Fracture - Book One of the Glass Galaxy Trilogy

Chapter 11: Kaeya Part 1

"Captain Kaeya!" she barked, her hand glued to her forehead in a salute, "It's a relief to see you up and about again."

I waved idly to her as I sat down at my seat, "At ease, Haelee. How did it go after the battle?"

She procured a tablet from one of the pockets in her uniform, and began reading off post-battle statistics. Two deaths, fourteen major injuries, seven minor injuries -one of which was me-, and moderate-to-severe damage to twenty-one Maestros.

Over three thousand enemy combatants killed.

"How's the Prodigy?" I asked half to distract myself from the staggering amount of death we had reaped.

"Technician Sentinel Nathanael has already completed his repairs on the Prodigy," answered Haelee, still talking in her stiff, overly professional manner, "and he is now in the process of repairing the damage to the Maestros."

"Anything else to report?" I asked as I opened up the command interface built into my chair.

She hesitated for a moment, "The local residents, Captain. They uh, they're calling you a 'heroine'."

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed my entire bridge crew turning to look at me, plying me for a response with their expectant gazes. I shrugged, "They can call me whatever they want, if it gives them hope."

An ADA appeared on my left side, leaning casually against the railing in front of my chair. The female voice that came from the ADA was soft and gentle, like that of a mother's when talking to her child, and it carried no trace of its artificial nature, "It's not just the locals who're calling you that, Kaeya."

I looked up from my command interface, mulling over Elestranda's words. "It's certainly come to fit you," she added.

I shook my head, "I'm not some hero that's going to save the galaxy." With one hand I lifted my shirt to show the bandages beneath it, though in the back of my mind I knew that it was more for my benefit than the benefit of those looking at me, "I'm just as prone to injury as anyone else on this ship, and I don't want any of you forgetting th-"

The voices hit me like a slap. They were always with me, a quiet murmur in the background of my mind, but that was when they were being routinely suppressed. I hadn't dealt with them in two days, and it caught up with me all at once.

A dozen voices started whispering to me simultaneously, an attack that scattered my thoughts as they formed, and I froze up in my seat.

"Haelee!" shouted Elestranda as her ADA rushed towards me, "Get under her other arm! We need to get her to the Prodigy!"

The voices quickly grew too loud for me to hear anything else. A hundred different conversations drowned out everything around me, all being shouted directly into my head. I had a distant feeling of being hoisted out of my seat and carried off, but I couldn't be quite sure of where they were taking me. My feet bumped sharply on stairs. Were we going up or down? I couldn't tell. Distant shouts. Something mechanical. Then I was gently lowered into a seat. The light ahead of me vanished, and I was left alone with the voices.

But the voices grew quieter and quieter and quieter still.

And then I could hear my thoughts again.

I took stock of my surroundings. I was sitting inside the Prodigy's cockpit, the familiar mechanical smell like home to me. The space was completely black, not a speck of light anywhere to be seen, but I knew by heart even the tiniest detail, and my hands danced over the controls above me. My hand hovered over the last switch, the last input needed to activate the titanic robot I sat inside. And then I undid my work.