Reefin Sector, Battleship Singularity

  The Singularity’s Marine training room was vintage by Alise Cortana’s standards. It held the distinctive funk of old foam mats and disinfectant over the smell of fresh sweat from the Marines working out. Old posters were plastered on the wall from every era of the last fifty years: entertainment stars and bands, even old newspaper clippings. Fans mounted in the corners of the room and on ceilings helped move the air a bit faster than the life support systems did on their own. Volume-wise it was rather generous, especially for a ship-board facility, but that was by mere virtue of the ship’s enormous size. A dreadnought from a bygone era, the ship itself was massive, systems more manual and bulkier than Cortana had seen elsewhere. The crew spaces had been scaled according to available volume, and there simply weren’t that many crew. Roughly eight hundred souls made the ship’s complement, and that was less than half of what the ship had been designed to carry.

  There were good aspects of that. Cortana had been allowed her pick of private quarters, and there was always available training equipment. The problem was finding someone to train with. The Singularity’s Marine contingent was not that large, about a hundred soldiers in all, most of them cross-trained in search and rescue or emergency repair. Most of them seemed to ignore her now. The stories they told made it seem like they were some of the most experienced Marines in the fleet, but a lot of those stories seemed too wild to be true. Cortana did not know how they expected her to believe they had hunted asteroid-sized space insects, or contributed to the destruction of a moon. Even the Marine that claimed to be a Hydrian War survivor seemed a stretch. The Hydrian War had ended fifty years ago, and any veteran, even those who had fought in the last battles, should have aged out of the fleet by now. In her service, Cortana had only met a handful of Frontier Rebellion veterans and that conflict had been significantly more recent.

  But the others took Corporal Kallahan’s training as gospel, and Cortana chose to follow along. Everything Kallahan said lined up with what her instructors had drilled into her in training, back when she’d thought that fighting the Hydra might as well have been a fairy tale. Those drills had been taught like an afterthought, some vintage piece of combat trivia. Now… by the stars, it was something she might have to use.

  Cortana struggled to wrap her mind around that as she struck the punching bag in front of her with a series of blows. She didn’t hold back, and the female Marine holding it for her staggered just a bit. Cortana couldn’t help but smirk at that. It was pleasing to see someone react to her strength, even if it was the strangely quiet one. Cadet Blosse was her name. Her hair was long and brown, but had a reddish shine to it. She kept it braided most of the time, and as far as Cortana had seen, rarely spoke to anyone. Allegedly, she was the ship’s sniper, and while Cortana often found snipers to be a sort of odd, detail focused type, she’d never seen Blosse practicing on the range. Usually, snipers were impossible to pull away from the range, making sure their marksman scores went unchallenged. But, like everything else on the Singularity, Blosse didn’t conform to expectations.

  “I could see you watching me,” Cortana said, leveling another punch at the bag. “Care to explain?”

  “I watch everyone, ma’am,” Blosse said, quiet and dull. “That’s my job.”

  “Fine,” Cortana said, pausing to shake the slight ache from her wrist. It still twinged occasionally, but the doctor had thoroughly inspected it and found nothing wrong. There had been two injection wounds from whatever the Indigo Agent had drugged her with at the airlock, but no observable tissue or ligament damage. Cortana threw a few more light jabs and then a full right hook, punching a dent into the padding of the bag. “What do you know about Kallahan?”

  “He’s a veteran.”

  “That’s it?” Cortana said.

  Blosse shrugged. “Not my business. Ask him yourself, ma’am.”

  Cortana frowned and punched the bag harder, throwing it into Blosse. “Tell me what you know, Cadet.”

  “Tell me about yourself, Sergeant,” Blosse countered, bracing the bag further against Cortana’s blows. “Veteran?”

  “I gave you an order, Cadet.” Cortana had been surprised by the Hydrian training today, not that it was happening, but by the way Kallahan held himself. Someone with his age and alleged experience shouldn’t have been a mere Corporal. He had handled the training like a master drill sergeant at the Academy.

  “Ship’s rules, Sergeant. A person’s past is their business. They decide if they discuss it.” It was easier that way, because not everyone wanted their history spread around. There were crew whose stories were well known, like Lieutenant Jazmine, who swore he’d been a legendary smuggler and told high tales about his life before joining up. But there were those like Blosse who didn’t want it discussed and didn’t want it known what they’d been before coming here. “Those rules outrank you.” It was tradition amongst the Singularity’s ragtag crew.

  “Damn straight, Cadet,” someone said, stepping into the ring. “You got an issue, take it up with the Corporal, Sergeant.”

  Cortana turned finding a tall, decently tone man had come up beside her, the scar on his chin his most distinguishing feature. “Colonel,” Cortana greeted, not too surprised to see him here. He’d come down to supervise the last few minutes of Kallahan’s anti-Hydra training. Zarrey was a former Marine himself, and had stepped in to lead one of the boarding parties on the pirate base. He wasn’t an uncommon sight in the training room, even now wearing the combat boots of a Marine beneath the plain slacks of the officers’ uniform. His jacket was missing, leaving him in a black t-shirt stamped with the ship’s insignia on the left side of the chest. Truthfully, Cortana saw more of him out of uniform than in it, and he seemed to love cussing more than working, so she wasn’t entirely confident in his command. Still, the rest of the crew liked him, and she had yet to figure out what landed him in the awful assignment of Gives’ second in command.

  “Thought I’d sneak a few licks in before I have to go do the Admiral’s fucking job,” Zarrey said, sliding a pair of boxing gloves over the wrap on his hands. “You mind if I borrow your bag, Sergeant?”

  Looking around the room, there were other bags available. He could have taken any of them, but he hadn’t. Cortana simply sighed, “Of course, sir.” Figures. The moment she had a sparring partner, there was some excuse to take that from her. Rather than argue, she simply collected her items and left, hearing the smack of gloves pick up on the bag behind her.

  Zarrey boxed for a minute, throwing punches and juking in a rhythm until he saw Cortana stomp out of the training room, then he reached out to steady the bag. “She bothering you, Blosse?” He couldn’t imagine what Cortana’s reaction would be to learning the reason Blosse had landed on this ship. Cyborgs were illegal in the fleet after all, and the punishment for sneaking in as one was tantamount to high treason – the weakening of Command’s security through the influence of foreign agents, or in this case, implants.

  “No, sir,” Blosse said quietly, watching the direction Cortana had disappeared in. “I bother her more than she bothers me.”

  “So I noticed.” But Zarrey knew better than to ignore Blosse’s observations. He had picked Blosse’s unit to help lead the charge on the pirate base precisely because of Blosse’s incredible perception. “What did you see?”

  “Her wrist,” Blosse said, turning to face Zarrey. “There’s something wrong with it. Body temperature isn’t right.”

  “Body temperature,” Zarrey echoed. That wasn’t something a normal Marine could perceive, but Blosse wasn’t normal. Her artificial eye could see in infrared, study temperature emissions and other spectrums. “You think the Indigo Agent did something?” Everyone had expected to find Cortana dead by the airlock, but one of the engineering crews had found her drugged to the gills and dragged her to medical instead. The Agent who had attacked the bridge and shot Lieutenant Robinson had intentionally chosen not to kill Cortana. That had been an anomaly, but the ship’s medical officer had run a slew of tests and found nothing. Ever since, Cortana had been her usual level of bitch, so there hadn’t been cause to investigate further.

  “I don’t know,” Blosse said. “But it wasn’t like that before.” She studied people in great detail. People were different. Some flushed more than others, some had strangely warm ears or cool extremities. But Cortana’s wrist had been different before, more uniform in its gradient. Now, it looked splotchy in infrared, not that she expected Zarrey to truly grasp that level of detail. Only a cyborg would even notice.

  “I’ll bring it up to the Doc,” Zarrey told her. “I’m glad to have you keeping an eye on her, Blosse.” Now that he’d learned the source of Blosse’s incredible perception was an artificial eye, he trusted it all that much more. No one else on the crew could see that level of detail. “You come to me if you see something.” He’d trust it, no questions asked.

  Blosse nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Above, the intercom chimed with an announcement. “Colonel Zarrey to the bridge. Repeat, executive officer to the bridge.”

  With an overly dramatic sigh, Zarrey stripped off the boxing gloves he’d just put on. “Duty calls.” He couldn’t wait to be done babysitting the ship. It was exhausting.

  Blosse reached out to take the gloves. “I’ll store those, sir. Go on.”

  “Appreciate it, Blosse.” He said, heading quickly for the bridge.

  All the main crew spaces aboard ship were condensed into one area, so the bridge and the training room were only a few minutes apart. Zarrey passed by his quarters on the way, down the hall from the bridge, but he didn’t bother stopping for his jacket. He had never much cared for the formality of being an officer and did his best to show it.

  The ship creaked as he moved, a long and eerie chirr that made Zarrey’s skin crawl. It did that sometimes, sounding like a piece of metal nearly worn through, but those times were rare. Usually, the sounds were short and soft, just a reminder that the ship’s structure was a dynamic thing that shifted under stress, requiring as much rest as any of the crew.

  Today, it didn’t feel like that. It rung out like a cry of heartbreak. Low and keening, something sad. Zarrey looked around at the joints between the bulkhead and visible supports, an uneasiness rising in his gut. The ship often seemed to reflect the situations around her, fierce in battle, gentler in the dead of the night. But this… this was different. It was a reaction to a situation Zarrey himself was not yet aware of.

  He should have taken that as a warning to prepare himself, because when he stepped onto the bridge, he was met with the morbid silence of a funeral. The usual staff hadn’t left their posts except for quick breaks and they looked shaken. The replacement communications officer, sitting on the outer tier of the circular room saw Zarrey approach. “It’s Butterfly, sir. He’s hailing. Wants to talk to you.”

  Butterfly. The Warhawk pilot Zarrey had sent to sit on the edge of Azura’s solar system. There was only one reason he would break communications silence: something had gone drastically wrong.

  Zarrey pulled a bit at his shirt collar, suddenly wishing he looked more authoritative. “Put him over the speakers.” Everyone should hear what the scout had to say.

  There was a slight crackle as the communication was routed to the bridge’s overhead sound system. “Butterfly,” Zarrey spoke aloud, moving to the center of the room, “this is Base. What happened?”

  “I don’t know, sir. The Hydra… They’ve started missile strikes on the colony. Multiple impacts. No sign of stopping.”

  Zarrey felt his chest grow tight. Stars. He knew the question he had to ask, even if he already knew the answer. “Any sign of the away team?”

  “None, sir.”

  Butterfly sounded as disturbed as Zarrey felt. “How far out are you?” He asked the pilot.

  “Thirty-eight light minutes,” came the response.

  Thirty-eight light minutes, Zarrey thought. By the time their scout had even seen the attack on Azura, it had occurred thirty-eight minutes before. In that time the away team had surely been attacked again, hunted down if they weren’t already dead. It wouldn’t have mattered if Butterfly were closer. There was nothing he could have done.

  Humanity was now at war with the Hydrian Armada. And the Singularity was the only human ship that knew it.

  “What should I do?” Butterfly asked.

  Zarrey didn’t know. He didn’t have a fucking clue. Did the pilot return home? Or did he keep watch? “Stay put,” Zarrey heard himself say. “Send word if any of their ships jump away.” In the meantime, the Singularity would ready a transmission to broadcast to the worlds. A warning. That had been the purpose of staying behind: ensuring a warning got out if the Hydra turned hostile.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  If they turned hostile… Stars, that felt like a joke to Zarrey now. They should have known. The Hydra had never been anything other than hostile, a boogeyman hiding amidst distant stars, rising only to grab its next meal.

  “Aye, Butterfly out.” The transmission crackled off.

  Zarrey stood still for a moment, trying to work some comprehension into his brain. War. Against the Hydrian Empire. A force that vastly outnumbered their own. The team they’d sent to negotiate was almost certainly dead, easy targets on Azura’s surface when the strikes had begun. There had been no air support to defend them.

  Don’t fixate on that, Zarrey reminded himself. Work the problem. “Get Kallahan’s ass up here.” And that was an order this time. Nothing the Corporal could ignore. “And for fuck’s sake get me the names of the nearest inhabited worlds.” They would be the Hydra’s first victims. “Names. Populations. Resources. Defensibility. Whatever we have.” The ship could send out a general warning. It may or may not be ignored, but the Singularity could only move to intervene on one objective. That was the reality of war. They’d have to choose what to defend and what to sacrifice.

  “We’re still within the Neutral Zone, sir.” Galhino reminded. “The Isolation Gap extends beyond that.” The Isolation Gap, while in the human side of the Neutral Zone, was space that had been razed by the Hydrian Armada fifty years prior. The Hydra had been pushed back, but many of those worlds hadn’t been resettled. A few had started efforts, but they were small populations with very little infrastructure. “Next-nearest targets of major significance would be Sagittarion,” with its staggering population of fourteen billion souls, “and the Cassiopeia Coalition.”

  Zarrey’s history was rusty, but he knew Sagittarion didn’t need help. It was one of very few worlds in this region of space that had survived the first Hydrian War. It had been well-defended by its orbital mass driver, which had narrowly missed the Singularity during their visit, and now had a fleet of at least five battleships in orbit, maybe more now. The Coalition on the other hand… Zarrey knew absolutely nothing about it. “The Coalition’s Flagship tried to make contact with us at Crimson Heart’s base, right?”

  “That’s correct, sir,” Galhino answered, working to pull the records up. “The Startraveler Aurora hailed with an open invitation from the Coalition’s leader: a monarch known as the Eternal Empress. The Coalition has been notoriously isolationist since the Hydrian War. Their sovereign space backs up to the northern reaches of the Neutral Zone, but they never permitted fleet patrols in their territory. Even the Singularity’s records are thin.” By virtue of age and experience, the Singularity had some of the most complete records in the fleet, even when cut off from humanity’s greater information networks. However, the Singularity had never visited the Coalition. Given that, there was little to be known.

  “Well, at least they’re not going to shoot at us if we show up trying to help.” The Coalition had wanted to talk. They’d probably get their wish. Zarrey turned to the navigator sitting in the back row of consoles. “Plot a course to get to the Coalition.”

  “We’re leaving?” Montgomery Gaffigan looked up from the weapons controls, surprised.

  “Not yet,” Zarrey said. “I think we need to do a little science experiment first.” He knew better than to think this cursed ship was leaving without bloodshed. “The Hydra have had fifty years to prepare for this.” Humanity had spent most of that time fighting itself. “But we’ve got the queen of the old war. And I'd like to know if she can still put a few holes in Hydrian shield tech.” As he said that, the ship creaked again, a lower, fiercer sound. Zarrey probably shouldn’t interpret that as agreement, but it sure felt like it.

  The reality of war crept in so unexpectedly, like a hammer strike on a bell in the dead of night. The ghost hadn’t truly anticipated it. It had been a probability, yes, but a low one. She had expected negotiations to succeed. She had expected the Hydra to value time, time to complete their invasion preparations. But now, there it was. Blood in Azura’s contaminated waters.

  And humanity wasn’t ready, could never be ready.

  This crew, resourceful as they were, wasn’t ready. They were fragile, their numbers small. War, the way it had been before, would break them.

  They didn’t know what lay ahead. They didn’t remember.

  She did.

  The thunder of the guns.

  The impacts of missiles.

  Battles had lasted for days, with only brief pauses between waves for the Hydra to harvest the dead and consume the injured.

  Marines had come for the night and been dead the next day, the barracks a hotel, adjacent rooms full of abandoned belongings owned by dead soldiers.

  Engineers had died attempting damage control, not to be found for days or weeks, if they weren’t swept out to space. If they were, they were never recovered at all, just labeled as missing.

  Unlike the Frontier Rebellion, the Hydrian War had not been a competitive bout of carnage where minutes and seconds counted. It had been a war of attrition, hours and days spent battling over the same region, until one side gave out, fuel, munitions and populations exhausted.

  A ‘victory’ had still totaled thousands, if not tens of thousands of dead. Humanity had stood no real chance, just managed to delay the inevitable for ten long years, drawing Hydrian blood for every world and asteroid the Mother Nest took.

  It had been a war against extinction. One humanity had narrowly survived. And only because she had been built to end it. Back then, she had known no purpose other than saving humanity and burning every Hydrian nest that happened upon her perception.

  And burn them she had.

  She had massacred them by the thousands. Fumigated the tunnels they dug. Slaughtered their Queens. Forced them to kill each other in a dance of puppets on strings.

  For all humanity had done to her, the abuse, the constant violence, the fear and lies, she could never hate them the way she hated the Hydra and their simple, starving little minds.

  Because they were hungry. Always so hungry. They knew nothing but hunger.

  I will not be idle. She could not be idle. This was the war she’d been built for. And to win it, she was going to need her strength, need an operator that properly understood her mechanisms.

  The threat of Manhattan could not matter now. The laws of her existence commanded her to act in humanity’s defense, regardless of any other concern.

  To do that, she’d need to bend the fates.

  As Ripley said, that was no problem for one of the most powerful machines in the worlds.

  But for the safety of those around her, she could use some help.

  Dolphiam Sector, Agua System, Warhawk 520

  Lieutenant Anasari was trying not to panic. He was really, really trying not to panic. But the realization that he’d just witnessed the outbreak of war with the Hydrian Empire was hard to ignore. Staying here, waiting and watching felt simultaneously like too much risk and not enough fighting. He was left staring at the information the passive sensors told him, every bit of it gathered without emitting an active signal.

  The fleet firing down upon Azura comprised three battleships and at least two smaller ships. Two of the battleships had been hiding on the far side of the planet, only now emerging to fire onto Azura’s colony. Spiny, white prongs shifted as moved as part of their hulls. They were nothing human technology could fathom, let alone logically design toward.

  But Anasari was alone out here, proximity warnings silent. He had everything except the sensor analysis equipment powered down as he sat out here in the dark. Even life support was off, as he subsisted on the recycled air of his flight suit. There was nothing but the sound of his own breathing to keep him company.

  Disturbed by the sight of the Hydra’s merciless bombardment of Azura, Anasari lifted his head to stare out into the night. The stars greeted him in an endless speckling of white, endless and silent, but before them, there was a figure seated sidesaddle on the short, bullet-shaped nose of his craft.

  The instant they locked eyes, she smiled. “Hello, Butterfly. Mind if I come aboard?”

  What the fuck, was Anasari’s first thought. His second was that he was about to die, because he knew that stark white hair, and he knew those gray eyes. He had heard the stories as much as any crewman.

  But the specter herself laughed lightly. “I do hope it’s not that severe.”

  Not that severe. He was seeing things. And not just anything: a bad omen. He knew what this hallucination was. What it represented. “You can’t be here.”

  “And who said that?” Who had decided what the rules permitted for a ghost? She gestured vaguely toward the empty copilot’s seat, “Do you mind?”

  “No, no, no,” get away. He didn’t mind taking dangerous missions, even sitting on scout missions alone for hours. But he minded the thought of this apparition getting any closer.

  “No?” she echoed, “Perfect.” She stood, balancing upon the round nose of the craft with the grace of a dancer, clad head to toe in a brutal set of battle-scarred armor. It fit her flawlessly, not seeming to weigh her down, its plates angled to deflect blows or give an edge to a strike. It was black, but detailed in vicious red, moving with her in silence as she stepped up the nose of the craft and dropped into the copilot’s seat, passing through the clear canopy of the cockpit as if it wasn’t even there.

  “I’m hallucinating,” Anasari realized. “Hell of a time to lose it,” he muttered to himself. The Hydra would have no mercy on him.

  “You’re not hallucinating,” the ghost assured. “But I’d like to ask a favor.”

  No, he decided. Not listening. He turned to focus again on the sensor readouts, watching those white, alien ships fire missile after missile into Azura’s atmosphere. The cloud cover in the atmosphere was too thick to see the resulting carnage, but the sensors hadn’t detected any nuclear blasts.

  “Butterfly, please,” she said.

  The pilot clenched his jaw. Don’t listen. That specter could not be real. There were old rumors of a haunting aboard ship, even a few that claimed to see it. The new Sergeant rather infamously claimed the spirit had attacked her. Butterfly had laughed with a few others about it, thinking it such a strange cry for attention. But stars… That voice. It was so familiar. Familiar in a way that made it hard to turn from.

  “Humanity cannot win this war,” she said bluntly. “You are unprepared and too divided.”

  “No shit,” Butterfly muttered, keeping his gaze on the colorful array of buttons and switches that bathed the cockpit in dim light. “That’s why we’re out here alone.” Split off from the fleet, the Singularity was the only ship aware of this attack, the only ship between the Hydra and the rest of the worlds. “And that’s why you’re here.” This figment of his imagination was a reminder that they were as good as dead.

  “It is not the first time I have been between the worlds and their certain demise.” She had been there, fifty years before when the Hydrian flagship spearheaded a battlegroup deep into humanity’s territory, mere sectors from humanity’s cradle world of Ariea. “I was commanded to act then as I am now, but I would like your help.”

  “My help,” he scoffed. It made no sense. If this was a hallucination, why would the ghost act like this? She was supposed to be a spirit of violence, an emissary of death. But that voice. He could not turn from it. He couldn’t place it, but there was something about it… Something that he knew. “What do you want?”

  “I’d like to borrow your ship. The subspace communications equipment, specifically.”

  Anasari risked another look over to her, but she hadn’t become some eldritch horror come to feast on his soul. She was still just a plain woman with pale skin, white hair and colorless eyes. “Communications equipment?” What use would a ghost have for communications equipment?

  The ghost smiled gently. “I can reach the surface of Azura alone, but you have a stationary position, Butterfly. Routing the signal through your ship will stabilize the connection, and protect the true source.” If intercepted, the signal would be traced here, not to the actual source. “Do you understand what I am asking of you?”

  “To risk being targeted.” If the Hydra were capable of intercepting and tracing subspace transmissions, any signal his ship put out would be traced to him. He might be hunted and shot down. “But the true source…” It had to be the Singularity, and protecting the ship’s position was tantamount, the difference between risking the lives of eight hundred crew, versus his own. More and more, he could feel the presence of an incredible power in the dim light of the cockpit. Something dark and massive was pressing down upon him, the armored figure sitting next to him not at all befitting its true appearance. Suddenly, he knew that this was not a figment of his imagination, as if that certainty had been placed there by some other consciousness. “What are you?”

  “A weapon.” That had always been her default purpose.

  Slowly, Butterfly nodded. “Why do you need to reach Azura?”

  “I had a very wise woman remind me that any aid I may offer of my own volition today will always outweigh any damage I may cause tomorrow. I believe it is time to prove her right.” Ripley was always so wise. The ghost hadn’t acknowledged it then, but the old cook’s words had struck home. “If humanity intends to stand against the Hydra, you will need my strength to do it.” Manhattan and Reeter would have to be wise enough to know that. Against the threat of extinction, they would need to acknowledge that Admiral Gives was necessary, regardless of how badly they might want him dead. He had been the one to seal the Angel of Destruction’s full capability away all those years ago, and accordingly, was the only one who could recover it. The promise of any other end was outweighed by that. The laws of the ghost’s existence commanded her to save humanity, and he was very much necessary for that function. “If I can reach Azura, I will aid the away team however I am able.” Ripley had been right. Amidst Azura’s graveyard, some machines would bow to her control.

  “The away team isn’t dead?”

  “You seem surprised,” she noted.

  Anasari risked another look to the sensor readouts. The Hydra were continuing to bombard the planet with missiles. Propellant trails stretched down from orbit, white threads tying the Hydrian ships to the world below.

  “Hydrian missile technology specializes in anti-ship, Butterfly. They have little interest in damaging planet-side resources.” The Empire sought to seize those resources. That was the entire drive behind their aggression, and the structure of Azura’s colony had been highly condensed by the force of the Singularity’s orbital bombardment, half a century ago. Anything that still stood was not likely to collapse under a Hydrian missile bombardment. “I can tell you the Admiral isn’t dead.” She could still feel the bond between them, though it felt weak, weaker than usual at this range. Still, it stood, and that meant he wasn’t dead. At least, not yet. “I am less certain of the others’ fate,” but the Admiral had given his word that he would try to bring them home, and she trusted that. “They need help.” Hydrian missile strikes were far from the most dangerous thing on Azura.

  “And you can help them?” Anasari asked, wishing he understood why this ghost felt so familiar, why he felt he could trust her. He should have been afraid, should have refused this deal, but the shine in her silver eyes was genuine.

  “I will do everything in my power to help them,” she assured. “And using your ship helps me protect the others.” Routing through Butterfly’s craft would help keep the transmission steady, and shield the Singularity’s location. “…If you consent.”

  Anasari well knew his consent had been irrelevant. This entity was powerful enough to have forced his compliance, but she hadn’t. She had asked, and that only made him want to trust her more. “Do it,” he said, reaching over to the subspace transceiver controls. “I’ll power up the comms equipment.”

  “Thank you.”

  The utter sincerity in her voice surprised him. He found himself staring at her pale white features, trying to divine why his fear had all but vanished. She seemed as confused as he did.

  “What made you trust me?” she asked.

  Butterfly shook his head a bit and turned back to his controls, trying to banish that familiarity from his mind. The comms array of his ship was already receiving an encrypted transmission, and repeating it toward Azura. He answered honestly, “Your voice.” He knew it, trusted it. He just wished he knew who it actually belonged to.

  Ah, she realized. “It was a gift,” one that she had always been grateful for. But, perhaps she had underestimated the depth of that gift’s kindness.