Here is a diagram of the warp fields produced by the three generators and how they overlap to form the ship’s warp bubble. Changing any one of the fields results in a different composite bubble and therefore different direction and speed. Travel to a specific destination requires balancing the three field generators to an exquisite degree. An imbalance of even one part in a trillion over time can drive us light years off in the wrong direction.”

“Everyone here knows the basics of gravitational propulsion,” said Stephens, his tone gruff. “Is there a reason for the refresher?”

Lynch gave Stephens a cold stare. There’s a reason behind everything I do, executive idiot. “With that background,” Lynch continued, still staring at Stephens as he drew out the last word, “I turn now to our current situation, a predicament directly related to our mission. First, we plan to engage the Gravity Drive non-stop for three weeks to reach Plana Petram, and then presumably for a subsequent two weeks of travel to the galactic core.” The commander swiped to a slide showing the exponential decline in engine efficiency with the decrease in matter density per cubic light year. “Second, more than half of that operating time will occur in a region of space where the matter density is much lower than the galactic planar mean, forcing the engines to work harder to generate a warp field.”

Commander Lynch ended his presentation with a flourished, bouncing tap on the tabletop that closed his slides. “The inefficiencies of operating in low-density space combined with the prolonged use of the Gravity Drive will put an enormous strain on the field generators, pushing them beyond their safe operational limits. Losing a generator would be a catastrophic event, destroying up to a third of the ship and killing an untold number of the crew.” Lynch had gestured with his hands during the presentation—he brought them to rest, clasped again on the table. “The Avenger is a Trident class starship, commissioned over thirty years ago. It could have easily operated within these mission parameters right out of dry dock, but not thirty years on, sixteen years since its last complete overhaul. It is my determination as this ship’s chief engineer that the Avenger cannot continue with its orders as currently executed.”

No one stirred after Lynch’s final word. The lieutenant commander basked in the consternation he had created.

“Cannot continue with our orders as currently executed?!” yelled Holbrook, causing those closest to him to jump in their seats. “What in Hades does that mean?”

Lynch kept calm in the face of the captain’s heated reproach, his plan proceeding as designed. “It means we cannot travel to Plana Petram within the three week timeframe you’ve set for us. By my calculations we will need at least twice that amount of time.”

Holbrook huffed, incredulous. “Six weeks to reach Plana Petram?”

“At least six weeks, captain,” said Lynch. “Even that pushes the limits of what I consider reasonable.”

“Why is this information only coming to me now?” asked Holbrook, the anger building in his voice.

Lynch deadpanned. “This is the first Captain’s Staff since we set course for Plana Petram. It’s the first chance we’ve had to discuss the matter.”

“But in the meantime we’ve informed CentCom of our three week ETA,” said Commander Stephens. “They’re expecting us to arrive in nineteen days.”

“Is that true?” asked Lynch. Please say those words again—I want to savor each one.

“Yes,” said Holbrook. “Commodore Ahrens will be at Plana Petram to brief us on the full mission details. He’s already en route in a sleeper, set to arrive about eighteen days from now. He can’t wake to find we’re only halfway there. And the mission itself, whatever it is, cannot absorb a three or four week delay. The urgency of the situation has been stressed to me several times. At this late date we can’t just tell CentCom sorry, we made a mistake, it’s going to take twice the time we said. We have to be at Plana Petram when we promised we would.”

We made a mistake? I didn’t promise three weeks. Pursing his thick lips Lynch nodded and said, “Thank you for explaining the situation, captain. I had not previously understood that CentCom was basing their timetables on our original projections. I see how six weeks of travel time is not an acceptable outcome.”

The captain’s entire frame had stiffened at the suggestion they push out their arrival date, a disaster of immense proportions. Holbrook visibly relaxed with Lynch’s response, likely believing his chief engineer was considering creative alternatives.

The corners of Lynch’s mouth curved upwards. “Unfortunately, I cannot change physics. The near certainty of catastrophic damage to this vessel is real. The Avenger will not survive the stresses of a forced three week journey to Plana Petram, and I will not be held responsible if you decide to try.” His eyes grew wide and lips almost pouty, reflecting the feigned heavy heart bringing him to his next words. “If CentCom is indeed counting on us arriving in nineteen days,” he said, holding the moment in the air, “then we must immediately inform them it simply won’t be possible, and petition for reassignment from this mission.”

An avalanche of anxious conversations flooded the room as Holbrook and Stephens sat with pained faces at the opposite end of the table, shellshocked by Lynch’s pronouncement. Petitioning for reassignment was an action reserved for only the most desperate circumstances. Short of a medical or equipment emergency it typically mandated the loss of command for the vessel’s captain.

Lynch stifled a grin as he eased back in his chair. He grew excited at the prospect of torpedoing Holbrook’s career, the Avenger’s smug and pompous star captain, and possibly even Stephens’s as well. When they came for Holbrook the crew would line the corridors of the Avenger—Lynch himself standing outside the doors to engineering—as the military guards escorted the disgraced captain to the shuttle bay, a last march through his soon-to-be former ship —

“I think there’s a way.”

Lynch chuckled at the words, believing them the product of some comedic portion of his mind. He stopped when the room grew hushed.

“What was that ensign?” asked Holbrook.

“I think there’s a way,” said Ensign Jiménez. “To get to Plana Petram in nineteen days. Or nearly nineteen.”

Lynch studied Jiménez from his end of the table. He had no idea what kind of stunt she was pulling but granted that the ensign was sharp, not to be underestimated. He needed to head her off before she could speak another word. “Ensign Jiménez,” he said in a calm, patronizing voice, “this is a meeting of the ship’s department heads. Your attendance here is solely to assist me, the engineering chief, in presenting information to the captain and the rest of his senior staff. It is not to ask questions or to offer your own opinions.”

“I’m sure the ensign knows her role in this meeting,” said Commander Stephens. “What she has to say must be significant for her to break protocol.”

I hope to God my plan takes you down with Holbrook, you condescending prick.

“Ensign Jiménez,” said Holbrook, “what were you starting to say?”

Lynch bore down on the young officer from across the table with an expression that conveyed the volcanic anger she would unleash should she say anything further. She paused a moment before replying to Holbrook. “It’s nothing sir,” she said. “Commander Lynch is right—it’s not my place to speak in this meeting. I should first discuss my findings with him to get his opinion.”

Findings? Everything came to Lynch in a rush: the special side project, the simulations, the scramble to assemble results for the meeting. Jiménez was also aware of the infeasibility of a three week trip to Plana Petram, but instead of allowing that fact to simply and elegantly disqualify them from the mission she had been researching ways to surmount it!

“What findings, ensign?” asked Stephens.

Reviewing the ensign’s data before she described any of it would be Lynch’s only hope of defeating whatever idea she had come up with.

“I’ve been running some simulations of a technique to reduce the strain on the Gravity Drive —”

“Captain, I need to vet the ensign’s findings before they’re presented in this meeting,” interrupted Lynch. “I am responsible for all recommended or suggested courses of action, no matter how improbable, that come out of engineering. While I was aware of Ensign Jiménez’s attempt to find solutions to our quandary, I did not have sufficient time before this meeting to review her methodology or her data. Once we adjourn I will confer with the ensign and if warranted have her —”

“What were your findings, ensign?” the captain asked.

“Sir,” said Jiménez. She glanced at Lynch one more time before forging ahead. “Commander Lynch is correct that traveling for so long in low mass density space will place a big strain on the engines. The problem comes from maintaining a near-constant field strength for three weeks so I wondered, what if we could somehow let the engines rest a bit during the journey.” She tapped the controls on the tabletop in front of her, summoning a slide with columns of numbers. “I designed a simulation of the Avenger traveling to Plana Petram where we vary the amount of time we keep the Gravity Drive engaged. This is the data from twenty different runs of the simulation.”

Holbrook blinked at the sprawling matrix of numbers. “Can you walk us through what we’re looking at here?” he asked.

“Yes sir,” said Jiménez with quaking hands, her first time speaking up in a Captain’s Staff. “Each row is a day of travel time, and each number is the estimated system integrity level at the end of that day. This first column shows what happens if we continue as we are now, keeping the warp field strength constant for the next nineteen days. You can see how starting at day ten the numbers turn from yellow to orange and eventually fall into the red. This is the situation Commander Lynch has raised.

“The other columns contain data for different engine duty cycles. For example, the fourth column shows a ninety-five five duty cycle—the engines engaged for fifty-seven seconds out of every minute. Even with that slight change all the system integrity levels stay out of the red.”

“You’re talking about pulsing the Gravity Drive,” said Stephens.

“That’s essentially the idea,” she said.

“Interesting,” said Stephens. “Am I right in reading the final column to say at a fifty-fifty duty cycle system integrity remains green for the entire trip, but it’ll take us twice as long to get there?”

“That’s right, sir,” said Jiménez. “That’s the tradeoff with giving the field generators more and more time to rest—they do less work, so the ship doesn’t move as fast. This is essentially the same as Commander Lynch’s request to take six weeks to reach Plana Petram.”

“It seems like the eighty-seven thirteen run is the most promising,” said Holbrook.

“Yes sir. By engaging the engines for fifty-two seconds out of every minute we can reduce the strain on the Gravity Drive and stay out of the yellow except at the very end, and increase our travel time by only two-and-a-half days.”

“Just one-and-a-half with Ensign Doerr’s route optimizations,” said Stephens.

“This seems promising,” said Holbrook as he reviewed the numbers. “Commander Lynch, what’s your opinion?”

Concealing his rage as best he could, Lynch spoke in measured tones. “As I said earlier, I have had no time, captain, to review these numbers or Ensign Jiménez’s simulation for correctness. So it would be —”

“I understand that, commander,” said Holbrook. “I’m asking if the ensign’s idea seems sound, if her conclusion seems plausible.”

How best to respond while salvaging his plan? If he said her idea couldn’t work, any review by the ship’s computer would expose that as a lie. Yet confirming her approach meant keeping their assignment and flying to their deaths at the galactic core. “It seems reasonable that changing the duty cycle would reduce the strain on the Gravity Drive, and in fact I had planned to investigate that option myself,” he said, his speech still measured and rigid. “However, while the pulsing, as you put it Commander Stephens, will lighten the load on the field generators, it will more than double, maybe even triple, our energy consumption compared to keeping the field generators fully energized.”

“Will we run out of power?” asked Stephens.

“Err … no,” said Lynch, “but consuming that much energy is obscene. Each time we disengage the field generators we’ll turn around and power them right back up again.”

“Obscene,” said Stephens, “but not otherwise a problem?”

As much as Lynch wanted to portray energy consumption as an issue, the Avenger’s power plant could easily drive a hundred such trips. “That is correct,” said Lynch. He reached for any other possible complication. “Though the varying field strength will increase the stresses on the gravitational waveguides.”

“What’s the worst-case outcome of that?” asked Holbrook.

“Nothing as bad as losing a field generator,” Lynch conceded, “but if we lose a waveguide we won’t be able to sail. We’ll be immobile until another CentCom vessel can help us with repairs or a tow.”

Holbrook rubbed his chin. “What’s your opinion, commander?” addressing his executive officer.

“This plan seems to give us the best chance of carrying out our orders,” said Stephens. “At least we won’t have to ask CentCom to take us off the mission.”

“If a waveguide fails just before we reach Plana Petram,” said Lynch, “that will turn into a three-week setback for CentCom because they’ll be forced to send a new ship.”

“True,” said Holbrook, “but that seems like a much more manageable risk than our present situation.” He turned to Jiménez. “Good work, ensign.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said with a sheepish smile.

“I want Commander Lynch to review your simulation and then the two of you to work on implementing this new plan,” said the captain. “It’s now your top priority. Keep me apprised of your progress.”

“Yes sir,” said Jiménez.

“Yes, sir,” said Commander Lynch. He briefly locked eyes with Jiménez. You’ve caused me to lose this battle, but the war is not over. I promise you will pay for sinking my plan.

“Thank you everyone,” said Holbrook as he stood from the table.

The captain and the other officers filed out of the room. Just before exiting, Lynch caught Stephens lean in close to Jiménez as he passed her on his way to the door. “Nice work,” he said.

Jiménez emerged last from the conference room with a smile that disappeared once she discovered Lynch waiting for her, his large hands jammed into his pockets. She walked over to him and the two headed together down the passageway, side-by-side, with the chief engineer’s bulk consuming most of the space between them.

Lynch spoke under his breath to Jiménez. “If you ever talk out of turn again,” he said, “I will wrap my hands around your neck and strangle you until you are dead.”

Jiménez could only nod. Her body began to shake.

7

Holbrook sat on the deck in his quarters, legs sprawled, back slumped against the bulkhead. His right hand held a glass, once tall with whiskey. His left hand batted drool from his chin. Tonight’s bender wasn’t the worst he’d ever had, but it was the worst in a long time. He dubbed it a “two” on the nullihol pill scale. If summoned for an emergency he’d need that many pills to wick the alcohol from his system.

Holbrook shifted his weight, making himself more comfortable on the hard deck. From his mind’s eye he looked down on his laid out body, judging.

What would dad say?

He rolled his eyes at the thought. Dad wouldn’t say anything. He’s dead. Been dead a long time.

Holding the glass to the light, Holbrook studied the remaining few centimeters of amber liquid. He took a drink, keeping the liquor in his mouth, letting it burn the insides of his cheeks. He released it in a trickle, a trail of fire down his throat.

Captain Holbrook hoisted the glass to his lips, took in the last of the whiskey, and let his arm fall to his side. The glass escaped his hand, bouncing once on the deck before rolling away.

He hadn’t thought about his dad in awhile. Captain Thomas Holbrook the second died when Holbrook was eight years, two months. Almost thirty years later Holbrook could still picture him: big, strong, fearless, resolute, commanding attention and respect. The news of his dad’s death hit him hard—he cried for days and wouldn’t come out of his room. When he finally emerged he refused to leave the house. He finished the school year at home, his assignments and lessons transmitted to him.

The psychologists told Holbrook’s mom his anguish only partly explained his withdrawal. Fear, they said, played as large a role. Holbrook had always been a skittish child, afraid of random sounds and sudden movements. His dad had been the anchor that allowed him to function in the world, checking under his bed for monsters, lingering in his room until he fell asleep, investigating strange noises in the dead of night. One day, just before Holbrook’s sixth birthday, the vicious neighbor dog five doors away escaped its forcefield pen, raced out of its yard, and charged down the sidewalk toward him. His dad jumped in front of the animal without hesitation, taking a bite in the leg to protect his son. His dad’s strength and devotion fostered in the younger Holbrook an unconscious sense of comfort, one that extended across the light years and between his dad’s long stints away from home.

His dad’s death unmoored him.

Without his dad, Thomas and the rest of his family found themselves alone in a perilous world. The monsters were real. They weren’t under the bed—they fell out of the sky.

The Regenitors and their spider drop-ships burrowing like ticks kilometers into the earth’s crust.

The Skaxx drones piercing the global defense grid and raining fire across several continents.

The Thetan rampage.

He’d forgotten the Thetan rampage, repressed it. The events came flooding back. Holbrook tried to shake the thoughts from his head but his half-conscious mind pushed on, dredging his memory. He breathed fast and shallow, on the verge of hyperventilating. Black spots filled his vision. The world went dark ….

Thomas Holbrook III sat in the dark, clutching his baby brother Timmy in the far corner of the basement. His arms and legs shook not from cold but from fear. Footsteps plodded overhead, nails and floorboards squealing under tremendous weight. Muffled screams and weapons fire drifted down through closed hopper windows.

Thomas sobbed softy. He breathed fast and shallow, on the verge of hyperventilating.

“Focus on your breath,” his mom shouted in a whisper from her hiding place across the room. “Your breath.”

Slow, deliberate breaths calm the body and the mind, she’d told him more than once. Thomas focused on his breath, reigning it in, deepening it. He drew the cool basement air into his lungs, much cooler than the air upstairs. The day had been hot for early fall.

“Thomas, did you open the upstairs windows?” his mom had called from the kitchen doorway.

Thomas walked in from the den, his vid on pause. He stood before her in a t-shirt and shorts, both garments struggling to cover his nine-year-old body on the brink of a growth spurt that would add nearly a meter to his frame. “Most of them,” he said. “I opened the ones in my bedroom and the ones in yours.”

“Did you open the ones in dad’s office?” she asked.

A repurposed third bedroom, his dad’s office sat across from the room he shared with Timmy. He made a point of skipping that room. “Why do I have to be the one to open them?” he asked, bunching his fists.

“Your brother can’t do it, Thomas,” said his mom, “he’s not tall enough to reach. And I have to start taking up dinner.”

Thomas made no motion to comply.

“I need you to be a big boy and open those windows,” she said, notching up the sternness in her voice.

“I just don’t like going in there,” he mustered, still not moving. “To see all dad’s stuff, everything in the same place … it just reminds me he’s never coming back.”

His mom walked to him and crouched to his height. Her hazel eyes flashed a mix of his pain and some of her own. “How ’bout this,” she said, “if you open the windows for me I’ll take care of closing them later this evening, before we head to bed. Deal?”

He didn’t want to go in there at all, but one trip into that room was better than two. “Deal,” Thomas said, sullen as he accepted the best arrangement he would get. He turned slowly and wandered up the stairs, head hunched, taking his time with each step.

“Hurry back down,” she said, “it’s almost dinner. And after you’ll need to take out the trash. It’s nearly overflowing.”

Thomas didn’t talk much at dinner despite his mom’s attempts to draw him out. His little brother, oblivious as usual, babbled on about some new dinosaur he discovered during holo-adventure time in school.

Warm, rotting trash greeted Thomas’s nostrils when he swung open the small cabinet door next to the sink. He tugged at the garbage can, sliding it out on its platform, and looped his hand through the liner’s drawstrings. Thomas hoisted the plastic bag out and set it on the kitchen floor. Freed from the confines of its container the white, overfull bag pancaked across the black and white tiles.

Thomas lifted the overloaded trash bag wth both hands and backed into the screen door, nudging it open with his rear. He scurried around the house to a large black garbage bin, flipped open its lid, and tossed the bag inside.

“Shit,” he said, bemoaning the patches of nighttime sky visible through the crisscrossed branches overhead. Thomas planned to survey the planets during the final moments of twilight, when they dangled like shining pearls against the starless blue black evening sky. He’d forgotten all about them.

He bounded into his front yard and up the steps to the porch, spun around, and fixed his gaze upwards. The old trees in his neighborhood obscured large swaths of sky, but from this vantage point the heavens appeared through a ragged, round gap in the canopy.

Thomas ran through his progression, starting with the planets. Venus, Mars, and Jupiter hung in conjunction directly above him. Two degrees south the white supergiant Deneb burned its nuclear fire. His finger traced a line from Deneb through the yellow supergiant Sadr to Albireo, then a new, perpendicular line from Delta Cygni, through Sadr again, to Epsilon Cygni. Together the five stars formed the Northern Cross, the backbone of the constellation Cygnus. His dad had taught him how to find the asterism. He’d taken up tracing its shape as a way to remember him.

A shooting star peeled across the jagged circle of sky. And a second. “No way,” Thomas said in amazement. The odds of witnessing a shooting star at the exact time of its fiery transit were improbably small. The odds of seeing a second —

A third shooting star streaked across the sky, then a forth, and a fifth.

He turned back to the house. “Mom,” he yelled, “you’ll never believe this!”

The house lights went dark.

Not just the lights in his house, but next door in Mr. Huntsel’s house, and at the Dylan’s place across the street. And not just the lights in the houses but all the streetdiscs too. Shrouded in darkness, Thomas looked at his comm, or at least where his comm should have been with his left forearm raised in front of his body. Its face had also gone black. No amount of tapping brought it back to life.

Thomas looked up again. Thousands of stars twinkled in the unobscured patch of sky where there had only been a handful before. The power has to be out across the entire prefect. His astronomy text had described how urban light pollution overwhelmed all but the brightest stars. Now even the faintest were visible.

The shooting stars came faster, ten more before Thomas gave up counting. Some moved in straight lines, others raced across the sky only to stop abruptly and turn at sharp angles.

Thomas froze in the engulfing darkness. He wanted to run but his legs wouldn’t budge. Discordant sounds began to displace the silence that had filled the neighborhood. Several large booms rang out in the distance. Footsteps clattered beyond the front hedge. A mother called for her child. Somebody screamed. He trembled so badly his teeth chattered.

“Thomas.”

The voice came from his rear, an urgent whisper. He turned. His mom stood inside the house behind the screen door, her face awash in glowing green light.

“Come inside,” she said in an urgent whisper, “hurry.” He walked the remaining distance to the front screen door and pulled it open. “Don’t let it slam,” she said.

Thomas entered the house and eased the screen door against its frame. He reached for the front door to close it.

“Leave it,” his mom whispered. “We’ve got to get to the basement.” In one hand his mom held a chemical light stick from the emergency stash she kept under the sink. In her other she gripped his little brother’s wrist.

“What’s going on mom?” Thomas asked.

“Shh,” she said. “I’ll explain once we’re down there.” She led the boys quickly through the front room, the light stick painting the walls and furniture in luminescent green. They rounded a corner and stopped before a small door under the main staircase.

“Go on,” she said, opening the door. “Take your brother’s hand.” She held the light stick above them as Thomas grabbed his little brother. The green light batted the darkness from the first few steps of staircase before yielding to the basement’s black void below. “Head down there, I’ll be right behind you. Please hold onto the railing.”

Thomas nodded and took a timid step onto the stairs. He reached for the railing as the green light disappeared. “Mom!” he yelled, “bring back the light!”

His mom’s green face reappeared in the doorway. “We can’t take the light down there,” she said. “They might see it.”

“Who —”

“You have to head down there without a light,” said his mom. “Hold the railing and test each step with your foot. And move slowly. Remember, you’ve got your brother and he can’t see either.” His mom’s green face disappeared again, leaving the two boys standing alone in the dark.

Thomas worked his way down the stairs at a slow pace, counting each step before blindly testing it with his foot. He gently pulled his brother along. Timmy, normally jumpy and noisy, remained quiet. Their clasped palms grew clammy.

At step eight the basement door creaked open. It shut with a click.

Thomas glanced over his shoulder but there was only darkness behind him. “Mom, is that you?” he asked in a loud whisper.

Footsteps rattled the treads to his rear.

“Mom!” he whisper-shouted, his terror growing.

The footsteps drew closer.

Thomas wanted to bound down the stairs, putting distance between whatever was approaching from behind but moving that fast in the dark would be foolish. He picked up the pace as best he could.

A hand landed on his right shoulder.

Thomas flinched and jumped, and let out a stifled wail.

“It’s me,” said his mom, gently squeezing his shoulder. “Keep going.“

Thomas, relieved but heart pounding, inched with his brother down the stairs.

Step thirteen didn’t thump like the others. It had a solid feel, and a wider surface. He’d reached the basement’s cement floor. Thomas took two steps forward, pulling his brother to make space for his mom to come the rest of the way off the stairs.

His mom’s hand still on his shoulder, she spun him around and leaned down to him. Their noses almost touched in the darkness. “Thomas,” she said, “take your brother to the far corner of the basement. Follow the wall under the stairs to where it turns, then head all the way to the end.”

“But mom ….” Thomas fell silent as cold metal brushed against his arm. “Is that dad’s gun?”

His mom hesitated. “Yes,” she said. “I have his shotgun and some plasma shells.”

Thomas was stunned. His mom complained about guns in the house on many occasions, one point of friction with his dad but a concession she made in her marriage to a soldier. She was a nonviolent person who held nothing but patience and compassion in her heart. Whenever they found so much as a spider in the house she would trap it and release it back outside. He could never imagine her wielding a gun or leveling it to shoot anything living. “What’s going on mom?” he pleaded. “You promised you’d tell me once we got down here.”

His mom hesitated again. “I don’t know for sure, Thomas,” she said, “I’m just being extra cautious. But something like this happened recently in a city in France.”

“Something like what?” he asked.

“There’s a race of aliens called the Thetans,” she said. “They deployed an energy dampening field … it’s like an invisible blanket over the city that disabled all the electronics—computers, lights, everything. Then they came down in their ships. All of this might be a blackout, but none of the electronics work.”

Thomas unconsciously tapped at his comm. The screen still didn’t respond.

His mom lifted her hand from his shoulder and gently cupped his cheek in her palm. “If it is the Thetans, we need to hide and stay quiet. They might come in the house. The Thetans don’t take prisoners.”

They don’t take prisoners. He and his brother used that phrase once while playing space pirates. His mom asked if he knew what it meant—he was shocked when she told him. “Timmy and me are nice pirates,” he insisted. They didn’t kill people, they just looked for gold and rare earths. He never used that phrase again.

“Take your brother Timmy to the far corner and don’t move. Don’t make a sound.”

“Where will you be?” asked Thomas.

“There’s a stack of large boxes a few feet straight ahead. I’ll be behind them. If anything that isn’t human comes down the stairs I’m gonna blast it with the shotgun.” She kissed Thomas on the forehead and found Timmy for a hug. “Now go, and be as quiet as you can.”

Thomas took his brother as he felt his way along the basement wall, walking under the stairs and turning left when he hit the corner. He moved along the next wall to the end, pressed his back into the corner, and slid down until his rear end landed on the floor. He pulled Timmy to sit between his legs and wrapped his arms around his little brother.

“Remember Timmy,” Thomas said, “we have to be quiet. We can’t make a sound.” The instructions were more for himself than for his little brother, who hadn’t made a noise the entire time. Thomas began shaking. He fought to stop it.

In the blackness without a working comm Thomas quickly lost track of time. The initial burst of adrenaline subsided, he nodded off to sleep in the monotony of the dark, quiet basement.

A muffled blaster discharge jolted him awake. Or something like a blaster. It had the normal throb of blaster fire, but also a high-pitched whine. Whatever it was, the sound came from the street, in front of their house.

How long had he been asleep? Minutes? Hours? He had no idea.

A muffled scream and a second discharge reached his ears, this time both louder, closer, accompanied by a lightning flash through the hopper windows.

A person … an alien … someone is in the yard.

A loud crash upstairs. Silence. A thud. Then another thud. And another.

Footsteps.

Someone or something had entered the house. Thomas looked towards the ceiling, followed the intruder as he moved across the living room. Joists and floorboards groaned with each leaden step.

It’s far too heavy to be a person.

The plodding footsteps rounded a corner. A loud creak came from the top of the stairs.

They’re outside the basement door!

Thomas’s heart pounded into this throat, and he had trouble breathing. He plunged into a panic, his body shaking uncontrollably. He fought to stifle a sob.

The doorknob jiggled.

Thomas waited for the creak of the door opening.

Another jiggle.

What’s it waiting for?? Just get it over with!

A weighty step landed on the floor above, shaking the ceiling. Another step. And another. And one more. The intruder was on the move, heading away from the basement door along the path it took through the living room….

A horn blared.

The all-clear signal jolted Thomas, his brother, and his mom awake. They had slept the entire night and most of the morning in the basement. By time they crawled up the stairs and spilled from the house out into the front yard the sun sat at its mid-morning spot in the sky.

“Stay back,” said his mom. Thomas waited, holding hands with his brother as the two boys stood in the grass. They were safe. CentCom personnel roamed the streets, even through their house. Thomas ignored his mom’s admonition, walking to the property line with his brother in tow, to the row of Azalea bushes that separated their yard from the sidewalk. Timmy was too short to see above the bushes but Thomas had no trouble peering into the street.

Bodies littered the black asphalt. Most were human, neighbors. Some bodies seemed OK, unmoving but without visible signs of trauma. Others were torn apart, rib cages wrenched open, limbs missing. In the street not too far from where Thomas stood with his brother a dead Thetan laid on its back in a pool of red-black blood, glaring at the hazy blue sky through its bulbous, smoky black helmet. It was humanoid, but much larger than a person. And blubbery, the product of a world with half Earth’s gravity. The skin of the Thetan’s black environment suit rippled over rolls of fat, like a walrus in a wetsuit. Thomas couldn’t help but stare, black death from the sky rotting in the bright morning sun.

He overheard his mom asking a solider about the alien. Their best guess for cause of death was either a weapon malfunction or friendly fire. They were puzzled why the other Thetans left the body behind. Perhaps lugging its dead weight back to their ship through full Earth gravity was more than they could manage.

Was that Thetan in our house last night? Thomas shuddered at the thought of confronting it in the dark. Why didn’t it come for us in the basement? Tears streamed down his face and he started to shake. He couldn’t control himself. They came close to dying last night. A strange turn of luck kept them alive. He wanted to run but he wasn’t sure there was anyplace safe to go. He grew short of breath as the full consequences of his dad’s death came into view. Without his dad, Thomas and his family were on their own, left to fend for themselves in a truly dangerous world.

Thomas cursed his dad. No father should leave his family, leave them alone in such a dangerous world, leave them to survive by luck. His dad went off in his starship but he didn’t think what would happen to his family if he never returned, didn’t worry what it would mean for them to be all alone —

Bzzzz.

Holbrook’s comm rousted him from his memories. He’d set a reminder to take some nullihol pills before falling asleep.

Too tired to move he ignored the alarm. He’d take the pills in the morning. It would just mean being a little bit later out of his quarters.

Holbrook lowered himself onto his side on the deck, placed his arm under his head, and sank into sleep.

8

“What do you mean that was my last drink?” asked the young woman from her barstool.

“Just what I said—that was your last drink for the night.” The bartender, a burly man with a balding crown, twisted a white dish towel into ever tighter knots. Irritation played across his chubby face. “You know they limit your tab to three drinks a day.”

The young woman tapped her comm. “I will point out, sir, the time is 12:07 a.m. A new day has begun, and with it a new tab.”

The bartender frowned at the young woman, his knuckles white from his grip. “Your residency contract covers up to three drinks a night,” he said. His voice shifted from gruff to saccharine sweet and a wide, feigned smile replaced his scowl. “But there’s no limit to how much you can drink in this bar, just on what’s already paid for.” The bartender grabbed a bottle of liquor from one of the lighted shelves behind him and wagged it gently in front of the woman. “I’d be happy to pour you a new drink, miss. Alls I need is another form of payment.”

The woman scoffed.

“Then that’s that,” he snapped, slamming the bottle back on the shelf. “Now if you’ll excuse me I have some paying customers to attend to.” The bartender whipped the dish towel over his shoulder and disappeared around the corner.

“There goes your tip, asshole,” the woman yelled after him. She squeezed her eyes shut and whimpered in frustration. Three drinks a night? The whole thing’s barbaric. Who are they to decide how many drinks I can have? Small teardrops emerged—she quickly pinched them away. They don’t own me, though they sure act like they do. It’s just part of their never-ending stream of controlling bullshit.

The woman swiveled left on her barstool and surveyed the faintly-lit space. The Andromeda Lounge was nearly empty, typical for such a late hour on a weeknight. Small booths with burgundy-colored upholstery lined the walls, the candle discs on their tables flickering apparitions onto the ceiling.

She swiveled right and discovered two men staring at her from the opposite end of the bar. One gave her a broad smile. She shot them both a dirty look and returned her attention to her glass, spying several small shards of ice swimming in the meager remnants of her drink. She jiggled the glass, placed it to her lips, and leaned her head far back to coax the final, watered-down drops of alcohol into her mouth.

“The next one’s on me,” said a loud voice in a slight German accent far too close to her right ear.

The woman glanced sideways—the two men from the other end of the bar had migrated to the barstools next to hers. The evening’s growing worse by the moment.

“What’ll it be?” asked the man who had smiled at her, encroaching on her personal space from the adjacent stool. He was middle-aged and skinny, with short, receding blond hair. A cropped, patchy beard concealed most of the cleft in his chin, and the man’s liquor-laden breath wafted across her face. His companion, also middle-aged and a bit dirtier blond, stood beside him with a smile, leaning against the bar.

“I’m calling it a night,” she said.

“Don’t be that way,” said the man. “We haven’t even been properly introduced. I’m Dr. Martin Freidrich, and my friend here is Dr. Rudolf Weiss.” Weiss’s hand lifted in a weak wave from the wrist. “And you are?”

“Thirsty,” said the woman.

Freidrich chuckled. “He has you on a tight leash.”

“Who does?”

“The guy who’s paying your bills,” said Freidrich, smiling. “Rudolf and I heard your exchange with the bartender. We have a little bet going on your story.”

“My story?” Pricks.

“Yes, your story,” said Freidrich. “You know, the reason a beautiful, young girl like you is here on a research station out in the literal middle of nowhere.” Freidrich cinched in closer as he spoke. “Rudolf here thinks you’re a researcher’s lonely, neglected young wife, forced to follow where his work takes him.”

“Is that so,” she said.

Weiss nodded with a toothy, intoxicated smile.

“My explanation is more charitable,” said Freidrich. “I don’t think you’re a married woman looking to pick up men in a bar.”

“How big of you,” said the woman. She scanned her glass again for any missed drops of alcohol.

“My guess is you’re an overworked research assistant to a crusty old physicist struggling through his mid-life crisis.”

Sexist pricks. Still staring into her glass the woman said, “Are you and Rudolf researchers, then?”

“Why yes,” said Freidrich with a wide grin, “Dr. Weiss and I are physicists, and we’re researching an incredibly exciting topic, but it’s very, very complicated.” His eyes sparkled as he grasped the back of her barstool with his left hand and stroked the mid portion of her bare back with his top two fingers. “If we’re successful, and I can objectively say we’re very close, they’ll award us the Nobel-Wasserman prize in Physics.”

“Oh that does sound very exciting,” she said in a sarcastic tone.

“It is,” he continued, nodding. “It’s perhaps best described as a grand theory of everything.”

“God, not more string theory bullshit,” said the woman. She closed her eyes and brought her fingers to the sides of her head, slowly massaging her temples.

Freidrich paused. His smile evaporated. “Maybe you are familiar with several of string theory’s challenges,” he said. “I agree it’s had its share of setbacks, but it’s hardly, as you say, bullshit.”

Deluded, sexist pricks. The woman swiveled on her barstool to face the two men. Her ice-blue eyes savaged them, gazing out from under close cropped dark bangs. She wore a short, dark, tight-fitting dress with thin straps that looped over her bare shoulders. The men’s attention fell to the exposed, rounded tops of her breasts, shifting unfettered beneath the dress’s sheer material. “I’ll at least give you both some credit for consistency,” she said. “The stories you made up about me are as ridiculous as your grand unified theory.”

Freidrich’s face quickly reddened. “Listen honey,” he said through clenched teeth and a forced smile, “if you think string theory is wrong it’s only because you don’t understand it.”

Patronizing, deluded, sexist pricks. The woman’s eye’s narrowed. “Either of my recent papers on entropic gravity should have been enough for all you zealots to toss your grand theory in the dumpster where it belongs,” she said. “Maybe you saw them in the Journal of Classical and Quantum Gravity?”

The two men blinked at her, their mouths agape.

“You string theorists always say, ‘By proving X we’ll finally demonstrate that string theory is correct,’ but when X turns out to be false you say, ‘proving Y will show that string theory is correct.’ And on and on it goes. That’s the problem with a theory that’s non-falsifiable.”

“I thought you looked familiar,” said Weiss, wagging his finger at her. “You’re Rebekah Riesen.”

“Dr. Rebekah Riesen,” she corrected.

“My God,” he said, placing his palm against his cheek. “Here, Martin, we’re dreaming of the Nobel-Wasserman prize in physics but she’s received it three times, twice before she was twenty-five.”

“That’s right,” Dr. Riesen growled, eyes smoldering on Freidrich. “And the reason I think string theory is wrong is because I do understand it.”

Freidrich’s gaping mouth snapped shut.

“Bartender!” shouted Dr. Riesen.

The bartender emerged from around the pillar, stopping in front of Dr. Riesen.

“I’ll have another,” she said, pointing to her empty glass. She tipped her head towards Freidrich. “He’s buying.”

- - -

Dr. Martin Freidrich’s hand moved along Dr. Riesen’s waist, sliding slowly across the fabric of her dress at the small of her back before slipping further down to caress her buttocks. Dr. Riesen ran her fingers through his hair while her other hand toyed with his waistband.

Freidrich pulled her closer. She enjoyed the firmness of his body pressing into hers.

He planted a kiss on her lips, then worked his way across her cheek to nibble her ear. “I know they say you’re a mistake,” he whispered, “but I don’t see how you could be any more perfect.”

Dr. Riesen reached behind her back, grabbed Freidrich’s wrist, and lifted his arm from around her body. She pushed him away and smiled. “I’ve got to get to bed,” she said.

“How ‘bout mine?” asked Freidrich. “I can tell Rudolph to go sleep in the lab.”

“Not tonight,” she said, shaking her head. She stepped backwards to stand within intention range of her apartment door.

“When, then?” he asked, taking a step toward her as the door slid open.

Dr. Riesen stood radiant in the corridor lights, framed by the dark foyer behind her: long, athletic legs flowing into wide hips; large, perfectly shaped breasts; pouty lips and ice blue eyes under a bob of black hair veiling alabaster skin. “I’ll message you,” she said, moving backwards into her apartment. She stopped a few paces inside.

Freidrich stood frozen, staring at her silhouetted form as she lingered in the twilight between the corridor and the apartment’s dark interior.

Dr. Riesen crossed her arms over her chest and grasped her dress straps. She drew the straps slowly down, peeling her dress away to fully expose her breasts. “You know you’re right,” she said, standing in the shadowed light of the doorway, “I’m not sure I could get more perfect.” Freidrich started forward as the door slid shut in front of him.

Engulfed in the blackness of her apartment Dr. Riesen returned her dress straps to her shoulders and stepped gingerly through the living room. She dodged the coffee table, finding her way to the couch where she dropped herself onto the pillows, breathed deep, and leaned her head back. She sat in the darkness, tears rolling down her cheeks from the corners of her closed eyes.

“Another challenging night?” said a man’s deep voice from across the room.

Dr. Riesen jumped. “God, don’t do that!” she said, snapping her head up. She quickly wiped away the tears with her hands.

“I’m sorry my child, I did not mean to frighten you.” A side table lamp came to life in the far corner, filling the space with a soft, warm glow, revealing a man sitting in a chair with wide cushioned armrests. He wore a hooded, crimson robe and crimson leather sandals. “Were you at the bar, or taking another walk?” he asked.

“I went to the bar tonight,” said Dr. Riesen.

“How was it?”

“Typical,” she said as she sat up straight on the couch. “They cut me off on drinks again.”

“You should be thankful The Brotherhood pays for any drinks at all,” said the man. “You know how we frown on alcohol. Besides, it’s never a solution to life’s problems.”

“I also ran into the typical bunch of idiots,” she said, fishing for sympathy. “Tonight they thought I was either a lowly research assistant or a physicist’s trophy wife.”

“Wasn’t that your objective?” asked the man. “Didn’t you present yourself in a way so they would assume you’re anything other than what you are?”

Her face still wet from tears, Dr. Riesen crossed her arms over her chest and gave the man an angry look. “And what am I, Rabbi?”

The man smiled. “You are many things,” he said, “starting with the most brilliant physicist alive.”

Dr. Riesen rolled her eyes.

“Was the man you were kissing in the hall one of the idiots?” he asked.

She shrugged. “What if he was?”

“You disrespect yourself by allowing a man you hold in such low regard to touch you as he did,” he said. “And you dishonor yourself by teasing him with your body.”

“That asshole got what he deserved,” she said. “But I think it’s your honor you’re worried about, not mine.” She cupped the undersides of her breasts and lifted, their smooth white tops erupting from her dress. “This is who I am. It’s not my fault all this makes you and the others so uncomfortable.”

The man blinked at her in the warm table light. “I have little desire or energy for verbal sparing at such a late hour Rebekah, but I think you know nothing you do dishonors me, for the way you act does not arise from anything I ever taught you. Your behavior is yours alone, as is the dishonor it brings.”

Dr. Riesen looked away, her gaze landing on the couch arm’s dark velvety upholstery. She ran her hand across the nap, smoothing it to fall in one direction. “What’re you doing up this late anyway?” she asked.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I figured I would wait up for your return.”

More tears welled. Dr. Riesen wiped them away with the back of her hand.

The man moved from his chair and sat next to Dr. Riesen on the couch. The crow’s feet at his temples accented his gentle smile, and his kind eyes peered at her though round glasses with thin rims. A smattering of gray patches dotted his dark brown, neatly cropped beard. He took her hands in his. “Have you reconsidered your decision?” he asked.

“I have not,” said Dr. Riesen. “If anything, I’m even more determined to go.”

The man sighed. “This choice will be much more destructive than the alcohol you consume every night,” he said. “And it still won’t be the answer to your problems.”

Tears ran down Dr. Riesen’s face. The man put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her gently. He gave her a kind smile. “Let me tell you a story.”

- - -

I rose at the God-forsaken fourth hour of the twenty-third day of the year 2302 A.D. Of course I know God forsakes nothing in His creation as everything manifests His perfect will, including 3 a.m. and all other moments in time. And of course I was no stranger to waking before dawn, as each day the entire Quad bustles with chores and chants before the stars have receded from the sky. Still, my faith struggled to find the divinity in flailing out of a deep sleep to quiet my bleating alarm, in scrambling to dress with my mind in a fog, in stumbling from my quarters to stand with a dozen men in the dead of night.

Once we assembled on the flat patch outside the Quad’s main gate the Admor raised his hand to settle us, shouted, “Yatsa!” and our party of Three, Seven, and Three lurched forward. Our destination: the Q’erh Radvid, a circular depression atop the tan-white Qumran cliffs that soared 400 meters before us, a massive glacier of stone towering in the blueish moonlight. A thin layer of dust floated at our feet as we shuffled along the soft dirt path that meanders a kilometer to the sheer cliffside. I caught myself sipping from my flask despite lack of thirst, and resolved not to exhaust my water supply on nerves. After a short time we reached the rugged cliff base, and found the tortoise-shaped stone that marks the start of the summit trail. Without a word or pause we took to the path.

Moreh Grünfeld and I walked behind the Admor who maintained an aggressive pace despite his 116 years. His staff struck the rock path with a steady beat, breaking the silence around us with a sharp thwack.

“Rabbi Lehr,” the Moreh said, clasping my shoulder as he took me aside at the previous night’s rehearsal, “during our travel to the summit you will find the Admor’s staff jarring, but in it you will also find comfort.”

“Were you a member of a prior Tchiyah ceremony?” I asked.

“Indeed,” the Moreh said through a wide smile, “the previous one.”

As the Moreh alluded I winced with each teeth-rattling crack of the Admor’s staff, but the steady hypnotic repetition drew my mind from the dull aches that grew in my knees and ankles.

The Admor, the Moreh to my left, and I formed the Tchiyah party’s forward Three. Behind us trudged the Seven coffin bearers: three rows of two monks walking abreast and a seventh in front to steer. Together they shouldered their load with huffs and grunts. The final Three, the ovum and sperm holders who also walked abreast, followed by the monk with the ceremonial womb, marched at the rear.

Most of our jagged pathway had been carved from the solid rock of the cliff face. The path ran wide in spots, but narrowed for long stretches. The grade remained steady throughout, not too steep or shallow. We encountered neither sand nor loose rock to challenge our footing, though our leather sandals sometimes slid where the stone had worn smooth. The landscape lacked life: no plants grew from the cliffside, no insects darted about, no animals rustled. This barren panorama provided little distraction from the black expanse just beyond the path’s ragged edge, a dark void waiting to swallow a careless hiker, to caress them in an onrush of air and blackness before they dashed to the ground below.

After marching for an hour the Admor slammed his staff into the stone path and cried, “'atsor!” signaling a ten minute rest. We stopped on a wide, flat overhang with ample space for the Seven to set down their heavy wooden load with its morbid contents. I had broken a sweat on our hike but did not overheat thanks to my robe’s chimney-like channelling of the cool night air. The coffin bearers hadn’t been as lucky. They tossed the wood bundles from their backs and let their robes fall away from their torsos—seven molting snakes shedding their crimson skins. They hunched forward with their hands on their knees as they heaved air into their lungs. At least their return trip would be easier.

I moved to the path’s edge and peered down to locate the trailhead. The moon had risen above the cliffs, leaving the alluvial plain in a darkness interrupted only by the yellow pinpricks of lantern light that winked from the Quad’s walkways far below. Further to the east shimmered the Dead Sea, a black mirror stretching to the eastern horizon.

I turned around to find the party had reassembled, and I sprinted to regain my place in the procession. The Admor, upon seeing all returned to their positions and the Seven again shouldering the coffin, shouted, “Yatsa!” He pounded his staff into the stone trail, spun on his heels, and resumed leading us in our march up the path.

The second half of our journey mirrored the first, with a pounding staff and an ominous darkness at path’s edge. The air grew cooler as our elevation increased, and winds jostled us at times with gusts of varied strength. Despite our ascent, we were not climbing to a destination high above the Earth’s surface. The Qumran cliffs form the leading edge of the African tectonic plate, marking the point where it drives the Arabian plate down into the fiery mantle. The Dead Sea and its environs sit on the Arabian side of this subduction zone, four hundred meters below sea level. We were not unlike creatures from the ocean’s depths on an arduous journey to the surface.

Another hour of travel brought sight of the trail’s end, and a squall so cold my ears and nose throbbed with pain. Moments later a stronger gust drove me into the Moreh, and the Tchiyah party had to stand its ground until the blast subsided. As we continued more gusts whipped around us and a steady wind grew until we could no longer make forward progress. The coffin bearers set down their parcel and we huddled against the cliffside. My teeth chattered as I pulled my robe tight and pinched closed the portion at my ankles. I donned my hood and gripped the rough rock face as best I could with frozen hands.

Sand welled from the ground below and rasped at exposed skin, striving to etch us from the cliff. We crouched and clung for ten minutes as the storm raged and showed no sign it would end. I looked eastward against the wind, making slits of my eyes. A few rumpled, gray clouds with orange bellies hung low as the horizon sprouted hints of soft blue. My concern grew—the Tchiyah ceremony had to begin the moment the first rays of light bolted from the sunrise. We could not turn back and attempt the next morning, for The Prophet’s spirit had already spent the past three days moving through the three bardos, the intermediate stages between death and rebirth. We had to move.

I spied the Admor nestled into the cliff face on my right. He looked skyward, but with eyes pinched shut and brow furrowed. His lips moved—I only made out fragments of his speech over the din of the wind. During a lull those loose sounds formed words from the Sheheḥeyanu blessing:

Blessed are You,

Lord our God,

King of the Universe,

Who has kept us alive, sustained us,

And enabled us to reach this season.

I too recited the blessing, followed by others, until the entire Tchiyah party shouted above the gale. I found myself crying, for if our prayers failed, 250 years of rebirths and revelations would end.

However that morning God heard our words and acted, for seconds later the winds slackened to a gentle breeze. No longer forced to shelter against the cliffside we stood and rejoiced with wide grins. Tears raced down my face, for God had shown His will indeed included The Prophet’s return.

As we stood beaming an anguished shriek tore through our celebration. I turned to find the Admor with a wild look on his face. He began screaming, a staccato of sounds made unintelligible by his distress, each syllable punctuated by spittle that flew from his lips. His eyes bulged as they followed the line of his raised left arm and forefinger aimed at the glowing eastern horizon. We had survived the wind but we had not yet reached the summit or prepared for the ceremony. We retook our positions without delay, the coffin bearers once again hoisted their morbid load, and we scrambled along the path’s final stretch.

The Admor, the Moreh, and I bounded up the trail, but when I glanced back I discovered the Seven thirty paces behind us. They moved as fast as they could but struggled under the coffin’s weight. I ran to them, lined up next to the lead coffin bearer, and lent my back to the effort. Even with eight men the casket bore down on my thin frame, taxing my muscles and sinews, but together we moved faster up the trail. I closed my eyes and focused on placing one foot in front of the other, trusting my workmates to keep us on the path.

Time raced or froze—I had no sense, only the focus to move the coffin up the trail. I was on the verge of collapsing when the word “‘atsor!” broke the silence and we stopped moving. I opened my eyes, surprised to find we had arrived at the summit. The eastern sky was brighter than moments ago, but the sun had still not risen.

The Seven and I moved with haste to the ash pit, a half-meter deep rectangular gouge with jagged edges and a rugged floor that suggested the work of chisels and pick axes. Despite its name the pit contained no ashes, the contents of the last Tchiyah ceremony having blown away decades ago. The eight of us centered the coffin into the pit.

The Seven unbundled their wood packs into the gap between the pit’s edges and the casket’s sides. As they worked, the lead coffin bearer swung open the lid and removed a large goatskin flask. Within the box a crimson-dyed burlap shroud traced the contours of a motionless head and torso. The lead bearer lowered the lid, pulled the cork from the flask, and doused the coffin and wood with accelerant.

Twelve of us took positions around the ash pit, forming a semi-circle that opened to the east. The Admor faced us from across the coffin, and we all stood motionless until the first ray of sunlight danced from the horizon. The Admor spoke:

“Tichyah. Rebirth. Today we observe the passing of The Prophet, not from this world to the next, but from the discarded body here before us to the new one we shall conceive. We are the joyful witnesses to his last moments in the world between worlds, and to the first moments of his next journey upon this Earth. We exult in excited anticipation of revelation.”

“Amen,” we all cried out.

As the Admor finished his remarks the lead coffin bearer walked to the casket. He reached into the front of his robe near his chest and withdrew a closed fist that pulsed with a gentle, red warmth. In a quick motion he flung the contents of his hand, three match beads, into the ash pit. Each glowing, milky-red pearl erupted in flame where it landed, and in seconds a conflagration engulfed the container. Gray smoke drifted high into the morning air, carried by a gentle breeze. Burning wood tinged my nostrils.

The trailing Three moved from their positions and presented themselves to the Admor. The monk with the womb, a shiny silver heart-shaped vessel about the size of a drumhead and several inches thick, held it outstretched from his body. Upon the Admor’s nod the ovum and sperm holders inserted their separate cryotubes, foot-long silver batons, into cavities along the womb’s top edge. As they stepped back the Admor bowed his head and pressed his hands together at his chest in prayer. We all followed suit, though I kept one eye fixed on the womb, waiting for the sign of conception. I stood breathless until the small green dot appeared at the container’s center.

The green dot also cued my part in the ceremony. I walked to the Admor who raised his head and lowered his hands and said, “Rabbi Lehr, do you swear to protect this Prophet child, to guard and defend no matter the cost, even to the forfeit of your own life?”

“I do,” I said, my voice gravelly. Though conceived only moments before, an enormous love rose within my heart for the new child, the next Prophet. Love, and a great pride in my selection above all others for the honor of Protector. I would be a father to this fatherless child, give all of myself and more, and never, ever, let harm come.

The following days dragged into weeks, and crawled into months. Each morning after reciting my prayers at the tiny wooden desk in my quarters I would add a new mark to the tally of days I kept on a special page in my journal. As spring became summer my despair over the remaining time turned to anticipation of the coming birth. I visited the gestational womb every day, bursting into the room to count the green dots arrayed in a spiral across its copper face. Each new glowing mote signaled the successful completion of another step in the fetus’s development.

At last the Birth Day arrived, just after Yom Kippur. Each moment lives with me still in vivid memory. I stared in awe as the baby’s crown bulged from the copper birth canal the Caretakers had attached to the womb that morning. The full head, shoulders, and torso emerged, the contraction protocol having entered its fastest and most forceful phase. Next came the belly, the umbilical, and gasps of shock and disbelief. A rabbi attendant offered the pithy observation, “This is the fuck up of all fuck ups.”

Two hours later Moreh Grünfeld and I stood outside the large wooden door to the Admor’s office. The Moreh carried a despondent look on his age-lined face. As Director of the Generational Program even a minor mishap meant major grief for him. When the newborn Prophet three generations prior emerged with an eye color closer to steel gray than the expected ice blue the program’s detractors hurled the barb, “Unreliable in small things, unreliable in big things,” a fair criticism, for if we could not guarantee a trait as basic as a man’s eye color what confidence could we assert in anything more significant. That day we fully confirmed their criticism.

Moreh Grünfeld twice struck the door’s massive driftwood planks with the tethered black iron ball knocker before pushing it open. The Admor’s assistant would have greeted us but had already left for the day. Cool air enveloped us as we entered the dark space, the antechamber to the main office. The Admor preferred a frigid workspace, and we shivered as we transited from the warm early evening air. Once inside the Moreh nudged the great door shut.

We walked the short distance to the main office door, dodging a desk and other furniture, gray lumps in the room’s dim light. The Moreh tapped with his knuckles, then nudged the door. Yellow-orange sunlight rushed from the breach, blinding us in the moment. The Moreh’s head disappeared into the crack and was met by a curt, “Come in.” He pushed the door open wide enough for us both to pass.

Fading golden sunlight filled the Admor’s office, streaming through tall panes of glass that stretched from floor to ceiling along the room’s entire western wall. The windows looked out onto a small garden of short trees and flower bushes, interspersed with a sandy path. Birds made their last stops of the day at several hanging feeders. Across from the garden rose the Quad’s stone block outer wall, and beyond it the white-tan cliffs.

Though immense, the room contained little furniture, just a simple wooden desk flanked by the Admor’s large leather chair and its two lesser, wooden counterparts. On the wall behind the Admor hung a fifteen foot tall oil on wood painting of the first man to hold his position, watching us with his fiery black eyes. This man of small stature possessed the courage and conviction to break from traditional Jewish teachings, basing the Brotherhood on the truths found in many different faiths. A cloister of Jewish monks was unheard of before him, much less one embracing the Buddhist belief in reincarnation.

The Admor trained his eyes on us as we approached. “Sit down,” he barked as he nodded at the chairs facing the desk. The Moreh took one while I remained standing to his side and slightly behind. The Admor’s command notwithstanding, protocol dictated I stay on my feet for sitting next to the Moreh would imply equivalent status. Our current predicament was more than enough grief for one day.

Deep, wide wrinkles crossed the Admor’s face like the grooves in bark on an old tree. Arteries bulged and pulsed beneath the papery skin at his temples. Fat eyebrows sat like caterpillars over sunken eyes as the Admor stared through thin-rimmed glasses at Moreh Grünfeld. The Moreh fixed his gaze on the Admor’s desk top.

“Have they determined the root cause?” the Admor asked, speaking in his typical low tone.

“As near as they can tell,” Moreh Grünfeld said, looking up as he fidgeted in his chair, “the error must have occurred sometime after the annealing phase that separates the male sperm from the female. We rechecked the photographs and genetic profile of each individual spermatozoon and confirmed the Tchiyah cohort contained no female sperm.” The Moreh paused as he shuffled in his seat. “However, they suspect a microscopic droplet of seminal fluid clinging to the outside of the pipet must have introduced female sperm into the transport cylinder.”

“So not only do we have a female Prophet,” the Admor said, his voice building to a low growl, “we don’t even have a record of the contributing spermatozoon’s genetic composition?”

“Correct,” the Moreh said in a quavering voice, “but we have sequenced the child’s DNA and reconstructed the spermatozoon’s profile. We have confirmed the child is genetically healthy and anomaly-free.”

“Except,” the Admor hissed, “the child is female instead of male.” The Admor spoke slowly and with emphasis, and the Moreh’s head sank lower after each word. “Why didn’t the genetic scanners flag this error at the start?”

“The scanners are designed to detect genetic sequence errors and anomalies,” said the Moreh. “A female embryo is technically not a genetic sequence error.”

“Error, mistake, call it what you will, but this is not the desired outcome in any sense,” the Admor said. “Why didn’t any of the subsequent generational stages catch it?”

The Moreh hesitated. “Your excellency, those systems were similarly restricted in scope. They assumed a male embryo in sym-utero, so none of the automated checks bothered to confirm the fetus’s sex. I have directed such testing be added at multiple stages, including conception, and future Tchiyah ceremonies will depart with secondary ova and spermatozoa cohorts as a backup for gender errors in the primary zygote. This mistake will not happen again.”

The Admor didn’t stir for several long seconds. “It seems we have a plan for the future,” he finally said. “Now what do we do about our current predicament?”

After a long pause the Moreh said, “The Prophet cannot be female. It is unfortunate but necessary to restart the generational process.”

The Admor pursed his lips. “Reluctantly I have reached the same conclusion,” he said.

“Perhaps a Hamatat Hessed ceremony,” said the Moreh. “This, after all, would be a mercy killing. And then we hold a new Tchiyah ceremony three days later.”

“We must not!” I shouted.

The Admor and Moreh looked at me in shock, as I had no permission or place in that meeting to speak.

“Killing is wrong,” I stammered. “Killing a child, an infant, to correct our so-called mistake is evil.”

“The Prophet must be male,” said the Admor in a lecturing tone. “This child, this female, should never have existed.”

“Who says she is not to be The Prophet?” I asked. “Who says our tradition of male Prophets is correct? Who is to say this female Prophet is not God’s will?”

Silence fell over the room. Finally the Admor spoke. “This issue is not up for debate,” he said. “We must trust in what we think is right. We are far along in the process of welcoming The Prophet back to this world, but not so far along we cannot fix this error. We must do this for the good of the program.”

I took a deep breath. The Admor and Moreh had so far been sympathetic to my point of view in that they had not immediately called the guards to drag me away to one of the contemplation cells below ground. I would likely find any further outburst met with a swift and harsh response. But after all my consultations with God since the birth of The Prophet I had steeled myself to my current course, had settled upon my next action before I walked into the Admor’s office. “The child has a name.”

The Moreh burst from his chair. “She cannot!” he yelled, his face contorted in anger.

“No, no, no, no, no!” shouted the Admor, each syllable louder than the last.

“The child has a name,” I said again, this time with more force, determined to see it through. “Her name is Rebekah.”

The Admor thrust his palms flat against his ears, and his eyes rolled back in his head. He began blubbering what may have started as a prayer but drifted to what sounded like the ramblings of an unhinged man.

“Blasphemy!” shouted the Moreh standing next to me. His eyes bulged, threatening to leap from their sockets. “You cannot give this child a name! This child cannot be the next Prophet!”

“Her name is Rebekah,” I repeated, my tone calm. Every muscle in my body tensed, and sweat beaded across my brow, but I stood fast in my resolve. I drew strength from the oath I swore nine months prior, to guard and defend that child no matter the cost, even to my life.

The Admor slowly lowered his hands from his ears. His bloodshot eyes looked past me, as if in a trance. “We cannot kill a child who has a name,” he said.

“We must!” yelled the Moreh, quickly cowering. Although he fully intended to kill a baby not even a day old he likely recoiled upon hearing his insistence they do so. He grew calmer, though his body shook with anger. “Your excellency,” he pleaded, “please let us fix this mistake.”

“We cannot kill a child who has a name,” the Admor said again, still looking past me, resignation in his voice. He stood and slowly raised his arms, turning his palms flat to face me. His eyes finally connected with mine, full of fire. I raised my arms and offered my palms in kind. He hissed the benediction that initiated the Protector’s service, “You, Rabbi Lehr, are the Protector. Raise this child, the next Prophet, and keep her from harm, so that God may reveal to us, through her, the inner workings of His holy Universe.”

- - -

Rabbi Lehr gently lowered Dr. Riesen’s head from his shoulder, moving slowly to avoid waking her. He reached into a box at the end of the couch and pulled out a blanket. He spread it over her arms and legs.

“We must trust in what we think is right,” whispered Rabbi Lehr, “and what can be more right than God’s will?” He caressed her head. “God chose for you to return to his Universe as a woman. That they cannot understand the wisdom of God’s decision does not make you a mistake. The mistake is their questioning of God’s will.” He caressed her head again. “I only wish you could believe that.”

9

“Welcome to Plana Petram Captain Holbrook, Commander Stephens.”

The greeting startled the two Avenger officers as they exited their shuttle’s airlock. An aught stood before them, two meters tall with white phlesh, short, dark hair, a slim pointed nose, and a wide, toothy smile. He wore a dark blue suit with narrow lapels, and his head jerked bird-like as his gaze shifted between the two officers.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Stephens huffed, shaking his head in disgust.

The aught blinked at the two men, its eyelids clicking softly. “Commodore Ahrens sent me to greet you upon your arrival and to escort you to the meeting room. I understand this is your first time at Plana Petram?”

Stephens glared at the aught, leaving Holbrook to nod in the affirmative for both of them. “We’re not in the habit of traveling this far from home,” he said.

“Well that affords me the pleasure of giving you a welcome tour of this research station while we walk. But first, let me introduce myself. My name is Magellan,” he said with a shallow bow, “as in Ferdinand Magellan, the sixteenth century Portuguese explorer, namesake of the Magellanic clouds. From our vantage point fifty-three thousand light years from Earth we have a spectacular view of those clouds and the sixty-seven other satellite galaxies this side of the galactic disc. This way gentlemen.” Magellan headed to the left down the corridor. The two Avenger officers followed, hanging back out of the aught’s earshot.

“Really?” whispered Stephens. “Ahrens sends an aught to meet us?”

“I’m sure there’s a good reason he couldn’t be here himself,” said Holbrook, his voice low.

“But this is official CentCom business,” said Stephens. “This thing has probably tipped off the entire Collective to our presence, maybe even to the mission, whatever the hell it is.”

Holbrook motioned Stephens to keep his voice down. “Most aughts aren’t part of The Collective,” he whispered. “Besides, this one’s intelligence level doesn’t seem to be very high. I doubt it can do much more than run errands.”

“All aughts are dangerous—you know that,” Stephens sneered, his voice rising. “They can’t be trusted, none of ‘em. I’d destroy ‘em all if I had the chance.”

Magellan spun around, facing the two men. The aught locked his eyes on Stephens, its lids clicking like camera shutters. The commander, startled, tensed his muscles as if readying himself for a fight.

Magellan smiled wide at Stephens. “The Plana Petram station came about as a fluke,” he said as he continued leading the men down the corridor, walking backwards in perfect step. “A survey probe venturing into this volume of intergalactic space chanced upon this capsule-shaped body, a 5.987 quadrillion kilogram class C asteroid the length of Manhattan, a strange find in a region where the space density averages only one hydrogen atom per cubic meter. The station consists of nine levels, eight of them subterranean. This top level hosts recreation space and dining facilities, while the others consist primarily of living quarters and research labs.”

The three arrived at the Grand Lounge, a cavernous circular room of couches and plush chairs. Snatches of light danced from sconces stationed like torches at two meter intervals along the curved outer wall. A breathtaking view of the Milky Way galaxy hovered above them, visible through the flat glassteel roof and providing the bulk of the illumination. Two automatons, also with white phlesh and dressed in dark blue suits, shuttled between guests and the bar across the room. Conversation filled the space.

“The Grand Lounge isn’t usually this busy,” said Magellan, raising his voice above the ambient noise, “but there are several conferences underway at the station, and it is happy hour.”

“I have a question,” Holbrook said.

“Of course Captain Holbrook, please interrupt me at any time,” said Magellan, beaming with a broad smile. “The same for you Commander Stephens.”

“Why in Hades would anyone build a station fifty thousand light years from Earth?” asked Holbrook.

“An excellent question,” said Magellan. “Plana Petram’s extreme distance from Earth and its position above the galactic disc places it far from most of the mass in the Milky Way but still within the relatively dense portion of the galaxy’s supposed dark matter halo, making it an ideal platform for investigating the nature of that substance.”

Stephens let out a loud, derisive laugh.

“What’s so funny?” asked Holbrook.

“Nothing’s funny, captain,” said Stephens. “This whole thing just keeps getting more ridiculous.” The captain stared at him, waiting for him to elaborate. “The only reason we’re out here, the only reason we had to spend three weeks traveling fifty thousand light years is because of a joke, because some old, dead physicists didn’t have their heads on straight.”

“I still don’t understand,” said Holbrook.

“Commander Stephens is referring to dark matter,” said Magellan, “a concept physicists dreamt up 400 years ago to explain why rotating galaxies don’t fling their constituent stars off into intergalactic space. Based on what they knew about gravity at the time they didn’t observe enough matter to keep a galaxy’s stars rotating around its core.”

“They called it dark matter because they couldn’t see it,” said Stephens, rolling his eyes. “Get it? Dark matter supposedly bound a galaxy through gravity on a large scale with invisible particles that somehow didn’t clump in the centers of stars or accumulate around planets as they swept through their orbits.”

“Discoveries at this station were instrumental in disproving the theory of dark matter,” said Magellan, “though it took another fifty years for the theory to be fully rejected.”

“As they say, cosmologists are often in error but never in doubt.”

The voice came from behind them. The three turned to find a young woman standing in a crimson jacket over a black shirt, with black slacks and crimson leather-strapped sandals. She had dark hair pulled back in a knob with bangs across her forehead. Her eyes were the lightest blue, the color of ice. “Sometimes it’s hard to wrap your head around what was accepted as legitimate science in those days,” she said.

“Ah, Dr. Riesen, very good,” said Magellan.

“Dr. Rebekah Riesen?” asked Stephens, his mouth falling open.

“Is there some other?” she asked.

“You know her?” asked Holbrook.

“Yes …, I mean no …, I mean we’ve never met, I just know who she is,” Stephens stammered.

The captain extended his hand past his stunned executive officer. “I’m Captain Holbrook of the CentCom starship Avenger. And this is Commander Stephens.” Stephens came to his senses long enough to offer his hand.

“Nice to meet you both,” said Dr. Riesen. Stephens could only sheepishly nod in acknowledgement.

“You must be some luminary to render my executive officer speechless,” said Holbrook.

“I’m just a physicist,” said Dr. Riesen.

“Dr. Rebekah Riesen is the preeminent physicist of our time,” said Magellan. “She has received three Nobel-Wassermans in Physics, five Gold Clusters for distinguished astrophysics research, the —”

“That’s enough Magellan,” said Dr. Riesen.

“She’s also The Prophet,” said Stephens.

“The Prophet?” said Holbrook. “Like in the Bible?”

“That’s a long story,” said Dr. Riesen, “one that we don’t really have time for right now.“ She turned to Magellan. “We should head to the meeting. We don’t want keep the commodore waiting.”

“Commodore Ahrens?” asked Holbrook, surprised. “You’re meeting with him too?”

“Indeed,” said Magellan. “And now that she is here we do not have to make a stop at her apartment to fetch her. Lady and gentlemen, please follow me.” The aught spun around abruptly and headed across the Grand Lounge. The three humans followed, with Dr. Riesen walking ahead of the two Avenger officers. The four bumped and pressed against the other station guests as they worked their way through the throng of people.

“Why would Rebekah Riesen be in our mission briefing?” Stephens asked Holbrook in a loud whisper just audible above the din.

“You said she’s The Prophet?” asked Holbrook.

“That’s what they call her,” said Stephens. “She’s part of some crazy sect back on Earth. They say she communes with God or something. A prophet relaying God’s secrets of the physical Universe.”

“You believe that?” asked Holbrook.

Stephens shrugged.

The humans followed Magellan to a set of three elevator doors at the far side of the room. When everyone arrived the aught pressed the call button to the middle elevator. The doors whisked open and the four stepped into the car, a spacious, round cabin with a bright interior. The door slid shut, creating a sudden pocket of quiet.

“Level six,” said Magellan.

After a short elevator ride the doors whisked open. The party of four emptied into a quiet, dimly lit corridor lined with sconces flicking light onto the walls and low ceiling. Magellan led the three humans past several closed doors to the last one on the right, five meters before the corridor’s abrupt end.

Magellan pressed the entry buzzer and waited. The door slid open, revealing a small room much brighter than the corridor, its walls lined with white tiluminum paneling. A rectangular table sat in the center with a smooth, glassy top, surrounded by eight chairs. A CentCom officer sat facing the door on the table’s far side, the ends of his uniform sleeves braided in gold commodore ribbons. He stood as the four entered the room.

“Captain Holbrook, Commander Stephens, Dr. Riesen,” said the CentCom officer in a deep, booming voice. He had a thick chocolate brown mustache flecked with gray, its bristles concealing the rim of his upper lip. Brown hair capped his head in a Roman military cut, with patches of gray at his temples. His eyes were dark brown, almost black, suspended over gaunt cheeks. The royal blue fabric of his uniform hung from his lean, two-meter frame.

A broad hand, its palm marred by an angry red scar, darted from the man’s right sleeve. “I’m Commodore Ahrens,” he said to the two military men as he reached across the table to shake their hands. “And good to see you again, doctor.”

“Commodore,” said Dr. Riesen, nodding slightly.

Ahrens’s dark eyes darted to Magellan. “That will be all.”

Magellan gave a wide smile. “It has been a pleasure Dr. Riesen, Captain Holbrook, Commander Stephens. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to improve your stay here on Plana Petram.” He leaned forward with a shallow bow and backed out of the room. The doors slid closed upon his exit.

“Take your seats,” said Commodore Ahrens, waving at the three empty chairs on the near side of the table while returning to his own. Captain Holbrook lowered himself into the middle one directly across from the commodore. Dr. Riesen took the chair to the captain’s left, Stephens the one to his right.

Holbrook forced a weak half-smile at Ahrens, who so far lived up to his reputation of having a no-nonsense style. When researching the man the most charitable comment Holbrook could find was he thankfully kept meetings short, sparing others from too much time in his presence. Would Ahrens show any concern for his vessel having drawn this assignment? The odds seemed against it—the commodore was seasoned career military, decorated on multiple occasions for his service which included two tours in the long-running Cygnus offensive. Still, Holbrook remained optimistic that Ahrens would be open to discussing possible alternatives to taking his ship so close to the galactic center. “How was your trip here, commodore?”

Ahrens’s dark eyes grabbed Holbrook, threatening to swallow him like two tiny black holes. “Irrelevant,” he said. “No one likes to travel by sleeper. Those God damn capsules are little more than a casket. It’s not a problem when you’re in transit but you feel like you’re suffocating during the awake periods at either end. I woke soon after I arrived but I had to wait almost two hours for them to open the God damn thing.

“But as I said all that’s irrelevant because I didn’t choose to come here, or want to come here, or even if I did want to travel over forty thousand light years to a station more remote than an Oort Cloud miner’s balls are from sunlight it doesn’t matter. The reason I’m here, like you Captain Holbrook, the reason we’re here is ‘cause of orders. We’re all just following orders.”

The door buzzed.

“Good,” said Ahrens, tapping the table’s surface. The doors opened, revealing a figure standing in the corridor’s gloom. “Come,” he said, beckoning with his hand. “Officers, Dr. Riesen, this is Tentek.”

Dr. Riesen, Holbrook, and Stephens each turned in their chairs enough to view the figure that had moved just inside the threshold. He was an aught two meters tall, skinny, with pasty white phlesh. He had a narrow face, almost as if it had been pressed flat from the sides, and cropped white hair sprouting from the crown of his head. His eyes were large white billiard balls that threatened to leap out of their sockets, with small nickel-colored irises and double-eyelids that softly click-clacked when they closed. His thin black lips cut a slit beneath the sharp point of his nose.

Stephens sprung from his seat and almost fell backwards over his chair. He fumbled past the captain and Dr. Riesen, nearly tripping over his feet as he backed deeper into the room. He stopped before reaching the far corner. Stephens quickly drew his electron pistol and aimed it at Tentek.

“Commander Stephens,” bellowed Ahrens as he exploded from his chair, “lower your weapon at once!”

“Sir,” said Stephens, his eyes wide and focused on Tentek, “this aught is from The Collective.” He studied Tentek, reassuring himself of his claim, then adjusted his grip on his pistol. “They have a very distinct design.”

“Yes, Tentek is from The Collective,” said Ahrens. “Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I’m some God damned cadet with his head so far up his ass that I don’t know I’ve invited a Collective aught to this meeting? Do you think I’m that clueless and stupid, commander?”

Stephens remained frozen in place while Tentek stared back at the him, expressionless, his double eyelids click-clacking softly.

“Put your weapon down and return to your seat,” said Ahrens.

“But what’s an aught from The Collective doing here?” asked Stephens. He kept his electron pistol raised.

Ahrens leaned forward, supporting himself on splayed fingers as he pressed the tips into the tabletop. He spoke calmly, bathing the room in his rich voice. “Well supposing you follow my orders to lower your weapon and return to your seat instead of me relieving you of duty, putting you in restraints, and sending you in stasis to the detention planet, supposing you do what I just God damned ordered you to do and you remain in this meeting and sit there quietly without another impulsive outburst, supposing all of that happens just like I described commander, then you will find out why he’s here.”

“Paul,” said Holbrook, “please do as the commodore asked.”

Stephens gradually lowered his pistol but held it by his side rather than holster it. He made no motion to take his chair.

“Tentek, come take a seat,” said Commodore Ahrens pointing at the empty chair to his left. The aught headed towards the commodore as Stephens worked his way back to his own chair, the two synchronized in their travel around the table. They simultaneously lowered themselves into their seats and remained with their eyes fixed on each other, Commander Stephens glaring at the aught and Tentek’s face placid, offering no expression.

“I apologize for Commander Stephens’s … overreaction,” said Holbrook to Ahrens, “but I do share his concern. Aughts from The Collective are not allowed near CentCom operations of any sort, so I’m surprised to learn you invited him to this briefing about a mission I understand to be quite sensitive.”

Commodore Ahrens sat back down in his chair. “All will be revealed, captain,” he said, pulling the front of his uniform jacket taut, “all will be revealed.” He glanced at Stephens. “And if we’re finally finished with all the bullshit, we can get started.”

Stephens broke his gaze with Tentek and sank his eyes to the table.

“Good,” said Ahrens. “As you know, the spatial and gravitational distortion around Sagittarius A Star makes any travel within 200 light years of the galactic black hole perilous. No vessel or probe that has entered that deformed space has ever returned or been heard from again. At least that was true until three weeks ago, when a civilian research ship was confirmed to have journeyed to within one hundred astronomical units of Sag A Star.”

“Incredible,” said Dr. Riesen softly.

“Not only did they survive,” said Ahrens, “they navigated to a planet named Infernum located in the RD Sagittarii star system that sits twenty-three light years from the galactic center, within the D-space around Sag A Star.” The commodore tapped the table surface, summoning a large holographic image of a planet with violet oceans and gray land masses mottled with yellow splotches. “These photos are from the research vessel, the Adiona.” He swiped quickly through more images of planetary hemispheres to reach a set of photos taken from the ground. One showed an ashen landscape with yellow scrub brush framed by a ship’s viewport, another a white boot against gray soil. A shot appeared of nine people in a control room, most with their heads down at their consoles, the others looking at the camera with grim expressions.

“How did you get these photographs?” asked Dr. Riesen.

“It’s not uncommon for CentCom to have clandestine devices relaying intelligence from the field —”

“No, I mean how did you actually get them? It’s not possible to receive signals from within the distorted space around Sag A Star.”

“It’s not possible to receive direct signals,” said Ahrens. “This mission data was transmitted by a single-use, omnidirectional burst-mode broadcast device.”

Dr. Riesen’s eyelids flitted, the researcher falling into deep thought. “A data bomb,” she said.

“That’s essentially correct,” said Ahrens. “The device broadcasts a data payload in all directions by detonating a small nuclear charge encased in a tachyite shell.”

“But even tachyons with their faster-than-light speed are still affected by the warpage of D-space,” said Dr. Riesen.

“Most of the individual signals were lost, but a statistical few eventually reached our grid of listening posts. We didn’t receive everything the device transmitted but we did get nearly all the mission logs intact as well as many photos and most of the sensor data.”

The commodore swiped through photos of rocky landscapes, most featuring a soaring mountain range and jagged snowcapped peaks in the background. Ahrens overshot the photos he sought, swiping back to them. The first showed a gray plain of smooth rock stretching to a line of blue metallic trees in the distance, meeting more trees in a grove to the right. The second looked down on an enormous hexagonal-shaped basin. The third, taken from inside the basin, showed rough gray terrain littered with small rocks and several tall mounds of soil. To the right of the mounds sat two shorter silver domes.

Ahrens swiped forward to a photo where one of the silver domes filled the frame. The structure was large, about five meters tall based on the height of two research team members standing in front of it, one posing with his hand against the dome’s silvery metallic skin. “When our CentCom analysts got these photos, the first things that stood out were these silver objects.” He swiped ahead to a photo showing five regularly-spaced large semi-circular caverns in the basin’s sheer cliff wall. “They were also very interested in these openings,” he said, “or more precisely, mine entrances.”

“Did I notice the silver objects have straight lines along their bases?” asked Dr. Riesen. “Can you swipe back to the previous photo?”

Commodore Ahrens brought the previous dome photo into view.

“There,” she said, pointing near the bottom of the image, “the base is made up of three straight lines. It’s not rounded like the top part of the dome.”

“Very observant Dr. Riesen,” said Ahrens. “The silver domes have hexagonal bases. The best guess of our analysts is this structure was created by the Hex Men.”

“Who?” asked Stephens.

“‘Hex Men’ is a nickname for an extraterrestrial race that may or may not still exist,” said the commodore. “We call them the hex men because of their fondness for hexagons, a sort of calling card they’ve left wherever they’ve ventured. Their primary activity seems to have been the extraction of materials from celestial objects. We’ve seen evidence of their visits across many of the star systems we’ve explored. Our own solar system bears evidence of Hex Men activity, with several moons, including Earth’s, showing six-sided craters. They also engineered the hexagonal weather pattern at Saturn’s northern pole.”

“The hexagonal shapes seen in the craters you’re talking about happened through natural erosion processes,” said Stephens. “And the hexagon at the top of Saturn is a natural result of swirling winds.”

Ahrens pursed his lips.“You have a Masters degree in physics, is that right commander? I recall that from your file. You consider yourself a physicist?”

“Yes, and yes,” said Stephens.

“Well it’s funny,” said Ahrens. “I’m not a physicists at all, but the first time I read the theory of the hexagon on Saturn I saw right through that bullshit explanation. I mean what’s special in nature about the number six? The answer is, ‘nothing.’ There’s no weather pattern larger than the Earth itself making a series of perfectly-spaced sixty degree turns to meet back where it started, and even glow in the God damned dark. How could it?” The commodore shook his head. “Now it’s preferable the masses believe it’s natural, which is why you’ll find that explanation in every physics book out there. We don’t have all the answers on what the Hex Men were up to, or if they currently pose any threat to Earth. The thought is, and I don’t disagree, it’s better to push a phony story than to alarm the whole human race.”

“What is the hexagon in Saturn’s cloud tops then if it’s not natural?” asked Dr. Riesen.

“Probes flown into the region show each corner to be a tightly focused, almost pillar-like force structure radiating field lines to its neighbors. The pillars taken together are akin to sticking six poles in the ground and wrapping a fence around them. This hexagonal force field reduces the storm activity within its boundary.”

“What would be the point of such a structure?” asked Holbrook.

“Well assuming this was another mining operation,” said Ahrens, “the only substance worth going to that much trouble to acquire would be liquid metallic hydrogen.”

“Liquid metallic hydrogen takes extreme pressures to form,” said Stephens. “If you tried to collect some, wouldn’t it return to its normal gaseous state?”

“Liquid metallic hydrogen is meta-stable,” said Dr. Riesen. “It’s like crushing carbon into diamond—when you remove the pressure, the diamond doesn’t revert to its original carbon form.”

Holbrook stroked his chin. “If the Hex Men were miners, do we know what they were mining on Infernum?”

“That brings us to the reason for this mission,” said Commodore Ahrens. “Based on an analysis of the research ship’s logs, we believe the Hex Men were mining a substance called Planck Matter.”

Dr. Riesen’s eyes grew wide.

“What’s Planck Matter?” asked Stephens.

“It’s a theoretical material that has never been seen in nature or created in any lab,” said Dr. Riesen. “Black holes compress an immense amount of matter into a relatively small volume by distending spacetime into small pockets. These matter-filled clumps of distended spacetime are called Planck Matter. No larger than grains of sand, each one holds enormous amounts of material. A clump the size of your fist can hold the equivalent mass of a continent.”

“But nothing can escape a black hole,” said Stephens, “not even light. If this Planck Matter forms inside, how can anyone get ahold of it?“

“Planck Matter escapes through quantum tunneling,” said Dr. Riesen. She turned to the commodore. “But drifting all the way from Sag A Star to a planet twenty-three light years away seems incredibly improbable.”

“The RD Sagittarii star system contains a smaller black hole, in orbit around its massive star,” said Ahrens. “The Planck Matter likely escaped from that black hole and was deposited on the planet. And that brings us to the whys of Tentek’s presence here.” The commodore gestured to the aught who gave a slow nod to the others in the room. “He came to us with some important information that I will let him convey.”

The robot clasped his thin hands before him on the table. “The Collective intercepted the data blast,” said Tentek, his voice tinny and faintly metallic. “They reached the same conclusion about Planck Matter. They have outfitted a ship.”

“My God,” said Dr. Riesen.

“The aughts on that ship are tasked with collecting Planck Matter and returning it to The Collective,” said Tentek.

Dr. Riesen covered her mouth with her hand.

“What in Hades is the matter?!” asked Holbrook.

The physicist turned to Holbrook. “With even a palmful of Planck Matter and the proper detonator you could build an unthinkably large weapon.”

“How large?” asked Holbrook.

“Larger than the human race has ever built,” said Tentek. “The Collective wants Planck Matter for a weapon that could destroy the Earth. They see it as a sort of … insurance policy.”

“When Tentek learned of this plan he relayed it to us,” said Ahrens. “It’s the reason for this mission.”

“Wait a minute,” said Stephens, incredulous. “He just marched in and supposedly ratted out his machine buddies, and you all just believed him? Everyone knows aughts can’t be trusted, especially not one from The Collective.”

“We determined early on that The Collective decoded the tachyon blast,” said Ahrens. “Tentek came to us after that. We’ve separately confirmed an aught vessel left The Collective home world a day ago, on a course for the galactic center. They should reach Sag A Star in about eight days.” The commodore swiped the table viewscreen off and set his dark eyes on Captain Holbrook. “We can’t let the aughts obtain Planck Matter. We’re sending the Avenger to Sag A Star to stop them.”

“But commodore,” said Holbrook, confused, “it’ll take two weeks for us to reach Sag A Star. By then it’ll be too late to intercept the aught ship before it enters D-space. There have to be ships closer than ours.”

“Intercepting them before they enter D-space is not the objective,” said Ahrens. “We can’t engage the aughts in normal space—that would spark an interstellar incident. It would touch off a new war.”

“But they’re trying to build a weapon to destroy the Earth,” said Stephens.

“We know that,” said Ahrens, “but the aughts’ll deny it. They’ll claim any other reason for their trip to Sag A Star. We’d never be able to prove otherwise.”

“We have this aught here,” said Stephens, pointing at Tentek. “From what you’ve told us he apparently knows the whole plan. We could dismantle him and read it right from his bubble memory. That would be proof enough.”

“That’s a brilliant idea, Commander Stephens, just brilliant,” said Ahrens as he folded his arms, his voice full of sarcasm. “We blow the Collective ship out of the sky and present to them, as justification, the disassembled remains of one of their own.” Ahrens cold dark eyes bored into the commander who wilted slightly under their intensity. “I recommend you leave the strategic planning to people above your pay grade.” Stephens shifted uncomfortably in his chair, a sullen look on his face.

“As I was saying, we can’t intercept them before they enter the space around the galactic black hole. That’s why we’re counting on this mission to take place within D-space. No one on the outside will be able to see what happens. The aught ship will appear to be just another casualty of the hazardous region around Sag A Star.”

“But that will be the Avenger’s fate too,” murmured Holbrook, his eyes glazed and trained on the tabletop. He looked up, surprised by the sound of his own voice, his inner dialogue spoken aloud. “Sir, I understood we’d be traveling to the galactic center—not flying into D-space itself, but operating in the still dangerous area just outside of it. That was based on the orders from Admiral Miller.”

Ahrens wrinkled his nose as if offended by a smell that had suddenly entered the room. “I spoke with the admiral right before hopping into the sleeper. He told me he made his orders clear and to the point because of the gravity of what was being asked. Those orders said you would be going to the core. I don’t see how anyone can get any more clear or to the point than that.”

“I guess the captain didn’t believe it was CentCom’s custom to hand out death sentences,” said Stephens.

“It’s not,” Ahrens shot back, “but it is our custom to do whatever it takes to keep humanity safe.” He returned his attention to Holbrook. “It sounds like you opted not to take your orders at face value. Perhaps you wanted to believe they were something else. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all my years in CentCom it’s you should always assume the worst. That way you can never be disappointed.”

Holbrook sank into his chair and his head slowly drooped towards the tabletop. The world spun as the true reality of the situation came into sharp relief. They were going into D-space, not next to it. Directly to Sag A Star, exactly what he had refused to believe, exactly what Stephens had tried to tell him. A one-way mission with no way home.

The commodore’s eyes narrowed at the distraught captain slumping before him. “Thomas Holbrook the second, now he was quite an officer. Didn’t know him, of course—I was barely out of grade school when he died—but his devotion to duty speaks for itself. He was a soldier, the kind of soldier the Republic needs you to be right now.” Ahrens voice softened. “Are you a soldier, Captain Holbrook?”

Holbrook glared at Ahrens from beneath his brows. He wanted to reach out and grab the commodore’s neck.

“He is a soldier,” said Stephens. “One of the finest I’ve ever served with.”

“If you’re a soldier, like your father before you, like your XO here attests, then you know a soldier’s only job, his only job, is to carry out orders. That’s the way CentCom works. That’s the only way anything gets done. Carrying out orders doesn’t mean doing a bunch of thinking about what might come afterwards, like your grand imaginings of a hero’s welcome in your hometown and of banging all the girls who never gave you the time of day. That kind of thinking, that kind of preoccupation with something other than the task at hand, is all a distraction, and in this business distractions get you killed.

“Your orders, captain, are to stop those God damn aughts from getting even a milligram of Planck Matter. All that moping you’re doing right now, all that will disappear once you focus on those orders. Your mind will be too preoccupied with everything you need to do to see those orders through to success. How to prepare your ship, how to prepare your crew, what contingency plans might need developing. None of that kind of thinking will throw you down in the dumps. In that sense your orders are the key to your own happiness. They are the key to your salvation.”

Holbrook slowly lifted his head. Still glaring at the commodore he straightened himself in his chair. “You’re right, commodore, about why I’m upset,” he said. “It’s because I am focused on what comes after. I’m focused on the loss of my ship, the loss of my crew. The loss of my own life.”

“Irrelevant,” said Ahrens. “Your worries, fears, and concerns, all those things are irrelevant. Your orders are all that matter.”

Dr. Riesen placed a hand on Holbrook’s arm. “The researchers on the Adiona believed they found a way out of D-space,” she said. “The aughts think it’s possible too, which is why they sent a ship to bring Planck Matter back from the galactic center. It seems the odds are with us that we can get back. We just don’t know how to do it yet.”

Holbrook slowly looked towards Dr. Riesen. “We?”

“Dr. Riesen has volunteered to accompany you on this mission,” said Ahrens. “Or at least I assume that’s still the case. I hadn’t briefed her on more than the travel to and from the galactic core. Besides finding the answer she can provide her astrophysical expertise to assist you in preventing the aughts from acquiring Planck Matter.”

“Why would you sign on to a suicide mission?” Holbrook asked Dr. Riesen, his voice leaden.

Dr. Riesen squeezed the captain’s arm gently, meeting his despondence with a reassuring smile. “Because you need my help, captain.”

“You’ll also get Tentek’s help,” said the commodore. “He’ll be joining you on this mission.”

“Coming with us on the Avenger?” asked Stephens. “Never.”

“Tentek can provide invaluable insight into dealing with the aughts from The Collective,” said Ahrens.

“I doubt that very much,” said Stephens. “It certainly won’t be any insight we can trust. And when the other aughts see their long lost buddy Tentek they’re going to invite him over for drinks.”

“The aughts on the planet will not welcome me,” said Tentek. “They will know I am a traitor and will want to harm me. ”

“Pretending for a moment you’re not a double-agent, even if you’re captured you’ll have a lot to bargain with,” said Stephens. “As the first aught to travel aboard a CentCom warship in over a hundred years I bet they throw you a parade.”

Tentek remained expressionless. “Should I encounter my fellow aughts on the planet, I do not expect that reunion to go well. For this reason I have installed an electromagnetic pulse bomb in my abdominal cavity. If captured I will detonate that bomb and destroy all of my circuits. Not even my memory core will function.”

“Why wait?” asked Stephens. “I for one would like to see this so-called bomb of yours go off right now.”

“Commander!” said Holbrook.

“Sir,” said Stephens, “you don’t believe any of what this aught has told us here today, do you? It’s not feeding us secret intel from The Collective, it doesn’t have an EMP in its chest, and it’s not going to commit suicide the next time it sees its buddies.” Stephens addressed Tentek directly. “You haven’t fooled me, aught, with any of your words,” he snapped. “And as far as joining us on this mission, I can happily say the regs don’t allow you to set foot on our ship.”

“The exception’s already been approved,” said Ahrens.

Stunned, Commander Stephens struggled for a response as his mind filled with an image of the unthinkable: a Collective aught roaming the halls of his ship.

“The Joint Chiefs passed a resolution just for Tentek that overrides the general regulations against aughts on CentCom starships,” said Ahrens. “He will be accompanying you on this mission.”

“Like hell,” said Stephens under his breath.

“That’s an apt description of what your life will be like if your borderline insubordination continues,” said Ahrens.

Holbrook glared at Stephens, silently ordering his executive officer to stand down.

Stephens sulked. “I’ll talk to Lynch about rigging up a Faraday cage in the brig for our guest here,” he said.

“You just don’t get it, do you commander?” asked Ahrens. “You clearly have a burning hatred for aughts, that’s plain for everyone to see. However Tentek is on our side. An ally. And you’re to treat him with the same consideration and respect as you would any other guest aboard your ship. You will not lock him in the brig, and in fact you will allow him to move as freely about your ship as you would a normal civilian. That is an order.”

Holbrook sat frozen in his chair, sullenly contemplating the fate of his vessel and crew.

“Captain,” Ahrens said, standing abruptly, “good luck, and keep us apprised of your progress on your way to the galactic center.” The commodore thrust his hand out to Holbrook.

Captain Holbrook stared at Ahrens’s hand, regarding its wide palm and the jagged scar that cut across it. How many other men had the commodore’s handshake sent to their deaths? How many times had that angry red gash sealed the fates of entire ships and crews? Holbrook leaned awkwardly into the table from his seat and half clasped Ahrens’s hand, giving it a tepid shake.

“I will leave you to your preparations,” said Ahrens. The commodore nodded to Dr. Riesen and strode out of the room.

The world no longer spun for Holbrook but his stomach felt queasy. He mustered the strength to speak, his mouth dry. “How soon can you be ready?” he asked Dr. Riesen in a weak, gravelly voice, still staring into the tabletop.

“I’m already packed,” she said.

Already packed? Of course she was. She’d planned to accompany them all along. “We’ll wait for you at the shuttle, then.”

Tentek stood. “I too am ready to leave,” he said.

“Meet us at the shuttle as well,” said Holbrook.

Dr. Riesen exited the conference room followed by Tentek, leaving the two Avenger officers still seated. Seconds after the door closed Holbrook pressed into the tabletop to stand, his head drooping.

Stephens rose from his chair. He stared at the closed conference room door, shaking his head. “Captain,” he said, “we can’t let that thing aboard our ship.”

“We don’t have any say in the matter,” said Holbrook. “It’s been cleared at the highest levels.”

“For sure that thing’s a double agent,” said Stephens. “It’ll be feeding us misinformation and stealing secrets.”

Holbrook rubbed his chin. “Tentek, by far, is the least of our worries.”

10

“This way Dr. Riesen.”

Stephens hadn’t mustered more than those four words since leaving the research station. Was he, a former physics grad student, really that starstruck? He’d certainly never dreamed of being in the presence of The Prophet, a living legend, but that explanation only told part of the story. He’d worked up the courage to talk to the physicist several times but had been taken aback by the smile he caught on her face whenever he’d glanced her way. He could only guess at the reason for her seemingly high spirits. “First time aboard a CentCom starship?”

“No,” said Dr. Riesen, smiling even then as she looked at him. “I’ve been on several. CentCom has asked me a number of times to consult on physics-related matters.”

What else it could be? “It’s just … you seem extremely happy to be here.”

“I am.”

Stephens looked at Dr. Riesen sideways. “I mean, I’m happy to be on the Avenger too,” he said, “just not so much right now given we may not come back from where we’re going.”

Dr. Riesen didn’t respond. She had become engrossed in a list of crew announcements on a passing viewscreen.

“Tell me again why you volunteered to join this mission?” said Stephens.

“Let’s just say I love a good puzzle. They don’t come much bigger than figuring a way out of D-space.”

The journey to their potential deaths was just a big, fun puzzle for her? Stephens wanted to probe more but their destination came into view. “Here we are,” he said as they approached Sickbay.

The doors to Sickbay slid open, revealing Dr. Marsden in her white lab coat. “Here she is waiting for us,” said Stephens as they entered. “Dr. Marsden, this is Dr. Riesen, a new guest aboard our ship.”

“Nice to meet you Dr. Riesen.” Dr. Marsden extended her hand.

“Likewise,” said Dr. Riesen.

“She’s a VIP, so be sure she gets special treatment,” said Stephens.

“How much of a VIP can she be if you’re the one showing her around?” quipped Dr. Marsden. She walked Dr. Riesen over to a medical examination table. “Dr. Riesen, please hop up here.”

Dr. Riesen pivoted, pressed the backs of her thighs against the lip of the table and lifted herself in reverse onto the surface. The wide viewscreen mounted on the bulkhead above sprung to life.

“This shouldn’t take very long,” said Dr. Marsden.

“I’ve barely been aboard five minutes,” said Dr. Riesen frowning. “Why’s an examination in Sickbay my first stop?”

“Standard procedure,” said Dr. Marsden. “Anyone who comes aboard for an extended period of time gets a physical scan. A full analysis of your physical condition means there won’t be any surprises while you’re with us. Medical surprises, anyway.”

Dr. Riesen studied the readout above her head, the screen populating with vital signs. “On other ships the first thing they do is get you comfortably situated in your quarters. This process feels very regimented.”

“Well this is a military vessel,” said Dr. Marsden. “But I imagine your next stop will be getting settled into your new quarters. Please lie back.” Dr. Riesen swung her legs around and laid flat on her back. “Good,” said Dr. Marsden, tapping a side control panel. “Now relax. The table will take a couple minutes to perform the scan.”

Nodding, Dr. Riesen folded her hands over her belly and closed her eyes.

“The name Riesen sounds familiar,” said Dr. Marsden as she studied the initial results from the scan. “Isn’t there a famous woman physicist named Riesen.”

“That would be me, doctor.”

“No kidding!” said Dr. Marsden. “Winner of the Nobel-Wasserman?”

“In the flesh.”

“You truly are a VIP then,” said Dr. Marsden, “which makes it doubly-wrong for Commander Stephens to be your escort.”

Stephens feigned irritation at the remark.

“I’ve read some about you, then,” said Dr. Marsden, tapping at the table’s controls. “Tell me, what’s it like to be a female physicist?”

Dr. Riesen’s face grew dark. “You mean what it’s like being a mistake?”

Dr. Marsden looked up from the controls. “A mistake?”

“Yes, a mistake,” she said. She propped herself up on her elbows and glowered at Dr. Marsden. “That’s your real question, isn’t it? What’s it like to be a mistake?”

Stephens cut in. “I’m sure Dr. Marsden didn’t —”

“I’m sure Dr. Marsden can speak for herself,” said Dr. Marsden. “And no, that wasn’t the question going through my mind. I don’t even know what you mean about being a mistake. Physics is so male dominated I was wondering about the challenges of being a woman in that field. Being a medical doctor is not nearly as bad, though I do have a few stories of my own.”

Laying back on the table Dr. Riesen closed her eyes again. “Sorry, doctor, I just get it a lot. It’s usually the first thing people ask me once they learn who I am. It leaves me walking around on the defensive.”

The doctor checked the scan’s progress. “Can I ask what you meant by ‘mistake?’”

“I’m from a line of genetically engineered humans,” said Dr. Riesen. “The ones who came before me were also named Riesen. The intent was all of us would be men. Obviously someone screwed up in my case.”

“You mean a group of men, with hubris coming out their asses, performed a genetic procedure and it didn’t go the way they expected?” asked Dr. Marsden. “Surprise, surprise. They screwed up trying to control Nature, but somehow you turn out to be the mistake.”

“I’ve got to get going,” said Stephens. “Dr. Riesen, you’re clearly in good hands. Someone will be by to show you to your quarters. In a couple hours the captain wants us all to review the logs from the Adiona. Cygnus Conference Room, Deck B.”

“What timeframe do the logs cover?” asked Dr. Riesen.

“A two week stretch,” said Stephens. “The last entry was recorded a little more than three weeks ago, four days before we got our new orders.”

“Thank you commander,” said Dr. Riesen. “I will be there.”

Commander Stephens exited the room and climbed a nearby rungway to Deck A. He wended his way through the corridors until he found Lieutenant Singh. The security officer stood outside a closed door with Tentek at his side.

“Hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long,” said Stephens.

“Fourteen minutes, thirty-seven seconds by my internal clock,” said Tentek.

“I was talking to Lieutenant Singh,” said Stephens.

“Uh, no sir,” sputtered Singh. “I knew you’d be along eventually.”

“Is it customary for guests aboard your starship to endure such long wait times before being settled into their quarters?” asked Tentek.

“No,” said Stephens, “but neither is it customary for us to have an aught from The Collective onboard. Let’s just say it’s extraordinary times.” He signaled for Singh to unlock the cabin. The door slid aside and the three entered the spacious guest quarters.

Stephens noted the queen bed replacing the more customary bunk, a typical concession made for guests. Did aughts even sleep? “Your comm will let you into all the places on the ship you’re authorized to enter,” he said curtly. “By the captain’s orders you’re a guest aboard this ship, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any rules. The main one is you’ll check in with security three times each day.”

“Is that also customary for guests?” asked Tentek.

“Like I said, extraordinary times. I assume that won’t be a problem.”

“It will not,” said Tentek.

Stephens headed for the door. “Captain’s organized a listening party for the Adiona logs. He asked me to invite you. Cygnus Conference Room, Deck B, fourteen-thirty hours.”

“Thank you, commander.”

“Don’t thank me,” said Stephens, “thank the captain. I still think you belong in the brig.”

Tentek cocked his head. “Then it is fortunate you are not in charge.”

Stephens pursed his lips and locked onto Tentek with a blank stare. He didn’t appreciate the attitude, not from an aught, not on his ship. “Lieutenant Singh, you mind giving us a moment?”

“Yes sir, I mean no sir,” said Singh. He quickly exited the room.

Stephens took several steps towards Tentek. “You may have fooled the others, Tin Man, but not me,” he said. “I don’t believe for a moment you’re anything other than a spy for The Collective.”

“My name is Tentek, and I do not think this is the best way to start off our working together.”

“Working together?” Stephens scoffed. “You and I are not ‘working together,’ and we never will. Like I said, you’re here because the captain ordered it. If it were up to me you’d be out an airlock.” He jabbed his finger at Tentek. “Just remember this, Tin Man: the captain runs the show, but I run this ship. You’re free to move around, but that freedom can be taken away in an instant. I have my eye on you and I’m looking for an excuse, any excuse to throw your ass in a cell. You so much as break artificial wind my way and you’ll find yourself in chains.”

Tentek cocked his head again. “My name is Tentek, and I doubt Commodore Ahrens would enjoy hearing you have suggested placing me in the brig, an idle threat in any case as we both know doing so would bring about the end of your career.”

Stephens smiled. “A wise man once said, ‘You can do anything you want on your last day.’” He winked and headed for the door. “See you at fourteen-thirty hours, Tin Man,” he said over his shoulder.

The aught watched the commander exit the room and head down the corridor until the cabin door closed, dreading the voyage before it had even begun.