The berthing that Midshipman Princeton led me to after my little heart-to-heart with the XO was unlike any communal space I’d ever seen. It had a common area, sure, a utilitarian circle of worn couches and a table bolted to the deck, but the sleeping quarters were something else. Each bunk was set in its own alcove, with a sliding partition that could seal it off from the rest of the room, providing a tiny slice of privacy containing a bed, a locker, and a small desk.

  For a tier seven ship, it was downright luxurious. It also made a grim sort of sense. A co-ed privateer vessel on cruises that could last years? Yeah, you’d want more than just a curtain between people.

  The air smelled faintly of ozone, recycled air, and the underlying, not-unpleasant scent of industrial cleaner. The low hum of the ship’s systems was a constant vibration through the deck plates, a tactile reminder that we were inside a machine hurtling through the void.

  Miss Princeton—I’d been quietly corrected that middies weren’t to be called by their rank, but ‘Mister’ or ‘Miss’—was a study in controlled disdain. She wasn’t overtly rude. Her answers to my direct questions were crisp, informative, and utterly devoid of warmth.

  But her entire posture, the slight tilt of her chin, the way her eyes never quite met mine for more than a second, screamed her superiority. It was baked into her, a product of a lifetime of being told she was better. Probably admiralty heredity, or maybe even pure Old Earth baseline stock.

  She carried the assumption that she was simply a finer grade of person, and my current… unfinished state—a stretched-out, half-goblin cookie of a creature—was an eyesore confirming her bias. She was prettier than me, and she knew it, which in her world apparently counted for more than rank or cultivation level. For now.

  She was fifteen, a midshipman on the navigation track, having boarded a month ago during the ship’s refit. Not a Pilot, a non-command specialty, and not a lowly coxswain like me. A Navigator.

  Someone who helped chart the course, who decided where this can of nuts and bolts would venture next. It was the only topic that got her talking with anything resembling enthusiasm outside of clothes or gossip. Apparently, if the six command officers above her bought it, command of the Crow fell to her.

  The chief engineer, doctor, quartermaster, and pilot all outranked her, but their ranks weren’t ‘flag’ commands—a distinction that was still fuzzy to my enlisted brain. It seemed less about ability and more about who the Admiralty trusted to follow their grand plan. Maybe she was the captain’s niece or something. That would track.

  I’d read a story once about a child prodigy groomed from birth to be an admiral and defeat a fleet of insectoid aliens—a weirdly common trope, probably because bugs are just icky enough to be universally hated. I’d always called scrot on it. A young mind, no matter how brilliant, lacks judgment. Lacks scale. Most of all, lacks the introspection and experience that comes from having your grand plans blow up in your face a few times.

  History is littered with ‘brilliant young conquerors’ who overreached and burned their own civilizations to the ground. A child commander was just a poorly programmed Synthetic Intelligence with an ego. And my entire job existed because SIs, for all their twitch reflexes, had notoriously piss-poor judgment.

  Reflexes don’t make a commander. If I ever wanted to be one, I’d have to learn to look up from my own cockpit. Admit it, Roisin, you’re decent in a knife-fight, but command is a whole different battlefield.

  My tour took an unexpected detour before I reached the flight deck. Princeton delivered me to the chief engineer’s domain, a surprisingly clean and organized bay humming with the heartbeat of the ship.

  The woman who emerged from a panel was tiny, with warm brown skin and pronounced epicanthic folds that crinkled when she smiled. She insisted I call her ‘Kimmy,’ not ‘Chief Kim.’

  “The XO tells me you’ve got engineering and magic sub-gifts,” she announced, after Princeton made the introduction.

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  Her voice was a pleasant, no-nonsense contralto. “If you do, I’m tempted to assign your non-training watches down here. Even if you go command path, engineering experience looks damn good on a record.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Indirectly,” I said, my voice echoing slightly in the bay. The smell of hot metal, lubricant, and ozone was thick here, a familiar and almost comforting industrial perfume. “It’s more suited to drone ops, though. I’ve got no experience with conjunction engines. My understanding begins and ends with shadowstep generators.”

  She nodded, a lock of dark hair falling across her forehead. “But you know they are conjunction engines, at least. That puts you ahead of most. They cheat relativity so you can monitor normal space from the Drift, which is vital on a clean ship like this. I want you to let me know if you sense something off about number three, compared to the others. I’ve only got a minor metal gift—great for maintenance—but these things are pure tier-seven magitech. They’ve got a feel to them.”

  I nodded, closing my eyes for a second to listen. The bay was a symphony of power: the deep thrum of the primary generators, the higher-pitched whine of secondary systems, the click and hum of relays. I let it wash over me, trying to isolate the signature of the engines Kimmy had indicated. After a moment, I gave up. The ambient noise was too much. I spotted a relatively clean patch of deck plating, sat down, and folded myself into a lotus position, ignoring the cool metal through my thin fatigues.

  “What’s she doing?” Princeton’s voice was a hushed, confused whisper.

  Kimmy’s reply was amused. “Meditating, probably. The drives aren’t her specialty. She needs to focus to pick up on the subtleties.”

  “Excuse me, Kimmy?” I asked, my voice soft.

  “Yes?”

  “Can you put them into standby? Just warm them up a little? I know we’re in dock, but the essence bleed should be minimal if you do a low-power cycle.”

  Kimmy nodded, her fingers dancing across the interface on her wrist. After a few minutes, a new, deeper hum joined the orchestra. “Yeah. Maintenance run is initiated. Why? Do you hear something?”

  I sighed, my concentration absolute. It was there, a ghost on the edge of my perception, a faint dissonance in the harmony of the ship. It clung to the periphery of complex six, a barely-there flicker. I pushed my spiritualism affinity, focusing everything I had on that one spot, trying to tease out the thread. When the first rune ring of engine three energized, the flicker solidified into a recognizable, and deeply sad, pattern.

  “You have a gremlin,” I said, opening my eyes.

  Kimmy smiled wryly. “I know. She’s sitting on my deck plating right now. That’s a hell of a lot of trouble to go through for a joke.”

  I shook my head, the motion feeling too sharp. “No. A real gremlin. A ghost in the machine. It’s hovering right on the edge of ring six, caught in the formation’s eddies. I’m not strong enough to pull it out. Can you depower the entire formation?”

  Her smile vanished, replaced by a scowl. “Yeah, but then we have to hire a formation master to get it restarted. That’s a six-figure credit problem, minimum.”

  I shrugged helplessly. “You must have passed too close to a derelict or a recent battlefield. Picked up a hitchhiker. It’s no wonder your techs and sorcerers missed it. It’s terribly weak.”

  “Is that a problem?” she asked, though her tone said she already knew the answer.

  “To me, it would be,” I said softly. “Every time you jump, you feed it just enough power to keep it from depowering and moving on, but not enough to break free. It’s trapped. Tortured. It’s just a spirit, not a full soul, but it might have echoes of human, or at least sentient, memories. Maybe Alien. Usually, this is only an issue for mystic ion drives, but you must have run ring six right through its point of origin.”

  I took a breath, delivering the bad news. “As for trouble for you? Yeah. Eventually, you’ll jump somewhere close to a heavy essence leak or a powerful aura—a Tyrant’s domain, maybe. The surge will give it the strength to tear itself free, and it’ll wreck the formation doing it. Then you’ll need a master to rebuild it, not just restart it. Your call, though. If you’re doing years of low-power flights, it might work itself free eventually. But if you’re heading into heavy rift action… well. How bad is a drive failure when you’re running from a Tyrant?”

  Kimmy grumbled, running a hand through her hair. “Scrot. I was really hoping you were going to tell me it was all in my head. Onboard for no more than two hours, and you’re already costing me fat cash. Git. Come back for the third shift. I’m getting a second opinion, but now that we’ve localized it, the diagnostic scan should be a lot clearer.”

  I jumped to my feet and hurried out of her bay, my heart pounding. The clean, orderly space suddenly felt like a trap. “Crap, did I just make an enemy?”

  To my surprise, Princeton offered a slight, almost imperceptible smile. “Kimmy? Hell no. She lives for problems like this. She’s probably going to have an array master here on third shift, so you can double-check that the cling-on has bailed after the shutdown. But complaining is her love language. If she’s buried in a machine, cussing enough to make an Orc blush, it means she’s happy. She’ll be all smiles and compliments at dinner.”

  I sighed in relief. I knew that type. Goblins were like that. If they weren’t bitching, they were bored, and boredom led to schemes that usually ended in explosions. But Kimmy was a sweet-looking woman. It was going to be strange adjusting to the idea that her swearing was a sign of affection.