"Do you think it's funny to do that everytime you get in the shower?" Carrie demanded as I stepped onto the bridge.

"Sometimes," I admitted.

"Stop having Cai divert all the messages to me because you want to spend extra time in the shower," she ordered angrily.

"How else do I know that you get everything important?" I asked.

"I'm your second-in-command! If I don't get something, it's because I sent it to you!" she said.

"And if Cai diverts it all to you then you get that too," I pointed out.

"You're impossible today!" she cried throwing her hands up. "What crawled up your ass and made you a dick?"

"I woke up when we dropped out of the jump," I said. Not the best excuse, but the only one I could give. It was also the one that made me wake up in a bad mood that I wanted to share with everyone else.

"That's no exucse to piss me off," she said.

"Did the teams find anything?" I asked Micheal to avoid the raging Carrie. It did not work.

"They didn't," she answered before Micheal could, grabbing my ear. "Come on! We're going to the sparring rings!"

"What about- Watch it, that's attached to me!- What about where we're going now?" I asked.

"We're going to the coordinates we found on the other world," she told me as she all but dragged me like a disobedient child.

"Have I told you today that you look lovely?" I asked in an attempt to improve her mood.

She twisted my ear harder.

"Are my arms still attached?" I asked Cai as I lay on the floor, trying to muster the courage to stand up.

"They are," he assured me as I listened to Carrie humming to herself as she put her weapons away. I'd gotten my ass kicked. Before I could ask him anything again, Carrie appeared in my vision and looked down on me.

"Having trouble with something?" she asked. "I need you to stand up soon, or I'm going to drag you to the infirmary."

"I can feel my toes," I assured her. "No need for the infirmary."

"I'm not so convinced," she said before leaving me alone.

Maybe I should have Cai alter what he does, Carrie didn't need to get the correspondence from the three Knights planning a game night, she just needed the stuff that was meant for me.

"To be clear," I said as I began to pull myself to my feet, "you object to having all the messages and data on the ship being sent to you, not just having the stuff meant for me, right?"

"No, I don't want the stuff meant for you either," she said. "There's a Paladin in the Engineering Department that sends you letters about having you rail them and pulling their hair."

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

"She sounds like a fun time, if a little nuts," I said.

"It's a guy." Carrie said.

"I'd like to change what I've said," I spoke after a moment.

"Why don't I see any of that?" I asked Cai.

"I delete it as soon as it comes in," he told me. "It falls under your 'spam' designation."

"But you send it to Carrie?" I asked.

"It falls under the 'everything' umbrella that you instruct me to use," he explained.

"I think I know how to fix this stuff," I told Carrie.

"Can I still hit you?" she asked hopefully.

"No," I said. "I told Cai to send you everything. It never occurred to me that he was taking it literally. I meant that as everything meant for me, and he sends everything that comes across the lines. That means that you get all the little day-to-day stuff between the engineering team, rather than just the stuff meant for me."

"It's taken you twenty years to figure that out?" she demanded. "You are an idiot."

"Did I ever pretend to be anything but?" I asked.

"All the time," she answered. "Fix this problem, otherwise I'm printing your admirer's letters out and putting them all over your walls."

"I will," I assured her. "But right now I need another shower."

"Don't you dare," she said angrily.

"I've learned my lesson this time," I assured her. "Besides, it's not fun if I do it everytime."

"It wasn't fun the first time," she said as we left for the showers.

"Demigod, you're alive!" Micheal called out as I stepped onto the bridge.

"Yeah, I don't feel it," I told him. "How far out are we?"

"Should be another few hours," Sarah told me. "Where's Carrie?"

"Getting some food," I answered as I approached the captain's chair. "She and I worked something out and now I'm debating having to go talk to someone in Engineering."

"Your fan?" she asked.

"You say that like a bad thing," Benjamin said, turning to look at us.

"In this case it is," I explained. "They're a little too into me for my comfort. If I'd known about them before this, I'd have done something about it."

"What's the issue exactly?" Micheal asked as he made course corrections based on the computer's sensors and simulations.

"You know those people that are so into someone that they're a danger to them and themselves?" I asked.

"Oh," Benjamin said as he looked back to his console. "That kind of fan."

"Still don't get it," Micheal said.

"I'll explain later," Benjamin assured him.

"You need food?" I asked Sarah. "I'll take over here while you grab something."

"I won't argue," she said. "I wasn't able to grab breakfast cause Carrie was boiling mad at you."

"With as often as that happens, I'm surprised I'm still in one piece," I said as she traded her chair to me.

"You wouldn't be if she didn't love you," Sarah said. "I'll see you boys in an hour or so."

When we finally exited the jump in orbit of the star we had found coordinates for, I sent the usual orders out to the fleet as the starships exited the Galaxy-Jumpers.

"Divide up into fleets of three hundred at minimum and start sweeping the area around the star out to a typical system's distance," I instructed them all. "If you find anything send word back and make your way back here to avoid being ambushed or wiped out. Let's find out where they went."

"Think that we'll find anything?" Carrie asked.

"I hope so, otherwise we've been lead on one wild goose chase after another," I said. "I'm just hoping whatever we find isn't going to get us all killed."

"It's been that way since we started this back on Rallypoint," she pointed out.

"True, but back then we didn't have to worry about finding a dead race and chasing what's left of them to the ends of the universe," I said.

"If it wasn't us that found them, then it would have been someone else," she said. "Do you really think that you could have left this alone after knowing about them?"

"I know that I couldn't," I said. "I'm responsible for every Nephilim life that gets put into danger, especially the ones that don't survive it. If I'd known about the Rif'nay'fex and I retired, then I'd spend what was left of my life wondering if I should have searched more zealously, or gone to different systems to find them. As it is, we got lucky with Tal'ryv, assuming she isn't a part of some bigger plan to lure us into a trap."

"I think she's safe," Carrie said. "If she was trying to trap us, then we'd have already sprung it when we went to the planets."

"Regardless, cryosleep for over three years like that is something that can cause issues when we remember the studies the Wardens did," I pointed out. "Especially when the pod is powered by something finite like hers was."

"So you still don't trust her?" Carrie asked.

"Not fully," I admitted. "There's more strange things with her than we realize. Until we know what they are, we can't trust her completely."

"Shame," Carrie said. "I kind of like her. She's got a nice voice."