Ham Sulp's eyes opened, and for a moment he was not sure where he was.

The reality sunk in as the old dream faded; he was on the Craton. This was his bunk.

Really just a cabin in the wall where he suspended his sleeping bag. In microgravity, as all Spacers were used to.

He opened his bag and slid out into the room. The floors and walls were all storage for him, and despite the cabin being small, it held a lot. Defying his great organizational skills, there was so much that boxes stuck out of shelves into the space of the room, held with bungee cords. Closed bags floated, only their handles attached to a surface to keep them from drifting away entirely.

He weaved between them into a sealing capsule. Shedding his sleeping spacesuit, he squirted out spheres of water into his hand and splashed them on his face.

The drops that went astray were sucked back up into the recycler, to be filtered and cleaned for re-use later.

"Did you sleep poorly, sir?"

The NI voice came in his ears as if Mo.P was standing next to him. The NI was really just a neural intelligence, a chat bot with a little extra raw thinking power for lifelike conversations. He'd made it himself years ago to practice with after he'd joined the Voidfleet.

Spacers were people of few words, but people from planets and intersolar space stations tended to yap a lot. It wasn't necessary to make the change, people understood the cultural differences. But it helped him to understand intersolars to learn about the small things they chattered about.

Even though he no longer needed the practice, he'd grown fond of Mo.P, and kept him around.

"Yeah," he told the NI. "I had a dream."

"A happy one?" the NI asked.

"No," he said, slamming closed the cover of the faucet.

Pulling on his uniform, he opened the tube and floated out. He'd take a proper shower later.

a drone appeared, with a projected sad face. "Was it the same bad dream?"

"Yes," Sulp said. The NI's memory was one of the few things he trusted.

It wasn't really more secure than a diary or log, and he had to maintain a Resource Log anyway, but the NI was a companion. Everyone needed their well to whisper down.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

"I'm sorry," it told him.

"Just how it is," he said.

Every night, the same dream.

No, not a dream. A memory. Sometimes details were a little different, a little . . . hazier. Memory was that way. On really fevered nights, he couldn't ever escape Terris. The Leviathan never came, but he just felt caught in the limbo of trying to leave forever. Until he woke up, that is, but it felt like forever.

It was worse today; it was an anniversary. Not of the event itself, but of the day that all the surviving ships had met back up in deep space to take stock of all they'd lost. When they had counted, they had found it so much worse than expected.

His own home fleet had come then, seeking to help. They'd been the first to board many of the ships of Battlefleets A, B, and C, and seen the horrors.

This was what came of settling worlds? one of his old friends had asked him later.

Despite it all being an act of brotherhood, of the fraternity of intelligent species, the attempt of help itself had left deep scars.

A sudden burst of energy came through him in a shiver, like he wanted to scream or bash his face over and over into a console.

Just the early morning jitters after the dream.

He still had things to do; his goals, that he kept himself to. How it had to be, he didn't know any other way.

Coming to the mirror, he opened it, got out the autoscrubber and put it on his face. The machine attached to the skin with gentle suckers all over, its flexible body conforming to his features. Stray skin flakes and shed hairs could float into machinery and cause trouble later.

He ran a hand over his bald head. Not many hairs to be found there, but the centuries of rads hadn't made Spacers bald everywhere. Random hairs on the body still could get shed. An eyelash, and the worst, a pube. Who wanted those floating through the air?

As he closed the mirror, he saw his eyes, the same pale blue as Sarah Lachmann.

He froze for a moment, holding his breath.

"Are you all right?" Mo.P asked him.

He turned away from the mirror. "What's my itinerary for the day?" he demanded.

Ten minutes later he was safely away from Mo.P's prying care and among the space hounds, back in a part of the ship with artificial gravity. Beaux, Cross, Sasha, Zeus, and Apollo greeted him warmly, the uplifted dogs' voices coming from speakers on their collars. They were still dogs, though, and danced in anticipation of their morning meal.

This was drone work, in the eyes of most, but there were tasks that were still best done with human hands, he thought, as he served each of the spacehounds.

They thanked him, and he thanked them back with a good head rub.

Angel the little Ship Terrier, was the only one who could not talk; she was just a sweet little dog without any enhancements or implants to improve her intelligence and grant her the ability to communicate with words.

She was a wiggly blur around his legs, jumping up at him, then dancing on her back feet, then running away, then back . . . It was exhausting just to watch.

"Here," he said, putting down her small bowl. She was a lap dog or ratter. Probably more the former even if her breed was originally intended for the latter.

Once he fed them, he waited while they finished.

"Zeus, you're with me today," he said.

The dog offered a human-like nod, and trotted by his side. The Boku-boku down here in Resources did not like dogs of any kind, and still tried to argue with Angel, even if she could only bark back. But today the little spazoids would have to get over themselves, because he didn't want to sit alone.