I leaned back and stretched, arching my back and twisting to work the kinks out. Halfway to the floor, my augmentation kicked in, keeping me balanced despite my precarious position. Faintly, as though from a dream, my back crackled as my spine shifted back into place. I'd been moving around in the VR room, but back in reality my body had leaned motionless against the wall.

I straightened up and looked over the plans Guy, Quick and I had worked up over the past hour. Everything from crew schedules to armor fittings had a spot on the white board in front of me. With a thought I committed it all to memory, then checked my internal chron.

"Okay, we've got five subjective minutes left. Before we go, we need to talk about how we got here. Have either of you found anything definitive from since we went into stasis?"

Silence met my question. I turned to face the boys and found them staring at me. Guy’s eyebrows hovered near his perfect hairline, and Quick's mouth hung slightly open. I glanced down at my uniform, but I'd managed to keep that much of my real-world self out of the VR; no stasis gel marred my whites. When I looked back up at them, I caught their eyes following mine. Guy took his time about it, too, and didn't even have the grace to look embarrassed.

"Gentlemen? Are we going to have another problem?"

"No, sir!" replied Quick. "Just... you're very limber, sir." He snorted in amused self-deprecation. "Caught me by surprise. Don't think I've ever seen a superior officer touch the floor behind themselves, sir. Didn't mean to stare."

"Try not to let it happen again. Cadet Delnot?"

Guy shook his head, only the speed of my augmented perceptions allowing me to see his gaze snapping back to my face again. "Oh. Sorry, sir. What Quick said, sir. Card is here, I need to get started on my wakeup schedule. With your permission?"

I glared at him as he stood there practically bouncing with impatience. My ire slid off him, and his eyes remained locked on my cheekbones. Almost dead level, given the few inches in height I had on him. I needed trustworthy subordinates. Right now, I had Guy and Quick augmented enough to matter, and Card, Ross, Jodi and Wendy. I didn't have time to deal with Guy's clutter now.

"It'll have to do. Go."

He disappeared, leaving me alone with Quick. To his credit, his eyes locked on mine the moment I looked at him. I nodded, and he spun to one of the white boards we'd filled and discarded. With a swipe of one huge paw, he cleared the screen. He whispered something to Echidna, too fast for me to make out the individual words. A moment later the screen filled with a schematic; glowing blue lines on a pale gray background.

"This is the ship's neural network." He tapped a few sections, speed whispered again, and part of the diagram glowed a sullen red, shading out to an ugly violet on the edges. "These are the sections which housed Tiamat's consciousness and active memory during her final battle."

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I interrupted before he could continue. "Isn't she supposed to be housed down near the jump core?"

"That's where her main processors are, yes, but..."

"Spit it out, Quick."

He blushed but spoke. "Most ships ignore those regs."

"Tomas!" Echidna sounded as if she would blush too if she could.

"How many people know about this?"

"Most Armorers who started on ships know. I'm sure any strong telepath who spent a while on a ship could tell. Other than that? I'm not sure."

Those two categories of people covered plenty of senior officers. I hadn't uncovered some deep, dark secret.

"Okay. Before I try to figure out how to throw my own ship in the brig for breaking regs, two questions. First, were those regulations written by Armorers who didn't start out on ships?"

"Checking..." After a few tense moments Echidna's presence returned. "Yes, Captain. Does it matter?"

"Officially, no. From a practical standpoint, the regulation might need to be updated, if not outright removed. Second question. Why?"

Tomas blinked once before answering. "Communication lag. Ships are big enough, and they're transceiving enough, that speed of light matters. Add in the additional lag and hash from an active drive, and most of them prefer to locate around their captain during any serious fight. That usually means they're pretty well protected anyhow, but sometimes..."

"Yes. Sometimes. Okay, Echidna, no leaving your central processors without informing your captain. Understood?"

"Yes, sir."

I couldn't tell if the VR slowed down or I imagined it. Either way, her sense of presence dulled a little. "It's okay, Echidna. I'm not angry with you. I just want you safe."

"Yes, Captain."

My ship mollified; I turned back to my First. "Now, where were we?"

Aware of the relentless pressure of time, Tomas jumped back into his presentation. "I walled off the area in black." A mutter, and a black background surrounded the red, violet, and a thin sliver of blue around the edges. "Contained within that are all of the memories, drivers, and everything else Echidna can't access."

"Can you go through it manually? Parse out the maps and drivers we need to get ourselves home to the fleet safely?"

"I... I can try, sir. I've been trying. Doing it by hand is taking forever, though. I tried connecting directly to the neural net, treating the thing like a sim, but... I'm not sure I can handle that, sir."

For the first time since I'd met him, Quick looked frightened. It shook me more than I wanted to admit. He tried to speak again, stopped. I spoke before he could upset himself or me any further.

"Okay, Quick. You're probably not the one who should be doing that, anyhow."

"What do you mean, sir?"

"Reviewing my predecessor’s tactics and the tactics in use by our enemies is my job, Quick." I paused for a moment, thinking quickly. I only had a few seconds left before Ross arrived. "Can you relocate the problem data?"

"Theoretically, yes. There might be some loss, but I can do it."

"That's fine. The area you described contains one bay, the captain’s office, and the bridge. We'll want Echidna to have access to all three of those. Move the data into an area centered on my old quarters. I'll be staying there until you get the Captain's office cleaned up."

"But sir, I won't be able to attend to you in your quarters."

I smiled at my ship. "I'll manage, Kid. Make it happen, Quick."

"Yes, sir."

He saluted, I returned it, and the VR room melted away before my eyes.