Lanis doesn’t remember being disgorged from the Assault Unit, the Fleet-tech cilia of the machine birthing her into the waiting arms of the Murkata medi-techs, her body pale and trembling. She doesn’t remember the kick of the extraction ship’s thrusters, or the tubes shoved down her throat, or the massive transfusion protocol, bag after bag of blood pumped into her veins as the surgical savants struggle to keep her organs alive.

  Later, there are memories, half-glimpsed at the edge of dreams. Admiral Ren, pacing beside her bed, deep in thought, chewing her thumbnail bloody. Mirem’s hand, stroking her own. The hum of medical machinery, her lung expansion gently assisted upward, and the smell of cold antiseptic gels rubbed against her body.

  She dreams. She’s later told that the deep sedation only lasts for three days, but it feels far longer, as if her entire life is re-lived, alongside other, imagined lives, ones where her AI integration scores never meet the implausibly high standards of Fleet. She lives, and she dies too, again and again in the Demeter, suffocating in the vacuum of space or hemorrhaging from her ears as the Demeter and the Anomaly tear her mind apart. Then the medical machinery chirps, sensing tachycardia, and pushes more sedation into her veins.

  Sometimes she dreams of Ether.

  It's usually after she's died in some horrible fashion, among the stars or on Terra. She stumbles, gasping, into a little meadow with a stream: and there is Ether, nestled along its grassy banks. She wears a pale sundress, something Lanis has never seen or imagined her in, and her legs dangle in the gurgling water. Her arms are not smoldering wrecks, but are whole and perfect in the soft sunlight. She smiles, as though lost in some pleasant daydream.

  Lanis yells, cries, and screams, but Ether never responds. Lanis stumbles through the steam, soaking the odd Fleet uniform that she sometimes wears on these occasions, and attempts to grab the woman, trying to shake her into answering. But her hands simply glide through Ether, unnoticed.

  Eventually Lanis gives up on trying to elicit a reaction from her AI partner, this ghost within her own mind. Instead, they simply sit, side by side, listening together to the quiet gurgling of the stream, the buzzing of little insects, and the wind rustling in the meadow's long grass.

  Slowly, the moments of waking begin to outnumber those spent in sedation. Medications are weaned and cautiously discontinued, tubes removed from blood-crusted holes, and warm washcloths stroked across her face, until, on her sixth day, she sits up in her bed, warm sunlight spilling in from the windows next to her bed, fully awake and able to speak, with Mirem’s hand resting upon her own.

  Mirem looks better than when Lanis last saw her, and Lanis says as much, croaking out the words with a smile. Maybe it’s because the grief of her parents’ deaths on the orbital docks isn’t still as fresh as a still-bleeding stab wound, or maybe it’s just the sleep, though Mirem says she still hasn’t been having much of it.

  “I’ve mostly been on Lanis-duty,” Mirem says with a small smile, “sleeping wherever the medical staff will let me. It was touch-and-go there for the first day and night.” She trails off, yet another unpleasant memory to be buried for a later time.

  Lanis winces as she adjusts herself in the hospital bed. “What happened to me?”

  “You mean, your injuries?” Lanis isn’t sure if that’s what she means at all, but she nods all the same. She has the vague feeling that she’s asked this question before, along with others, when she was thick and dumb with medication, but Mirem simply nods with gentle understanding.

  “It’s probably better that the medi-techs answer that,” Mirem says, hesitant; “but they used the words ‘highly irregular’ quite a bit, which in my corp experience translates to ‘we have no idea.’ They said it was like you suffered an internal burn, along with hemorrhaging, and shock. So there was that… and also the ruptured blood vessels, along where the Unit was giving you fluid. And elsewhere.”

  Lanis lifts up an arm, turning it over and grimacing. It looks like it’s been painted by an abstract artist, one obsessed with purples and blues.

  Lanis sniffs, and tries to swallow. Her throat is still damned sore from the tubes, and Mirem hands her a small cup of ice water, which she tentatively sips.

  “And, Ether?” Lanis asks, dreading the answer.

  Mirem sits back with a sigh, looking at Lanis with sympathy. “Damaged, but functional.”

  Lanis opens her mouth to press for more, but Mirem raises a hand. “That’s all they’ve told me. But you’re going to get to ask the experts yourself pretty soon.” Mirem’s eyes go to a digital clock above Lanis’ bed.

  “Admiral Ren has been here nearly as much as I have. I have a feeling that she thinks of this as her downtime,” Mirem says, shaking her head. “The woman is a machine, what with everything that’s happened…”

  Mirem abruptly clears her throat, as if she’s suddenly trespassed into dangerous territory. She stands up, leans over, and gives Lanis a long hug. Lanis rests her face into the cradle of the woman’s neck, pulling her as tight as her fragile body will allow, so grateful for her familiar scent and touch that it makes her want to cry.

  Mirem pulls back unwillingly and strokes Lanis’ short hair, looking at her with a tender smile.

  “I’ll be back soon. Promise me you’ll kick them out if you’re too tired. I know the medi-techs will try, but I’m not sure even they can stand up to these two,” she says, her hand lingering on Lanis’ before she turns and leaves.

  Mirem doesn’t quite close the room’s door behind her, and Lanis overhears a brief conversation beyond its threshold: the urgent whispering of Mirem, the firmness of Admiral Ren, and unmistakable growl of Morris.

  The door opens, wide enough to reveal the hulking forms of Moriss’ aug-human guards taking up their stations on the other side, and then closes with a click, depositing Admiral Ren and Morris before her bed.

  Admiral Ren is in a working Fleet Admiral’s uniform, blue and white, with the insignia of her rank splayed across her shoulders. Lanis notices that another star has been added to both epaulets, bringing her to the rank of a System Admiral. Lanis wonders what part of the Fleet hierarchy remains to give out promotions, but then realizes with a start that both new stars are gold, rather than silver. So, a promotion by Unanimous Decree. It’s a rare distinction, usually reserved for distant Fleet engagements where entire command structures have been obliterated, in which the remaining commanders elevate one of their own.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Well done, Admiral, Lanis thinks.

  Morris is dressed in a plain green Murkata security suit and black overcoat, declining, as usual, any insignia of rank besides a Murkata-Heisen corporate pin. Lanis smiles slightly, appreciating the irony that a senior officer in what is now indisputably Terra’s strongest mega-corp wears a uniform that would make the leader of a proletarian revolutionary movement proud.

  But she supposes that’s what true power allows.

  Seeing Morris affect an air of tenderness is like watching a bulldog try its hand at embroidery, but that’s what the man does, going so far as to give the edge of Lanis’ hospital bed a small pat. It’s probably the equivalent to a lingering embrace for the hard-looking man.

  “Good to see you up,” Morris states matter-of-factly. His voice is as rough-edged as ever, but Lanis detects true relief in his tone.

  “Very much so,” Admiral Ren quietly agrees. She sits in the chair that Mirem has recently vacated, while Morris pulls one up on the opposite side, his dense bulk causing its legs to creak in protest.

  “I know you’ve just woken up,” Admiral Ren begins, “and I’m sorry that we have to push you like this. But we need to know what happened in there.”

  “First tell me how Ether is,” Lanis responds, her voice quiet but firm.

  Lanis can see Morris’ mouth fractionally tighten, but Admiral Ren doesn’t try to argue, perhaps having expected this exact response.

  “She’s damaged, but alive. Core competencies are intact, along with most of her ego, though some of her memories are fried, especially those that pertain to the Anomaly.”

  Ren waits a moment, letting Lanis absorb this information before continuing.

  “We transferred Ether to a new cortex shell two days ago. Your Versk tech, Ash, is an impressive woman. She’s been working on her non-stop, with the full assistance of the Murkata and Fleet technicians.” Ren leans forward, her voice intense.

  “She’s important to us too, you know. You both are. I can see what you’re thinking, and you’re right; it’s not just for sentimental reasons. That thing will be back, and next time we need to be able to protect ourselves, and to fight back. Like you did. Like Ether. She's the only AI to have come out the other side of fighting that thing intact, just like you. So, again, please tell us what happened.”

  Lanis wants to press Ren for more details, wants to tell her to go get Ash, and Ether’s cortex shell along with her, but instead she takes a sip of water, her hand shaking only very slightly. She meets Ren and Morris’ eyes in turn, and then proceeds tells them everything she remembers.

  Admiral Ren and Morris don’t react as Lanis recounts her fight with the Anomaly, but as she goes on, she has the odd sensation of being examined, like an extravagantly valuable jewel. She’s been used to such reactions before, of course, as a Navigator, but it feels rather unexpected coming from Morris and Ren.

  She can see Ren struggling not to interrupt her at points, to explain some finer details of the dream-duel with the Anomaly that she clearly can’t completely come to grips with. You’d need to be a Navigator to completely understand, Lanis thinks, as she haltingly tries to explain the weapon that she plunged into the anomaly: how it was not merely something from her imagination, but rather something extra-dimensional, something nearly Warp-adjacent that only one with Navigator training would know how to grasp. It all seems impossible, saying it out loud. But there it is, for them to interpret as they will.

  Her voice, already hoarse, is a whisper by the time she’s done. There’s a lingering moment of silence as Admiral Ren and Morris exchange a heavy glance.

  “Thank you,” Admiral Ren says after a few seconds. She slowly rises. “There will be a more thorough debriefing later, when you’re better. But for now, this is enough. You’ve done an incalculable service.”

  “Wait—what happened to Mars Fleet?” Lanis leans forward, eyes narrowed. “And to the rest of the Academy students? You have to tell me what’s going on out there!”

  Ren shakes her head. “Later. The medi-techs gave us five minutes." She glances at the clock above Lanis' bed. "We’ve already overstayed.”

  “I swear to God I’ll rip out this IV and follow you out that door if you don’t tell me what’s happening,” Lanis whispers, grasping a slender cluster of tubing that runs out from beneath her left clavicle.

  “Told you so,” Morris says, chuckling, as Admiral Ren sinks back into her seat. “I’ll go take care of the medi-techs,” Morris continues, rising. “Maybe buy you another five minutes until they break down the door. Just enough time to fill in our hero about what’s been happening while she’s been asleep.”

  So Ren does just that, or tries to, and it’s Lanis’ turn to bite down question after question at the end of each of Ren’s statements, each more unbelievable than the last. She shakes her head at the description of the Androvan Spire-ship, though Ren explains that “Androvan” is a slight misnomer for a species that seemingly broke away from their common ancestor more than ten millennia ago. Mars Fleet has been communicating with them, after a fashion, since their arrival. Not the Spire-ship— that faded away after the first day— but with a ship that they left behind.

  “Dwellers. That’s what they call themselves, as best as we can tell, though there’s certainly a lot that’s being lost in translation. Their full name is something more like, Those Who Dwell in the Interdimensional Continuum of Time and Space,” Ren says, her voice a mixture of wonder and Fleet-sharp calculation. “So, just Dwellers, then. From what we can gather, they want to help us. Or at least help prevent us from being corrupted by the Anomaly again.”

  Lanis is almost too exhausted to be amazed, but she immediately begins to grapple with the implications: Do the other races know about the Anomaly? Have other races fought it before? Do they know what it is?

  Admiral Ren gives a heavy sigh, as if she can guess at Lanis’ questions, and shakes her head, suddenly looking old. “I don’t have all the answers, Lanis. We’re still trying to come to grips with what’s occurred. But I suppose it’s an offer we can’t decline. Not that we have many Navigation cadets left. Only a few dozen of the first and second years, who we extracted before the Academy was overrun. Perhaps twenty more who would have been chosen from the incoming class.”

  She looks again at the clock behind Lanis’ bed. Behind the closed door to the room, Lanis can hear muffled voices.

  “You need rest. And I need to go,” Admiral Ren says, rising, weariness creeping into her voice.

  She hesitates after she stands, watching Lanis.

  “You know, someone will have to train those Navigators, Lanis. The commanders too, and the Insertion Unit pilots.”

  Lanis meets the admiral’s grey-eyed gaze, a flicker of understanding passing between them.

  “Just something to think about.”

  And then she’s gone.