1.21.1

Rite

“Enemy vessel is trying to break away, Captain.” Rick’s voice chattered through the intercom. “Orders?”

“Dell. Run out the guns.” London looked to the technician.

Dell conveyed, “Bridge. Captain orders to engage and destroy. I repeat, do not let them get away.”

Astrid dragged her eyes from the pooling blood that dribbled down the wall and onto the floor under Graves’s propped corpse.

The Aldebaran quaked when the S.O.’s ship disengaged. Then they pursued.

Astrid sensed the fizzle of those around her. They drew together, helpless, to the body of their officer, and to the Channeler that guarded it.

But it felt one Static too few. Already quieter. Already diminished.

“Get these scum off my deck.” Overhead, the captain gestured to the abandoned bodies of the hostile invaders. “Bag them for ejection. And get Ishioka to prepare a cold-casket for Karth so we can bring him home.”

“Yes, sir…” Dell accepted.

Romo and Rue returned, the latter covered in more burgundy than the former. Without a word, the grim pair worked to pile the corpses separately. With Karth, they moved in slow methodical care.

All around, the crew carried out the captain’s orders. But Astrid found herself immovable, staring into empty brown eyes.

Outside, Ricks raced after their adversaries with rabid hunger. But inside, things fell painfully slow with little to do now.

“I need to go to the Bridge,” Anders announced darkly. “I need to see it finished.”

Tenya nodded to him in understanding, then inclined her head gently to the transfixed Channeler. “I’ve got her.”

The captain, too, went with Anders, upward to oversee the demise of the enemy. And even those that remained below struggled to pull themselves any further until they heard proof the job was done.

“I’ll go to Ishioka,” Romo finally conceded, so the rest could remain. “I’ll come back with bags.”

Again, Tenya nodded.

Dell set about checking the gear of the dispatched bodies. He ransacked pockets for clues as to their identities, then collected their weapons.

Each gun he passed to Astrid. Without thought or acknowledgement, she drained each and every one to lifeless, deadened polymer.

But she was not the only one that couldn’t take her eyes off Karth’s body.

Across the table, Rue stood, an armored statue. Her face ashen but her energy insidious.

Something deep and twisted flared behind the soldier’s white noise. Astrid could feel it. It hid behind a stern scowl and rigid body language.

Rue refused to look at her, as lost to the vision of their dead commander as she. It was the mask, the shielding of her true emotion that perturbed Astrid the most. And when the Channeler lifted her eyes to the other woman, she almost called out to it.

A deep hum thrummed through the ship. The engine’s signature flared under Astrid’s feet and the Aldebaran shuddered in power. It felt much like the ship’s warm up sequence, but almost instantaneous. And this time, Astrid felt relieved for the rush of pain to seat her back on her feet and out of her head.

“Enemy ship is destroyed,” Shaely’s voice announced through the comm. The officer’s voice filled the hold with resolution, but not relief. It became apparent in the woman’s tone the Bridge crew heard of their loss. “The board is clear.”

“That’s it, then,” Dell announced soberly.

Beside Astrid, Tenya squeezed her shoulder. But less than a minute later, Anders and Captain London reappeared, their expressions severe.

“Hale,” London ordered. “With me.”

To Astrid the effort of talking felt exhaustive. “I… I don’t-”

“It’s not a request.”

~~~

It still took her a moment to drag herself away from the battle scene. But still bloodied himself, the captain marched her away.

Not to the Med Lab, and not to the Bridge. The Captain’s Quarters.

Astrid braced herself for the worst. Perhaps, she wondered, the captain realized having a Channeler on board was not worth the risk. Perhaps he’s deigned his venture a failure. She couldn’t blame him.

But Astrid could feel nothing. Her memory bounced between Karth’s lifeless body, and Graves’s baneful glare just before she blasted it away.

The captain’s door closed behind them, and she stood, doleful, in the foyer of his room.

Thin, fine carpet lay over the hull floor. A desk, and wall-mounted monitor, sat adjacent to an intercom. A bookcase rested opposite, and the bed and sleeping area sat deep in the back, behind a slatted room divider.

A small sofa, a floor-bolted plush sitting chair, and a short cupboard stocked with bottles of various liquors made up the middle. Decanters rested neatly upon the cabinet. A collection of historical document replicas hung, in glass cases, along the borders of the chamber.

Astrid didn’t have it in her to ask questions.

The single shot that started the battle, that started the bloodying of the War Room, still rang in her ears. Behind her eyes, Karth fell, again, and again, and again.

The only imagery vivid enough to compete was the look in Graves’s face. The moment he realized what was about to happen to him. And that she would be the one to do it.

“I served four tours with Karth Kendall.” London’s voice sounded wearing while the man rearranged things over his cabinet. “I considered him an old friend.”

At the commander’s name, Astrid weakened.

“Do we… do we have to do this now, sir?”

“Yes.” London replied with his back to her. “We have to deal with it before we can get past it. The sooner the better. Abandoning our duty because we prolonged our grief would be a disservice to his sacrifice. I can’t allow that.”

“If you brought me here to lecture me, I already feel awful…” Astrid dared.

“I did not bring you here to lecture you,” Captain London sighed. When he rotated to her, two glasses of deep amber rested, one in each hand. “I brought you here to have a drink with me.”

He extended one to her.

“What is it?”

Without humor, the man raised a brow. “I can’t imagine it matters right now.”

Convinced, Astrid clasped a drink in her gloved hand.

Upon review of her forlorn expression, the captain also provided her a clean cloth. He gestured over his own face to indicate what she should do with it.

Astrid dabbed at her stained cheek.

“I’m so sorry, Captain. I didn’t want this.”

“None of us want this. This is the hardest part of what we do, bar none. The crew will feel this just as much as his family will back home.”

It seemed too easy to forget that she was perhaps the only one aboard without a family to miss her when she was gone. It didn’t seem fair. But she recalled now, that at their first supper together, she noted Karth’s wedding band.

She took a drink.

“Furthermore, you took your first life today.” The captain peered to her over the rim of his own tilted glass. “This is not something we celebrate, either. But it, too, must be acknowledged.”

A chill settled in Astrid’s heart. She crossed the line that loomed ever since her recruitment. Unavoidable, but treacherously irrevocable.

She’d officially become a killer.

“At the prison… I knew we were slaying people,” Astrid finally shared. “I wasn’t blind. Even then, my part was almost entirely support. But it still felt defensive. Like we had no choice.

“This was different. I chose to kill him. Myself. I wanted it to be me.”

“Yes. Someone who wanted to harm you, someone who harmed your team. And you did it with your weapon, not your power. As a solider, not a Channeler.”

They both stood, too restless to sit or settle. But they drank and met one another eye to eye.

“Hale… there’s something about being on a team like this that you need to understand,” the captain continued when Astrid didn’t respond. “If it had been you executed instead of him, every man and woman on this crew would have responded the same way you did. Exacted retribution. Felt the loss you’re feeling.

“This,” he paused and swirled his beverage in deep thought, “this is the part of being a team I wanted to impress upon you when I recruited you. But you can never be ready for it. And I could never have described it in full. There are no words for what this is.”