FWSS Eridani, pinchspace
Michael felt at home the minute he walked on board his new ship. The deepspace heavy scout Eridani had the same sense of closeness he had enjoyed in 387, a feeling of coherence, of common purpose that the poor Ishaq had never enjoyed. Even better, he was able to talk to the ship’s master AI-called Mother, just like in 387.
The best news of all was the cheery presence of Matti Bienefelt. Michael had last seen her more than twelve months earlier, when the battered wreck of DLS-387 was being loaded for its journey down to its final resting place in Braidwood National Cemetery, from where it would watch over the last remains of the spacers it had not been able to bring home safely. Here was Bienefelt again, fully recovered from the injuries she had sustained during the Battle of Hell’s Moons and newly promoted to petty officer to boot. Somehow-Bienefelt refused to explain exactly how-she had wangled a posting to the Eridani, where she was now second in command of the heavy scout’s surveillance drone team. Michael did not care how she had gotten there. It was really good to have her around again.
He settled back into his seat. He had the watch, but there was not much to do now that they were in pinchspace except keep a careful eye on the ship’s automated systems to make sure their embedded AIs did not get any silly ideas and do something stupid. Around him, the on-watch command team was quiet, the sensor holovids blank except for system status reports, the soft buzz of idle conversation barely audible over the ever-present soft hiss of the ship’s air-conditioning.
Despite the events of the last few days, Michael was more or less happy. Not ecstatic, he had to admit, but feeling okay. Considering how dumb he had been, that was not too bad a result.
With time on his hands, he commed his neuronics to patch into the sim of Eridani’s forthcoming patrol. Although not quite as terrifying as 387’s forays into Hammer space before the Battle of Hell’s Moons, this operation-a tiny cog in the enormous machine tasked with the invasion of the Hammer home planet of Commitment-looked as if it might have its moments. Even though the thought of dropping back into Hammer space sent shivers chasing up and down his spine, things had changed. He welcomed the risk, welcomed the fear, because without them he would not be doing all he could to destroy the Hammer.
With Anna gone, even though he would never give up on her, and with his family barely speaking to him anymore, he was well and truly on his own. Well, apart from the always-comforting presence of Petty Officer Matthilde Bienefelt, that was. At least she would always be there for him, though somehow he did not ever see her displacing Anna. He grinned at the thought. No doubt about it, a life with Matti, who towered over him by close to half a meter and outmassed him by a good fifty kilos, all of it pure muscle, would be an interesting experiment in interpersonal relationships.