I strode down Echidna's corridor, my dress whites flashing in the corners of my vision. The silence creeped me out; it reminded me of the shuttle.

"Echidna, where is everyone?"

"There are three individuals in your office in various states of disrepair. The remaining Middie and Junior Cadets are still safely contained in stasis pods."

"Disrepair?"

"Sorry. Was that not the right word? Damage... Incapacitation? No, although that one's technically correct. Injury! Yes, I think injury might be best. They're all casualties at any rate."

I counted to five as I strode along the corridor toward the Captain's office. She didn't mean to be rude, but unlike a normal AI, she had only my speech patterns to base her own on. Of course, that brought me back to the question of where everyone else had gone.

"Where did everyone else go?"

"What do you mean, Captain?"

I spoke clearly, trying to give my new ship a good role model. "You are an Imperial Crèche ship."

"That would make sense, with all the Cadets aboard."

"So, if you're a school ship, where are the instructors?"

"The... Oh! I'm not sure. Let me check my..." Echidna's voice slurred on the last word, and a terrible squeal echoed through the radio frequency bands. I shouted, both physically and mentally, as loud as I could.

"Echidna! Belay that data search!"

The RF hash quieted with agonizing slowness. When the last bit of static died down to nothing, I addressed the ship once more.

"Echidna? Are you alright?"

"Captain... Oh, Captain, don't make me go back there. Please, I tried to find out for you, but... I can't."

Tears borne of fear and self-loathing at admitting her fear drenched Echidna's reply. As I kept striding down the hall, I lowered my voice, a mother calming a crying child.

"It's okay, Echidna. I know you did your best." My duty to the rest of the crew wrenched at me, tearing at my heart as I realized I couldn't let her remain silent. "You don't have to go back, but... could you tell me why you can't go back?"

"Nightmare. Horror. Madness. Even thinking about that place..." her words slid off into an ever increasing keen, one I interrupted with my mind and voice before it got fully started.

"Echidna! Focus on my voice!"

I'm here for you, Echidna. Don't forget that.

I'd hoped my ship would be an unqualified asset, but I realized then and there I couldn't force anyone to face nightmares. I'd spent years wallowing in my parents’ memories, and a subjective eternity buried under the weight of their fears and failures. I would not do such a thing to my ship, to my Echidna.

"Echidna? Are you with me?"

"I'm here, Captain. I'll be," she sniffled, betraying the lie in her own next words, "just fine."

Not if I left her like this, she wouldn't be. "Excellent. While I investigate my office, I need you to scan the surrounding system for threats." I paused, realizing the extent of my ignorance. "For that matter, I'll need to know what system we're in. Get that information to me as soon as you can."

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"I will, Captain!" Faced with the prospect of something productive to do, the ship's AI brightened considerably. She muttered to herself as she set to work. "These external sensor array routines are awful, I'm sure I could do better..."

After listening to a handful of similar mutters, I interrupted. "After thousands of years of service, the routines ought to be fairly close to optimal."

Echidna paused for the briefest of instants, an eternity of shock for a new AI. "My routines for the use of my sensor arrays are all default routines. I mean, the date stamps are thousands of years old, but they aren't modified." She paused again. Ethereal mutters passed through the air too fast for me to comprehend. "Captain, I'm not a new ship, am I?"

I rounded the last corner before the entrance to the Captain's office, the dilemma rendering me silent as I approached the door. How did I give someone who trusted me the same awful news I'd struggled with for years?

In the end, I had no choice. Lies might comfort, but in the end, they hurt more than they helped. I stopped before my office door and spoke to the nearest pickup. "You're a Blank. Like me."

Her reaction surprised me; I'd expected confusion, but I'd expected more denial and hurt. Instead, she simply asked, "What is a Blank?"

"You're a new person wearing a body an old person should have been wearing."

"Oh. Old person? You mean I'm supposed to be geriatric?"

I swore, careful to keep it to myself even inside my head. I kept forgetting, assuming she'd know everything Tiamat had known. "No. The body you wear, the ship you inhabit, it used to be a ship named Tiamat."

"Then why am I here now?" Her question, small and afraid, the same one I'd asked my own mother, tore at me.

"I don't know, Kid. That's what I'm about to find out." I suspected the reason lay in the Captain's office, and I expected looking too closely would drive her into nightmares once more. I couldn't bear that. Worse, I didn't have time for it. Worst, neither stood out as the real reason I gave her my next order.

"Echidna, no matter what, I do not want you consciously observing my office until I tell you differently. Understand?"

"Yes, Captain." Her reply mixed relief and frustration in equal measure, but I caught no hint she would disobey, even from her constant ethereal mutters.

I reached out through my augmentation and opened the door.

***

A scene from one of my nightmares greeted me. A Hullborer stretched across the room, the furnishings tossed aside where its claws and binding palps swept through the room in its death throes. It lay still, obviously dead despite its lack of injuries. A perfect specimen, a rare find, but I only spared it a moment's glance.

The thing's tongue, already beginning to decay from the acid of its deceased progeny, coiled across the floor from the Hullborer's maw to where Guy knelt, motionless, in a pile of random, mismatched body parts. I forced myself to stare at the mess, trying to make sense of it. Guy cradled Doctor Andrews' body, his hands stroking the scorched remains of her hair. She lay limp, the only damage visible her burned hair and her charred eyes. The bloody remains of a white uniform dangled from the acid-crisped gobbets sprayed across her sweats. I followed the trail back to the pulped, crimped tip of the Hullborer's tongue. The bulk of Commandant De'Lann's remains curled around it, holding it shut.

My traitorous mind replayed the scene for me. The Hullborer ripped its way in through the wall. The doctor, by noise or scent or just being in the wrong place, attracted its attention. It lashed out with its tongue, trying to pull her back to its beak, and the Commandant did what any Imperial Marine would do. She threw herself in front of the Civilian. The tongue took her in the lower torso, and she clamped down on it to keep the wasps inside.

I was missing something. I had no idea what killed the doctor. I had even less idea what killed the Hullborer. I couldn't even think about Tiamat's death, but it made no more sense than the others. All of that raced through my mind, but my subconscious still poked at me, telling me I'd missed something, that I should look again. My eyes tracked back to the Commandant's still form, dismembered by the tongue still gripping her belly.

I'd last seen her avatar, svelte and trim. In a moment of dawning horror, I remembered the last time I'd seen her in reality, her belly distended, her baby due any day. I wanted to empty my stomach on the floor, but I couldn't. Augments don't. Captains don't. I'd not eaten anything since my rebuild. I could only sink to my knees as tears streamed from my eyes.

Over the years I've had occasion to question what I've become. When I ran from Colin's world, when I held at Abomination Stand, when a mad empress turned from me in fear, each of those times and more I've wondered, and every time the answer is the same. The path I chose started there, on my knees, weeping over the death of a single child.