Petty Officer 3rd Class Roisin Gabrielle Reynard-

  Graduation from the three-month mental meat-grinder that was J-School was the single most anticlimactic event of my life, which was saying something for a life that had recently included being sold to the military by bounty hunters. There was no parade ground review, no solemn ceremony, not even a change into dress uniforms. We were simply called into our respective classrooms, the scent of sweat, ozone, and anxiety still clinging to the air, and handed our results.

  A Chief whose name I never learned slapped a new third-class eagle insignia into my palm, its metal edges cool and sharp against my skin. It felt unnervingly light for the weight it was supposed to carry. My orders, a data-chit that felt flimsy and ephemeral, was thrust into my other hand. A quick, perfunctory handshake was administered to the whole class, a blur of calloused palms and muttered congratulations. And then, just like that, it was over. The school was simply… done.

  A few of the other students had been challenged during the finals, their performances scrutinized under the cold, logical eye of the instructors. But not a single one of us had been ‘sent back to the lines,’ which was, according to the scuttlebutt, practically unheard of. We’d morphed from a group of competitive, paranoid individuals into a weird, dysfunctional pack, helping each other where we could, sharing tricks and shortcuts in the sims. I exchanged personal comm codes with the ones I’d worked with most closely—Learine, with his eerie elven grace; Taxon, all blunt goblin pragmatism; and Kaxis, whose dwarf-level stubbornness had saved our virtual hides more than once. A promise to keep in touch, a tiny lifeline thrown out into the vast, uncaring fleet.

  Then, we simply changed into our low-order dress uniforms—mine had needed yet another trip to the tailor, my body stubbornly refusing to stay one shape for more than a few weeks—and headed to the local transit node to scatter to the winds of our next commands.

  The warrant officer, the man whose name I’d finally learned was Charlie David Wasserman, had vanished on detached duty almost two weeks prior. The absence was a physical ache, a hollow space in the environment where his cool, demanding, and strangely supportive presence used to be. I missed the challenge, the way he pushed us. I missed the delicious, complex aroma of his aura, a scent of ozone, old leather, and a pain so profound I could almost taste its metallic tang. But his absence was also a relief. The changes wracking my body were becoming a full-time job to conceal. I’d shot up another inch, now taller than the tallest goblin I’d ever seen. My hips were widening, my chest… well, that was requiring a lot of careful bandaging and strategic application of darkening powder to mimic the musculature of a young male goblinoid to prevent… problems

  I knew that Learine, at least, knew. Elven senses were sharp, and he’d always been observant. But he’d kept mum, his beautiful, ageless face a mask of polite indifference. That is, until our final handshake. His grip was warmer, lingered a fraction too long. His smile, usually a generic flash of perfect teeth, held a small, intimate knowledge that hadn’t been there for the others.

  “Seriously,” he’d said, his voice a low, melodic murmur meant only for me. “Keep in touch. I cannot wait to see what happens when you finally come into your own.”

  The words were friendly. The look in his eyes was not. It was the look of a collector who’s just spotted a rare and valuable piece. It wasn’t warmth; it was appraisal. It made my skin crawl, putting me on edge around someone I’d started to think of as almost a friend. Welcome to the world, Roisin, I thought sourly. Where even friendship comes with a price tag.

  The Maenad’s protective concealment was a cruel joke. It wasn’t designed to make us look masculine as adults; it was designed to make pre-adolescents look like genderless goblins. The only reason it had worked this long was that adult goblin males and females weren’t that different apart from secondary characteristics, which a tight wrap and a baggy uniform could hide. But the dam was breaking. I was ungainly, all elbows and knees, my center of gravity shifting daily. I felt like a poorly programmed mech, my limbs never quite going where I expected them to.

  A quick search on the public ‘net told me the UPFFS Crow was not a regular fleet vessel. It was my window. My chance. I decided, right then and there, that my arrival would be the perfect time to ‘discover’ the administrative error regarding my sex. It was a gamble, but a calculated one. Privateer crews were supposed to be more irregular, more flexible. Maybe they wouldn’t care.

  The ship’s history was a fascinating read. A rift reward, won by the current captain’s grandmother—a UPF Admiral, no less—fifty years ago. Passed down like a family heirloom, it had been refitted as a luxury transport for elite clients and discreet diplomacy for decades. A heavily armed, heavily defended taxi service. It had kept the ship flying, a minor miracle for a tier-7 magitech vessel in a galaxy that had largely stabilized at tier-6.

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  Recently, it had been passed to the third captain, who’d left her reserve commission to return the ship to its original purpose: a light assault drone carrier. The most recent news clip, from a year ago, showed it assisting a planetary defense force against a Creeper.

  I watched the footage, my stomach clenching. A Creeper was a swarm-type Chaos beast, a living biological bomb. It would drop through a gravity well, bury itself, and rupture, releasing millions of winged, imp-like monstrosities. They consumed all life, absorbing essence and biomass with equal fervor. DNA, toxins, nothing mattered. They’d strip a world clean, then turn on each other until the strongest few grew large enough to spacefold away and begin the cycle again as new creepers.

  The video was a horror show. The swarm ignored the drones and fighters slaughtering them, focusing entirely on the ships that contained living pilots. They would wash over a fighter, and it would simply… vanish in a cloud of tearing claws and wings. It was a brutal, visceral lesson in why being a drone coxswain was so lethally dangerous. The simulations never captured that single-minded, horrifying hunger for the pilot’s life force. My confidence, so high after breaking the Kobayashi sim, shriveled and died. I’d have been dead in seconds.

  I instantly resolved to learn everything I could about void beasts. My life wouldn’t depend on grand strategy, but on some obscure factoid about a spawn’s hunting behavior.

  And then, I was there. The transit node deposited me in a quiet, clean corridor of the Calintare shipyards. The Crow was out of drydock, being reprovisioned, so all I saw was a pressurized umbilical docking ring. And a guard.

  She was stationed next to the airlock, a figure of lethal elegance in black, form-fitting light battle armor. It was station-duty kit, not full mech, and it was sculpted to follow the curves of the lush body beneath the hardened plates. Her faceplate was silvered, reflecting my own apprehensive face back at me. In her hands was a P-9 heater rifle, its loading coil plugged directly into the port on her suit’s forearm, feeding off the suit’s power core. A sensible weapon for station defense—devastating against soft targets, less likely to cause catastrophic decompression.

  I was wearing my duty cap, and for the first time, I hadn’t tried to alter my appearance. The bandages were tight under my uniform, my new height felt awkward, and I felt terrifyingly exposed. The guard’s presence screamed that this wasn’t a standard, safe military base. This was the doorstep of something else entirely.

  I got the distinct impression she was inspecting me long before I got within fifteen feet. She didn’t raise the rifle, but her posture shifted from ‘at ease’ to ‘alert.’ When I was at the prescribed distance, her voice came through her helmet’s speaker, crisp and professional. “Halt! Who goes there?”

  The drill was automatic by now. “Petty Officer Third Class Roisin Gabrielle Reynard,” I recited, my voice sounding higher, less certain than I wanted it to.

  There was a pause. I could feel the scan from my UI band washing over me. Then, the airlock hissed open. Another woman stood there, dressed in a non-standard black uniform cut in a distinctly feminine style. A midshipman’s insignia graced her shoulder. She was tall, blonde, and stunningly beautiful, towering over me. A fresh wave of jealousy washed over me. I’ll get there, I promised myself, feeling the familiar ache of growing bones.

  “Petty Officer… umm… Reynard?” she asked, her eyes scanning me from head to toe, a faint frown on her face. She looked from me to a data-slate in her hand.

  “Yes, Ma’am,” I said, forcing my voice to stay level.

  “We’re going to have to run a full security sweep on you and your UI,” she stated, her tone leaving no room for argument. “Your packet says male. Are you certain you’re in the right place?”

  I nodded, clutching my orders chip. “Yes, Ma’am. My orders from J-School were quite clear. Report to the UPFFS Crow on this date and report to Executive Officer Commander Jennifer Taero for assignment. It’s… entirely possible a mistake was made in the initial intake processing. My breed’s immature form is rather… ambiguous. No one ever asked for clarification.” I offered a weak shrug, hoping I sounded more embarrassed than terrified.

  She looked at me for a long, assessing moment. I felt like a bug under a microscope. “I’ll take charge of this appointee,” she said to the guard. “Please alert the Master-at-Arms to meet me at the quarterdeck for a full security screening. This is an irregularity. And you know how the Captain feels about irregularities of any kind.”

  The following hours were a blur of invasive scans, pointed questions, and hushed c omms calls. The Master-at-Arms was a no-nonsense woman with hands that felt like they could crush rock and a gaze that felt like it could see through my carefully applied powder and bandages. But my story held. I was recognizably the same person from my intake photo, just… more. More height, more shape, more female.

  When I mentioned the ‘growing pains’—a convenient, half-true excuse for my general clumsiness—I was promptly marched to sickbay. The doctor, a brisk woman with kind eyes, clucked her tongue. The analgesics that worked for my specific physiology were unusual, a cocktail my mother had drilled into me, but the doc had something close enough. She handed me a month’s supply with a sympathetic smile. “Growth spurts are a bitch, kid. You’ll level out.”

  You have no idea, I thought, pocketing the pills.

  Finally, the middie escorted me to Officer’s Country, a part of the ship that smelled of clean air, polished metal, and quiet authority. She deposited me outside a door labeled ‘Executive Officer, Commander J. Taero’ and left me with a curt nod.

  I stood there for a moment, alone in the corridor, my heart hammering against my ribs. I adjusted my uniform, took a deep breath that did nothing to calm my nerves, and raised a hand to knock. This was it. The end of one journey, and the terrifying beginning of another.