Deep within the Fleet command center of Terra’s orbital docks, Admiral Yuen scowls. He’s dressed in the impeccable blue of Fleet with three stars glittering across his epaulets, and his only nod to personal vanity is a small, grey mustache that he carefully trims each night before bed. The look he gives to his subordinates as he strides into Central Command makes more than one junior officer want to shrink beneath his or her terminal station.

  “What in the blazes do you mean the Agni is undocking?” he yells, taking in his surroundings with a practiced glare. Several dozen non-integrated Fleet officers attend to banks of projection-displays, while others hunch over specialized terminals; in the middle of the room lie three Fleet Administrators, semi-supine in their integration couches, each with a Fleet tech-savant monitoring their every need.

  A junior colonel, standing at attention before the admiral, opens his mouth to reply, but he is interrupted: “The Agni is not responding to repeated hails,” one of the administrators says, her voice, soft as it is, cutting through the low chatter of the other officers.

  “Christ,” Admiral Yuen mutters. His fingers graze over his left wrist, manually activating his rather aged implant.

  “This is Port Admiral Yuen. Planetary Fleet Command demands that you cease undocking maneuvers. Admins, who the hell is on that ship? Have we already tried overriding their embarkation procedures? And what about—”

  His rapid interrogation is cut short by a flickering on one of the projection monitors.

  “Sir, it looks like the Agni is finally responding, but is bypassing Admin protocols,” one of the junior officers says, his brow furrowed in confusion. “Shall I bring her up onscreen?”

  Admiral Yuen gives a curt nod, but his normally immovable demeanor imperceptibly tightens as a knot of alarm tugs at his chest.

  He stares at the flickering display for a half-moment before making a sudden decision.

  “Admins, alert Admiral Harkim and all active commanders on emergency protocols. Scramble an intercept—the Warwick and whatever other destroyer at-ready, weapons free.” That’s it; no matter what the Agni does now, someone is spending the next several months planet-side, if not facing a full court-martial.

  “Transmission is finally coming through, sir,” another lieutenant states, her voice hesitant.

  The flickering static of the projection-display slowly resolves itself, and a face becomes clear.

  It’s Commander Raine, of the Agni. Except…

  “My god,” Admiral Yuen whispers, his breath catching.

  The woman’s eyes are gone. No, not just gone: it looks like some kind of damn animal has torn them out of her face.

  “Hello Admiral,” Commander Raine whispers. She smiles, the blood from her torn-out eyes dripping slowly down her face and spreading across her teeth like red oil across white cobblestones.

  “Sir, the Agni’s weapons systems are hot!” one of the lieutenants yells, red alarms blossoming across the Command Center’s monitors. Activity erupts, and to his right Yuen sees one of the Admins begin to writhe, his pale face silently contorted in pain.

  No, Admiral Yuen thinks. He takes a halting step back, turning his face to bark orders while keeping his eyes glued to Commander Raine’s ruined face.

  “Techs, what the hell is happening to my Admin? And where’s my goddamned intercept?” The junior officers are frantically mouthing words to their counterparts, both on ships and across the orbital station, while the Admin techs silently wrestle with the writhing Fleet Administrator as they try to manually disengage him from his integration couch.

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  “Some sort of neural spike, sir, we don’t know how—” one of the techs responds, wrenching the last shunt from the admin's body. The other two Admins' faces are sheened with sweat, and their fists are white-knuckle clenched against their integration couches.

  Wide-eyed officers yell out their status reports, barely-restained hysteria bubbling up from beneath the cacophony of raised voices:

  “There’s some sort of intrusion—an AI virus?”

  “From who? Are we under attack?”

  “Picket sensors detect no Warp jumps, repeat no Warp jumps—”

  “Are those real reports? Can we trust the sensors?”

  “AI degradation spike, sir! Emergency Admins woken on Command station three, undertaking countermeasures.”

  “Sir, Mars Station comms just went down.”

  Admiral Yuen feels sweat break out on the back of his neck, his heartbeat hammering in his ears.

  “Ah, Admiral. Do you know the sound of rot breaking?” Commander Raine says, slowly shaking her head. “If you don’t, you should listen…”

  “Scramble all ships on emergency protocols!” Yuen shouts, and he watches as the emergency ship confirmations begin to blossom across the displays. His officers, despite the chaos of the situation, are performing as they should, and he feels a tug of pride. With nearly fifty years of Fleet service kicking in, he pushes down his panic, and takes a step toward Raine’s smiling face on the display.

  Delay, he thinks.

  “Commander Raine, you've clearly had a psychotic break. You must halt your maneuver,” Yuen states, trying to sound reasonable.

  “But Commander Raine isn’t here anymore, is she?” the woman replies, her smile growing fractionally wider, blood dripping out of the corner of her mouth.

  “No? What are you then? And what do you want with my ship?” Yuen says quietly.

  “My ship,” the broken woman hisses. She tilts her head, as if considering the admiral with her unseeing ruined eyes.

  “I have a problem, Admiral. It seems that every time I try to meet one of your little Navigators, their brains have the unfortunate habit of melting. Why, I’ve killed five in just the past few minutes.”

  Admiral Yuen’s mouth twitches, and he turns to the wide-eyed junior officer next to him.

  “Sir, the cruisers Hecate, Durga, and Indra are undocking, along with the destroyer Alkonost, and the Insertion Unit Carrier Tanit. None are responding.”

  Admiral Yuen turns back to Commander Raine, his face now pale. Whatever has taken control of Raine is running rampant, now un-mooring nearly a quarter of the power of Terra’s currently docked fleet. A virus, then? A coordination of psychotic breaks?

  The woman licks her blood-stained lips. She speaks in a whisper that nearly becomes a moan: “Help me find one who can withstand my blessing. Help me Admiral, and I will show you what I am. I will show you what power you can wield on this plane of existence.”

  Behind Yuen, there is a slight reprieve of pressure upon the Admins’ minds as Raine, or whatever it is, moves the point of her focus.

  There’s something suddenly exquisite about Commander Raine. Her eyes are not ruined, but beautiful. No—more than beautiful: luscious, and carnal. Yuen remembers the way she smiled at him when he toured the Agni last year. She’s more than thirty years his junior, but he knows that she wanted him then, the way she looked at him, undressing him, the slut, the whore—

  Admiral Yuen slowly brings a shaking hand up to his face, and pinches his eyes shut. He feels like he’s about to vomit. His hand is still trembling when he withdraws it several seconds later, but his eyes are now flint-hard, and his teeth are gritted with his signature snarl, honed from decades of Fleet service.

  “Fuck off.”

  Commander Raine’s smile falters slightly. The woman—the thing—shakes its head.

  “You’ll regret that, Admiral.”