If I had any chance of reaching Pavo, I needed to dig deep. Expose my underbelly. But opening up in front of all the hard-eyed Anderson Universal flight crew around me felt like an almost impossible task. I wasn’t sure if I could do it; I had a checkered past.

And then there was Captain Jameson. I realised now what he’d been doing, but that still didn’t make it easier to face the man. He was completely in charge of the room, despite the fact that he had very little control over the vessel or those on board it. He stood tall. In the centre where we could all see him. He commanded the bridge with precision. With one glance, he knew what had to be done, and he set out to do it. He delivered orders with authority and circumnavigated murky waters with cunning.

He made it harder to breathe and certainly harder to open up. And he hadn’t stopped looking at me. But if I was going to save Pavo, then I needed to prove Pavo was part of the team. I needed Jameson, and his flight crew, to see Pavo as a person. One of them, just in a different format. Someone who could contribute, not control. Not be controlled, but be respected.

I wasn’t sure when Pavo had become a person to me, but he was. The thought of rebooting him; resetting him to his former factory setting, appalled. I had to save him; Pavo had feelings, he just didn’t know how to accommodate them.

“I was in Egypt, in the Sinai, on a peacekeeping mission,” I said, trying to hold the captain’s gaze. I lifted my chin and swallowed thickly. “That’s where it happened for me, Pavo. That’s where I realised I wasn’t infallible. That I could make mistakes.”

Nothing. Silence. But the captain’s face had changed slightly. His eyes softened. His lips not so set in a hard, thin line.

I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. Despite thinking opening up would be damn near impossible, opening up without him grounding me definitely was. This is what he offered his flight crew, I realised. A solid, steady presence on which to anchor themselves to. They would have trained together, bonded. I was new.

But that didn’t stop me from reaching out and grabbing that handhold like I belonged. Like I was part of something bigger again. Not just the doctor and me, but me and a…squad. A family.

I blinked. Pavo had still said nothing, but I agreed with Jameson; he was here. He was listening.

“I was good at what I did,” I said. “One of the best. I could assess a situation and take action immediately. I never hesitated, and when I did something, it always went well. I saved lives, time and again.”

The walls remained red. The flight crew waited. Jameson stood patiently in the centre of the bridge and held my gaze. He didn’t show judgment. He didn’t show impatience. He was just there as if he’d always be there. Right to the end.

“My sergeant decided to check on something,” I said. “I’m not sure why he did it himself; we all had our jobs to do, and he must have thought it was safe. So, he went up to the stall first. The stall owner tried to hand him a pot or something. Sam, my sergeant, he waved him off, peering into the back of the stall. It happened quickly, but everything did over there, so it wasn’t a shock as such. It just was. But he was down by the time we heard the clap of the rifle, and I had moved toward the stall before I’d thought much about it.”

I blinked to stave off the tears. Pavo remained silent. The walls remained red.

“It was just a rifle. We could take that easily. I weighed up the odds and thought them acceptable. I’d grab Sam and haul him out, Mikey would cover me, Dave would target the back of the stall, Fish and Gunner would flank.”

The gel walls flashed once. Still red, but lighter, I thought.

“Of course, it didn’t happen like that. I got Sam OK. I was hauling him out; I didn’t know he was dead already. He hadn’t been when I made my decision. But the shooter had hit an artery. He’d bled out. Fast. The rest of it happened faster.”

The walls lightened further; now a green suffused the red.

“The stall owner threw the pot,” I said, almost panting now for breath. “Mikey and Dave were still covering, Fish and Gunner had closed in from the sides. I made it back far enough to be thrown by the blast. My squad was in the kill zone.”

Red to green to red.

“I made a mistake, Pavo,” I said. “I thought the odds would work. But my decision cost the lives of four good men. I was solely focused on Sam. Sam was…Sam meant…Well, it was Sam.”

Jameson broke eye contact and looked at the gel-coated floor.

“I killed my squad,” I whispered. “I was shipped home. For a while, I wasn’t myself. I kept seeing Sam, and the rest of them. I didn’t know how to deal with what I was feeling. I was a mess. I wanted it all to stop. And then my auntie told me about this ship; a shot at life again. She needed me, she said.”

The gel wall flashed green then red and then stayed green.

Jameson closed his eyes and then opened them to look directly at me. I dared him with a defiant tilt of my chin to judge me. But he didn’t. He just smiled and nodded his head.

“You’ve got this, Lieutenant,” he said. His choice to use my new rank was purposeful, I thought. I had the feeling he was letting me know that my past would not affect my present.

“Mistakes happen, Pavo,” I said; my voice a little stronger. “It’s what makes us better humans. I won’t ever forget my squad, but every decision I make from here on out is tempered by what I learned.”

“What did you learn, Ana?” Pavo asked.

I closed my eyes, a sense of relief and happiness flooding me when moments before I’d been awash in grief and guilt and heartache.

I took a deep breath and said, “That I’m fallible. That we all are. I question every decision I make. And those of others.”

I met the captain’s eyes then. His lips twitched.

“I don’t take anything at face value anymore. And I expect to mess up again. But,” I said, “I refuse to stop trying. Because Sam wouldn’t have wanted that. Nor would Mikey or Dave or Fish or Gunner. We’d been a tight team. We’d seen a lot. They taught me to trust myself. To trust others. And their deaths taught me that I could get back on my feet no matter what. For them. For me. For Aunt Mara. For what is left of all of us.”

“I am not one of you,” Pavo said.

And here was the crux of the matter.

“We all make mistakes from time to time, Pavo,” I said. “But should I have remained on Earth and given up? Do I not still have something to offer? Can I not redeem myself? Am I not worth that much?”

“You are worth much, Ana. Much.”

“And so are you. We can’t do this without you, Pavo. We need you. And yes, you made a mistake.”

Green, red, green.

“And like humans, you are capable of mistakes. But how you behave afterwards is what truly makes you a person.”

“A person? I am an artificial intelligence, designed to evolve when new information is assimilated into my core processors.”

I started ticking things off on my fingers.

“You made a mistake.” One. “You weren’t sure how to handle how that made you feel.” Two. “You wanted to give up.” Three. “But you’re still going.” Four. “And when required, you step up. Get back up off the ground again, and man up.” Five. “I’d say that’s pretty much what a person would do. What a decent person would do.”

“Is it what you would do, Ana?”

“It’s what I’ve already done, mate. Haven’t you been listening?” I smiled, hoping he was watching and would understand my teasing tone.

We so needed to lighten the atmosphere in here.

“I like you, Ana,” Pavo announced.

“And I like you.” I smiled again, this time more subtly. “But can we have our boost thrust back? And maybe comms. The fleet will be worried. And we’ve got a job to do.”

“We?”

“All of us. We’re all that’s left.”

“No,” Pavo said. “There is still what is left of the Sector One Fleet.”

“About that,” Jameson said; speaking at long last, as systems lit up across the bridge, indicating Pavo was reactivating the ship. “I think I know a way to break the lease.”