I mechanically shoveled mouthful after mouthful of tasteless glop into my mouth. Each bite reminded me again of Tiamat's fantastic cooking. I couldn't help but compare Echidna's runny, grey, nearly tasteless 'oatmeal' with Tiamat's warm, crispy yet tender French toast, delicately fluffy scrambled eggs, and firm, satisfying grits.

"Captain?"

I blinked away tears and looked across the table at Darien. "Yes, Cadet Captain?"

"Permission to speak freely, sir?"

I stared down into his solemn six-year-old face. His eyes didn't belong, a constant reminder that despite my inflated rank, he'd done my job for longer than I'd been alive. Several times longer than I'd been alive if it came down to it. I'd be six kinds of fool to turn down advice if he wanted to give me some.

"Go ahead, Darien."

He smiled at my use of his name, or maybe at the smile I'd forced. "Mourn her officially, at the funeral, or in private, but not here, not now."

I looked around the vast, empty space of the mess hall. We'd looked in on the Junior mess; the older Juniors, just freed from stasis, filled the room with noise and activity. I'd needed peace and quiet. We'd bypassed the Middie mess, on the far side of the ship, and wound up in the Senior's cafeteria. I'd never eaten in Senior country before, and I still found the subtle differences slightly off-putting. Either way, with no Seniors aboard, Darien and I had the place to ourselves.

"You're still not in private, sir. Anybody could walk in, and if you've really let go the way I think you need to, you won't notice."

I twitched my lips up into something which could charitably pass for a grin. "Am I that obvious?"

"No, sir. I've seen it before, sir."

I blinked at that. "I'd never heard of a ship dying the way Tiamat did."

"No, sir, neither have I, but I've seen Captains outlive their ships." He smiled at me, the expression not reaching his quiet, old eyes. "I outlived mine."

I blinked, and without thinking about it I mentally reached for Huff's data. He'd lost a ship nearly eight years ago. That's why he was on Tiamat in the first place. I took another bite and remembered once more, Echidna, not Tiamat. I held back my tears and frowned down at my Junior Cadet Captain.

"No, you didn't, Huff. You went down with her. You died."

"I'm here, aren't I?"

"Yes, and that kind of proves my point. You died, you were reincarnated aboard Tiamat," a thought struck me. "You weren't transferred already, were you?"

He smiled, sadly. "No. You're right, I was born aboard. My mom..." he stopped in midsentence, and I felt like a complete ass.

"I'm sorry."

"No. It's all right. We weren't as close as you might think." His face didn't agree with his words. "Sometimes reincarnate families are like that."

"She's still your mom, Huff. It's okay to grieve." I stopped, realizing now why Tiamat's death kept hitting me so hard every time I thought about it.

"Yeah, but I'm in the same position you are, sir. Got to keep up appearances." His eyes watered as he said it, and I grabbed for anything to pull us away from talk of mothers dying.

"Do you remember dying?" Okay, it wasn't that far away, but I wasn't at my best. Sue me.

"Sort of. Not really. It's... fuzzy. Like I was there, but it wasn't important. Quite a few things are like that. Important stuff, life changing stuff, I can remember clear as my hand in front of my face, but minor stuff? It's either really vague or gone."

I tried not to think about what it meant that my 'important, life changing' memories from my father and mother were deaths. "Vague how?"

"Like... do you remember what you ate for breakfast three days after your fourth birthday?"

"Well, no, I..." Suddenly the data appeared in my mind, hard edged as crystal. "Scrambled eggs, buttered toast, and cereal. Crunchy fluffs. I loved crunchy fluffs as a kid. I don't know how I forgot that. I don't know how I remembered that."

All sensory data has been recorded. All recordings are available once mental augmentation is complete. All recordings are transferred at the time of reincarnation. Some loss of clarity due to compression algorithms is commonly reported.

"You're listening to your essie, aren't you?"

"Yeah, why?"

"There's a look people get. Kind of distant, like they're really grooving on the music in their heads." He must have noticed my blank look. "Tell me someone told you?"

I swallowed another big spoonful of glop before answering. "Told me what?"

"I forget you're an orphan..."

"You mean a Blank."

"I mean an orphan. Being a failed reincarnation has nothing to do with it. Well, I don't think so, anyhow. Music."

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

I took another bite while trying to figure out his last statement. I had a music collection on a storage chit back in my old room. I'd listened my way through most of it several times while reviewing the files on my Middies, and I'd even added a few new tracks when Tiamat found I shared her love of paleo-classical. I pondered asking if Echidna still had those recordings, or if she'd lost them when Tiamat died.

After a few more contemplative bites, I opened my mouth to ask him what he meant. Before I could speak, Echidna's voice rang through the mess hall.

"Battle Stations! All hands to battle stations!"

Before Echidna finished her announcement I leapt from my chair, grabbing my food tray and dashing for the disposals. Halfway there displays popped up along the sides of my vision; along the left a single blue bar with a thin sliver of red at the bottom, on the right a countdown timer currently displaying just over half an hour, falling as I watched.

Current reaction mass sufficient for roughly nine hundred heartbeats. Continued refueling advised.

I hadn't finished processing that when a child's hand grabbed at the fabric covering my thigh. "Captain, sorry to have to ask, but where should I be?"

Of course, life couldn't hand me one problem at a time. I held up one finger for Huff to wait. "Echidna, do you have the assignments Quick and I worked out earlier?"

"Yes, Captain."

I sighed in relief; she'd lost so much I worried irrationally that she'd keep losing things. "Please provide each Cadet with a guide light to their assigned station."

"Uh... Doing so now, Captain." I ignored how distracted she suddenly sounded, ignored the red light leading me out of the cafeteria, and turned my attention to Huff. "You're in the core command bridge. Your First will be in the core engineering bridge."

"Thanks Captain!" He snapped a salute, I returned it, and he sped off with all the youthful energy I'd expect from a six-year-old. Just before he left the room he spun on his heel. "Keep smiling! It gets better!"

I hadn't noticed the smile on my own face, but once he mentioned it, I only took a moment to realize why I had one. "What class of Insectoid mother ship, Echidna?"

"How did you," Echidna caught herself halfway through her question. I took the opportunity while she spluttered a bit to toss my tray in the disposal, activate my augmentation, and bend one edge of my bowl into a spout. Runny oatmeal wasn't appetizing, but I gulped it down like a thick milkshake anyway.

I really missed milkshakes. I made a mental note to ask if Echidna had any recipes once we dealt with this 'Sect.

"I can't be certain at this distance, Captain. Based on mass, visible characteristics, and acceleration, it's either a Madrecita, a Mutterchen, or... it's not a Marapi. It's moving too slow. I don't think they'd have a -Ter variant out this deep, but it could be."

I paused my oatmeal shake guzzling. "How soon until it reaches engagement range?"

"Forty-two minutes if it's a mature Mutterchen. Forty-nine if it's a Madrecita, but it could have parasites in action against us in just under thirty minutes if it's carrying Squids."

I frowned, trying to recall exactly how long I'd been eating. A second later my essie projected the numbers right beneath my reaction mass counter. I finished swallowing the last of my oatmeal, and that counter jumped upward again. Now I had just over twenty-seven hundred heartbeats left, however long that gave me. The bar on the right filled me with mixed emotions. On one hand, the fact it hadn't moved meant I'd have some endurance if I ever got myself full. On the other, I'd just choked down a double serving of really awful oatmeal and I hadn't moved it noticeably. Visions of choking down gallons of raw syrup and oil every meal filled my head.

I took myself to task; I'd have time to work all that out later. "Quick, how long until we're jump capable?"

My First's voice sounded in my ear a moment later, "I'd really appreciate another twenty-five minutes, Captain. Technically we could jump now, but about ninety percent of the projector casings are still lying on the deck. With the tools and spares still lying on the deck, we'll lose a good chunk of them if we have to accelerate at the other end."

I fought to keep the ice out of my voice as I started strolling toward the middle command bridge. "Can you give me one good reason my ship's legs are flayed open, First?"

I must have failed, because while his response wasn't insubordinate, it certainly qualified as indignant. "We've been jump capable for five minutes? Ten minutes under my own best estimate, and six and a half hours under Echidna's, unless my math is off."

I smiled and slowed my stroll. No need to ruin my digestion. "Fantastic work." I caught myself purring as badly as my sirens ever did. "Remind me to put you in for a commendation when we get home."

"No... no need," he stuttered, "just doing my job."

"Well, get your job done as quickly as you possibly can, then get yourself to the middle engineering bridge."

"I can be at skin command five minutes faster, sir."

I thought about that for a moment, then shrugged. If the 'Sects had figured out our layout, which bridge he occupied mattered less than having our command crew spread out enough to slow them down if they boarded.

Which they wouldn't. Not this time.

"Excellent suggestion, First. Let me know when you're battened down and ready to fight."

"Yes, sir!" Whatever ill will I'd gained with my initial icy tones, I'd managed to lose again, mostly. I sauntered through the corridors, mentally reviewing what I knew of the 'Sect's various small mother ships. A few Cadets raced past, telling me to run until they looked around and saw who they were shouting at. I smiled at them, returned their salutes, and sighed when they smiled before dashing off to their stations.

I really hoped we weren't facing a Marapi. They had the capacity for multiple jumps, and I didn't know how well Quick's Cadets had fixed our projectors. If he said they worked, they worked, but losing one on a jump wasn't unheard of. If we ran and the 'Sect could follow us, my entire plan could wind up shot down before we got it started.

"How many jumps do you have power for, Kid?"

Echidna didn't respond for so long I worried one of Quick's repairs had damaged something. When she answered me, her voice barely audible, I could swear I could hear tears in her voice. "One, sir."

I forced myself to keep to my casual pace, kept my voice as level as possible. "Why?"

"T... Tiamat, sir. I think. I'm not meaning to blame her, sir. I'm sure she had reasons. But my antimatter and my fusion reaction mass are both nearly empty. I'd used a lot of what I had left before I realized how little I had, too. I... I thought I'd started out full, and I didn't have the drivers for my power system readouts, and... and... I screwed up, sir."

When she wound down, I stopped a good five paces away from the command bridge doors. "Have you used power for anything except what I told you to do?"

"You didn't tell me to feed anyone."

I rolled my eyes. "Other than that?"

"No, sir. Not since I found you."

I squared my shoulders and stepped forward. "Then if it's anyone's fault, it's my fault." The doors slid open, and I nodded to the three crewmen in their crash couches. They returned the nod, hands never leaving the manual controls. I had Card with me as a med tech, and two runners, both barely old enough to be Middies. The moment I settled into my command couch, the walls disappeared, replaced by a vision of stars burning clear and cold in the vastness of space. A single star, outlined with the ghost of a 'Sect Madrecita, hovered dead ahead of me.

"Okay, 'Kid. What's the maximum acceleration you can maintain without using any of the power we need to jump, and without overcoming your inertial dampening?"

"Only about twenty percent of maximum, sir."

"Okay, then. Give me five percent power... thataway." I waved one hand at a skew angle away from the 'Sect. "Get ready to jump, and pray that thing launches Squids soon."