"Mark?" Lissa spoke gently, trying to rouse the human without startling him too much. The Captain stared at nothing, hunched. He did not seem to be aware that she had spoken. Lissa's face crinkled with worry.

"Mark." She spoke a little louder this time, with a hint of sternness in her voice. The Captain still didn't respond. Yvian shuddered to think what must be happening behind his eyes. She'd seen that look before. Seen it in a mirror. Pain and horror, memories that burned, pulling and gouging until your mind shuts down to protect itself. She never expected to see that look on the Captain. She should have known better. The man had been alone for decades. Alone, and hunted. She suspected there was more, worse, maybe. He'd told the Vrrl that he wasn't welcome among his own kind. What was it that Exodus had called him? Worldbreaker? Filicide?

She could worry about that later. Yvian dug a pencil out of the drawer next to her console. "Hey!" she called, throwing it. "Mims!"

The pencil bounced off the Captain's head. He jumped in his chair, hand flying to the blaster on his hip. His head jerked to face Yvian, eyes wide.

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Don't we still have work to do?"

"Right." He shook himself, brow furrowed, and turned back to his console. "Work to do."

Lissa held out a questioning hand behind his back. Like all good sisters, the two could communicate with facial expressions alone, and Lissa's said "What the Crunch are you doing, blockhead?"

Yvian rolled her eyes slightly and tilted her head sharply in the Captain's direction. "I'm helping him, dumbass! Don't make a fuss." Lissa had been spared the things Yvian had experienced. She hadn't had to wake screaming night after night for years or decades. Lissa had never had a panic attack, never had fits of rage or fear or such crushing sadness that you curl up in a ball and bawl your eyes out even though nothing happened and you don't know what triggered it. Yvian was glad Lissa hadn't experienced these things, but it did mean she had a bit of a blind spot when dealing with the people who had.

Lissa would try to be gentle, which was nice. But she would also try to be sympathetic. Mims would not be able to tolerate such a thing. He would see it as coddling. Pity. An emotionally centered person can accept sympathy for what it is, maybe even take comfort in it. In the state Mims was in, it would burn. It would be worse than scorn. Nothing they could do would hurt more than sympathy.

No, what the Captains needed was a quick shock to bring him back to reality and a task to set his mind to. Better to act normal and let him recover on his own. Under different circumstances she'd be happy to lend an ear or a shoulder and help him work through things, but now was not the time. Several thousand aliens with big ships and a taste for human flesh were still in the sector. The human could cry or scream or stare off into space later. Right now she needed him to have his shit together.

The Captain stopped typing long enough to put his helmet back on. The girls didn't comment, but they knew he hadn't done it for safety. He was rattled, his trademark calm a cracked shell of its former self. He hid his face so it could not betray him.

After another minute of typing he hailed Migo's shipyard. "Migo, this is Mims. The Vrrl have ended their hunt. They'll leave once they're done evacuating their battlecruiser. We'll stay until they're gone, but then I expect to be paid in full."

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"Holy glurk." Migo swore. "You did it. You scared those scrapsuckers off. Holy glurk, Mims! You-"

"Did no such thing." snapped the human, cutting him off. "The Vrrl are leaving for their own reasons. They can still hear us. If you piss them off, I won't protect you a second time."

"Oh. Shit. Sorry." The mechanic backtracked. "I just got excited, ya know? When the Paradigm disappeared, I thought we were all getting et. I don't wanna get et, Mims. Getting et sounds like it hurts. And then you came back and..."

"Can we focus for a moment please?" Mims let out an annoyed breath. "I'm sending you a rental contract. Fourteen fighter class ships and a corvette. Should be enough to keep pirates off your back until you can hire a new security fleet. The Ancillary's not included. I'm taking that one with me."

"Lemme see..." Migo muttered to himself over the comms as he read. "Thirty days...standard rates... Hey Mims, does this mean you're not mad at me no more?"

"I'm fucking livid," the human told him. "But I honor my agreements."

"Oh. Yeah. Well..." the mechanic cleared his throat. "You saved my hide, human. Saved my family. Saved my whole void damned station. Even though I borrowed your ship without asking."

"That's called theft," Mims reminded him.

"Yeah, well. The point is I owe ya. You fought for me, even when it cost ya the Paradigm Shift. And you're still lending me a fleet so pirates don't come loot my ass. I just... Thank you, Mims."

"Thank Yvian," the Captain told him. "I was going to kill you and leave your people to die."

"Who the glurk is Yvian?" Migo's voice grew sly. "You get yourself a girl, Mims?" A brief pause. Yvian assumed it meant he was scanning the Encounter. "Two girls! Mims, you klug! You know, I'd heard humans were sexually deranged..."

"Shut it, Migo." Lissa cut in. "We're not his girls. We're his crew."

"Well hello there, sweet thing," the mechanic did not seem to take the hint. "You the one turning Mims into a big ole softy?"

"God damn it, Migo," Mims was running out of patience. "Do you accept the rental contract or not?"

"What? Oh, yeah." The comms pinged again as the mechanic sent an N-mail. "Contract's accepted."

"Then we're done here. Mims out." The Captain cut off the transmission.

"Is he always like that?" Yvian asked.

The human sighed. "Pretty much. He's a good mechanic, but he likes to talk." He checked his sensor display. The Vrrl fighters were still attached to the downed Bloodwing. The cruiser hadn't stopped moving when it was disabled, and they were a considerable distance from the rest of the fleet. "It's gonna be a while before the Vrrl leave. Twelve hours at least."

"Can we afford to wait here that long?" Lissa asked. "We've only got eight days before the Xill attack the Federation."

"No choice. That's the contract." Mims pulled up his comms screen. "But I can get the ball rolling in the meantime. Be quiet a minute."

He typed into his console for much longer than it should take to set up a standard comm link. When he was finished, he sent a hail through the Nexus network. "Observer, this is Outcast."

He waited. After thirty seconds had passed, he tried again. "Observer, this is Outcast. Please Respond."

Another thirty seconds, and he tried again. "Observer, this is Outcast."

Just before he could try a fourth time, a reply came through. "Outcast, this is Observer. This comm link is not secure. Cease your transmission."

"Shit." Mims started to transmit again, but thought better of it. He severed the comm link. "Maybe the Confed's nosing around."

"What was that about?" Lissa asked. "Who's Observer?"

"Federation outpost," Mims explained. "The humans have backchannels set up in the Nexus. Lets them know what the Confed's up to. I was hoping I could make contact that way, but it looks like they're not taking comms at the moment."

"Wait, the humans are on the Nexus?" The Nexus was a closed system. Nodes only talked to other nodes specifically attuned to it. It shouldn't be possible to access the Nexus by any other means. "How?"

Mims shrugged. "They've got a node."

"Oh." A terrible suspicion began to form. "How do you know about this?"

The Captain looked at her, face obscured by his mirrored visor. "What do you mean?"

"Secret nodes, backchannels, codenames..." Yvian's eyes went wide. "You're a Terran agent!"

"I'm a privateer," Mims corrected. "The spying thing's more of a sideline, really."