"Response Team One has been launched," Ji-min Bin's voice came through his system.

Brooks had been monitoring the launch from his office. He would get a call soon, he knew.

His door chimed, and he saw it was Jaya.

"Enter," he said.

She came in and saluted. "Captain, I need to talk to you."

Part of him wanted to ask if it was important; it was not likely to be as important as what he was waiting for. But he'd never known Jaya to engage in hyperbole. If she thought it was important, it surely was.

"Go ahead," he told her.

"Ten minutes ago, I was approached by Dr. Logus," she told him.

"Why?" Brooks asked.

"He told me of the situation that is occurring - with the patient aboard MS-29, and about your . . . proposed mission to the Terris system."

Brooks studied the woman for a moment. Was she here to talk him out of it, he wondered.

No, he decided. If she agreed with Logus, she would not have come to him.

And he just did not believe she would side against him. Not as long as he was right.

"What did you tell him?" he asked her.

"That I trusted your decision. But I thought you should know that he-"

"Went behind my back to undermine me?" Brooks finished. "I thought he might, in some way." He turned in his chair, his gaze going to the wall, but staring through it. He should have had the man escorted to his room, now that he thought about it more.

"You needed to know, Captain, but I do not believe it was a betrayal," Jaya continued.

With an arched eyebrow, he looked back to her. "No?"

"You have not asked what he wished me to do," she noted. "With respect, Captain, in the matter of the Terris expedition you are making a sound judgment, but on the matter of Dr. Logus you are viewing the man as an enemy when he is not."

"You just told me he went behind my back to attempt to sway my Operations officer against me. If that's not a betrayal, then what is?"

"He did not ask that of me, Captain. He could have ordered me to intercede, but that was not what he was asking. Instead, he asked me to talk to you - to help you see reason."

Brooks suspected that even if ordered, Jaya would not have betrayed him. Unlike Logus, she understood duty - and sacrifice. "But you agree with me about the mission," he said.

"I do. But I realized that I do still need to speak with you. You need to see reason about Dr. Logus."

That caught Brooks off-guard.

He felt an anger rise up inside him, threatening to burst out. To shout at the woman to leave his office for this absurdity.

But he paused, thinking about what she said. He still felt angry, but he tried to work past it, to see through it. He wanted to find a fatal flaw in what she said, but-

He really did not like Dr. Logus.

"How do you think I have treated the doctor unfairly?" he asked.

"You failed to convince him, Captain," Jaya replied. "Because I do not believe that you tried. You are persuasive; your reasoning sound. Dr. Logus is an intelligent man - I can see why, from his view, that he would have objected. But you should have won him to your side."

It was hard to argue with praise, but he could not help but try. "I think you over-estimate me there," he noted.

"Perhaps," she replied. "But in the past, you helped me to see reason when I thought I never could again."

That he could not argue with, and he suddenly felt much older than his years. "I'll have to think on this, Jaya. Thank you . . . for coming to talk to me."

The woman nodded, and gave him a salute. Rising to his feet, he returned it.

"Now, Captain, I understand that Apollonia Nor has been having some issues - with MS-29, and with Logus herself. Would it be all right if I talked to her?"

Brooks was again surprised. "If you believe you can help, then I welcome it. Just approach cautiously. Nor has had a lot of bad surprises in her life, and isn't used to trusting."

Jaya nodded sharply, and turned to leave.

As she left, Brooks sat down again to wait. Soon, the call from Verena would come, asking him just why he had sent his people to the forbidden Terris system.

*******

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

"Since the aftermath of the Battle of Terris, the system has been closed to all traffic," Caraval told them. "That you all know. But what I'm about to tell you is that most everything else you know about the place is hearsay and rumor."

Pirra felt a thread of nervousness worming through her stomach.

Every spacer in the Sapient Union, and she figured most outside of it, had that reaction to the name. To bring it up was unlucky, or if one was less prone to a quirk like superstition, reminded them all of the fragility of their existence in space.

The year before she'd joined the Voidfleet Academy, she had seen leaked footage of the battle. A battleship, that commentators had identified as the Aldebaran Luminous, split open down its length, its two halves travelling at different angles from each other as if nothing was amiss.

The cross-section had been so neat as to let the layout of floors and equipment be easily visible. The reactor, still glowing like a miniature sun, had even still been functioning. The crew were infinitesimal specks, but at that point were already believed to have been dead - or at least unaware of themselves.

Hopefully.

That the ship kept functioning for some time after separating had been theorized by many in the comments to be a sign that it was not truly split, but that each half had been simply existing in a different time and state.

"Pirra?" she heard a soft voice ask. It was Tred.

She blinked. "Yes?" she asked, looking to him and trying to cover her own feeling of shame. Iago had still been talking, and she had spaced out.

". . . there are no monsters in the system. Scouts have come in and out with clear bills of health multiple times. The vast majority of runs are wholly unexciting, and frankly I expect that to be the case this time as well."

"Majority?" someone asked. "Do some have problems?"

"It's nothing we need worry about. We're not going deep into the system - just to the outskirts, to the last known position of the Sunspot. Both then, and its present position."

"Are you all right?" Tred asked her quietly.

The man looked concerned, looking over her carefully, and it made her self-conscious.

"I'm fine," she replied defensively.

The man looked a little stung and turned away quickly.

"Our first stop, though, will be at the primary monitoring station for this area around the system - Monitor 1 or M1 going forward. That's where we're going to drop our engineer and a supervising officer. They'll launch probes using its dashgate to spots along the wreckage path of the Sunspot from the last eight years."

*******

Tred's eyes widened as Caraval mentioned his role.

"You won't have to go into the system," Pirra told him, hoping it might make him feel better.

"What will I be doing there, exactly?" Tred asked Caraval. "I'm not a drone controller."

"Your job will just be to perform regular maintenance on the system - confirm that the reactor is operating as it should."

"Isn't the station manned? I've always heard it was manned," Tred asked.

"It . . . was. But there were issues and it was decided to pull all personnel out and let it operate on computer control."

"How long has it been unmanned?" Pirra asked.

"Six years," Caraval noted.

"When's the last time the system underwent maintenance?" Tred asked worriedly.

"Eight months ago," Caraval told him.

Tred sat back in his seat. Eight months! No reactor should go that long without human oversight! Sure, on paper and in sense of safety it'd be fine, but the efficiency would almost certainly have degraded significantly. And the neutron flow injectors!

Iago Caraval seemed ignorant of Tred's horror, however. "Lieutenant Pirra, you'll be in charge of that operation."

That announcement pulled Tred out of his shock. Of all the members of the Response Team, he was pretty sure that Pirra disliked him the most. He glanced to her, trying to not draw much attention, but her large eyes flickered over to him anyway. Her expression did not change, though; she seemed entirely neutral on her assignment.

He looked away quickly.

*******

As the run-through of their mission and assignments ended, Iago looked over them all - but his eyes lingered on her.

"If there are any questions pertaining to the mission, go ahead and ask."

Pirra raised her hand to speak, but Iago continued. "If you have any questions pertaining to your specific assignments, talk to me on a private channel."

No one had any other questions, and Pirra clicked into the private channel.

"Sir-" she began.

"I know what you're going to ask, but you are on the monitoring station assigment," Iago said.

She wanted so very badly to demand why. But that was not how one was supposed to address a superior officer, even if they were also a close friend.

She settled on just asking, politely.

"May I ask why I've been relegated to this task, sir? I'm not a drone specialist. Wu or Enerson might be better qualified."

"It's an easy assignment, Pirra," Iago replied. "You're more than qualified."

"Yes, sir. Permission to speak freely, sir?"

Her commanding officer sighed. "Go ahead."

"Why would you trap me on a station alone with Engineer Tred? No offense to him, sir, but he's difficult and he's . . . he's . . ." How did you politely say someone was bothersome as dead air?

"I know he's difficult, but this was my call and I want you to sit out the exciting part of this mission, Pirra," Iago told her. "You've been put into the most dangerous position on each of your last assignments - and your last one was supposed to be part of your vacation time. No, this time I want you in the background."

A dozen potential replies went through Pirra's head, but she knew Caraval. The man didn't ground people easily; he was spooked.

And hadn't she been? It was true that she'd been through the wringer the last few times.

She wanted to argue, to convince Caraval around to her point of view. But it would be abusing her rank to get someone busted down into this task. None of the Response Team would look forward to spending days just regulating an automated drone launcher and being alongside Tred.

She glanced to the man, and he suddenly looked awkward, trying not to meet her eyes. Nothing was really wrong with the man, he was competent and he came through.

But regardless of how long this mission actually took, it was going to feel a whole lot longer.