Commandant De'Lann yanked me out of my stunned reverie with a snappish "Cadet!"

"Yes, Sir!"

"Have you heard a word I've been saying?"

'"I'm sorry, sir, I thought you were talking with Cadet Delnot." It was a lame excuse, but when you're in a bad position you use whatever comes to hand. "I didn't want to accidentally overhear anything personal."

The ghost of a grin twisted her lips, but her eyes remained hard. "Really, Grace? After everything you've pulled in the past, you're concerning yourself with privacy issues?"

"Sir, I'm not Grace Li. She was my designated maternal, but she passed away before I could get to know her." Good riddance, too. Anyone who would abandon a two-year-old because she wasn't what you expected deserved to die. Long buried emotions, as much a product of my clone father's memories as my own vague memories of her, tugged at me, but I ruthlessly stamped them down.

The commandant did something with her desk. Interacting with an interface projected directly onto her optic nerve, most likely. God, I wished I could contact my essie. I wouldn't use an interface as antiquated as the one De'Lann preferred, but... It struck me then that she wasn't in a position where she used older interfaces because she couldn't get newer ones. She was using them because she preferred them. She might look like a young woman flush with her first pregnancy, but that one quirk hinted my impression was wrong. Really, really, wrong.

I had intended to research my new commanding officer during my last day on the shuttle, but the emergency acceleration, Creepy Stalker Guy, and the crash ruined those plans. Hoping to find something to keep her from spacing me, I sub vocalized frantically.

"Tiamat, request access public information Commandant De'Lann."

Thankfully, Tiamat was a full AI, not the idiot expert system I'd been forced to deal with on the shuttle. Her response came back with the quiet murmur that told me she was projecting for my ears only.

"Senior Commander Sarah De'Lann. Presently Commandant Imperial Creche Ship Tiamat. Sixteenth incarnation. Three thousand two hundred twenty years old, with twenty-four hundred six of those years in this incarnation. Present incarnation female."

I held my expression rigid, so I wouldn't show any shock at the commandant's age. She was older than my clone father had been when he kicked off for the last time. The number of incarnations was a little high, especially for someone who hadn't died in longer than my clone father had been alive. Tiamat was reciting stuff I could see with my own eyes, and by the look on her face De'Lann was about to start shouting at me. I sub vocalized the only question I could think of under the circumstances.

"Tiamat, why is De'Lann so pissed at Grace?"

Tiamat paused. Proper AIs never pause, unless they're doing so deliberately to emulate human speech patterns or working through something particularly knotty, like long distance pocket jumps or human emotional interactions. She answered hesitantly, as if unsure of her conclusion.

"Junior Lieutenant Sarah De'Lann participated in the holding action at Deep Stand Nebula. Junior Commander Grace Li took command of the forces at Deep Stand Nebula during the latter half..."

I didn't hear the rest of Tiamat's analysis. I realized right then I'd made a terrible mistake when I transferred. Instead of finding a place where I'd be free of my clone father's memories, I'd arrived in a place where I was hip deep in the memories Grace had shared with him.

...I watched in horror as wave after wave of Imperial Marines swept into the furnace in front of me. I ached to go down there myself, to destroy the damned Insects with my own hands, but that wasn't my place. If I left where I was, the fleet would fall back on protocol. They would follow standing Imperial orders. Whether they ran or stood made no difference at that point. The Insects would get through, and when they did this entire sector would burn.

"Send them in again... "

"What did you say, cadet?" This time the commandant's voice shocked me out of my fugue. Her glare should have turned me to ash on the spot. The heat of it burned my cheeks, but I refused to flinch. I stared at the wall above her head. My arches ached; I wanted to bounce, to stretch them, but standing at attention I had to remain stock still.

Check me in again.

Delnot's voice echoed through my head. My lips were moving before I could stop them.

"Check me in again. Please, sir."

The Glare wavered, confused. "What are you talking about, Cadet?"

Check my identity with Tiamat and the Imperial database, sir.

This time my lips were my own, but Delnot seemed to know what he was doing. At least the commandant wasn't glaring any more. "Please check my identity with Tiamat and the Imperial database, sir."

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The Glare returned, but this time it was set to silence, not kill. After an eternity of staring, her at me, me at the wall, she spoke. "Tiamat, confirm the identity of the newly arrived female cadet."

"The female cadet in your office is Middle Grade Cadet Dustie Dabig, newly arrived from the Outer Rim fleet." Wry humor suffused Tiamat's statement. She didn't have to worry about being expelled. "I've already checked the most recent Imperial download. She does bear a striking resemblance to Grace, doesn't she?"

I had to hand it to the commandant. When presented evidence that I wasn't the woman she thought I was, she went from screaming harpy to self-possessed commander in an instant. Of course, I couldn't be lucky enough for that to rescue me entirely.

"So... Dustie Dabig. Tiamat, feed her data to my desk display, please.” She paused a long moment, by her hand movements scanning through my file. When she finished, her frown hadn’t gone away. “Cadet Dabig, you present me with a conundrum."

She sat there, letting the silence work on me. Normally, I can keep my mouth shut in a situation like that, but in the past day I'd been knocked out and thrown into my clone father's memories once too often to be patient. After no more than a minute passed, I broke.

"What kind of a problem, sir?"

"The former Middle Grade Cadet Captain was promoted to Senior Grade Cadet just before I arrived. This leaves me without a Middle Grade Cadet Captain." She stared at me as if expecting me to deduce what she meant based on that one little tidbit. I had a terrible suspicion, but so long as I didn't give voice to it, even to myself, it wasn't real. What never existed couldn't be taken away from me.

"Yes, sir?" A good, noncommittal answer. You can never get in too much trouble agreeing with the commander. Okay, you get in less trouble than disagreeing with her, at least. Her frown told me there was enough trouble available to make everyone in the cabin long for something simple, like a 'Sect invasion.

"As you're very well aware, tradition demands that in the absence of any extenuating circumstances I promote the most senior year fifteen Middle Grade Cadet to the position. Normally, that would be the Middle Grade Cadet First Officer. In this case Cadet Quick." Beads of sweat tickled my scalp. I tried to hold them in place with sheer willpower but had to settle for hoping my posture was good enough to keep most of them running down the sides of my head, under cover of my hair. It's never a good thing when the commander gets pedantic. It means someone is about to get several new holes ripped in uncomfortable places. Since Quick hadn't done anything wrong, that left Delnot and me, and my luck today hadn't filled me with confidence about my chances of it being him.

"Yes, Sir. Cadet Quick will be the new Middle Grade Cadet Captain, sir?" I was agreeing with her preemptively, something that ought to get me off the hook. Unfortunately, by the way her brow furrowed even further, I'd just stepped right in the middle of the clutter I was trying to avoid.

"Not another one," she muttered. "No, Cadet Dabig. Before Cadet Quick could be promoted, I was informed of two transfers, both with more seniority than Cadet Quick. Would you care to guess who those two transfers are?"

I'm neither slow on the uptake nor deliberately obstructive. "Myself and Cadet Delnot, sir?"

"Yes. Now, would you care to guess which of you is senior?"

Her question implied permission to look at Delnot, but I wasn't about to risk another fugue moment. Instead, I just thought about which option would wind up with her being more annoyed at me. "Me, sir?"

"Oddly enough, no. You're junior to Delnot by about three days." For a few moments, the commandant had almost been smiling. Her mention of Delnot, on the other hand, stripped every bit of humor from her face. "Unfortunately, there are extenuating circumstances regarding Cadet Delnot, which make him ineligible for the Middle Grade Cadet Captain slot."

I forced my sigh of relief back down. The commandant was ticked at Delnot, not me. I was just an annoyance. I might still be able to salvage this. I wanted the command slot almost as much as I wanted air, but getting it in a way that annoyed the commandant would be worse than useless. "Sir, I'm due to be promoted within the year." I swallowed my jealous bile and kept talking before my ambition could throttle me. "That ought to be extenuating circumstance enough to allow you to bypass me and promote Cadet Quick in my stead. It would be disruptive to have a Cadet Captain for less than a full year. I'm sure no one would mind."

I'd gone and handed her a solution to her dilemma, one that sacrificed the command slot I wanted so dearly, and before I was halfway done speaking her look could have frozen plasma. "Are you quite done, Cadet?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Based on your transcripts, both Cadet Delnot and yourself show enormous command potential. Unfortunately, so does Cadet Quick. I am saddled with a plethora of riches. If I were to keep one of you from the command slot, the Admiralty would no doubt be disappointed, but understand. However, sacrificing two of the three of you would be a black mark on my record, and I will not have it. If I could, I would cycle all three of you through the Middie Captain slot over the next year."

I couldn't help myself, the words slipped out before I could stop them. "So why don't you, sir?"

Her lips curved into what should have been a smile, but her eyes were filled with cold fury. "As noted, there are extenuating circumstances regarding Cadet Delnot. Instead, I believe I will preemptively delay your promotion to Senior Grade Cadet to allow you to complete a full year long tour of duty as Middle Grade Cadet Captain. Congratulations, Cadet Dabig."

I should have been elated, but my stomach was a ball of lead, sinking fast. The barely restrained splutters from Cadet Quick as he watched his chance to be Cadet Captain evaporate were a big part of the reason. I would have to work closely with him for the next year, and from the start he would resent me. It seemed the commandant was of the 'throw the student into the deep end of the pool' school of education. Still, there was only one thing for me to say. "Thank you, sir."

Her smile got wider, and my heart decided to race my stomach to my heels. "In addition, for the good of the Service, I will be delaying Cadet Quick's promotion to allow him the same opportunity. Tiamat, please make a note in the Cadets' files."

"So noted, Commandant."

Commandant De'Lann's basilisk stare held me pinned, or I would have run screaming. The only hope I had of succeeding as Cadet Captain was getting the help of a First Officer with experience aboard the Tiamat. With that one proclamation, she'd made sure Quick was going to hate me. As I stared into her eyes, I realized the truth; she was taking her anger at Grace out on me. Worse, there was absolutely nothing I could do to prevent her from taking her revenge this way.

I never thought I could hate Grace as much as my clone father. It turns out I was wrong.