Even as her mind seemed to crash, the imperatives of duty and habit took over her body. Hobbes stood and turned, taking one respectful step away from the station that wasn’t hers. Vision reddened at the edges, as if an acceleration blackout were closing in.

“Captain on the bridge,” she managed.

The confused bridge crew snapped to attention.

He nodded and took the shipmaster’s chair, and she took careful steps back toward her usual station. She slipped into its familiar contours still in shock.

She looked up at Zai.

“The drill we spoke of is canceled, Hobbes,” he said quietly. “Not postponed. Canceled.”

She nodded dumbly.

He turned to regard the airscreen, and Hobbes saw the other officers quickly turn their startled faces to their own stations. A few looked at her questioningly. She could only swallow and stare at her captain.

Zai looked down at the image of the Lynx, and smiled.

If Hobbes understood him correctly, Laurent Zai had just thrown away all honor, all dignity, every tradition he had been raised upon.

And he looked…happy.

Her words had made a difference to him. For a long, strange moment, Katherie couldn’t take her gaze from the captain’s face.

Then a troubled look came over Zai. He glanced sharply down at her.

“Hobbes?”

“Sir?”

“Pray tell me. Why is it so damned cold on my bridge?”

Ten Years Earlier (Imperial Absolute)

Senator-Elect

Laurent began talking about Dhantu quite suddenly.

Nara could feel his injuries, the strange absences in his body. The prosthetics were lifeless and invisible to her empathy, but psychic phantom limbs overlay them, hovering like nervous ghosts. Laurent Zai’s body was still whole in his own mind. One arm, both legs, even the cavity of the artificial digestive tract glowed hyperreal, as if Laurent were a photograph garishly retouched by hand.

The apathy in Nara’s system was slowly losing effect as the drug filtered from her blood, her empathy growing stronger by the hour. Oxham’s abilities recovered from chemical suppression in two stages: first with a sudden rush of increased sensitivity, then more gradually, a timid animal emerging after a storm.

Even here in the refuge of her polar house, thousands of kilometers from the nearest city, Nara was anxious about complete withdrawal. Laurent’s presence in this sanctum was an unknown quantity. He was her first guest here at the polar estate, and the first person in whose presence she had totally freed her empathic ability since coming to the Imperial home world.

She wondered what had possessed her to bring the gray warrior here. Why had she been so open about her childhood? He was, after all, one of the enemy. Nara tasted embarrassment now, the long discussion of her own madness flat and metallic in her mouth. And the sting of Laurent’s words: That’s insane.

She was silent now, letting her mind drift while the hearthfire burned itself low.