Ana wasn’t sure when she’d started crying. The window was immense, a slab of clear crystal twice the width of her entire apartment back in Rio. It ran from wall to wall, ceiling to floor, and standing before it was much like standing at the edge of an infinitely tall cliff. In front of her, the dark expanse yawned like the entrance to a jet-black cavern, hen-speckled with tiny pricks of light, a blue-green marble set like a crown jewel in the centre of the viewport, frothed in white.

She’d stood for a time, exactly how long she couldn’t be sure, gazing down on everything and everyone she’d ever known.

She was in space. It still felt like a dream.

She’d only just become vaguely aware of the moisture on her cheeks when a polite snapping sounded out from behind her, the ulu equivalent of clearing one's throat. It resembled the noise of a stapler punching through thin paper, and it brought Ana out of her trance with a jolt.

“Your world is beautiful,” Singer remarked from the doorway to the conference room. Ana had claimed it as her viewing lounge upon noticing the enormous window, and the rest of the team had left her to it. The ulu-ulu’s talons clicked on the hard floor as she hopped over— there was precious little room on board a spaceship for the kind of darting acrobatics that the avian race preferred as their mode of transport.

She joined Ana in front of the window. “It is a very pretty blue, like the crests of those who came from our mooncradle, before we changed to be yellow and orange. On Trembau 4, where I was born, you would not be able to see the land or the sea for the clouds.” She looked over at Ana. “I don’t want to rush you, but Vice Admiral Kel’rek wants us all in the control room for debriefing. I will lead you there when you are done.”

Ana brushed the moisture from her cheeks. “Have they been waiting for me?”

“Not for long.”

Ana blinked in surprise. “And you don’t want to rush me? That’s your CO.”

“You are a new species, and this is your first time in space. Allowances can be made,” Singer bobbled her head in amusement. “The real answer is that the new fleet has arrived, and there are now journalists in the system. The brass is running damage control. You were so entranced, so you didn’t notice, and I didn’t want to cause a scene, but there may have been some photos taken.”

“Photos? Of me? Photos for what exactly?” Ana squeaked, mortified. “Christo, I was crying. I’ve hardly been in space an hour, and I’m already a propaganda piece?”

“Hard to say, what for” Singer shrugged. “But they had clearance, which means they were probably military aides. The most I could do was to ask them politely not to bother you. Clearly, they were at least somewhat discrete.”

“Kill me now,” Ana sighed, and Singer bobbed her head again. Unlike some of the aliens she’d met since working with the Imperials, the ulu seemed to understand millennial humour. “But yes, seriously, let’s not make them wait any longer.”

“It’s a bit of a walk,” Singer gestured with a wing, and Ana moved alongside her, the avian’s hops playing leapfrog with Ana’s steady gait. After a minute of walking, it became clear that the ship was a warren of mazelike grey corridors, plain and unmarked.

“How do you navigate this place so easily anyway?” Ana asked as the pair rounded their third corner into another identical hallway. “Are you sure you know the way?”

“Standard issue visual augmentations,” Singer replied. “Every member of the Imperial military is issued a bionic eye. It lets me see things you don’t. You’ll get yours soon.”

“Wait, really?!” Ana exclaimed in shock, peering closer, and Singer warbled in amusement.

“No. Ships just tend to be built to spec. It’s easier to mass manufacture them that way, and it saves on repairs. The frigate in which we stand shares a floor plan with others that I’ve served on,” the ulu explained, her head still bobbing as she hopped along.

“And there’s no signage because?”

“Security.”

“Riiight. Fuck the new guy, am I right?

Singer tilted her head in confusion. “I don’t think that expression translated correctly.”

“Whatever. Say, can I ask you something?”

“You can ask, but I cannot always tell. You know this.”

“You’re a war form, right?”

Singer’s next hop came half a second late. “I am,” she acknowledged. “You will find that most of the military personnel you end up working with will be war forms.”

“And your commanding officers? Are they also war forms?”

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“Some are,” Singer picked up the pace slightly. “The ones who care enough about the prestige to work their way up through the ranks. Most of the top brass aren’t though; they went to military academies. Not many war forms choose to go off and study.”

“But you could have? If you’d wanted to, I mean.”

“I suppose. I don’t know any war forms personally who made it through an academy, but I’ve heard of a few who did. A friend of mine tried once. She washed out in week four, got the jitters from all that sitting around reading strategy texts,” she stopped halfway down a corridor and turned to Ana. “Just so you know, this is a bad time to ask these kinds of questions. You’re treading close to subjects that I will get in trouble for talking about.”

“Because I’m human?

“Obviously,” Singer looking Ana in the eyes. “I don’t make the rules.”

“Obviously,” Ana deadpanned. “I thought war forms were a thing in every other known species. If it’s open knowledge, why can’t you—”

“Later,” Singer interrupted. “I’ll go through everything I can tell you later. Preferably over drinks in a crowded bar. As I said, the brass is running damage control now that the press is finally here in force. Humans talking about war forms isn’t something they can spin easily.”

“Wait a second.” Ana stopped, narrowing her eyes, and Singer also came to a halt, dipping her beak into the crux of one wing to tug at a piece of down. “All this talk about media and spin. This isn’t a debrief, is it? It’s a press conference. They’re going to show me off to the whole galaxy.” Singer plucked the offending fluff and stowed it in a satchel at her side. “I know I’m right!”

“There will be a debrief. But you are correct; it’s also a photo op,” Singer sighed and prompted her with a wing to continue walking. “If it helps, I doubt that you’ll need to do much more than stand and look professional for the cameras. We’re nearly there, it’s time to get your game face on.”

Rounding the next corner, they were met with a set of grey sliding doors, outside of which two armed guards were standing. They stepped aside when they saw Singer and Ana, though as the human woman went to approach, Singer stopped her with an outstretched beak, then beckoned her close to murmur into her ear.

“The Vice Admiral wants to speak to us first,” she said, her voice low. “Just follow me and don’t talk to anyone until we’re debriefed. We’re acting on orders here. My advice? Walk like a badass.”

Singer turned and padded over to the door, her head bobbing up and down in an exaggerated swagger that Ana couldn’t help but think resembled more of a waddle than a badass walk. Stifling a grin, she fixed her gaze straight ahead and strode through the door after the bird woman.

The room they found themselves in was clearly intended as a waiting room. Its walls were lined with rows of seating, and those, as well as most of the spaces between, were filled with all manner of creatures. Chitin, skin, fur and scale all blended into an almost amorphous blob of alien beings that took up all of the available space on either side of two rows of Imperial marines who were maintaining a cordoned walkway down the middle. A good number of the room’s occupants were kespan, while others were species that Ana recognized from her brief time with the Imperial forces. Many, though, were species completely unknown to her, and it took a lot of willpower to keep her gaze fixed forward towards the far side of the room.

Singer kept up the momentum as the sliding doors closed behind them and they approached the crowd, making for the far door without acknowledging any of the thronging beings.

Their arrival was clearly anticipated, but it still took the crowd of beings a good second before the first exclamation of surprise went up. Then the frantic clicks of cameras started, the group of aliens shoving each other aside and jostling for position. Ignoring them and the flurry of questions that rose up from the crowd, Ana and Singer made for the exit on the far side of the room; a set of heavy double doors that were opened by another guard as they were ushered past the sudden media crush.

When the doors closed behind her, the alien chatter from the other side was swallowed up, and Ana found herself standing at the top of a room that was built like a miniature auditorium. Following Singer’s pace, she took the steps down towards the rows of seating, and another flurry of clicks greeted her from uniformed personnel with fancy-looking cameras stationed on either side of the room. Keeping a straight face, she ignored them, instead turning her attention to the open space of the auditorium below.

While the seats closest to her had appeared empty at first, on closer inspection, they were all occupied. Large eyes blinked back at her from drab blobs of colour that matched the shade and texture of the maroon seating— the upper rows were filled with duradians.

At the bottom of the room was a stage-like area, furnished with a long table displaying several three-dimensional maps and holographic projections. On the stage, several kespans in grey officer’s garb watched as the pair entered. Of the five or six beings that stood in front of the table, two were swatched with the white band that identified them as a part of the Admiralty, and all were festooned with medals and livery. It seemed that those were a universal concept.

Ana had never met Vice Admiral Kel’rek in person, but the abundance of stars on her shoulder made her easy to identify. She wore the most heavily decorated of the grey jackets in the room, though she had none of the defined muscle of the rank-and-file soldiers. Even for a kespan, a species that tended toward slightness, she was thin, practically skin and bone beneath taught skin, with a gaunt, greying muzzle that protruded from her face like the frame of a tent clad in sun-bleached pink tarpaulin. It was fixed into a thin smile that Ana couldn’t read.

Was she one of those non-war-form officers Singer had mentioned? Was the difference really that noticeable? She hadn’t gotten a good enough look at the civilians waiting outside to compare.

Just as she was beginning to think that finding a pair of empty seats among the duradians was going to be impossible, at least without looking like a complete idiot in front of the cameras, a fluffy white paw shot up from the very front of the room. Bruiser gestured towards two seats between herself and Raker, right in the front and centre of the room before the stage. The ursinian’s muzzle was plastered with an enormous grin as she watched the human sweat under the attention of the entire room— Ana was going to need to get used to that. She breathed out slowly through her teeth and descended the steps.

As Ana came closer to the stage, the less decorated admiral’s eyes narrowed into slits. Something dark was brewing there, venomous and filled with tempered hate. Like the Vice Admiral, this woman also had stars, though hers were less abundant. She stood to one side but in front of the other officers and close to the Vice Admiral’s shoulder.

Oh for fuck's sake, Ana thought as the cameras continued to click. This is going to suck, isn’t it?