“You must have had to deal with inexperienced crewmembers, surely?”

“That depends on your definition.” The Trouble Dog lowered her voice. “There was one time during the infiltration of the Messianic Cluster, when I had to deploy six short-range nukes just to scare away a pair of—”

“No, that’s not quite what I meant. I meant deal with on a human level.”

For three full seconds, the ship seemed to consider the question. When she answered, her voice came out flat and devoid of expression. “I am not human.”

“But you do contain human components, don’t you?”

This time, the pause felt longer. “You are quite aware,” the Trouble Dog said, frowning, “that sections of my central nervous system were extrapolated from harvested stem cells.”

“I am.”

“Then what is your point, Captain?”

I shook my head. I’d forgotten where I was going with this. Instead of answering, I got up and paced to the bathroom.

I had been at college when my parents were killed. They were on board the survey vessel Green Fuse when it exploded while charting the accretion disk of a black hole. By the time a follow-up mission detected their remains, tumbling slowly through the disc with the rest of the debris, dust abrasion had stripped their bodies down to pockmarked skeletons. I had been nineteen years old. When the war came a year later, I elected to serve on a medical frigate.

Now, ten years and half a galaxy later, I leant on the sink and glared into the merciless bright lights around the foggy bathroom mirror, noting the lines around my eyes, the scattering of premature white hairs at my temples.

“It’s possible,” I told the ship, “that I’m feeling lonely.”

Thirteen: Trouble Dog

THIRTEEN

TROUBLE DOG

It was possible she was feeling lonely?

What did she know about being lonely? I had flown away from everything I held dear, resigned my commission and dedicated my life to the service of humanity. I was, according to any objective test you might want to run, almost as human as Captain Sally Konstanz. My implants may have been better, my mental acuity faster and more fluid, my weaponry a billion times more potent—but I remained essentially a person. My original stem cells had been harvested from a dying soldier on a battlefield so far from here that the sunlight that had warmed her face wouldn’t reach this part of space for another twenty years. They’d also blessed me with a scattering of canine genes designed to promote tenaciousness and the desire to savage anyone foolish enough to threaten my pack.