I stared at the wall, taking the few minutes between Card leaving and Ross arriving to center myself. No matter what happened, I had to maintain an air of command. If that faltered, we'd never escape the 'Sect trap. Thoughts of the ambush made me itch for a plotting board. If I were in a sim, I could have anything I wanted by asking for it, but...

I leaned against the wall, bracing myself with my palms, gently thumping my forehead into the armored bulkhead. Eventually my augmentation would be second nature, but for now I still caught myself thinking like an unaugmented Middle Grade Cadet.

"Echidna, please set up a VR conference room. I'll need an updated plotting tank, defaulting to interstellar local scale, current Order of Battle, maximum granularity, and a white board."

"Yes, Captain." She'd recovered from her earlier fright, but our easy familiarity hadn't returned. I wanted to talk things out with her, smooth it over, but I didn't have time. A few seconds later my sirens breathed in my ear. VR room ready, ma'am.

I acknowledged them with a nod, and the corridor dissolved into a blank, endless space. Three displays took up the space directly in front of me, but other than that I stood in the middle of nothing.

"Walls, a floor and a ceiling would be nice, too, Kid. call it an even ten meters by ten meters, five-meter ceiling."

"Yes, sir." The room blinked into existence around me. I'd ordered her to make it big enough for a real conference, but as far as I knew, no one else aboard Echidna had the augmentation to use a VR space. Of course, I hadn't actually checked; some of the Retread crew might have a few connectivity augments already.

"Echidna, post a list of the Cadets with the requisite augments for unassisted VR usage on the board, please."

After a brief pause, the list blinked into existence. I scrolled through both columns, a quick count showed three hundred twenty-six who could join me if they were awake. Three names stood out during my scan: Delnot, Quick, and Card. I had to talk my plan over with someone, make sure I hadn't missed anything. Not Card. My brief scan reminded me of something else I'd failed to consider.

"Echidna, three more boards, please. Table of Equipment on one, roster on a second, with notation regarding stasis status, and leave the third blank."

"Yes, Captain." The boards blinked into existence, and I spent another few moments scanning the complete list of Cadets aboard. Six thousand, one hundred and fourteen, roughly half Juniors and half Middies. I sorted them by ratings, which had the side effect of mostly sorting them into Retreads and Noobs.

"Reincarnates and Neoincarnates." I said out loud. I had to stop thinking in slang terms, or I'd use them in conversation. I color coded each group, slapping a legend at the top of the board for whenever the others arrived.

I stopped, walked over to one of the virtual walls, and banged my head against it a few times.

"Echidna, please have First Officer Quick and Cadet Delnot report to the VR room at their earliest convenience."

"Yes, Captain."

A few seconds later, Quick appeared in the center of the cluster of white boards. He snapped me a salute and held it until I returned it. He smirked at me as he walked the few paces to where I stood. "Captain. I heard about your discussion with Card."

I felt my skin heat, forced my avatar to suppress the blush. "I'm not turning into some kind of dictator."

"With all due respect, Captain, you are a dictator. We're a military vessel cut off from command. Until we get back in touch with higher authority, you're it."

My lips twisted into a half smile in reply. "Thanks."

"No problem, Captain. Just doing my job. I hope you'll still take advice from us mere mortals?"

That pulled a laugh from me. A short one, with little real humor, but a laugh nonetheless. "Yeah. That's why I called you here, actually. How much do you know about our situation?"

"We're cut off from the fleet. Tiamat," he winced, but forced himself to keep speaking, "lost it and started jumping at random, so we're not even sure where we are, except that we're not on any known charts." He stopped for a second, his eyes darting back and forth. When I opened my mouth to ask him why, he raised one finger. I folded my arms beneath my breasts and waited, a frown creeping across my lips.

"Sorry, Captain. I just realized something. We don't know we're off the charts."

"That's pretty easy to figure out. Echidna, are we on any of your charts?"

"No, Captain."

"See?"

Quick frowned, shaking his head. "No, listen to what you asked, and listen to what she said. We're not on any of her charts. Echidna, do you have software controls for your deflectors and absorbers?"

"Well, I don't really need them for my absorbers, so those are working nominally. I can't tweak and shunt, but I can use them. I gathered about ten percent of the incoming fire from the Sora before you blew it up. I haven't been able to find deflector drivers, and those suck up power like mad when you power them up without drivers, so I just left them off."

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"What charts do you have?"

"Um... throwing up a display now." With that, a tank display flickered to life, rapidly filling in with a display of the Unity's outer reaches, the ones patrolled by Imperial fleets. Every star along both sides of the border glowed green. The core glowed a dull, even red, with green stars on a black background showing up in a multitude of thin swaths.

"Get it yet, Captain?"

I opened my mouth to tell him no, but before I could make a sound a wave of sudden comprehension swept over me. "She only has backup charts. The ones where Tiamat..."

I couldn't continue. Quick didn't comment, he just finished my sentence. "...used updated versions. We might be anywhere in that red space."

"Okay. Echidna, do you have the explorer charts for areas beyond the Imperial borders?"

"Some of them." Without further explanation, yellow stars lit outside the skin of green. Some hovered close to the green borders, others stood well off; bright stars, or ones which showed up well for one reason or another. A huge swath in 'Sect space, the space nearest to our last location, stood empty.

"Okay, Echidna. Cut this back to an area six jumps wide. Assume maximum jump range. Center it on our last known location."

"I have a problem, Captain." She still hadn't shaken the fright I'd given her earlier, demanding twelve hours’ work in six. I tried to keep my voice gentle and supportive, but it wasn't easy.

"What's the problem, Kid?" It came out as an echo of my siren's purr, but I figured that beat barking at her again.

"I don't know where we started. My only known location is here, and I don't... I don't know where here is..." she almost wailed the last word.

I shook my head, walked into the tank display, and started expanding it around me. I focused on the area of space I thought the fleet had been congregating, zooming and panning until I spotted the star I'd last seen floating at the center of my ill-fated sim.

"That's our last known location. Give me a six-jump radius around there." I zoomed the tank back to its original scale. A few seconds later, a rough sphere blinked into place, narrow at the middle, wider at the top and bottom, and bumped slightly inward by any of the known obstacles. The sphere had a good chunk of dull red inside. Unfortunately, it had an even bigger chunk of dull yellow, indicating unknown 'Sect space.

"There's another problem, Captain." I saw it even as Quick mentioned it.

"Yeah," I confirmed, "we don't know if Tiamat made any controlled jumps before she started chain jumping." This time I managed to complete my sentence before my grief silenced me. Quick let me have a moment, turning his attention to the crew roster I'd been playing with before he arrived.

Guy chose that moment to intrude. He appeared with an artificially cheerful, "Good morning, Captain! How can I assist you today?" My augments, faithfully reproduced in my VR avatar, flashed my shields into existence. I forced myself to stillness and glowered at him silently.

"What's wrong? Crew having a ship supported mutiny already?"

"Cadet Delnot! I would never do such a thing!" Echidna's outraged denial preempted any angry retort I may have made. That gave me time to think, but it also gave my anger time to mature from the sudden spike of rage at his flippant remark to a deep-seated fury about his ongoing insubordinate behavior.

"Cadet Guy Delnot?"

He cocked his head, puzzled. "Yes, Captain Dabig?"

I kept my voice level, ice keeping the siren's purr and their growl to a minimum. "To the best of your knowledge, have I done anything to warrant removal from my post?"

To his credit, he actually stopped and thought about it. After a moment or two, he shook his head back and forth, deliberately slowly. "No, Captain."

"Until and unless I do, you will maintain a proper military bearing at all times."

He lowered his head until his beautiful features paralleled the floor. "I apologize, Captain. Permission to explain?"

I froze, fighting my anger. He'd done nothing improper this time, no matter how infuriating his whiskey baritone remained. I nodded, unwilling to trust my own voice. He must have seen the motion because he started speaking the moment I did.

"I grew up in a family where we dealt with grief by cracking bad jokes. Tiamat's demise... I felt her pain in those last moments. It went beyond anything I've ever experienced before. I'm a Respawn..."

"Reincarnate." The correction was almost automatic, I'm not sure he even heard.

"...so, you can guess how much pain I've been through. I used to be a front-line combatant, mostly unarmored; I'd been up for a legit transfer to the Dragon before I got waxed on Parisen." My mind made the connections without my conscious volition; to be up for transfer to the Dragon, he must have had more combat time than Wendy and Jodi put together. He had more years in combat zones than they'd been alive. He kept talking, filling the silence which had fallen in the VR room. "I didn't want to do what I did, but I couldn't think of any other way to stop her. I tried. I really did."

If he broke down, I would break down, and I couldn't have him seeing that. I didn't think I could let Quick see that, and I trusted him. Instead, I shot out the first thing I could think of. "So... do you think that's going to get you out of being late to the conference?"

His snort echoed from the walls of the VR space, and he raised his head to look at me once more. "You almost reminded me of mom just there." His eyes met mine, and for the first time since our ill-fated meeting in the shuttle, I let myself look. They flickered, as if on fire. I couldn't feel myself falling, but I felt the lurch when I stopped.

"I'm sorry, sir!" He stammered. He shook his head convulsively. "Didn't mean to make improper advances!" A glance at Quick showed me part of the reason why. His glower wasn't a patch on the Commandant's, but he'd obviously studied her. I desperately needed to learn that.

For now, I used what I had. "Why, First Officer Quick, that's no way to treat our ship's Doctor," I purred.

Guy stammered again, blurting out something incoherent about not being allowed to take positions in the chain of command. I silenced him with a raised hand.

"Are we going to have a problem, Delnot?"

At that, he straightened once more. "No, sir!"

"Good. Why were you late?"

"I was almost done with a decant when Echidna explained things. I came as soon as I finished. I mustn't have taken more than two minutes. Maybe another few seconds to make contact."

Quick cleared his throat. "We're in an accelerated VR, Sir. You're talking words nearly as fast as you can think them, instead of waiting for your mouth to move. At a guess... I'd say around fifteen to one?"

"Just over nineteen to one, but very close, Tomas." I had to figure out how my First Officer managed to seduce AIs. I couldn't see him turning it against me, but it might be useful at some point in the future, if we ever got home.

"Okay, then. How long until Cadet Ross reaches my location?"

"What about Cadet Card?" Guy asked, his tone making clear he only asked out of curiosity.

"She can wait."

"Yes, Sir."

"Approximately four minutes, Captain."

A facility with simple math is built into every augment package I've ever heard of. That part I remembered. "So that gives us seventy six minutes to plan out how we can use these," I waved a hand at our order of battle, our table of equipment, and our roster, "to outmaneuver a force large enough to threaten the First Dragon, defeat enough of them to punch a hole through to the fleet if we need to, and get ourselves and our information on evolved 'Sect tactics back home."

I grinned at my subordinates, and they both groaned in reply.

I knew I had it in me to motivate people. I just had to figure out how to motivate them in a positive way before they mutinied.