First Day New Ship

“Good people don’t get to do what they want. They do what they must.”

It might have been that she had a sour look on her face as she approached her assignment. She sure felt sour. The Semmistratum wouldn’t take her back and neither would her own sect—the Tressian holy warriors who ran operations with that well-known humanitarian group. A liability, they’d called her. She’d lost her memory, and a lot of it at that. But one thing this fighter knew about herself was that no matter the number of things she couldn’t recall about herself and her past, she knew she was not that. Never a liability.

She’d come all the way from Alpha-Megara to this place on Delta-Omega, a massive dry-dock cylinder with nearly fifty bays housing busted-up ships from across the Lettered Systems in varying states of disrepair. The one Commodore to even entertain her request for placement in the Letters Select Service had sent her to this dull pit, rife with the taste of metallic dust particles floating in the dim atmosphere. The ship was a transport—and a broken-up transport at that. She was a fighter, not a flight attendant.

So, sour. You could say that.

She poked her head around the bay, looking for the ranking officer. The commodore hadn’t even given her the captain’s name, just a ship—Yankee—and unless the cylinder’s records were inaccurate, this broken heap was Yankee.

It was a mid-size early-war bucket that—from the looks of her—had been badly banged up in a scrape with at least one vessel with much sharper teeth. It was curious that they were even salvaging her at all, rather than pushing her headlong into a nearby star or gas giant to keep the space clear. There were hull breaches up by the nose, the flight deck glass was out, and the mid-body—where the maintenance crew had just put in a new atrium window—had several of its own open gashes in the outer plating.

“Some bucket,” she said, walking toward the back ramp shaking her head.

The one good thing about a decent-sized ops transport like this, though, was that it’d be spacious enough to live fairly comfortably on, given the number of rooms and the probability that hardly anyone would be itching to crew-up on such a hobbled wreck.

“Anybody home,” she said, deliberately stepping heavily up the rear ramp as she boarded. She wanted to make sure they’d hear her coming.

As she stepped down the rear corridor, she noticed the lights were out throughout the ship, but she sensed that somebody was there.

“Hello,” she shouted to no answer. “This is ridiculous,” she mumbled, stepping into the main room mid-ship.

There was a man sitting in the darkness on the bench that ran along the room’s side wall. She gathered that he was hiding in the darkness there, presuming she couldn’t see him, but he had no way of knowing that her eyes were synthetic replacements—highly enhanced. She could see everything, plain as day.

He looked to be a cyborg, cut right down the midline, it seemed. His face was half-metal, like they’d done serious repair work to the skeletal framework of his blown-out half and then simply failed to complete the cosmetic work on the outside.

“I see you there,” she said, presuming he could see her too with his tech-eye, but even though it was open, it wasn’t processing her. His living eye popped open.

“Huh? Wha— Who’s there?” the cyborg said.

“Can’t you see me?”

“Negative. I must have dozed off. Lights.”

The lights didn’t come on.

“Come on,” he said, banging on the framework of the ship. “Nothing works around here.”

With the third thump he gave to the framework, the lights came on.

“Oh, hey. There you are,” he said, getting up from the bench. “I’m Sōsh.”

“Leda,” she said, shaking the cyborg’s living hand. “Are you the captain?”

“Negative, that’d be Burch. He’ll be back later tonight. Something I can do for you?”

She shook her head and looked around the room. It was utter chaos, tools everywhere, scraps of metal, shards of glasswork that had come off the atrium window’s framework in the replacement process.

“Tight ship,” Leda said. “Whose idea was it to salvage this mess?”

“Burch and I should talk,” the cyborg joked. “We’re in about the same shape. I suppose that’s why the commodore decided to put us together. You still haven’t told me what I can do for you, Leda.”

“I was assigned here.”

“You were?”

She shook her head. “I guess. If I want to be.”

“What’s your issue?” Sōsh said. “You look just fine—a fighter by the looks of you. Maybe tech-ops?”

“Lunar specialist.”

“A fellow rock hopper? What command?”

“Currently? Unaffiliated. And my issue is that I can’t remember. Otherwise, I’d be with a real unit.”

“You lost your memory?” the cyborg said. “Head knock?”

“You could say that.”

She started to walk around the atrium, circling the table, looking at the ship’s structural makeup, especially the new framing around the atrium window.

“So you don’t retain information well—like training details and mission intel, or is it deeper? Not trying to pry, just trying to figure out why they sent you down here with me and Burch. You look like you could handle yourself fine.”

“I know my name and that I’m a fighter. A drone suit pilot and an operator—lunar ops. I get vague flashes of memory. I’m pretty sure I was with the Semmistratum or the Letters, but nobody has a record of me.”

“How is that possible?”

“I got nuked, is the short answer,” she said, turning to look at Sōsh. “All this,” she said gesturing to her face and body, “all of it was put back on me. I got burned to a crisp, my eyeballs cooked out of their sockets. I suppose about the same thing happened to my brain with the radiation. The Letters won’t take me because they can’t verify my identity. The Semmistratum won’t take me because I’m damaged goods. So the LSS sent me here—Commodore Ahern’s command was the only one who even granted me an interview. I’m here, because I have nowhere else to go except back to the temple to teach martial arts. But I don’t want to be a teacher: I’m a soldier.”

“Oh,” Sōsh said. “Do you want to sit? Maybe I could explain the premise here, because I’m not sure how much action we’re slated to see. If Burch has his way about it, it won’t be much.”

“Then what am I doing here?”

“It’s a good question. Can’t say I haven’t asked it myself quite a few times.”

He gestured toward the table.

“How long have you been here?” Leda said, sitting reluctantly. “You seem to know this Captain Burch pretty well.”

“Good enough,” Sōsh said. “I met him in rehab.”

“Him too?”

Sōsh shrugged. “That’s the kind of outfit I think we are. Busted ship. Busted crew. Busted captain.”

She shook her head, scoffing. “What an insult. Some kind of LSS joke?”

He didn’t respond, but she could tell just by the way he dropped eye contact that the comment had stung.

“No offense,” she said. “I’m still capable.”

“And I’m not?”

“No. I mean…I don’t know what I mean. It’s just—”

“Frustration, yeah. I feel you. At least you got put back together properly.”

“Not properly enough, I guess, but there’s plenty of things can’t be undone.”

“That’s a fact. Anyway, there’s worse things than getting stuck here. If you want to be on a crew, it’s Burch’s crew for sure.”

“Why’s that?”

Sōsh shrugged. “He’s a steady guy. Decent. Looked out for people worse off than him in rehab, even though he was hard up himself. Everybody likes Burch. That’s how I ended up here.”

“Well, I won’t be staying,” she said. “I’ll find a better way to be useful.”

“I’m curious, though, before you go, Leda, just how much do you remember? You said flashes, but can you function?”

“What do you mean function?”

“Like if I asked you to describe an operation, a lunar drop for instance, would you know what to do?”

She didn’t answer him but looked visibly angry. She shook her head at him dismissively.

“So?”

“I’d be fine.”

“Drop helix? Counter formation? Tri-point? Those terms mean anything to you?”

She didn’t react.

“So you’re a walking, talking, moon-hopping instinct with absolutely no awareness of how you know what you know? Or at least you think you are.”

She got up from the seat. “I’m going to go. It was nice meeting you. I’m sorry I’ve already forgotten your name.”

“Okay, bye, Leda,” he said, smiling a half smile. “Wow, see. Look at that, half a head and I remembered your name.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re not a rock-hopper, Leda. It’s fine. Whatever you were, I hope you figure it out, or at least what you’re supposed to be now. Seriously, I wish you well.”

She shot him an angry look. “I am a lunar combat specialist. No- and low-gravity drops and ops all day long, son.”

“You came in here and met a contact and forgot his name in what, four minutes? But that wasn’t memory loss, I don’t think. That was attitude. I’m just a grunt, but that’s nonchalance, arrogance. For what it’s worth, if it’ll help point you in the right direction, I’d say you’re an officer, probably a junior lieutenant, and given the chip on your shoulder, something rear echelon—some nothing outpost.”

“You don’t know anything, cyborg.”

“Oh, that cuts deep. Cyborg. Haven’t heard that one yet. Tell me something before you storm off, though, Leda. Where’d you get nuked? I believe you; just where were you found? You know that right?”

“Kendry.”

The half-smile returned, almost a laugh. “Okay, lieutenant. I bet you ran a logistics warehouse.”

“Kendry is an Indie.”

“So?”

“So the Letters were never there, and the Semmistratum doesn’t run planetside logistics. I’m a rock hopper, through and through.”

“I wonder what the hell you were doing down there then. In any case, good luck at the temple, sensei.”

Sōsh got up and seemed to be turning to get back to whatever work he was doing before he’d dozed off.

Leda didn’t leave, just took a few steps in place, watching him as he turned his full metal side away from her. She could tell he could see her in his peripheral vision from his living eye.

“You were just leaving, weren’t you?”

She shrugged.

Sōsh turned back to her. “But where to go, lieutenant?”

“Stop calling me that. I don’t know my rank.”

“You don’t know anything it seems, not even whether you want to stay or go. If you want to stay you can, but there are some contingencies now.”

“You’re not the captain.”

“I have his trust. If I say no, he’ll say no. Trust me. You want to be on a ship? This is the one, and if you want to be here, and I’m going to be working with you, I want to know if your memory works, and I want to know if you can handle yourself. First test is easy. What’s my name?”

“I told you, I forgot.”

“I introduced myself to you as Sōsh. It’s a shortened version of my first name: Attasōshteki. What’s my name? And don’t ask me whether I’m serious or I’m sending you away. What’s my name?”

“Sōsh.”

“Full name.”

“Attasōshteki.”

“Kinesamakanatoneko,” he said. “Kinesa-makana-toneko. That’s my surname. Repeat it back to me.”

“Kinesa-makana-toneko. What kind of name is that?”

“My family is from Dana Point originally but had to relocate to the Letters after the fighting pushed into the Western Quarter. Trasp territory now.”

He gestured for Leda to sit. She sat, this time with a stoic look on her face. The energy in the room grew serious, taking on the air of a practical exam in military qualifications or, more recently relevant to Leda, a belt test in the martial arts, only she was usually the administrator.

“Can you form mental images?” Sōsh said. “I had slight damage to my right hippocampus that hindered my ability to form mental imagery for a while after my injury. You said you had brain damage?”

“I had a difficult time at first,” Leda said, “but I’ve recovered almost fully neurologically. Just not my memory.”

“Good,” Sōsh said. “I want you to close your eyes and follow. When I ask you a question, I want you to tell me what you would do in the scenario. Got it?”

“Yeah,” Leda said. “I got it.”

“This is a live drop. Planetary settlement at .94G, 1.26atm, breathable. It’s twilight, visibility good to moderate. Twenty ships, vertical incursion for deployment within an urban theater. You are currently in orbit, about to drop into the atmosphere. What do you see?”

 “I would see the wall of the hopper—I mean, directly in front of me.”

“And beside you?”

“Just one on my right, my top NCO.”

“Above and below?”

“I don’t know. It depends on my rank. How many deploying?”

“Shut up and answer, lieutenant.”

“It’s a small group if I’m a lieutenant, a light drop. No one’s above me. Only four or five rows below tops. Two rock hoppers behind us, back-to-back with me and the sergeant.”

“How many total in your group?”

“Twenty.”

“And you’re at the top?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Certain.”

“What do you hear?”

“It’s more feel,” Leda drew forward circles in the air as she struggled to conjure up the image. “Through the chair, the release mechanism, the clicking, silence for like twenty seconds, then a dull rolling of the air as we start entry.”

“What do you feel?”

“A pull in the gut?”

“Where?”

“At the base of my…the middle of my pelvis.”

“What’s it feel like?”

“Like I’m alive again, like the best goddamn feeling in the whole universe.”

“You’re dropping, describe it.”

“I…” Leda kept moving her hand, gritting her teeth. Her eyes scrunched up tight. “I can’t see it.”

“Why not?”

“I told you,” she said angrily, her eyes opening. “It’s just flashes. Nothing concrete.”

He was standing across from her behind the table, examining her face.

“Okay, I’ll describe,” Sōsh said. “Close your eyes again. Open them again before this scenario concludes and this test is over.”

She could see the sincerity in his one good eye. She took a deep breath and shut her eyes again.

“The air is a hum at first,” Sōsh began, “and that feeling rushing up through your gut is gravity pulling you down, straight down. Do you feel it?”

“Yes.”

“Can you hear the air rushing past the dropship?”

“Yes.”

“It’s getting louder. And it’s getting warmer in there. You’re getting heavier. The weight of your limbs. You’re clenching your fists and arms, flexing your thighs. Getting ready to hook. HUU-HUU-HUUT! Let me hear it.”

“What?”

“Do you want to pass out when the brakes fire, lieutenant? HUU-HUU-HUUT!”

“Huu, huu, huut.”

“Your head is starting to swim. Lieutenant Leda is drifting away. Stay on top!”

“HUU-HUU-HUUT!”

“Good. She’s back now. Push that blood to your head, Lieutenant! Keep it there. You’re going to need it. Door’s opening, Leda. Can you hear it?”

“Negative,” she continued to shake her head.

“Feel the air rush in?”

She’d been so focused on picturing the scenario she hadn’t noticed that Sōsh had stepped around the table and was standing behind her.

“Feel the air rushing in around your helmet.” He grabbed her head from above, gently shaking her with his palm, moving her head chaotically to simulate the air flow in the hopper. “What’s next, lieutenant?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Engine’s going to pop. Quick pop. Test fire. POP-POP-POP! Feel it in your gut, lieutenant?”

“Pop. Pop. Pop.” she said. “Roger that. I feel it. Breathing. HOO-HOO-HOOF!”

“Stay on top! Good. Now what?”

“Squeeze. Burn, cut, and burn.”

“Firing! POP-POP-POP!”

Leda let out a long breath and grasped the table with both hands.

“You’re out!” Sōsh shouted, pacing behind her now. “What do you hear?”

“I’m out. Breathing. Just the wind.”

“Where’s your frame?”

“I don’t know. Gone.”

“Gone how?”

“I don’t know, like the ship. Gone up.”

“The frame has a hard chute, Lieutenant. How could you forget that? You’re free now, but you’re spinning, a slight backwards tumble. What do you do?”

She tilted her head and lifted up one hand while pressing her other palm down toward the table. Sōsh could see the instinct in the movement.

“Roll left, then settle,” she said, her eyes still shut tight. “Find a reference point on the horizon. Up is up.”

“Why left?”

“My partner’s on my right. Our backers roll the other way. My op, my lead. I roll left.”

“The horizon is orange,” Sōsh said. “The sun’s going down. Peg your head to that light on the horizon. Let me see your hands.”

Leda’s movements were precise and subtle, her palms inverted, her fingers tight together, like tiny wings in the wind. Even in the chair in that busted ship, Sōsh could see her body remembered.

“Chin up, lieutenant. Your bearing is a saddle between the two mountain peaks slightly to your right. Take a quick look below you before you cut forward. The plain is littered with lights coming on. It’s getting darker the further you fall. Are you on your bearing yet?”

“Affirmative.”

“What do you see?”

“Two mountain peaks, a saddle between, and an orange sky behind it.”

“Do you run a suit, Leda?”

“Always.”

“Not today, you’re not. Chute only. Old school. Silent. Watch the horizon. You’re pulling at three hundred meters. What’s in your eyepiece?”

“Altitude and bearing.”

“Good. Target is the brightest light cluster to your right beneath you. Should be blinking in your eyepiece now. Let the air take you there. Nice and easy, lieutenant.”

“I’m a captain.”

“You think so? Get promoted in the last minute?”

“Negative. I always was, Sōsh.”

“You remembered my name. Good. Mark those three needle-like structures on your left, like pins of light puncturing the sky. Seen them before?”

She shook her head.

“Three bluish-white pinpricks of light. A city surrounded by mountains on a high plain with a thick breathable atmosphere?”

“Nessel,” she said, suddenly recognizing the place from the description.

“Nessel’s the Trasp name for it. Thirty years ago, when my family lived here, it was Dana Point. Those needles are the Fingers. You see them now. Keep them on your left. Follow the targeting lights on your glasses into the district in between the two city hubs. Are you over the target?”

“Yes.”

“Four hundred meters now. When do you pull?”

“Now.”

“Good. Get your legs under you, captain! Hit the gap between the two rows of buildings. Do you have skyscrapers like that where you’re from, captain?”

“I don’t think so. This feels new.”

“Mind the wind. Those drafts will pull you down or slap you into the side of a building in a heartbeat. Don’t want to drop from here without your drone suit. That’s certain.”

“The lights are on,” Leda said. “There’s no cover.”

“You’re going to touch down and get that gear off fast. What’s your next move after that?”

“Regroup? Disperse? What’s the mission objective?”

“Stay alive. Create a diversion for the sleepers who’d infiltrated the government. Make the attack seem external. Pull defense resources from the capitol’s center.”

“What was your unit’s objective, Sōsh?”

“The Reserve and Exchange.”

“You could have leveled it from orbit, though. So this was a full human coup?”

“Affirmative. Stay focused. Are you down yet?”

“Yes,” she said, picturing the landing in her mind. “I hit the sidewalk standing, despite the ancient gear.”

“Good. You’re taking off your harness, but you notice something’s off.”

“What?”

“Look around. It’s Heila City, early evening, and the lights are on, but nobody’s home. No one in the offices. No one in the streets. Not a vehicle; not a bot; not a busking singer or a barking dog.”

“Coup’s over, Sōsh. Guess you guys didn’t get the memo in time. We’d better move.”

“Sharp. It took us another minute or two to realize that.”

“Drones?” she asked, though even with her spotty memory, she really didn’t need to ask how the rest of the scenario unfolded. She opened her eyes to gauge his reaction. She’d hardly noticed when he’d sat down at the table beside her, his living half closer to her.

“We had intel from inside the city,” Sōsh said. “What do you figure our next move was?”

“I’d have ordered my people to scatter, run. Hopefully disperse into the city well enough a few could get out before they got picked up. Populated areas would be best to run into immediately. That’s why I’d never drop without a drone suit. At least you could get back in the air. Did anyone make it out?”

Sōsh put out his arms as if to say he was still there.

“Obviously, but?”

He shook his head. “It was a slaughterhouse. They lit up the district with thermals.”

“You lost your whole unit, then?”

“Wasn’t my unit. I volunteered to tag along. Local boy with a little insight for the lay of the land. You’d be surprised how much of your home town seems familiar even if you don’t remember ever living there—stories, old friends, things of that nature.”

“Might not be that surprising at all,” Leda said.

“Touché.”

“How’d you get out of there?” she asked. “It had to be damn near impossible odds.”

“Says the girl who got nuked.”

Leda shrugged.

“I made for a residential district nearby, thinking they’d be less likely to drop thermals on a neighborhood with families in it. That wasn’t the case, as it turned out. Carbysville was the area, and it was full of Indies, full of my people. I got burned by maybe three or four thermal rounds after the drone picked me up and locked on to me, and it was just my instinct to turn to one side so my whole body didn’t get cooked. I woke up in the basement of an old family doctor’s residence. It turned out he remembered my family, because my father was an alderman.”

“Hard to forget a name like yours.”

“Hard to remember it,” Sōsh said. “Anyway, it was just dumb luck they pulled me from the street and hid me, managed to keep me alive long enough to smuggle me back out in a freight carrier. LSS did the rest of the repair work at the body bay.”

“The body bay?” Leda asked.

“Kendry, you said, right?” Sōsh asked. “That’s where you got injured? And they didn’t take you to the body bay?”

Leda shook her head.

“It’s the top level of care in the LSS medical system. Massive complex on Alpha-Richard. You must have known about it before. Just out of curiosity, who fixed you up, Leda?”

“Initially it was the Semmistratum,” she said. “I don’t remember much of it. When they realized I was Tressian, the Semmistratum sent me home to the doctors there. I imagine from the looks of your prosthetics, I was about as bad as you, just all over my body.”

“So you never had the pleasure?”

“Of what, the body bay?”

Sōsh nodded.

“Negative. I had my own pleasures, and plenty of them. That’s where you met Captain Burch?”

“Yeah. But you should know he got promoted in bed—one of those post-combat promotions, knowing he would never be back on active duty. Pump up the pension a little bit, I guess. That and a little prestige. Tough trade for your legs, I’d say. He hates it when people call him captain. Gave his legs and still feels like he didn’t earn it somehow.”

“Good to know.”

“You still haven’t passed the exam,” Sōsh said. “It’s a single question. Pass-fail. Are you ready for the final question, Leda?”

“You’re serious?”

“Yeah, I’m serious. I told you if you passed my test I’d give Burch my recommendation for you to stay on. At least it’ll give you an option slightly more gratifying than teaching karate to kinders, but you gotta get the question right. I’m not going to crew up with a liability.”

Leda got visibly angry at that word.

“Ready?”

Leda glared at him.

“What’s my name?”

“You’re serious? Your name? It’s Sōsh.”

“No, no, no. My full name, first and last.”

“All ninety-two syllables of it?”

“You went and forgot it again, even after I made a big stink about it? Don’t tell me you don’t remember.”

“I didn’t tell you anything yet.”

“You haven’t told me my name.”

Leda shook her head. She was about to let out a string of curses when the lights went out in the atrium again.

“What the hell?” Sōsh said. “I’d swear this stinking ship likes to mess with me if I didn’t know any better. Lights, ship!”

He got up from the table to activate the motion detectors in the atrium, but the lights didn’t come back on. Then Leda noticed the strangest thing. In ultraviolet, an arrow appeared on the bulkhead wall opposite her, calling her eyes to it. And apparently, Sōsh’s mechanical eye couldn’t pick up that wavelength, because it was glaring in the darkness to her synthetic eyes.

Sōsh pounded on the bulkhead three times, and the lights came back on, but now, instead of the arrow, projected in a bright purple script only her synthetic eyes could read, was Sōsh’s full name. Every last syllable, in violet, plain as day:

Attasōshteki Kinesamakanatoneko.

“Well?” Sōsh said, as he sat again. “Time’s up.”

She took a moment to sound out the syllables in her head, then turned to him, her face totally deadpan and stated, “Attasōshteki Kinesamakanatoneko.”

Sōsh looked at her in disbelief, shaking his head.

She didn’t say anything further as he stared at her, examining her face, struggling to figure out how she’d done it. The purple letters disappeared from the wall.

“The monks,” she said, “when I was recovering, they gave me techniques. Memory techniques.”

It wasn’t a total lie. They had. Leda just hadn’t been very good at those mnemonics. Correlating numbers and syllables with images, building stories and mental maps. Even before the injury, her memory was slightly above average at best, except maybe for the chess board. Now it was crap.

Sōsh was still stroking the living half of his chin when he said, “I guess you pass, Leda. Damned if I believe it, but you pass. So now you get to choose between this place and kiddie karate.”

“I train Tressian holy warriors,” Leda said, “not kinders.”

“Okay,” he said. “But you’re still sitting here, and you cared enough to pass my test, so at least some part of you wants to stick around.”

“Maybe I do or maybe I don’t,” she said. “Why should I want to stay? Look at this place, this ship. The captain, you say, wants no part of any action. So you’re going to shuttle VIPs around the Letters maybe.” Leda looked around the atrium again. “Maybe not even that. Who’d put a dignitary in this bucket?”

“Nobody smart,” Sōsh agreed.

“We’ll probably end up shuttling generators and munitions from port to port when shipments get shorted or mis-logged. I didn’t survive a nuclear blast to live a fruitless life like that.”

“Hmm,” Sōsh said, shaking his head. “That’s one perspective.”

“What’s the other? You act like there’s some good reason for me to be here.”

“I told you the captain didn’t want to get into any scrapes after what we’ve been through. That’s true,” Sōsh said. “I also told you he’s a good man. The way I see it, we’ll go out for a while—I give it five…eight weeks tops—and then we’ll see something in this messed up galaxy that don’t sit right with him. Then it’ll be a choice between keeping our hands clean or getting back into the fray. I know what Burch’ll do.”

“Eight weeks?”

“Not a day longer. Most people have a sense of what’s comfortable. They’ll just do whatever that is to get by. Then there’s people that see something wrong and just can’t let it sit until it’s righted. You want to be here, Leda, because you give people like Burch and me a ship—and you if you want to join us too—we’re not going to be running batteries between ports, no matter what Burch thinks he wants to do. Good people don’t get to do what they want. They do what they must. So do what you want to do, or do what you must. That’s for you to figure out. You’re welcome if you want to join us. A fellow rock hopper, busted memory and all, is always good to have around.”

 Leda looked around the atrium again, shaking her head. “This ship is utter chaos.”

“Yankee chaos,” Sōsh said. “Has a proper ring to it.”

“Fact.”

“Do you know how to weld, Leda?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess we could find that out fast.”

“Let’s find you a rack,” Sōsh said.

He showed Leda around the ship, the rest of which was nearly all as battle-damaged as the atrium. She was right about the ship’s spaciousness, though. The captain had taken the stateroom near the front with the least damage. Sōsh had a room in the back adjacent the airlock. There were two racks with drawers on their undersides and airscreens for sleeping in zero G, a pullout desk, even two closets. Leda took the mirror image of Sōsh’s room on the opposite side of the ship beside the medical bay. There was space enough for two underway and hardly any signs of damage from the battle.

After she settled in and tucked her scant belongings away, on the pull-down shelf beside the bunks, she placed her only real possession from her past life—a metal prayer card from the Tressian tradition she believed to be her own. Before stepping out to try her hand at hull repair, she noticed a blinking purple arrow on the wall of her new quarters. Once it had caught her attention, the arrow disappeared, and once more, words appeared on the wall:

Welcome aboard, Leda. So happy you chose to stay. We’ll talk soon.

–Rishi.