Violet quickly grew bored with life onboard the Remus. Her days blended together in a dull repetition of wake, eat, wander the parts of the ship she had access to, eat again, workout in the ship’s gym, shower, eat, sleep, and repeat.

Several times, she tried to strike up a conversation with some of the ship’s crew in the mess hall, but she didn’t get further than a brief introduction before they seemed to be called away back to their duties. She began to wonder if something were wrong with her. Did she smell bad or have something stuck to her face? She’d used plenty of sanitizer in the showers and scrubbed everywhere…

She looked for Virgil almost daily, trying to convince herself that she was just looking for a friendly face, one that she knew, but it was more than that. She liked him, and she was lonely.

Midway through the journey to Cerberus, she began fantasizing about him showing up to her room late at night. Once, she’d even lurked in the vicinity of the bump bunks, hoping to run into him again, but she had no luck. Wherever he was he seemed to be on the complete opposite side of the ship at any given time.

The only familiar face she found with any regularity was that of Porter Byrns. At least once a day, she seemed to bump into him, always in a different part of the ship. One time at the mess hall, once at the gym, another outside the showers.

Each time he gave her the same shit-eating grin and flamboyant wave of the hand, but she was still pissed at him for giving her the new-guy treatment. Besides, if he was Colonel Webster’s aide, and she was to be in Colonel Webster’s unit, then she would see plenty more of Porter Byrns. No sense in rushing to get to know him better here.

Around midday on the seventh day of the journey from Tryptek, the ship filled with a strange buzz of energy. The crew was snappier, and there were more of them out and about than usual, running every which way, with urgency in their steps.

“What’s everyone’s deal today?” she asked one of the cooks as she made her way through the mess hall line.

“Making preparations for docking at Cerberus,” the cook replied without looking up. “Last thing they want after reaching port is to have to stay on the ship and do whatever cleaning duties or maintenance they’ve been assigned.”

She received her tray of food and thanked him before finding a table.

She mostly poked at her food until finally giving up. It wasn’t the cook’s fault. The food was delicious. It was the butterflies in Violet’s stomach. Despite her boredom, she wasn’t quite sure she was ready for whatever came next.

She went back to her room and packed what few belongings she’d taken out of her bag, and then went to the viewing lounge where she discovered she had the place all to herself.

Everyone else must be getting ready for their arrival, she thought. Or perhaps they’d seen it all before and she was just being an overeager space-traveling newb. They were probably watching her on one of the closed circuit feeds and making fun of her at this very moment.

Oh, well, screw them. She plopped down on one of the couches and settled in for the show, such that it was.

Ever so slowly the tiny pinpricks of light out in the pitch black of space grew bigger and resolved into several roundish shapes. A few minutes later, Violet groaned as she realized what they were—asteroids. She’d really traded up—from a space station floating outside the asteroid belt to wherever the hell she was—about to spend some more time with those giant hunks of floating rocks. Not floating, technically, the nerd in her brain pointed out.

With a sigh, she decided not to fight a battle that she couldn’t win. Like it or not, her path led through more asteroids, and she had no control over that. Just remember that at least you’re taking a step forward, she coached herself.

The Remus drifted toward the larger of the rocks and Violet could just make out some spire-like shapes jutting out unnaturally from the surface. Despite her earlier disappointment, she had to admit the Military Intelligence Academy’s design was brilliant. What better protection and camouflage than hundreds of feet of dense asteroid?

As the asteroid continued to grow larger in the view port, it was clear to Violet that it was easily as large as Tryptek Station and maybe much larger. She wouldn’t know for sure until they touched down.

Suddenly, the ship veered hard to port causing Violet to stumble and grab onto the walls of the ship despite the inertial dampeners. Outside, an explosion suddenly illuminated the blackness. What the hell was that? she wondered, scanning the surface of the asteroid below for any signs that would cast some light on the cause. Was it an accident? A malfunction? Or was it an attack? And if so, from whom?

The ship-wide alarm sounded and the emergency lights flashed as several of the ship’s personnel went running by the observation deck where Violet stood, still clutching the wall for support, her gaze glued to the scene outside.

Tiny dots, swarmed around the giant rock outside, like little insects. Several more explosions plumed above the asteroid’s surface as the Cerberus’s cannons found their marks.

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The previously serene scene had suddenly transformed into a laser light show that surpassed any of the EDM parties Violet had attended back on the station.

She heard footsteps running down the hall and turned to see several crew members blur by. Several steps behind them came Porter Byrns, for once, the smug expression wiped from his face.

Violet tried to flag him down. “What the hell is going? Are we under attack?”

Porter looked at her for a moment and then away, continuing to wherever he was headed.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Violet said, and took off after him down the corridor. He may have had a healthy head start, but Violet had certain advantages of her own. Her transformation after dying on Tryptek Station had given her metahuman physical abilities, and she put them to use now.

The only problem was she had no real clue how to use them. When she had fought Zane Anderson back on the station, she’d been running on pure adrenaline-fueled instinct. She hadn’t needed any sort of control, only all-out effort.

So when she ran as fast as she could to catch up with Porter Byrns and get to the bottom of what was happening, she overtook him in less than a second and ran straight into wall next to the lift as she desperately tried to slow her speed. She just made out Porter’s surprised expression before she slammed into the bulkhead shoulder first.

She heard a sickening pop followed by a crack and another pop; then she felt the air exit her lungs up through her mouth thanks to inertia; and then the pain came.

The next thing she knew, she was lying on the floor and reaching out for help to an apologetic-looking Porter Byrns who was watching her as the lift doors closed. There were two of him.

There were two of everything.

She shook her head to clear it and took a deep painful breath. She’d definitely broken something in her chest—ribs, collarbone, cartilage—something.

The lift indicator pointed up. Porter was heading to the command deck. Good, she thought, somebody up there ought to have some answers.

Her irritation grew to something close to anger and she gathered herself up off the floor. Ignoring the searing pain in her chest, she raced for the spiral stairs that were adjacent to the lift annex and sped up them, violating the ship’s traffic protocols. Regulations be damned.

The tight staircase was empty, thankfully, or it would have been one hell of a logjam as she blasted her way up, skipping three stairs at a time. It would have been more, she thought, if she wasn’t limited by the curve of the staircase.

She reached the top and ran back out to the main corridor of the command level, hoping to catch Porter as he exited the lift, but she was too late.

Porter was nearly to the end of the hall about to pass the guards that stood to either side of the bridge bulkhead. The door stood open; she could see the various stations inside, crewed by men and women all frantically monitoring their positions and reporting on the current situation.

As she started down the hall, Porter crossed the guard’s threshold. She knew if he made it through, the doors would hiss shut behind him and then her pain would have been for nothing. In hindsight it wasn’t the best decision, but she was caught up in the adrenaline and anger of the previous sixty seconds, and she wouldn’t be denied her objective.

She charged ahead, as fast as she could manage, still having learned nothing from her recent experience. The corridor blurred around her periphery as sped ahead. It was going to be close.

Porter crossed the bridge bulkhead and the doors started to close, but it slow motion. Or so it appeared to Violet.

A brief image of her body being cut in two by the doors flashed through her mind as the guards attempted to apprehend her and she dove and tackled Porter.

Pain flooded her chest and ribs again, but not as severely as the first time. She landed mostly on top of the colonel’s aide and used the spare momentum to roll and come up to her feet again.

Immediately, she was aware of the fifteen odd sets of eyeballs that turned to gawk at the intrusion to their inner-most sanctum.

“Security!” someone called out.

Violet’s eyes darted back and forth from person to person, still on high alert from the chemicals in her bloodstream, searching for any signs of threatening behavior.

“Weaver! What the hell?” Porter cried, climbing back to his feet and dusting himself off.

The severity of what she’d done came crashing down on Violet, made even more clear when Colonel Webster himself walked over. “Miss Weaver, what it is meaning of this? We are in the middle of an—”

He was cut off by one of the crew members. “Sir, enemy drones are at half their original numbers, but they’ve become aware of our existence and my scanners show seventeen currently heading for our position.”

Colonel Webster fixed his steely gaze on Violet. “I’ll deal with you later.” He turned and addressed the crewman. “Change our course to evade and contact Cerberus, tell them to scramble some fighters to fend off the drones and have them clear the portside docks. We’ll be coming in hot.”

In a complete one-eighty to the previous two minutes, Violet now stood frozen, transfixed at the scene playing out in front of her. They were under attack. She’d never been under attack before. Well, maybe once, if you counted the psychopath that tried to destroy Tryptek Station, but never like this. This was a coordinated attack by—who was attacking a military intelligence base? And why? The Galactic Authority wasn’t at war with any of the systems, and they had no enemies that she knew of. What was happening here?

Violet’s thoughts were racing a mile a minute trying to compute some answers that would soothe her need for understanding when she felt a hand grip her arm roughly.

“Come on, you little brat!” Porter Byrns hissed through his clenched teeth. “Let’s see how you like your first taste of military discipline.”

The bridge doors opened and Porter began dragging Violet toward the guards that had entered. For a moment, she considered fighting his grip—it would be easy to tear herself free from his grasp—but where would she go? Who else would she need to fight to get there? No, she decided, as much as it pained her, Porter was right. She’d made her bed and now it was time to lie in it.

The guards took hold of her on either arm. “Take her to the brig,” Porter ordered.