"Three seconds, then It's time and past time to get gone, Kid."

"Understood, Captain."

As our armored Cadets sorted themselves out, readying for the jump, Echidna ran her final calculations, and I stood watch. The makeshift weapon beneath us opened a hole in space, one end on its surface, the other tethered inside the nearby red giant. The entire asteroid seemed to deflate as the device flash vaporized it over the course of two seconds, gaseous iron pouring through the wormhole to form a complex line inside the star. Accelerated in my command space and focused on Echidna's sensors, I imagined I could see it, a poisonous serpent writhing through the star's heart.

"Incoming!" Quick's yell shocked me from my reverie. The asteroid collapsed in on itself, revealing a set of four Marapis, each with a brace of Soros. All four Marapis birthed Scout class parasite craft, which tore through space to come to grips with us. They didn't bother firing; without Imperial fire control, they wouldn't be able to concentrate enough fire to get through our absorbers. They just accelerated.

"Kid! Now would be a good time!" I grabbed the limited power our absorbers had garnered from our previous battle, throwing it through our projectors as a series of razor-edged planes of force. The two nearest Scouts split cleanly. One more spun in ever tightening circles, half of its drive nodes sheared off. The final Scout homed in on us. In the final second of preparing her jump, Echidna couldn't evade without throwing her jump calculations off. The 'Sects were trying to pin us in place for their larger sisters to kill us.

The Scout hammered into us, a physical missile absorbers could do nothing about. Our deflectors screamed and died, and only Echidna's meters of refractory armor saved us from a hull breach. Just as it hit, I routed all our spare power through our projectors, grabbing the space around us and twisting it into a trio of artificial gravity wells, pinning us in place long enough for Echidna to finish her calculations.

"Kid! Now would be a good..."

The universe went black, shrunk down to an irregular sphere no bigger than Echidna. Thoughts, human words and AI tones and even a few 'Sect clicks, echoed through our jump pocket. Acting on an instinct I didn't fully understand, I sought out the source of those clicks. An alien mind, all brutal hunger and hard-edged hatred, screamed in endless fury. I pushed down on it, forcing it to silence, a pillow over its mental face. The clicks slowed, growing angrier as they did. Finally, after an eternal moment, they stopped entirely.

Only then did I notice the flashing pink light in the corner of my vision. Before perception became understanding, the universe expanded to its normal size, echoes disappearing as quickly as they'd come. I had no time for reflection on my mother's memories; four Marapis squirted from their jump pockets, orifices already opening to allow tentacles to writhe forth. Before they could clear their vision from the echoing nothing of the jump pocket, I lashed out with more planes of force, slicing their drive nodes away.

I accelerated away from our emergence point, taking carefully planned shots at my immobile foes as I did. Each shot lanced out, tearing through the nerve clusters along a Marapi's spine, leaving it drifting aimlessly as its weapons and communications nodes twitched. Before I finished with the final one, Echidna awoke and took over navigation, a constantly changing evasion pattern around the course I'd set. Moments later the wisdom of her decision became clear; another dozen Marapis emerged, scattered across the jump limit of the distant star. Before my fire reached them, they awoke and began maneuvers of their own. Two died anyhow, victims of the oscillating energy patterns I sent their way, but the other ten adopted converging paths. Soon they'd try to coalesce into a swarm like the one we'd left behind.

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I reached for power to throw at them, but a nagging sensation stopped me. I checked our power stores; I'd already used all the energy I'd siphoned from our absorbers, and a corrosive enzyme from the Scout had short circuited the ones near its impact point, leaving a slow power leak. Quick patched it by cutting that entire quadrant of our absorbers, deflectors, and projectors out of the circuit, but that left us unable to create a pocket until we fixed the problem.

Unable to jump for lack of projectors, unable to shoot for lack of power, we did the only thing we could. We ran.

***

I slipped out of my command space to find my crew waiting for me on the bridge. Card held out a thermos; I checked my power readouts and waved it away. I wouldn't need a lot of power for what I'd be doing, and I might need it later. She pulled away; her movement hindered by acceleration gel. She swayed and looked a little green as we continued to change course every few seconds. I walked toward the door, the gel a minor hindrance until I stepped through the inner door, one of my bodyguards shadowing me. The gel drained away from us, and he rocked into me when Echidna changed course yet again.

"Is there a reason you're not compensating for inertial effects, Kid?" My question came out slightly sharper than I'd intended, mostly due to my impatience with the outer bridge door.

"First Officer Quick's idea, sir. I'm doing minimal compensation effects everywhere except occupied Junior areas. We should charge at least an hour quicker this way, assuming we have to keep up with this evasion pattern."

I nodded and headed down the corridor for my quarters. "Understood. Quick?"

"Yes, Captain?" Quick's reply came instantly; Echidna had achieved Tiamat's level of skill with communications, at least.

"We're evading until we're ready to engage for ten minutes, sustained full power projector use, plus two jumps. Get everyone in, fed, rested, and buttoned back up by then."

"Yes, sir. Sir?"

I'd been about to hand over command to Quick while I tried to untangle Tiamat's memories again, but something in his voice stopped me.

"Yes, First?"

"Two volunteers stayed behind to finish the device."

I froze. Without the cushion of VR, my whole body tried to curl about itself. I forced myself to remain upright, to continue striding down the hall toward my quarters.

"Who?"

"Middle Grade Cadet Mary Ford. Senior Grade Cadet Wendell Jonns."

I did blink at that, slowing a fraction. "Senior Grade?"

"Cadets keep having birthdays, sir. Unless you or the Commandant delay their promotion, they're automatically promoted on their sixteenth."

While he spoke, I slipped into a light VR space, enough to review my fallen Cadets' files. Mary, studying to be a medical tech. Wendell, planning on going full Armorer, just like Quick. They burned themselves into my memory alongside the other fallen. My eyes watered from trying to take in too much information at once, but I had no time for that. I strode down the corridor, readying myself to face the maelstrom once more.

"First?"

"Yes, Captain."

"You have the command."

"I have the command, sir. Rest. We need you."