I don't know where I am. The maelstrom tears at me, hungry for life. It tries to eat my soul, to make me over in its image. I am Dustie Dabig. My mother was Grace Li. My father was Dustin Dabig. I am not a coward. I am excellent. I am strong. I will not be remade in any image save my own.

The maelstrom does not hear. Its hunger pulls me down, and I seek any pattern within its chaos. Thoughts and memories are its substance. Thousands, millions, even billions, each unique in size and identity, all driven by a single overwhelming will. At that thought, a piece of me surfaces, and I become one with it.

I must save Tiamat.

I latch onto that thought. I make it my own, for I recognize it is not mine. Even as I do so, it pulls me down into a single current swirling about the eye of the storm.

***

At the sound of the door sliding shut I pushed my command board away and slumped, resting my shoulders against the wall. Despite millennia of genetic tweaking, pregnancy still exhausted me. Part of that came from the endless resource drain of creating the new life within me. The shutdown of my onboard fusion reactors accounted for the rest. Powering an augmented body with nothing but organic metabolism sucked vacuum.

At least the emergency gave me an excuse to get rid of the brat her Imperial Majesty sent to hover over my shoulder. Once I had him safely ensconced in a stasis pod, I could fight my ship without the constant worry of a knife sliding between my ribs. The entire ship shuddered, and I pulled myself into something resembling a thoughtful slouch before I asked why. In the time it took to do so, Tiamat beat me to it.

"Sorry, grasshopper, just a little too slow." The lights flickered. "Gah, sorry about the lights... That near miss has one of my projector banks sucking power like you wouldn't believe. Zapped us a big old bug, though."

"Details, please?"

Her jovial tone disappeared, letting me know without the waste of words she spoke only to me. "Of course, Captain. Roughly four percent of my projectors are operating at minimal efficiency. Nothing I can't work around now that I'm aware of it. We destroyed a fully mature Mutterchen and chased off a pair of Marapis. There are another two unspecified Madrecitas hovering between us and the insertion limit. By their behavior, I'd put them as stock 'Citas, young-ish. Each of the 'Cita variants has at least two Soros hovering nearby, plus they've each launched around half of their complement of parasites.

"They're boxing us?"

"Yeah."

"You're letting them why?"

"You heard what Dustie said?"

I lifted one hand in a peremptory silencing gesture. I needed time to quell the sudden urge to get my hands around the preternaturally pretty cadet's sculpted neck. She wasn't Grace Li. She was just another victim of Grace's endless narcissistic melodrama. I told myself that over and over and over again until my fingers stopped twitching.

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"Something about thinking there was an ambush."

There is an ambush!

The foreign thought filled my head with a maelstrom of images for an eternal instant. I blinked eyelids I couldn't be sure still existed and wondered why I had.

"I'm convinced she's right, sir. I've tracked the telemetry as well as I'm able without a functional CAU. The Soros didn't follow us; they were waiting here for us. I think these 'Citas are a reaction force designed to pin us down."

"So why are you letting them? Let's punch a hole and get to the rendezvous."

"Yes, sir. Moving to engage the thinnest portion of the enemy, sir."

I slumped back against the wall. When a ship commissioned before the first time you were born takes that tone, it's a sure bet you've screwed up. I wanted to blame everything on how angry Dustie made me, but I couldn't. Imperial War College beat self-deception out of commanders before the end of the first semester, and I'd never been a slow learner. I could almost blame Grace, but even that felt hollow. I'd ignored my best asset and my staunchest supporter. Thankfully I'd done it in the privacy of the classroom instead of on the bridge with security watching.

The doors chimed, and I pushed myself away from the wall of the classroom before anyone saw me leaning. I reached out via my augments and opened the door. My security detail flowed into the room. Oliver Mull and Gary Back. Partners of convenience, I guessed they'd drift apart once Jodi and Wendy gained Senior status. For the meanwhile, though, they moved like a single Marine, scanning the compartment and taking up positions without a single word.

Of course, their entry made my apology that much harder to implement without ruining my hard-won image of infallibility. "Tiamat, belay that last order. Something's not right about this. Ideas, please?"

"Thank you, Captain. The Soros are spread too thin to stop me. They know that. They're going to watch which way we go."

"...And we'll bring the 'Sects right down onto the rendezvous." I thought for a moment. One irrelevant tidbit surfaced, and I let it through my lips to keep it from interfering with my thoughts. "I do not like the idea of devious 'Sects. I do not like it at all."

"Me neither, sir. What shall we do?"

I closed my eyes and ran through all of the 'book' responses to 'Sect actions. Unfortunately, the 'Sects hadn't done this before, so I didn't have a preplanned, preapproved tactic to use. I'd have to improvise.

I hated improvising.

"Okay, what they're doing is pretty standard for Mech', right?"

"Vulg' do it as well, Captain. Even we do it, really. The 'Sects must have copied one of us."

"Let's assume Mech'. They developed the technique, they're the best at it." I ignored her offended sniff and continued. "Standard operating procedure is to chain jump. The book says a minimum of two, but I've always thought three left a harder trail to follow, without critically depleting energy reserves."

"Ordinarily, yes, Captain, but I've jumped recently."

"You haven't recovered from that yet?"

"Sorry, Captain, I've been operating under minimal stealth protocol, trying not to advertise our presence. I'm at about ninety five percent. Call it six full power jumps, and one short one."

"Instead of the seven you'd normally have. Right. Set me up a three-jump route to the rendezvous point. As soon as you've got it roughed, amble in the opposite direction to the one we'll need to go. Be subtle."

"Captain, I'm a warship the size of a large asteroid. I don't do subtle."

"Exactly. The moment you've got the jump path firmed, we rush our exit path, cut a hole, and chain jump as fast as possible."

Moving my ponderous bulk carefully, I headed out the door and toward the main command bridge. My twin shadows oozed along around me, never taking my safety for granted, even in the heart of the Imperial Navy's second most protected ship. I took comfort in that, as well as comfort in the fact that no little jumped up mama's boy would countermand my commands.

"Sir, I believe there is at least one mature Marapi in the enemy's battle order. If I do not break through it, it will follow us through our entire jump chain."

"That's what Marines are for Tiamat. That's what Marines are for."