"Zach, why weren't you at the ceremony?"

The man was hardly visible, half of his body underneath the small craft that had been his hobby for months now.

The man stopped his work as Brooks spoke, but did not come out. There was a long stretch of silence, and Ian knew his friend was having a harder time than he let on.

"I'm sorry, Captain," Urle replied finally, sliding out from under the craft. "I thought it was only a request, not an order."

"It was just a request, I was just surprised," Brooks said. "And we can drop rank."

"I'd prefer to keep my head professional right now, if it's all the same to you, sir."

Brooks couldn't say he liked that, but he nodded anyway. It was hard to be the direct superior to someone you considered a close friend.

"I just wanted to check in on you," Brooks noted.

Oil was on Urle's uniform, he saw. He did a double-take as he realized the man wasn't even wearing work clothes; he was actually in his dress uniform.

Brooks pulled over a stool and sat down.

"I'm fine, Captain," his first mate replied. "I'm just taking care of some minor upgrades here, and then I'm going to do a full self-diagnostic on my personal upgrades before we reach MS-29-"

"That's not really what I meant. Urle, why are you in your dress suit?"

The man froze a moment, then looked down at himself. "Ah, well, I guess I got side-tracked a bit and put this on before I decided to get some work done instead of going to the ceremony."

Urle could be forgetful of details, but this was extreme.

And he had an idea what might be bothering his friend so much.

"How did it go telling Hannah and Persis where we were going?" Brooks asked.

"Well," Urle said. "It was a surprise to them. I mean, to me too, but that's okay."

"Were their reactions negative?"

"Persis is kind of excited, I think. But Hannah . . . was mostly quiet. And then today in class she threw a shoe at someone."

"Threw her shoe?"

"A shoe. It wasn't actually hers. Or she brought an extra shoe with her, I'm not sure," Urle grunted.

"Was anyone hurt?"

"No, she . . . missed the other kid, thankfully. But I had a long talk with her."

Urle got up, a frustrated energy in him lending his movements a jerky stiffness. He moved to look at the engine part - Brooks honestly did not know what it was - peering down into a pipe.

"She's never thrown a shoe before! She's never thrown anything at anyone before."

"It sounds like she's having a hard time," Brooks said carefully.

"Yeah, she told me that she feels angry but she's not sure why or even at who," Urle said, his voice distracted as he still analyzed the part before him.

Brooks knew that technical obsession was a part of how his friend avoided his own feelings.

"I think it might be good for them if you took some time off," Brooks said.

Urle nodded softly. "Yeah. Yeah, that might be a good idea."

"I think it'd be good for you, too," Brooks added gently.

His friend didn't reply this time, just staring down into the pipe. Then, without a word, he pulled it off.

It wasn't something that anyone should have been able to just pull off. It was attached securely, and yet Zach ripped it off with the ease of a man ripping paper.

It was easy to forget just how much of him was enhanced, and to what degree.

For a moment, even Urle seemed shocked by his action. "I . . . that needs to be replaced," he muttered.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Zach," Brooks said firmly, standing. "Take the time, all right?"

"I'd prefer to keep doing my duty," the man said. "I can take care of the girls and still do my job."

"I believe you, but I think it'd be a good idea to take the time to be with them. They'll appreciate it."

Zach said nothing, his eyes downcast towards the empty hole he'd just ripped in the engine.

"Don't make me have to make it an order," Brooks said, regret creasing his face.

"All right, Captain. I'll take . . . a few days off. But I want to stay on-duty until we arrive. I want to be in the greeting party when we go over to the station."

Zach looked over at him, and Brooks could see the need in his friend's eyes. It wasn't a request Brooks wanted to turn down.

"That's fine," Brooks told him. "After that you'll go off active duty."

Zach's eyes went back down, not even to the engine, just . . . down. "All right. Thank you, Ian."

*******

The room was uncomfortably warm and humid.

The human personnel in the room had a sweaty sheen to their skin, but Dessei did not sweat, and so Pirra only felt hot.

Which was fine with her; her kind tolerated heat better than cold.

No one bothered her as she walked among the cloning tubes. Thousands of them, filling any room on the Craton that could hold them; storage rooms, science labs, medical bays. Any space they could spare.

Pirra had gone to every room and visited the beings in them.

They were not aware of her, she'd been told, at least not consciously. They were just . . . asleep.

She didn't know if they would ever wake up. They might just pass into mortal dream without ever having a chance to breathe the open air.

The man in the tube before her was moving, his feet twitching. He was fully formed, it seemed, but the sensor display showed that he had numerous problems; his heart, his brain, even his bones had not formed correctly.

"It will be okay," she said softly. There was no way he could understand; her language would be incomprehensible to them. But maybe her tone would impart something.

A clomp of boots she recognized approached.

"Commander Cenz," she said, turning to him and offering a salute. "My apologies if I'm not to be in here."

"We are mostly limiting access to medical and science personnel," the being said. "But I have put you on the exemption list."

"Thank you, sir."

"You do not need to thank me, Lieutenant. Just remember to call me Cenz if no one else is around."

She smiled slightly to him. "I know we'll be reaching MS-29 soon, and I just wanted to say . . . goodbye, in a way." Her large eyes went over the cloning tubes, and the beings sleeping within. "I feel some kind of connection to them."

Cenz said nothing, but he turned in place to look around the room. "Yes, I understand. We found them, and so I feel some sense of responsibility for them." He reached out his mechanical hand to touch one of the tubes.

"I feel . . . trepidation, knowing that their future is uncertain. They deserve to have a chance at life, but I do not know what kind of quality it will be. I sometimes even wonder if they will . . ."

He trailed off, his face screen turning to a troubled expression.

"Will they curse us for having brought them into the world in their state? I cannot imagine how they might feel, years from now. Who will they consider their parents? Their people? I could not imagine they'd have any love for New Vitriol or its deceased leader."

"They won't curse us," Pirra replied. "I feel certain of that. Even if they suffer from great problems in life, at least they will get to know joy - happiness. Even loneliness. Without us, they never wouldn have known anything. Just . . . a nightmare."

Cenz nodded slowly. "I hope so, Pirra."

She turned and continued to walk down the row. Some of the clones were so visibly unhealthy that she had low hopes that they would survive. But some looked so close to normal, their readouts within at least acceptable parameters, that perhaps they'd be able to live long, full lives.

Cenz came up along with her. "MS-29 has some of the best medical staff in the known galaxy," he said. "If anyone can help them, they can."

"Have you been there before, Cenz?" she asked.

"No," he admitted. "I've always had a morbid curiosity to see it, but it's not a place you can reach easily, nor simply tour. But Dr. Y has spent some time there, I believe."

Pirra was not close with the doctor, though sky knew she'd seen him often enough after getting bashed around in some mission or other. Perhaps she'd ask the AI about it sometime.

Something had been bothering her, though. She had told herself she would not distract Cenz with her question; it was something she almost did not want to know.

But she turned to look to Cenz, who was busy on his tablet, and spoke. "Some of the tanks got shot when we were facing the guards on New Vitriol. Do you . . . think those beings would have survived if not for that?"

Cenz stopped working with his pad, but did not look up.

"This question occurred to me as well," he admitted, his voice softer and more subdued than normal. "I cannot be sure, Pirra. It is always possible. But it was not likely. Those beings were in very poor health. I suspect we would not even have been able to bring them with us."

Pirra said nothing, finding her throat dry.

She looked back up at the clones again. So many had not even been healthy enough to move. Cutter and his engineering crews had worked to better shield the colony from radiation, but there were so many odds stacked against those they had left behind. She did not know what their fate would be, but if they did not survive she hoped that they at least did not suffer.

"I should be off-duty when we arrive at the station," she finally said. "Would you mind if I observed them being unloaded?"

"That's fine," Cenz said. "But there's so many that it may take several days."

She nodded. "I'll just stay for all I can, then."