The way back to the computer core was silent but for Lieutenant Armstrong’s occasionally pain-filled breaths. He insisted on making the journey under his own steam. No one could help him. His shoulder and arm were badly flayed on one side and his hip and thigh on the other, making it impossible to walk beside him and offer any aid without further adding to his discomfort.

The captain carried his weapon for him. His face hard. His eyes haunted.

He’d handed my wrist comm back to me before we’d moved out. I hadn’t expected he would once I’d given it to him. I found him a difficult man to read.

I led the way, with Lieutenant Johnson right behind me. I wasn’t sure if his closeness was to offer protection should my father’s men have made it inside the tubes and surprised me, or because he like the captain still didn’t trust me.

But maybe I was winning the captain over. He had given me back my wrist comm, after all.

I started to climb up the glowing green ladder, aware that Armstrong was having difficulty well behind me. I tried not to get too far ahead of him and the captain. I’d just slowed near Deck C, where the green glowing gel wall branched off toward the computer core when the ship rocked beneath me.

It was so sudden and unexpected; I lost my grip. Johnson shouted out below me, frantically trying to catch himself on the ladder and flailing to catch me. His gun got knocked aside, slipping down his arm, until it was hanging on by the strap to his pinky. He had a choice. Keep the weapon or reach for me.

He chose the weapon. If I’d had time, I would have glared at him. As it was, I fell past too quickly to do anything else but scream.

My shoulder hit one side of the gel tube, and then my knee bounced off a ladder rung. And then I hit Lieutenant Armstrong.

Armstrong let out a sound of dreadful agony but somehow managed to keep hold of the ladder, half his body wrapped around one rung.

I bounced off his bad shoulder and then hit his good hipbone, jarring my head in the process. And then I was past him and falling again.

I hadn’t stopped screaming; the sound ricocheting around the tube we were all in. The gel walls glowed softly on all sides, mocking me. There was nothing calm or safe about my free fall.

And then Tremblay caught me. It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t painless. All the air was knocked out of my lungs, my chin hit his shoulder, his head hit the gel wall, we slipped down a rung and then another; knocking knees, and banging elbows, and grunting with exertion.

Finally, we stopped somewhere down by Deck D where we’d come from.

For a moment, neither of us said a thing. And then the ship rocked with what had to be an explosion.

“What the hell?” Tremblay said, hauling me up his side and getting me close enough to grab the rung he was also holding.

My trembling fingers wrapped around the gel bar. The ship shuddered again, and my knuckles turned white. My feet found a rung to stand on, not the same one the captain was on; he was taller than me by a significant margin. And then he surrounded me with his body. Pressing me against the ladder, not allowing me to slip out from under him. His hands gripped the rungs over the top of my hands, and his thighs bracketed both of my thighs.

“It’s OK,” he said when it was anything but.

The ship rocked and groaned, and something that sounded distinctly like fire roaring sounded out from down one of the tunnels.

“What the hell is it, Captain?” Johnson yelled from way above us.

Tremblay gripped my hands harder, almost painfully so, but I wasn’t complaining. The tunnel had begun to warp all around me, and my vision had started to blur. I lowered my head to the rung before me and closed my eyes, panting through the sudden nausea that had started.

“Artificial gravity is fluctuating,” Tremblay said.

“Jesus, it sucks,” Armstrong muttered sounding terrible.

And then the ladder groaned beneath us ominously.

“Get off! Get off the ladder!” Tremblay barked.

He pulled me sideways, into the nearest tunnel, which happened to be Deck D again. Above us Johnson scrambled into Deck C’s tunnel and then his head poked out and he yelled at Armstrong to hurry up. The poor wounded officer struggled to stay on the ladder, let alone move up it. But the gel walls suddenly stopped glowing green, and the ladder made a noise that did not sound at all healthy.

And in a second or two, Armstrong found the energy required to make it close enough to Johnson, who reached out and grabbed his arm; saving him.

The ladder dissolved. The gel walls stopped glowing any colour. Darkness descended.

And somewhere onboard Aquila an explosion sounded. Followed by a noise I had only ever heard in the movies.

“Torpedoes,” Tremblay said, still holding me close to him, his breath heating my cheek and ear. “We’ve just fired torpedoes at someone.”

I closed my eyes and tried not to think about who had given that order.

But I knew who and there was no denying that knowledge.

I pushed away from the captain and crawled along the tunnel, and then sat down as the ship shuddered and groaned and the swish-thump-pop of a torpedo being fired nearby surrounded.

My father had done this.

My father had started a war.

My father. How did I live with this?

The captain shouted something up the ladderless tube to his men and then crawled up to my side.

“Hey,” he said as the ship continued to make god-awful sounds. I couldn’t do this anymore.

I rocked where I sat, back and forward and back and forward, and started to hum a tune my mother had taught me when I was young.

“Adi,” Tremblay tried.

I ignored him.

“Adi,” he repeated reaching for me.

I struck out, swiping at his hands and arms and blindly hitting whatever I could reach.

“Stop it!” he growled and instantly overpowered me. He held me still by my wrists for a long moment and then he brought me closer.

One hand wrapped around both my wrists and then the other pressed my head into his shoulder.

“Breathe,” he murmured. “Breathe, wildcat.”

My whole body shuddered against his as he stroked my hair and held me close, my wrists confined in his large hand, safely tucked between us.

Eventually, the ship stopped shaking and rocking, and only the occasional groan could be heard. And definitely no more torpedoes.

“Who…?” I managed, unable to say more.

“I don’t know,” Tremblay said, still stroking my hair. “Could be some of the vessels in the fleet have fought back. We’re still here, so…” It didn’t look good for their success, then.

“I can’t do this anymore,” I whispered.

He said nothing.

I shook my head, feeling the stiffness of Tremblay’s uniform against my cheek.

“I can’t…” I said, lifting my face to peer through the gloom at him.

Somewhere safety lighting had come on, so I could see shadows. I could see the glint of his eyes as he studied me.

“This has to stop,” I said.

“What has to stop, Adi?” he asked.

“This. My father.”

I pulled my hands free of his grip; he let me. And then I reached down and took off my wrist comm. I stared at it. Aquila’s gift to me. Then I picked up one of Tremblay’s hands, turned it over, and placed the wrist comm in his palm.

I closed his fingers over the device and then looked up at him.

“Please,” I said. “Make this stop.” Stop my father.

He stared at me. My hands still cupping his closed one, the wrist comm secured behind strong fingers. Our faces inches apart.

We stayed like that for a long moment and then my eyes started to drift down toward his lips.

It was entirely involuntary and totally unexpected. But I stared at his lips, and I wished that he’d kiss me. That he’d show me something other than mistrust. I needed a friend. I needed something.

Tremblay let out a long breath of air and pulled back. He stared at the comm and then looked back up at me.

“Well, wildcat,” he said, “you sure as hell know how to make a man question his sanity.”

I stared at him.

He stared back at me.

And then Aquila said, over the ship-wide comms, “Bring out your dead. Bring out your dead.” Like some creepy mechanical grim reaper.

I shifted closer to the captain. He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and tucked me into his side. The comm unit was already on his wrist, I noted.

Tremblay kissed the top of my head; not exactly what I had hoped for. And then he said, “Let’s find a way back up to our deck. Armstrong needs us.”

Bring out your dead, I thought. How many more would die because of my father?

How many more before he was stopped?

How many?