“Is it? I hadn’t noticed.” Blues can be sarcastic? “My Sect intended for me to be a man. I surprised them.”

“What Sect?” Sevro asks.

“She has no Sect. She was appropriated by the Copernican Sect, but dismissed shortly thereafter, for obvious reasons,” that officious Blue interrupts again. “She’s a Docker.”

Orion flinches. She swivels on the other Blue. Her voice does not rise. “And what are you but a pedantic little gasp of a fart, Pelus? Hm?”

“You see,” Pelus explains placidly, “she is a Docker. Emotional metrics are unmanageable. Not her fault. She is a product of her greasy environment.”

“Bolly that,” she says, stepping forward quickly.

She punches Pelus in the face. He wails, falling backward like he’s never been hit before. Likely because he hasn’t. Why would a Blue hit another Blue? They’re test takers, math makers, star charters. Not fighters.

“I like the rude one,” Sevro says.

“Wait, dominus! I desire the ship!” Another Blue slides forward, staring at Pelus on the ground. “I … I deserve it. Orion is no more than a … a … laggard! Her mastery of astrophysics leaves much to be desired, to say little of her understanding of extraplanetary mass kinetics. She didn’t even attend the Observatory.”

Another Blue pushes forward.

“Forget Arnus! He’s a dodderhead at astrophysics and his assumptions in theoretical calculus are imprudent at best! I was second in command of this vessel for six months under the Ash Lord. I served upon it while it was in its dry berth. Logic supports the maneuver to place me as your captain, dominus.”

The armada’s ships continue to hail us over the coms. Men-of-war slide closer. Inside their bellies, brave men and women will be donning suits of armor; they’ll board leechCraft and shoot into space to land on my hull, burrow their way through, praying that they will make it home to have a meal made by their mother, their spouse. All that while my Blues shove and push to lead my ship, howling insults at one another’s math skills and academic integrity.

“Don’t listen to either of them, dominus!” shouts a woman in that slow accent. She falls to her knees. “My name is Virga xe Sedierta. I have studied the physics of astral drift in the Midnight School—far superior to the Observatory. I hold, among others, a doctorate on dark matter and gravitational lensing. Let me guide your vessel, dominus. To decide in favor of another would be specious and worse: illogical!”

These Blues should have used their logic and seen that I look only at the woman who does not kneel like the rest of them. Orion, the first to speak, still stands, shoulders square, long neck unbent. Her dialect is lowborn, sharper, and more worldly than the dreamy lingo of these academics. Likely from the dock city of Phobos or the String Docks near the Academy’s Can. If she really is a Docker who didn’t go to the Observatory or the Midnight School, I wonder about the story of how she came to be on the bridge in the first place.

“What about all that noise?” I ask Orion, gesturing to the Blues.

“They’re full of batshit, dominus.” She taps a slender finger against her temple. “I am not full of batshit.” She smiles and nods to the displays where the other torchShips creep closer. “And you’re running out of time.” I glance to the scanner stations where alerts signal the secretive launch of two leechCraft from the Sovereign’s nearby men-of-war and cruisers. “I know I can do this, otherwise I would not have spoken out. Give me a chance.”

I nod to Sevro and he tosses her the captain’s winged star.

“Get us to our fleet.”

“Rules of engagement?” she asks me.

“Minimal casualties,” I say. “We are good. The Sovereign is the tyrant. That is how this must play.”

“Aye, dominus.”

I watch with Sevro as Orion takes command of my ship and sets orders to rendezvous with Augustus’s ships beyond the Rubicon Beacons. The squabbling stops as soon as I appoint Orion. They know their chance has passed, so they slip into their comfortable roles as though they wished they’d never left them. Their blue Sigils look like tridents against their forearms in this dimmed lighting.

There’s a curious remoteness to Blues. An island people in the abyss of space, they were designed to survive the long journeys from Luna without mutiny. So they share. They share the same oxygen, the same food, the same bunks, the same routines, the same pits, the same commanders, the same lovers, the same Sects, the same ambitions—to do their job with precision and rise high through merit so that they might honor their Sect.

I open a com channel to the rest of the fleet and the satellites of Luna. They can’t stop the signal. Not of this ship. Our arrays are as sophisticated as any in the Sovereign’s navy.

“Sons and daughters of Society. This is Darrow au Andromedus of the House Augustus. I bring terrible tidings. Tonight, your Sovereign has broken the Compact of our Society. As my master, ArchGovernor Nero au Augustus, slept under her protection, she made attempt upon his life, the lives of his family, and those of his Praetors and aides. Along with the Bellona, she attempted the illegal and immoral murder of more than thirty Peerless Scarred. She failed.

“In retaliation, I have taken one of her flagships. And I am now besieged, with my life, as well as those of my master and his family, at risk. If we do not fight back, we will die. If we surrender, we will die. I have not vented the ship. Those aboard have seen the merit of my cause and have allied themselves with a family that would resist the power-hungry tyrant Octavia au Lune.”

Close enough to the truth.

“Hours ago, our Sovereign told me to betray my house. To betray my vows. Like her father before her, she is drunk on power and now believes herself Empress. She told us to bow, witness now our reply.”

I turn the com off.

“Mr. Pelus, as you will,” Orion declares. “Let the bastards have it when they come.” She activates her own tattoos and sinks into digital speak with the rest of the crew.

The bridge is silent. A second ticks by, another. On the HC, I watch three Grays shoot a Gold in the head. In the hangars, Oranges huddle to the side as Golds lead warColors against the downed stork. Then Ragnar arrives in the hangar, and the Oranges rally around him, as do armed Reds, who’ve followed him from the halls. Many die. Something furious grips these Colors. And though they die, I feel the flickering of rebellion as I give them permission to do what they’ve wanted to do their entire lives. It’s there, even if you never see it till the end—that spark of individuality, of freedom. The door of the stork pops open and Mustang charges out with my Howlers to aid the lowColors and Ragnar, though even the Telemanuses keep their distance from the monstrous man.

Beyond my vessel, the enemy ships finally show their menace. The scanners swell with red. Enemies, leechCraft freshly spilt from the bellies of the armada around us, streak through space to find our hull. They aim to take us by storm.

Orion opens broadsides.

“It’s so beautiful,” Sevro murmurs. I stand in silence. Railgun payloads slam through leechCraft, shearing away metal and men, only to carry on and smash into the hulls and shields of the same men-of-war that launched the leechCraft.

My newly appointed captain paces the command plank, arms crossed. My five-kilometer war vessel begins a roll, cycling through her banks of railguns as they hurl death into the face of the Sovereign’s fleet. Orion half turns to face me, smirking for all to see.

“Now, about carving that path, dominus.”

She orders the engines to pound blackmatter. We shoot forward through the remains of two men-of-war.

My bridge is silent but for the buzz of technical orders. Missiles flash in concert beyond our hull. We deploy our flak screens, as the enemy has now deployed theirs, rendering missiles worthless. An aura of light surrounds us like a no-man’s-land. Railgun ordnance smashes into our hull, though we do not feel the reverberations here on the bridge. Our equipment does not spark. Wiring does not fall from overhead compartments. This ship is the pinnacle of seven hundred years of design.