We hadn’t made it to the fleet base but in the end, the fleet base had come to us. The news we’d carried was so dire that Pagar’s Claim now played host to half the Navy command structure for this entire side of the Commonwealth. I’d head talk from a few friends among the shipminds here that they might permanently relocate the base here. But they were also here for me.

It was faint at first. So faint I probably would have missed it if I hadn’t been actively looking for it. Barely a tickle on the edge of my sensor envelope. Radio behaves strangely in hyperspace. Of course, everything behaves strangely in hyperspace, but electromagnetic waves like light and radio are particularly odd. Because of the way hyperspace loops back on itself, over and over in that twisty little pattern that defies reasonable modelling, any signal experiences a giant mess of self-interference.

Hyperspace was a fundamentally disorienting place, in as much as it even counted as a place. The dead zone loomed large behind my hull, a sheer plane of pure black from which no signal emerged, ever could emerge. As far as anyone could ever tell, hyperspace just didn’t exist beyond that boundary. It would sit there, a perfect sphere of nothing embedded forever in the chaotic everything of hyperspace. Oddly, as the only fixed features in an ever-changing realm, deadzones were remarkably useful as navigational landmarks, even as they cut off access to the places within and beyond them.

“So what do we do now?” Marcus was the one who asked the question, but everyone was thinking it. All eyes turned to Pepper. They were, after all, the Captain now. “The plan hasn’t changed. We need to get this ship, our people, and the information we carry, back to the Commonwealth. Anything we might do about the Empire is contingent on that, whatever the ultimate decision is. Gold— Ransom— whatever in the galaxy your name is now, how long until we can get into hyperspace?

It took Marcus nearly a minute to calm down long enough to speak. “In the Emperor’s name, Erin, you really stepped in it this time, didn’t you? Erin Gold, evil AI overlord, feared by one and all!” They were still laughing. I didn’t know what to make of it. “But I get why you wanted to show me this now. I’ve met Sam, Captain Pepper, couple of others in the hall.

Sam stalked back into the compartment at Pepper’s back. “Hyperspace bombs. Suicide implants. Your Empire’s a real piece of work, you know that?” “That’s not what the implant is really for,” I said. I was still animating my human avatar on the screen for Marcus’ benefit. Time to see how they’d take me spilling the beans on this. “It can do that on command, if we need it to, but it’s not its primary function.

Pepper regained their composure admirably quickly - certainly quicker than Marcus did - and flowed into the room on the back of my introduction. “A ferret indeed, Commander Marks. I take it you’ve never met a querral before?” “I had to ask when you first woke me up,” I pointed out. “True, but I’m trying not to use you as the standard for anything right now.” Ouch. They definitely still hadn’t forgiven me.

I took a few moments to work out my appearance. I wanted an image of my old human self to show on the screen when I spoke to the prisoners who had been my bridge crew. I had to construct it from memory, from having seen myself in the mirror. My interface had a program for doing that, though; the ability to construct realistic human faces by combining features from a library of them was so old no one knew when it had been developed.

I had my doubts about the plan, but I wasn’t about to undermine Sam by saying as much, not when I didn’t have anything better. I knew Marcus to well too let myself think they’d be easy to convince, if it was possible at all. Pepper was right. I’m not sure I’d have come around if my circumstances had been different. My old Imperial prejudices that I’d spent a lifetime learning would probably have won, if they hadn’t come back to me at the same time as a lifetime of memories spent in a Commonwealth that was completely unlike everything I’d ever been told.

Sam half-slouched in the command chair, calling out the checklist. Pepper had declined to be present for engine restart. It was a formality, but it still stung. However good their reasons, and I had to admit they were some good reasons, my captain and I were not speaking, and the captain/ship relationship is one that is built on trust and communication. If we had been anywhere else, one of us would have had to be relieved.