Eric paused, noting the stiff forms and salutes that greeted his arrival, and calmly returned the latter while acknowledging the former with a curt nod and a few words.

“As you were. Admiral,” he said, “reporting as ordered.”

“Good to see you cleaned up, Captain,” she told him, getting out of the seat. “I have a strategy meeting with the President and Premier. I’ll leave the Odysseus in your hands. She’ll serve you well, I think.”

Eric blinked. “Ma’am?”

“The con is yours, Captain Weston,” Gracen said, tone brooking no argument nor fake confusion. “I’ll be in my office.”

He swallowed. “Y . . . yes ma’am.”

“Don’t look so shocked,” she said softly, walking past him. “I told you, I need every able hand.”

“Aye aye, ma’am,” Eric said. “I won’t let you down.”

“Just try not to crash this one into a planet, would you? The paint is new, Captain.”

Eric twisted his lips into a grimace, but Gracen didn’t notice. She was already past him and headed off the bridge. He was forced to sigh to himself and gingerly move around to the command console and take a seat. He squirmed a bit, getting used to it, and then began to hesitantly call up information on the command displays.

Eric didn’t notice, or didn’t let on if he did, the surreptitious glances of the other officers on the deck as they looked between him and each other, some just interested, but most smiling to themselves. He had work to do, and the formation of inbound enemy warships held his interest most deeply.

“This ship is different than what my humans build . . .” Gaia pondered as she examined the vessel that had previously been little more than a minor blip on her consciousness.

It felt significantly different than anything she’d encountered previously, not surprising, she supposed, since it was clearly not of Earth human manufacture. However, there was something more to it, something almost . . . familiar. She walked the decks, drawn to what she quickly learned was the power core of the big ship.

Humans used reactors to power their ships. That is . . . Earth humans did. Those were warm sources of magnetic energy. She could feel them from beyond her normal influence, actually. These ships used something far different, however. They used massive gravity wells of their own. Singularity cores that contained as much mass as small planets and conversion units to turn that mass directly into power as it was needed.

Deep in that mass, however, was something she had never experienced before.

It was like looking into a mirror, she found. Deep inside the massive singularity of the Odysseus, Gaia found an abyss . . . Within the abyss she was staring into, there was a reflection there, staring back. A human would have drawn back, would have cringed or even cowered, but Gaia had never known fear until the Drasin arrived. And now she was dying anyway.