Chapter 6: Kal

The Imperium dreadnaught First Fist floated serenely through the vacuum of space, the distant sunlight of the Xochi system’s host star shining dully off its smooth ceramic hull. It was two weeks into a six-week rotation patrolling the system for Surrie activity. Over the past six months, numerous Surrie groups, never more than three or four small ships, had been detected approaching the mining world of Zuxochi. Really less of a world than it was a large asteroid, it was the single richest deposit of rivinium known to exist in the Imperium. It was vital in the construction of shift generators. If the Surries captured the mines, it would be a devastating blow to the Imperium war machine. And so, for half a year, a regular fleet presence had been maintained to guard against a raid that might never even happen.

Ensign Kaleb Haruun opened his eyes. Everything was dark; his bunk curtain was drawn and there was a chorus of soft snores coming from the other side. He sat up slowly, careful to avoid hitting his head on the bunk above his own. That was a lesson he’d learned early. Pulling back the curtain, he swung his legs out over the edge, stifling a gasp as his bare feet touched the cold metal deck. One of these days, he’d get around to placing a rug or something there. He staggered over to his locker and quickly dressed. He checked the clock; he had twenty minutes before his duty shift started. Time enough for a quick breakfast.

He was brushing toast crumbs off his uniform as he relieved his night shift counterpart at the RADIS station. Range and direction in space, or RADIS, was a typical station for green officers. Meant to teach humility, patience, and a sense of responsibility, it was mostly uneventful and boring. At least during these sorts of patrol assignments. Kal tried to tell himself that it was a learning opportunity, that he was getting important experience learning how to tell the difference between an asteroid and a small enemy craft on the RADIS screen, but the truth was, he was dying to see some action. His shifts passed with glacial speed and he had yet to spot any unusual activity in his nearly one hundred and fifty hours of staring at the RADIS readout. He performed sensor sweep after sensor sweep, hour after hour, all with the same results; he read asteroids, free-floating gas molecules, and empty vacuum. There weren’t any other ships within the fifteen million mile rage of his station, whether they be Imperium, Surrie, or otherwise.

“Felsen,” Kal spoke softly into his headset. A woman with dark brown hair trimmed short and big blue eyes snapped her head up from the other side of the sensor pit.

“Yeah?” she asked from her station ten feet away.

“Can you monitor my station for a minute?” Kal asked her. “I’m falling asleep over here. I need a cuppa perk or else I’m gonna pass out on my console.”

He saw Felsen smirk. “Late night?” she asked playfully.

“Early morning,” Kal responded. He stifled a yawn. “That a yes?”

Felsen nodded. “Sure. Station twelve, yeah?”

“You got it,” he said. “Thanks, Mel. I’ll just be a few minutes.” He waited until his readout indicated that she had tapped into his station and then excused himself to the mess on the bridge level. Moments later, he was sipping at a steaming cup of perk, its rich aroma filling his nose while the bitter black liquid poured down his throat and cleared away the fuzz in his head. He finished his cup minutes later and made the trip back to his station in dread. The tedium was really getting to him; it was nearing his threshold of tolerance. He was considering requesting a transfer to a more dynamic assignment, even if it meant having to leave the bridge.

He sat back down at his station and replaced his headset. “Thanks, Mel,” he said.

“No problem, Kal,” she replied, transferring control back to his terminal. “Nothing to report. From either station,” she added glumly.

“There never is,” Kal said. “I’m starting to think this war is a myth.”

Ensign Felsen gave a soft laugh. “No kidding,” she said. “What I wouldn’t give for a Surrie right now.”

“You and me both,” Kal said. “Something to liven the place up a—” He was interrupted by a faint blip on his RADIS screen. It was such a weak contact that, for a moment, he thought he’d imagined it.

“What is it, Kal?” Felsen asked.

“I thought I saw something,” he answered. “But it’s gone now.”

“An asteroid,” Felsen offered. “Or a RADIS ghost contact. Sensor echo, that sort of thing.”

“Maybe,” he said, unconvinced. The blip returned. “There it is again!” he said. This time, the signal didn’t disappear. And it was joined by two more contacts. They were in formation.

He ran a secondary scan to confirm that these objects were really there. According to his instruments, they were solid, with a mass far below what asteroids of comparable size should have. That left only one alternative. He hit his proximity alarm. “Enemy contact!” he called out. “Three ships; range, one thousand miles and closing fast!”

He heard Felsen swear over his headset.

“Confirm!” a voice boomed from across the bridge. Commander Kreyne, captain of the First Fist, stood like a statue as he glared out the front viewscreen. “And get me visuals!”

Kal double-checked his readings. “Confirmed, sir!” he called out. “Three ships, mid-sized; galleass or corsairs. Getting visual contact now.” He transferred his data to the main viewer. The image of empty space was replaced with three ships in tight formation. His heart raced as the picture came into focus. Instantly, his palms were slick with sweat and his insides turned to ice water.

“Corsairs,” Commander Kreyne growled. “Those aren’t recon ships; that’s an advanced patrol! Scramble fighters!” he bellowed. “I want a defense screen around this ship and three squadrons sent back to the mine. And send a signal to High Command. Tell them we’re about to intercept the enemy and request reinforcements.”

“Sir, the nearest reinforcements are seventeen minutes away at top FTL speed,” called out a communications officer.

Kreyne frowned at the man. “Then you’d all better hope you paid attention during training, hadn’t you?” He turned to Kal’s section of the bridge. “RADIS team. I want continuous reports. Track those ships’ every movement and run extended scans of the system. I don’t want their friends to catch us unawares.”

“Aye, sir!” Kal called out in unison with his fellow RADIS operators. He expanded the sensor range to its maximum and did his best to maintain a balanced signal readout. Spread so far, the RADIS took constant manual adjustment to give a coherent reading. It was a stressful job, but it was exactly what Kal needed after suffering such tedious stagnation since he began his tour. Adrenaline surged through his veins and for the first time, he actually felt as though he were making a difference. It was all he had ever wanted to do, to be an important cog in the Imperium machine, and now he finally had his chance. It was terrifying and exhilarating all at once.

Kal’s fingers flew over his console, adjusting the myriad variables in order to maintain as clear a RADIS image as possible. So far, there were no secondary contacts. The three enemy ships were still closing fast, now just four hundred miles directly ahead; they were close enough to be seen as pinpricks of light with the unaided eye. Another fifty miles and they’d be entering maximum weapons range. It was there that they’d be at the biggest disadvantage. Corsairs were smaller than dreadnaughts, making them faster and more maneuverable. And their weaponry was impressive enough that three of them could pose a significant risk to a lone dreadnaught. But their weapons had far shorter range than those of the larger warship. They’d need to close to within two hundred miles before they could open fire. That meant they would be exposed to fire from the First Fist for at least ten seconds, long enough to sustain heavy damage if the Fist’s gunners were even half-decent.

Kal watched the RADIS screen become a flurry of activity as hundreds of fighter craft poured from the dreadnaught’s five spokes, each one a large hangar bay housing dozens of craft ready to launch at a moment’s notice. Most turned to intercept the incoming corsairs, but three squads broke off from the main body and sped back toward the mine.

“Fighters are away,” Kal confirmed. “Surrie vessels will be in weapons range in seventeen seconds.”

“Gunners, lock targets and prepare to fire the second they’re in range,” Kreyne ordered. “I want a tight concentration on the center of the formation. If we can get them to scatter, they’ll be easier to pick off one by one.”

The seconds counted down like hours in Kal’s mind. They said in the academy that your first enemy engagement was the most memorable, but Kal couldn’t imagine remembering much after this was all over. He seemed to have switch over to autopilot, running more on instinct and training than conscious thought. Everything was a blur of action and reaction.

“Weapons range in three-two-one-RANGE!”

“FIRE!” Kreyne bellowed. “All weapons fire!”

The huge ship shuddered underfoot as the heavy plasma cannons thrummed to life, sending lance after lance of devastating energy hurling toward the enemy ships. The corsairs absorbed the first wave of fire, the plasma bolts splashing across their bows and dispersed by their heavy ceramic armor. But as more strikes found their targets, their armor began to burn and crack. By then, the first of the fighter craft had closed to within range and had opened fire. Their weaker weaponry posed little immediate threat to the warships, but as the corsairs’ armor began to weaken, the fighters would exploit the breaks in their defenses and make devastating surgical strikes. It was a deadly tactic that had no real defense. Unless the Surries could eliminate the fighter swarm, they stood very little chance of surviving an encounter with the dreadnaught.

Fireballs blossomed in the distance as fighter craft were destroyed by the corsairs’ weaponry. Kal watched the contacts wink out of existence at an alarming rate. The Surrie ships had begun to widen their formation, but not enough. They were still close enough to offer one another cover fire. The fighters were getting decimated and the dreadnaught’s salvos weren’t causing enough damage.

“Range?” Commander Kreyne called out.

“We’ll be in their range in four seconds,” Kal responded. The others in his station seemed too focused or flustered to reply. “Two seconds, one, range!” On cue, the dreadnaught was rocked violently by the first enemy salvo impacting the hull armor. The lights on the bridge dimmed briefly.

“Damage report?” the commander demanded.

“Superficial hull damage,” called out an engineering officer Kal was unfamiliar with. “No breaches reported.”

“And our friends?”

“The lead corsair seems to be venting something,” the officer replied. “It doesn’t look like atmo. Could be their water reserves.” He scanned his console readout. “Hull damage on all three vessels, though nothing catastrophic. Hull plating looks to be around eighty percent and,” he flinched as another salvo shook the bridge, “their weapons don’t seem affected.”

Now that the corsairs had closed within weapons range, they spread out to attack the larger ship from multiple angles, using their speed and maneuverability to carry out devastating passes. More fighters flared out of existence and the damage reports were beginning to increase in severity.

“That last run took out all weapons on the third spoke!” called out the engineer after a particularly jarring pass by one of the corsairs. The lozenge-shaped ships were strafing the dreadnaught with deadly effectiveness. The upper hull of the massive ship was now pockmarked with blackened breaches spewing smoke and atmosphere into space. One of the corsairs was trailing burning atmo and smoke like a fiery comet, still spewing weapons fire at the dreadnaught. Kal had to give the Surries credit; they weren’t cowards.

“Where’s our godsdamned reinforcements?” Kreyne bellowed. He was clutching the arm of his command chair to steady himself as one of the corsairs made another pass across the bow of the ship.

“I’m tracking two inbound ships matching Imperium tags,” Felsen called out. “ETA twelve minutes, sir!”

“What’d they send us, ensign?” Kreyne asked, wincing as a console across the bridge exploded in a shower of sparks.

“The galleass Judicar and the dreadnaught Mother’s Mercy,” she answered.

“Send word as soon as they’re in range,” Kreyne ordered. “Tell Judicar to break off and join our fighters over Zuxochi. Tell the Mother to send half her fighters with them and bring the rest to bear on these godless curs out there.”

“Aye, sir,” the ensign said.

With the pounding they were taking, Kal wondered if they would make it until reinforcements arrived. But if Commander Kreyne was worried, he was doing an excellent job of hiding it. He looked angry more than anything, cursing with each strafing run.

“Concentrate on the most heavily damaged corsair,” the commander ordered. “Have our remaining fighters run interference between us and the others. Draw their fire away from us until the Mother gets here.”

The order was given and the bulk of the fire was turned to the badly wounded corsair, which could do little more than limp away from the tightening arcs of plasma. More and more strikes hit home, burning away vast swathes of hull material and exposing multiple levels of the interior to open space. Though he couldn’t see it, Kal imagined terrified crewmen getting sucked out into the vacuum, left to drift forever in cold isolation. He suppressed a shudder. Kal couldn’t imagine a worse death. He silently prayed to the Mother that they hadn’t suffered.

A terrific explosion caused the bridge viewscreen to go black momentarily as the bright light overloaded the image capture. When the image came back, all that remained of the corsair was an expanding cloud of hot gas and a field of debris spinning through the void.

“HA!” Kreyne barked. “That’ll give the other two something to think about!” He turned back to the RADIS station. “Any word on their friends?”

Kal shook his head. “Nothing registering on deep scan, sir,” he answered back. “If they have more forces coming, they’re taking their time.”

Kreyne rubbed at his chin. “Curious,” he said. “Though it’s possible they didn’t expect to encounter a dreadnaught out here. Stay sharp,” the commander ordered. “There may well be no further Surrie forces, but I’d rather not take the chance that there’s an enemy fleet ready to jump in any second.” He turned back to the viewscreen and watched the two remaining corsairs pulling away to regroup, temporarily cowed by the loss of their companion. “And I want this boat ready to shift the moment more forces arrive. Anything bigger than these corsairs could leave debris that might find its way back to impact the mine.”

Kal listened to Commander Kreyne barking out his orders and, for the first time, realized that they had entered battle without first entering Divine Space. He hadn’t even thought about it. But he supposed smaller skirmishes far away from inhabited space didn’t require shifting. With all the excitement and the adrenaline, he’d completely overlooked that rather huge detail. One of those things they don’t teach at the academy, he surmised.

The two surviving Surrie ships turned back toward the dreadnaught, splitting up to hit the great ship from the left and the right simultaneously, catching the First Fist in a deadly crossfire. The attack rocked the ship and power conduits overloaded in the ceiling, showering the bridge with a cascade of sparks before the automatic breakers cut the power from the conduits. Whole sections of the bridge went dark before auxiliary power kicked in.

“Where are our reinforcements?” Kreyne roared angrily. “How many fighters do we have left?”

“Three flights,” Felsen called out from her station across from Kal.

Kreyne swore. “That’s a fifth of our complement!”

“The corsairs’ initial attack devastated most of our fighters in the first pass, sir,” Felsen told him. “Our fighters are designed for larger targets; they’re vulnerable to smaller, faster ships.”

Kreyne shot Felsen a look of pure venom. “Thank you for the lesson, Officer Felsen,” he growled and Mel shrank down in her seat, all color draining from her face. Kal couldn’t help but feel for her. It was every green officer’s worst nightmare to incur the wrath of the commander of the ship. “Maybe your place is back at the academy, teaching new recruits the finer points of space combat!”

A new blip had appeared behind the First Fist on the RADIS screen. It was displaying an Imperium ID tag: Mother’s Mercy.

Thank the Five, Kal thought. “Sir,” he called out, happy to distract the commander from laying into Felsen, “Mother’s Mercy has arrived directly astern. They’ll be in firing range within thirty-six seconds.”

“It’s about time!” Kreyne roared. “Let’s see how these Surrie scum handle two dreadnaughts.”

The remainder of the battle was short and brutal. The combined firepower of the two dreadnaughts, coupled with the fresh waves of fighter craft, made short work of the pair of Surrie corsairs. Within a quarter of an hour, it was all over and the Mother’s fighters were making pass after pass over the Surrie debris field, destroying any pieces large enough to pose potential threats to Zuxochi less than one AU distant. Though most hands had been lost, Kal himself had captured a handful of Surrie escape pods on his RADIS screens; the men and women found within had been recovered and taken directly to the brig. Kal wasn’t sure what would happen to them from there on out. A part of him didn’t want to know.

After his shift, Kal found himself sipping at a steaming cup of perk and going over the whole battle in his head again and again. Repairs were already well underway all over the First Fist and it was expected to take more than two weeks in dry dock to fully recover from the confrontation. Their FTL engines had been damaged in the battle so the Mother’s Mercy was sitting off the bow of the Fist offering its protection until they could jump back to Oranidus’ shipyards. The damage to the ship was obvious and easily reparable. The emotional trauma from the battle was a different matter.

“You look like you could use someone to talk to.”

Kal looked up and saw Officer Felsen pull out the chair opposite him and sit, her own cup of perk in hand. She blew lightly across the top before taking a tentative sip of the steaming liquid.

“Huh?” Kal asked stupidly.

“Don’t worry,” she went on. “It was rough for me, too. Even without the Commander taking a pound out of my rump.” She took a breath. “We’ve been blooded; we’re real officers of the Imperium now.”

Kal tried to dismiss her implications. “No, I’m fine,” he said. “Really.” But he wasn’t fine and he was sure he wasn’t convincing anyone to the contrary.

“Kal, we helped kill people today,” Mel said. “Of course you’re not fine. I’m not fine. Yeah, they were Surries, the enemy, but they were also people. They were officers serving their cause just like you and me. And you and I and the rest of us on RADIS station, we played our parts in their deaths.”

Kal sighed. “Alright, fine,” he admitted. “It’s harder than I expected it to be. I’ve never hated them; my father always taught me that an enemy is just someone with a different point of view. They’re misguided, but they’re not evil. I don’t want them to die even if I know some of them have to.”

“I know,” Felsen said softly. “They say it gets easier,” she offered hopefully.

Kal shook his head. “I hope it doesn’t,” he said. “The day it’s easy to take someone’s life is the day I retire from service and buy a farm back on Albarra.”

Felsen wasn’t sure what to say to that so she opted to sip at her drink in deafening silence.

“What do you think will happen to the ones we recovered?” Kal asked after a few moments of quiet. “The ones from the escape pods? Will they be tried and sent to Cadmeus?”

Felsen shook her head. “No idea,” she replied. “Probably.” She gave a little shudder. “Boy, I can’t imagine being sent there. Have you ever seen images of those deserts?”

“No,” Kal told her. “I mean, I’ve heard the stories along with everyone else, but I’ve never seen pictures. Is it really that bad?”

“Worse,” Felsen said. “One of my uncles was a guard at the main prison facility. He said that half the compound isn’t even walled off. It’s built into a mountain, see. Solid rock. The part that faces out, they don’t bother blocking off because no one could survive for long outside the prison. The nearest water is hundreds of miles away. You’d die of dehydration long before you got anywhere near it. And the prisoners know, too. No one even bothers trying to escape anymore unless they’re planning to die. And as far as the prison is concerned, they’re welcome to it. One less mouth to feed, I guess.”

“That sounds awful,” Kal said.

“Yeah, well, don’t feel too sorry for them,” Felsen said with a bit of an edge working its way into her tone. “The people they keep there aren’t exactly locked away for tax evasion. These are murderers, rapists, prisoners of war. These are bad people.” She dropped her gaze to her cooling perk. “My uncle was murdered during a riot there a couple years back. Someone stabbed him fifteen times. In all the confusion, they never figured out who did it.”

“I’m sorry,” Kal said thickly, feeling a flush of embarrassment. He never knew what to say in these situations. “That’s really awful.”

“Yeah,” Felsen said, nodding. “Mom took it pretty hard. It was her little brother, see. They were close.”

“Is that sort of thing common there?” Kal asked.

Mel shrugged. “It’s not exactly uncommon,” she said. “It’s a rough place. Things happen.”

Kal’s mind drifted to the new POWs sitting in the Fist’s brig and wondered how many of them were truly bad people who deserved to be locked away with the sort of people who murdered Felsen’s uncle. What if he had been captured? Did he feel he deserved to get sent to a place like that?

“What are you thinking?” Felsen asked, noticing his pointed silence.

Kal shook his head. “Nothing,” he lied. “Just clearing my head. Lots of thoughts in there after today.”

“I know what you mean,” she said. “It was terrifying and exciting and disturbing all at the same time.”

“Yeah,” Kal said in agreement. “It’s like, we were finally doing something, making a real difference. But we were in real danger while we were doing it. And to do it, we had to kill a bunch of other people. There’s a lot of conflicted feelings rattling around my skull right now.”

Felsen nodded. “Me too,” she told him. “But we just have to remind ourselves, we’re fighting a war. People die. We can’t get hung up on every death and lose sight of the bigger picture. And never forget that they fired the first shots a hundred years ago. They started this war.”

“I know,” Kal replied softly.

“You should get some sleep,” Felsen told him as she stood and stretched her arms above her head. “It’s been a long day. We could all use a little shuteye.” She grabbed her mug from the table and nodded to Kal. “See you next shift?”

Kal nodded back. “Next shift,” he said. Felsen left the mess in the direction of the crew quarters, leaving Kal alone to stew in his thoughts.

One Year Later

Life aboard the First Fist hadn’t really settled down much after that first Surrie encounter. Kal had joked once that the war seemed to be a myth, to be little more than a bedtime story told by one’s parents to get them to behave. But since that day, he’d discovered that the war was no myth. The war was real and it was ugly and it was all around him.

Kal lay in his bunk, listening to the soft breathing of Corporal Emelia Felsen as she slept beside him. He and Mel had bonded after that first encounter with the Surries, and their relationship had quickly blossomed into something more. Fraternization with your fellow officers wasn’t strictly forbidden, though it rarely ended well. They’d tried to resist their feelings for one another for a while, but their attraction to one another was strong and the effort to avoid it seemed like wasted energy. Once they let go their reservations, they found themselves not just happier people, but better officers. Often stationed together, their relationship helped them work more efficiently. So long as their duties didn’t suffer, Commander Kreyne wasn’t interested in their downtime.

For a while, Kal just lay there, listening to Mel breathe and the underlying bass thrum of the Fist’s anti-matter reactor core. It was a soothing combination, one that he had come to associate with contentment. It was comforting and familiar now. It felt like home.

He checked his watch. Their shift started in half an hour. He’d put off getting up for too long.

“Hey,” he said, gently nudging Mel next to him. When that didn’t work, he shook her harder. “Wake up, Corporal,” he said in his most authoritative voice.

Mel stirred. “Sir, yessir,” she said sleepily, not opening her eyes. “Whatever you say, sir.”

Kal grinned and gave her rear a little pinch beneath the covers. “Now, soldier!”

“Hey!” she cried, giving a little jump, now wide awake. “I’m up! Jeez,” she said, rubbing her butt. “Jerk,” she said. She tried to look angry, but her scowl broke and she smiled back at him, leaning over for a kiss. She checked her watch and groaned.

“I know,” Kal said. “C’mon, we have time for a quick shower and something to eat before shift.”

“Or,” Mel said with a salacious grin, “we take a slightly longer shower and skip breakfast altogether.”

That was a good shower.

Kal stepped onto the bridge a few minutes before his shift began, Mel following close behind. There was a little spring in their step that few could miss. They got some knowing glances from the night crew as they were relieved.

Mel took her seat at her RADIS station; she had been promoted to lead communications officer, but still spent most of her time staring at a blank screen. Kal, however, climbed the stairs to the command dais, where Commander Kreyne was already sitting in the captain’s chair going over reports from the night shift. Kal had recently been promoted to lieutenant and joined a small group of tactical advisors Kreyne liked to surround himself with at all times.

“Lt. Haruun,” Kreyne said in lieu of a greeting.

“Morning, Commander,” Kal said, giving the older man a respectful nod. He’d worked closely with Kreyne in the last year, had come to respect him in a way he really only reserved for his father. Even his instructors at the academy hadn’t gained the level of admiration Kal had for the Commander. Kreyne was a good man, a loyal and pious man. He was the epitome of everything Kal stood for, everything the Imperium stood for.

“Overnight there were reports of a patrol near Sector 87 losing contact with their base ship,” Kreyne told him, wasting no time in briefing Kal on the news of the day. “Their ship, the Crovan Sunrise, asks that we check in on their last known position as we are the closest ship to that sector.”

“And do we suspect Surrie involvement, sir?” Kal asked. Kreyne had handed him the report and he skimmed it now. The patrol consisted of three scout ships and five support fighters. It seemed unlikely that all eight craft would coincidentally develop communications malfunctions simultaneously. Logic would dictate that at least one would have been able to send a message back to their ship should there have been some sort of accident. The report stank of foul play.

“We do,” Kreyne told him. “Our orders are to locate the patrol’s approximate last known location and see what we see. Best case scenario, we find eight ships with bad communicators. Worst case...” He let it trail off. Kal knew what the worst case scenario was.

“I’ll have pilots and gunners at action stations, sir,” Kal assured him. “If the patrol was ambushed, the Surries won’t be able to catch us unawares.”

Kreyne nodded. “This is why I like you, Lieutenant,” he said. “You anticipate my needs without me having to tell them to you.”

Kal grinned at that. Kreyne wasn’t terribly forthcoming with praise, so it was something to bask in when it happened. “Just trying to make your life easier, sir,” he said.

Kreyne gave a little chuckle at that. “Son,” he said, “if you made my life any easier, I’d have to stay in my quarters and let you drive the boat.”

“That’s the dream, sir,” Kal replied. “I’ll issue those orders right now, Commander.”

Kreyne gave a curt nod. “Tell them we should arrive in-system in less than three hours,” he said. “I want Stingers primed and ready to launch the minute we exit FTL.”

“Yes, sir,” Kal said, relaying the orders to the Commander of the Air Group. The Fist’s CAG was a woman nearly twice Kal’s age who had seen more frontline combat time than just about anyone Kal had ever met. The nose of her Stinger was so full of stenciled on kills that she had to stop keeping score.

“Lieutenant Haruun to Captain Trace,” Kal said into his comm, “Commander Kreyne has issued orders that all pilots are to be on alert and in their craft within three hours. That’s 1100 hours. Suspected Surrie activity in Sector 87. We’re going in hot. Further details will be relayed to your command terminal.” He sent the orders from his screen.

“Captain Trace, acknowledged,” Trace said after a moment. “Orders received. Our birds will be primed and ready by 1100 hours, Lieutenant. Trace out.”

“Good flying, Captain,” Kal said. “Haruun out.”

“You’ve got a reputation,” Kreyne said over his shoulder, his eyes never leaving the readout screens projected into the air before his chair.

“A reputation, sir?” Kal asked, puzzled.

“People like you,” the commander said. “You have a reputation for being easy to work with. You inspire respect.” He gave a little grunt of amusement. “I always found it easier to command respect, but to each their own.”

The commander spun his chair around to look at Kal. “You’re smart, capable, and people like you. Where do you see yourself in five years?”

The question caught Kal off guard. He honestly hadn’t given it much consideration. Ambition had never really been his driving force in life; more often than not, Kal allowed the Five to guide him to wherever they deemed he ought to be. Applying to the academy on Titania had been the first time he’d ever really taken charge of his own life instead of going wherever the flow took him.

“I’m not sure, sir,” he answered honestly. “Hopefully still under your command, if I’m being frank. I’ve found you to be an inspiration to me, sir, if I may be candid.”

“Son,” Kreyne told him, “if that were true, you wouldn’t be satisfied with just being under my command in five years.” The older man narrowed his eyes at Kal, giving him a long, hard look. “You have potential, you just need the drive to realize it,” he said finally.

“I’m not sure I understand, sir,” Kal said. What was the commander going on about?

“Lieutenant, I’d like to take this opportunity to inform you that I have officially recommended you to Imperium High Command for formal consideration.”

“Consideration for what, sir?” Kal asked.

“Your own command,” Kreyne told him. “Oh, it won’t be any time soon,” he said quickly upon seeing the panic on Kal’s face. “But someday, I see you sitting right here.” He tapped the arm of the command chair. “You have it in you to have your own command.”

“You really think so, sir?” Kal asked. He felt his face flush.

Kreyne nodded. “I do,” he said. “You may not have noticed, but command comes easily to you. I’ve watched you, seen how you interact with subordinate officers. And I’ve seen how they look at you. They see it, too.”

Kreyne spun his chair back round toward his readouts again. “And now High Command will see it, too,” he told Kal. “I intend to send them regular reports on you. And I’d like you to spend more time here on the command deck. There’s no better place to get experience than the helm of a dreadnaught. It’ll mean long hours,” he said. “And less...social time.” Kal understood the unspoken implications and glanced at Mel, who was busy speaking with one of her subordinates in the RADIS pit. “But I think it’ll pay off in the long run.”

Kal nodded. “Thank you, sir,” he said, and he meant it. He’d never considered command before then, but he had to admit, the idea felt good to him. Felt right. “I hope I don’t let you down, sir.”

“You won’t,” Kreyne said with confidence. “Now, I believe we have a trap to spring in Sector 87.”