CHAPTER
ONE

In the afternoon sky, the sound of the approaching aircraft rose above the sea breeze, a steady drone. Nothing to see…no, there it was, small to make that much noise…and then the sudden flood of data from the implant: not an aircraft, no one aboard, a weapon homing on the airfield's navigational beacon. Visual data blanked, overloaded by heat and light, auditory data an inchoate mass of noise, swiftly parsed into channels again, stored, analyzed: primary explosion, structural damage, secondary explosion, quick flicker of building plans, primary visual restored…

Ky Vatta jerked awake, heart pounding, breath coming in great gasps. She wasn't there, she was here, in the dark captain's cabin of Fair Kaleen, darkness pricked with the steady green telltales of major ship functions. All she could hear beyond her own pulse beating in her ears were the normal sounds of a ship in FTL flight. No explosions. No fires. No crashing bricks or shattering glass. No reverberative boom echoing off the hills minutes later.

"Bedlight," she said to the room, and a soft glow rose behind her, illuminating tangled sheets and her shaking hands. She glared at her hands, willing them to stop. A deep breath. Another.

The chronometer informed her that it was mid-third-shift. She had been asleep two hours and fourteen minutes this time. She went into the bathroom and looked into the mirror: she looked every bit as bad as she felt. A shower might help. She had showered already; she had taken shower after shower, just as she had worked out hour after hour in the ship's gym, hoping to exhaust or relax herself into a full night's sleep.

She was the captain. She had to get over this.

This time she dialed the shower cold, and then, chilled, dressed quickly and headed out into the ship. She could always call it a midshift inspection. Her eyes burned. Her stomach cramped, and she headed first for the galley. Maybe hot soup…

In the galley, Rafe was ripping open one of the ration packs. "Our dutiful captain," he said, without looking up. "Midshift rounds again? Don't you trust us?" His light ironic tone carried an acidic bite.

She did not need this. "It's not that I don't trust the crew. I'm still not sure of this ship."

"Ah. As I'm sure you recall, I'm on third-shift duty right now, and this is my midshift meal. Do you want something?"

She wanted sleep. Real sleep, uninterrupted by dreams or visions or whatever…"The first snack you pick up," she said.

He reached into the cabinet without looking and pulled something out. "Traditional Waskie Custard," he said, reading the label. "The picture is an odd shade of yellow—sure that's what you want?"

"I'll try it," Ky said. He had put his own meal in the oven; now he handed her a small sealed container and a spoon. She glanced at the garish label; it did look…unappetizing. Inside the seal was what looked like a plain egg custard. Ky dug the spoon into it. It should be soothing.

"Excuse my mentioning it to the captain," Rafe said, sitting across from her at the table. "But you look like someone slugged you in both eyes about ten minutes ago. I promise to perform all my duties impeccably if you'll go back to bed and look human in the morning."

Ky started to say something about duty, but she couldn't get the words out. "I can't sleep," she said instead.

"Ah. Reliving the fight? It must've been bad—"

That attempt at pop psych therapy almost made her laugh. Almost. "No," she said. "I had my post-manslaughter nightmare the second night. This is something else."

"You could tell me," he said, his voice softening to a purr. When she didn't respond, he sat up and said, "With the matter of the internal ansibles, you have enough on me that I wouldn't dare reveal any secrets of yours."

Maybe it was safe to talk to him; he had been ready to commit suicide rather than let outsiders know he had unknown technology, a personal instantaneous communicator, implanted in his head. "It's not…it's…I'm not sure what it is." Ky tented her hands above the custard, which was not as soothing as she'd hoped. Something in the texture almost sickened her. "I think…somehow…I'm seeing what happened back home."

"What…the attack?"

"Yes. I know it's impossible; I don't even know if Dad's implant recorded any of it, and I haven't tried to access those dates anyway. But I keep dreaming it, or…or something."

Copyright © 2006 by Elizabeth Moon