“Hey, sir?” Rivers called up into the ship.

Benson poked his head over and scowled. “The fuck you want?”

“Why do you have both ion propulsion and these fuel tanks on here?” Rivers said, slapping the hull of the ship they were almost exclusively working on now, barring the moments when Benson would stalk out of the room, cursing violently to cross reference something on the alien craft.

“Because,” Benson said around his lip of tobacco. “I don’t know a goddamn thing about flying with antigravity. But I do know a lot about flying with ion propulsion and the standard burn-shit-to-make-thing-go method. At some point I’m going to want to test fly this thing, but I don’t want to get smacked with not knowing how to get the thing back down. Hence, contingency. Next question.”

“Got anymore dip?”

Benson grunted and dropped the can down to her. When she tossed it back up, Benson caught it and disappeared back into the hull. As she turned, the door opened and Neil came walking back in. “How’d it go, First Sergeant?” She asked.

Neil winced, but wiggled his metal fingers. “All the diagnostics show I’m running perfectly fine. Just a little clumsy.”

“Right,” Rivers said, nodding.

“Valentine still at his check up?”

“Yep. I feel like the only one who doesn’t have smart people crawling all over them.” Rivers said, spitting on the floor. “Want a status report?”

“Not really, but I might as well know what we’re getting into for the rest of the day.”

“Finished the outer hull and Captain Benson is finishing up the control panel.”

“Finishing up…” Benson muttered, appearing again out of the hatch. He glared down at the two of them. “Finishing up would mean I’m close to getting done, but I haven’t done this much wiring since ever. Fuck this shit, I need some real mechanics.”

“Call Journeyman Drake?” Rivers supplied.

Benson shook his head. “Nah I need to just quit my bellyaching and get it done. First Sergeant, you got a minute? I could use a hand.”

“Sure.” Neil said, climbing up the ladder and coming to the cockpit, where Benson had resumed the position of being flat on his back with his legs sticking out, tools all around him. “You’ll excuse me saying, sir, but it looks like you’re a real enough mechanic for the job.”

“Yeah,” Benson said, his gravely voice muffled. “I’m a real, piss poor mechanics. The real good ones like this shit, but I keep getting zapped every few minutes and I don’t fucking like it.”

“Can you cut the power to the ship?”

“Sure, if I want this fucking thing to float up to the ceiling.” He peered out from under the control board. “You could have clipped a cigar with my asshole then, it was a tense few minutes.” His face disappeared again.

Neil chuckled. “What do you need sir?”

“I need you to hand me that box,” He pointed. “And I need you to tell me how you’re doing?”

Neil blinked, his fingers flexing slightly by instinct. “Sir?”

“I’m the Admiral’s aid, Ziggenbor, I’m obviously spying on all of you and reporting back to him, whatever he wants to know.” Benson swore as another spark flew. “I figure it's best to keep things above board. If I tell you I’m spying on you you’ll tell me what you want, and trust me more than if you common sense types get your bullshit o meters in a frenzy. Not a lot of coming back from that, I’ve seen it happen.”

Neil thought about that. For a moment he had been angry, but then the sense in Benson’s words struck a chord with him. “What do you want to know?”

“I want to know how you’re doing.” Benson said. “I don’t know, I’m not a people person. If it’ll help, Neerson asked me to check in on the three sergeants and ask them how they’re dealing with… well,” Benson’s hand appeared and made a sweeping gesture. “It’s all kind of a lot.”

“How are you dealing with it, sir?”

“I’m scared shitless half the time and don’t know what’s going on the other half, so it balances out. Mostly I just blast music in my quarters until I forget about everything outside them. Now,” Benson glared out at Neil. “How are you doing?”

“I’m not a people person either.”

“Observed, noted, and disregarded. Goddamn, you and your brother can’t just answer a fucking question, can you?”

“He gives you shit?”

“He gives Neerson shit and then I need to hear about it. Look, give me something so that I can make it look like I’m doing my job.”

“You’ve practically gotten a working antigravity well operational in a ship made from spare parts and alien tech, I think he knows you’re doing your job.”

“Yeah, you would think, wouldn’t you?” Benson beamed a smile. “Would a more direct question be better?”

“Worth a shot.”

“How are you doing with being the lone survivor of the 3-95th?”

Neil went completely still. Now Benson didn’t say anything, but from the small movements, scraping of tools, and occasional pairing of a spark and profane word he had gone back to work. With this as the soundtrack to the memories playing through Neil’s head now, he felt everything he usually did when he slept. Everything he felt before the nightmares started. Vane’s mutilated face flickered in front of his face, as did Flint’s dead eyes after she was shredded by the marauder. He let his eyes dry out, knowing that if he closed them he would remember the hot sun on his face and the rhythmic thwump-chunking of Troy’s APES. Many long nights laying awake in a sweat had taught him not to try and pinpoint exactly which time he was remembering. It could have been any of them or all of them, but he was inclined to think it was just the last.

He had told them he would get them off the planet. Flint had been going to get mortar lessons when she got back, and Troy had just wanted to get off the planet. Then the usual images faded from his mind’s eye as Benson awkwardly kicked another tool towards his hand. Memories Neil didn’t often entertain came up. It had been Troy’s kid brother who he had jumped on, the kid who’s brain had slid out the back of his shattered skull. It had been Neil’s first failure of that hell. Once he had thought about the fact that would have been one of the many ways he could have gone, if it hadn’t been Specialist Troy to wrap his hand around his skull in the same spot. The clinical voice of the first doctor to officially brief him after Colonel Vance had said they needed to cut them apart, he and Troy. They didn’t know how much of Neil they had taken to get it done. With a pang, Neil wondered how much of Troy they had left.

A zap sounded in the captain and an expletive followed by what sounded like a wrench being slammed against a metal bar in frustration. The sound sent jolts through Neil, and he closed his eyes. He didn’t remember the explosion that had hit their extraction vessel, and he didn’t remember Troy jumping on him, flattening him to the deck while he wrapped his head around his head. But Neil could see the Specialist’s determined face, feel the rough arms around him as the concussion hit them both.

Neil opened his eyes again.

Then there had been the cybernetics.

Then there had been Titan.

And now they were here.

“Not well.” He said in a low voice.

Benson looked out at him and nodded. “Thanks First Sergeant.” He said, his voice sincere.

Neil nodded and stood.

“You might be the first person not to rack the shit out of your head on that overhead.” Benson said.

“Well I’m a short fucker.” Neil shrugged. “My brothers never let me live it down.”

“I’m sure. You got anything you want me to pass on to Neerson?”

“No.” Neil said, climbing back out of the hatch, calling over his shoulder. “If I’ve got something I want to say to that man, I’ll say it myself.”

--

“The First Sergeant’s bullish nature persists, then.” Neerson said as he played his last blind and Benson swore vehemently, drawing his hand back to fling his cards at the office wall before he caught the admiral’s eye. Without breaking eye contact he put the half deck of cards he was holding gently onto the table, and slowly pushed them to the floor.

Neerson closed his eyes and drew a long suffering breath.

“I would tend to agree with that statement, sir.” Benson said pleasantly as the last card hit the floor. “Pretty sure he’s still pissed off at you about your treatment of Sergeant Rivers.”

“My feigned mistreatment of Sergeant Rivers, and I have already admitted my mishandling of the situation.” Neerson said, leaning back in his chair while Benson collected the cards.

“Hey, sir, I don’t give a fuck what you do. I’m not stupid enough to do what he did, but props to him. Everyone needs their lane.” The Admiral said nothing and Benson began to shuffle the cards. “But why did you let him mouth off to you like that, sir? If I can ask.”

Neerson sat in silence until the cards had been dealt. “Men who follow orders are an invaluable asset. So are men who question then, within reason, though many officers fail to realize this fact. Men such as yourself are also an indispensable asset.”

Benson thought about that. “Not quite sure how to take that, sir.”

“Men with whom an officer can talk freely with, when they are so often used to being one of one in the rank structure of command. A person with whom they might receive interaction with that is neither too hostile nor too formal. A…”

“Friend?” Benson supplied, playing an ace.

Neerson winced, though whether it was at the word or the cards he picked up was unclear. “I was unaware you allowed yourself to have friends, Captain?”

“People come and go, sir, you can’t get too attached. Especially when sometimes when they go, they die. Thought we were talking about you and the First Sergeant.”

“I deflected the uncomfortable topic of conversation regarding me to one regarding you, Captain, hoping that you would not notice.” Neerson said without embarrassment.

“You know me better than that I hope, sir.” Benson said.

“I do.”

They played for a few minutes longer in silence until Benson took the hand and Neerson collected the cards. “First Sergeant Ziggenbor is such a man that I can expect three out of four of the aforementioned qualities.” Neerson said. “There is another, though, that I require from men in leadership.”

“The ability to stick up for their people?”

“The ability to stand in the gap for their subordinates.” Neerson confirmed with a nod.

“I wasn’t aware that applied to flag officers being dicks, sir.”

“Leadership is not always a two way street, Captain.” Neerson said. “You are correct in this sense, that in a routine assignment, and even many that are outside of the conventional scope, the officer's word ends the discussion. It is the nature of officers to make correct decisions and indirect ones, and had there been anyone other than those witnesses there to bear testimony of First Sergeant Ziggenbor’s conduct, some sort of repercussion would have been necessary. However, the situation was carefully crafted. Incorrectly calculated,” Neerson snapped, as Benson opened his mouth. “But it was my intention to see for myself the measure of the man I had heard so much of and seen so much of on the edge of situations.”

“Just over one and a half meters.” Benson said.

“Captain?”

“First Sergeant Ziggenbor’s measure.” Benson smiled. “Five foot six.”

“Good lord…” Neerson muttered. “Growing up with elder brothers must have been a taxing nightmare.”

“Something, something, comes by his nature honestly.”

“Indeed.”

“Why?”

“I dislike indirect and unspecified questions such as ‘why’, Captain.” Neerson said. “You could be asking me why I haven’t brought you in fully on Commander Ziggenbor’s mission, why I provoked First Sergeant Ziggenbor into near criminal insubordination or why there are two messages from Senator Ziggenbor that I haven’t responded to yet.”

Benson cracked his knuckles and leaned back. “You’re getting ready to send Zig back to Mars for the extraction of some small group of individuals from the planet and some sort of ship recovery, you poked the short one because you needed to make sure that you have someone willing to tell you when things are stupid, since you know you’re not infallable and that you have a lot of crazy tech around that could go boom, or its one to one equivalent, and if you’ve only got people around you willing to say yessir then you might not see a tiger’s tail before you step on it, and I’ve got to admit I don’t know about the Senator.”

Neerson folded his hands with a pleased smile on his face. “Your perception grows, Captain. Have a guess at the third. I am intrigued.”

“Hmm.” Benson rubbed his chin. “I would guess that there’s something going on in the Senate that you want to be well informed on and he’s providing you with non critical updates.”

“Why non critical?”

“The alerts came in on a low tier priority. No persistent pinging or other kinds of alerts. I’ve been in here when high priority messages come through, it sounds like an insane rat with a bell on its neck.”

“Your apt descriptions notwithstanding, the principle you have indicated is correct. The Senate is trying to push through the order to scrub Mars immediately. In addition to the other things I have requested from the eldest Ziggenbor, he is trying to stall that motion from passing. All in all, a basic task for him, and hardly worth anyone's notice.”

Benson thought for a moment. “Unless it fails.”

Neerson inclined his head. “Unless it fails.” The implications of that remained unsaid as Neerson allowed the cards to remain untouched. “You are very near the mark on the other two subjects. I would very much like to know how you deduced the nature of Commander Ziggenbor’s mission.”

“Sir, if you didn’t want me to know stuff, you shouldn’t have made me your aid.” Benson said. “The first thing I did was pull up the regulations, and short of blatantly rifling through your stuff I can go pretty much anywhere on your flagship under the pretense of anticipating your needs. When I’m not trying to beat that ship you’re having me work on into submission or engaging in these pleasant chats of ours I’m usually familiarizing myself with the ship logs.”

“No direct observation?”

“I usually have the logs pulled up while I snoop around, but the numbers tell me a lot more than my eyes can. Sir, I’m good at looking at what’s in front of me and figuring things out. That’s why I’ve been able to rip apart that ship on the Vulcan and take out the vital bits, bubblegum them together and make it work. You put me down like the RAE corps and ask me to just research something out of thin air, that’s harder.”

“You managed to reason out the mission.”

“That was all in front of me.” Benson countered. “You’ve been ordering ship slaving equipment and additional crew to the Deterrence with an emphasis on medical and mess staff. You’ve been doing it slowly enough that most anyone would have just assumed you’re just trying to shore up the crew there while we wait for more, but you’ve moved the Vigilance back down to an almost skeleton crew and us at nearly the same manpower. We’ve also moved into a defensive mooring posture, which means that the Deterrence likely won’t be with us much longer. Also the Vigilance has been receiving classified equipment transfers from the Vulcan. Most of them stayed on board, but a few of the larger pieces got forwarded to us, and then the Deterrence.”

“You’ve followed the paper trail.” Neerson nodded.

“To someone just performing busywork, it just looked like you’re reallocating the equipment and assets.” Benson shrugged. “That’s what I thought at first.”

“What led you to believe otherwise.”

Now it was Benson that gave Neerson a long suffering look. “Sir. You don’t just do busywork. Everything is to further a strategic advantage. Once I saw it was you authorizing these things personally so that the Commanders wouldn’t bear any responsibility, should things get shit canned at some point in the future, the rest was easy.” Benson finished, adding. “To me.”

Neerson pondered this for a minute and a half or so before, “What makes you think I am deterring responsibilities from the Commanders? Perhaps I am just trying to keep them from learning of my intentions, as you have.”

“I should have specified, sir.” Benson said. “You’re trying to keep Jericho from bearing any responsibility from knowing about the particulars of things. Yet.”

“Why would I do such a thing?”

“Because you’re like First Sergeant Ziggenbor, sir.” Benson said. “You don’t let anything get to your people.”

Neerson was quiet again, tapping a single finger on the desk. “Lieutenant Commander Jericho is a remarkable officer. And she had been dealt an unfortunate hand so far in her career. I would like to provide her with the necessary means to not be caught up in my unrealized avenues of strategic approach just yet. There will, no doubt, a time when that decision will be taken from me and presented instead to her. But for now the judgment on that front lies with me. As for the First Sergeant,” Neerson’s eyes came up. “You are also correct there. The man may not possess the Commander’s strategic prowess or the Senator’s ability to understand the things unsaid, but he sees, more often than most, the things that are staring us right in our faces, yet remain blind to. Unfortunately, these are the things that often go unsaid the most, for common sense is a thing that lies with its very name. It is rare, this quality, to look at the obvious and take it for what it is: Foolishness, or prudence. However, finding the men willing to stand firm in their belief that the obvious choice is the right one even in the face of cold logic and irrefutable intelligence is equally rare.”

“You want Neil because he’s got a good gut?”

“All men have an instinct that communicates the right thing, even when it is not visible to see yet. The absence of knowing the height of a drop does not change the simple fact that a height does exist. And now, Captain, we are standing along a precipice from which we cannot ascertain how far, nor how devastating a fall may be.” Neerson drew a long breath. “We are walking the edge of that cliff, that cliff being the terrible advancements housed?? in the Vulcan. There will come a time, I have no doubt, where my desire to look forward three steps blinds me from the stone right in front of me that would be my downfall. I need a man like First Sergeant Ziggenbor who will not only point out this stone to me, but fight me tooth and nail to make sure that I do not walk blindly into it due to my own stupidity.”

“You’ll need to trust him for that.”

“I think I do.” Neerson said. “Though there will be times when a stumble may be a part of the plan. He will need to understand this.

“For that, he’ll need to trust you.” Benson said. “And that’s going to be a task all by itself.”

“One that I most sincerely hope I am up to the challenge of.” Neerson sighed. “Tell me of the other Sergeants. How is Valentine?”

“He’s still got a ringing in his ears.”

“No.”

“Sir?”

“It’s not a ringing, I’ve had the report from Artisan Coppersmith. The nanites in him are talking to each other, and he’s picking up on the communications.”

“Okay, weird and disconcerting, but how do you know that sir?”

“I read one of the thesis works she published on the theoretical evolution of nanotechnology in military and medical application. She postulated that nanites will develop their own community, like a hive of bees, and that based on her hypothesis something that all nanites share while inhabiting a host is to make their presence known. A self preservation tactic so that the host does not inadvertently take action that would compromise them. It’s an imperfect strategy, but I’m basing that from a frightened human world view and not theirs. And I won’t pretend to be an expert on the subject just because I’ve read a very long, very boring piece of someone’s life work. How is he doing, Captain?”

“Well he doesn’t resent your decision regarding Neil.” Benson took the cards and started shuffling. “Apparently he got tapped for First Sergeant a year or so back and declined. Said he preferred smaller teams to running a company.”

“This information is good to know. What else?”

“He’s suspicious of Rivers.”

Neerson was quiet as Benson dealt. “Why?”

“He can’t put his finger on it. But from what I gather it has something to do with her time serving in the Task Forces, but that she won’t talk about a lot of what she did openly.”

“Sergeant Valentine of all people should know that many of those experiences are often burdens that are carried silently, and alone.” Neerson said. “And she hasn’t been attached to them for long. If he expected her to be so forthcoming, I would tell him that patience and a readjustment of his expectations might be in order.”

“I don’t think it’s small talk that he wants, sir.” Benson said, laying down a three. “It sounds more like he doesn’t trust her, is all. They all talk, they all laugh, they all bitch, and they all do it together. But there’s something there that’s keeping Valentine and Ziggnebor from getting on board with it fully.”

“Her.” Neerson snapped, his eyes flashing and coming up.

“Yes sir, I’m sorry.” Benson’s face went red. “Her.”

Neerson sighed. “Thank you. But they are inconveniently sharp, the both of them. A hazard of selecting men such as them to be in close proximity to so many secrets. What about you, Captain?”

“Me?”

“Do you trust Sergeant Rivers?”

“I’ll be completely honest sir and say that there’s a devil inside everyone that I don’t fully trust. Maybe that makes me a cynic. She’s got a lot of good in her, and she’s damn capable, smart, just as good at what she does as the other two.”

“That sounds like an awful lot of words to say that you don’t know, Captain.”

“Ho ho, sir. I’ll trust anything except that fucking robot down with the Journeymen.”

Neerson played a card. “Carga has her purpose. Your suspicions are based on prejudice.”

“I feel like prejudice is generally reserved for people, sir.” Benson couldn’t keep the stab of anger out of his tone. “Nanites and clones are the boogeymen in the shadows, sure, but robots are the boogeyman that we thought we could control and were proved wrong. They’re the tried and true monsters that we were always told weren’t under the bed until they dragged us down and damn near killed us off. Two are hypothetically bad. One is.”

They played to the end of the hand in silence. “Carga has her purpose.” Neerson said again. “But I will not at this juncture try and reason with you about this particular point of friction when you have been so willing to accept otherwise difficult things in front of you.”

“I appreciate that, sir.”

“I would however, ask that you believe the things that your eyes see in regards to her, and that if you see something that would change your mind in a reasonable situation that you would do your best to not turn away from it.”

Benson let out a huffing sigh. “Best I can do is say I’ll do my best. They bang the ‘all robots bad’ drum pretty hard in the first couple years of general schooling.”

“They beat it far harder when I was going through my own early education, I assure you. But I’ll say no more on that front at the moment. What of Sergeant Rivers?”

“What about her?”

“How is she doing?”

Benson thought about that. “She’s onto me.”

“That will happen when you inform people that you’re collecting information on them to pass to me.”

“Sure. But she knows why you want to know, I think. I don’t know. She won’t talk to me, sir, she just gives me a little smile and says to tell you that she’s adjusting fine, then keeps on working, or training, or doing whatever it is that she’s up to.”

“And their training is going well?”

“I don’t know if I’ve seen three people work together so well. Tried to think of someone, but when they just forget what they’ve all been through and how fucking weird they all are, they’re tight. Formidable, is a word I think you would probably use to describe them.”

“Who leads the stack?”

“Typical order of march is Valentine, Rivers, Ziggenbor. She likes to zip out on command and flank, while Valentine usually finds a position to hole up in and let the fight come to him.”

“The First Sergeant?”

“You ever seen videos of a bull cut loose?”

“Indeed I have.”

“It’s like that but with the careful application of small arms fire in a fast moving environment. I’ve never seen anyone move as well under pressure with the alacrity he does. If he thinks about it too hard he gets hit, but if he’s just moving on instinct, the training bolts just seem to miss him.”

Neerson allowed himself a smile. “Excellent. Thank you Captain, this meeting has been most informative.”

“We’re done?”

An alert pinged off his terminal. “For now. But be warned,” He leaned back and drew a small tin from his desk drawer, flipping it to Benson. The Admiral’s smile not fading from his lips. “You may have secured your position for the remainder of your military career. I can’t have someone as bright as you running around without being able to keep an eye on them.”

Benson left then and Neerson answered the alert. “Neerson.”

“Sir, it’s Jericho.”

“How may I help you Commander?”

“I’ve got Senator Ziggenbor all patched through. We’re ready to transmit.”