I lay silent, cacophony swirling around me, and focused on my link to the Empress. If I could let her know our situation, she could send the fleet looking for us. Before I could think of what message to send, my essie interrupted me.

This is a dedicated link. It cannot be used for mind-to-mind contact.

I stopped, stunned by overwhelming frustration. If I could send one message, our flight would be over. If I could talk to the Empress, we could finally get free of the 'Sects once and for all.

In the back of my mind, the links I'd formed to my dead Cadets slid incrementally closer to the gaping pit of the Empress' link. Ruthlessly I locked them down, forcing them to remain. I'd paid too high a price to let them slip away from me now, to lose themselves to that insanity.

For a moment, Doctor Andrew's voice sounded in my head, but before I could understand, the Empress' link erupted in mindless fury. I damped it down, walling it off into a corner with my own endless rage over how we'd been tricked into this death run.

Finally certain I could trust my own mind, I stood and manually turned on the lights. A glance in the mirror showed my fatigue couldn't be seen on my face, but I still needed something to wake me up. A tiny bit of dried acceleration gel flaked away from my hair. I needed a shower anyway, and maybe some real food instead of the glop Guy and Card kept shoving at me.

I grabbed a set of dress whites from my closet, undergarments from my drawer, and slapped the manual control next to the door. It slid open. Guy leaned against the far side of the hallway, his eyes snapping open at the sound of my door. His mouth opened, but instead of speaking he just squeaked.

I didn't have time for this. I powered up enough to move faster than a lurching walk, then jogged to the Middie showers. In theory, as Captain, I had my own facilities, but I didn't really know where...

A map appeared before my eyes, and a dotted line drew itself on the floor in front of me. I ignored both.

Morale?

"Won't hurt morale for them to see me taking a shower, and I don't know if that section is in vacuum still or not," I muttered as I entered the showers. I hung my uniform on the rack, tossed my bra and panties into the bin underneath, and stripped off my sweats. The first time my hand touched the fabric, I thanked providence for Guy's insistence on Armored VR training. The absorbent fabric hadn't reached its limits, but even a quick brush brought my hand away sticky. At least no one but Guy had seen me stalking the halls soaked with sweat.

What?

My essie understood the comment and replied immediately, even managing to sound faintly aggrieved, a not insignificant feat from the siren's purr.

You used power. You got hot. It's a cooling mechanism.

Shaking my head, I tossed my sodden sweats into a hamper and stepped under the pounding stream of steaming water coming from the spigot. I cranked the controls to maximum heat and stood there for uncounted minutes, letting the water wash away the fatigue of the past few days. Without warning the sparkling ball of madness in the back of my skull pushed outward, trying to get past the barriers I'd erected. Without thinking, I slammed more in place; rage over the Commandant's refusal to acknowledge my analysis layered itself over fury at being singled out from my peers and forced to remain a MIddie. Around all of them I erected an adamantine wall of all the pent-up anger from my parents dying and leaving me a Blank with no one to turn to.

"Captain?" Echidna had gotten better at projecting her voice. I heard her clearly through the pounding water, and the sound pulled me away from my silent internal fortifications.

"Yes, Kid?"

"We're ready."

I nodded, scrubbing down quickly, rinsing, and then activating my shields to shed the water before stepping from the shower. While I slipped into my uniform, I contacted Quick and Guy.

"Gentlemen, gather the crew in the main bay."

"Yes, ma'am. Anything in particular I need to prepare for you?"

"No, Quick. I'll need to speak with Delnot in person before the meeting though."

I felt both of them query Echidna for my location, and Quick disconnected with a terse, 'will do, sir.' Guy started moving toward me from the hallway outside my quarters. I caught him as I pulled my jacket shut.

"Meet me... here." I pinged him a small conference room near the entrance to the bay.

"Oh. Yes, sir."

I didn't have time to figure out why he sounded disappointed. As I walked toward the bay, the intermittent stream of Cadets growing thicker as I approached, I focused on one thing; whether I had enough time to form an active link to each and every one of them before my incompetence got any more of them killed.

***

Echidna hurtled through the void, her drives warping the fabric of space to propel her away from the Marapis who pursued us. I watched the edges of our drive field tear apart atoms drifting too close, the resulting radiation enough to fry any unshielded organics. Normally, Imperial ships deflected any such atoms, but Echidna had veered toward this concentration. Her absorbers sucked up the energy, dumping it right back into her drives, throwing us ever onward.

Behind us and losing just a little more ground with every second, the Marapis couldn't see us; our absorbers let nothing escape, and at this distance even our mass meant nothing. On the other hand, the traces of broken atoms littered our trail, and they faithfully followed it, hounds scenting out their quarry. Between the distance, their need to sniff out our trail, and the fact we'd both cleared the midway point of the system a bit ago and now gravity pulled them backward just a touch harder than us, we had a speed advantage. Not much of one, though. Not enough to risk a flat-out sprint for the jump limit. If they saw our path, they could hit us with an energy weapon aimed at our destination.

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

I mused idly on putting something nasty on our trail, but before I'd even queried our inventory, Echidna pinged me with the likelihood of any such surprise damaging an opponent. If we could afford to waste power, or if we were running to a known point of safety, or even if we weren't so badly outnumbered, it might be worthwhile, but right now every erg of power and every spare gram of mass was precious.

I still stared at the Marapis behind us when Guy cleared his throat.

"You wanted to see me, sir?"

I dropped out of my VR trance and looked him over. Despite days without sleep, his hair remained perfect, his face flawless. I met his gaze, and he glanced down ever so slightly. I half expected to see bruises under his eyes from the lack of rest, but he just fidgeted a little as I examined him. A twitch of his shoulder settled his uniform jacket. It fit him perfectly, of course. No doll's feet or dangerous curves for him, just lean muscle over an athletic frame.

I shook my head; I had no time for woolgathering. "I need to know everything you know about how to form links."

His mouth dropped open slightly, and he met my eyes squarely for a fraction of a second. A moment later he shook his head. I raised one eyebrow, but before I could inquire, he spoke. "Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir, but you've formed them so readily, I just figured you knew everything you needed to know."

"That's not what you were thinking just now."

"No, it's not."

My blood chilled at his evasion. "Then what were you thinking, that had you shaking your head?"

"I'm sorry, sir. It's... it's personal and irrelevant, sir. I'll tell you if you insist, but I'd really rather not waste time on it."

I stared at him, willing him to flinch. The link in the back of my head radiated sincerity, so much I knew he had to be doing it deliberately. Eventually I nodded. "Fine. Tell me what you know about links."

He stared at me a moment longer, as if trying to figure something out. "Delnot, is there a reason you're hesitating now?"

"Sort of, sir. If you told me what you already know it would help."

"About links, or about telepathy in general?"

"Either, sir."

"Not too flaming much about either. Telepaths can read another sentient being's mind, but only the surface thoughts. They can judge the other person's emotional state. They can send messages. It's genetic, not that that means a lot, what with an essie's ability to tweak genes around. Of course, only someone really stupid or really desperate would do that particular tweak." I twisted my lips into something which might be construed as a grin.

He smiled back, but only on the surface. I already felt him trying to sort out where to begin. "Well... yes and no on all of that, sir."

I thought about what I'd said, and when the implication hit me, the smile dropped from my face. "What?"

"Okay, the reason telepathy works is because a portion of consciousness is contained in the electromagnetic field generated by the brain..."

I frowned. "Yes, Delnot, I passed both Junior and Middie life science."

"Sorry, sir. I don't have access to your records, and I would need a while to go over them to get a grasp on what you have a grasp on."

"Go on."

"Right. A telepath's brain is both exceptionally sensitive to those fields and able to project their own. Reading thoughts is just... well, it's like a really high resolution, decoded version of something pre-Imperials called a brain scan."

A pink light blinked in the corner of my eye as an image flickered past; a room sized device all focused on the skull of the person buried inside it. I blinked the vision away and focused on Guy again. "How do you know what pre-Imperials called anything?"

He grinned, for once looking his age rather than his rank. "My dad is history buff. Anyway, that's how telepaths read minds."

I thought about it for a moment. "So why can't they read anything but the surface?"

His gaze dropped to my doll feet. "Has a telepath ever told you that?"

"Um... I don't quite remember. I remember working with a couple aboard Glaucus, but I don't remember if they told me they can’t, or I read it in a book."

"Yeah. That's kinda the point. Telepaths won't lie about it, but if all the books say we can't, and we didn't write the books, we're not lying about it, are we?"

My own face went slack in shock. "You mean you can? Every telepath out there can pull whatever they want out of anyone's head, and you don't tell anyone?"

"We."

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah. I just found out. You."

"Sir, there are mitigating circumstances." He paused long enough for me to get annoyed enough to nod at him to continue. I didn't trust myself to speak.

"Every mind is different. We can't just 'read minds' any more than we could decipher signals in an unknown code. The more commonality we have, the easier it is. The less, the harder. Surface things... There's only so much variation in how brains process sensory information."

"Red is red, you mean?"

"Well, oddly enough, not always, but if I'm looking at something red, and I know the person I'm scanning is looking at the same thing, I can sort out how their brain encodes it when they see that same color."

"Lord, how does anyone read anyone like that?"

He dropped one shoulder in a Gallic shrug. "The essies handle most of it. Honestly, the folks we're scanning usually have an essie of their own, and they facilitate. It's when you're dealing with someone who doesn't have one that it gets tough."

"Who doesn't have an essie?"

"A few really oddball worlds outlawed them. The Vulg don't have them. 'Sects don't have them."

I raised one hand at that, stopping his recitation instantly. "Wait. You're trying to tell me we could read 'Sects?"

"Well, I don't know that anyone's ever done it, but the ones we've dissected indicate they have central nervous systems. We're not sure they're really sentient, especially some of the small ones, but that doesn't mean we can't read them." He grimaced, and before I could ask why, he explained. "Mom makes all her kids read a few native terrestrial animals before we're allowed off her apron strings."

"All her kids? You're all telepaths?"

"Uh, I'm not sure? I think so though."

"How many kids does your mom have, anyway?"

"Yeah, that would be why I'm not sure. She's old, and according to my dad she gets an urge to pop out a kid every couple decades."

I rolled my eyes at that. I barely understood wanting to have one child, maybe two. The Imperial Unity always needed more people; even with functional immortality, some people decided they'd had enough, and the colonies didn't magically populate themselves. Still, Guy's statement implied his mother might have hundreds of children, all of them telepaths.

"Yeah. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

He grinned. "Nah, she knows what to expect. I think she enjoys it. She just won't admit it. Dad likes it though."

"Yeah, well. He doesn't have to be an incubator."

Now it was his turn to frown. "You don't want kids?"

"Telepathy, Delnot. Links, specifically."

He shook his head, his perfect hair barely moving as he did. "Right. Links... okay, it's like the red thing, only with everything. You need to really grasp how the person perceives the world, get a read on the fundamentals of their genetic predispositions, and then catalog all the major life events."

"Hell. How am I going to get linked to the students in the next hour?"

He just stared at me. After a few seconds he shook his head and spluttered out, "All of them?"

"Is that a problem?"

"Well... yeah."

"Why?"

Guy stopped, lost in thought. I opened my mouth, and he held up a hand with a pleading glance. I folded my arms and waited. "Okay, the trouble is storage space."

"Come again?"

"When you form a link, you're basically giving over part of your brain to a teeny tiny emulation of the person you're linking to. Get enough of them in your head, and there's no space left for you."

I thought about that. I'd spent so long fighting to be me, I didn't know if I could force myself to give anyone that kind of space. I had no idea what would happen to me if I let my whole mind be overwhelmed with foreign thoughts, desires, and emotions. The loss of self it implied terrified me.

A dozen shriveled husks which used to be live people stared accusingly at me from the back of my mind. Almost unheard, the Empress' link raged at my continued denial. I ignored her, but I couldn't ignore my dead and remain myself.

I took a deep breath. "Show me how."