Jennifer Li stood up as straight and tall as she could in the lift and laughed.

"Space captain, Graham!" she said to her companion, unable to contain her joy. "I'm finally going to be space captain like my mother before me."

So many times she'd heard that Mid Port Station was gloomy and dark, but at that moment she felt she'd never seen brighter shades of navy and grey.

"We all knew you had it in you, Jen," he said. "Have you told your mother yet?"

"I was hoping to put that off as long as possible."

Graham's expression was wry. "Your mother is a formidable woman. I can see why you'd put it off."

"You can say 'terrifying', Graham. I won't take offence."

The elevator arrived at the top level. Jennifer smoothed down her uniform and checked her appearance in the dark, wobbly reflective panels outside the office, before moving into Vice-Marshal McIntyre's office, the automatic doors opening smoothly before her.

Graham followed behind, as always.

Glenda McIntyre surveyed them from above her glasses as they went through the basics. "Let me dispense with the formalities," she said. "We'll have one of the new cruiser-class vessels here within a fortnight. Captain Talbot is retiring and various of his crew are being reassigned, so you will likely pick up some of them for your crew. My staff can let you know who is available if you have any requests."

"Yes, sir."

"More delicate is that the surviving crew of the Moving Along Silently have arrived. Their vessel is a ruin and their captain currently unable to feed himself. If I can, I'd like to reassign some of his senior staff to you, if you can win them over. I won't sugar coat it – that is likely to be extremely difficult. I have the utmost respect for Captain Savage's service record but he ran his ship like a cult, and his personality the centre of their worship. Currently they're confined to level 11 while we investigate who had the audacity to sabotage one of our most reliable ships."

"I see. I imagine the situation is politically difficult," Jennifer said.

"More difficult than you know. They were ferrying a small group of Nectaren traders across the sector." McIntyre looked up from her files and made her gaze sharp, but Jennifer kept her face as blank as possible in the hopes of betraying no emotional reaction at all. "I won't bore you with the details of the original assignment, but, as it ended with a diplomat dead and Captain Savage suffering from a cerebral haemorrhage, we can safely say it was a miserable failure. Section 7 are investigating, but while they do I'll leave you with these files to study."

McIntyre pushed over a beige folder, fat with papers and decorated with the faded pink, green and yellow of sticky notes.

"Yes, on paper," McIntyre said, then scrubbed at her face with her free hand. "This is the new rule for information security in this sector. I think it's nonsense but nobody consults me about these things."

Jennifer picked up the folder and tried not to be obvious about how much she wanted to flick through it.

"I'll prepare carefully, sir," she said.

"Shall I let Vice-Marshal Su know about your promotion?" McIntyre asked.

"I'd appreciate that, sir. I think she'd prefer hearing it from you."

"This is a lot of responsibility we're handing you, but what you did on the Dream of Adventure was exemplary and Captain Nguyen speaks highly of you. Don't let us down."

"I won't, sir."

"And Murray," McIntyre said, finally addressing him. "We have a different standard of presentation on Mid Port."

Jennifer tried not to laugh. "You'll finally have to shave, Graham."

*

In the quiet of the small living room attached to her assigned quarters Jennifer didn't have to hold back her enthusiasm as she flicked through the folder, back and forth, making notes with a notepad and pen she'd reappropriated from the conference rooms on a lower floor.

"Any hot chicks?" Graham asked, from where he was hanging around like a useless lump on the grey-blue armchair that faced the door. Finally clean-shaven, at least, so he no longer looked like he belonged more in a trendy cafe in North Milton than on a spaceship.

"That's inappropriate."

"What? I'm looking out for you. You like an attractive woman." He tossed up and caught an old stress ball, again and again and again.

"Not on duty." Jennifer sighed. She pulled an untidy pile of papers from the middle of the stack and put them on the coffee table in front of his chair. "Here, make yourself useful, Section Leader Murray. You know my general opinions on things. Make some notes. Save me time."

He raised an eyebrow? "Is that an order?"

Jennifer smirked. "Now that I'm two ranks above you, you should assume everything I say to you is an order."

"I'll catch up. Just you wait." But he picked up the first of the papers and started looking through them, as she knew he would.

"You better try. Wouldn't want you to lose your ambition now."

Fifteen minutes of quiet study and Graham spoke again. "Do you think they'll let me be your second in command?"

"It would be a shame to break up a great team like us."

"They'd break up our team for someone like her." He handed her a pinned together pile of papers, a roughly assembled personnel file on one of Captain Savage's crew. From the front page details and picture she could tell this person, a Space Commander Solaris, was tall, sharp-faced, severe of expression. But that was not the most interesting thing about her.

Graham smiled, like he knew exactly what about the file was piquing Jennifer's curiosity. Of course he did. They'd known each other since university even before they'd joined the space force. He knew exactly the sort of people she was fascinated by.

"Family, redacted. Additional names, redacted. Schooling prior to joining the academy, redacted. You might as well wave a red flag in front of me," Jennifer said.

"Look at her face. Do you think she's frigid like your average Westroian or easy like the women on Korres?"

Jennifer clenched a fist, then let it go. "Language, Graham. I think she looks like a well-decorated officer of the UAP space force, and no more."

"Why did she go to that academy and not the one on our planet? Westroia is one of our planetary neighbours. She travelled halfway across the system."

"I imagine for the same reasons her entire life on Westroia is redacted. Or perhaps..." Jennifer said, eyes fixing on the most fascinating part of the report, "it's because of that level 5 psychometry. New Sydney would have shuffled her straight into intelligence. She would never have served aboard a scientific exploration vessel. How interesting you seem, Mr Solaris."

"You're guaranteed to want her for your crew," Graham said. "I'll be left in the cold."

"Very dramatic. This woman may not like me at all, and then where would we be?"

Graham scoffed. "Everyone gets along with you, eventually."

*

Later she convinced Graham to spend his energy in his own room, on the floor below, and stop bothering her while she was thinking. Even so, without Graham there to annoy her she became restless and started pacing the floor. A sign she should pace the station instead.

The hallway outside her room seemed full and busy. The Nectarens who'd been rescued from the political wreck that was the Moving Along Silently were staying on the same floor, personally guarded by one of the Vice-Marshal's staff. They looked up, skin glistening, big eyes peering at her humanoid body as she strode, sure-footed, toward the elevators. Three of them flashed the pale blue of nervousness.

The Lieutenant that McIntyre had assigned looked faintly panicked, the stiff movements of her faltering attempts at Nectaren Common Sign Language giving her away. She was probably the closest to conversant of anyone on McIntyre's staff, but not enough for effective communication.

"Space Captain Li," the lieutenant said, and bowed.

Jennifer entered the code for the lift, smiled, and greeted her in return.

The Nectarens were watching. McIntyre knew Jennifer's fraught history with Nectaren peoples, so she supposed that letting them stay on the same level of the station was some kind of test.

Two lifts arrived at once. With easy arm movements Jennifer signed to the Nectarens, first the sign for 'Welcome to our humble abode', and then with quick hands, 'My name? Captain Li', before quickly moving into one lift and banging her hands on the button for level four.

She left the other lift for them, so they all could travel in peace.

*

With hands behind her back, Solaris paced up and down the confines of the small walkway. The Moving Along Silently, her home for several years, was now nothing more than scrap metal. Captain Savage was in no condition to command.

She felt her career, her life, was in limbo, with no good answers as to why.

Dr Pill walked out of the Captain's room, wiping his hands on a small towel. He seemed to have become strangely sweaty since they'd arrived at the station, like a man who could not stop feeling the heat of that burning room. Ridiculous. He should check himself for endocrine disorders to avoid having to wipe his bodily fluids on a towel so often. His constant need to wipe his hands was scraping at the edge of Solaris's nerves.

"The outlook isn't good," Dr Pill said. He used the towel to wipe at his face as well. The air in this level of the station was set to the same blandly cool temperature as all the ships members of the UAP space forces served on. How could there be any need to wipe sweat from his face?

"No?" Richards asked, pale-faced, sitting as he was on one of the pale orange velvet bench seats that undoubtedly matched the decor of the civilian hotel on a lower floor.

"The Captain won't be returning to duty any time soon," Dr Pill said. "Even if he could walk on his own, they'd forcibly retire him. It's for the best. I don't know that I want to be in this force any more, either."

"What will they do with us?" Richards asked. His voice was small and pitiful.

Dr Pill gripped his towel and leaned against the wall. "They'll reassign everyone who stays on, and you'll be grateful for your new assignment, or they'll rush you out. If you're lucky you'll get to work on another ship. If not, administration somewhere."

Richards was leaned over, eyes on his own feet, slowly clawing at his own hands as he listened.

"Sit up straight, lieutenant," Solaris ordered.

He complied, immediately, but set his eyes to stare at the grey wall in front of him instead.

Dr Pill sighed. "McIntyre's gofer told me both Captain Smith and Vice-Marshal Su's daughter are here, so you may be lucky yet."

"I don't want to serve under some nepotism pick who doesn't know how to handle how to handle a ship and gets me killed," Richards said. An annoyingly loud outburst, after speaking in such annoyingly quiet tones for the previous thirty eight minutes.

"Nobody gets this far by nepotism, boy," Dr Pill said.

Solaris continued to pace.

"And what of Lady Free?" she asked.

Dr Pill looked at her with a dull look of surprise. "She'll go where Captain Savage goes. I thought you knew that."

Even more ridiculous. Solaris unclasped her hands from behind her back and pushed her way into Captain Savage's room. The lighting was unnecessarily dim inside and Lady Free sat in a chair beside the captain's bed, typing something into a data pad.

"Why are you not choosing to continue as the captain of your own ship?" Solaris asked.

"I could discipline you for speaking to me like this," Lady Free said, voice sharpening like a threat.

"Do as you will, Lady. You are smart and skilled at managing a ship, and have a special talent for creating loyalty in those that follow you. To not continue your career in the space force is a waste. I know you have captained ships before. Certainly, Captain Savage is exemplary at what he does, but your rank is the same as his and your record as spectacular. Why do you still follow him even when it leads you out of the force?"

Lady Free raised her eyebrows. "Why did you work under his command for a full decade, long after it stopped benefiting the upward movement of your career?"

"That is a ridiculous question and I will not answer it."

"Is it?"

"I cannot be what you are. I am not someone people can easily respect."

"Because you are soft and sensitive," Lady Free said, and her voice was so calm Solaris could almost believe that she didn't mean it as a cruelty. "I did not start my career in a soft and sensitive era like the one we live in. I belong in the violent world of the past." She put the data pad down. It looked to hold a loose draft of a letter of resignation. "I have led, but I do not want to lead anymore unless I can also follow him. You are young. One day you'll understand this kind of loyalty."

That is something Solaris could not believe.

She walked out, as aware of her rudeness in refusing to conduct that conversation within the rules of proper protocol as she was when she started it on the way in, and moved up the hall at speed.

Johnson was down the hallway near the service elevator, his hands clenched into reddening fists.

"This wouldn't have happened if we hadn't let those squiddies on board," he muttered. Clearly incapable of learning that nobody wanted to hear.

"Be quiet, Johnson," Solaris said.

She was barred from using the service elevator, of course. They were not meant to leave that level of the station. Nobody had handed her the security codes.

That did not mean she didn't have them. Information security on Mid Port was even worse than she'd heard. She punched in the code and waited for the lift to arrive and take her to see Veronica Menken, with her last view of the floor of Johnson's shocked face as he stood and watched her press the elevator doors close.

*

Solaris embarked from the elevator as if she were meant to be on the floor she was on, and tugged her uniform shirt down so she'd look more neat and tidy. So she'd look professional and not at all like she was disobeying orders.

Nobody else was in the warm, carpeted hallway. Walls that same pale orange as the bench seat on level 11, with doorways painted a dark yellow, and with the kind of lights that Solaris believed her spiritual leader on Westroia with have called "soft mood lighting".

Solaris knocked on the door to the room she knew Veronica Menken was being kept in and waited to be let in.

After a delay Veronica opened the door. She appeared to be unguarded.

"Please," Veronica said, and opened the door wider so Solaris could walk past. Her hair was still perfectly styled but her face had been scrubbed of make-up. Other than the clarity of the purple tinge under her eyes the difference to her normal presentation was minimal, though Solaris assumed the refusal to wear foundation was emotionally significant in some way she couldn't understand.

The room beyond the door was blandly well-appointed in the way of hotels but smaller than Solaris expected. A bed, a monitor playing the station's own channel full of endless advertisements for nearby tourist attractions, a reading lamp illuminating an embossed menu. The far wall had empty bookshelves and the overhead light was of the kind that could never replicate the experience of a sunny day, though it struggled to try. The kind of decor that indicated the ideal customer was a mainline human on a business trip and not anyone that required any real stimulation.

Solaris closed the door behind her.

Veronica looked up and started to cry. "Nobody will tell me what happened."

Solaris froze. This she had not prepared for. "There is no need for an emotional reaction to the situation."

"I can't help it. I feel so helpless. Nobody will help me understand what happened on that trip and now nobody here talks to me. There was a guard before but all he did was grunt at me and rush out when something beeped."

"That does explain why it was so easy for me to break in," Solaris said.

"Do you know anything more than I do?"

"Not much," Solaris admitted. "And the little more I do know would not help you. That there was a saboteur on-board is certain. That I cannot narrow down the suspects unless I access more information, and will not be allowed to access that information, is equally certain."

Veronica stepped close to Solaris. "How can you live like this, never being told what you need to know?"

Solaris raised an eyebrow in surprise. "It is rare for me not to be told what I need to know. These are exceptional circumstances, Ms Menken."

"I wish you would call me Veronica."

Solaris turned away. "As I have assessed your situation, it would be wise for me to leave."

"Oh, I'm just happy you're not hurt," Veronica said in a watery voice.

She reached up to grasp Solaris's shoulder, and Solaris was so surprised at Veronica Menken taking that liberty with her personal space that she didn't move away quickly enough to avoid her rising up for a kiss.

Memories exploded into Solaris's mind. At once, she was here in a bland hotel room, eyes wide, and moving through Veronica's memories, there with her as she ate a bland pastry while watching the television, and there with her as she waited in Dr Pill's medical bay for the ship to land at the station, and there with her as she paced and waited in her ship-board quarters like a caged animal.

And earlier, earlier, while she grasped Humphrey Menken by the lapels of his coat and kissed him, too.

One second was more than enough. Solaris pushed back and wiped her mouth.

Veronica stood, shaking, still with her hands up from where she'd grasped Solaris's shoulders to drag her down. "I... I'm sorry..."

"No, I'm sorry, Mrs Menken. I gave you the wrong impression. Grieving widows are of no particular interest to me. I only wanted to ensure the safety of a valuable witness."

Solaris left the room and shut the door behind her, just as Veronica started to respond with further noise.

Solaris stood and held the door closed behind her until her breathing slowed down. She stepped away towards the elevator, then stopped again to tug her uniform shirt down into place again. Even with her thermal under-layer she was a little bit cold in the hallway.

The sounds of Mrs Menken trying to speak through the door behind her died away, but there was another sound in the hallway, a conspicuous throat clearing.

Solaris looked to her left – the sound belonged to another member of the UAP space force, a captain judging by the insignia on the shoulder of their dress uniform.

Whoever they were, they looked warm and comfortable, entirely at ease with where they stood.

"I don't believe you're meant to be here, Commander Solaris," they said. Was that amusement she detected in that person's voice?

"Nor do I mean to be here." Solaris turned toward the service elevator, aware the civilian elevator wouldn't go to level 11 while they were stuck there. Equally aware her ability to survive this situation with her career intact was entirely in this stranger's hands. "You have the advantage of me. You know my name but I don't know yours."

"But you will." The stranger leaned over and punched her own code into the service elevator, then winked. "Give my greetings to Lachlan Pill. And while you do that, I believe I will investigate the shocking lack of guards around Madam Menken's room."

*

Mrs Menken seemed less pleased to have Jennifer's help finding a replacement guard than she might have expected. Obviously she'd been through a lot, and Jennifer wasn't remotely interested in speculating within Graham's earshot about what relationship the ambassador's widow might have with the mysterious Commander Solaris, but to sulk and say, "If you must," at the suggestion that a new guard would be obtained soon was surely a surprise.

Graham was even less pleased to be called up as her interim guard, at least until Jennifer could find someone better.

"Come on, Jen. Can't you get me a job more important than this?"

"Sure, I could. McIntyre doesn't care who guards the lady's door as long as someone does. I'm going to look for someone more capable."

He folded his arms and leaned back. "I'll do better at it than you."

"Certainly my talent for disappointing women continues unabated."

"Just go. I'll stand here looking at the peach-toned walls."

She slapped his upper arm, rough and friendly. "Apricot, I'd say, Graham. Apricot and gold."