Brant stretched her arms and shook out her legs. She was in the ship's tiny rec area, which was little more than a vid screen, a table, and a punching bag. She'd put on a training outfit that left her feeling a little exposed, but then, who'd care about seeing her scantily dressed? It wasn't like there were any humans around anymore.

She didn't feel like crying. Was that a sign of strength or coldness?

The punching bag shook as she threw out a series of jabs. God, she hadn't done any boxing since her colony days - what the hell was she even doing right now? She should be looking over readouts, or reviewing old intel on this sector, or, God help them all, rereading some of those stupid books about leadership from her academy coursework. Anything that might help even a little bit, now that...

She gave the bag the hardest roundhouse she could muster and found the impact unsatisfying, so she followed up with a right hook. That stung her knuckles, but not good enough. Another punch, another kick, another, another. Her breath started speeding up and she heard clearly the ragged hitching of emotion in those breaths. But no - that would not do, not now. Maybe in her quarters later, but not now, not where anyone might walk in. Or would the stupid aliens even realize what water coming out the eyes meant?

Captain, she thought. Captain.

The hatch opened, and Katarek skittered in. She had a media stick in one pincer and a bag of dried meat in the other.

"Ah, lieutenant - I was not expecting you in here."

Brant wiped at her forehead and sighed. "Captain," she said. "It's captain now, Kat."

"Ah! I apologize. Old habits - it will not be a problem, captain," Kat said. She sounded sincere enough, but Katarek had poked and prodded at the limits of Andrews' authority enough that this was probably intentional. "I was going to watch some vids, but I can go to my quarters if you're..." The mantis eyed the punching bag. "...what is it you're doing, exactly?"

"This? We call it boxing. A sport of structured hand-to-hand combat," Brant said.

"You...don't expect it to be useful in the near future, do you?" Kat asked. She skittered into the room and placed the media stick and the bag of meat on the table, then skittered over to the punching bag, eying it quizzically. "Shooting at a dummy can make you a better shot, sure, but I don't see how fighting a bag will help you fight a live foe."

Katarek poked hard at the punching bag, her pincer piercing the tough exterior. A little tuft of stuffing poked out of the hole she left. Brant shut her eyes and breathed in. "Katarek, I...no, I'm just trying to let off some steam."

Kat cocked her head at Brant, looking at her intensely for a moment. The mantis cocked her head and clicked a few times, and it was all Brant could do to avoid screaming at the insectoid to get out of her face and...

"Ah. Of course. I...I will leave," Kat said. She scrambled over to the table to collect her belongings. "I did not...I apologize, captain."

Great! Now Brant felt like a jerk, too. "Kat, it's fine! You can watch your..." But the mantis was already gone. She went through a few exercises on the punching bag, but she didn't feel much like boxing after all. It wasn't getting the feelings out like she'd hoped, and it was like Kat said: no matter how mean her right cross got, it was unlikely to make much difference against a mantis or an antipersonnel drone.

She was seriously considering taking out her pistol and blasting the bag into pulp when Kat returned, this time carrying a small satchel.

"Ah, good. I think I could stand to watch some mindless combat for a few hours," Brant said. She wiped her forehead with a towel, and sat back in one of the chairs.

"Thoughtless? That's an outrage! The choreography, the artistry in those films, is…" Kat had puffed herself up to her full height, then made an effort to calm herself down. "No. That's not why I'm here. You just looked so pathetic punching this stuffed bag, and I was hoping to help you be less pathetic."

Brant's eyes bugged out a little, and she held her hands out around her head for an exasperated moment before she found words. "I wasn't really doing combat training, Kat. I just...I don't feel very good, and I was just trying to hit something until I felt better."

Kat giggled. "My entire life philosophy, captain. I knew I liked you." She approached Brant and dropped the satchel on the table with a thunk. There was something heavy and metallic in there. "Andrews picked a worthy successor."

If hitting the punching bag repeatedly for fifteen minutes hadn't made her feel better, it had at least tired her out somewhat. Some part of her howled WHAT WOULD YOU KNOW ABOUT IT?! but she just nodded, frowned, and said "He'd better have."

Katarek nodded and clicked inscrutably. She seemed uncomfortable, hesitant.

"Out with it, Kat."

"Uh...yes. Are you familiar with the funerary traditions of the Katalpik?"

"I don't even know what that is."

"They're my people, a mantis ethnicity. We...believe that when a member of the war band dies, it creates a weakness in the band itself. Not just because we're down a member, either. More because everything that warrior brought to the group, every combat strength and every personality quirk, was part of what made the group function. We try to reduce this damage to the band by...recycling, we call it."

"If you are suggesting we eat Andrews' body..."

"Not unheard of, but that's not what I'm talking about. We keep our comrades' memory alive by taking on their behaviors, their tastes, their fighting style, whatever they bought to the group. We have never been good at saying words for the dead or building memorials. We remember the dead through our actions."

Brant looked at Katarek for a moment. That actually sounded like a good system, but Brant wasn't sure she liked where the mantis was going. "Yeah? Is there some trait of Andrews you were thinking of taking up?"

"I did not know the captain very well. It might be in poor taste to take from someone who was only briefly my comrade. I don't mention it for me." Katarek reached into the satchel and pulled out a solid metal cylinder, two inches wide and a foot long. Andrews' power baton. "I think you should learn how to use this, captain."

Brant raised her eyebrows. She'd seen him use this a few times, and it was a terrible thing in the right hands, a captain's weapon indeed.

"Not just because you looked truly pathetic punching the stuffed bag, either. I...I think this could help you to…not feel bad."

Brant reached out cautiously for the weapon. It was Brant's by right now, but she'd completely forgotten about it in the rush of new responsibilities. She extended it and held it up to her face, turning it over.

"It would be a shame to let it go to waste, if nothing else," Brant said. "I don't have any training in it, though. I hear these can be just as dangerous to the user, improperly handled."

"Ah - in that, I may be able to help." Kat slammed her pincers into the side of the table and heaved, flipping it away from them and advancing on the captain. Brant spilled out of her chair and rolled away, landing in a crouch as Kat bore down on her, bringing her right pincer down in a savage arc toward Brant's head. Brant threw the baton up to catch the blow, but Kat stopped short with a disapproving click.

"Oooh - we've got a lot to do. First lesson - don't ever parry like that," Kat said. "You're holding it in front of you. If I hit you hard enough like this, I'll knock the tip of the baton right into you, and even at low speed it would cause damage." The mantis reached out and gently grasped Brant's hands, wiggling the baton back and forth. "Block like that. Focus on deflecting, not stopping."

Brant wanted to tell Kat that she was in no mood at all for combat instruction right now, and for God's sake didn't she understand that humans need space to grieve?

But really, this was better.

Without a word of warning, Brant leapt at Kat, sweeping back and forth with the baton. She didn't ignite it, so its full lethal force was kept dormant, but a strike landing home might still require a trip to the medbay. Kat laughed, dodging the strikes or deflecting them, then struck low and swept Brant's feet out. She fell on her back, her teeth clicking together, then leapt right back up.

"Not bad for a mammal, eh?"

"No, but that's setting the bar pretty low," Kat said. She pounced at Brant, who batted away Kat's slashes and rushed in to throw her shoulder into the mantis. Kat stumbled backward, surprised that the captain had closed with her, and only just sidestepped as Brant lashed out with the baton. The weapon grazed Kat on her pincer, and Kat laughed excitedly.

"Yes! That would have taken my arm off!" Kat cheered. "Your grief is yours, captain! Make it serve you! Make it a weapon! Come! Again!"

They didn't talk much more as they traded blows for the next half hour. By that time, Brant was a mess of blood, bruises, and cuts, and Kat's carapace had caved in in several places. And Brant couldn't stop smiling, even as she lay down in the medbay and finally, exhausted, started to cry.

They sparred at least half an hour a day from that point on, for the rest of Katarek's life.

Was she going the right way?

Brant could have made her way to the medbay blindfolded if she had to. This ship had been her whole life for months, and she'd had to navigate its corridors through low power, through billows of smoke, and more than once with the threat of hostile forces on board. On top of that, it wasn't a big ship. She knew she wasn't lost, but her mind rushed to come up with any other reason why it would be so quiet in here as she approached the medbay.

She stumbled on, awkwardly clutching her numb arm and her pistol in one hand. She dug around in the packs at her belt and took out a tiny vial of combat stimulant, jamming the microsyringe into her leg. She inhaled sharply, drug-induced clarity flooding her senses, her pain fading into the distant background. Her arm still refused to move.

The hatch to the medbay stood in the corridor just ahead of her, shut. The corridor remained quiet as the vacuum. Katarek was dead.

Brant stopped. She had to assume she was alone in the fight now, holding the emotions that came with that realization at arms' length. Katarek was dead, and with her they'd lost their berserker, their wild killer whose fury could break the enemy.

Your grief is yours. Make it a weapon.

She could be going in one against three, with the enemy dug in and expecting her, and she was badly wounded herself. She thought about Karl, and the more she thought about him, the more confident she felt in her decision to lock him up; the enemy knew their ship layout and their systems too well to chalk up to coincidence. So she holstered her pistol and, the stimulant still numbing the pain, grabbed at the awful wound on her arm. It was mostly cauterized, but she squeezed it enough to get her hand good and bloody. She smeared her face with red, and she ripped off her patch to expose the twisted scar tissue where her eye had been. She had no illusions about her odds of surviving the next few minutes, but she told herself that just one slight moment of shock in the enemy could mean the difference between her getting shot like a dog and killing one or two before getting shot like a dog.

She told herself this. Really, she was feeling sentimental, and she decided that if she was going to die, she'd like to die the way Katarek should have.

She took two pouches off her belt. One had a multitool in it and the other had some nuts in case she wanted a snack; she hefted them to check their weight, then nodded to herself.

Well, Charlotte, she thought. Time to make an exit.

She hurled herself at the medbay door, opening it remotely with her wrist unit as she approached, and she screamed low and brutal. Just as she approached the threshold, she threw the pouches into the middle of the medbay; as she'd hoped, she entered the room to see three human forms throwing themselves behind cover away from her supposed grenades. She charged on; she leapt up on top of an autodoc table and picked a target, a tall, bearded Rebel who'd crouched behind the table next to hers. He was alert and ready for her, raising his pistol just as she leapt into his sight; her opening shot grazed his shoulder, a spasm of pain rocking his body and making his own shot go wide. She pounced at him, firing down at him as she went, but he managed to roll away and compose himself just as Brant bore down on him.

On the one hand, closing with only a pistol out and only one working arm was a terrible idea, especially against a larger opponent. On the other hand, Katarek was dead. Brant threw herself on top of the Rebel hard enough to knock him flat. He grabbed both of her wrists, easily pushing away the gun. Katarek was dead. Brant snarled and slammed her forehead into his once, twice. This was a disciplined soldier, but she saw the onset of panic on his bloodied face, felt it in his tensing muscles. Still, his grip held fast, and she couldn't bring the gun down to finish him. Katarek was dead. Katarek was dead.

Brant snapped her jaws down on the man's throat and shook her head, and that did it. His grip gave just enough for her to wrench her pistol free and jam it into his armpit, pointing it right at his heart, pointe blank. She'd take him out, then she'd worry about the others, maybe take one more with her, but no. Something hit her in the side, and her every muscle went limp at once.

"Jesus, God," the Rebel under her said. He kicked her off and scrambled away from her. "She bit me! Crazy girl bit me!"

Brant tried to summon up an appropriate obscenity, but she was surprised just to realize she was still alive. She willed herself to move, but got only minimal response from her body, not enough to do anything as she felt someone grab her arms and lock her hands into restraints behind her back. She was kicked in the side hard enough to turn over, and she found herself face to face with a short, frail-looking woman with a shaved, tattooed head, hard eyes, and a pistol trained down at Brant's face.

"That was a stun round," the woman said, still in that same annoying sing-song accent, and still with reasonable good humor. "I think a full-power shot would rather improve that nasty cyclops face of yours, so you're gonna' want to listen real close if you want to keep breathin'."

Brant tried to speak, but her mouth felt full of cotton. She took stock of the situation in the room. The Rebel she'd attacked was stumbling over to guard the door, poking at the shallow yet ugly wound she'd left on his throat. There was one more Rebel standing against the far wall of the medbay, a pistol ready, his attention divided between Brant and his two prisoners, kneeling and restrained next to him. Ahab's fine coat was torn and his body shone only dimly, and 78 was dented and missing a leg, but they were both alive, and looking at her with surprise.

"Not your best look, captain," 78 said, his voice heavy with static. "But...you make it work."

"The handcuffs are particularly objectionable," Ahab muttered. "You should lose them."

"I've got to say, you lot do live up to your reputation. Whatever you did to piss off Command, they want you something fierce. We'll be able to buy a resort world with what we'll get for bringing you in alive."

"Real fancy-like," said the man guarding Ahab and 78.

"So, introductions. That over there is Angel." She nodded over to the man who'd just spoken, who grinned. "The fellow over there that you chewed up is Grisham. And I'm Captain Lilian McRee. And judging by the intel we got on this crew, you're Charlotte Brant."

Brant slowly got the use of her limbs back, only to find that her restraints were secure and that she didn't have anything nice to say.

"Burn in Hell," Brant said.

"Oh, dear, you're in a mood," McRee said. "I take it you found what was left of your shields engineer."

78's face flickered yellow, then went black. "Katarek is dead?"

"I promise you, before this is over, you will pay tenfold for killing her," Brant growled. She smirked joylessly. "And considering what we did to the guard you left, you're already halfway there."

78 whined loudly, his face shining red as he attempted to struggle to his feet. Angel slapped him back down and McCree kicked Brant back to the ground.

"Listen to yourself! How many wars have the mantis started, just in living memory? How many slaving operations are they running right now? And you're threatening a fellow human for taking one of those monsters out of circulation?"

McCree had hate in her eyes to match Brant's own. Brant breathed in and out, trying to calm down. She had to think. Toh might be following her in shortly, and...he was too bruised up to count for much. Karl...was locked up and very likely a rat. Katarek was dead.

78 struggled to get back up to a kneeling position, but with one leg gone it was in vain. Ahab sat serenely, his eyes closed and his aura still faint, apparently meditating.

"Ah...but I don't want to get on a rant. We've just about got what we came for, so let's wrap this up," McRee said. She touched her wrist unit, the hate replaced with a smug grin. "Let's get the man of the hour in here. Channels are open now. Tell him we've got you in the medbay, and to come on down so we can beam off and have done with it. And if you could possibly sound real pathetic when you do it, that'd be extra nice."

Brant thought she would have run out of anger by this point, but nope. On closer inspection, she found she had quite a reservoir of rage left.

"He sold us out..."

"What? Oh no, no, no, Charlotte. You have to see: you sold yourself out." McRee knelt down to eye level with Brant and put her hands on Brant's shoulders. She kept talking as if explaining something to a small child. Brant tried to fumble for her power baton, but with both hands tied up and only one hand working, it was not a thing she could do subtly. "You betrayed the heritage of Earth. You sacrificed humanity's destiny for...what, the company of xenos? You made the choice to abandon your race all on your own." McRee sighed and got back to her feet. "And if you thought what we did to the mantis was bad, then just wait 'til you see what we do with traitors like you. Now call him in."

Brant didn't move. What was there to do? The only avenue of rebellion still open to her was to resist this last insult to call her betrayer in, so she lay on the ground quietly.

Well...we always knew it was a longshot.

McRee rolled her eyes. "Fine, whatever. I'll call him myself. Come in, captain! Damion Andrews, wherever you are, I want to let you know that we've got your hussy captive in the medbay. Come to us with your hands over your head, or we will execute her in two minutes, with one of your aliens to follow two minutes after that. Better hustle, cap'n!"

"Wait," Brant said. "You're looking for Andrews?"

"Who'd you think I was talking about?" McRee asked, suspicious. "Grisham, keep alert. Sounds like there's..."

It all went to hell in the next two seconds. The air vent above Angel's head exploded, gobs of plasma fire streaking out of it. Ahab stood, turned his back on Angel, and projected a blast a brilliant green energy out of his hands into his captor's face. A round from the duct took Grisham in the abdomen, and the Rebel went down. And as McRee turned to deal with these disruptions, Brant finally teased the baton out of her belt; in the one working hand behind her back, she extended it and ignited it. Then she spun on her knees and brought the weapon slamming into McRee's calves.

And like that, it was over. Grisham was still alive, but he lay in the doorway, paralyzed with pain from his gut wound. Angel was similarly out of commission, staggering around blindly, clutching at his face. McRee alone seemed to have some fight left in her: her legs were a very painful-looking mess from the knees down and she'd dropped her pistol, but she was dragging herself over to it. Brant got to her feet, strode over to the gun, and kicked it away. She looked down with a blank expression at the Rebel captain.

"Andrews is dead," Brant said. "I'm the captain now."

Brant didn't feel very good at the moment. She kicked McRee in the face, in the gut, in the back, everywhere she could, and was thinking she'd just keep kicking until she felt better, though that'd probably be an awful lot of kicking.

A large, hard hand fell softly on her back and pulled her away from the Rebel captain.

"Captain..." Toh said. She turned to see him looking terrible, leaning heavily against a nearby table and much of his molten blood already cooling and hardening outside of his wounds.

Ahab had freed himself and 78 with Angel's keys, and 78 was busy reattaching his leg. Karl was trying to jimmy the air vent loose so he could get out.

"Sorry I'm late, ma'am," Karl said. "They must have hacked the door controls."

Toh's hand was still on Brant's shoulder. She returned his molten gaze. She tasted blood in her mouth, and didn't know if it was hers.

"I'll tell him," she said softly. "Not right now, though."

"Good thing I've got a narrow frame, I guess," Karl called out. The vent finally came loose and he slowly began to back out of the hole, his legs dangling above the floor.

Ahab came up with the restraint key and let Brant go; she immediately put the cuffs on McRee. "I'm going to go get us in jump. Toh, 78, I want the medbay operational in five minutes. Ahab, Karl, I want the prisoners stabilized and escorted to the brig. Ahab - how are you at interrogation?"

The zoltan flashed an upsetting smile. "Second to none, captain."

"Good. Prep them." Charlotte turned and hurried out of the room. She heard clunking metal steps following her and pretended not to.

"Captain!" 78 called. She kept walking, but she could only go so fast at this point and he quickly caught up. "Captain...Katarek..."1

Oh, to hell with it. Brant turned and grabbed the engi, pulling him against her and holding him. 78 shook and returned the embrace. She let out one sob, but she couldn't let that dam break yet. The ship was still vulnerable. Her crew still needed her.

"We'll be okay," she whispered. "Soon. There will be time to mourn soon."

"Katarek wouldn't want us to mourn," 78 whispered back, his voice warbling and breaking off. What he said next, though, was clear as a cold mountain lake. "Would want us to avenge."

"I know." Another tear fell from her eye, and she pulled 78 closer for one last moment. "There will be time for that, too."