The Admiral and the Assistant

Grimthorn sat in the medbay, staring at the biopod. Kinnit rotated within, healing.

"Admiral?" One of the meds poked his head in. "We're changing shifts. It's time to go."

"When will she be better?" he asked.

"Ah... we don't know, sir. Just like when you asked yesterday. Um. But everything is going well. Her vitals are stable. She'll wake up when she wakes up."

Grimthorn stood and straightened his jacket.

"Very well. Call me immediately if she wakes."

"Of course, sir."

Grimthorn looked through the little window in the biopod. Her face rotated by, smooth and expressionless. He laid a hand on the cold steel containing her.

"I love you," he said to her silent form.

Her eyebrows twitched. She lifted her chin slightly and she cooed, as though she were trying to sing.

"Corpsman!" he barked. "She's moving!"

"Are you sure, sir? Sometimes in the biopod, the patient will twitch involuntarily and--"

The sensors on the biopod began beeping and pinging. The med sighed.

"Of course, right at the end of my shift," he muttered. Grimthorn shot him a dark look. "I mean, of course, sir, we'll get her decanted right away."

The med rushed off to fetch a batch of helpers. They returned and carefully removed the lid. Kinnit's body settled slowly down into the pearl-colored cushions at the bottom of the biopod.

She sat up slowly and blinked muzzily. She saw Grimthorn and smiled.

"Mmm. Hi, Grimthorn," she said. She rubbed her eyes.

"Kinnit? How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Really good," she said slowly, her face gradually lighting up. "I feel really well-rested. Like I slept for a month."

He grabbed her in a crushing hug.

"You did."

She sighed happily and returned the hug.

"I'm glad to see you, Grimthorn."

He shook his head, holding her close.

"Do you remember, when we first met?" he said, his voice muffled against her neck. "I said that you were too soft for this work? I take it back." He held her tightly. "I think I'm the one that's too soft for this work." He let out a shaky sigh. "I only hope you're as strong as you are hard."

She laughed.

"Grimthorn, I'm fine."

He released her and held her at arm's length.

"How much do you remember?"

"I remember getting into the shuttle. I tried to keep Senn calm while I throttled up. I just knew we couldn't let him get back to Techterra. If he'd escaped again..."

"Your instincts were right. Do you remember the-- the collision?"

"Not really. I over-juiced the v-thrusters, disabled the safety and popped the stasis field. I hoped the impact would be enough to knock him out of commission. I guess it worked?"

Grimthorn's mouth tightened.

"We had to carve you out of that shuttle. It took four welders with plasma cutters thirty minutes to cut enough of the shuttle's armor away to get to you. How's your arm?"

Kinnit held her hands up, looking at them.

"Which one? They both seem fine."

"Your right arm."

"It seems okay. Why do you ask?"

"Because you didn't have it when we put you in the biopod."

"Oh." She carefully closed her hand and put it in her lap.

Grimthorn let out another shaky breath.

"You're bad for my heart." He reached out and stroked her face. "I know it was--- circumstances, with the hostage situation, but-- I don't ever want to see you looking like that again. You were--" He paused and shook his head. "It's good that the medbay is close to the docking bay. I'm glad you're feeling better."

"I'm sorry, Grimthorn. I was only trying to stop Senn."

"I know," he said. His haunted eyes kept replaying the scene of her mangled body being carefully lifted out of the wreckage of the shuttle. "I know."

"Oh! Did Senn--"

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"He survived," Grimthorn said, his teeth clenched. "He was in one of the Marine's positions in the shuttle, in a troop seat. I'm going to have a word with the shuttle designers. We should protect the pilot seat as much as the troop seats in our Marine shuttles."

"Is he going to ever be well enough to face justice?"

"Unfortunately, yes. He's in a prison hospital right now. I wasn't going to waste the biopod on the likes of him." Grimthorn considered for a moment. "I don't think he'll ever walk right again, though. It's the least of what he's earned."

Kinnit frowned.

"Usually I'd fuss at you for talking that way, but in this instance... I think I agree."

Kinnit sat thought for a moment, then brightened as her dream recurred to her.

"Oh!" she cried. "I had some thoughts for the wedding! We should get Dame Haffa to sing for us. Wouldn't that be wonderful?"

"I... I suppose that's fine. Invite whoever you like."

"Yes! Wait, did you say I've been out for a month? That means we've only got..." she ran a few mental calculations. "We've only got a few days left! I need to make sure the baker Lucy recommended has the cake transportation lined up, and the florist is already downplanet. Did you hear anything from the dressmakers? I have so much to get ready!"

Grimthorn chuckled.

"Not even out of the biopod yet and you're right back to wedding planning."

She held her arms up.

"Then you should help me out of here so we can get married," she said coyly.

Grimthorn did, enthusiastically.

Captain Cohrmere sat in a small conference room on board the ISS Helix. The room was filled with the captains of the rest of the Arcturan detachment. The room was warm, being so tightly packed, and the mood was grim.

"Okay," Captain Cohrmere said, quieting the buzz of conversation, "rather than go through everybody one by one, I'll just ask the room. Has anybody been able to make any sense of these new formations? Anything at all?"

Awkward silence filled the room. Cohrmere let it linger long enough to become uncomfortable.

"Nothing? Again?"

"I mean, I understand the purpose of the formations," piped up one of the younger captains. "The defensive constellation, for example. It gives us the same capability as the hedgehog, but with more room for each ship to maneuver. It makes a lot of sense. I completely understand how it's more effective formation. I can see how it would be deployed in a battle. But when I start thinking about how to get into that formation, how to move in, it... it doesn't make sense to me. I don't understand how my ship fits in it."

Nods circled the room, followed by mutters of "Yes, that's exactly right."

Captain Cohrmere frowned.

"So we're just too dumb to get it, then?" Captain Cohrmere asked. "A roomful of captains of the most powerful fleet in the galaxy, and we can't figure out simple formations?"

The awkward silence grew again.

"It's not that, sir," the young Captain said again.

"Then how would you explain it?"

The young Captain frowned. He looked at the assembly. He paused, hesitant to speak his mind in front of so many older captains. Finally, he gathered his courage.

"Sir, I've been having these dreams--"

"That's not relevant," Captain Cohrmere cut in. "Let's stay focused on military matters."

"No, sir. I think it is relevant." Mutters of agreement filled the room. "We've been looking at this as a strictly military problem. We've been at it for weeks and weeks now, and there's been no progress. I think it's time discuss... some other possibilities about what's been happening."

Rumbles of agreement filled the room. Captain Cohrmere frowned disapprovingly.

"All right, then. Go ahead."

The young Captain cleared his throat.

"I've been having these dreams, sir. I've been dreaming of jumpspace."

There was a release of tension in the room, the collective sigh of something like relief. Captain Cohrmere pursed his lips.

"Go on," he said.

"For all my years in the Navy, I dreaded entering a jumphole. It filled me with terror, I couldn't move, couldn't think, I could barely breathe. In these dreams, sir, it's still jumpspace, but it doesn't feel scary any more."

"What does it feel like, Captain?"

"Well, sir," the young Captain said. He paused, thinking. "Well, sir, it feels like home."

Captain Cohrmere sagged, a tragic look on his face, and the buzz of hushed conversation in the room increased.

"All right," Captain Cohrmere said. "All right, quiet down. Everybody who's had these dreams, raise your hand."

Every hand in the room went up. Cohrmere's expression stiffened. Then he slowly raised his hand.

"What does it mean, sir?" asked the young Captain.

"I don't know, son," said Captain Cohrmere. "I've been thinking a lot about it. I was afraid that maybe I was the only one. I was almost as afraid that I wasn't."

Captain Cohrmere gazed at the assembled captains.

"They call us the survivors of the Battle of Arcturus. That's doubly wrong. We never got to Arcturus. We were lost in jumpspace along the way." He drew in a deep breath. "On top of that... I don't know that we survived."

The hushed conversation broke into open babble. Panic began creeping into voices.

"What are you saying, that we're ghosts or something? Wraiths?" one of them cried.

Captain Cohrmere stayed silent until the babble of voices quieted down. He stared at his hand, flexing it in front of his face.

"Or something," he said. "We're here. The Navy doctors ran us through every scan they could think of. We have bodies. We eat. We breathe. We exist. And yet..."

He frowned again, staring at his hand.

"We're not here. We exist, but we're not living."

"What do you mean, sir?"

"Show of hands, who's taken shore leave since getting things sorted out at home?"

The room stayed deathly still.

"Show of hands, who's had anyone on their ship take shore leave?"

Still nothing.

"We've got all the money we could possibly want. Every one of us could retire from the Navy right now. Why don't we?"

"Well," piped up one captain from the back, "it wouldn't be right, would it? I signed up for a career, not a quick stint and a pile of cash."

"Ah, but you've put in your time, haven't you? We've all served over 20 years. Ask anybody in the fleet if they'd be willing to trade places with you, if they'd have spent a lifetime in jumpspace."

"What are you saying, then?"

Captain Cohrmere paused in thought.

"I don't know what we are now. We have bodies, but our-- well for lack of a better word, I think our souls are still in jumpspace."

There was much muttering and shuffling of feet, but nobody spoke up.

"So what do we do?" asked the young Captain quietly.

Captain Cohrmere shook his head.

"We're not completely here, and we can't live there." He covered his mouth, thinking hard. "Perhaps we can ask the Cryptographers. I'll reach out to Admiral Stonefist, he's in regular communication with them. Maybe he can help us figure something out. Until then, we'll need to do the best we can within the Ninth Fleet. We all stayed on, therefore we all have a duty to the Imperium, and to the Navy."

"But we can't do the new formations!"

"Then we'll do the old ones. We'll do them like nobody's ever seen." Captain Cohrmere stood. "It's not what they're using today, but our formations expanded the Imperium across the galaxy." He raised a fist. "If wraiths is what we are, then we'll be wraiths for the Imperium! Our tactics subdued the Fyronix! Our formations smashed the Dravnik! The Kethul Enclave could not stand against our mighty fleet!. Regardless of what happens, we will fight. The Wraithfleet will stand by our oaths. We will protect the Imperium. The Imperium protects her citizens. All hail the Imperium!"

"All hail!" cried the Captains, their proud voices ringing through the dusty conference room.