They Called Me Defective, Until I Tamed the Interstellar Commander novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Standing Rule

The alarm hit on the sixth night, and it was not the red lamp.

It was the hull alarm, sounding in every corridor at once.

I fell out of my bunk with my boots in my hand.

Dax's voice came over the intercom, flat and fast.

"Raiders at Halden Rift. Eight ships, one transport caught between us and them. All hands to stations. Anchor, stay in your bunk."

I pulled the boots on anyway.

The door slid open on a corridor full of running people, and Dax himself came around the corner at a sprint.

"Back inside," he said. "Standing rule. An anchor never goes near the bridge in a Surge."

"Why?"

"The last one froze there. He broke her wrist before he knew who she was."

"Dax, how bad is it?"

"He's been in the chair ten minutes. He's good for twenty."

"And then?"

Dax looked at me and did not answer.

He ran on toward the bridge, and I stood in the corridor with my own pulse loud in my ears.

I had not walked to the Commander in the Hall because I was brave.

I had walked because there was nowhere else to go.

This was different.

If I stayed in my bunk and he lost his mind in the chair, then the one person on this ship who didn't mock me would be gone, and so would the only reason I was alive in this uniform.

I ran.

The bridge doors were open.

The bridge crew sat at their stations with their eyes on the main screen, and none of them turned around.

On the screen, eight raider ships were closing from the left.

Between them and the Meridian floated a slow, lit civilian transport with its engines dead.

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