There was something else there too, a feeling that lurked below the surface, nagging at her but never taking control. It was one she pushed back against, fought. It had always been there, but it had grown stronger over the years, intensifying with each promotion, each new mission. Was it fear? Alliance officers weren’t supposed to feel fear. Or at least they weren’t supposed to admit it, even to themselves. But if it was fear, it was of failure, not of danger. Kat was ready to die in battle if her time came—it was the way of things—but the thought of failure, of returning home in disgrace, was too terrible to imagine.

The battle had been fierce, the resistance far stronger than the intel reports had suggested. That was no surprise to Kat. She tended to have little regard for intelligence officers, less even than was common among the Alliance military in general. She suspected the image of fearless operatives risking their lives on missions to gain priceless information was almost a complete fabrication, an illusion designed to add nobility to a bunch of deck jockeys who spent their time paying off informants and analyzing communications intercepts, while Palatian men and women like Kat were on the front lines, fighting like honest warriors. The Alliance was a martial society through and through, and the Palatians considered themselves the greatest fighters in the galaxy. As far as Kat was concerned, skulking around in the shadows was beneath the dignity of a true warrior.

Vindictus was in the vanguard of the invasion, tasked along with her fellow lead vessels with smashing the Helian orbital defenses and securing the way for the troopships to land on the planet. It was a position of honor, one she knew she should regard that way. But she had seventeen dead on Vindictus already. She did her duty, always—and she would give her life in the service if that was her fate—but as she’d grown older and advanced in rank she’d found herself struggling more with watching the men and women under her command die. She kept her feelings to herself, of course. Such thoughts would be deemed signs of weakness, perhaps enough to derail a career that had, to date, been exemplary and unspotted. Death in battle was the highest honor a Palatian could achieve, and there was no place in the service for differing points of view.

“Engineering reports significant damage to the outer compartments, Commander, but our major systems remain fully-functional. Several overloads, but all disabled systems have been rerouted.”