The Admiral and the Assistant

Captain Minius frowned at his small console screen. He was sitting on the bridge of the Ocher Dawn, Brutus to his left and Flander to his right. They'd been gathering more scrap in the Alvor sector.

Brutus' brow wrinkled in worry. Minius had not been as excited about the scrap as he should have been. He'd hoped that once the matter of the Oracle had been settled that the Captain would return to his old self. Instead, after the news of the Feeder attack on Ceon 12, he seemed even more concerned, withdrawn and moody than ever.

"What's wrong, Minius?" Brutus asked finally.

Minius shook his head.

"Nothing. Everything are fine."

Brutus' brow raised skeptically.

"It are fine!" Minius assured him. "I just have been thinking lately."

"Yes?"

"It are these Feeders," Minius said finally. Brutus closed his eye in resignation. Of course. Minius continued. "I did hear what they did on Techterra."

"Minius, we did what we could. We forwarded their information over to the Admiral." Brutus shrugged. "I think we helped."

"Oh, I know, we did, we did." He still looked pensive. "I do have a concern about them, though."

"Minius, what's going on? You've never worried about the rest of the galaxy before. Let's just do what we've always done, collect our scrap and take care of ourselves. The galaxy's too big for us. Leave all that to the likes of the Navy. We should focus on selling scrap."

Minius stared quietly at his console, unseeing, for a long minute.

"What if we wake up one day and there are no one to sell our scrap to?" he said.

Brutus opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out.

"I have been hearing rumors when I go downplanet," he said. "They say the Imperial Navy were destroyed. They say the Feeders can't be stopped. Some of the older scrappers are stocking up, preparing to live in space for a long time, to get away from inhabited systems." He finally met Brutus' gaze. "They do say it are the end of the Imperium."

Brutus scoffed, but there was no heat behind it.

"That's-- that's nonsense. Flander, tell him that's nonsense."

The mute robot tapped twice on the deck.

Brutus shook his head in frustration.

"Look, think about your Admiral. Do you really think he'll let a bunch of aliens destroy the whole Imperium, even if they could?"

Minius looked at his hands.

"I do not know if he can stop them. I have heard he may already be dead."

"Then what do you want?" Brutus exploded. "We're scrappers in a ship that's just barely holding together! What do you think we can do?"

"I do not know," Minius said quietly, idly playing with his fingers. "I have run away from dangers my whole life. I did run away from home in my youth and joined with the Red Eclipse pirates. I did run away from them after I did have to kill Crag Mullin. I did run away from the girl I met years later. Old Jasper did finally give me a place where I thought I did not have to run. But it is because here I can do nothing but run from place to place." He gestured at the Ocher Dawn. "This are my home. Space are my home. No planet, no government, nothing left to run from. That is what I did think. But now..."

"Look, Minius, you've been spending too much time thinking about this Admiral. We can just--"

"Just nothing!" Minius roared. "I are tired of running! I are tired of fleeing to a narrower and narrower life every time it gets hard! I are ready to stand and say 'no more!'"

Brutus recoiled in shock. Minius rarely let his temper show.

"But Minius," he said gently, "we can't do anything."

A light on the console flickered. Flander tapped, bringing attention to it.

"Comms," Minius said gruffly. He poked his console. Admiral Stonefist's face appeared, and some of the tension unwound from Minius.

"Admiral!" he said, some of his old energy returning to his voice. "It are good to see you well."

"Likewise, Captain Minius," Admiral Stonefist said. "I wanted to talk to you about your role as a privateer."

A flash of nervousness crossed Minius' face. That was Admiral Stonefist, right to the point, as ever.

"Are we doing aright?" Minius asked. "We haven't broken any rules, I don't think."

"Nothing like that," Admiral Stonefist said. "We'd actually like you and your ship to become an official part of the Ninth Fleet."

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Minius' eyes widened with something like horror.

"The... Ninth Fleet?"

"Naturally, you would receive full compensation as ship and crew of the Imperial Navy. Your vessel would be refitted to repair existing damage, and enhanced with Naval technology."

Minius licked his lips and looked at the rest of the crew of the Ocher Dawn. They looked no less horrified than he did.

"Admiral... we are no combatants," he said finally.

"There are many roles in the Navy that don't involve combat," Grimthorn said. "I was thinking your vessel would make an excellent recon ship."

"Ah... I do not know if--"

"A recon ship would scan, collect data, and report back to Central Command. Naturally you would be outfitted with some weaponry for self-defense."

"Ah, ah... I do not know about this, Admiral."

Admiral Stonefist's face became a little more withdrawn.

"I'll be straight with you, Captain," he said. "We are having to rebuild the Ninth Fleet more or less from scratch. I would not normally ask this, but we are in a deadly tight spot."

A thick, uncomfortable silence settled over the bridge of the Ocher Dawn. Even the rattling of the engines seemed muted.

"Are it really that bad?" Minius asked.

Grimthorn paused, as though wondering how much to reveal. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

"It's worse. Our next stand is likely to be our last," he said quietly. "And once the Ninth Fleet falls for the final time, the rest of the galaxy will quickly follow." He straightened and fixed Minius with a level stare. "I'll understand if you don't want to get involved any further. That's perfectly reasonable. If you decline, my personal recommendation would be to make yourself scarce. I'm sure you know some quiet corner of the galaxy to hide away in. Get far away from any inhabited system, and stay there as long as you can."

Minius looked sick.

"Are there no hope?"

"There's always hope," Grimthorn replied, standing stiffly straight. "Even if we can't see it right now. But I have sworn to protect the Imperium with my life. If the Feeders are going to destroy the Imperium, they'll only do it when when my corpse is floating through the dead cold of space."

Minius' face softened.

"I do understand, I think." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "I will help you with this, Admiral. I will become part of the Ninth Fleet."

"Minius!" Brutus cried in shock and outrage. Even Flander managed to look surprised.

"If my crew does not want to join," he said, as much to the other occupants of the bridge as to Admiral Stonefist, "I will divvy out their shares of the Ocher Dawn's holdings. No one will have to stay."

Captain Minius took a deep breath.

"If the galaxy are to fall, I will fall with it," he said. "I will not run again to a still narrower life. I will not cling to the barest existence and call it mine. I will mean something at last." He took a deep breath. "Where do we start, Admiral?"

Herin Kasra grinned. He was in his thinsuit, floating loosely within the structure of the Ash-Tongue's boneship. He watched as two of the Feeders prepared his place, prepared the device that would change him.

Getting here had been easier than he'd expected. After sorting out the particulars with his Feeder friends-- now his Feeder family, he supposed-- Herin had hired a short-haul freighter, just big enough to carry a shuttle through jumpspace. Once they were in the appropriate sector, it was easy enough to eliminate the Captain and take the shuttle. It was shockingly easy to steal a ship and shuttle when you didn't have to consider the consequences.

He was so excited to get started with the Feeders that he didn't even take his time with the Captain. Just killed him and moved on. He had bigger and better things waiting for him.

Once the boneship had arrived, he'd navigated the shuttle out of the little bay and as close to the Feeder's ship as he could manage. He'd donned his thinsuit and drifted over, navigating into the labyrinthine structure of the boneship. Movement was easy; the gaps in the struts were plenty large enough to maneuver through, and the bones themselves provided plenty of natural handholds. There was no apparent rhyme or reason to the structure of the thing. Struts seemed to simply grow and branch in random directions.

Herin had been surprised at the bones themselves. They were warm. The thinsuit shielded him from the cold of space, but the temperature reading rose as he entered the boneship. Additionally, there was a little oxygen. Not enough for him to survive without a thinsuit on, but the tiny bit of gas clung to the interior of the ship somehow.

The temperature continued rising the further in he went. Whatever the Feeders were, they liked it warm.

When he'd finally met with them, he'd nearly giggled. The closest analogy he could think of was that they looked like giant, stretchy shrimp. They had long, segmented bodies that curved in the middle, with hundreds of tiny arms. Their short arms were swift and deft as they finished the preparations.

Herin's mind went back over the conversations he'd had with them. He didn't know much about them, but he know enough. The Feeders were effectively immortal, as long as they could feed. He'd been a little surprised about how easily they'd agreed to turn him into one of them, but in the course of their conversation it came out that Feeders were a constructed species. They couldn't reproduce on their own, so they'd developed the technology to turn other species into Feeders. There had been lots of talk about compatibility.

Eventually, Herin realized that their talk of "compatibility" had less to do with biology and more to do with mindset. He laughed to himself.

Finally, in a galaxy full of muddled thinking and misplaced morality, he'd found an entire species of clear thinkers.

The two Feeders worked around a large golden egg nestled in the bone structure. It split open lengthwise and levered open. The Feeders gestured for him to get out of his thinsuit and into the egg.

He paused only briefly. If they'd had treachery in mind, it would have been far easier for them to shoot his shuttle down than to engage in all this fuss with the egg.

He sipped a big breath and stripped down. His suit beeped atmosphere warnings at him as he zipped it open. Sweat sprang out on him and dried almost immediately as he was exposed to the thin air. It was as hot as an oven. Holding his breath, he pushed over to the egg and settled his nude form within.

The shell closed over him, locking in place. There was barely enough room to move, and his lungs were spasming. He finally had to draw breath. He diaphragm pulled, but there was nearly nothing to pull from. He gasped, trying to pull oxygen from the limited atmosphere.

The egg suddenly flooded with a gel-like fluid. It was blisteringly hot. If he'd had any air to work with, Herin would have gasped in pain. The burning fluid buoyed him, then tightened around him as the pressure rose. Herin tried to thrash, but there was no room in the egg. In desperation, he gasped again, his lungs screaming for relief. The high-pressure gel rushed into him, filling his lungs, filling his stomach, forcing its way into every part of his body.

He flailed for a moment more and then stilled. His lungs stopped screaming. His limbs stopped thrashing. Gel flowed around him. It no longer felt hot, but only comforting. A strange calm descended over him. Oxygen began flowing directly into his bloodstream without all the complicated pushing in and out of the diaphragm.

He knew from their earlier discussion that his full transition would take several weeks, but already he felt right at home.

Herin Kasra smiled for the last time as a human and began his ascendancy to a Feeder.