She’d fallen in love with me. And that was the last time I was thinking of that. There were more pressing matters.

She’d fallen in love with me.

I smirked at myself and pressed Adi’s wrist comm to the lift access panel.

“It still works,” she said.

“Yeah,” I agreed, studying it. All other wrist comms would be tied into the ship, which had been tied into Aquila. They would be offline until we got around to rebooting them. Only essential systems were running at present. Rather like an emergency setting. But the wrist comms?

I shook my head. A puzzle for another day.

The lift doors opened on the Deck A central hub, and we stepped out when we saw López.

“Good,” she said, all business. “You’re here.”

I arched my brow at her.

“This way, sir,” she said, walking toward the bridge.

“Any mercs?” I asked her back.

“None. Scattered at my guess. Just like Mandy said.” She looked over her shoulder, sharing a nod of greeting with the spook.

For a brief moment, the thought of how many had perished on H Deck was supplanted with pride at how far my officers had come. They’d risen to the challenge. They’d fought hard and long.

They’d adapted to all situations, including the addition of a CIA agent in our midst.

I just needed to adjust to a new day with four hundred dead.

I swallowed thickly. We’d know soon how many had survived. If any had. I could only hope, those in their cabins had been exempt from Aquila’s wrath. The AI had not been all-powerful; some of the cabins had been outside his gel wall manipulation.

But the central hub.

I clenched my fists as I followed behind López.

The corridor that led to the bridge grew nearer, but Andrea didn’t slow down. I did. Force of habit. We’d dealt with the mercs. We’d dealt with Aquila. One last hurdle and I was not dropping the torch here.

“Commander,” I said.

She stopped when she heard the censure in my voice.

She looked at me and then at all the rest of the officers that had congregated around us on arrival on this deck. Then her eyes shifted to Mandy and the two officers from Pavo and Corvus. And finally, she looked at Adi.

Ah, damn. She’d been finding her courage.

“He’s not here,” she said, for Adi, but the words could have been in answer to me.

Adi’s teeth ground together.

“Have you found him?” she asked, voice bleak but still somehow so strong.

“I don’t think he was in the leaseholder’s quarters either,” López said in answer.

Oh, this just got better and better, didn’t it? I reached out and touched Adi’s hand. She gripped mine as soon as she felt the contact.

“Come on,” López said, sounding resigned. “You’d better see this.”

She walked into the corridor that led to the bridge and we all reluctantly followed. The bridge doors stood open. No mercs guarding them. And no emergency lockdown either.

They should have locked down when Aquila was destroyed.

I let out a slow breath of air, feeling like the walls were closing in on me. I wasn’t going to like whatever it was López had found.

How much more death?

We crossed the bridge threshold, and I immediately looked toward the tactical console. My former home in here. But it wasn’t anymore, so with a sad twist to my heart, I looked at the captain’s chair.

It was covered in blood.

Captain Moore hadn’t been in it when he’d been killed. His blood had been wicked away by the gel floor. Along with Commander Lawrence’s.

I stared at that chair and didn’t want to voice what I knew had happened.

“Any way to be sure?” I asked.

“Once we knew the mercs were missing, I sent Flux down to the medbay,” Andrea said. “Doc should be on his way here if he survived this mess. He’ll be able to confirm it.”

I turned to look at Adi, to see if she’d understood what was happening.

She had. I could see it there on her face. So pale. So angry. So upset.

“Adi,” I said, softly.

“It’s all right,” she mumbled and walked to the closest chair and sat down. Thankfully it wasn’t covered in blood.

Saitō stepped forward, then, and said, “I might be able to get comms back up.” Of course, he’d want to let his ship know the trouble had passed.

I nodded my head.

“I’ll help him,” Kereama said, garnering a raised eyebrow from Saitō. “What?” she said. “I can help. I’m a good helper.”

I left them to it, my attention back on Adi. My heart hurt.

Hers was confused and broken.

Her father was still her father even if he’d been nothing like a father to her.

Dr Romano walked in. In one swift scan of the room, he’d noted the occupants; those who had permission to be here and those who didn’t. His eyes didn’t linger long on Adi or Mandy, but they did on Saitō and Kereama.

“Captain Tremblay,” he said. “I always knew you’d do it.”

“Do what?” I asked.

“Get back our ship.”

But at what cost?

“I didn’t do it alone,” I said, instead of voicing my heartache.

The doc looked at me for an extended heartbeat and then approached the command chair. He stared at it for a moment and then let out a deep breath of air.

In seconds he’d scanned the blood and compared the DNA to his files.

“It’s his,” he said. “Nathan Price. And more than enough to prove death.”

Adi let out a little noise and then shot out of her chair. I was across the room before she’d managed to take two steps toward the bridge door.

“I’m here,” I said. “I’ve got you.”

She clung to me, her whole body shuddering. Tears streamed down her cheeks making her eyes rimmed red. The others either watched on or not, I didn’t care. I may have been their captain, but I would always be there for Adi. Like she’d been there for me. That might not be how it was supposed to work. But my loving Adi would not steal a thing from the rest of the ship.

Loving Adi made me a better man. Loving Adi allowed me to keep going after so many deaths.

“Shhh,” I said, stroking her back as she let out a gasp of breath.

I realised a second later that it wasn’t a sob. Her fists were clenched against my armour.

“Damn him,” she muttered. “Damn him.”

“Adi?” I pulled back and looked down at her. Was this normal?

She wiped at her eyes. There had been tears. She was hurting. But it wasn’t just for the loss of a parent. Adi was hurting from something much darker than that.

“I’ll never know why,” she said, looking at me as though I could provide the answer.

I shook my head.

“My dear,” Doc Romano said, approaching from the side, “it is enough to know that you had no part of this. It was all on him. His neuroses. His psychotic episodes. His mental instability. I’ve seen his brain scans,” he added quietly. “Aquila took them.”

Oh, hell. That was new.

“I think the AI suspected the leaseholder…” I liked that the doc didn’t call Nathan her father when talking about this. “…was quite simply mad. And it dealt with what it saw as a potential problem. They were designed to protect us, guide us, you see. It is conceivable that at some level that function still remained. Corrupted, of course. But to Aquila, Nathan Price was a hazard that could be contained. Albeit in a rather brutal fashion.”

Doc looked over at the command chair and then glanced away again.

“In any case,” he went on, “left to his own devices, the leaseholder would have become increasingly unstable. Paranoia. Schizophrenia. Any number of mental illnesses would have befallen him. Was there something in his past that might have set this off? Say an incident he regretted? An emotional event that was the catalyst for a change in behaviour?”

Adi nodded her head. She looked worn out. She looked numb. She looked how I felt.

“He…” She cleared her throat. “He killed or had my mother killed. He did it. I’m sure. He changed after that. Cold. He was so cold. And cunning. He took delight in hurting me indirectly.”

Romano looked like a caring grandfather as he nodded his head and reached out for Adi’s hands. He held them in his steadily, and said, “A man like your father, I should think, did not handle regrets easily. He regretted your mother’s death and his debilitated state of mind created an atmosphere ripe for mental instability. This, what has happened here, was not your fault, nor could it have been avoided. It is a blot on our society that mental health does not have the resources it requires to be cared for.”

He wasn’t saying Nathan Price was a good man who had done bad things because he was sick. He was saying Adi had not had the tools needed to help her father and could not be held responsible for him.

I hoped Adi could understand that.

And then, I realised, that statement could apply to me.

I wasn’t sure if I was ready to release the weight of guilt for all the deaths. But I might have been ready to share it with Aquila and the man who had corrupted him so thoroughly.

I decided, then, that I’d make sure Adi understood she was not responsible for any of this, and I’d even try to consider the possibility that I didn’t have much of a choice either.

A small, dark part of me whispered that there is always a choice. And perhaps there had been. But at the time, I’d not seen it. I’d simply seen all those lives that we could save if we stopped Aquila right then.

I met the doc’s eyes and nodded my head, thanking him silently. He nodded back.

Adi slumped against me, exhausted, practically asleep already.

“Got it,” Saitō announced into the solemn silence.

I glanced over at the science officer.

“Got what, Lieutenant Commander?” I asked.

“Comms is back,” he said.

It was over. We’d dealt with the mercs and the crazy computer. Aquila had dealt with the mayor and the leaseholder. There was no one left to fight, and definitely not another AU vessel.

No more deaths.

“Fleet-wide hail,” I said, sweeping Adi up into my arms.

“Channel open, Captain,” Saitō said.

I looked at all my officers. I couldn’t have been prouder of them. And then I looked down at the woman in my arms. Captain’s quarters, I thought. But first…

“This is Captain Hugo Tremblay of the AUS Aquila. Stand down. We have the ship. Stand down. Anderson Universal has the ship. Tremblay out.”