Page 6 of Commander’s Mate

“And if there are more than we can carry?” another officer asked.

The question scraped through the room.

I looked at the map, at the holding chambers marked in red. “Then we make room.”

Degatu’s mouth tightened, but he did not contradict me.

After the officers dispersed, he remained. So did Pyrr, though he pretended to study the map until Degatu looked at him with one raised brow.

“I know when I am dismissed,” Pyrr said.

“Then demonstrate,” Degatu replied.

Pyrr gave a lazy salute and left.

The door sealed behind him.

Degatu waited three breaths. “You are thinking like a grieving son.”

“I am a grieving son.”

“You are also commander general of our ground forces.”

“I know what I am.”

“Do you?” He stepped closer to the map. “Because if you try to save every enslaved being in the Empire with four wounded ships and frozen accounts, you will get our people killed before we recover the first transport of Farseek survivors.”

The anger rose fast enough that my vision sharpened. I held it behind my teeth.

“You think I do not know that?”

“I think you know it and hate it.”

“Yes.”

“So do I.” Degatu touched the display, closing the Ursaga map. “We must survive long enough to be useful.”

“Useful.”

“To the living.”

That landed where he aimed it.

I turned away from the table and looked through the viewport. Farseek was below us, clouds moving over a continent scarred by black impact fields.

“How many children came aboard?” I asked.

“Eighty-three so far. More teams are still searching remote settlements.”

“Families?”

“Fragments. Some elders. Three women who hid in a water-treatment bunker. One father with two children. No intact clans yet.”

No intact clans.

Among the Uatu, clan was not merely blood. It was house, land, shared work, ancestors, arguments, meals, births, burials, and the place a warrior returned to when duty stopped devouring him. A man could lose wealth, rank, and limbs and remain whole if his clan fire still burned.

The Sargans had extinguished thousands.