Natalie stood on the other side of a sheet of one way glass, staring into the room on the other side like it was a tomb. One of the subjects had already been removed from stasis, and had been coherent enough to give his consent to the operations ahead for him. The other, however… she stared at the CMT. She knew the ins and outs of the technology that drove the thing, but she didn’t know the specifics. Now she wished she did, so that she could be something of a use here. Instead, she stood by, and it was the medics who busied themselves about the CMT, their lips moving as they called various status readings back and forth. Natalie knew what was inside. She had seen the raw footage of the recovery, the bits of bodies and smears of bodily fluids; most of which had been burnt to a crisp when the missile had detonated.

Which made Natalie kick herself. Another subject matter that she had once had the opportunity to study, and had countless other times at least had the resources to gain a rudimentary understanding of the way that the felbound missile system worked.

If there was an unwritten law of the RAE corps, right after ‘don’t kill yourself in the pursuit of knowledge’, there would be written ‘you can’t know everything. Trying to will break rule number one’. Even with that, Natalie knew that the blast should have incinerated everything inside that boarding hatch. Everything that wasn’t incinerated should have been pounded to squishy, slushy matter from the blast concussion. But here they were with Valentine on his way into surgery…

And Neil not quite dead.

Even that was hard to think about. Not quite dead. Neil who was always so alive and full of fight, no matter who it was, no matter what kind of fight it was. It was usually Martin he had always come closest to blows with, often standing nose to nose, daring his older and much taller brother to take the first shot. Martin almost never did, a lesson he had learned early, and well. Neil had made an impression, she had heard, letting Martin rack his jaw twice. It had been Martin who had to eat soup for a month and Neil that had gotten his ass beaten soundly by the old man. So she had been told. She had also been told, and seen more than her own fair share of times, Matt weather Neil’s onslaught from the comfort of a seated position and the almost impenetrable armor of cold logic and reason. He had a far better grasp of how to use the fire of Neil’s anger to temper the steel of his own intellect. Her eldest uncle often joked that it was this that had equipped him so well for the ‘blustering old fuckers’ in the senate.

And after these confrontations with his brothers? Neil would usually laugh. The first few times the rage had seemed out of control, and terrifying. It wasn’t until it was Natalie’s own time to rage that it was Neil’s turn to stand in the face of an oncoming storm and meet it with unshakeable resolve. When those times had passed, she would apologize, begging Neil not to hate her. He would always say the same thing.

One of those things.

That’s what he would say if he could see her now, worrying about a situation like this, knowing damn well that she wasn’t the one to blame, no matter how things turned out.

She shut her eyes against the memory of his smiling face, the feeling of him running his hand over her head, only to have it evolve into a ruffle that tossed and mussed her hair completely.

“Just one of those things…” She muttered.

“What was that?” A man said, looking down at her. He had come in with a small group of, what she presumed was authorized personnel, but had been too caught up in her thoughts to pay them any notice. She looking him up and down briefly. He was naval, officer type with three stars on the chest of his uniform. That meant admiral, and admiral meant important in the other two branches of the trident.

Natalie felt herself straighten a little bit, out of habit than anything. “Nothing, sir.”

“I’d like to know.” He said, not unkindly. “I don’t believe in errant words.”

The other ranks didn’t mean much to the RAE corps, but Martin had told her for a long time, the higher the rank, the heavier the burden, the stronger the person carrying it. They’ve earned some level to respect, and even if you don’t respect the man, you do need to respect the rank.

This was usually followed by Neil yelling ‘bullshit’ from the other room, and Matt yelling in turn at him.

“Something I say to myself, sir, in hard times. Just one of those things. One of those thing you’ve got to deal with and move on from. Learn how to make it there next time if you can, learn how to make it further if you can’t. All you can do.”

“Those are wise words.” The admiral said.

“I didn’t come up with them on my own.” She said.

“Wisdom is more often handed down than discovered. Who did come up with them?”

“It was something that my grandmother used to say to herself when she was flying on difficult missions. It got passed on to me from…” she looked back to the CMT.

“Someone important to you?”

Natalie nodded. “Yes sir.”

The admiral crossed his arms. “What is your area of study?”

“Cybernetic appendages, with a focus in human subject application.”

His eyebrows went up. “I feel far outclassed in the matter of intelligence.”

She shrugged. “I’m sure I would feel the same if we spent any amount of time talking about your area of expertise, sir.”

“All I do is look at a situation and solve a problem.” He said. “Sometimes those problems require the careful application of personnel.”

“See?” Natalie said. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about using other people to solve a problem.”

“Why not?”

“There’s too many… variables. Too much to take into account.”

“Please explain.”

“Sir,” Natalie said, feeling the smallest stab of irritation on top of her almost unbearable anxiety. “They’re people. If you give me a bunch of tools I can sit down with a prosthetic hand that needs repairing, and every tool will do exactly what I want it to do.”

“Really?”

“Well,” Natalie thought about all the times her tools had fallen under the ‘experimental application’ category of usage. “I can use what I have at my disposal to solve a problem.”

“What if you can’t solve the problem?”

“You can always solve the problem.” Natalie said, a little more matter of factly than she had meant to. “It just takes better application of what is in front of me, and what I’ve got in my hands.”

At this the admiral nodded. “I think that you would not find wartime strategy so difficult.”

“It doesn’t change the… infuriating irrationality that people tend to operate within. You can never tell how they’re going to respond in certain situations, no matter how well they’re trained.”

“That much is most certainly true, but I wouldn’t know the first thing about a prosthetic hand, no matter what tools were set in front of me.”

“I can send you some files on it, sir, if you ever have trouble sleeping.” The words were out before she could catch them, and she felt the heat on her neck about the same time she felt the admiral’s eyes on her.

“I would like that, apprentice. Perhaps I will return the favor and send you some of the more thrilling manuals on wartime law and the rules of engagement we operate under. Would you be interested?

Natalie nodded once. “Yes sir.”

“Good. I’ll have them to you within the week.”

Natalie didn’t know whether she should take him seriously or not, but the door opened and a man she did know entered. Colonel Vance took in the two of them talking and moved to stand next to the admiral. “Trying to steal away more of the Apprentices, Admiral Neerson? Doctor Ramirez won’t be pleased.”

“I would never dream of it.” Neerson said with a smile. “We were just having a pleasant conversation about our areas of expertise.”

“Indeed.” Colonel Vance said. “We need to clear out, including the apprentices and journeymen.”

“You are going forward with the procedure?”

“If there’s anything beyond the oblivion of death, may it be kind to me, but yes. We’re going to do everything we can to save him.”

Natalie’s heart leaped into her throat as tears leaped to her eyes, and she looked again at the CMT. The activity that had been so routine was changing. Fresh medical staff were coming in, the room being prepped for bringing the subject out of stasis.

A hand touched her shoulder. “Apprentice Ziggenbor.” Admiral Neerson said. “We need to go.”

“Yes. Yes sir.” She whispered, and followed him out of the room.

When they stood outside it, Neerson turned before departing. “Jade Ziggenbor was a great pilot and a wise woman. I was fortunate to have sat in on some of the lectures she granted in the later years of her life.”

Natalie blinked. “You knew her? You knew my grandmother?”

“Heavens no.” The admiral said. “I was never so fortunate. I tried to introduce myself, one time, but was dismissed out of hand. She had little time for curious, young naval officers, and even less patience. But I was able to procure some recordings of the lectures that I was able to attend, if you’d like me to send them along with those other files.”

“I…” Natalie stammered. “Thank you sir. I would like that.”

Neerson nodded. “I’ll be in touch.”

—

Thwump—chunk. Thwump—chunk. Thwump—chunk.

The sound played on repeat, even though the world remained dark and cold. Cold because there was just nothing else, a swallowing, vacant void where the sensation of taste, sight, smell, feel, should have been. Even the sound was something deep and distant in the far away recesses.

Thwump—chunk. Thwump—chunk.

There was no will to move, no desire to react. The time for that had passed, and if there had been feeling, maybe it would have felt like falling. Deeper and deeper into nothing but the absence.

Thwump—chunk.

Then another sound joined, the ferocious keening, scream of an engine. It was lower than the thwump—chunking of the APES, but it was everywhere, impossible to pinpoint where it was coming from. Like a deadly insect that buzzed hither and thither in a room with no doors, no windows. There, unseen, but heard from everywhere.

Thwump—chunk. Thwump—chunk. Thwump—chunk.

And the scream of the engine.

Then… the click, the snap, the angry hiss. This one was right in front, and the lowest sound yet. But out of the three, it commanded the most attention, the most frantic panic and need to.

Thwump—chunk. Thwump—chunk.

Engine scream.

Hiss.

The hiss was growing louder, coming nearer. The frenzied feeling grew, stronger, the desire to react to it mounting. But it wasn’t possible to react, even with that hideous sound getting closer, closer, closer. A mass of others, voices, voices that were familiar whipped around the disembodied sense. A surprised shout, a low hum of the craft’s propulsion.

Thwump—chunk. Thwump—chunk. Thwump—chunk.

Screaming, keening, engine hitting a crescendo.

And then the hiss was the loudest thing. It was all there was, and right before the moment where there should have been—

Neil felt his heart thump, saw a metal ceiling and a blue huge in the space he was in. He could see up, but nothing else. And there was still no feeling to be had. Even with that there was… there was something wrong. The desire to move remained, as did the inability to do so, even an inch. Panic roared inside him and he felt… it felt like there were bugs crawling all over the right side of his body, from his shoulder, down his side all the way to his thigh, calf, foot, everywhere. It wasn’t an inch, but it was similar, something that shouldn’t be there. Something was signaling an immense wrongness.

There were people, they were there, he knew it, they were there. They said nothing, and Neil tried to make sense of what that meant. Nothing. It meant nothing, nothing except that he was coming out of cryo-stasis. He wasn’t waking up, he was being pulled out of a hibernation state.

Thwump—chunk.

It was a disembodied sound, but right next to the right side of the head, like something that was just outside his sight, but translated to the sense of hearing.

Thwump—chunk.

Neil didn’t feel the needle. He would never know that it entered the charred flesh of his left arm three times before the fluid took.

His heart thudded one more time, and everything went dark again.