Chapter 6: 04:30

  S12-CUT 202.3.27675.89

  Resolute 04:30 17.03.2244

  I was discharged from Medbay just past midnight.

  Dr. Senar checked my vitals one last time, confirming the radial fracture had fully healed—thanks to the marvels of regenerative medicine, one of many gifts from the Commonwealth’s collective mind.

  The room was deathly quiet—only the steady thrum of the ship’s engines beneath us.

  Senar was the only one on duty, moving with that same Thaelari precision—imperturbable, feline, focused.

  His clawed fingers pressed gently across my chest, inspecting the flesh where bruises had once bloomed in nebula-purple, storm blue, and angry red. Now, only a faint yellow remained.

  The pain was dull and familiar. Like I was already getting used to the suffering.

  He did not speak. Just observed—those spherical eyes unreadable and stoic.

  And in that silence, something about the moment unsettled me.

  It didn’t feel like a routine check-up. It felt like a forensic exam.

  Like a police surgeon assessing damage. The shape of someone else's violence, left behind on skin like a crime scene.

  The posture of someone reviewing a broken thing, still warm in a monster’s hands.

  The walk back to my quarters was short.

  Thankfully, I passed no one.

  The crew were either asleep or buried deep in the ship’s labyrinth working—focused, hidden, maybe even holding their breath.

  The encounter with Zeth in Medbay had not left me.

  My anger. Her silence. The shame that came after.

  And something behind her eyes I still could not name.

  The hiss of the door behind me as I stepped inside my room gave a fleeting sense of comfort—or maybe just a well-dressed lie.

  I had slept most of the day in the Medbay—partly by choice, mostly not. But I was still exhausted.

  Sleep that night did not feel earned—it felt like surrender.

  To my right, the clock on the HV-OS interface glowed dimly.

  I groaned.

  Four hours.

  That is all I had before I’d have to face her again.

  I did not bother undressing. Just collapsed onto the bed—hard. It was as comfortable as expected.

  And within seconds, sleep began to pull at me.

  But not gently.

  In my mind’s eye, I was already back on the muddy ground—flashes of gold and panic, her eyes locked on mine.

  A predator’s solar eyes.

  And then…

  nothing.

  Just black.

  And, somehow—peace.

  Clawing myself out of bed was the first test of the morning. But my head felt clearer—more than it had in days.

  I stood at the narrow window and breathed deep. My portside quarters faced towards Earth. But that’s not what interested me.

  Outside, a sea of stars stretched across the void like a canvas— a billion pinpricks of light scattered through endless black.

  Cold. Beautiful.

  Right where they belonged.

  For all the chaos in my chest, orbital space felt paradoxically grounding.

  And for the first time in days, something in me steadied—a flicker of resolve.

  Maybe even hope.

  0430 hours. The tail end of the Gamma ‘graveyard’ shift, running 0000-0800 hours.

  The corridor outside the auxiliary gym on Deck 6 was colder than I expected. The recycled air bit at the exposed skin of my neck and wrists—a synthetic chill that felt far too real.

  I should have felt pride arriving here. Gratitude, even. I had worked my whole life to get here.

  But instead… the corridor felt like it was warning me. Like the ship itself remembered the violence this room had seen,

  and was exhaling it into the air.

  A chill had settled in my bones sometime in the night. And it was enduring.

  I was healed. The pain was old now—almost expected.

  But mentally? Not yet.

  The damage she inflicted was more than skin deep, and I hated her for that.

  Two passing crewmates gave me a glance and quickly looked away as they walked past.

  I must’ve looked like shit. I felt worse.

  And by this point, I was the next onboard celebrity. Likely, the talk of the ship.

  I breathed deep—reaching for the drive I knew I had within me. Whatever today held, I would not let her break me.

  I had come too far, and I was not going to give her the satisfaction of watching me fail.

  I refused to give that to anyone—all my life.

  Not once.

  Part of me hoped the door would not open.

  The other part?

  It hoped it would.

  And that this time…

  I’d land a solid hit.

  The door hissed open.

  The fates were decided.

  Inside, the gym was dim—five ceiling lights cast long shadows across rows of training mats stretching off to the right. The room looked like it had once been a science lab—scars of old infrastructure still marked the ceiling, conduits rerouted, panels patched.

  I figured Zeth had been offered this space for her work. I felt like a lab rat, left to train in the dojo of a cat.

  The air smelled faintly of cleaning solvent, rubber, and scorched ozone. But beneath it—sweat and grit. The scent of pain well-earned, familiar from my countless hours at the Academies sparing gyms.

  This was not a simulated environment. No distractions.

  Just matte steel walls, weight racks, and the anticipation of pain waiting to happen.

  It was a chamber built for discomfort. It was perfect.

  And she was already there.

  Commander Ka’Rina Zeth was barefoot at the centre of the largest mat, her usual uniform traded once again for sleeveless black-and-crimson combat gear.

  Her scales shimmered faintly under the lights as she moved through a series of stretches—slow, precise, unhurried.

  Watching her was like witnessing someone sculpt themselves for a higher purpose.

  Every motion methodical. Every breath measured. Each stretch coiled with the quiet promise of a potential onset of violence.

  I watched her carefully with a quiet interest—drawn to her form.

  Intricately athletic. Flexible, but with the broad shoulders and measured control of a seasoned military combatant. Strength without waste. Grace without invitation. She gave the aura of a combat veteran.

  I now noticed something I had not during our first encounter—subtle cues in her stance, her balance. The way her lead foot tucked around for stability. The shape and control reminded me of human Kung Fu—but wider and deeper, more grounded, and far more aggressive.

  As a half-Drac’kari, she must have been trained in Sonen Kynvari—the dominant martial art on her hereditary world, Nyrr’kul.

  Unfortunately for me, I knew almost nothing about it. And I had certainly never studied it.

  I felt like this was a tactical error, like a bad joke at my expense—and one soon to be learned the hard way.

  She did not acknowledge me when I first entered the room.

  But now, she finished her set.

  Rose to her full towering height.

  And turned towards me.

  She looked at me for a long moment—carefully, deliberately—measuring again. Those eyes, solar and unwavering, burned through me. The eyes spoke nothing of consolation today. Only judgement.

  I couldn’t meet them fully, not just yet. It felt like staring into the sun—too long, and something inside might go blind.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  And then she spoke.

  “You showed up,” she rasped. Almost like she was not expecting it.

  “I treated it like an order, sir,” I replied, steady.

  Her lip slowly curled—just slightly. It might’ve been a smirk.

  Or maybe just satisfaction at the promise of more fun with her new plaything.

  “Strip to training gear,” she said.

  “Ground drills first. Then reaction testing.”

  I nodded.

  My throat was dry.

  I didn’t dare speak again.

  The first hour was a war of stances.

  And a war it was.

  Footwork drills—over and over.

  Front to back.

  Lateral shift.

  Pivot. Reset.

  Again. And again. And again.

  Each movement had to be exact. Controlled. Deliberate. But even then, it was never enough.

  I had done many of these exercises before, but never this intense or quickly.

  Front-step, rear-slide.

  Reset. Again.

  Lateral shuffle—faster.

  Reset. Again.

  My stance had to stay tight, guard up, knees bent. But it was falling apart. Every time I shuffled wide, she was already there—hip-checked me back across the mat like I weighed nothing.

  Sweat poured from my hairline. My calves burned first. Then my thighs. Then the deep, dragging ache crept into my lower back like someone had poured molten lead down my spine.

  This wasn’t just movement.

  This was dismantling.

  She circled me constantly like a seasoned huntress—silent, highly perceptive, rapacious.

  Every time I leaned too far, or missed footing even slightly, her tail snapped out—sharp and fast with a Thwack—clipping my ankle or sweeping my foot clean from under me.

  The first few times I hit the mat hard enough to bounce.

  The mat did not care. Neither did she.

  “You're thinking too much,” she said, circling me like a predator, as my sweat soaked back fell to the floor.

  “Stop thinking.”

  “React instinctually.”

  “Feel your center.”

  “Get up Ensign!”

  I tried. Gods, I tried.

  But the center she spoke of—this elusive inner stillness, this perfect point of balance—it felt cosmically distant, and far below me. Buried beneath the waters. Trapped beneath a column of pain, exhaustion, self-doubt and self-preservation after our first encounter.

  It was not that I did not want to find it.

  I did. I really did! I just did not know how…

  All the lessons I had in the Academy felt like a damn pantomime compared to this—they were once useful once, highly effective, but laughable here.

  This was not training.

  This was madness, dressed in ever repeating drills standing over sweat-slick mats.

  Getting faster and faster. More complex with every slight improvement.

  She wasn’t teaching me to stand my ground. She was teaching me to unmake myself.

  To strip away everything the Academy had padded me with—technique, theory, letting go of my ego.

  I did not know if I could keep doing this...

  But with every fall, every breath, every goddamn roll of the dice…

  I was getting better.

  Sharper. Closer.

  The second hour blurred into the third. She showed no sign of stopping. I was exceptionally fit after years of training, but this level of exercise felt like my unmaking.

  We moved into flow drills—grapples, reversals, holds. Her grip was ironclad, each movement effortless but brutal.

  She used my momentum against me, turned every misstep into a painful lesson delivered through bone and bruises.

  Each correction came with force. Each mistake with renewed pain.

  “Too slow Varr.”

  “You dropped your elbow. Again.”

  “You hesitated Ensign.”

  Each phrase was a scalpel. Each word found a new part of my body and mind to flay.

  I didn’t cry. Not aloud. But something broke behind my ribs every time she swept my legs out. Every time I landed wrong and faceplanted, tasting the mat.

  Again and again, I rose. I was not sure if it was bravery or stupidity. Maybe both?

  She never praised.

  Never encouraged.

  Only observed.

  And dissected.

  But I didn't back down. Not once.

  To be honest, I didn't know how. Not really.

  Growing up without support—without a loving home, without a family to call my own—it shapes you. Twists you. Leaves you reaching in the depths of the dark for something solid. For the hands I wasn't there to reach.

  Years of survivor’s remorse etched themselves into my bones. I’d watch the stars reflected in still waters on clear nights… and my own eyes when they weren’t. Eyes that had seen too much. Or too little. Eyes that couldn’t forget the moment the space gave out beneath my life forever.

  When I lost her.

  Since then, I found a kind of resolve—unyielding, brutal, and mine alone. Bit by bloody bit.

  I didn’t need any encouragement from Zeth. I didn’t need it from anyone.

  I wasn’t going to stop.

  Even if it killed me.

  By the fourth hour, the sweat had soaked through my undershirt and was practically flowing onto the floor. My eyes were red, burning with all the salts since lost.

  I was getting dizzy. Pale faced. A hollow construct. A puppet of my former strength, reflexes, and vigor.

  I was going to be sick if we did not stop soon.

  But she was unyielding. And so was I.

  We were now deep in a set of grappling and guarding—hips low, heads tucked, forearms tight and locked in the space between.

  Back and forth. Again, and again.

  Pressure and release.

  I would go for her wrist, and she would rip it away with such controlled violence I would lose footing. Claws cutting in my wrists. Fighting for underhooks, chasing wrist control more now, resetting, and doing it all again.

  Around and around, we went. Like a death spiral.

  My breathing laboured now, right at the edge of my max heart rate. Each inhale scraped through my chest like fire. Sweat poured from my brow and burned my eyes—blurring the lines between her limbs and motion.

  We were moving so fast. It was hard to keep any focus on what was happening anymore.

  But Zeth—Zeth was impenetrable.

  Sweating and breathing, yes—but not in any distress.

  Her body moved with surgical precision, and her expression was treacherous. Immovable. Focused. Dangerous.

  Her abilities ran deeper than muscle or breath. I could feel it, and I could not get an edge anywhere.

  Her eyes locked onto mine once again—blisteringly me like the sun. She was studying me hard without tension, only grace.

  And I knew, in that exact moment, that not only was she a great fighter. She was the best I had ever seen. Nothing about her faltered—she was inexorable.

  I felt like a kid with a water pistol sparing a dragon.

  Suddenly, I managed to get a solid hold of her right wrist.

  Finally, an edge! And my stance was stable!

  Or so I thought...

  She unexpectedly shifted her weight to her left, like she was going for another leg sweep.

  Instinctively, I committed—my guard lowered to block it.

  And that is when she taught me the new lesson.

  It was a feint—I had massively overcommitted.

  I saw her expression as soon as I moved, a smile of vicious conviction.

  My entire center was now wide open…

  Like a viper, her hips and torso rotated around and upwards—putting her full bodyweight into the elbow that was now driving towards my chest. Her movement was not wide, not wild—it was tight and surgical, like it had been waiting there the whole time.

  It hit me like a whipped gunshot.

  WHAM

  The impact landed square in the solar plexus like a sledge hammer—a brutal shot right below the sternum.

  Pain exploded across my chest instantaneously. I folded like a stack of cards to floor.

  There was no cry, no time to curse. Just collapse. And shock.

  I hit the mat so hard, my arms folded beneath me, forehead slamming into rubber. My ribs flared with pain. The impact sickeningly echoed across the room.

  My mouth opened, but no breath came. I was badly winded. My mouth gapped like a fish caught in a net. All the air had been ripped from my lungs—like someone had opened the door of the gym to the vacuum of space.

  The world spun, edges blurring. A silent scream curled inside me as my diaphragm locked up, making it near impossible to take a breath. My throat made the familiar choking sound, as the muscle spasms deepened.

  I lay there, face into the ground. Eyes closed in shock. Withering in pain.

  Yet again, I was finished and defeated. And yet again, she wanted to continue.

  “Again,” she said turning away from me, running her fingers through her own sweat saturated hair and forehead and breathing hard. Like a logger taking a break from levelling an old oak with an axe.

  I could not move...

  She turned to look at be sharply now, eyes lit.

  “Again Varr!” Shouting now quite acrimoniously.

  After a few seconds, I began to catch my breath, unfolded the arms stuck under me at an awkward angle. The pain was easing now but barely, slowly. I looked around and opened my eyes.

  Zeth was staring right into them.

  Her face was near mine, crouched down beside me. Golden eyes, narrowing with cold disappointment and conviction. I could feel her breath—controlled, measured.

  But not her temper.

  “You think strength comes from instinct?” she asked, voice low.

  “From winning against lesser adversaries and thinking you’re special?”

  I coughed, pain surging through my chest once again wincing. My mind flashed to the final test at the Academy only two days ago, and my name at the top of the scoreboard.

  I could not answer. It seemed unfair.

  She leaned closer, oppressively so.

  “Strength comes from breaking,” she whispered. “From rebuilding. Again. And again. Until your body remembers what your mind forgets.”

  Her tone was calm, clinical. Like a scientist examining a used specimen. A slain and dissected rat.

  “You are raw. Untested. Fragile. But you have one thing I can use Varr.”

  I looked in terror. “What?” I gasped.

  “Stubbornness.”

  And with that… She stood. And left the room as if the moment had meant nothing.

  After she left, I lay on the mat for what felt like an hour. Soaked in sweat. I felt dismantled.

  The pain was not just physical anymore.

  It was emotional, layered with shame, self-doubt, and the iron hot bloom of something I had not expected to feel.

  Hate.

  It started small. Just a spark.

  A glance at the doorway where she had disappeared. A clenched jaw. A whispered curse under my breath.

  But it was there.

  The kind of hate that does not scream—it simmers. Quiet and patient. The kind that grows under your skin until it becomes part of you.

  I hated her perfection. Her silence throughout, without any constructive feedback. Her indifference to my suffering as she left. I hated how she made me feel like a child learning to walk. I hated that she never explained why.

  But beneath the hate was fear. Because part of me was starting to understand her.

  And that terrified me more than anything.

  Later that day, I limped to Sickbay. Again.

  The medics did not ask questions, not this time. Just scanned, applied regenerator fields, muttered about the bruising pattern, and mutely made room on one of the biobeds marked with a quiet tag:

  Security Unit Only.

  It meant me. There was always a bed now. Prepped and waiting. Just for me.

  This isn’t normal. It shouldn’t be.

  I'm not sure I could survive a week of this, let alone a month.

  What the hell did Zeth have in store for me? And what could justify the Vanguard letting her do this to me?

  I did not sleep that night. I could not.

  Instead, I sat by the small viewport near my bunk. The stars outside were blindingly still. Like pinholes stabbed into a velvet curtain. Earth was now visible in the far distance, spinning slowly behind us. A call to my past. A vision of failure.

  I pressed my forehead against the cool surface of the glass and let the chill seep into me and my fever hot skin.

  I hated her. I hated that I could not stop thinking about her.

  Her movements. Her voice. Her strength. Going around my mind in a loop like an orbiting planet.

  But more than anything—

  —I hated that I still wanted to be like her.

  Learn from her. Perhaps try to beat her.

  — Failure, a 21st Century band.

  You're a flash of light, a transient flare.

  You can't be deserted by what was never there.

  You were born on the bottom of the ocean.

  You don't get to brag about your drowning.

  A.M. amnesia carries us along.

  Our leader has no switch, this era has no song.

  This old sunset looks so lost stretched across your eyes.

  You are someone else's every time you rise.

  Awash in your sweetness, the dream bashed in my head.

  There is nothing left to forget.

  A.M. amnesia carries us away.

  This feeling has no switch, this absence has no sway.

  The space falls in, the space falls out.

  The space comes in, the space goes out.

  She's got exactly the same dream.

  Trading her memories for machines.

  She breaks the circuits in your brain.

  She speaks, her fingers drop like rain.

  You turn it on.

  You turn it on.

  A.M. amnesia carries us along.

  Just put your mind away and carry us along.

  The space falls in, the space falls out.

  The space comes in, the space goes out.