Putting on her best dress uniform, Tessa took the time to check every fold and nuance, to make sure every gilded edge and point fit to the letter of protocol. Looking at herself in the mirror, the eyes that stared back were those of a younger Tessa, a Tessa that had put on her best dress uniform in preparation for meeting Captain Hilleboe and formalizing her transfer to the Von. It was a Tessa that still missed Izzy, but at that time, things had been different– she’d known that even if they didn’t end up on the same ship, they would meet again someday.

Maybe as Captains! Izzy had said. Or maybe Admirals!

Tessa closed her eyes against the thought, hands faltering at her cuffs as she finished sullenly. This time, it’s different. She pulled firmly at the edges of her uniform. This time, the only way I’m going to see Izzy again is if I end up in a body bag.

Turning, refusing to let the thought linger and fester, she crossed the room, walked past several crates of belongings she’d set aside and labeled to be shipped back to Izzy’s family. Virek had made all the necessary arrangements for Tessa’s transfer, told her that someone would be by to pick up Izzy’s things while the Von was in dock, that she shouldn’t worry about it. Reluctantly wrapping hands around the handles of the pair of duffle bags that held everything she owned, everything she didn’t want to leave behind, Tessa pulled in a deep breath, turned and gave the room one last look, one last level gaze.

This is it. She closed her eyes, exhaled shakily. When her eyes opened again, they opened with the moistness of new tears, and it was all she could do to turn away again and cross out of the room, out of the life she’d shared with Izzy, the life that had become dark, hollow and empty without her.

The hallways and corridors leading to the central docking lock were alive with activity as repair teams from both the ship and the station mingled together like the body of a single crew. Surrounded by bustling men and women in yellow jumpsuits, she skirted the busy central corridors for the narrower, less used passages that picked their way along the outer edge of the habitable sections of the ship. Picking up speed as the repair crews thinned, disseminated themselves through the Von like a dose of medical nanites injected into injured tissue, she passed only a handful of workers, most running, carrying tools and resources to distant destinations. Despite the bustle, the running and shifting through narrow corridors choked with people, most of the repair work was being done EVA by machines and greasemonkeys in suits, but there were still plenty of systems on the inside that needed pinpoint repair work or replacement, systems too damaged or remote from primary systems to repair themselves.

Nearing the lock, foot traffic slowed again, and Tessa was forced to maneuver past a lieutenant engrossed in his note ‘puter and cup of coffee as she slid carefully between a stack of nanoweave plates and the back of a technician with a plasma torch. A grav cart loaded down with a pair of ten foot long primary nutrition cartridges labeled for the Lower Mess thundered past, and then she saw it– saw her.

At the open mouth of the airlock, amid the endless flow of resources and the technicians who would put them to work, a single figure stood out like a rock against the tide, as golden and bright as if she had been fashioned purely of light and sun. Tessa blinked, swallowed, pushed forward, spoke as the sea of bodies parted for her, moved like water around them.

“Phoebe.” Tessa said quietly. No other words would come, nothing seemed appropriate. Phoebe’s eyes dropped to the deck, moved sadly, uncertain, afraid, and for a moment, Tessa felt the urge to scoop her up like a child and hug her, mess up her hair and show her that everything would be okay, that there was nothing to worry about.

Phoebe’s foot moved idly, uncertain, eyes never leaving the floor. “You... look good, LC.” She breathed.

“Thanks.” Tessa managed. There were no other words. All the farewells that cycled through her mind felt empty, hollow.

“I... didn’t come to say goodbye.” Phoebe glanced up, met Tessa’s eyes evenly, her gaze betraying only the slightest quiver. Tessa blinked, gave her a questioning look.

“I came...” Phoebe began, then looked away suddenly, unable to meet Tessa’s gaze as the fear built in her voice, the pain and tears in her eyes. Swallowing, half-gasping, she looked up again, forced herself to look her LC in the eyes. “I came to ask you to stay.”

“I...” Tessa faltered. Now, it was her turn to break the stare, to look away and try to forge ahead, try to continue. She swallowed, closed her eyes. “I can’t, Phoebe.” She looked up again, and this time there were tears in her eyes, tears that came with thoughts of all she’d lost, all that she was about to leave behind. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t...” Phoebe tried, but even as she began to take a step forward, she hesitated, stopped, unable to move, unable to close the distance between them. Tessa’s hands tightened against the handles of her duffle bags in response.

“It’s okay.” Tessa tried. “It’ll be okay.” She forced herself to look up, forced herself to meet Phoebe’s gaze. “I’m going to miss you, but you’ll be okay without me.”

“No.” Phoebe shook her head slowly. Tessa closed her eyes again, pulled in a deep, steadying breath.

“Just, try not to think about it too much, okay?” She offered, opened her eyes, managed a smile that came weak, broken. “Watch, you’ll be so busy, you’ll hardly think about me.” She breathed a tired sigh, hesitated, offered another smile. “Pheebs, you’re in line for a promotion now. You’ll be the new LC of Minerva squadron when they bring in the next group of recruits. That’s at least–”

“I don’t want Minerva squadron!” Phoebe cried out suddenly, and even as the foot traffic around them slowed, she darted forward, closed the distance between herself and the other woman, reached for her. Before Tessa could react, their lips met, and in the shock of the instant, she dropped her bags, hands hesitating, fingers flexing tensely. Losing herself in the sudden rush of emotion, Tessa closed her eyes, kissed back, kissed hard and desperately, hands going reflexively to Phoebe’s side, her back.. The taste was rough, laced with the salt of tears but familiar and sweet, a taste that brought back memories of Izzy, memories that Tessa had been all too ready to forget.

When the kiss finally ended, it felt too sudden, too soon. Phoebe pulled away almost on impulse, slipped out of Tessa’s arms and looked away again, hands knitting nervously in front of her.

“I’m sorry.” She breathed, voice coming broken, shaky. The next words came whispered, frightened and tinged with tears. “I had to...” She looked up, met Tessa’s eyes again in the pause. “I had to let you know how I feel, before...” She swallowed. “Before you go.”

Tessa smiled, the soft edges of the gentle curve coming naturally, fully. For the first time in days, she felt whole again, human. Like the first rays of dawn, Phoebe’s inner strength, the heat, the passion of her kiss had awakened something within Tessa, left her with a little piece of light that, even while it faded, filled the hole in her heart. For a moment, her smile broke to a grin– in the space of a kiss, she had found solace; she had tasted the sun.

“I won’t forget you, Phoebe.” Tessa reached out and traced Phoebe’s chin with one index finger, gently lifted it and kissed her again, softer this time, sweeter. When they broke apart again, Phoebe’s face was wet with tears, broken to ivory with the cracked edge of a smile. Tessa grinned, then hugged her suddenly, squeezing all of her love into the younger woman in their final farewell. “You’ll make a great LC.” She managed. “Better even than me, I’ll bet.”

Impossible. Phoebe thought, but the word wouldn’t come, wouldn’t pass her lips. Squeezing her eyes against the endless stream of tears, she simply nodded, hugged back, sucked in a quick, desperate breath of air. “I’m gonna miss you, LC.”

“I know.” Tessa said simply, still smiling, even as they parted again and hands found the straps of abandoned dufflebags. “I’m... gonna miss you too.”

And then she was gone, lost in the crowd as she stepped through the lock and into the station. Turning, Phoebe tried to spot her, to see her, but it was too late. Tessa had already become a part of the background, a fading specter, a breath of mist that had passed and was now gone forever. Phoebe bit her lip, fought the urge to cry again.

Goodbye, LC. Came the sad, reluctant thought. I hope you find what you’re looking for.

At the far end of a gantry deep within the station and far from the Von, an older woman, a silver-haired Admiral whose skin ran a deeper ebony even than the uniform she wore, the uniform from which the Sigel rune of Ultima Thila glinted, reached out and wrapped gnarled hands around the railing in front of her. A grin played at her face, ate at an expression that was lost somewhere between excitement and anxiety.

“Oh, she will, little one.” She said solidly, voice like the thunderous tones of a wild and untamable storm. “She will.”

“But it won’t be what she expects.”

The next few days passed in a slow, abrasive blur that left Tessa tired, ready for something other than rest and routine. As time passed, she put off scheduling the meeting with Doctor Altaker that Virek had requested until at last the Doctor himself tracked her down during a session of tennis she was playing against herself and picked up the racket for the opposing team. Using the medium of the sport as a means to loosen her up for looking at the things that were really bothering her, he gave her a run for her money on more fronts than just the physical, and in the end, she left refreshed, more in control of the emotions that broiled and simmered within her like an ominous front of heavy clouds. She was grateful the Doctor had taken the time and the initiative to catch her in the middle of a workout instead of waiting for her to set aside time for the meeting she might never have scheduled otherwise, but when he extended the offer to take the conversation further, to discuss Izzy and her transfer over dinner, Tessa politely declined and retired to her room. It wasn’t him, wasn’t his advances– it was the simple fact that thinking about Izzy killed her appetite outright, curdled any desire she might have for anything other than brooding in the dark, losing herself in thought in the back of the shower.

As the Von der Tann plowed on through the heavens, she saw Phoebe several more times, mostly in passing. Succumbing to the young Lieutenant’s bright insistence over a console message, she’d agreed to another drink and a bite to eat after a training session, but the whole thing fell through when she’d gone to the gym and found Phoebe in Izzy’s old place at the punching bag, making the best of it despite her lack of practice and weaker frame. The young lieutenant had tried to get her to stay, to get her to talk about what was bothering her, what had suddenly lodged itself in her soul like an immovable spire of bladed ice, but the motions she made were too much like Izzy, reminded Tessa too much of the way Izzy might have reached out in an attempt to comfort her. Tessa closed her eyes, apologized, and agreed to meet Phoebe again later, to share a drink with her in the Lower Mess and discuss tech specs on a series of new Seindrive modifications that weren’t due to be installed for several more weeks. Surrounded by technicians and non-commissioned officers, they quickly had a crowd of interested hardware heads gathered around them, picking apart the new upgrades and mincing the details about what would interface with what, and what wouldn’t. Far from being the dry conversation that Tessa at first suspected it might be, running over the tech specs with a handful of greasemonkeys who made their living working in the guts of the rigs that pilots like Phoebe and Tessa flew turned out to be exactly what she needed– something fresh that got her mind off Izzy, gave her purpose– even if only for a little while.

That same night, sleep hung somewhere unreachable, wouldn’t come to her in the night, just left her staring into the darkness with eyes that searched aimlessly, unable to find the peace that they sought. Eventually giving up and wondering if Phoebe was still awake, maybe up for another drink in the Officer’s mess, she ran a passive check through her console, breathed a tired sigh as the system returned a polite do-not-disturb signal. Feeling the onset of darker emotions, the return of a tense, brooding stillness that crept insidiously up inside her, paralyzing soul and heart, she closed her eyes, pushed headfirst out the door and left the room that still smelled like Izzy behind.

Sometime later, in the dead silence of a deeper night than the void and stars scrolling all around her on the Von’s observation deck, Cordova arrived unexpectedly, brought some light into that depthless darkness when he handed her a cup of coffee, sat with her and made an effort at loose, casual conversation. She smiled as she cradled the little cup and thanked him, sipped as he offered sympathies and jokes that she tried to appreciate, but that ultimately did little more than distract her from the darker thoughts still clinging to her psyche like everpresent clouds. Misunderstanding, he eventually lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, sipping his coffee and staring blankly off into the silicon representation of space that sprawled all around them.

Again, Tessa found herself apologizing, but Cordova shook his head at the attempt, offered to share some of his problems or stories with her if it would make her feel better. In the end, she accepted, and the two pilots discussed Jose’s wife, her charms and her idiosyncracies, the little things as well as the big things until the conversation ultimately strayed toward older stories of better times in orbit of worlds that had long since been taken by the Coralate or left behind as the Von had forged farther and farther into the frontier. When the two parted again to go their own separate ways in the hopes of getting even a shred of sleep out of that night, they parted as friends, promised to keep track and keep up with each other no matter how far away the Von or the Ultima Thila took them from one another.

And then, somehow, the day came, the day Tessa had been half wishing for, half dreading, and as she stood before the mirror again, naked and wet from the shower, she knew that fate had finally caught up with her, had finally closed the distance of time down to a matter of moments, fragments of an hour.

Pulling in a deep breath, she met the eyes of her reflection steadily, evenly.

“Okay.” She breathed. “This is it.”

“Time to meet my destiny.”

“Ultima Thila!?” Phoebe asked. “The Gray Society? No way!”

“Yeah.” Tessa set her drink down. They were in the Officer’s Lounge again, perched at the bar this time, just the two of them with the steady buzz of conversation hanging in the air behind them, the blurred words of a handful of other pilots who had just come back from the range. Tessa looked up, stared into the silicon stars that scrolled past the screen at the far end of the bar, tried not to think about Izzy, about the last time she’d sat in that familiar seat.

“He thinks I’m qualified for the TALENT program.”

“Well, I mean, if you score high enough on the RRH bar of ESP tests, they say your mind can be taught to do just about anything.” Phoebe gestured quickly, glanced at Tessa again, excitement faltering slightly as the other woman nodded soberly, sighed.

“What did you score on your TK tests Earthside?”

“.05c in ten.” Phoebe said immediately. “Eighth tier.” She blinked as Tessa turned toward her, met her eyes. “You?”

“.07c in fifteen.” Tessa nodded, looked away again and took a slow sip of her drink. “Also Eighth tier.”

“So then...” Phoebe looked away again. eyes wandering blankly as her mind tried to sort out a coherent sentence. “But then, why didn’t they– I mean, why didn’t they pick us up... you up when we first took the tests Earthside?”

“Apparently, they don’t take people right out of basic unless they score into First or Second tier for TK, ES, Visionary Precog or anything else.” She made a loose gesture. “Everyone else has to spend some time in the field first, get experience, develop any talents they might have on their own, and then be recommended in, or seek them out directly.”

“I scored a twenty three on the VP test.” Phoebe said absently. “Sixth tier.”

“It’s just a stupid game.” Tessa said flatly.

“You’re still going to accept, right?”

Tessa closed her eyes, breathed a tired sigh. “I’m not going to find anything better.”

“But that...” Phoebe swallowed. “That means you’re going to be leaving... right? I mean, like soon, right?”

“Yeah.” Tessa paused, swirled her drink absently. “Apparently as soon as we get to Thuban Reticulae.” Tessa let her eyes drift open, lose themselves in the depths of her drink. “Virek thinks I should talk to the head psych officer in Med,” She laughed dryly. “Like an hour alone with Altaker is going to convince me to stay instead of transferring.”

“Well, maybe you should go.” Phoebe shifted slightly, swallowed anxiously. “Talk to him, I mean. It might– I mean, not that you’re crazy or anything,” She said hurriedly, hesitated as Tessa looked at her. “C-cause you’re not, y’know, but... uh... y’know, maybe he’s right, I mean he is the Admiral and the leader and all, and...” She gestured. “And...”

“I know.” Tessa said quietly, turned back to her drink.

“I don’t know. It might help.” Phoebe made a defeated gesture. “I mean, it’s because of Izzy, isn’t it? The reason you’re transferring out?”

“Yeah.” Tessa closed her eyes again, squeezed the bridge of her nose in silent frustration. “I’m sorry, Phoebe.”

“No, it’s...” Phoebe tried, but the words wouldn’t come. In her mind, she imagined herself reaching out to Tessa, touching the hunched, defeated shoulders, pulling her LC into a hug– anything that might bring back the familiar strength, the resolve and power that Izzy’s death seemed to have sapped from her very being... but in the end, she simply sighed, turned back to her own drink and stared, unable to do anything but wait, eyes distant, mind running through the same broken thoughts over and over again. Tears touched the edges of her eyes, quivered there.

“Do you think...” Phoebe spoke up suddenly, and as she paused, Tessa shifted slightly, turned to regard her with those cool, cobalt eyes. The young Lieutenant played idly with the ring of condensation at the base of her glass, found herself unable to even meet the other woman’s eyes. “Do you think you could ever love anyone again?” She asked quietly. “I mean, the way that you loved Izzy?”

“I–” Tessa hesitated, looked away again. The question blossomed cruelly in her mind, brought with it traces of memories that could no longer bring her joy, memories laced with an unshakable, subtly burning pain.

“I dunno, Pheebs.” She said finally, and as she breathed the words, she closed her eyes, fingers tightening imperceptibly against her glass.

“It’s... hard to say.”

Virek sighed, set down his coffee. For a long moment, he simply sat there, stared at his desk, unwilling to look up, unwilling to let his eyes be snared by the cobalt stare that had beaten him, that had countered everything he had tried, everything that had come to mind in the spur of the moment. Now she was waiting, waiting for a suggestion or a dismissal. Virek closed his eyes, shook his head. There was one choice, one place where he knew a pilot of her caliber would not be wasted, one silent offer that had been on the table for years, had hung there in the silence, waiting for just such a circumstance to be put forth. Virek pulled in a deep breath, turned and met Tessa’s eyes again.

“Are you familiar with the Gray Society?”

“The Gray Society?” Tessa blinked, hesitated. “You mean... Ultima Thila?” She watched him silently for a moment, studied his face in the pause. “Aren’t they affiliated with the TALENT program?” She made a brief, uneasy gesture. “All that, spec-ops, hush hush secrecy stuff?”

Virek nodded once. Tessa opened her mouth, closed it again.

“You’re not suggesting...”

“They’re always looking for new people.” He pushed ahead. “I’ve seen your scores on the RRH bar of ESP tests.” A pause, a gesture. “You’re more than qualified to transfer into an organization like that.”

“But the TALENT program.” She paused, pulled in a shaky breath. “Well, that’s like...” She blinked, hesitated. “Look, I could see being spec ops material, maybe, but TALENT?” She shook her head. “Admiral, I swear, I could stare at a note ‘puter all day long and it wouldn’t dance or fly across the room. They tested me for TK Earthside, and the best I managed was a .07c in fifteen.”

“Untrained, that’s impressive.” He leaned forward. “Imagine what you could do working with the people from TALENT.”

Tessa swallowed uneasily, let the question hang in the pause. Virek was right– most people couldn’t even score a readable result in the mandatory TK tests that every soldier in the Commonwealth had to go through. The fact that she could meant that she had potential, and potential was exactly what spec ops groups like Ultima Thila were built to utilize and cultivate. But with results like mine? Results barely within the eighth movement tier?

“I have a friend, an Admiral within the Gray Society.” Virek continued. “She’s had her eye on the pilots of Minerva and Athena squadron for quite a while now. She asks me periodically about you, about Lieutenant Jenkins and Lieutenant Copperfield.” He gestured. “She even asked me once or twice about Roger Eisley, your old left advance wingman, before we lost him at the battle for Orphington four.”

Orphington four. Tessa’s eyes dropped to the desk, closed in the silence. Another battle she was trying to forget. Fifteen rigs downed in quick strikes by Coralate hit-and-run tactics, eight pilots dead, three wounded but recovered before their Seindrives sunk to the bottom of that endless, simmering sea.

“Not one of our better moments, I know.” Virek glanced away, sighed tiredly. “The point is, Admiral Blavatski has an open offer for you and a handful of other pilots aboard the Von der Tann.” He looked up again, met her stare evenly, gestured. “Officially, Ultima Thila policy is something along the lines of ‘let the pilot come to the organization,’ which suits me just fine because I’ve never had to say a word, never had to risk one of my pilots taking up that standing offer and leaving the Von.” He breathed a tired sigh. “But this time, well...” He shrugged. “You did ask for a suggestion.”

Tessa swallowed uneasily.

“But... why Ultima Thila?” She asked. “I mean, there’s gotta be somewhere else, another ship, another assignment you know about...”

“None of them even come close to the prestige and honor that comes with being able to work within the Gray Society.” He said levelly. “None of them are good enough for a pilot such as yourself.”

Pulling in a long, shaky breath, Tessa hesitated, nodded. Virek’s fingers knit together again as he continued.

“I won’t lie to you. It’s not going to be easy. I can tell you right now that you’ll take a pay cut and lose a couple bars of rank at first, but once you’re out of the training program and in the field again, you’ll pick them back up pretty quickly. It’s just part of the process, something they do to all the recruits.”

“But they’ll still let me fly, right?” She asked. “I mean, I can’t see running shadow work with a Seindrive, but...”

“Not with our equipment.” He smiled. “But Ultima Thila is at the forefront of Commonwealth military technology. Everything you fly for the Gray Society will be equipped with hardware we won’t see on the front lines for another five or ten years.”

“Seems wrong.” She said, tone noncommital. Virek shrugged and Tessa glanced away again, studied the floor. A moment later, she looked back, met the Admiral’s eyes, nodded stiffly.

“Okay.” She managed, breathed a shaky exhale. “Ultima Thila, huh? I don’t have to like, sign my contract in blood, do I?” Virek laughed.

“Relax, Lieutenant Commander. I’ll contact Blavatski this afternoon.” The edges of a smile played across his face. “If I know her at all, she’ll have someone at Thuban Reticulae waiting for us when we get there.” Reaching out, he picked up the note ‘puter, switched the screen on. “In the meantime, I want you to make an appointment with Doctor Altaker down in Medical.” He gestured with the ‘puter, features taking on the edges of a serious cast. “Talk to him, tell him about how you feel, and ask yourself if a transfer is really what you want.”

“So I can back out at the eleventh hour and give the Gray Society the proverbial finger?” Tessa managed the wry edge of a smile, shook her head. “No thanks, Admiral. I can already tell you that no amount of psychotherapy is going to change my mind on this one.”

“Do me a favor,” He smiled slightly, almost wryly. “Just talk to him.” The smile spread a little. “I’m sure you can find the time in the next three days to give him at least an hour.”

“Is that an order, sir?” She shot back.

“I can make it one.” He grinned. “That way, when you disobey it, I’ll have another scrubber for the next janitorial shift.”

“That won’t be necessary.” She laughed, just slightly.

“Good.” He smiled gently. “I also want you to get some rest. You look like hell, Eisenherz.”

“Thanks.” Came the soft, wry reply. “Though I think I’ve had enough rest.” She shook her head in the pause, gestured. “What I could really use is some kind of stimulant and some time in the range.”

“Whatever it takes to get you through this, Lieutenant Commander.” He smiled again. “If you need anything–”

“Please, Admiral.” She made a weakly dismissive gesture, unable to meet his gaze as she spoke. “Don’t say ‘you can always contact me.’” She looked up, gave the traces of a smile. “I appreciate the kindness, but I have enough people worried about me and willing to help me at the drop of a hat as it is.” Her smile spread a little as she added softly: “I can take care of myself.”

“I don’t doubt it.” He nodded back in response. “But the offer still stands.” His smile shifted, crossed to one side of his face. “You should be glad that you have so many people who care about your well being.”

“I am, Admiral.” She looked away, laughed suddenly, nervously, and pressed the edges of her fingernails against her lips before she caught herself and looked back, nodding, smiling.

“Thank you.”

Fifteen minutes after Tessa had filed the request for transfer and sent it on its way through the system, Virek had caught it in his office console’s inbox and responded in turn with an immediate summons. Transfers and drops were to be expected, considering all that his pilots had been through, but Eisenherz was an LC, she’d seen hard situations before, and her rating as a pilot put her in the top five percent for rankings in the TCGND. Losing her would be a blow to the structure and the fighting prowess of the Von der Tann IV that he wasn’t going to simply accept– he’d fight it if he could, take it as far as he could in an attempt to change her mind. What he needed was information, an advantage, anything he could lever against her or use to understand her reasoning, combat her doubts, her fears, her reasons before she even arrived. Working from a point of knowledge, he could parry whatever she threw at him on a level field of reason and logic, make her see that her problems on the Von weren’t so bad, that they could be ironed out, could be set aside and worked through.

Stiff fingers touched the polyquid display of his console, hesitated momentarily before going to work across the sensitive touchscreen surface. Circumventing the normal restrictions of the network, he dug briefly into external, automatically generated notices and logs that the system had attached to her file, found nothing but a recommendation that she have her next flight physical within fifty-six days, and a notation that her rig was still awaiting transfer aboard the Wu Ang Hok. As a pilot, she had a clean, quiet record– only her Earthside academy days showed any sort of reprimands or citations, and then all merely for minor forms of insubordination that had been punished with time in isolation, janitorial duty, extra courses of training, that kind of thing. He sighed, scratched his chin, dug deeper into the system, going so far as to check into her personal outbox, tabbing the messages she’d sent from her console to display from newest to oldest and blinking as only two came up that were less than a week old. No fights, then, no complaints, no build up of heated exchanges. He thought. Or at least, none on record.

Blinking, he paged from one entry to another, absently hoping something might pop out at him. Just a maintenance call for a new mirror and the transfer request sent to my office. He sighed, rubbed at his eyes. Nothing. Just this request out of the blue– no reason, nothing.

And then he remembered.

The wake.

A quick glance through squadron records told him everything he needed to know. Lieutenant Izandra Copperfield had served with Eisenherz for practically as long as Eisenherz had been an LC. There was an investigation pending on the status of Copperfield’s quarters that had been tagged with a fifty-year wait period by an unknown and likely unauthorized user, and a system generated report about a total lack of activity in her shower system for more than six months. Virek allowed himself a small smile, knowing that there was probably a similar system report on Eisenherz’s file, a notation about a sudden drastic increase in shower use beginning at about the same time, but he didn’t bother to look. As an Admiral, he’d seen it all before, done it all before, been the Lieutenant with the note ‘puter who knew how to wire it into the guts of a console and change tags, forge logs, reroute comm circuits so they relayed automatically to another officer’s quarters. Officially, the Navy frowned on it, took a stance against its officers getting too close, but few Admirals enforced the policy absolutely. Most had the same views on it that Virek had– as long as it didn’t cause a problem, as long as no one got caught, he didn’t say anything.

So that’s it, then. He closed his eyes, breathed a tired sigh. The two must have been close for the loss to effect a pilot like Eisenherz so drastically. He frowned slightly, opened his eyes, let them roam blankly over the screen again. Everyone has their breaking point.

“That would explain the look on her face yesterday.” He said quietly, mind replaying memories of her stony features, the way she stood in the corner of the gauss bay like a broken statue carved from immovable ice, eyes staring like the eyes of a wounded wolf. It was the kind of look he knew all too well, a look that made him feel guilty every time he saw it on one of his pilots, every time he thought about it. It was his decisions that put men and women like Lieutenant Copperfield in danger, his orders, and he felt every life that was lost as a result, took a certain sense of responsibility from every face he saw on a coffin holograph surrounded by flowers. Sighing, he covered his old eyes with his hand, pulled in a deep breath. The door chime sounded an instant later.

“Come in.”

Stepping past the automatic door, Tessa stood just inside the office, her face pale and drawn, eyes tired, distant. Virek blinked, leaned back, regarded her rough cut hair with a cool, uncertain indifference.

“Eisenherz.” He pulled in a deep breath. “Your hair is different.”

“Yes sir.” She responded levelly, just the edge of shakiness playing through her tone. “I... just felt it was time for a change in my life.”

“Hmmm.” He nodded noncommitally, closed the screen of his console and knitted his fingers together on the surface of the desk between them. “So, Lieutenant Commander Eisenherz, commanding officer of Minerva Squadron.” He breathed a tired sigh, gestured for her to sit. “You’re putting in a request to transfer.”

“Yes sir.” She managed, picking her way slowly across the deck to his desk, flinching as the door whisked shut behind her.

“I don’t see a registry number on here.” He made a non-committal gesture at a nearby silicon note ‘puter. “Do you have a ship in mind?”

“Not yet, sir.” She swallowed, closed her eyes, pulled in a deep breath, opened them again. “I was, ah... actually half hoping you... might have a suggestion.”

Virek looked at her sideways, responded levelly. “And if I don’t?”

Tessa pulled in a quick breath, raised her chin slightly. “Then, I guess...” She gestured, shook her head. “I guess I’ll just read the names on the docking manifest when we get to TRS-88 and find one that sounds good to put in a transfer for.”

“That could be dangerous.” Virek said flatly. “Some of those ships see more action than we do. Some of them are given low-priority missions with a high casualty rate, some of them get some inglorious and forgettable duty like asteroid clocking and tagging closer to the core,” he paused, “and some of them are used as bait to draw the Coralate into Commonwealth offenses.” Pulling in a deep, thoughtful breath, he gave her a loose gesture. “None of it is good enough for a pilot of your caliber, in my opinion.”

“Honestly, sir, after Tarsis, I feel like I could handle anything.” She breathed a sigh, pushed fingers shakily back across her scalp. “Even something boring like rock duty.”

“This is about Lieutenant Copperfield, isn’t it?” Virek said suddenly, and Tessa looked away reflexively, closed her eyes as he continued. “Look, Eisenherz, do me a favor and give it a few days. Spend some time thinking about all that you have here before you do something you might regret.”

“I appreciate where you’re coming from, sir.” Tessa swallowed, forced herself to meet his eyes again. “I’ve thought about this. I know that this is the right decision.”

“The Von is a pretty prestigious assignment to get.” He shot back. “We don’t just take anybody.”

“Then it looks good on a resume.” She said simply, smiled weakly.

Virek sighed, let his eyes drift away from Tessa’s. In that moment, he knew he was beaten, knew that there was nothing he could say which would dissuade her or change her mind, but still he forced himself to meet her eyes again, to continue and say his piece.

“We’ve lost a lot of fine pilots lately.” He began, starting slowly, letting the edges of disappointment that pulled at his mind filter through his features and into his words. “Men and women that I never thought we’d lose. Men and women like Lieutenant Commander Susan Giller, and your own wingman, Izandra Copperfield.” He closed his eyes, shook his head, let his fingers knit together again, slowly and purposefully. “The truth is, you bring a lot to the table, Eisenherz. You’re probably one of my best pilots. I’d hate to see you go.”

“That means a lot to me sir,” Tessa smiled weakly again. “Thank you, really, but I’ve already made up my mind. Even though the Von is like home to me, even though her crew and pilots are like the family I’ve never really had...” She shook her head against the buds of tears that threatened to form in her eyes. “I have to do this. I have to go somewhere else, take a shot at living my own life, at finding something to live for other than that which I’ve already lost, other than Izzy.”

“Even if it means running away?” Came the level response.

Tessa nodded once, firmly.

“Even if it means running away.”

Fifteen minutes later, she was in the shower again.

Curled into a tight, desperate ball, she gasped desperately for air in the steam, fought a blind, internal battle against the burning downpour, one shaky hand rising, pushing through her rough-cut hair. After the initial slice, the scissors had picked up speed, had worked with a steadiness that was driven and passionate, each stroke, each clip shredding length, butchering hair down to a shorter, more utilitarian cut. Later, as she’d stood in front of the mirror again, seeking out a complete reflection among the shards and studying the short, brutal cut, she’d found an odd sort of solace in the spiky messiness of it, in the features that stared back at her. Like a fragment of some hazy and forgotten past, it was almost comforting, familiar, some older portrait of herself that she recognized, that didn’t remind her of Izzy.

Climbing into the shower, there had been no thought, no pause to adjust the temperature. Hands had gone to work immediately, cranking the controls to max on temp and flow as Tessa hurled herself into the furthest corner from the showerhead, shivering through the initial frigidity, hunkering down into herself as the heat rose steadily around her. Fingers flexed into fists as sweat broke across skin, the hail of scalding droplets biting into flesh, stinging her, scouring every inch of her body with a fierce cleansing that burned like liquid fire. Lips parted, drew in another brutally humid breath, strained as she forced the exhale, growled through bared teeth. In another instant, she was moving, soles of her feet catching on synthplast tile, hands finding resistance in the surface as she threw herself against the controls, grasped at the polyquid display and forced the water temperature all the way down again. Shivering and gasping as the pelting water turned suddenly icy, fingers spasmed desperately, arched wildly against the controls, mercilessly stabbing the display back toward hot. A warning flashed, a silent red reminder that successive rapid changes in temperature were not advised– and then she was on the floor again, sprawled across cool bathroom tile outside the steaming box of the shower, beyond the reach of the burning, pummeling fall. Hanging half open before her, the bathroom door yawned, stretched like a portal to some other world, some other dimension or time. Hands flexed against smooth floor, palms pressing, lifting her dripping body up, pushing, giving her knees a chance to shake into place beneath her. Breath came quick, muscles tensed, hardened in her limbs like the toned whipcords of a runner, and in an instant, she was on her feet again, sprinting full on into the bedroom, losing her footing on the edge of the wet tile and falling backwards, the ceiling rushing by in a blur of broken black.

When she came to again, she woke up cold, chilled to her very core and aching for heat. Lips quivered, hands flexed, arms numbly coming to life as she stared blankly at the wall that seemed so distant, so far away. Fragments of hair lay everywhere around her, spread across the carpet like fallen soldiers on some barren, nameless battlefield, each shard shining in the dim light with the glint of silken midnight. In the half light, there was no sound, nothing beyond the soft glow of appliances on standby and the steady vibrations of the ship– even the overhead lights and the shower had switched to automatic and turned off. Licking dry lips, she tried to turn over, fought the bending, spinning of reality as she pushed herself back onto her chest and stared blankly toward the bed, toward the little figurine of St. Von Mitternacht. Phantom sensations of hair in disarray played in her mind, left her reaching back, grasping at empty air, hands finally settling on the broken edges of what was left of that long, silken mane, fingers brushing, moving through damp blades of spiky hair. Shivering, she felt the cold set in deeper, felt it touch her heart, and for a moment an irrational fear seized her, a loss of identity, of self and time. Where am I? She wondered. This isn’t... Teeth set in against each other, jaw locking, setting with a sense of resolve as she regained her feet, stood slowly, staring at the little figurine in the cubbyhole by the bed.

“Grandma?” She whispered, blinking as she shivered, covered herself reflexively. A voice tugged at her mind, the edges of a thousand voices, all crowding in, whispering.

“Is someone there?” She called out, turning suddenly, stumbling as disorientation set back in. This is my room, my room aboard the Von der Tann IV. She swallowed at the thought, shivered again as she glanced around quickly. I am a lieutenant commander of the Terran Galactic Navy, leader of Multipurpose Squadron Minerva...

“No.” She whispered, turning back to the bed, stumbling toward it. There was something wrong, something that didn’t make sense, something... “No, I...”

And then the smell, the sweet, familiar scent that seemed to cling to everything reached out and caught her senses like the sweet essence of some invisible angel. Skin tingled, responded to a touch that wasn’t there, wasn’t... “Who’s there?” She tried again, blinked, felt the edges of tears as they built in the corners of her eyes. In her mind, she was seventeen again, sequestered in an academy solitary cell overnight for something the navy passed off as isolation training. In space, the general had said, sometimes you have to be able to function in open void with no conversation and no support for forty-eight hours or more, depending on circumstances.

The only way to get used to it is to live it.

And then there was Izzy.

Tessa closed her eyes as memory danced through her tired, broken mind like a reel of pastel fragments strung together by madness and injury. Stumbling forward, moving suddenly toward the one thing she knew could get her through the night, would get her past the demons of memory that haunted and tormented her, she swallowed against the spinning, the disorientation. Wet hands guided her to a drawer, yanked, reached, grasped the thick, smooth leather of her riding jacket and pulled it out, forcing herself awkwardly forward into it. Pulling it close, she shivered against it, felt the leather warm up against bare flesh, eeking a subtle heat back into her skin. Beside her, the bed looked comfortable, inviting, a meal set before the starving prisoner of a labyrinthine dungeon– but it was all deception, the comfort illusory. Within the soft fabric of the blankets crouched more memories, thoughts of Izzy that waited in the darkness like cruel and mischievous imps, eager to torment her through the long, dark night. Pulling the jacket closer against herself, she stumbled into the center of the room and lay down, curling up inside the jacket, pulling her knees up against her chest and hugging them tight as eyes fluttered brokenly with the onset of sleep. Bound up in the coat, there was no trace of Izzy, only the sweet blackness, the scent of rain and bike leathers, the smell that flooded her senses with clearer, kinder memories of a past when she flew solo, when Izzy was just a distraction, a possibility, and the sky and the stars, the night and the open road were her only true lovers.

In the darkness, Tessa breathed a tired sigh, sunk into the steadily warming leathers. In the morning, she would meet with Virek. She would put in for a transfer and leave for some other ship, somewhere where she could start her life over again, where she could be the Tessa Eisenherz she’d left behind somewhere in her past, life the live she might have lived without Izzy, and smother the memories of that broken love under something newer, something...

There’s plenty of time to figure that out... She burrowed closer into the jacket, grimaced as she tried to put the thoughts out of her mind. Plenty of time...

Mac hardly noticed when Tessa eventually set aside her drink and excused herself. Lowering her head and scooping up the package in her lap, she left the two old veterans to their drinks, to their conversations, fired remarks and memories of a war that had ended over a half of a century ago, a war that, for Tessa, it still hurt to think about. Imalda nodded in some kind of understanding, gave a vague wave, and the gesture itself was enough to make Tessa hesitate, but the pause in her stride didn’t last long, and as she reached out to say her farewells, shaking both old pilots’ hands with a stronger, more confident grip, she thanked the older woman for the advice and managed the best smile she could push across her lips. The steel, the firmness that she forced back into her voice, her hand brought a grin to Mac’s face, made the Grand Marshall crack a smile that looked almost proud.

Wandering the corridors back to her quarters, the clouds of depression and the darkness of memories better left forgotten crept in at the edges of Tessa’s mind, building ominously behind a wall of willpower that kept her on the edge of melancholy, blank and distant, aloof. All around her, the passageways were empty, quiet, totally devoid of people or sound. Bending space at a speed that wouldn’t dislodge or damage the Hok had left the crew a few more days before their convoy of butchered warships would reach Thuban Reticulae, and automated systems picked up the slack, left pilots and soldiers to practice maneuvers in the simulators, work out in the gym.

We’ve got hours... she could almost hear Izzy say. Let’s grab pheebs and run some coordinated attacks on something big... like a warship! Or want to hit the range? We could squeeze off a few rounds, see if maybe you get lucky and beat me on your accuracy percentages for once. Tessa closed her eyes, squeezed against new tears as they fought to well at the edges of her lids. If only things had been different. Came the sudden thought. If only she hadn’t caught its attention... if only.

Tessa stopped, turned and buried her face into the nearest wall. Guilty thoughts wrestled with vindications, with words of encouragement and jumbled advice. None of it mattered– within the space of a breath, she was sobbing openly again, unable to move, her whole body collapsed forward against some nameless section of wall somewhere in the guts of the ship. There was nothing– nothing on the ship that she could cling to, that didn’t remind her in some way of Izzy, of all they’d had. She bit her lip, bared teeth. Something has to give. Something has to change.

That night, she stood standing in front of the shattered mirror again, staring blankly at her naked reflection in the broken glass. Flakes of dark blood shined dully across the stainless steel handles of the scissors like the edge of an omen, beckoning, filling her mind with images of flashing chrome, blood in her eyes. She swallowed, reached out, hesitated, fingers hovering and unsure.

Something has to change. Fingers tightened, balled into a fist. This...

This is a change.

Smooth metal ground against fractured glass as she worked the scissors free, the mass of chrome clicking loudly, almost insect-like in the silence. Muscles tensed, tightened, and an instant later the scissors were in her hand, held at an angle that made the blood-flecked blades seem vicious and knifelike, as if she were holding some sacrificial dagger, a weapon poised, hungry to satisfy its purpose. Pulling in a deep breath, Tessa closed her eyes, let the scissors, the fist that clutched them drop, come to rest at her side.

The bed. Came the sudden thought. That’s where I’ll do it. That’s where it will mean the most, where the memories and her scent are the strongest, the hardest to shake. Her fist tightened against the scissors, felt the dull outer metal push unyieldingly back. Slowly, reluctantly, her eyes came open again, turned toward the bed, stared blankly at the ruffled sheets, the cubbyhole in the wall there where Izzy had kept a few choice books, her copy of the bible. Now, cleared and left bare, it was home to only one object, the one thing that stood more as a reminder of Tessa’s own past than of the part Izzy had played in it– the little resin figurine of St. Von Mitternacht.

Tessa pulled in a long, deep breath, forced herself to move. Every step between the broken mirror and the bed felt cold, heavy, echoed the weight she felt in her heart, in the pit of her stomach. Pain built, rose up within her as she crossed the distance, crossed the scant handful of paces and stepped closer and closer to what she knew was the point of no return. Stopping, she sat awkwardly on the edge of the bed, fist coming to rest on her lap, opening, scissors glinting in the dim light. Part of her cried out against what she knew must be done, what she knew must come to pass if she was ever to be truly free. There were a thousand ways to do it, a thousand ways to use those blades to end the torment, to separate herself from the reality that still retained so much of Izzy, but only one way that stood out, one way that would give her what she needed, one way that would cut her free, slice loose the bonds and leave her free to fall, no longer tied to a broken collection of memories as sharp as shattered glass. Slowly, purposefully, hand shaking in a mixture of regret and fear, she raised the scissors, opened the blades, closed her eyes. The first cut would be the hardest, would have to be the deepest, or she might falter in her resolve and stop. She swallowed, lips parting, quivering under a nervous breath.

And then suddenly she found it. The strength, the moment of shock-resolve she needed to make the cut, to close the handles and bring the blood-stained blades together. Cold steel brushed her neck, moved against flesh, rose, and in one smooth slice, tore through silken midnight, chopped free the long mane of hair she’d been growing since things had gotten serious with Izzy, since they’d moved in together near the end of their academy days Earthside. Lips curled back, teeth baring, parting slightly under the burning exhale that came in place of a scream, a tortured moan. Tears forced themselves from squeezed lids, traced hot lines down her cheeks as one fist tightened around the scissors, the other around the severed tail of her butchered hair.

A change. Came the sudden thought, and for a moment the pain subsided, turned almost to relief, gratefulness. Eyes opened, tears breaking, flowing freely.

A change.

“Everything reminds me of her.” Tessa closed her eyes, shook her head. Beside her, Imalda looked on, gaze flat, almost sympathetic. The Officer’s lounge hung quiet around them, conversation lingering at a low buzz. Only a few other pilots clustered in groups, sat at tables conversing in quiet tones– a few studied silicon notepads in corners, sipped lethargically at steaming mugs. Mac took another swig of his whiskey, breathed a satisfied sigh.

“I had a feelin’ you was one of them girls that swings the other way.” He drawled, slurring words. “You and that Iz... Jes’ seemed too good to be true.”

“She’s not a lesbian, Mac.” Imalda picked up her own drink, some bland, steel colored mix that had the alcohol content of a light beer, and glanced at Tessa, took a sip. “She’s normal, just like you or me.”

“N’see here!” He breathed. “I t’aint never touched a man in such a way, Imalda. T’aint holy, t’aint natural.”

“Traditionalist.” She shot back.

“Dyke.” He breathed.

“Smile when you say that.” She grinned, set down her drink. “I’ve been with plenty of guys in my life. Normal people don’t have a preference.” She looked over at Tessa again. “You love who you love. Only your heart can tell you who that is.”

Mac took another swig of his whiskey, grumbled something unintelligible. Imalda’s eyebrows rose briefly, dismissively as she raised her glass, sipped at it. Beside her, Tessa’s eyes sunk to the tabletop, drifted listlessly across patterned steel.

“Maybe you should leave.” Imalda suggested suddenly. Tessa looked up slowly, found Imalda’s eyes staring back at her, as comforting and kind as iron could be. The old mercenary shifted in her seat, set her glass down to regard Tessa thoughtfully.

“I mean,” She began, folding her arms in the pause, “if everything here reminds you of her, then maybe you should try a change of scenery.”

“Where would I go?” Tessa managed, looking away. “I’m Navy, I’m on contract. I can’t just...” She gestured. “Go work somewhere else, retire, something...”

“You could go to another ship.” Came Imalda’s level response. Tessa looked up again, studied her eyes for an instant.

“I’m not cut out to be a mercenary, Imalda.”

“Everybody with a gun or a rig is cut out to be a mercenary.” The older woman leaned back, regarded Tessa cooly. “But that’s not what I meant. I mean a transfer.” She gestured. “Why don’t you request a transfer to another ship, somewhere not on the front lines?”

“I’d kill myself if they stuck me in a desk.” Tessa said flatly. “I joined the Navy so I could fly.”

“No, you joined it for the money and the chance at saving the Commonwealth from the biggest threat we’ve faced since the GMOs started to rise up and demand citizenship.” She shook her head. “Am I right?”

Tessa squeezed her eyes against the remark, the pain, the anger it spurred within her. She doesn’t mean it that way. If she knew... She bit her lip, opened her eyes again, breathed a tired sigh. If she knew, I wouldn’t be here. Lips parted on reluctant words. “It’s not the money.”

“Then why the Navy?” Imalda shot back. “Any civilian with the right training can get a flying job.”

Because GMOs like me are barred from serving with the Armed Forces. Came the silent retort. Tessa bit her lip, swallowed. “I have my reasons.”

“Don’t we all.” Imalda looked away, took another sip of her drink. “Don’t we all.”

In the pause, Tessa’s eyes dropped again to the table, mind losing itself in the stirrings of thought. Her reasons for joining the Navy were many and varied, but the one that rose above all the others, towered over every other justification she had given her government-fearing grandmother on her way to catch the first shuttle out to Earth for basic training had been an ethical one. It isn’t right that people with Genetically Modified Organisms in their ancestry are barred from serving their Commonwealth. She’d said. Someday, the legislation will change. People like you and me and mom will be seen as human beings, but in the interim, in the here and now, people like us need to step up and prove that we’re as human as anyone else, that we’re not drones, not robots or animals. For now, that means a lot of faking, lying, forging and pretending, but it doesn’t matter. It’ll all be worth it in the end, and thousands, if not millions of people affected by the unfair laws of a more conservative time will ultimately benefit from it. Suddenly, she was keenly aware of the weight of the little figurine wrapped in fabric as it lay on her lap. St. Von Mitternacht, patron saint of the Genetically Modified, saint who had slipped through the cracks of a more galactic interpretation of Catholicism.

How fitting. How very fitting.

“How about that guy you were talking with earlier?” Imalda said suddenly. “The one who gave you the package?” She pointed over crossed arms.

“Dimitrov.” Tessa looked down, rested one hand on the red fabric, eyes searching the creases and folds absently before she looked up again, met Imalda’s level gaze. “He’s... a friend.”

“Just a friend? That’s too bad.” The old Mercenary grinned, took another sip of her drink. “He was pretty cute. What ship does he serve on? Maybe you could transfer there, get to know him a little better.”

“His ship is the Wu Ang Hok.” Tessa looked away again. “It’s front line, just like the Von.” Not to mention so badly damaged that we have to tow it back to TRS-88 because it can’t even travel under its own power anymore. “And Dimitrov... well...”

“Reminds you too much of Izzy?” Imalda asked suddenly.

Tessa closed her eyes, breathed a tired, hurt sigh, shook her head. “It’s not that, it’s just... he’s a traditionalist.” She looked up, met the Grand Marshall’s eyes again. “Besides, I– I couldn’t just transfer on the hope that I might find someone to take Izzy’s place in my heart or... or anything like that.” She shook her head again. “It...”

“Look, I’m just talking here.” The older woman said suddenly. “I’m just saying that change would do you good, that’s all.” She gestured, offered the traces of a smile. “Think about it, consider your options, and maybe even put in for a transfer, if you’re feeling adventurous.” She made another gesture, shrugged as she turned back to her drink. “The Navy is a lot bigger than just one ship, Eisenherz. There are a lot of places that a hotshot pilot like you can fit in.”

“I know.” Tessa looked down again. “It’s just, the Von is like a second home to me. The people here... they’re like family.”

“But everything here reminds you of Izzy.” Imalda said flatly.

Tessa closed her eyes again. “Yeah.” Only Mac saw Imalda’s eyebrows rise again, watching as she took another sip of the steely liquid. In her mind, Tessa knew that the other woman was right, that change would do her good, but the thought of leaving the Von, of leaving the sense of family that had sprung up in her time aboard ship was not something easily dismissed. She sighed again, buried her face in her hands. Something had to change. Something in her life had to be new, fresh– not haunted by the pastel traces of memories that rang with the sound and scent of Izzy.

Something has to change.

Something.

Even after Phoebe had paid her final respects to both Izzy and Davidson, Tessa stood beside her lover’s casket, one hand resting gently on the top, absently caressing, half hoping that some shred of the link they had shared through touch might whisper up her arm and into her mind. The fabric-wrapped package lay cradled in her other arm, almost forgotten as memories of better times, of the joy and happiness they’d felt together flitted through her mind, lost themselves at the far end of her psyche. Tears framed a soft smile as Tessa pulled in a deep breath, let her hand return to her side, eyes closing, lips parting on a whisper.

“I’ll miss you, Izzy.” She opened her eyes again, looked over at the holograph and caught Izzy’s eyes staring back at her again, staring back over that wild grin which had become so familiar, so expected. A moment later, Tessa broke the stare, looked away again, smile fading.

“I lost a part of myself when I lost you.” She managed finally, then spared one last glance at the holograph, at the face of her lover. “I’ll never forget you, Izzy. You were my life, and now that you’re gone, I...” She breathed, let her eyes drift skyward, losing themselves in the ductwork tracing its way along the ceiling as she took a moment to steady herself, to force back the tears.

“Goodbye, Izzy.” She finally said, and in the pause she forced the broken edge of a smile. “See you again soon.”

I hope.

Looking up slowly, her eyes found the door of the gauss bay, the two people who had come late, who had lingered on as long as she had, talking to one another in quiet tones. One of them she recognized immediately– the old, grizzled pilot, Captain Mac. The other was a stranger to her, a woman in a beat-up, white flightsuit and a leather jacket covered in ancient, fraying patches. She looked up in response to Tessa’s gaze and smiled reflexively, skin twisting disturbingly around the stout leather strap of the eyepatch she wore, the skull and crossbones emblazoned across it leering in the soft light. Tessa nodded once, smiled the edge of her own smile as Mac glanced over and the strange woman folded her arms, showing off the long strips and plates of steel that traveled up and across both limbs, threading their way in lines up her neck to poke out periodically in tiny patches that were as silver as her viciously buzz-cut and spiked hair. Mac beckoned once, quickly, almost absently, then turned and offered some mumbled counterpoint in a conversation Tessa couldn’t hear.

“Mac.” Tessa managed, smiling softly as she crossed the bay, stopped a few paces from him. “Thank you for coming.”

“That Izzy was a fine woman.” He nodded, grinned. “A firecracker! My kind of girl. Wouldn’t have missed the chance to pay my respects if they’d offered me my own moon not to go.” The strange woman glanced at him, grinned, caught the quick grin he shot back as Tessa looked away reflexively, her own smile fading.

“But!” He made a loose gesture. “Eisenherz, I’d like you to meet the leader of the Ixion Condottieri, Grand Marshall Imalda Grande.”

Tessa looked up, caught Imalda’s steel-tough gaze in the same instant that the woman extended her hand. “Pleasure, Lieutenant Commander.”

Nodding once, absently, Tessa took her hand, shook it weakly. The woman had a grip as strong as iron, the kind of grip that was as hard, as firm and no nonsense as her personality. Imalda offered a lukewarm smile in response.

“We flew a couple missions together back in ‘45, when the ‘Moes were killing farmers back on Toliman.” He grinned. “She was a hell of a pilot back then, and now look where she is! Leader of her own merc outfit!” He slugged Imalda playfully on the shoulder. “God damn we’re getting old.”

The GMOs weren’t killing farmers. Came the unbidden thought. Tessa lowered her eyes reflexively. They were the farmers.

“Speak for yourself, you old geezer.” Imalda shot back, grinning. “You were old when that war started, flying that old piece of shit Slashdriver against those gen-engineered freaks.” She laughed. “You’re lucky so many of them were bred to be docile! If there’d’ve been more of those bloodthirsty Derivative soldiers out there, you’d have been toast!”

If you’d just left them alone, let them have the world that they had bled and poured every ounce of their being into, there never would have been a war... no one would have had to die.

“Docile, hell!” Mac laughed back. “Those fuckers were all a bunch of warmongering crazies who went off the deep end when the good people of the commonwealth voted in those laws trying to keep them from marrying our daughters and acting like a bunch of animals in our streets. I swear, even back then the people in power knew enough to know that the only good GMO–

“I–” Tessa said suddenly, catching the eyes of both Mac and Imalda. She swallowed uneasily, forced herself to speak. “It’s been a long day, and I...” She gestured toward the door. “I think... I’m going to go lay down.” A quick, nervous half-shrug. “Rest a little.”

“You sure?” Mac turned to face her, grin softening to something more comforting, less brusque and intimidating. “We were about to head over to the Officer’s Lounge, have a few drinks for Izzy.” He gestured loosely. “We were hoping you might want to come with.”

Tessa looked down, pulled in a deep breath, looked up again, managed the best smile she could. “Maybe... maybe some other time...”

“You know, it’s not good for you to be alone after you’ve lost someone.” Imalda put in. “Even if she was just a wingman.” She gestured. “You need to spend some time with friends, talk to someone.”

Friends. Tessa repressed the urge to grimace. Yeah right. If only you knew. She shook her head, pushed aside the thoughts, looked away again.

“Look, I really appreciate it, but I... I...” She closed her eyes, looked up and met both glances in turn. Somewhere within her, a little voice came alive, urged her to go, to spend her day doing something other than laying in bed for hours, managing some broken and quiet repeat of the previous day, the night that still hung dark and hazy in her mind. Swallowing, she nodded once, managed the edge of a smile.

“S-Sure, okay.”

Here I am again. Came the thought. Surrounded by the dead.

Tessa blinked, looked up from the floor to let her eyes move slow across the gauss bay. This time, there were only two of them. Only two coffins, two flags to drape across them, two corpses– but one of them was Izzy, and the other was Davidson. Two more Minerva squadron pilots lost to the Coralate. Two more letters to grieving families. Two more friends lost forever.

Tessa swallowed uncomfortably. Standing stony-eyed and rigid in a darker corner of the bay, she clutched a bouquet of hydroponic hydrangeas brokenly in cold, immovable hands. Around her, pilots from the Von stood hardfaced and troubled, scattered in tight little knots of broken minds and wounded psyches. One by one, people paid their respects to the dead, glanced up occasionally at her, regarding her with blank looks that said nothing, meant nothing. Slowly, tiredly, she closed her eyes. It was all too familiar, painfully familiar, as if time had cruelly ripped its script from the vision she’d had aboard the Hok.

“They were both fine pilots, Eisenherz.” Virek said gently, stepped up to touch her shoulder in a soft, almost paternal gesture. Slowly, reluctantly, she met his eyes, blinked against the onset of fresh tears. “Especially Copperfield.” He looked down for an instant, met her eyes again loosely. “The Navy lost a great deal of talent when we lost her.”

“Yeah.” Tessa managed, and the word came weak, tear-raspy.

Pulling in a deep breath, the Admiral nodded once, offered the weak edge of a smile, and then patted her shoulder gently as he walked away. Glancing once at the coffins, Tessa’s eyes dropped again to the deck almost immediately, unable to face the cold reality that stretched on before her. The soft pastels of the bouquet in her hands were oddly comforting, gave her the wisp of forgotten strength she needed to draw breath, to look up again and take the first step toward inevitability, toward the final farewell to Izzy and Davidson. Less than ten paces away, Phoebe stopped beside Izzy’s coffin, ran one hand absently across the smooth top, eyes seeking those that stared smilingly back from the holograph resting there. From where Tessa stood, she could see the moistness building in Phoebe’s eyes, the tears breaking free– and then all at once, the young Lieutenant dropped to her knees and cried, sobbing openly against the casket.

“Sweet girl” Someone said, and the sound, the memory it invoked raised hair across the back of Tessa’s neck. Turning to glance in the direction of the voice, her eyes found those of Dimitrov, found dark amber staring back at her as he sniffed, gesturing vaguely. “You were her LC, right?”

“Yeah.” Tessa managed, swallowing against a knot of tears that threatened to rise in her throat.

Dimitrov nodded, gaze dropping to his feet. “Yeah.” He looked up again, met her eyes, his own gaze searching, flicking. “You know about her boyfriend, then... back Earthside?”

Tessa blinked, stared silently. Dimitrov breathed a tired sigh, gestured vaguely. “Look, I can understand if you have issues, but he deserves to know what’s happened out here.” He managed a rough, tired smile. “Poor bastard. I’d hate to be in his shoes, now or ever.”

“Your point,” She bit off, glancing at his rank insignia, fighting to ignore the clouding, the blurriness of oncoming tears. “Lieutenant.”

“When you send on the package, put this in it.” He handed a palm-sized bundle off to her, a weight of something wrapped lightly in a soft, red fabric. “I don’t know if he’s religious at all, but if you tell him you found it in her room, it’ll mean a lot to him, I’m sure.” He paused, swallowed. “Clear up any doubts he uh... might have had.”

Slowly, carefully, gripped by a sudden irrational fear that came with half-knowing what she would find wrapped in that bundle, she lifted away edges of the fabric, opening the little package to look at the resin figure cradled gently within. Cold seized her, set in with renewed strength as she recognized the shape of a woman, recognized the image of the upraised and exposed palms, the striking eyes, the stigmata marks on open hands and feet, the bleeding third eye framed by a triangle that stood out in the center of her forehead, a perfect match for the bound eye raised across her chest. Tessa exhaled quickly, covered the figure again immediately, whole body suddenly filled with fear and shaky fight.

St. Von Mitternacht, She almost dared to whisper. Patron Saint of the Genetically Modified. Eyes closed, squeezed against tears, tears that came with a thousand realizations, realizations that ripped through her heart, butchered her soul anew. Lips parted on a shaky, broken noise, a wet breath. Dimitrov blinked, took a careful step forward.

“Hey...” He tried, almost reached for her, hesitated. “You okay, Tessa?”

“Yeah, I...” She grimaced, forced herself to meet his eyes even as fresh tears poured down her cheeks, caught on the edges of an almost invisible forced smile. “I’m... still not feeling all that well.” She looked away. “Excuse me.”

“If you need anything.” Dimitrov tried, and she stopped, glanced back at him in time to catch his soft smile. “Anything, a friend, a shoulder to cry on... anything at all, you just let me know, okay?”

“Okay.” She said softly. “Thank you, Ben.”

Nodding once, gently, he folded his hands together in front of himself as he watched Tessa make her way to the casket, to Izzy’s side, her eyes reluctant to meet the brilliant and wild smile in the holograph– Izzy as she would have wanted to be remembered, as everyone else would ultimately remember her. Tessa closed her eyes, gently set the bouquet at the base of the holograph, crouched down beside Phoebe, and reached out in a tender gesture, pulling Phoebe into a silent, sideways hug.

“I can’t believe she’s gone.” Phoebe blubbered, eyes never rising, never leaving the deck.

“I know.” Tessa managed. Looking down, she blinked past new tears, bit her lip. “I’m really going to miss her.”

Phoebe looked up, sniffed, wiped at the wetness in her eyes.

“She was, really important to you, huh LC?”

Tessa nodded softly, tried a smile. “I never told you, but I loved her. We were...” She looked up, pulled in a deep, shaky breath, laughed once, wryly. “Just last week we were talking about the possibility of marriage, y’know, maybe someday.” She looked down again, breathed a broken sigh. “A lot has happened in the last few days.”

“I didn’t realize you two were so close, that you were...” Phoebe swallowed, gestured. “Y’know?”

Tessa nodded once, offered another soft smile. “Yeah.”

“I–” Phoebe started, hesitated. “I really looked up to her, LC. And to you...” She looked away, shook her head. “She was so smart, and pretty. She never took any crap off anybody, and I’d always look at her and just say ‘man, someday I want to be just like Izzy.’” She looked over, met Tessa’s eyes again. “She was just... that cool to me.”

“You’re already that cool, Phoebe.” Tessa offered, reaching up to ruffle the young Lieutenant’s hair with a teary smile. “You’ve still got a little growing up to do, but I think...” She paused, swallowed. “I know Izzy was proud of you. I’m proud of you.”

For the first time since she’d entered the bay, Phoebe smiled, genuinely smiled, and as it spread, the radiance of it provoked the same change in Tessa’s features. An instant later, Phoebe reached out and found Tessa in another hug, buried her face in the LC’s shoulder, staining uniform fabric with tears that were partly happy, partly sad.

“Promise me you won’t go anywhere, okay LC?” She breathed. “I want to keep making you proud.”

Tessa couldn’t help it– she laughed, and as she hugged back, holding Phoebe tightly and grinning over the young Lieutenant’s shoulder, she nodded.

“Okay.” She managed. “I’ll do my best.”

But I can’t make any promises.

It’s still... too soon.

Pain came and went, carved its way through the body of time like the cruel blade of a dull knife. Moments of shrieking and screaming passed into the night, the broken ripping and bleeding of soul that came with the knowledge that half her being was gone, cruelly hacked free and ripped away. Her life, her mind, her body, her entire reason for living...

Gone.

And it had been the Coralate that had taken it all from her.

Somewhere in the hazy, dull and broken fragments of night, she found a pair of scissors tucked into a drawer, sandwiched between a pair of old, stressed denim civilian jeans and the black leather riding jacket she didn’t wear anymore. In the stillness, the hesitant return of memories that drifted back from a happier time, she ran one hand slowly across the old German flag and the old name Deutschland emblazoned across the thick leather of the jacket, absorbed the difference in texture like a blind man, eyes staring distantly, vacantly off into some other place, some other time. An old pair of sunglasses rattled somewhere near the bottom of the drawer as she pushed it closed.

Fifteen minutes later, she stood up suddenly from a crouch and stared blankly at the razor edged blades of the scissors in her hand. Years ago, she’d slipped them between the jacket and jeans in the midst of some strange mood, left them there as a reminder of a part of her past she felt like she’d lost, left behind somewhere along the way to becoming a woman, a partner, an LC. Now, even those feelings felt distant, lost– only the scissors remained, and even they retained little memory of how she had felt in those days, who she had been, what she had cared about. Within her mind, there was only Izzy, a black, immovable and featureless cloud that hung like a corpse over everything, blotting out all emotion, all thought and function of mind with images of her face in the throes of death, her final, broken words...

I’ll miss you.

Tessa closed her eyes, fought the demons which threatened to rise within her again, fist squeezing against the scissors’ unyielding steel– but still the pain grew, fired itself and rose above everything until all that was left to do was scream, was bear teeth and cry out against the bladed edges of the shard of agony lodged within her tortured heart. It should have been me! She screamed. God, why wasn’t it me!?

Turning sharply away from the drawer, she stumbled back into the main room of the quarters she had shared with Izzy, scissors held loosely in one weak hand. Eyes squeezed against tears again, hands tightening into fists, screams dying on choking sobs, broken noises. Every step was a blind fumbling, a struggle waged and lost against the darkness, the pain of loss. In the haze, she stumbled over a stack of Izzy’s books, reached out in a vain attempt to catch herself, caught and then slammed sideways against a shelf Izzy had filled with more books, priceless books, copies of things that were hard to find in digital anymore, but the shelf didn’t hold, wouldn’t support her as she fell, and left her trying to shield herself instead, crying out and bleeding into the carpet under the hail of falling novels that landed in heaps all around her, dusty, filling her senses with the smell of her lover. Eyes opened reluctantly, saw the open pages of a book Izzy had set aside unfinished, a book that still bore the creasing of archaic pages, the marks that were Izzy’s way of tracking her progress through a novel. All around her, bits of Izzy assailed her senses– fragments, remnants that could not be ignored, scraps of a life that hung like a layer over everything, on everything, in everything. For a moment, the smells, the sensations, the memories became too much, became stifling. Tessa gasped, coughed, choked, dropped onto hands and knees, mouth working for air, drawing in more and more of her lover, words, name pounding over and over in her brain. Izzy. Izzy. Izzy!

“I have to...” Tessa panted, tried to swallow, choked and retched instead. Fists dug into carpet, one hand squeezing violently against the scissors. “The smell... I can’t...” Eyes closed against the rising pain, forced tears from between lids, lips skinning away from bared teeth.

“I have to get rid of it! I have to get away from it!” She cried out suddenly. “The smell! Oh god! Izzy! Izzy!”

Time passed in a merciful haze again. Somewhere along the way, she had shed her clothes, and memories of hurling books and shelving into a corner haunted her in the darkness. Curled into a ball in the farthest end of the shower from the head, she found a fragment of the peace she sought, slept the drizzled and shivering sleep of the tortured, the broken slivers of images, dreams and memories slowly shredding her out of each sparse, short moment of tired, blank solace. One tight fist held the pair of scissors against her chest, held it like a blade poised between her breasts, wet steel cold, flat against skin and bone. How much time passed there, she didn’t know, couldn’t know. Crying softly and unable to sleep anymore, she stood, walked to the wall and collapsed forward against it, wet skin shivering, clinging brokenly to synthplast tile. Another indeterminable gulf of time passed before she pushed away again, fumbled with the dials that silenced the shower.

Eyes blinked numbly in the light of her quarters as she made her way to the bathroom mirror, toweled off the condensation that clung to it like a sheet of water. In the sudden clarity of her reflection, her eyes found the cool cobalt stare of another Tessa, a Tessa who looked haggard and distant, broken, her gaze almost dead, almost corpselike. In the back of her mind, something came alive, urged her into action, and with all the careful patience of a ritual, she gently dried herself, dropped the towel and stood staring blankly at her naked reflection in the mirror again. Somehow, one hand found a brush, left the pair of scissors in its place. Moving with that same slow sense of patience, she gently worked over every inch of her long, midnight hair, brushing it carefully and completely into a sleek silkiness. Beside the sink, the scissors beckoned, glinted with a tiny reflection of some unseen light. In a way, they reminded her of the blade-like appendages of the Cygnan that had stabbed her, that had called to life those orbs of deadly chrome, those slivers of vicious, living metal that had ripped so mercilessly through Izzy, eviscerating organs and tissues, reducing her to a bloody pulp, a lifeless husk that could only breathe the words I’ll miss you.

And then, without any sense of warning, Tessa stopped. Staring down at the scissors, something snapped, something in the way the steel caught the light, made it look viscous, liquid, chrome. Eyes rose to meet hers in the mirror, brush stalling in her hair, hanging in a river of silken midnight– she only felt it when the mirror cracked, shattered under the force of the fist that darted out to slam against it, blood welling across knuckles and shards of reflected skin, reflected midnight. The brush clattered across the floor, abandoned, and in the next instant, she had the scissors in her hands again, held in her fist like a knife, poised on the edge of an action her heart cried out for, her soul wanted, needed. Shards of crimson-stained chrome flashed back at her from the depths of the broken mirror, seemed to urge her on, bloodthirsty, eager. Do it. End it all. End it. End it!

She cried out as she raised the scissors, muscles tensing in a breath of hesitation, and then the blade came down, swept in on a vicious arc that flashed in the shattered glass, flashed with the colors of spilled blood even before she buried it into the ruins of the cruel mirror, twisted the blades like a pair of knives jutting from the chest of some Coralate soldier, that Coralate soldier, that damned blueskin. Glass clicked against steel, chittered as hands fell away from cold, bloodsmeared handles.

“No.” She said suddenly. “I won’t.” Then quieter, “I won’t.”

Somehow, she fell asleep curled into a ball of cold, bare skin beside the bed she’d shared with Izzy for as long as she could remember. Old blood clung to her cheek in a sticky crust, stiffened her wounded knuckles, stuck here and there in her hair. Sprawling out across the floor on her chest, she stared at the opposite wall, saw the subtle glow of a message waiting on the monitor of her console. Blinking tiredly, she picked herself up, stood swaying for a moment, then pushed herself forward, catching herself on the back of a chair before sitting down and triggering the playback.

Wake for Davidson, Harley and Copperfield, Izandra at eleven hundred hours.

A glance at the clock told her it was still somewhere in the morning, a little over an hour before the send off, the final farewell. Fresh tears pulled at Tessa’s eyes, lips parting as she drew in a long, shaky breath.

For the first time in years, she had lost two pilots.

For the first time in years, she was suffering through it alone.

Tessa...

Somewhere in the haze between dreams, a voice lingered, haunted Tessa’s ears. Colors swirled darkly though a sweetly beckoning abyss, and somewhere in the depths, she almost thought she could see light, could see...

“LC!”

Tessa’s eyes came open slowly, painfully, her vision a blur of light and broken color. In the haze, she saw something move, lines, a face, felt something brush against a body that still felt formless and undefined, reluctant to take its familiar shape around her. Lips moved sluggishly, formed words as she blinked to clear the blurriness off the face that watched her, the features whose brightness she recognized almost immediately.

“Hey.” She croaked, blinked, sniffed. “Phoebe. Hey, you’re okay.”

Phoebe nodded absently, gaze wholly focused on Tessa’s eyes. For a long moment, she just stood there, tears in her eyes, expression a battle somewhere between joy and sobbing agony, hands nervously knitting in front of her, until somewhere inside, something broke, forced her forward into a pounce that came so suddenly Tessa’s eyes hardly had time to widen even a fraction before the young Lieutenant collapsed against her.

“Oh my god, LC!” Phoebe sobbed into Tessa’s shoulder, clinging to her, burying her face into the nanofabric of her hospital gown. “I thought I’d lost you! I was so worried!” Her voice gave way to a sobbing cry as she buried her face further into Tessa’s shoulder, her chest. Slowly, shakily, Tessa moved one fatigued and uncertain hand onto Phoebe’s back, weakly rested it there.

“Easy, Phoebe, easy.” She sniffed, managing a smile despite the tears threatening to form in her own moistening eyes. “It’s okay now. I’m okay.”

“We were all worried.” Another voice added. Glancing up, Tessa caught the eyes of Jose Cordova, the gentle edge of a smile that he offered. Stepping up to the edge of the hospital bed, he hesitated, stopped a pace away, uncertain, unsure. A moment later, Phoebe pulled away, moved to stand upright again, hands already knitting back together in front of her.

“It’s good to see you’re okay, Jose.” Tessa smiled softly, straining a little to push herself up as she fought against the weakness that gripped her and used what passing strength she could muster to glance at herself, her surroundings. Medical, came the immediate realization, the Von. An intravenous line crept across her arm and into the sheets of the hospital berth, connecting her to a machine– and then the dizziness came, the nausea that rose up to wash through her, drop her back to the bed as quickly as she had risen. She exhaled sharply, and in an instant there was a nurse at her side, hands reaching out to her, hesitating as she closed her mouth, sunk lightly back into the bed. Eyes moved in distant, sluggish searching motions, lips parting, hesitating against a swallow.

“How... long was I out?”

“Almost ten hours.” The nurse reached out, clicked on a palm-sized flashlight and quickly opened and checked Tessa’s eyes, felt at her neck. “You’re lucky a team found you when they did. If you had lost any more blood, we might not have been able to bring you back from the brink.”

“What happened?” She blinked, licked her lips, brows knitting. “I don’t remember...”

The nurse hesitated visibly, met Tessa’s eyes and then looked away again just as quickly, sharing a glance with Phoebe and Cordova that said nothing, passed Tessa’s eyes virtually unnoticed. “We don’t really know for sure.” She finally said, clicking off the flashlight, taking a deep breath. “There was a puncture wound in your abdomen serious enough that we had to rush you into surgery, but no evidence of any projectiles, residue...” The nurse shook her head. “My best guess is you were stabbed by something.”

“Stabbed?” Tessa coughed the edge of an ironic chuckle. “Man, I don’t know what I had to drink last night, but it must have been some wild stuff if I can’t even remember being stabbed.” The nurse looked at Cordova, glanced back at Phoebe again. In the silence, Tessa closed her mouth, hesitated. “Hey... what’s up? Why is everybody so quiet and beat up about this?”

“Lieutenant Commander Eisenherz,” The nurse began, paused almost thoughtfully. “What’s the last thing that you remember?”

“I don’t know.” Tessa shook her head, cracked the edge of a grin. “Flying, I think. It’s all really blurry.” She shook her head. “Why? Did something happen?” Eyes roved, tracked across Phoebe’s strained features, Cordova’s steady, distant gaze. “Hey, where’s Izzy? Is she around?”

Phoebe swallowed painfully, face drawing to a pale shock as fresh tears worked their way out of the corners of her eyes. Suddenly off balance, uncertain, Tessa opened her mouth, tried to say something, offer something, but before anything could come, Phoebe looked down, sniffed, closed her eyes. Cordova pulled in a deep, steadying breath, then stepped closer, took a long, quiet moment to find his LC’s hand, to gently fold it into his own.

“Tessa, we...” He hesitated, shook his head against the pain that rose within him, fought to be released, boiled steadily under the walls he had lifted, raised around it. “I thought you knew.”

“Knew what?” Tessa swallowed, lips parting as an edge of cold panic set in, seized her heart and stilled her breath. “Jose, I...”

“She’s gone, Tessa.” He said quietly, hand gently squeezing hers, eyes blinking against a hint of moistness. “They found her laying next to you, holding your hand.”

And then, in a terrible flood of frigid pain and razor-edged memory, the whole thing came burning back into her brain, stitching itself deep into her psyche. Lips parted as she remembered, and as her eyes widened, skin tingling, burning, lost in a tide of vicious imagery that hurt to think about, hurt to focus on, a single word escaped her mouth, slow and small, so quiet only Cordova heard it pass her lips.

“No.” She managed. It didn’t seem real, and yet she knew it was, knew that in the flash of an instant, the Coralate had taken away the only person she’d ever truly loved, her reason for living, her reason for being, existing. Eyes closed on a kind of death-like stillness, and as the haze of shock settled over her, she felt the tears budding at the edges of her lids, pushing slowly through.

Izzy.

Oh god, Izzy.

For one terrible instant, time seemed to slow, to break apart and spread itself across the heavens on the wings of a fire so bright and violent that it scalded the eyes, burnt out the viewer and left every Operations officer reeling and disoriented. An instant later the shockwave hit, tossed the Von like a broken toy caught in the surging currents of a storm-wracked sea. In the space of a breath, Operations became a jarring freefall of bodies and fire, of darkness and an endless cascade of scorching sparks. Hilleboe woke up an instant later on the floor, blinking past the blurriness, the spots of blindness that swirled through his vision. One hand went to his head, to the crisply shaved military cut there, came away bloody. Halfway across Operations, his hat lay against the wall, abandoned. Johanson was the first to recover.

“Minimal damage.” She shook her head, smashed a fist against the sparking polyquid console. “Scratch that. We’re at seventy-eight percent for the hull– internal systems are shocked but recovering.”

“Weapons are toast.” Leighton stumbled away from her console, limped over to the crumpled shape of Abrams, checked his pulse.

“Is he?” Hilleboe tried to stand, collapsed again almost immediately as reality swept upward into a swirling current around him. Leighton was at his side almost immediately, catching him, helping him steady himself.

“Don’t move, Captain.” She said gently. “You’re hurt. David will be fine. He’s unconscious, but breathing.” She looked up, glanced in the direction of the Comm Officer. “Binford–”

“We have to...” Hilleboe stared blankly past her, stared into the darkness of the dead viewscreen. For an instant, a palpable sense of pure, irrational terror seized his heart, and he lurched backwards, away from Leighton and into a support. Confusion shot across the Tactical Officer’s features, and an instant later she was on her feet, following Hilleboe as he forced himself upright, fought the bendings, the swirlings of reality around him, and pushed himself into his chair. “Can you get a fix on the other Coralate ship?” He asked breathlessly. “Where are they!?”

“They’re already gone, sir.” Johanson glanced back at him. “They bent space right before the other ship detonated.”

“One less thing to worry about for the moment, then.” He shook his head, wiped blood out of his eye. Beside him, Leighton swallowed, stared, her eyes becoming alive and evasive only as the Captain fixed her with his steely gaze.

“I need you at your post, Lieutenant.” He said softly. Leighton nodded quickly in response, and a moment later, as she took her station, the Captain turned his eyes back to the dead viewscreen, stared into that impenetrable blackness. “Binford, raise medical. Tell them we’ve got wounded up here, but no priority cases.” He glanced at Johanson again, her sandy blond hair a tousle of feathery strands. “How long before we can get the viewscreen back online?”

“Working on it now, Captain.” Came Johanson’s quick response. “We’ve lost over eighty percent of our skin sensors– bypassing under these conditions is a tricky–” She bit her lip, leaned into the holographic data, sorted another sequence of data strings, tied working relay signatures into one another, ferreted out functional passages between huge clusters of burnt out systems. Looking up, she entered a quick series of commands, lips parting in hesitation. “That... okay.” She worked another quick sequence. “This should do it.”

At first there was only static, the digital snow of broken lines and stellar noise. Somewhere in the center of it all, there was a shape, light– a flash of clarity showed dark metal, an edge of debris, something spinning.

“Can you clean it up, Lieutenant?”

“I’m trying, sir.” Johanson shook her head. “I’m surprised we’re even getting a feed at all, it’s–”

And then, as if by some cruel or divine hand, the screen snapped into perfect clarity, showed the hazy yellow lines of plasmatic debris as they carved their way through the heavens in broken rings, skirting the glowing, charred chunks of metal that hung spinning among the stars. Hilleboe’s jaw dropped reflexively. There was no sign of the monstrous Wallace class Warship or the equally massive Coralate vessel that had been there only a moment ago– only a field of slag and broken, glowing artifice that mixed anonymously in the heavens like a sea of unrecognizable headstones.

“Jesus.” Hilleboe managed. There was nothing left of the Carl Sagan, nothing recognizable, nothing that could be recognized as even being part of the ship. He swallowed reflexively. Yuuki, jesus.“Johanson, what can you give me? Could anyone have survived that?”

“No sir.” The young Lieutenant shook her head, eyes wide, blind. “There’s no way...”

“What–” Hilleboe stumbled past the words, stumbled through the shock that had seized his heart. “What about our pilots? How many of them did we lose?”

“Jesus.” Came Johanson’s shocked, broken response. Eyes dropped to her console, hunted through data, but saw only isometric light, couldn’t make sense of the readings. “No, no, not good.” Tears pulled at her eyes, and in the next instant, she had her face in her hands, breaking down, sobbing into supportive palms. Hilleboe pulled in a steadying breath, shifted in his chair.

“Johanson!” He barked. “Dammit, this is hard on all of us. Pull it together! Report!”

“We–” She tried, but the sound came hesitant, broken. “Sir! Respectfully request to be dismissed from Operations until the completion–”

“Request denied.” He shot back. “I need you here. I–”

“Sir, with all due respect!” She shouted, cutting him off, face a wreck of pain and tears. “I had a brother aboard the Carl Sagan! I can’t even perform my duties right now and I– and I–”

“Lucy!” The Captain thundered, pushing himself upright, forcing himself into a standing position despite the buckling, the bending pressures that threatened to take him back down just as quickly. “You are an officer of the TCGND! Pull yourself together and act like it, soldier!”

For one long, stretching instant, it seemed as if Johanson’s face might buckle open at any moment, as if her earthy eyes might burst forth suddenly with a renewed flood of tears. Teeth clenched together against an unseen pain, fists balling at her sides, and then she pulled in a deep breath, nodded once, firmly, and managed a quick, strong-sounding “Sir.”

“Resume your post, Lieutenant.” Hilleboe nodded back, lowered himself slowly back into his chair as Johanson slipped back into her station and stared blankly at the isometric data again. Hilleboe set his jaw at an angle, looked back at the brutal swath of space that haunted the viewscreen. “Can someone tell me the status of our pilots, please?”

“Status is good.” Binford glanced back at the Captain suddenly, one finger switching reflexively between feed channels at a rate that was almost impossible to follow. The edge of a smile moved across his face as he added: “The warning went out in time. We didn’t lose a single rig!”

“And the others?” Hilleboe asked, leaning forward, gesturing. “The Constantine? The Feynman and the Ducornet?”

“All outside the blast radius, sir.” Johanson stared at the numbers, blinked, sniffed, closed her eyes on the exhale. “No damage.”

“Binford, advise the other ships to begin salvage and rescue procedures, giving priority to the Carl Sagan over the Hok.” He shook his head “Tell them we’ll catch up in a little bit. We still have a little cleanup to do here.”

“Roger that, sir.” Binford nodded quickly.

“And Johanson.” Hilleboe added, the edge of a smile pulling at his lips. “I think we can find someone to fill in for you if you’d still like to be dismissed.”

“That won’t be necessary, sir.” Johanson sniffed, looked up, eyes hardening as she stared into the isometric data milling across her console, blinked away the soft buds of bitter tears. “I’m an officer of the TCGND. My place is here.”

“Glad to hear it, Lieutenant.” Hilleboe nodded, smiling. “Glad to hear it.”