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.”