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“Sorry?” Carson questioned.

“Remus
12,” she said in a far more forceful tone, “we need to go back. We
need to go home. Remus 12.”

An
almost electric silence spread between them, then she heard Carson
type something on a panel. “Okay,” he said simply.

That
single little word sent incredible relief rushing through her, and
she let out a whimper.

“Nida,
it's going to be okay,” Carson tried again. “What's happening to
you . . . ? We will figure it out.”

She
finally tipped her head back, looking at him. “I know what's
happening. We have to return home. Remus 12.”

He
regarded her with pale cheeks and a drawn, tired look to his gaze.
Then he nodded. “We are going there now. You
disabled . . . I mean the entity disabled those
Barbarian vessels. It looks like they will not be able to follow.
It even took out their communication relays, so they won't be able
to get off a message to any of their friends. I would send a
communication back to the Academy letting them know that the
Barbarians have violated our territory again, but there's something
wrong with our communication relay too.”

“It
has been disabled,” Nida pointed out plainly, her voice calm and
even.

Carson
turned back to her, a very careful look on his face as his gaze
darted all over her. “What?”

“You
must not contact anyone. No more interruptions. Remus
12.”

He
took a long moment to consider her, swallowed hard, then nodded.
“Don't you worry; we will get there.
But . . . just leave her alone,” he
managed.

Nida
knew whom he was talking to. The entity.

“We
can get you back there. I'll give you my word, but leave her
alone,” he said, now speaking through gritted teeth.

“We do
no harm. Remus 12,” Nida said again, the entity speaking through
her.

“Yes,”
was all Carson could manage. Though he turned back to the computer
panel before him to type other things into it, eventually he turned
and he faced her once more.

His
eyes were wide, and he appeared to be trying to take in every
single centimetre of her. “Are you still in there?” he asked
softly.

Though
the entity had intermittent control of her, she managed to nod.
“I'm fine,” she said in a tight whisper. “We just have to get,” she
began.

“To
Remus 12. We are on it. It'll be a couple of hours. Then we will be
there. Now I just have to . . . ,” he took some
time to turn around and survey the bridge, “find some way of fixing
the rest of the ship.”

“This
ship will make the distance,” Nida pointed out in a cold and
efficient tone, “we will keep it running. You must do nothing but
wait with us.”

Carson
opened his mouth, appearing ready to say something, but whatever it
was, it died on his lips.

Then
silence came.

Sick,
cloying silence that stretched between them and stifled the scene
like choking smoke from above.

Nida
was the one that broke it. She couldn't take it any more. The
stress, the horror. She tried to get up, but she couldn't. So
instead, she turned her sorrowful gaze on him. “I'm sorry,” she
croaked. “I didn't mean to. I couldn't control myself.”

He
looked up at her sharply, and somehow, despite what she'd done,
there was no blame in his eyes. Just concern. Incredible, powerful
concern. “Nobody will blame you,” he said slowly.

“It
just needs to return home,” Nida said as she finally unhooked her
arms from around her knees and stared at her hands. They were still
bright blue, and if she concentrated, she could see those flashes
of energy pull up from her skin only to sink further down into her
palm and fingers like worms rising up from the earth only to
wriggle back down again.

“Why?”
Carson asked. “Why do you need to return home?”

“Because if we do not, we will become corrupted,” Nida
answered. Her voice was half her own and half the entity's. Half
completely shocked and half completely sure of itself. Suffice to
say, her tone shook up and down and her voice rattled in her
chest.

But
that did not stop Carson from understanding her words apparently,
because his eyes drew wide. “Corrupted? What does that
mean?”

“We
are not from this place. We are from beyond. We must return to our
home. If we stay here, we corrupt.” Nida still sat with her back
pressed up against the wall, and she was thankful for the
reassurance it gave her.

“But
what does corrupted mean?” Carson pressed again.

“Broken, changed, contorted, twisted, corrupted,” Nida
said.

It was
clear Carson couldn't understand, because he simply shook his head,
finally pressing too grimy fingers to his brow and sticking his
fingernails into the skin. He was clearly stressed, tired, and from
the way he held his left shoulder, it appeared he was injured too.
“Please, try and help me to understand. I'll do whatever you need
me to, but I need to understand. How do you mean you will be
corrupted? What will happen to you?”

“Do
not ask what will happen to us, ask what will happen to you,” Nida
found herself saying. The entity had full control of her voice now,
and the calm it used to speak its words made them all the
creepier.

Carson
dropped his hands from his head, no longer massaging his brow, and
instead staring at Nida with a clearly worried expression.
“Sorry?”

“We
will break your space. We do not belong here. If we remain, we
become corrupted, and we corrupt everything around us, twisting it
towards us, changing it,” Nida explained.

Carson
stood a lot straighter, and the look in his eye became almost
terrifyingly attentive. “You mean that was what was happening to
Nida on Earth? That's why those TI objects were being attracted to
her?”

“Yes.
Our presence within her distorts her implant, causing what you call
TI objects to pull toward her. But this effect will eventually
extend to all others. We cannot control this. We do not belong
here. We must get home. Remus 12,” Nida added again
needlessly.

Carson
nodded, but it was clear that what he really wanted to do was shake
his head and shout about how damn insane this was. “And once we get
to the planet, you will . . . leave?” He stared
at Nida, but it also appeared as if he was trying to look through
her, quite possibly at the entity.

“Once
we reach our home, we will leave,” Nida confirmed.

Carson
looked ready to sigh, but just as he began to, he pressed his lips
tightly closed. “And Nida? Will you leave her alive? Will she be
okay?” His tone was pressured, quick, and sharp.

“There
will be no damage,” Nida noted in the calm voice of the entity,
“but the longer we remain, the longer we corrupt. We must return
home soon.”

Carson
nodded, and finally he sighed. “Well, all you have to do is hold on
for several hours. Can you do that? Or are you going to
start . . . corrupting the rest of the ship?
Are the panels going to be ripped from the walls and sent flying
towards you?”

Nida
shook her head. “We can control ourselves. The closer we return to
Remus 12, the easier it will become.”

Carson
actually closed his eyes, planted a hand over them, and took
several enormous, deep breaths. “That is the first piece of good
news I have heard today. Right, we'll just ride this out. Nida,
we'll get there soon. Don't worry,” he added quickly.

“I'm
not worried,” she said in her own voice.

Carson
dropped his hand and blinked an eye open. “Really?” There was an
incredulous note to his voice.

“I'm
completely freaking out,” she clarified.

He
gave the briefest, smallest of half smiles. “So am I. But it will
all be over soon,” he promised.

That
promise was like a warm hug, something to centre her, something to
calm her, and god knows she needed that right now.

Then
she remembered something very, very important. “Earth, the Academy,
is everybody okay? What did I do?”

Carson
put a hand up to stop her. “Everybody is fine. Nobody was hurt.
You . . . the entity, managed to exploit the
Endgame Manoeuvre. Basically, it infiltrated the entire Academy
secure computer network, pumped the thing full of power, and
transported every single person off Academy grounds, giving you the
opportunity you needed to escape. Nobody got hurt,” he
repeated.

Slowly
Nida let her mouth drop open. “Endgame Manoeuvre? I did
that?”

“No,
the entity did,” he said pointedly. “Nobody is going to blame you
for anything,” he added.

She
wanted to believe that, but she didn't know if she could. Carson
seemed to be ready to trust in her and to believe in her, but she
wasn't so sure the Admiralty would agree.

Still,
perhaps now wasn't the time to worry about that. Her attention had
to be focused on one thing: returning the entity to Remus12.
Everything else could wait.

Or
perhaps it couldn't. She jumped to her feet. “The Barbarians, god,
what did I do to them? Are they okay?”

Carson
looked at her very carefully. “They aren't going to bother us,” he
said diplomatically.

She
pushed her head to the side as she stared at him askance. “You mean
they all retreated back to their ships?” she asked
naïvely.

“No,”
he said simply. “You dealt with the threat,” he added
opaquely.

She
started to feel sick, very sick. “Where are they?” She turned to
head off the bridge.

Carson
took several steps towards her, and went to reach out a hand to
grab her arm, but stopped. Instead, he strode around her, planting
himself firmly between her and the bridge door. “The threat has
been dealt with. The Barbarians are vicious, vicious enemies. They
were going to take this ship and kill the both of us. The entity
dealt with them,” he said simply. “Nobody will blame you,” he
added.

She
receded, staring at that very careful look in his eyes. “I killed
them,” she whispered harshly.

He
didn't move a muscle and neither did he say anything.

“I
killed them,” she repeated. “Jesus Christ, I killed
them.”

“Nida,
if the entity had not intervened, this ship would have been stolen
by the Barbarians, and both you and I would either be dead or on
our way to be sold into slavery. And I really don't want to go into
how horrible the life of a Barbarian slave would be. The problem
was dealt with. You didn't attack their ship; they attacked ours.
They started this. They were not willing to compromise. The entity
dealt with it. That's the end of the story.”

She
shook her head.

God,
it felt like the only thing she could do. It felt like simply by
shaking her head she could make everything go away.

But
she couldn't.

She
couldn't deny the reality.

She
had killed the Barbarian attackers that had boarded this ship, she
had severely disabled the two Barbarian vessels, and god knows
whether she had left them life support.

“Nida,
don't be so naïve,” Carson said through clenched teeth, “you are in
the Academy. When you graduate,” he said, hesitating on the word
when as if he really wanted to say if, “you will become a full
member of the United Galactic Coalition Army. You will devote your
life to protecting those of others. And that comes with a price.
You don't get to pretend to be nice any more. You don't get to hang
back when somebody else is in danger. You have to put your life on
the line, and sometimes your peace of mind, to do what has to be
done. If the Barbarians got hold of this vessel, it would equip
them with what they would need to complete far more devastating
attacks. And if they had got their hands on the entity,” he said in
a far quieter voice, “I can't even imagine what would have
happened.”

She
understood what he was trying to say, she really did, but it didn't
help. She couldn't get past the fact that she had murdered
people.

And
yes, she was a member of the Galactic Coalition Academy, and yes,
she knew that if she graduated, she would become a full soldier in
the United Galactic Coalition Army. But somehow, she had never put
the two together. Somehow, she had never really appreciated how
dangerous space travel could be, and how it could not only threaten
one's life, but one's moral integrity too.

She
felt so very sick that she found herself rocking backwards, and
then, without warning, collapsed to her knees.

Carson
rushed forward to help her, but he seemed too hesitant to actually
touch a hand to her shoulder and arm. Instead, he hovered beside
her, concern igniting in his gaze as he searched her own.
“Everything will be fine once we get to Remus 12. Nobody will blame
you,” he repeated.

She
tried to nod, but she couldn't. Instead, she swallowed hard. Her
hands were shaking, and so were her arms and legs, and no matter
what she did, she couldn't stop them.