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.Jess flicked off the screen showing what was now, irrevocably, a part of the mission’s past.A chill that originated in her bones hummed and vibrated inside her, cold as space.She felt a primordial impulse to close her eyes and scream, but instead forced herself to run checks using her instrument panel.The Galleon appeared to have forgiven Jessamyn’s exacting treatment.Are you grateful you were spared? wondered Jess.The question pinged back to her: Are you grateful? Are you? Her fingers made course adjustments automatically, and it seemed to Jess almost as if she was watching someone else piloting the ship.Below, her home world retreated, and she allowed herself to gaze at Mars, to watch it as it raced away, or as she did.The planet shifted from a yellow-orange sphere to a smaller orange-y circle and finally a reddish smudge against a backdrop of velvety black.Jess lost all sense of time as she sat, immobile, watching her world shrink away.“First Officer,” said the captain’s voice inside Jessamyn’s helmet, “I’d like a word on a private line.”Jess felt a cool emptiness in her stomach.She knew she should feel something more: Kipper was almost certainly going to offer praise for the quick thinking that had allowed the Galleon to escape.“This line’s secure, Captain,” Jess replied with a sigh.She wasn’t in the mood for congratulations.Or for Kipper.“What in Hades did you think you were doing back there?” asked Kipper, sounding like she had Mars-sand stuck between her backside and her flight suit.The question caught Jessamyn off balance.I could win an award for my inability to predict other people’s responses to my actions, she thought.Closing her eyes wearily, she asked, “Could you specify which part of my rescue of the Red Galleon and her crew you’re referring to?” She heard the sarcasm in her voice and found she didn’t regret it.“We could start with the part where you began shouting orders to LaFontaine, without reference to the fact that your rank is inferior to—was inferior to—”Jessamyn cut Kipper off.“I was trying to save his life.Which I think you can agree was more important than worrying about who outranked whom.Sir.”“It was insubordinate and unprofessional in the extreme, First Officer, and it may have cost the crew of the Red Dawn their lives,” said Kipper.“If this ship had a brig, you’d be cooling your heels in it right now.”Jess’s throat burned with the words she couldn’t say with certainty—that it wasn’t her fault.Instead, she lashed out.“Fine.Send me to my room.”“You will address your commanding officer with respect, First Officer Jaarda.”“Send me to my room, sir.” Jess knew she sounded like a child.In truth, she felt angry and frightened to a degree she hadn’t known since childhood.She heard Kipper’s loud, angry exhalation.“Jaarda, you will confine yourself to quarters for the remainder of the watch.You will write up a full report detailing the possible harmful consequences of the maneuvers to which you subjected the Red Galleon and her crew.You will evaluate the possibility that you endangered our sister ship, and you will compose letters of condolence to the family members of the crew of the Red Dawn.”Jess sighed.“Okay.”“First Officer, you are a member of my crew and you will answer your captain according to standard protocols.”Jess closed her eyes.She could do this.“Aye-aye, sir.”Another loud exhale.“Captain out.”Jess wasn’t surprised by how her commanding officer treated her; rumors had reached Jessamyn that Kipper had tendered her resignation when she’d found out Jess would be her first officer.And Jess knew exactly why Kipper had, in the end, remained on the mission: returning home as a victorious raider would help her politically.Jess despised her for using the command of such a mission as a stepping stone.But Jessamyn had promised Lobster she would try to get along with Kipper.Her throat tightened as she remembered the conversation.She owed her fallen friend this much.Jess entered the quarters she would share with Harpreet for the next three weeks.She found that she craved the relief of examining every choice she’d made upon the bridge, laying bare what had happened and why and how.Far better this than the haunting question: Could I have done something that would have saved both crews?Collapsing on the upper bunk, Jess pulled up the ship’s vid log.How quickly everything happened.From the ship’s first warning of discovery to her final, daring maneuvers, only four minutes of time elapsed.She replayed the moment where she had put her ship into a hard turnabout—the moment the lasers lost the Red Galleon.She saw how they overshot their target and then ceased firing, seeking the missing ship.It had been pure dreadful luck that placed the Red Dawn square in the line of fire.Jess steeled herself to observe the video and saw how the laser had sheared through the Dawn’s wasp-like midsection, cutting the crew off from the bulk of their propulsion rockets.Horrified, she saw Lobster trying what she would have done herself: burning side thrusters in small bursts to turn the crewed half of the vessel back toward Mars and the safety of a lower orbit.But the laser tracked the movement and opened steady fire upon Lobster’s helm.Without the big thrust engines, the Dawn hadn’t stood a chance.Jess stopped the vid and leaned back in her chair.In saving her own ship, she’d exposed Lobster and his crew.The image of the laser burning through the Red Dawn kept repeating itself in her mind’s eye, a torment never to be forgotten.She rose desperate to go somewhere, but then she realized where she stood—aboard a space-faring vessel confined to quarters.There was no planet-hopper to take her deep into the Marsian desert.And so, kneeling in the center of her quarters, Jess grieved in the manner of her people, moaning tearlessly, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.Harpreet found Jessamyn like this during the hour before evening rations.“Child,” she said, placing her own strong arms around Jess.“Ah, daughter.We blame the wind when it blows dust upon our windows.But the wind blows for a thousand reasons we cannot name, sparing our neighbor’s windows one day and our own another.”Jess felt the strong arms surrounding her and curved her head into the embrace
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