War Angel: part fifty-one

Jack’s door chimed and it swung open allowing Sarah to enter. She looked at him leaning against the wall and cocked an eyebrow at his odd positioning. “Permission to drop the formal crap, Desperado?”

He exhaled. “That would be fantastic.”

“Whatcha doing in here? Getting all broody and moody?”

Jack ran his fingers through his hair. “I am,” he said with a bit of flair, “planning.”

She nodded. “That’s good. How’s that working out for you?” He opened his arms and shrugged. “Oh. That badly, then. Well, that is sort of why I’m here- the whole ‘what’s next’ thing.”

He looked at the ceiling. “I know we didn’t win that one because we had a genius plan. I’d like to avoid being that stupid again.” Suddenly he shifted his gaze to her. “Survival is going to be a matter of cleverness. So here’s my first bit of cleverness: this tub needs a first-mate. You’re elected.”

Sarah mock curtseyed. “I’m honored and thrilled.” He started to reply but she cut him off. “Okay, first thing I want to suggest.” Jack let out a short laugh. “We need to fix the gunnery problem. In our first firefight, you had an unqualified crewmember working the weapons.”

“That crewmember helped design the retrofit of the ship,” he replied.

“But,” she said, steadying herself, “we have an crewmember on board who could kill everybody here in about three minutes, whether by hand or with a weapon. I think we should consider letting her play with the guns.”

Jack sat forward and reached for the comm. “Bridge? F.A. are you there?”

The comm. crackled to life. “Present.”

“F.A., how would you feel about shifting over to the weapons console going forward?”

“Like it was home,” she replied.

“Done,” Jack said, then closed the channel. He looked up at Sarah. “Anything else, first-mate?” She sat down next to him and began lifting his shirt over his head.”

“I’m in the mood to break any rules that might involve fraternization, Captain.”

Gina strolled onto the bridge, stretching and yawning. She saw Kate slouched down in the captain’s chair, feet propped up on a small crate. “And here I was worried you wouldn’t find a way to relax,” she said.

Kate looked over her shoulder and watched Gina walk down to the conn and sit in the pilot’s seat. “I’m not uptight every hour of the day, Gina.” She paused, then added, “just most of them.”

The War Angel’s pilot snorted. “Wow! Kate Stinson just made a joke! It really must be the end of the world.” The duo looked at each other for a moment and let that statement sink in, neither wanting to address the reality. Finally, Gina filled the silence. “So what’s been going on?”

“I shot an asteroid for Richard, which I thought was great. But he swore a lot, so I think cannon three isn’t quite as fixed as he thought it was.”

“Richard knows how to swear?”

Kate nodded. “In a very real way, it turns out. Guess he just needs the right push. There may be hope for the boy yet.”

“Don’t tell him that. You know—“

“I’m not blind. I’ve caught him looking at me, and then he gets all nervous and shy. It’s cute. Pathetic and sad. But cute.”

Gina shook her head. “Ouch. True. But still: ouch.”

“Oh- Jack called down and asked me to take over at weapons. So he seems to be getting a clue. Slowly.”

“That’s a relief. Both the clue thing and that you’ll be doing the shooting. No offense to Sarah, but…”

“…She doesn’t exactly have my skill set. Right.” Kate cracked her knuckles. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to our next shot at those bastards. With any luck, Jack is reading those old journals of his and coming up with ideas for how we can take the fight to them. If we don’t, I’m damn sure they’ll bring the fight to us.”

Suddenly, the hyperfrequency light lit up, accompanied by a loud chirping sound. Kate and Gina stared at it as it whistled and tweeted, and after a couple of minutes it finally stopped. The light began to blink at a slow, hypnotic pace. Finally, they looked at each other and shrugged.

“You were saying?” Gina said.

War Angel: part fifty

2142- In Orbit Around Pluto

Jack leaned against the bulkhead in his quarters and exhaled softly. He mentally replayed the battle against the Omegan ship, step by step, analyzing the decisions he had made, looking for what went right and what he needed to improve upon. His logical, rational mind told him what he already knew: the War Angel had been damned lucky to survive that fight.

None of them had considered how difficult it would be to slow the ship coming out of the tachyon drive. He had asked someone to play gunner who had no practice and no training with the equipment. A smart captain would have entered such an engagement with a backup plan and an escape route in place, just in case something went horribly wrong. “The entirety of my plan,” he realized, “was to keep shooting until we hit the target we were aiming for.”

“I had no idea how tough the ship would be to maneuver once we started taking hits,” he thought, and his pilot was barely qualified to fly. One word kept popping into his mind, over and over and over: “stupid.” He rubbed his temples. “Very, very stupid.”

And yet… as stupid as they had been, they won. The War Angel was now stocked with supplies that gave them a cushion. Time wasn’t on their side, but it also wasn’t hanging over their heads like a sword, either.

Suddenly, Jack slapped the wall above his head. “If we can beat a ship like that being stupid, then we can damn well take these bastards on by being smart!”

Richard connected the last two wires inside the open bulkhead and then dropped his pliers into his back pocket. His lips uttered a silent curse as he stared at the intricate machinery, and then he stepped to a comm. port and hailed the bridge.

“Bridge. F.A, here, Clover. What’s up?”

He cleared his throat. “I just polished up behind the panel where the… thing… was found. I think cannon three should be ready to go. Need’s to be tested, though.”

She suppressed a laugh. “I think I can shoot something for you, Clover. Hang on.” Richard could hear her bustling around the bridge. After a minute, her voice returned. “I’ve got a nice, small rock of some kind about a thousand kilometers off that side of the ship,” her voice echoed through the corridor. “Targeting…” she paused, “umm, you may want to step far away from the area you just fixed. Just to be sure.”

His eyes opened wide. “Uhh, yeah. Right.” He jogged away from the comm. and yelled his readiness.

“Five… four… three… two… firing!”

Outside, on the hull of the War Angel, cannon three sprang to life, firing a burst of energy through the blackness of space, striking a passing meteoroid with its righteous fury and reducing it to its component atoms.

“Direct hit!” Kate yelled. Richard began walking back to put the cover over the bulkhead, but as he did, a small burst of electricity and fire burst forth from the conduit. He grabbed a nearby fire extinguisher and began spraying it over the burning circuitry controlling the cannon. Suddenly, the comm. sprang to life with a stream of profanity and anger that Kate would have guessed Richard incapable of even knowing.

“So, there’s a problem, then?” she asked gently.

The channel closed without him replying.

War Angel: part forty-nine

2142- Midway between the Earth and the Moon

Life aboard the Kan’Tar was a portrait in organization and discipline. Soldiers, always armed and armored, strode confidently down the ship’s corridors in packs of six. Each Omegan carried himself as though death awaited around each corner; ramrod posture, arms at the side prepared to draw his sidearm, eyes that could bore a hole through the hull with their focus.

Yet they would rarely see action.

Promotion to the Kan’Tar was a reward for distinguished service to the fleet. Only the finest of warriors were given duties aboard the fleet’s flagship. It took years of working one’s way through the ranks: first you trained as a pilot or as infantry; then, if you were worthy and you survived long enough, you were assigned to a B-class warship; demonstrate potential there, and perhaps you were be assigned the center seat of leadership. However it went, Omegan soldiers all knew- the B-class warship was where most Omegans finished their careers and their lives.

But those that were truly special were granted special appointment to the Kan’Tar. The ship was not elegant in design, of that there could be no argument. Its size was too large. The top was smooth and flat, the component pieces of the rail gun existing down the center of the ship. Indeed, one looking at the Kan’Tar from a certain angle might suggest that taken on the whole, the vessel itself somewhat resembled a bulky rifle. However, this rifle was designed to hold and weaponize small asteroids and other debris before firing them at helpless worlds in the Omegans’ path.

That lack of elegance was more than made up for by the destructive power of the craft. In order to protect itself when it went into asteroid storms to arm itself, the external hull was five times thicker than that of a B-class. The sides and bottom were lined with a dozen laser cannons. Any ship that dared strike at the Kan’Tar soon realized its folly… just before it was blasted into atoms. Through the history of the ship, most didn’t even bother trying. Thus, the Omegans stationed aboard the ship spent days upon days training and practicing against one another. Without doing so, they would likely not see battle again in their lifetimes.

Earth, though was different. The humans had dared to assault the Kan’Tar directly during their first clash with the Omegans. In the aftermath, the Omegan Hierarchy had been forced to conclude that the humans’ strategy was a clever one- they ignored the main ship and concentrated on destroying the rail gun itself, the one part of the ship unprotected by the hull and laser cannons. The damage done, and the redesign, took decades to complete. Now, the Kan’Tar was once again on Earth’s doorstep. Waiting. Watching.

The Omegan soldier stood at passive attention before his leader, F’ath M’isti. F’ath had spent almost every waking moment of his life in pursuit of the warrior arts, proving himself to be one of the greatest soldiers his society had ever produced. During the first war against the humans, he had served on a B-class vessel as a pilot, racking up an astounding number of kills. In their second engagement with humanity, F’ath found himself in a leadership position, captaining a B-class. As that campaign wore on, it was his ship, time and again, that achieved the most victories against their foe. It was that gift which ultimately sent him to the shipyards to oversee the final pieces of the reconstruction of the Kan’Tar; a project that finished ahead of schedule thanks to him. His reward? It would be F’ath M’isti would lead the fleet back to Earth and finish the humans for good.

F’ath spoke. “No survivors?”

“No, my leader. The data remnants we have been able to recover suggest that they set the weapons system to overload and explode. The ship was in pieces when assistance finally arrived. We detected no signs of escape pods on the planet or on any of its moons.”

“May they hunt well in Erestia.” F’ath pondered his next move. “Very well. I promised retribution for resistance. When you leave here, you are to proceed to the quarters where we are holding Admiral Kelly. Tear out his spine with your bare hands. Make sure you do so on camera, that we may broadcast it to these defiant ones and show them the price to be paid for their lack of obedience.”

“It will be done, my leader.”

F’ath nodded at him. “Go now.” The soldier bowed and left the command center, leaving the Omegan leader alone with his thoughts. M’isti queued up the data on the War Angel that his technicians were able to mine from the EAD’s computer systems. He scratched his chin absently as he read, muttering to himself as he went. “I remember this ship well from my days as a pilot. She was a strong one. Her crew fought bravely and honorably.”

The screen shifted, and pictures of those now aboard the War Angel now filled his vision. “But these… I know nothing about them. Data recovery shows that this Morrison was not acting as captain and that lifescans showed one fewer person on the ship than what we were expecting. Children… children have a warship. Yet somehow they defeated one of ours. They must be dealt with.” He began reading the personnel profiles, absorbing as much as he could about who his enemies were. It was while reading one of those that he found the key to eliminating whatever minute threat that the War Angel represented. F’ath opened the Omegan internal communication systems and hailed a nearby B-class ship.

“Commander of the Chimera, speak and reply!”

The comm. system crackled to life. The voice on the other end sounded stunned to hear M’isti calling directly. “Yes, my leader. How may I serve?”

“You have a prisoner from the planet in your care. I wish him to be moved over here to the Kan’Tar. Immediately.”

“Of course, my leader. To which prisoner are you referring?”

F’ath scanned his screen, looking for the information he needed. “Prisoner 1212 from Q-system.”

The B-class captain responded immediately. “It will be done, my leader. He shall be on the Kan’Tar within an Earth hour.”

“Very well.” F’ath closed the channel and stood from his seat. He walked around the command center for a few minutes, contemplating his next move. Within a day, planetside operations would go into full effect, and within half an Earth year, this particular project would finally be completed and the Omegan people could put the tiny mudball behind them. In the meantime, nothing would be allowed to be left to chance. They had been fortunate once, and once was enough. The presence of the prisoner should drain the fight from them quickly.

And if they tried to fight? No fool, no matter how clever, would last long in battle against the Kan’Tar.

War Angel: part forty-eight

Wilma circled the large table slowly, her eyes drifting between the skeleton and the dead body that Kate had retrieved from the Omegan ship. Every few steps, she would stop and rearrange a bone in the skeletal structure. Jack eyed her with curiosity, standing back and away from the table to let the doctor do her work.

“Fascinating,” Wilma exhaled. “I’ve never seen the like of it.”

“Any guesses?”

She ran her right hand through her hair. “I think I have the skeleton put together correctly now. Beyond that, I don’t want to jump the gun on anything. I’ll need to run DNA tests, blood tests… every test I can think of. It’ll take a while.” She paused. “Are we in a hurry?”

The question seemed to take Jack by surprise. “Huh. Not in a major hurry, I suppose. But some speed might be good. I’m thinking… I mean, I found the skeleton on our ship. A ship that had been buried for a hundred years. These things have been around for a while. So why haven’t we heard anything about them? Even my ancestor’s journals don’t mention anything about other creatures besides the Omegans.”

“Maybe… maybe whatever they are, the Omegans try to keep their existence a secret?”

Jack pointed at her with excitement. “Yes! Exactly! And if they are keeping these creatures a secret that could mean that either these things are something that points out a weakness in the Omegans…”

Wilma brightened. “Or they’re an enemy!”

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend, doctor.”

“I’ll start the autopsy and tests right away, Captain.”

Jack exited the medlab and tapped his comm. link. “Clover, do you read?”

“Aye, Captain.”

“Are we set for departure?”

“Scoop is extended and ready.”

The young commander began taking long strides, picking up his pace quickly. “Excellent. Head for the bridge and start prep. I will be there in five.” Jack rounded corner after corner until he finally came upon the landing bay, finding Kate and Gina finishing up the unloading of their new cargo. Gina was the first to spot him and looked at him with confusion. He stared back at her for a moment before she finally spoke.

“Are we supposed to do that ‘Captain on deck’ shit?” she asked, wary of what his response would be.

He shook his head. “Hell no. Let’s keep our focus on our survival and keeping this old heap flying instead. Fair?”

“More than,” she replied. “Want a status report?”

“More than,” he said, laughing.

“Water and food stores, if rationed appropriately, are up to around ten weeks worth.” Kate jumped in. “We also got two crates of guns, so we’re set for close quarters fighting if need be. Doc brought medical supplies that ought to hold us for a bit of we can learn from our mistakes and avoid the machinery breaking apart and slicing our faces off.”

“Good to know,” Jack replied, lost in thought for a moment. Then, with a jerk, he snapped back to focus. “Gina, can you spare Kate for a few? I need to talk to her.”

Kate and Gina looked at each other for a moment, wondering what was coming, before Gina waived Kate away. Kate threw off the gloves she had been wearing and walked toward Jack, who immediately exited the landing bay with her in tow.

“What’s going on, Jack?” she asked, stopping him in his tracks. He spun on his heel, facing her with a look of pained resolution on his face.

He exhaled slowly. “Kate, what would it take to create a vaccine to your experiment?”

She looked at him, puzzled. “It’s really nothing to worry about, Jack. I mean, if it’s troubling you, I can flush it out an airlock right now. I suppose if we took a horrible beating, the stasis field could collapse, so you’re right, I probably should…”

“I’m not asking you to destroy it, Kate. Just make everyone on this ship safe from it.”

“Jack?”

He straightened himself, cracking his back and tugging at his uniform. “Like you said earlier, Kate- you’ve created a biological weapon.” His eyes flickered. “We may need it someday.”

“If we release it on Earth, it would kill almost every person on it, Jack! Humans included!”

“Then let’s hope it never comes to that,” he said, walking away and leaving a stunned Kate Stinson in his wake.

END PART ONE

War Angel: part forty-seven

Jack finished laying out the skeleton’s bones on the deck and stared at his attempt at putting this particular puzzle together. Whatever it was, it was not human. Nor was it Omegan- the structure of the skull, the height of the body, all too small to be one of the enemy. “Not this particular enemy,” Jack corrected himself.

But curiosity had to wait. Jack picked up his tools and began working on repairing cannon three. This was war- discipline had to come first. Lack of discipline could mean death… an irony that left Jack shaking his head.

Kate reached the Omegan morgue and opened the door. She moved into the room carefully, gun pointed and at the ready in case a survivor had found refuge within. However, the room checked out clear, and she holstered her sidearm. Looking around, she did a quick assessment of the room- the walls were full of panels, small controls situated next to each one, and each panel had a data readout in its center. She approached one and studied it for a moment before shrugging her shoulders and tapping the comm. “F.A. to all points. I don’t suppose any of you reads Omegan?”

The system was silent for a beat before Wilma’s voice spoke up. “Mr. Drake does. But…”

“Shit!” Kate yelled. “Sorry. Okay, thanks. Back to it. Bye,” she said, closing the comm. link. She leaned her head against the wall for a moment, pondering her next move. “Bleah. Fine,” she thought. “trial and error it is. I’ll start with the obvious and go from there.”

Her hands began to tap buttons on the controls. Eight minutes passed before the panel slid open and revealed the body of a dead Omegan. She tugged on the body and it floated free of its compartment. “Huh. Really is just like a morgue. Bastards are strangely human in their own way.” She shoved the body back in and closed the panel. “Looks like another ten or so of these are occupied. Might as well get started.”

Five minutes later, Jack’s comm. link sprung to life. “F.A. to Desperado. What in the actual fuck???”

“Bring that one back,” he replied calmly.

Wilma exited the Omegan medlab, pushing a crate full of supplies that would do the War Angel well. Bandages, antibiotics, herbs used to make painkillers… the crossover between Omegan physiology and human physiology was truly a godsend when it came to healing. As she approached the landing bay, she saw Kate pushing a crate of her own towards the shuttle. “Are we all set?” Wilma asked.

Kate’s shoulders dropped, and Wilma realized that the young woman must be exhausted. “After all,” the doctor remembered, “she was forcibly awakened from a sedative-induced sleep. It has to be catching up to her by now.”

“I’m fine, doctor,” Kate rasped. “Just had my fill of this day.”

Wilma’s voice radiated positivity. “We all have. But we’ll be out of here shortly, head for shelter, and rest for a while.” Wilma patted Kate’s shoulder, her hand gently bouncing off the young woman’s pressure suit.

“Ha!” Kate snorted derisively. “That’s what you think.” She tapped the crate she had brought to the landing bay. “This is going to keep all of us busy for a while.”

The doctor approached the crate. “What is it?”

The shuttle doors opened and Kate pushed the crate into its storage area. “Hopefully,” she muttered, “you’ll be able to tell us.”

Sarah stared at the skeleton spread out on the deck. “What the fuck IS that?”

Jack tightened the panel covering cannon three’s circuitry back into place. “That is why cannon three was offline,” he replied.

“You’re kidding.”

He shook his head. “Nope. Whatever… whomever… this was, he or she was in the interior of the bulkhead. Maybe making a nest, I don’t know. But it knocked wires out, crushed some circuits.”

“Think it was an Omegan plant of some kind?”

“Hard to say. Maybe. If this thing had easy egress to the rest of the ship, it could have certainly sabotaged things easily enough. On the other hand… well, maybe it’s something unknown. I mean, living in the walls is the kind of thing a stowaway would do. Maybe this thing had nowhere else to go.”

Picking up a bone, Sarah examined it carefully. It was smooth, with few striations or hints of damage. “Huh. Well, however it died, either it wasn’t violent or its muscular structure protected must have been impressive. Would be amazing to see one with all the flesh and blood, maybe see what Dr. Gray can make of it.”

Jack smiled. “Your wish is my command.”

War Angel: part forty-six

Jack reached starboard south and found the nearest internal comm. unit. “Desperado to Clover, come in.”

In the engine room, beset by chaos, Richard lunged for the comm. panel. “This is Clover.”

“Status of propulsion systems, Clover?”

Richard’s eyes wandered the room. Most of the wall panels were on the floor, as he had decided to run a full inspection as he adjusted the inertial dampening system. Small pieces of equipment littered the floor, and Richard found himself realizing that his usual way of doing things was no longer going to work. Wartime work would require more focus and discipline.

Two things that were abundantly absent in Richard.

“Umm. Propulsion systems are green, Captain. Scoop is working, and inertial adjustment should be completed in about ten minutes.” He decided to cover his ass, adding, “I’m going to do a full inspection of engine systems just to be on the safe side.”

“Negative,” Jack responded across the comm. “Hime is on her way back with a load from the Omegan ship. Get down to shuttle bay and help her unload. Full inspection can wait until after our next jump.”

“Fuck,” Richard whispered to himself, punching himself in the forehead repeatedly. Finally, he hit the comm. button. “Roger that. On my way.”

He picked up a screwdriver and began hurriedly replacing panels. “I am such an asshole,” he said, quietly admonishing himself.

“I’ll be damned,” Jack said to no one. He sat down on the deck next to the hull panel covering the wiring and circuitry for cannon three. His eyes scanned the panel carefully, and he dived into his memories. No, he decided, this panel did not look like this the last time he was down in this area. The bowing and warping, though not destructive, was noticeable. “Must have happened when we engaged the scoop,” he thought. He ran his hands across it, then stood and began walking forward. It was slight, but definite- something had moved as the ship lurched. “Internal machinery must have been loose and came bouncing through.”

He walked back to his original spot and removed the panel gently, not wanting to lose whatever vital equipment might have found its way to that spot. He pulled from the top, hoping to use the panel as a catcher for screws and the like when he got the surprise of his life. Jack jerked away and slid backward across the floor hitting the opposite wall. His jaw went slack as he stared at the thing that had been disrupting his ship’s weaponry system:

It was the strangest skeleton he had ever seen.

Kate peered around the corner and suppressed a laugh. Only a minute earlier, she has been in a firefight with six Omegan soldiers who had been fortunate enough to find pressure suits before all of the ship’s oxygen escaped through its broken hull. Now they bobbed and bounced off of the corridor ceilings and walls like rubber balls, victims of her precision shooting and their astonishment at having been boarded.

“I needed this,” she thought. “As fun as strangling Ben was, this was far more cathartic.”

Her left hand reached instinctively for her abdomen. More than ever, she was certain that the decision she had reached was the correct one. It would have to wait until they had jumped away and gone back into hiding- she would require some time to recover- but it would have to be done. Just then, Kate’s reverie was disturbed when the comm crackled to life.

“F.A. this is Desperado, copy.”

She cleared her throat. “F.A. is go, Desperado.”

“I have a… strange… request.” Kate cocked an eyebrow. “I have been scouring the plans for that ship, and nowhere can I spot anything that looks like a morgue. We know that Omegans typically stored salvageable bodies so that they could be returned home to their families for death ceremonies, so it would seem like they would have a morgue.”

“Umm… sure,  Captain.” Kate thought about it for a second. “It’d be someplace they could keep nice and cold where it wouldn’t affect the rest of the ship, I’d think.”

Jack groaned. “Of course! I should have thought of that. There’s a room towards midship on the starboard side that has what looks to be a strong cooling system. That has to be it.”

“I’m assuming you’re curious about this for a reason, Desperado?”

“Hmm. Yeah. Listen, I need you to check out that room. Look for anything weird.”

Kate laughed. “I’m on an alien fucking spaceship in orbit around Saturn. This is officially the weirdest day of my life. So trust me when I tell you: I’m going to need something more to go on besides ‘anything weird.’”

Jack’s voice found its assertiveness. “Specifically then: I want you to check for bodies that aren’t Omegan.”

She stood motionless for a moment, letting Jack’s order sink in. “Huh. That’s more like it. On my way, Desperado.”

War Angel: part forty-five

Wilma entered the landing bay, a strange balloon floating behind her. She had used a number of ropes and tied them together to form a makeshift netting, allowing her to gather a number of crates into a “pile” and bring them to the shuttle in one trip. As she approached the shuttle’s storage area, she noticed that Gina was ahead of her, tying down and securing barrels that Wilma guessed had to be water. Seeing Wilma, Gina gave a thumbs up.

“Looks like we’ve got our first full load, Doctor,” Gina said into her comm.

“Go ahead and make a run back to the Angel,” Wilma replied. “I need to hit their medical facilities. I should have that done by the time you get back and still have time to grab more food.”

Gina nodded. “Sounds good. There’s more water, too.”

“I’ll let F.A. know if I see her,” Wilma said. “Shooting aliens is probably thirsty work.”

Sarah tore the panel away from the wall, flinging it down to the ground angrily. Her right hand darted through the wires and metal inside and found the biogel pack. She took a deep breath and then disconnected it from the War Angel’s electrical systems and gently pulled it out to examine it. It was coal black, limp and dead in her hand.

“Unfuckingbelievable,” she muttered under her breath.

“I’m sorry,” the voice echoed down the corridor.

Her head snapped around. She hadn’t heard Jack’s footsteps approaching and it took her off guard. The biogel pack slipped in her hand, but she caught it before it completely came out and hit the ground.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated.

Sarah sat the biogel pack down in her toolkit and then stood and straightened herself. “Don’t you dare,” she said.

He tilted his head sideways. “What?”

She ran her fingers through her hair. “Don’t you dare apologize to me.”

“What? Why not? I know I fucked things up. I overloaded the shielding system. I screamed at you on the bridge.” He bowed his head, contrition flowing from within. “I got you hurt.” His eyes rose to meet hers. “And for all of that, I am very, very sorry.”

Her hand whipped across his face, and the sound of the slap echoed down the corridor. “I told you not to apologize to me, and I damned well meant it.” Jack’s hand caressed his aching cheek, his face a mask of confusion. “You dumbass. You’re the fucking captain now, and the captain does not apologize.” He started to interrupt, but she cut him off. “We’re at war, Jack. Every minute of our lives could be our last. That means every decision you make is one between life and death. If it damages the ship but we live, then you’ve done the job. If your gunner freezes in a firefight and you need to scream at her to get her head out of her ass or we’re all going to die-“ she paused- “then you’d better scream at her or we’re all going to die.” Sarah knelt down and pulled a new biogel pack out, then stood again. “So don’t apologize to me. Or to anyone else. Do your job.”

“It wasn’t a job I wanted,” he said quietly.

She slid the biogel pack into the wall and hooked it into the ship’s systems. “Well, it’s the one you gave yourself. And honestly? No one else here is right for the job, so you’re stuck with it… and we’re stuck with you. So just do the damned job,” she said, walking over to the discarded panel and returning it to its proper place.

Jack stood and watched her for a moment, silent and mulling over what she had said. Innumerable thoughts crashed through his mind, but ultimately he realized that any disagreement was wrong-headed. She was right.

She was horribly, terribly, right.

Finally, he brushed off his uniform and turned on his heel. “I’ll be on starboard south, checking out cannon three. Get this done and join me there. I don’t want another fight without full weapons.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” she said, and then moved on to the next panel.