Admiral Stonefist rotated slowly in the biopod. His body was rigid, his eyes firmly shut. The gentle pings of the sensors outside penetrated dimly to the interior of the biopod.

The gentle pinging spiked to an alarmed beeping, and his eyes flew open. Medics hurried in and began the decanting process.

Grimthorn's body lowered to the bottom of the pod, and medics scrambled to get the lid off.

"Sir!" the lead medic called. "How are you feeling?"

Grimthorn took in the situation and lifted himself out of the biopod. He lifted his arm and flexed his shoulder.

"Never again," he growled.

"Sir? Is your shoulder not healed fully? Do you need more time in the biopod?"

"If you try to put me in there again, I had better be unconscious, or you will need a lot more men."

"Sir?"

"Shoulder's fine. That devil-box," he said, pointing an accusatory finger at the biopod, "gave me nothing but nightmares for two solid days." He leaned into the lead medic's personal space. "Never. Again."

"Y-yes, sir," the medic said.

"Where's my uniform?"

"We have your things right here, Admiral."

Admiral Stonefist dressed himself deliberately, tucking everything away just so. He had to admit, he did feel better. And his back and shoulder felt like new again. But the dreams... he shuddered. Lots of his past had come back to visit him in the last couple days.

Once he was squared away, he signed out of medbay and stepped into the hallway.

Captain Caltrel was waiting for him immediately outside the door, fuming. His arms were tightly crossed, and he held an aggressive stance.

"This is why I don't ever take time off," Grimthorn muttered.

"Yes, Captain," he said out loud. "What do you need?"

"We need to have a serious conversation, a serious conversation about your Assistant."

Admiral Stonefist's face set in a frown.

"Go on."

"You need to take her in hand, she's clearly lacking in any discipline or knowledge of military protocol!"

"Yes, I'm well known for being too soft on my subordinates. Do you have a specific complaint, Captain? Or did you just come here to share your charming conversation with me?"

Grimthorn looked around.

"And where is Assistant Kinnit?"

"She's in the brig."

The temperature around Grimthorn dropped sharply. Grimthorn stared the Captain levelly in the eyes. His posture didn't shift, but the air around him grew distinctly more murder-y.

"Captain Caltrel, you had better have the mother of all explanations for why you have imprisoned my Assistant and my Voice."

The Captain faltered under Grimthorn's stony gaze.

"Well, sir, ah, she performed a launch from the torpedo tubes with no authorization! And she forged a requisition with your name on it!"

Grimthorn considered this for a moment.

"If, as you say, she did these things, I'd be very curious as to why."

"Oh, who knows why SSes do anything? She got upset by some data on the bridge and ran off."

"What kind of data, precisely?"

"Oh, I don't remember."

"Captain Caltrel, let's save ourselves some time. You stop pretending I'm an idiot, and maybe I won't court-martial you. What happened? Bearing in mind that I'm also going to get my Assistant's full report as well."

"Court-m-- that's outrageous! I'm not the criminal, it's your Assistant who's breaking laws and violating protocol!"

Grimthorn pulled up a timer on his scanner.

"If you don't explain precisely what happened in the next ten seconds, I'll gig you for obstructing an investigation. Which is not going to look great at your trial."

Captain Caltrel sweated.

"We received a distress call from Krivax space and she wanted to take the whole fleet to respond to a non-military call. When I refused, she did just as I said. I have proof." He handed Admiral Stonefist his scanner. "Here are the records showing the forged requisition, and this video shows her going into the torpedo bay, Tube Three."

"Hm. I thought Tube Three was offline?"

Captain Caltrel calmed a little as he presented more evidence.

"It's functional, it just can't communicate with the bridge. She convinced the fire control officer to manually launch. I've put him on disciplinary suspension."

Grimthorn looked through the data on the scanner, frowning deeply. The requisition was clearly created while he was in the biopod. And the security video clearly showed Kinnit making her way nervously to Tube Three.

"And I assume you have witnesses that can verify a launch occurred?"

"The entire bridge saw the launch. It took us a minute to figure out what had happened. She deliberately used Tube Three because she knew the interface was down, and we wouldn't get notified that anything was going on."

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"And did the torpedo hit anything?"

"Nothing was hit, sir. She fired into a jumphole. I think it was programmed for the distress signal."

Admiral Stonefist looked up.

"You think? How do you know it didn't hit anything if you don't know where it went?"

"It's-- we haven't had a chance to track it down yet, sir. This only occurred an hour ago."

"So you're telling me that the flagship of the Ninth Fleet fired a torpedo into a jumphole, into a civilian sector you think, an hour ago and this ship is not already hauling mass after it?"

"Ah, we wanted to get your input on--"

"Who's we? Are you the Captain or a committee?"

"I-- I wanted to focus on halting the criminal actions of the SS, sir."

Admiral Stonefist started quick-walking to the bridge and pulled out his scanner.

"This is Admiral Stonefist, authorization one-one-two-one," he said, pinging the bridge. "I want nav to lay in a course for the Krivax sector. Get weapons warmed up in case we need to take out that torpedo. Prepare to move the ship as soon as I get there."

Grimthorn paused, his brow furrowing. He turned to Captain Caltrel.

"What was the distress call about? What else are we facing when we get there?"

"Ah... I'm not really sure..."

Grimthorn stopped dead and wheeled on Captain Caltrel.

"You're not sure? What did the message say?"

"We, uh, didn't initiate contact. It's not a military sector so we--"

The crack of Grimthorn's open-handed slap echoed down the hallway. Captain Caltrel tumbled to the ground.

"You ignored an active distress call from Imperial citizens?!" Grimthorn roared.

Grimthorn's scanner crackled with a message from the bridge.

"What torpedo, sir?"

"The torpedo that was launched from the Swordheart!"

"I wasn't a torpedo, sir, it was a probe."

Admiral Stonefist's eyes turned on Captain Caltrel, white-rimmed with fury. Captain Caltrel slowly stood rubbing his face.

"I-- I never said torpedo--"

"That's why," Grimthorn rasped. "She sent a probe to find out what was going on because you refused to respond to a distress call. And then you put my Voice in containment. What did the probe show?"

"We didn't capture the data," said Captain Caltrel. "I was focused on the SS. The fact remains that she engaged in criminal activity--"

Grimthorn grabbed his lapel and pulled him close.

"She did exactly what I would have done. Which is why she is my Voice. And why you--" Grimthorn grabbed the rank insignia of Caltrel's uniform and ripped it off. "--are no longer a Captain."

Grimthorn wheeled and dashed to the bridge.

----------------------------------------

The ISS Swordheart cleared the final jumphole into Krivax space. A collective gasp went up from the bridge.

The damage didn't look so bad, from outside the solar system. You could almost even believe everything were fine, if you didn't look at the scans from the probe.

"How long until the rest of the fleet gets here?" Admiral Stonefist asked quietly.

"It should only be another fifteen minutes, sir," said Lieutenant Renning.

"Scramble some shuttles. Do a close scan of the surface. See if there's... if there's anybody left. Comms, get Imperial Disaster Managment on the horn, ship them the sitrep. They'll know what to send. Renning, as soon as the fleet jumps in, let's start organizing a civilian evac."

The surface of the planet was covered with a thick haze. Scattered asteroids filled the area between the Krivax homeworld and their sun. Many of the asteroids were already being pulled into a spiral around the sun, forming what would become another asteroid belt, in time.

The scans penetrated the haze, and showed a fresh, massive crater, miles across, on the surface of the planet. It glowed with spent energy.

What had happened was sickeningly clear. Whoever had done this had reeled in an asteroid, aimed it at the Krivax homeworld, and given it a good push.

It took a ton of energy, and some specialized equipment, but it was one of the oldest weapons in the universe. Throw a rock, hit your enemy.

If you were good at math, you could even do it from light-years away.

Of course, any Imperial planet had early-warning systems and mitigations in place. The only planets that such a primitive attack would work on were those that were so militarily unimportant that it wasn't worth deploying the technology. Like an SS homeworld.

The Imperium satellites were the only reasons the Krivax were able to get a distress signal out at all.

With a trembling hand, Admiral Stonefist pulled up some data on the Krivax. Humanoid omnivores, on the smaller side, vaguely cat-like. Tech level was nothing to speak of, civ level only had medium cities, no interesting resources on the planet, nothing that would warrant-- well, anything. Much less this.

"Sir," said Lieutenant Renning. "Surface scans are complete. There's... nobody left. Nothing on the planet survived."

Admiral Stonefist swore mightily.

"Comms, let IDM know. They can send a cleanup crew instead of rescue and refuge."

Admiral Stonefist hung his head, his thoughts buzzing uselessly. Why? Why the Krivax? It was as cruel and pointless as burning down a flowerbed.

He pressed a button on the dais console.

"Security, this is Admiral Stonefist. Take Kennex Caltrel into custody. And release Assistant Kinnit. I need her. On the bridge."

"Yes, sir," came the reply.

Now to find out who did this.

----------------------------------------

Kinnit found herself back on the bridge shortly. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her uniform was not as crisp as she usually kept it. She'd passed Captain Caltrel-- well, not Captain any more, apparently-- on her way out. He'd made a point of not even looking at her.

"Assistant Kinnit, glad you're here," Grimthorn said as she entered the bridge. He turned and saluted her. "Excellent work as my Voice."

Behind him, the massive bridge screen was filled with scans and imagery of the ruined planet. Her lower lip trembled, and her eyes filled again as her battered emotions took in the scope of destruction.

"Sir, what..."

He briefly briefed her on the situation.

"Now we need to track down who did this. The trajectory of the asteroid is easy enough to figure out. We'll sniff up the backtrail and scan for anything unusual. Energy signatures, propulsion exhaust, anything that will give us a clue."

"Yes, sir." Her voice quavered. She felt a strong hand rest on her shoulder. She looked up into Grimthorn's face. He gazed down at her with a haggard look.

"You've had a tough day. I know. I will make it up to you somehow. But we need to find whoever did this, and keep them from ever doing it again."

For a strange moment, she wanted to rest her face on his strong hand. Instead, she nodded, and took a deep breath.

"I'm here to help, sir."

He removed his hand from her shoulder.

"Sir," Lieutenant Renning called, "the rest of the fleet is arriving."

"Good timing. Let's form up in a diamond formation, prepare to sweep. Nav, lay in a course to track back to where the asteroid came from."

Grimthorn frowned.

"I only wish we had more ships. It may look like a lot, but it's shockingly easy to miss clues. There's a lot of space in space."

Kinnit looked at the planned formation.

"Sir, couldn't we spread the fleet out more? The scanners have more range than that. We could put a few hundred klicks between each ship."

Grimthorn shook his head.

"Can't. The fleet has to stay in contact. If we spread out too much further, we'll lose signal to the edges of the fleet. We need to keep in contact in case someone finds something, or if somebody runs into trouble."

"But sir, we don't need to be in contact with the edge of the fleet directly. If we spread out so that the nearest ship is halfway to edge of comms range, and the next closest ship as at the edge, they can still keep in contact. Have every ship relay any messages closer to the center of the formation, and pretty soon it will get to us."

Admiral Stonefist grimaced.

"See, this is why I need you, Kinnit." He shook his head. "I didn't even think of that."

He popped up some alternate formations on the main screen.

"And if we make a circle formation instead of diamond, even the ships on the edge will have three points of contact for communication. And we'll be able to sweep thousands more kilometers at a time."

"Thank you, sir. I'm glad I could help."

He looked down at her and opened his mouth to say something. But after a moment, he closed it again.

"Let's go find them," he said instead.