8 – Embedded

Political Officer Bryce Ellis winced as Nurse Turlova daubed an alcohol-soaked gauze onto the narrow cut on his scalp. He looked up at the nurse with a sheepish grin. She didn’t seem to notice, or rather, had the class not to comment.

“So... am I getting stitches?”

Turlova muffled a snicker, and discreetly set aside the gauze.

“You’re fine, Lieutenant.”

“Any chance I’ll get a citation for this? Wounded in combat?”

The nurse grinned politely.

“I suspect several officers on Thalassa would have an opinion about that.”

He stole a glance at Turlova as she turned her back to him and stepped away to her console. He wasn’t sure if it was the woman, or the uniform, but he felt waves of sex washing off of her.

As she turned around and raised an eyebrow at him, he suspected that it was the uniform.

“I’m done with you. Just keep it clean.”

He slid off of the bench, and looked around quickly for his tunic, before realizing that he had left it in the Racewind hangar.

“Thanks, uh...”

“You’re welcome,” she replied dismissively, stepping through to her private office adjacent to the treatment room.

Ellis shook his head, and took a deep breath. He was the last patient she saw... he insisted that the “real” injuries got attention before attending to his encounter with an errant socket wrench. The cut on his scalp tingled, and his hair was a little matted around the center, just beyond the patch she had cleaned.

“Hello nurse,” he muttered under his breath as he stepped out of the infirmary.

Scanning the corridor, he spotted a clutch of pilots striding past him, hoses swinging from their uniforms. He found one pilot staring back.

Staring hard.

He knew the face, and he didn’t like that he was finding that face here. He leaned against the wall, as they marched past. One of them, a tall Daganrok in the Fleet-allowed carryover uniform of the Bastrada, straightened up quickly, before releasing a short, sharp hiss. Each of the pilots jerked aside, staring at the Daganrok.

Ellis heard a familiar voice behind him.

“You’re still here?”

He turned to find Sokolov watching him, his flight suit unzipped to his navel.

“Not for long, I hope. Not going to Thalassa any time soon, I don’t suppose?”

“No.”

“Right.” He turned back to the pilots, who were descending a short flight of steps into the belowdecks, which seemed to serve as a gym. “That your wing?”

“Yes.”

“You, uh... you know these pilots pretty well, I suppose?”

Sokolov stared at Ellis with bland eyes, seeming to count the seconds before he could discreetly walk away.

“More or less.”

“More or less... that’s a non-answer.”

“Why do you ask?”

“No reason.”

“We have two cadets, and the Dag.”

Ellis blinked at the pejorative. That was a word that he would never hear on Thalassa. It was something of a taboo, a remnant of the Race Wars that lingered on human tongues when spoken privately, quietly, and usually in anger. But Ellis knew that Sokolov was a veteran. Not just a veteran... the veteran. The war hero, who stood alone in a war with only one clear victory.

“Ok,” he mumbled.

“You might find a flight from the Simcoe. They are standing down flight operations, if I understand correctly.”

“Thanks. I’ll look into that.”

Sokolov took this as his cue to leave, and plodded away from Ellis.

Ellis called after him, “Hey, Sokolov.”

The enormous Slav turned his head halfway.

“That was good flying out there. I’m glad you’re with the team.”

He nodded once, and continued after his comrades.

Ellis shook his head.

“...with the team? Fuck, I need to get off this boat.”

He managed to make it to the Officers’ quarters without making an ass of himself, and stepped through the door to an officer’s bunk. Four bunks sat across a narrow space. Each bed was tidy, with a minimum of personal paraphernalia cluttering the walls. Ellis couldn’t imagine living on a carrier. His permanent quarters on Thalassa were filled with his belongings. Paintings, books, furniture... But then, he rented the apartment by way of a stipend from the Diplomatic Corps. These guys were transitory, nomads, never actually settling down, but always in a state of transition. He imagined how it would age a man. He wondered how old Sokolov actually was. The man looked to be in his forties, easily. What if he was Ellis’ age? What would that mean, really?

Ellis sat down to a console on a plastic desk built into the little wall that wasn’t consumed with bunks. He swiped his access card through the console reader, and patched in several communiques to both the Simcoe and the Cascadian, searching for any pilot who was running an errand to Thalassa. Anyone would do.

The door to the bunk opened behind him, and an officer stepped inside, rubbing his face miserably. Ellis recognized him. Lassiter... a logistics officer from the Racewind bridge. He had interfaced with Lassiter several times in preparations for the Terranovan summit.

Summit. It was three minutes of monologue, and a hasty retreat. He was wasting his time on this ship. He had to get back.

Lassiter paused, and gave Ellis a nod.

“How’s the compiling going?” Ellis asked.

“With alacrity.”

“Must have something to go off of. I hear the captains are calling a joint meeting of the Lieutenants.”

Lassiter slung himself uncomfortably into one of the bunks.

“More than we had yesterday,” he replied, pulling a pillow over his face.

Ellis surveyed the man. He seemed to be completely spent.

“I’ll... leave you alone.”

He moved to pull his card from the console, when he spotted a communique arriving from the Simcoe. He settled down in his seat again, and opened the message. A shuttle was bringing a consultant to Earth in three hours. Perfect! He could escape this nest of career soldiers and make it to Earth. From there, he could find public transit to Vienna, and then it was a matter of taking the next supply flight back to Thalassa from there, and he’d be home. Ellis rattled off a few messages back and forth with the flight lieutenant of the Simcoe to secure his passage, made mental notes of the schedules from Earth to the Corridor, and quietly searched for a clean tunic from the lockers in the bunk. Whosever tunic he was requisitioning would surely forgive him in the afterlife.

Ellis marched from the Officers’ quarters back down the hallway, down the last stairs into the hangar, and trotted past hustling Grolls and humans towards the mechanics’ pit where he left his uniform. He knelt gingerly on a clean rag, snatching his tunic from the top of a job box, and pulled himself upright, removing his insignia and decorations from the soiled garment.

He looked up and spotted Dershaun, still winding his hand in the air, directing the traffic through the hangar. He watched the man for a few seconds, admiring his sense of order in chaos. Only a few more hours, and he would be leaving this world of nuts and bolts, missiles and bullets, carriers and fighters... for his own world. The world of words and policy. If only the mechanics of diplomacy were as precisely machined as the tools in this hangar. He could choose exactly the right words, at exactly the right time, and get the exact correct perfect results. Every time. It was a fantasy. But in political reality, the same perfect success on Monday could become your catastrophe on Thursday, and by Sunday you’d either be looking at a promotion or another job.

Ellis transferred his insignia to the stolen tunic, and tossed his old one back onto the job box. He trotted back out of the hangar and through the ship to the bridge. He would have to make a quick statement to the Captain... it was appropriate, and he simply couldn’t leave the ship without his approval.

He stepped up onto the bridge of the Racewind, the enormous tactical display projected into the air above the front of the expanse, alive with symbols representing security teams sweeping the Jovian moons. Arkel was poised directly below it, staring at the display with intensity. Ellis stepped up past the bridge officers, and squared himself beside Arkel.

“Captain,” he chirped with a salute.

Arkel lazily returned his salute without making eye contact.

“What is it, Ellis?”

“Requesting permission to disembark, sir.”

Arkel turned to him, and lifted a brow.

“You’re leaving us, then?”

“Found a flight outbound from the Simcoe. I’ll be leaving in two and a half hours for Earth.”

Arkel smirked.

“Fine. Don’t breathe too deeply. You’ll wake up with a black lung.”

“Aye, sir.”

Arkel watched as Ellis saluted again. He turned to Ellis, and squinted slightly.

“I’ll... uh, I’ll walk you out.”

The Captain tapped the shoulder of a nearby lieutenant, and stepped down the center plank between the pits alongside Ellis.

“This probably seems to be such a waste of your time. I do apologize about that.”

Ellis ruminated on his words for a moment, then responded, “I’ll be sure to pass your sentiments along to Colonel Delancy.”

“How is he these days?”

“Fine, sir. We just pushed through the Fleet Integration Act. That consumed, like, an entire year for us.”

“Yes, I know. We’ve just recently brought aboard several new members...”

“Prazzik, for example.”

Arkel nodded curtly.

“How are you and the Lieutenant Commander working, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Arkel ushered Ellis in front of him as they descended the steps down from the bridge.

“He’s a remarkable officer, knowledgeable, and I’d trust him with command of any ship.”

Ellis smiled at Arkel’s glowing response.

“That’s... a mouthful.”

“Just shooting straight, Lieutenant.”

Ellis nodded reluctantly.

“Oh... uh, where do you think I’d find the flight lieutenant? I should get in touch with her before I leave.”

Arkel stiffened very slightly, but enough for Ellis to catch it.

“I would try the simulators, or the bullpen. Hard at work, I imagine.”

Ellis nodded, and turned to take his leave as Arkel lingered at the base of the stairs. As he took a couple steps, he froze.

The face.

He finally placed it.

Ellis turned slowly to Arkel, who was starting back up the steps.

“Captain?”

Arkel turned back to Ellis, his face heavy with restraint.

“Yes?”

“You know you have a security issue.”

Arkel did not respond.

“You know it. I know you know it.” Ellis stepped closer to Arkel to lower his voice. “These insurgents... they don’t run twenty ships into the Jovian system underneath the Cascadian’s nose. They don’t run ships into Terranova under your nose.”

Arkel held up a hand.

“We’re looking into it.”

“Right. Because, with the kind of residual racial acrimony I’ve seen even just on this ship...”

“...we’ve fully embraced the Forced... Fleet Integration Act.”

Ellis held up a finger.

“Like that.” He stared at Arkel. “Captain. Sir. You have to accept the distinct possibility that you have a breach.”

Arkel looked down for a quick second, and took in a breath.

Ellis pressed on, “You have some of the best and brightest on this carrier. I’m sure they’re putting one hundred percent into this counter-insurgency.”

“You’re damn straight, they are!”

Ellis watched Arkel as his disposition darkened.

“Ok. I wish you luck.”

He turned to walk away, when Arkel took a step down behind him.

“Still,” the Captain murmured, “maybe it would be a good idea to get counter-intelligence on this.”

Ellis stopped, and his shoulders dropped a little.

“That’s my point, Captain.”

“What is?”

Ellis turned to Arkel with a stiff jaw.

“They’re already here.”

A flash of panic crossed Arkel’s eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“When you live on Thalassa, you get to meet people. Rub enough elbows at enough inter-departmental functions, and you even get to know people. You remember faces. People you just run across casually on Thalassa... and then you see them in the field.”

“You saw an agent on this ship?”

“Yes.”

Arkel leaned into Ellis’ ear.

“I want you to tell me who it is... right now.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I am not fucking around, Lieutenant...”

Ellis stepped away from Arkel.

“Please. There’s no way in hell. I’m giving you the heads up, and that’s just a courtesy.”

“That’s crap.”

“No, it really isn’t. If I tell you who the agent is, then you get in the way, and I make their job harder than it has to be... not to mention I’m going back to D.C. and I’m not going to put my career into a sling over this.”

Arkel’s face was turning red.

“Captain, remember... these guys are here to help you. If...” Ellis stepped in to whisper. “If you have a breach, then these guys are the ones best equipped to find it. Not you. Don’t worry about it. Don’t make it harder for C.I. to get the job done. This isn’t bad news. Alright?”

Arkel seemed somewhat pacified, until Ellis added, “It’s just a bad time to have secrets on this boat.”

Ellis saluted one last time, but Arkel turned and hopped up the steps back to the bridge. He watched the tall man as he ascended, and disappeared from view.

He took a deep breath, and hustled down to the simulators.

---

Feyenne finished the last of his whiskey, and set his glass down clumsily onto a thick manual.

Jock threw a rolled up sock at him.

“Don’t leave rings on that!”

Feyenne very carefully transferred the highball glass from the manual onto the little patch of cleared space left on the table in Jock’s cabin, before pulling the manual down onto his lap.

“What is this?”

“Put it back.”

He opened the binder, and flipped through a few pages.

“Officer Training Course... fuck me blind... you’re serious?”

Jock rolled her eyes, and sipped some whiskey from her own glass as she pulled herself up on her headboard.

“Would you put it back?”

“This thing is huge. Fuck.”

“Put it back.”

“You’re taking the Officer’s Exam?”

“Eventually.”

“Eventually?”

“Yes. Eventually.”

“The fuck does eventually mean?” Feyenne shook his head. “So, that’s why you want Arkel off this boat? You’re gunning for XO?”

Jock sneered.

“If I wanted XO, it wouldn’t be here.”

“Why not?”

She lazily rolled her fingers around in the air in front of her, her eyes drooping with the effects of alcohol.

“Too boring.”

“You’re pissed to the gills, you know that?”

“Fuck you.”

Feyenne snickered as he dropped the manual back onto the table, rattling the glass with it.

“Well thank you so very damn much for this,” he snorted as he pointed to the Wing Leader bars over his airman insignia. “I needed this like I needed another asshole.”

“I can’t babysit you people anymore, Punch.”

He waved his finger at the manual.

“Is... is this why you booted old Chuck to the curb?”

She rolled her eyes.

“Come on.”

“Seriously.”

She sighed, and threw back the last of her whiskey.

“There were plenty of reasons.”

“He was holding you back. So were ‘us people’. So... you made sure we were all put back into our boxes. Right? Just wondering if I have this square in my head.”

She threw him a finger.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he replied with a chuckle.

“Don’t make it sound like I’m...”

“...human?”

“No.”

“It makes me feel better. I feel like... you’re just as fucked up as the rest of us. So, seriously, it’s not a thing.”

Jock set her highball down onto her nightstand, and fished a cigar from beneath her mattress. Feyenne spotted the cigar, and countered with one of his own, sliding it from a pocket inside his tunic.

“Look, Punch.”

“Yeah?”

“This is the last... bardenay... for a while.”

Feyenne searched his pockets for his lighter.

“The hell is a bardenay?”

“This,” she responded, waving around her cabin. “We can’t do this anymore.”

“Because I’m Wing Leader?”

“Because I have a lot to do now. And yes. Because I can’t have one Wing Leader in here and not the others.”

Feyenne rolled his eyes.

“Whatever.”

“And don’t go smoking in the Lariat, either.”

“Well, where do you propose...”

“Find a way. Just don’t make this my problem, alright? Can you do that? Do you think that at least one of you people can stop being my problem, just for once?”

Feyenne watched as she tossed clothing off of her bunk, and finally finding her lighter in the pocket of a uniform. She lit up her cigar, and tossed the lighter to Feyenne.

As he lit his cigar, he lifted his eyes through the thin white smoke at Jock. She sucked on her cigar with gusto, lounging against her headboard in her bra and the pants of her deck uniform. Her hair lay loose against her neck, sliding down with chestnut tones and red highlights. Her eyes were heavy, low-lidded with intoxication. She released a long, languid exhale, blowing sweet tobacco smoke into the air in a graceful line.

“Ever think... maybe we’re not your problem,” Feyenne asked with a clear voice as he exhaled.

Smoke lifted between the two, rising to the ceiling.

“Who’s the problem, then?”

“I’m not saying there is a problem.”

“Oh, there’s a problem.”

“With Chuck?”

“What?”

“Lassiter. What was your problem with Chuck?”

“I wasn’t talking about Charles.”

“You’re my problem.”

“He wasn’t my problem.”

“The problem, I mean.”

“Wait, what?”

“You’re the problem, Mel.”

Jock blinked rapidly as she leaned forward.

“What did you just say?”

A thunk in the ceiling made them both jump. Red lights flickered, and a high-pitched siren released a series of chirps.

Feyenne managed to get to his feet before three plumes of white vapor rushed down into the room from the ceiling. He reached out and gripped Jock’s arms as they flailed from her bed. He jerked her off of her bed, and the two stumbled into the hatch to her cabin. He smacked the pad, and the hatch released... not opening as it typically did, but dropping down, free of its actuator arms, with Feyenne and Jock falling down on top of it.

Feyenne managed to exhale before he hit the ground, and the thud simply bounced his ribcage slightly. He felt Jock’s body dropping down on top of his, her arms shoving his away.

“Fuck! What... the...”

Feyenne blinked rapidly, his eyes stinging from the chemicals floating out of the cabin. He squinted up at the lit cigar in his fingers, then down at Jock, who was pulling herself up to her feet from on top of him. She set her shoulders, staring into her cabin, which was filling with powder from the fire mitigation system.

Several airmen were gathering around them, some chuckling, some staring with wide eyes.

Feyenne pulled himself up to his feet, and took one last long drag on his cigar before tossing it into the plumes of white powder inside Jock’s cabin.

Jock stood trembling.

“That son of a bitch,” she growled, turning around, ready to storm off and out of the barracks. She paused, and grabbed a nearby airman, jerking his jacket off of him through his protests.

Feyenne simply watched as she disappeared up the steps towards the main ship corridor.

One of the First Wing pilots stepped up to Feyenne as the white powder finally stopped belching from the ceiling inside the cabin.

“Man,” the pilot stuttered, “w...what happened?”

He exhaled the smoke into the pilot’s face, and replied as he choked on it, “I almost fucked up. Is what happened. Yeah. Almost fucked up.”

Feyenne steadied himself, and tried his best to walk away in a straight line.

---

“You hear that?”

“What?”

“Sounded like a fire alarm.”

“If it was a fire alarm, we’d be covered in white dust, ass. Now give me five more.”

A-Bomb stared down at Mule, who was bench pressing easily ten pounds less than he ought to. She watched him with resentment. He was the embodiment of laziness. The consummate underachiever. She had been spotting him for the better part of a year, and she knew he was stronger than this. He wasn’t pushing. Wasn’t really trying. She wondered why he even bothered coming to the gym outside of the mandatory weight training requirements set down by Fleet.

“Twenty!” he grunted.

“That’s eighteen.”

“Nineteen... twenty.”

He set the bar down on its cradle, and hopped up from the machine, waving Blondie in.

A-Bomb watched as Blondie slid onto the bench. He looked up at her and winked. She rolled her eyes. The man was a walking testicle.

“Alright, Mule. I’m going thirty on your ass.”

“Wouldn’t be hard,” A-Bomb retorted.

Mule lifted his hands, and set down on an exercise bike nearby... just sitting, not actually pedaling.

As Blondie began to snap the bar with speed and ease, A-Bomb looked up to spot Junior entering the gym.

“Junior!” Mule bellowed. “Didn’t know you lifted.”

“I don’t,” he muttered miserably. “I’m behind on hours.”

A-Bomb shook her head in disdain.

Mule asked, “Where’s Rock Star? I wanted to see how much she could press.”

“She’s in the infirmary,” A-Bomb replied.

“I heard her sneezing,” Junior added. “She ok?”

“Is that what that was?” asked Blondie, as he snapped his twentieth press. “Fuck. Thought she was going to bite my arm off.”

“She should have,” A-Bomb mumbled as she smirked down at him.

“I can’t catch the flu,” said Mule. “Not now. I’m gambling we’re getting some R&R after this action.”

“What makes you think that?” A-Bomb barked.

“Well, we’re right here, ain’t we? Europa’s just ten minutes on the other side of Jupiter.”

Junior found his way to a machine on the far end of the gym, and replied, “We’re in Threat Level Two. You really think you’re going to hit the beach right now?”

“Maybe.”

A-Bomb shook her head.

“Not until we line these motherfuckers up on the block.”

“Ok, so... we do that. Then we hit Europa?”

Blondie cleared thirty, and sat up, barely breaking a sweat.

“I’m in. I love Europa.”

Mule reached out with a hand, and slapped Blondie’s as he stepped around to spot A-Bomb.

She walked around, and lay down on the bench, testing the weight. It was light. Too light for her taste. This wasn’t going to be a workout. But she learned a while back that it was a bad idea to add weight to a bar that she was sharing with men. They invariably left the weight on, and either wore themselves out, injured themselves, or made such an agony over it that she wished she had listened to her father and decided to go to Brasilia University rather than enlist.

Junior called out from across the gym, “So... guys. What do you think about our new Wing Leader?”

A-Bomb paused, and looked over in his direction.

Mule shrugged from his bike.

“Works for me. The man ain’t going to bust our balls over stupid shit, like Jock did.”

A-Bomb tossed the bar up into the air, let it hang a little before letting it drop again.

“He’s an ass.”

“Yeah,” Junior replied. “But does that make him a bad Wing Leader?”

“What do you know, Junior?” she spat. “You don’t know him. You haven’t flown with him.”

Mule snickered.

“Don’t listen to her, Junior. She’s just continually pissed at everyone. Especially Punch.”

“Why?”

“Ask her how she got her call sign.”

A-Bomb cradled the barbell, and sat up, shooting Mule a withering stare, which seemed to go unnoticed by the smug ass.

Blondie stepped between them.

“Ok, if Junior won’t ask, I will.”

Mule put a hand on his shoulder.

“See, when Connie first arrived here...”

“Connie?”

She squinted at Blondie.

“Consuela.”

“Anyway,” Mule continued, “when she transferred in from the Tettnanger, she made this huge stink about how they had segregated bunks over there, and she had to share a bunk with men here.”

“It’s stupid,” she grunted, as she reached for a towel.

“So... Punch takes her on, makes this speech about how men and women should coexist in Fleet. She gives him lip. You met her, right? It’s what she does. So that night, Punch decides to give her a hand unpacking...”

A-Bomb threw her towel back onto the bench.

“You going to press, or what?” she spat at Mule.

He held up a hand, and returned to the bench, continuing his story.

“Punch unpacks all her shit, right? He folds it nice and neat, regulation. Man’s a nutjob for uniforms. I think it’s, like, a fetish or something. So he gets to her... you know.”

“What?” Blondie asked, beaming at A-Bomb.

“You know. Unmentionables. He pays extra attention to this part. Takes notes. And come the evening after her Flight Eval, she’s already got a call sign.”

Blondie blinked at Mule.

“I don’t get it. A-Bomb?”

Junior called out from his machine, “It’s her bra size, moron.”

A-Bomb reached over, and jerked the bar from Mule’s hand.

“Thanks for sharing.”

She dropped it back into his hands. It slipped slightly, and Mule screwed his face into a wince as he braced for it to land just below his neck.

Junior asked, “Why didn’t she make Caveman wing leader? Isn’t he... the man?”

Mule and A-Bomb rolled their eyes.

She strode over to Junior, and stretched her arms.

“Junior, Cave’s not going to do anything but fly. It’s what he’s made to do. It’s his calling.”

He stared at her blankly.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Worlds, Junior. It has worlds to do with everything.”

---

Jock stormed into the officer’s quarters, smacked the panel to Lassiter’s cabin, and marched in. She kicked the foot of his bunk, and woke him up. He groaned as he rolled off of his bunk, tossing his pillow aside.

“What?”

“Cute, Charles.”

“What is?”

“Fucking fire system.”

He sat, rubbing his face.

“What about it?”

“I really, really didn’t expect this grade school bullshit from you.”

He squinted up at Jock, shaking his head.

“I assume it went off on you?”

She put her hands on her hips.

The officer in the bunk above Lassiter twisted and groaned, “Keep it down.”

Jock smacked his feet.

“Shut up!” She returned her stare to Lassiter. “Did you actually go out of your way to embarrass me, or is this just a convenient oversight?”

“I didn’t have a choice, Mel. We were uploading all of the operating system defaults to the Cascadian. I had to reset the vital systems to factory.”

She turned in a circle, staring at the floor.

“Thanks for the heads up, there. Real kind of you...”

“Stop it. Please.”

“Is this how you want to play this?”

“Hey, I’m not the one who kicked me out.”

“Don’t turn this around on me, Charles.”

He stood up and brushed past her.

“I’m not turning anything. I was catching some bunk time, and you came storming in on me.”

“Ok.” She lifted her hands. “Fine. I get it.”

He paused and took her in.

“You’re drunk, Mel.”

“I’m not.”

“Fine.”

“I’m not drunk.”

“Were you drinking with Feyenne? Lit up a cigar?”

“So?”

“I told you it was a bad idea.”

“No thanks to you.”

“Stop it! God damn it, you’re not thinking clearly.” He pulled off his shirt and pulled a fresh tunic from his locker. “You did it. You made him Wing Leader. Good. You needed that. Now, get yourself in the right place.”

“What’s the right place? Educate me.”

“Would you just keep the man at arm’s length? Jesus, Mel, he’s a pilot. An arrogant, insubordinate pilot with marks on his record, and you’re breaking Uniform Code with the man in your own cabin.”

She sneered.

“So, you’re going to preach about breaking Code when you’re the one who rewrote the security system to let me do it?”

“Yes!” he shouted, slamming a hand on the locker. “And that was a mistake. A big mistake that could have ended up a demerit on my record. And that’s been undone now, because I’m getting my thinking clear.” He turned to Jock and started to button up his tunic. “You should, too.”

Jock shook her head at Lassiter, and turned to walk out.

“I don’t... need this, Charles.” She paused at the door. “Is this it? Any more surprises I should be bracing for?”

He pulled boots on.

“Not from me, but you really should consider the company you’re keeping.”

“I do.”

“Fine. Now, excuse me, I have a debrief.”

She lingered at the doorway, pushing the pad to open the hatch.

“I didn’t get the notice.”

“It’s... tactical. Logistics. We’re meeting on the Cascadian.”

“Still...”

“The XO is flying me over.”

She looked out of the bunk into the corridor, and nodded.

“Ok, then. Am I getting a report when you’re done?”

“I’ll hand it to you myself.”

She nodded.

“Ok.”

With a sniffle, she stepped out of the bunk. As she steeled herself to continue, she spotted a man in dress whites approaching her. She thought about running for a second, but figured she wouldn’t make it very far before possibly colliding into a wall.

The officer stood in front of her, and did not salute. She checked his insignia. Lieutenant. And by his demeanor, he was career. Probably one of the officers from the other ships.

“Lieutenant Delancy?”

She straightened up, and cleared her throat.

“Yes?”

His eyes wandered down around her face.

“What happened?”

“What?” She put a hand up to her face, and pulled it back, smeared with white dust. “Oh. Nothing.”

“Ok...”

The two stared at one another uncomfortably.

“How can I help you?” she finally asked.

“I suppose you don’t recognize me.”

“I don’t suppose I do.”

“Bryce Ellis?” He paused, and she continued to stare. “We met last year at the installation ceremony of the Mt. Hood. I, uh... I work with your father?”

She squinted, and put a hand to the side of her face.

“Right. Hi.”

“I’m on my way back to Thalassa. I’d be happy to take any messages you might have...”

“Yeah. I’m good.”

He blinked a couple times, then nodded.

“Ok. Have a good one.”

She watched as he turned on a heel and stepped away.

She shouted to him, “Tell him... tell him I’m taking the exam.”

Ellis looked over his shoulder, and nodded.

“Good luck!”

“Thanks,” she replied, stretching her neck, and feeling the first signs of a hangover settling into her brain.

---

Lassiter watched the Cascadian as it pulled into view from the Strexar panes of the shuttle cockpit. Lieutenant Commander Prazzik adjusted their approach, and typed a landing code into the nav computer. As Lassiter fished through a binder on his lap, he heard Prazzik suck in a long, whistling breath. The enormous lizard released a sharp chirping noise, and wiped his snout with a length of cloth tucked into his regalia.

“Bless you,” Lassiter said.

“What did you say?”

“Bless you. It’s... a thing we say. When we sneeze.”

“I see.” Prazzik continued to pilot for a moment before adding, “It was a cough.”

“Oh.”

“What do you say to a cough?”

“Uh... I guess you say ‘Excuse you.’”

Prazzik turned an eye to Lassiter.

“You bestow blessing upon one who sneezes, but chastise one who coughs?”

“I haven’t really thought about it like that.”

“You have a chaotic language.”

“That’s why I prefer to talk to computers. Math never lies.”

Prazzik blinked at Lassiter a couple times, then continued to fly the ship into the Cascadian hangar.

They disembarked, and were escorted into the command bridge, Captain Bosco greeting them and several other guest officers as they stepped onto the bridge. Prazzik made a grand bow to Bosco before continuing on to the map room. Lassiter followed Prazzik, and immediately began distributing binders to the others already seated. He recognized a couple of the logistics officers from the other ships, who had been communicating with him during the last twenty hours.

In a few minutes, the last of the guests arrived, and Bosco closed the door to the map room. His XO, Nicolas Czerny, greeted the room tersely.

“Welcome, everyone. So, we’re still waiting for the Tettnanger to arrive. We’re all pulling extra duty, here. Thank you all for your efforts. Now, I understand we have the data from the salvaged wreckage to go over. So, I’m just going to give this meeting over to Lieutenant Commander Prazzik.”

Prazzik stood up and nodded with grace.

“Lieutenant,” he said as he gestured to Lassiter.

Lassiter stood up, and engaged the hologram in the center of the table, dimming the lights in the room. A tactical display of Fifth Wing’s encounter with the insurgents flickered to life in the center of the room.

“At eighteen-twenty-one yesterday, Flight Lieutenant Delancy and Airman Kaza Dorada engaged six insurgent craft approximately twenty-thousand clicks from the periphery of the Main Belt, at one hundred and six degrees of the elliptic. Upon acquiring target, they met zero resistance, at which point Delancy concluded that they were decoys. Now, shortly after attempting to break their attack, the forward sensors and war computers aboard the Simcoe and the Racewind experienced an ambient RF spike that scrambled our tactical displays, and temporarily broke our communications with the First and Fifth Wings, which had already launched.”

He triggered the hologram, which flickered to a display of the three carriers.

“The Cascadian, however, was in the middle of a main trunkline repair, and their war computer was routed to a temporary generator. They managed to capture this...”

He triggered his remote again, and twenty red-lit marks appeared on the display.

“Twenty bogeys total. Out of nowhere. Delancy and Dorada engaged with a degree of success. Both pilots claim that their on-board communications were similarly jammed during the dogfight. Here... Lariats Two and Three, piloted by Airmen Sokolov and Feyenne, made best speed and joined the fight.”

Czerny lifted a hand.

“Were their ships not crippled by this RF spike?”

“It seems... they had acquired a visual, and engaged without war computers.”

A murmur rippled through the map room.

Czerny lifted a brow.

Lassiter continued, “They, and Dorada, proceeded to basically eradicate the bogeys piecemeal, before we managed to reboot the auxiliaries aboard the Racewind. By then, it was over. Now,” he sighed, triggering the hologram into a list of technical readouts, “we salvaged wreckage from the site, and the deck crews aboard the Simcoe have spent the last ten hours poring over them piece by piece.”

“Who are they?” asked Captain Bosco.

“Well, we still don’t know.”

“Bodies?”

“None. These craft were drones.”

Another murmur swept through the chairs.

“And that’s not all. We’ve found molecular stamps on most of the drive machinery. They’re using Fleet material.”

Czerny stepped forward to squint into the hologram.

“These aren’t Fleet craft. They’re using... what? Parts?”

“In a way, yes. We found these mechanisms...”

Lassiter triggered a close-up of six separate pieces of wreckage. They were striped with bright, silvery metallic edges, rippling with light.

“The hell is that?” muttered Czerny.

“Nano-mechanic residue.”

Some of the officers pushed back from the table, conferring with one another.

Prazzik closed his eyes for a long moment, before looking over to Lassiter.

With a low rumble, he growled, “Nano-mechanics?”

“Yes,” Lassiter replied gravely. “These craft were assembled in situ. We don’t have an intact specimen leftover... it’s our best guess, the nano-mechs are built with a terminal date. We can’t tell if the nano-mechs were in place before the engagement, or if they were fired into place... but they assembled viable attack craft in a matter of minutes.”

“Assembled from what?” Bosco asked.

“The debris field. An old field, leftover from a carrier trash drop. This technology is insidious. One culture of these nano-mechs can be deployed into any appropriate debris field...”

Prazzik interrupted, “Like the one around Terranova?”

“Right. The more intact the debris, the faster these little monsters can piece together a drone.”

Bosco turned his back to the display.

Czerny shook his head, and muttered, “Nano-mechs have been outlawed on Earth for better than sixty years.”

Prazzik added, “This manner of technology has been illegal in Daganrok space for over three hundred years. This... is significant.”

Lassiter took his seat.

“Now, these drones are obviously not equipped to survive an active engagement with our pilots. But they are the perfect blind-hit weapon. And they require some manner of control. That’s where the RF spike comes in. It’s my opinion... and there’s some disagreement here... that the spike is the actuation signal, as well as a command upload.”

Prazzik asked, “This means, someone is activating these clockwork killers?”

“Which makes this an act of war,” added Czerny.