I stared at the little girl lying in the cradle and tried to feel something for her. Sparks of hatred tried to ignite, but they just couldn’t catch in the barren wasteland inside me. The seeds of love wouldn’t bloom, though I knew they ought to, one way or another. I couldn’t even bring myself to feel basic human compassion for her.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered, vaguely embarrassed by my failure.

Of course, it had been a long time since I felt human compassion for anyone. Maybe I’d lived too long. Maybe I’d spent too long in the company of the most compassionate man I’d ever met, relying on him for cues on how to care for other human beings. When he died, I’d felt that compassion shrink down to the tiniest spark within his sleeping link. Whatever empathy I’d once felt for anyone had burned low as well, leaving me with nothing but the tiny reminder of all that was Dustin Dabig; my lover, my husband, my salvation.

***

“Captain?”

Quick’s huge paw jostled me into something resembling wakefulness. I could feel my mother’s memory of me hovering in the background. I wanted it gone but couldn’t muster the energy to banish it. Quick didn’t deserve my anger, and he definitely didn’t deserve a lackluster Captain. Too bad. I was all he had.

“Yes, Quick?” I pushed myself upright and staggered to my closet, shedding the undergarments I’d passed out in. I heard him shuffle behind me; giving me space to dress, I guessed.

“We’re at the jump point, sir.”

I pulsed my force field. I couldn’t handle the social stress of the showers. “Why didn’t you just message me?”

“The interference around your quarters, sir.” He sounded weird, his voice echoing oddly in the confined space of my quarters. I dragged my uniform on one piece at a time. I ought to ask him for help, since he’d already seen me staggering, heard me falter and fail. He didn’t want me as his Captain. How could he? I’d just left hundreds of millions of innocent Civilians to die. I couldn’t be the Captain he needed, but I could pretend. After all he’d done for my ship, for me, I would do that much for him.

I turned around after pulling my boots on. He stood, back toward me, refusing to acknowledge my existence. “Lead on, First.”

***

“I tried, I really, really did,” I explained.

I’d held him back from the endless ravening maw of my link to Mother. She’d reincarnate him, I was certain. He’d died a hero. She might even grant him the honor of joining the ever-growing Imperial Family. She might do it just to taunt me, but I doubted it. She knew me too well; I didn’t care enough about her opinion or my own neck to be polite to her during my trial, I certainly wouldn’t care enough about public opinion to avoid something as ultimately meaningless as sleeping with my own sister. More likely Mother would send the tiny seed that remained of him to some far-off world I’d never find, and then taunt me with the official Imperial anonymity policies. I’d have to wait decades for him to grow up enough to contact me. By then he might not want the shattered shell I’d become since Deep Stand, the shell he’d spent thousands of years trying to fill.

“I’m not… you’re not…” I reached down to smooth the little girl’s fiery curls, push them out of her sleeping face before they tickled her nose and woke her.

I couldn’t finish a simple sentence. No wonder I’d failed so miserably with reincarnating my Dustin. I’d had my essie start the pregnancy; they’d long since archived Dustin’s genetic material, along with his requests regarding his next incarnation. I’d slipped the cold, quiet link into the fetus’ mind the moment it could retain it. As soon as enough spare neural tissue existed, I’d begun feeding the little one his memories, most of them deeply intertwined with my own. I’d left that link open, letting her bathe in the sense of him I’d known for so long.

***

I blinked in the sudden silence after our pocket jump, waiting for the stars to form around me in my navigation display. Nothing did until I scanned around behind me. For nearly ninety degrees I saw nothing. The truth took a bit to sink in.

“Echidna, Quick please.”

“Yes, Captain?” My First replied instantly; he’d been waiting for the call.

“Why are we this close to a black hole?”

“Power, sir.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

I couldn’t reply. He was right. I’d failed utterly. Maybe it was time for him to take over.

“Understood.”

I barely heard his reply as I drifted into my mother’s memories. “I’ll send Junior Cadet Captain Huff up for you, Sir.”

***

“So pretty.” The words seeped from me of their own accord.

I inhaled, sucking in the scent of the little girl sprawled before me. I owed her an explanation for what I planned to do, even if she would never understand it. “I’m sorry, little one,” I whispered. “I’m sorry I’m not who you need me to be.” I choked back a sob I didn’t fully understand before I continued. “I was one of mother’s Experimentals; a torn off fragment of a shattered personality. Before I met Dustin, I was her perfect killer, unable to care for anyone. I cared so little I even broke… broke the Dragon. I felt… felt each and every one of them dying, and I still sent them… sent them in again.” I stuttered to a stop. I needed to say this, to make it real. If I didn’t, I would wind up hurting all that remained of my precious Dustin. I choked down a burst of hysterical laughter. “The woman who couldn’t care about other humans even when she felt their souls burning, and the man who cared so much he could feel the mechanical heart of a ‘Mech carrier.”

I stopped, unable to go on without breaking down. I stood there staring at the little toddler who, day by day, tore at me. I couldn’t go on like this. I forced the words out. I needed them more than she did. “I waited for him to wake up, but he didn’t. You’re here. He’s gone. No one knows why, except me.”

She stirred, and I dropped my voice to a whisper even I could barely hear. “I screwed up. I put too much of myself into you, trying to get him to come back. But…”

***

I trudged along next to Huff, trying to keep my shoulders square. He’d been silent since he arrived to escort me to the airlock. At one point he smiled up at me. I wasn’t sure why.

We arrived at the starboard airlock, set just to one side of the primary pocket emitter. As the lock cycled, Huff reached one tiny hand up to me.

“Wish I could go with you, but…”

I frowned down at him. “I sort of expected Quick and Delnot here. To make sure of things.”

He shook his head. “Quick needs to be down in Engineering for this, and Delnot currently has everyone but the bridge crews running a sim. They aren’t aware of what’s going on. It ought to be a surprise for them.”

“Yeah.” I ground the word out, barely able to keep myself standing.

“Oh, did you ever get your playlists sorted with your essie?”

I had no idea what he was talking about, or why he’d be talking about it now. “What do you mean?”

He shook his head. “Man, I keep forgetting. Nobody around for you. Your essie has enough storage to keep you in music for years, Sir. I can’t think of anyone over the age of sixteen who doesn’t have something playing in the background most of the time.”

I still had no idea why he was telling me this now. The lock cycled open. I stepped forward in silence, heard him shift behind me. I glanced around to see him saluting me. I returned the salute, and he scampered off before the inner hatch finished closing.

The outer hatch opened, leaving me alone with my mother’s memories.

***

Blood thundered in my ears, a rage at being abandoned by the one man I’d ever felt anything for. “I can’t. Every time I look at you, I want to try again, to let you die so maybe next time you’ll come back as him. But you won’t. No matter how much I want him to come back, he had one chance, and I screwed it up, and every time I look at you, I remember that. That’s not your fault. It’s mine. But it’s why I have to go; so you have a chance to grow up. To grow up into the amazing person I know you’ll be.”

***

Sir, I need access to your essie.

Guy’s thought echoed in my head. I stared into blackness, the ice picks stabbing at my ears dulled by two tiny fields. The sirens interrupted my solitude next.

Doctor Delnot-Li is requesting temporary administrative access. Should we allow this?

I couldn’t think of why they needed that, except maybe to take my defenses down. If that’s what they wanted, I couldn’t think of a reason to refuse them.

Sure. Go ahead.

I had no way to measure time and didn’t care enough to bring up a clock. I stared at the blackness before me for a subjective eternity until a single line of text popped up in front of my eyes.

SC: Wormhole generated. Handoff to Echidna primary driver complete. Firing primary emitter in five seconds.

I saw no reason to be awake for what came next. I drifted off into my mother’s last memories of me one final time.

***

She stirred again. I didn’t trust myself to touch her; I tossed a blanket over her instead. Before I could see her face again, I turned away. I had to go. One of us had to die, and the little girl behind me didn’t deserve it.

An echo of my beloved Dustin reminded me she didn’t deserve to grow up alone, with no idea why I’d left her, either.

“Glaucus, attend.”

The ship’s supercilious whine cut at my rage, sharpening it. “Yes, your Highness?”

“I hereby name this child Imperial Princess Dustie Constance Evergreen Dabig-Li. You are to attend and protect her as you would any member of the Imperial Family. She is to have full Imperial Family authority from this moment forward.” The moment I said that visions of what my mother might do should she find my infant daughter here without me to protect her surfaced. It would not do for me to leave, only for my mother to do what I was trying to avoid. “Her identity is to remain sealed until such time as she claims her name and title.”

“And her authority?”

I smirked at the ship’s unseen pickups. “Active in full until and unless rescinded by Her Majesty.” That ought to keep Glaucus from flaming her up too badly.

“Essie, encrypt my memory, start point tee minus ten minutes. Slug it to her essie, with instructions to release it…” I thought about it for a second, but not much longer. I could smell her, and even that made my rage spike. “Release it to her when she really, earnestly believes no one wants her, along with the following: It’s not your fault, little one. It’s mine. If Dustin were alive, he’d tell you the same. Now go. Do something amazing.”