Kinnit laid her head in her hands, taking a moment to disconnect from the overwhelm.

Every single piece of equipment on Erebus base had been destroyed by the coronal mass ejection, from the generators down to the electric faucets. People wouldn't be able to live down there until the equipment was all repaired or replaced. It could take months. Years, maybe.

Everyone from the base would need to be housed until another station could be found for them. The Navy was trying to quickly organize new locations for all the functions Erebus base had covered. Mostly training and shipbuilding, but there had been any number of lesser administrative functions.

The ISS Swordheart was carrying nearly twice as many people as it had been designed for. Supplies and food had been arriving, but there wasn't enough room to store it all, and there had been bottlenecks in the kitchen getting food prepared for so many people.

The worst was the toilets. The military folks were used to long waits and crowded toilets. The men, especially, were practiced in doubling or tripling up on urinals in a pinch. But Erebus had housed many civilian employees, and they were much more fastidious. They required more privacy and time. The lines at the latrines were long, slow, and filled with distressed bathroom-goers.

The relief ships had been promised a week ago, but were only just arriving today, which presented a whole new logistical nightmare. Shuttles would be moving refugees between the Ninth Fleet and the relief ships. The docking bays were already disorganized from the evacuation, and trying to offload a ship's worth of people was not going to improve matters.

Kinnit had been running around helping to take care of all the refugees while trying to organize everything on board. Grimthorn was out somewhere, keeping the investigation moving. And Lieutenant Baric spent all day staring glumly at his desk.

She wanted to scream at him, or hit him, or do something to break him out of his funk, but she knew none of that would help. He was so convinced that he could be no help at all that he was no help at all.

She'd tried to feed him a couple easy tasks. He would perform them half-heartedly and shut back down. She simply didn't have the bandwidth to keep feeding him work.

A new message popped up on her console. She scanned it, and her mouth dropped open in disbelief.

"What do you mean there's no food in the kitchen?" she screeched at her console. "I've got three cargo bays full of food!"

She gritted her sharp little teeth together, and grabbed her horns, fuming.

"It can't get there," Lieutenant Baric said quietly.

Kinnit rounded on him.

"What?" she spat.

"The food. How is it getting to the kitchens?"

Kinnit bit back her reply, which would have been unhelpful. She took a calming breath.

"I suppose people are just carrying the food," she said finally.

Sol's voice took on a slightly professorial tone.

"Logistics is not just a matter of having materials and goods, but a process of how and when you move them to where they're needed." Sol thought for a minute. "We could empty off the torpedo carts and use those to help transport food to the kitchens."

Kinnit raised an eyebrow.

"We couldn't get the torpedo carts down the hallways. They're clogged with refugees."

"You could move some of the refugees to other halls in order to clear the way for food transport. You don't have to move all of them, only half. As long as all the refugees are on one side of the hall, that should leave enough room for the carts to get past."

Kinnit smiled a little.

"But we've already got lines of food waiting to get in into the kitch--"

"Right, press a lot of ensigns and such into kitchen duty. Easy stuff like peeling potatoes or something. The kitchen will still be overloaded, though, because even with more hands, you've still only got so many stoves and dishes and such."

Sol began tapping at his terminal, his energy rising. He waved Kinnit over. She stood behind him, watching him type.

"Instead of the usual three meals," he said, "have six or eight mealtimes. Run them in shifts. Keep just enough experienced kitchen staff on each shift to guide the ensigns. That lowers the load on the kitchen and the mess." Sol nodded as plans started to form on his console. "Less waiting for the refugees, as well. Maybe we could get some of them to help with cleanup and so forth."

Kinnit gave him a sly smile.

"Sounds good. Let's go do it."

Sol's hands froze on his console.

"What? No, I was just thinking out loud."

"You thought out loud and made a good plan. Let's do it."

"I... can't do that! Nobody will listen to me!"

Kinnit put her hands on her hips.

"But they will listen to me!"

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

Grimthorn was exhausted. He'd been fighting with Naval investigators all day. For once, the Council of Admiralty had not hesitated to send a full investigative team, but the team had been spending all their scraping data out of any system that hadn't been completely cooked by the CME.

"When do we start analyzing the data?" He'd barked that often enough and loud enough that even he was getting sick of hearing it. Yet all he heard was a bunch of nonsense about "comprehensive data retrieval" and "holistic investigation" and other such nonsense.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

He'd gotten too used to Kinnit's habit of digging right into the data and pulling an answer out quickly.

He sighed.

The shuttle he was in landed on the Swordheart, touching down gently. He saluted the pilot and stepped out of the hatch.

He trudged down the hall. He wanted nothing more than to go to his quarters and collapse, but he needed to stop by the office first to finish up his work for the day. He braced himself to dodge the ever-present refugees in the hallways.

The hallways seemed clearer this evening. He shook his head. Maybe he'd been getting too negative. Those investigators had been getting to him.

He paneled open the door to his office to find both his Assistants still there, despite the hour.

"Grimthorn!" Kinnit cried, popping to her feet. She dashed over. For a moment, Grimthorn thought she would throw her arms around him, but she stopped short and grinned at him. He would have welcomed it, except Lieutenant Baric was right there.

Lieutenant Baric paused typing at his console and looked up at Admiral Stonefist with something like fear.

"Sol's been helping with logistics," she said. It's going so much more smoothly! Did the relief ships come in yet?"

Grimthorn smiled tiredly.

"We got two ships in today. We've started offloading some of our recon ships."

"Only two relief ships?"

"IDM is sending more. They haven't told me when they'll get here."

"Well, thanks to Sol's work, things are running better on the Swordheart," she said.

"It was just a little organization," Lieutenant Baric said.

"Do you want to see what we've done, sir?" she chirped.

Grimthorn smiled tiredly.

"Maybe tomorrow. I need some shuteye. I just stopped by to see if my Assistants needed assistance."

Kinnit playfully slapped his arm.

"Well, you must not be too tired if you can still crack jokes like that."

Grimthorn smiled a little.

"In any case, I trust your work. Good job, you two."

"Thank you, sir. How's the investigation going?"

Grimthorn rubbed his eyes.

"Well, we've figured out the what, but not the why. The base has-- had-- EMP disruptors. The star around Erebus base is young and rowdy. It gives off a lot of EMPs and CMEs. It's so unstable that the Navy wouldn't even have considered this system for a base, except that it was so well-placed strategically."

He sighed.

"The domes protect the base from radiation and light, but there was a whole custom system just to detect potentially damaging CMEs and counteract them. By shielding the base with electromagnetic pulses out of phase with any incoming EM surges, they could protect the equipment. But it didn't work in this instance. Most of the records were cooked by the CME, so we're having trouble getting answers as to why."

"But what happened with the reservoir?" Kinnit asked.

Grimthorn frowned.

"That one's simpler. The design did not fail safely. The primary sluice gates were held open with powered valves. In the event of a power outage, the batteries have just enough charge to close the valves and dog them tight. When the CME happened, though, it destroyed the brains of the equipment, so the valves kind of... flopped open." Admiral Stonefist waved his hands around tiredly. "In a properly designed system, the valves would naturally stay shut unless power was applied."

Grimthorn stretched his back.

"In addition to all that, the sluice gates were not well constructed. The sudden extra pressure knocked them out of alignment, so they couldn't even be closed manually. So the whole reservoir emptied itself in the middle of the base. To say nothing of the decision of putting the reservoir smack in the middle of the base."

"Why was it built that way?"

"Cutting corners, probably. We'll track down the engineers responsible for that. They have a lot to answer for."

Kinnit clenched her jaw.

"Yes they do. Don't they realize they're working for the Imperium? Sloppy work is a disgrace!"

"Yes. But now I need to get my head down. I'll be out again first thing in the morning. Message me if anything comes up."

"Yes, sir!" Kinnit said, saluting.

Grimthorn trudged out of the office. The door closed behind him.

"You didn't have to do that," Lieutenant Baric said.

"Do what?"

"Try to give me credit for the work today."

"Why not? It was your planning. Everything's already running much more smoothly now. And since it'll be a little longer before the rest of the relief ships arrive, we'll get even more benefit from your work."

Sol scoffed.

"Please. I know what you are." His face sagged in despair. "I know how you saved the Ninth Fleet, and the Fifth Fleet. I know you escaped a black hole with nothing more than a shuttle. You even saved Admiral Stonefist's life. You're not an Assistant, you're a freaking hero." He shook his head. "Imagine, someone like you pretending that me moving potatoes around means anything."

Kinnit's mouth locked open in shock.

"I did not-- I mean, it wasn't like that!"

"Sure, whatever. You're the Assistant Admiral Stonefist deserves."

Kinnit blushed heavily at his words.

"I... I try to be," she stammered.

"He deserves better than me. I don't even know why I'm here."

Kinnit set her hands on her hips.

"You're here because he sees your potential. He sees what you can become."

"Why bother, when he's already got you?"

"Sol, everybody has their strengths. You know, when I first came on board, Admiral Stonefist tried to fire me."

Sol's eyes widened in shock.

"What is he, stupid?"

Kinnit laughed.

"Sometimes. But I talked him out of it, and I was able to be a help to him. And you can too. He's giving you a chance, you need to give yourself a chance. Just because I've had some success doesn't lessen your success."

"But I can't do any of the stuff you do," he retorted. His eyes shifted to the floor. "I... I don't think I can go down to a planet any more. I have to stay on the ship."

Kinnit threw her hands up in exasperation.

"So stay on the ship! Who cares if you can't do what I can do! That's why I'm here! I can't do any of the things you can do!"

Sol stared at his desk silently, thinking hard for a long while.

"Maybe," he said.

Kinnit let out a sigh of relief.

"I'll take that much," she said.

Sol was quiet for a moment.

"Kinnit, are all Kobolds like you?" he asked suddenly.

She laughed gently at the unexpected question.

"Are all Terrans like you?" she asked.

Sol thought about that for a long time.

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

Several days later, they were all sitting in the office. The rest of the relief ships had arrived, and the Swordheart had depopulated in an orderly fashion. The halls were clear again, and one could go to the restroom nearly any time one pleased. The investigation was proceeding apace.

There were still no firm answers as to why the EMP disruptors had failed, but the more Grimthorn saw of the few records they could salvage, the more he thought he knew why.

Maintenance on Erebus base was shockingly poor. Nothing was updated in due time, repairs were delayed, sometimes indefinitely, and most of the men on the maintenance crew had been either cut or reassigned elsewhere. The required annual inspection of the EMP disruptors had not been performed in at least four years, maybe more.

In Admiral Stonefist's estimation, somebody-- maybe multiple somebodies-- had been draining money and resources from maintenance and equipment. It was hard to say specifically who, since most of the records had been cooked along with Erebus base. There would be trails through other Imperial systems, though, traces of malfeasance that could be tied back to what they could extract from the remains of Erebus base's systems.

His console rattled as he hammered away at it. He'd love to get the data into Kinnit's hands for analysis, but the investigators were being territorial about it, and it would be improper to pull rank.

They'd get it sorted it out eventually. He could be patient. For now.

A message popped up on his console. He pulled it open.

Admiral Stonefist, I need to have a private conversation with you. Please contact my office immediately. - Commander Ordren

Grimthorn got an ugly premonition from the message. With deliberate calmness, he pushed his chair back and stood up.