Jessa
The message arrived five weeks after Nexus.
Official Consortium seal. Formal language, the kind I’d grown up reading over my father’s shoulder.
Addressed to Captain Serak and the surviving personnel of the Rift Wraith unit involved in Operation Ebon Gate: Serak, Ressh, Thoryn, Deyric, Zevik, Solren.
Serak read it once, put the datapad on the mess hall table, and called everyone in.
They came the way they always did. Zevik arrived last with his boots untied and a protein bar hanging out of his mouth. Maris took one look at the Consortium seal and sat down without being asked.
Serak read aloud.
“The Consortium of Aligned Systems formally acknowledges that Operation Ebon Gate was compromised by internal conspiracy. All charges arising from the operation against the surviving Rift Wraith personnel named herein are vacated.”
Nobody moved.
“Service records restored,” Serak continued. “Ranks restored where applicable. Retroactive pay from Ebon Gate. Pension and benefits credit. Order of Meritorious Service, First Class. Optional reinstatement with choice of posting.”
“First Class,” Zevik said around the protein bar. “That’s the fancy one, right?”
“There’s more paperwork attached.”
“Less fancy.”
Serak set the datapad down.
“The offer is to six of us.”
That mattered.
Not Maris. Not Alix. Not me.
The Consortium was trying to repair what it had done to the people it had sent into Ebon Gate and then erased afterward.
It was not offering to define the crew that existed now.
Serak looked at the other five names on the message.
“I’m not going back.”
Ressh leaned back in his chair. Bronze moved slowly through his traceries. “Last time they owned my orders, Vain was on the other end of them. No.”
Thoryn put his hand flat on the table.
Palm down.
“No,” he said.
Deyric hadn’t looked up from his console. “They would put me in a fleet engineering bay.”
Serak waited.
“Twelve technicians. Standardized systems. Maintenance protocols written by committee.” Deyric tapped the console. “I rebuilt this ship’s sensor array with parts from three species and integrated the stealth systems myself. Nobody in a fleet bay would let me do that.”
“So that’s a no.”
“That’s a no to reinstatement and an insult to the Raptor.”
Solren folded his arms. “I’ve spent five weeks treating conditions their medical manuals don’t admit exist. I’m staying where the patients are.”
Zevik finished his protein bar.
Five sets of eyes turned toward him.
“What?”
“Your answer,” Solren said.
Zevik looked offended. “Have you seen what fleet governors do to an engine?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are we having this conversation?”
The six original Rift Wraiths had answered the reinstatement question.
Alix, sitting beside Ressh, reached for the datapad and turned it so she could read the offer.
“That’s one decision,” she said. “The Raptor is another.”
Serak nodded.
“The Consortium can restore six old records,” she continued. “It doesn’t get to decide what this crew is now.”
Maris leaned back. “Good. Because I have supply routes, contacts, and three separate people who owe me favors after Nexus. I’m not handing any of that to a procurement office.”
Zevik wadded his wrapper and tossed it at the recycler.
Missed.
Solren looked at the wrapper.
Zevik looked at the wrapper.
“I’ll get it later.”
“You won’t.”
“I will.”
“You never do.”
“One time I did.”
“That was Jessa.”
“It was in the spirit of me doing it.”
Serak looked around the table.
Not six people now.
Nine.
“The question is whether the Raptor stays independent.”
Deyric finally looked up. “I thought I answered that.”
“You answered whether you wanted a fleet engineering bay.”
“The answers are strongly correlated.”
Maris snorted.
Ressh’s arm settled around Alix’s shoulders. Thoryn’s hand was still flat on the table. Solren had already stopped looking at the Consortium message and gone back to watching Zevik’s wrapper like it was a medical emergency.
Every answer was already in the room.
Serak looked at me.
I’d been sitting to his left, where I always sat. Watching them.
The crew I’d fed and managed and mediated through supply shortages and broken systems and the end of a conspiracy.
For years I’d been the person who kept them in place.
They didn’t need me to keep them in place.
They were choosing it.
“Jessa,” Serak said.
“I’m thinking.”
“Take your time.”
“I’m thinking about what I’d tell my father.” I looked at the Consortium seal. “He spent thirty years in diplomatic service. He believed in the institution.”
The room stayed quiet.
“He’d probably tell me there are ways to do more good from inside it.”
“And?” Serak asked.
“He’s not here.”
I looked around the table.
“The people who are here want this ship. This crew. Work we choose because it matters, not because somebody assigns it.” I looked back at Serak. “I want that too.”
The light in his hands caught the overhead glow.
“Then the Raptor stays ours.”
That settled the ship.
The money was separate.
Serak picked up the datapad again. “I’m directing my restitution to the Nexus rehabilitation fund.”
Ressh nodded. “Mine too.”
“Same,” Deyric said.
Solren didn’t hesitate. “Put mine toward survivor medical care.”
Thoryn tapped the table once. “Mine.”
Zevik’s crest went straight up.
“Wait. MY back pay?”
Serak looked at him.
“That was going to be a very good bar tab.”
“A GOOD bar tab.”
Nobody said anything.
Zevik looked around the table.
Then he sighed with his entire body.
“Fine. Mine too. But I want it recorded that Zevik’s future bar tab was sacrificed for the greater good.”
“Noted,” Serak said.
“Noted and appreciated,” Solren said. “Now pick up your wrapper.”
Zevik pointed at him. “You ruin every important moment.”
He got up, collected the wrapper, held it up so Solren could see, and dropped it into the recycler.
The crew began to scatter. Ressh and Alix headed for the training bay. Thoryn and Maris left with Maris already talking supply routes. Deyric returned to his console. Solren went back to medbay. Zevik followed him out, still arguing about the theoretical value of the bar tab he no longer had.
Serak and I stayed at the table.
The mess hall went quiet around us.
The Raptor hummed.
I looked at the datapad with its formal seal, then at the empty chairs.
The Consortium had given six people their old names back.
None of us needed it to tell us who we were now.
For years, what the crew wanted and what I wanted had been the same thing.
I’d thought that meant I’d lost myself in them.
Turns out it meant I’d found where I belonged.