"Captain. We have a problem."

I stared at the expanding clouds of gas which had, up until recently, been 'Sect Marapis. Six. We'd taken six, and hadn't lost anyone. I tried to ignore the screaming in my brain, constant cacophony of thousands of minds each hammering at me, vying for a piece of my attention. A wash of pain filtered through; dissociative drugs meant the Cadets in sick bay didn't feel Echidna's remotes peeling away the remains of their armor, but they did nothing for me. With exquisite care I herded the bleeding stars of the Cadets in med bay to a sheltered corner of my mind. I didn't dare disconnect from them. Even now one of them might lose their struggle with the reaper, and if I didn't catch them, no one would.

Six thousand, one hundred and six minds. Four hundred nine seriously injured, scattered through various medical bays. Eighteen injuries sustained from trace inertial compensation failure in the Junior creches; the last Marapi using its own bulk as a missile, a last grasp at vengeance. Thirteen hundred fourteen Juniors still in various stages of shock from the savagery of the battle.

Twenty-six hundred and twelve celebrating their victory. Eleven hundred four of those nibbling at my self-control by giving in to the wash of teenage hormones and post-battle adrenaline. Those weren't in any danger; no essie in any of my borrowed memories had let its human suffer from a disease, and Echidna wouldn't let them try anything really dangerous. I'd given orders. I shoved the whole flaming lot of them to the side, conveniently surrounding the other big distraction, my ever-flickering link to Her Majesty. I erected a barrier around them, writing off that bit of my brain for the moment, letting the unwanted emotions echo around inside. Let the Empress deal with it.

She reached out again, recoiled from the walls of hate and fear around her link. I sighed at the relative quiet and looked out into space once more.

"Captain?"

Echidna's worried tone shook me from my fugue. "What is it, Kid?"

"We have a problem. I finished my review of the final data from the system we just vacated."

Standard practice. I hadn't ordered it. One of the older Juniors flared with anger, and a younger one cried out in pain. Before Echidna could respond I sent disapproval and comfort, respectively. Bullying would not be tolerated aboard my ship.

"Captain?"

"Sorry, Kid. I don't know how Doc Andrews handled this. It's... I don't even know how to describe it."

"You're multi-tasking at a level normally reserved for mature AIs, Captain. I am peripherally aware of what's going on, and your essie is attempting to explain the rest, but mostly they're keeping you functional."

I brought up my internal schematics; filtered them for essie activity. They flooded my cerebrospinal fluid, communications and information specialists relaying data to the other cavities in my body, sorting, filtering, storing information for later retrieval. More maintained my active systems, but most lay dormant. A quick query told me why. Power.

I'd used more power since I forged the links than I had since I woke suspended in gel. Combined. As I watched, the energy reserves slid downward from twenty to nineteen to eighteen percent. Without warning, my fuel stores climbed from four to eight percent. I blinked, internal schemata and fragmentary visions of emotion laden imagery vanishing to let me see a heavy carafe upended above my head. I lowered it, stopped myself from sucking down the last bits of grey glop. I wondered at the lack of taste.

We disabled your taste and smell receptors during refueling, so you could continue working.

My hand dropped to my side, Card sweeping in to catch the thermos before it could hit the floor. No gel inhibited her movement. A sudden chill washed over me, fans blowing air to dry the gel solvent from our uniforms. We weren't clean, but we wouldn't stick to random surfaces due to the tacky gel, either. I stared at my readouts, horror creeping through me as I realized how much power I'd consumed. I used nearly enough to keep Echidna functioning.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Power readouts flashed up beside my own, dwarfing them.

Enough to power a jump, maybe. Not enough to power the ship itself.

Before I could reply, a wave of unrelenting terror washed through me. I traced it back to a single source; one of the cadets lying in medical. I sent reassurance his way, but it splashed against the fear emanating from him, completely ineffective. I reached out to touch him...

And found myself drawn down into his nightmare.

***

I hovered in space, my team surrounding me. Quiet pings filtered through our team channel, and I squashed them before they got out of hand. We weren't on radio silence, but bad habits were best nipped in the bud. The call came in from our wing leader; the enemy approached from heading one six eight. I pinged the rest of the team, and we focused our attention on that part of the sky. Our armor integrated the images from the six of us, turning it into a single composite picture of the Marapis streaming towards us.

I brought my weapons to bear. My missiles locked on instantly, straining to leap out and attack the things heading toward us. I held them back; at this range they wouldn't make it to their targets. Instead, I shunted power to my projectors, building a charge strong enough to tear through the hide of a full grown Marapi.

The central image in my view blossomed; one became thirteen, then twenty-five, then thirty-seven. In seconds we faced a swarm of sixty Beetles; tiny relative to their Marapi mothership, but each one still nearly as large as a regulation suit of Imperial Marine armor. Bigger than my training armor, even with the weapons pods First Quick had added.

My hands ached. It took me two tries to activate my communications and report the incoming attackers; even as I did orders trickled down from higher, tasking my team with eliminating the Beetles. Designed for planetary assault, they were nothing more than cannon fodder in space. I forwarded the orders to my team, stumbling over the words. Ghostly images of my team's targeting appeared in my vision, but I didn't see them.

I saw a swarm of Beetles thousands strong cresting a rise. Civilians behind me lumbered for the evacuation transport, screaming in terror when they heard the first building collapse, torn apart by meter long mandibles. Reinforcements would arrive in minutes, but the Beetles would be on the Civilians in seconds.

Unless someone slowed them down. I armed my last few munitions, powered up my energy projectors, and opened fire. I kept firing until meter-long mandibles tore my armor apart.

I blinked. Green auras encircled all but ten of the Beetles. Arcs of energy flashed between them as they tried to bring their own energy weapons to bear; with that many they could fry me inside my armor even before the mandibles got to me.

I turned.

No.

I ran. My team, confused, cracked. Three opened fire, their missiles betraying the position of the entire ambush. Another two followed me for a moment, then fired again. The crackling lines of electricity playing between the Beetles swatted the offending missiles from the sky.

This didn't happen.

The Beetles swarmed through my team, rending them apart, breaking our formation, expanding outward to tear into the units tasked with destroying the Marapis. I launched, hoping to keep them back, but energy arced from Beetle to missile to my armor, and paralyzing pain burned through me.

You didn't run.

The fire locking my limbs in place almost died down before they clamped down on my armor and started to pull it...

Cadet Rodriguez! Attention!

***

My siren's shout shook me free of Cadet Rodriguez' nightmare. It shook him awake as well, or as close as he could come. My essie had the data hanging before my eyes as I came to myself; Rodriguez, a reincarnate, hadn't run, even when his team of neoincarnates started to come apart at the seams. He'd taken over their armor remotely, plotted out the solutions, and taken down all but a few of the Beetles himself.

Of course, in doing so he'd lit himself up like a beacon, and the remaining Beetles had lashed him with enough energy to fry most of his nerves before his team pulled them apart in turn. Without quite understanding how, I packaged that data with the images he ought to be remembering and forced it into his mind in place of the nightmare. He quailed but settled after a few moments.

I caught myself as I stumbled stepping over a coaming. The door to my quarters beckoned; the chaos within might be the only thing which could drown out my Cadets long enough for me to find my tattered sanity.

"Captain!"

I stopped, shocked at my ship's tone. "Yes, Echidna?"

"We have a problem, Sir."

"What is it?"

"I..." Echidna stuttered to a stop, words failing her. Instead, she slugged an image to my essie, who dutifully placed it before my eyes.

The image of a single Materner, scorched by battle and the radiation of an exploding star, but most certainly not dead.