The door slid closed behind Midshipman Princeton with a soft, pneumatic hiss that sounded like a blade being sheathed. A final, definitive sound. The kind that separates one reality from the next. I was now alone with the Executive Officer, and the air in the room felt several degrees colder, thicker, like the calm before an artillery barrage.

  Commander Taera sat back in her chair, a heavy piece of dark-stained wood that looked like it had been salvaged from a shipwreck. It creaked under her slight weight. She was a Taer, a species I’d only read about in xenobiology briefings. Childlike in feature and build, but sized like an adult human, with an ageless quality in her large, dark eyes that spoke of decades, if not centuries, of experience. Her ironic surname, ‘Taera’, was probably a grim joke on her part; she might well be the last of her kind. She pointed a slender finger at the chair opposite her. “Have a seat.”

  The room was a study in deliberate anachronism. It was an officer’s mess, but it was dressed in the garb of a bygone era of seafaring. The lower half of the walls were dark, polished wood; the upper half covered in an elegant, textured paper with a subtle leaf pattern. From heavy, dark cross-beams overhead dangled several small chandeliers of what looked like genuine silver, their crystals catching the low light and casting tiny, fractured rainbows across the room.

  I knew the bones of the ship were modern alloy and composite, but in here, the illusion was absolute. The air even carried the faint, comforting scent of old wood, lemon oil polish, and something else… ozone and something floral. It was a heady, disorienting mix.

  A large, intricate oriental rug, worn soft with age, covered the deck plates, its rich reds and blues a stark contrast to the somber wood. A heavy, scarred table dominated the space, surrounded by two dozen equally heavy, dark wooden stools. I moved to one, the legs scraping softly against the rug’s thick pile as I pulled it out.

  I planted it firmly, the solid thunk a reassuring anchor in the surreal setting, and sat down carefully, perching on the hard surface. I hooked one foot into the rungs beneath the seat, a subconscious gesture to ground myself. I suppose there’s no risk of the room tilting on a starship, I thought with a flicker of wry humor. The dangers here are far more personal.

  “Ma’am?” I asked, my voice quieter than I intended. It was hard to be loud in a room that felt like a library or a chapel.

  “I was the one who allowed you on this vessel,” she began, her voice a calm, measured alto. “The personnel files go through me unless the Captain specifically requests someone. You were a… problem an old friend was trying to get rid of.”

  My stomach did a slow, cold roll. Enemy action, then. Not luck. It was never luck.

  She continued, her gaze unwavering. “I was on Ostrogath before it was invaded last year, but the Valkyrie fleet is known for being where fleet problems come to rest. A final dumping ground for inconvenient personnel and lost causes. I know full well what gremlins are, and when that friend noticed you in intake, I made sure you were shuffled around where you needed to go.”

  I kept my face a neutral mask, but my mind was racing, connecting dots, assessing threats. An old friend? In the Valkyries? That meant someone high-up, someone who knew things. Was I a favor? A pawn? A piece of contraband? “Yes, ma’am,” I said, the words feeling inadequate. I was trying to puzzle out her endgame, the vector of this conversation. Was I about to be thanked or spaced?

  “I understand the difference perfectly well between enhanced bio-maturity and standard galactic years,” she stated, leaning forward slightly and folding her hands on the table. Her fingers were long and delicate. “Technically, my species never enters bio-maturity at all; I was a child for nearly fifty years before I finally chose my class. So, I would like to know your emotional maturity. Not what your file says. You.”

  The question was a scalpel, precise and unexpected. It bypassed all the layers of deception I’d built around myself and went straight to the core. I had to answer carefully. A lie would be sensed—Taers were empaths, their perception legendary. A truth could be just as dangerous.

  “I am not an adult yet,” I said, choosing my words with the care of a bomb disposal tech clipping a wire. “But I don’t want to be around males until I am at least a class master. If you know anything about Maenads, you will know we tend to bond early, and I don’t want to be a slave.” The last word came out harder, sharper than I’d meant it to, tasting of cold iron and despair.

  She nodded slowly, a gesture of understanding that didn’t necessarily mean agreement. Her eyes flicked down to my wrist, to the simple band that housed my hacked user interface. “You hacked the UI. I can tell you have more than the stated two affinities. Why? And what is it?”

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  I sighed, a long, weary exhalation. The jig was up. She knew. Lying was pointless. “I have adept tech, Ma’am. I was captured by slavers, and I needed to be official to protect myself if they found out what I was. So I just kept my mouth shut when they started calling me boy until I could get through basic and get rated. That’s where all the confusion came in.” It was the truth, just a very carefully edited version.

  “You went through orc conscript basic?” she asked, a hint of skepticism in her tone.

  “No, Ma’am. They assumed a Gremlin is the same as a goblin, so I went through tech basic. It was rough, but I wouldn’t have passed orc basic. I am strong, but nobody is as strong as a heavyworlder orc at tin.”

  “And your unregistered affinity?”

  Here it was. The moment of truth. I could feel the weight of it. “Spiritual, Ma’am. I was a conscript. If I had been admitted to spiritual, I would have gotten sent to the meditech trainers and spent the next few years building cyborgs and necro drones.”

  I met her gaze, letting her see the genuine revulsion that coiled in my gut. “I do not approve of necrotics for faith reasons, ma’am, and would take my own life before I’d allow them to force me to sell my soul.” It wasn’t a bluff. The very idea of shackling a living spirit to dead, cold flesh and metal made me want to vomit.

  She sighed, a sound of weary resignation. “What traits do you have from spiritual?”

  “Triage and remote healing, Ma’am. I picked them both up while I was in J-school, training with the troopers. I wrote it off as swarm tech, but spiritual gave it a lot more depth.” I’d felt it awaken during a simulated casualty drill, a sudden, warm certainty in my hands as I’d pretended to direct micro-swarms to seal a simulated wound. It was a real, tangible power, not a technological mimicry.

  “Aid?” she asked, referring to the simple, temporary pain suppression and minor healing spell.

  I shook my head. “No, true healing. I don’t have enough ranks to regenerate, yet, but I am not a purist… I don’t mind helping install upgrades or prosthetic adaptations if needed, but I just don’t want to force a living spirit into a dead body. That’s...evil.” The word hung in the air between us, stark and uncompromising.

  She nodded slowly. “Yes, your tech and spiritual would make you a natural for the hybrid path. And with physical, even as a female, the fleet would jump to put you on a battlefield, raising the dead as cyborgs. I can understand your caution.” She paused, letting that horrific future sink in. “We are not fleet, though. If you have true healing, if you wanted to take the medical path, you’d be in OCS before you can blink.”

  The offer was tantalizing. Safe. Respected. And a complete dead end. I shook my head, the motion firm. “No, Ma’am. I want to command a ship.”

  “Why?” she asked, her head tilting. It was the question I’d been dreading and anticipating. Better than her asking about forces, but it seemed that was still hidden.

  I shook my head again, more slowly this time. “I am sorry, Ma’am. I cannot tell you unless you are willing to swear mental confidence.” It was a huge risk, demanding a vow from a superior officer. But the secret was too big, the stakes too high.

  She leaned back, the wooden chair creaking again. She looked at me carefully, her dark eyes seeming to see right through my skull and into the whirring, frightened machinery of my mind. “You know, I could advise you to be returned to the depot and get reassigned.”

  I shrugged, a gesture of pure, pragmatic fatalism I’d learned from the orcs. Let them see I wasn’t bluffing. “I am sure you can. It is your right and duty.”

  She nodded, a flicker of what might have been respect in her eyes. “But it is clearly extremely important to you. Alright, as long as it doesn’t endanger the ship, I swear mental confidence. But I cannot promise I won’t pester you about it or try to change your mind.”

  Relief, sharp and sweet, washed through me. I’d passed the first hurdle. I offered a small, tight smile. “Thank you, Ma’am. As you probably know, I am a Maenad. Do you remember the species cited during the anti-genemod trials?”

  “Dryads, Nymphs, and Maenads,” she recited, her voice flat.

  “Exactly. Maenads were one of the three cited as being created as slaves. We were designed as companions to heavyworlders, shieldmaidens, and living weapons, easily controlled by whichever male decided to become our mate.” I could feel the old, familiar anger warming me, burning away some of the fear. It was a cold fire, good for focusing the mind.

  I shrugged, the motion feeling awkward. “Imagine a modern delver with a fanatically loyal woman by his side. Strong, physically competent, able to keep him safe and repair almost any damage, and able to heal almost any wound. True heal is COMMON in my family. And he could beat her, abuse her, starve her, or do whatever he wanted, and after bonding, she would stay loyal. She couldn’t even THINK of betraying him without wanting to kill herself, and was willing to do ANYTHING he asked her to do.” The words were ash in my mouth. I was describing my mother. My aunts. The fate I’d narrowly escaped.

  She nodded, her expression grim. “That explains why you want to be on a drone ship. Distance. Isolation.”

  I shrugged again. “Every few years, the fleet goes on another recruitment drive, and the bounty hunters they hire to collect recruits know where our major world is. So they collect as many newly of-age Maenads as they can, unbonded and ready to be bonded to the first male of almost any genemod that decides they want one.”

  She looked at me weirdly, a frown creasing her brow. “They don’t conscript females.”

  I nodded, a bitter laugh threatening to bubble up. “That’s the rule, but they certainly collect them, and none of them ever make it to a recruitment center. What do you imagine happens to them?” I let the question hang, watching her.

  She went pale. The color drained from her face, and the ageless eyes suddenly looked very, very old. She knew. She could picture the hidden auction blocks, the private yachts, the gilded cages.