Dreams. Fuck dreams.

  Lanis is inside the Demeter once again. She’s bereft of her implants—no joint articulations, no neural net jacks, no data feed when she closes her eyes. Just herself, naked and struggling, unable to hide. She’s led into the navigation plughole by a trio of hardware-masked aug-humans, more nightmarish in the dream than the actual Fleet specialists, their faces abloom with hissing metal implants and green-lettered micro screen readouts.

  “Let go!” She screams, but no words escape her, only a panting groan. I’m not ready; no implants, no prep, what the hell are they doing? She struggles, but it’s like swimming in honey; and then she’s being shoved into the suffocating gel of the navigation pod, her hands scrabbling futilely against the closing hatch.

  A shock of cool wetness. She’s in, unable to escape. She holds her breath, feeling for the ship to insert its breathing tube, eyes wide in the darkness. Red lights blink on around her. She hears massive groaning, like an ancient animal stirring, and recognizes the A-matter drives powering up. No, not ready, no, no, no! She sees a neural jack burst from the navigation pod’s wall, and gurgles a drowning scream as it bores its way into her brain where her neural implant should be. A voice booms through her skull:

  DEMETER TO CREW: Warp JUMP IN THREE, TWO, ONE—

  Even in the midst of bowel-wrenching panic, Lanis’ training takes over, drilled in through thousands of hours of instruction and jump-meditation. She opens her mind to the inter-dimensional possibilities that even the Jupiter Class ship’s AI cannot comprehend, ready to fold its ten megaton carcass through a tear in reality and into a new spatial possibility.

  Nothing could prepare her though, nothing could prepare her that there would be something else waiting for her there, something from every nightmare, from every darkness, from every bleeding cancerous rotting gnashing bitingsquirmingcuttin—

  She thrashes, gasping for air, her scream escaping from her lungs as a rasping, high-pitched groan. It takes several seconds to register that the hand squeezing her shoulder doesn’t belong to one of the Demeter's AI technicians, that instead she’s in some strange bed with some woman she barely knows. Mirem. That’s her name. And the bed—she clutches at the linen comforter, grasping its reassuring texture—it’s real. A stranger’s bed perhaps, but what bed hasn’t been strange recently?

  Stolen novel; please report.

  And the dream… Just an echo.

  “God, are you ok?” Mirem asks, eyes wide in concern. The room’s lights come on, a faint glow that reminds Lanis involuntarily of the Demeter’s navigation pod.

  Lanis realizes that she’s soaked in sweat. Slowly she releases her death-grasp on the bed’s sheets.

  “I—I’m fine. Thanks,” she mumbles.

  She squeezes Mirem’s hand and slips out of the bed, pulling off the sweats that Mirem gave her and padding quickly to the bathroom. Mirem hears the bathroom faucet turn on, the splashing of water to a face, coughing, a glass being filled.

  Lanis returns with a glass of water and leans heavily against the doorway, one arm crossed over her small breasts as she takes a long sip. Her naked form is backlit by the dim nightlight of the hallway, and she feels fragile in a way that she wasn’t last night, like a fawn that might bolt at any sound. She finishes her water, seems to think for a long moment, and then walks tentatively back to the bed.

  “Sorry about that. I should have known…” She shakes her head. “I’ve been drinking enough that I haven’t been having dreams. I guess I better just get used to them. Again.” She sits at the edge of the bed, one leg folded beneath her, the other dangling.

  She feels Mirem considering her, the brush of a hand. Probably rethinking what she’s gotten herself into, Lanis thinks. Not that she’s actually ‘gotten herself into’ anything. The woman doesn’t owe her anything. No one does.

  “Ever since… the Warp jump?” Mirem asks, interrupting these thoughts.

  Lanis nods. She stands up again, slowly, eyes searching for her clothes. “I should go,” she says, but with a hesitation that suggests uncertainty, and a sadness at having outworn a brief welcome. Mirem reaches out her hand and rests it on her hip.

  “You should stay. If you want to.”

  There’s a delay, as if Lanis is probing a wound of an uncertain depth. She turns her head, looking down, her eyes meeting Mirem’s again, but for the first time, in a way. I wonder if those are her real eyes, Lanis thinks.

  Lanis says, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Mirem responds. She slides out of bed and stands in front of Lanis, slowly. She takes her hand and runs it gently across the shortness of Lanis’ hair. Then she leans in and kisses her; a long, slow kiss that Lanis returns, at first tentatively, but then deeply, like a second, even more grateful drink of water. She can’t remember the last time she kissed someone sober.

  She withdraws, looking into Mirem’s eyes, trying to release a tightening in her chest without crying. Mirem strokes her head, her other hand moving to Lanis’ slim waist, and they come together again.