The limp was worse when Mercer was tired.
He hated that.
Not because of the pain. The pain was manageable now. Medical had fixed most of the damage after the away mission. A little stiffness, some scar tissue, a warning not to be stupid for a few weeks. Standard stuff.
No, what Mercer hated was that the limp advertised weakness before he even opened his mouth.
And on a ship full of security personnel, weakness traveled faster than rumors.
The corridor outside the security duty room was already crowded. Crew moving with purpose. Too much purpose. Everybody walking a little faster than normal. Mercer noticed things like that now. Since the mission.
Especially since getting shot.
He slowed outside the hatch for a second, adjusting the tunic collar that didn’t need adjusting.
Why do they always send the rookies first?
He’d been asking himself that ever since the away mission. Last-minute reassignment. Thrown into a landing party because somebody else got sick. Twenty minutes later he was bleeding into alien dirt while the rest of the team tried to keep the mission from falling apart around him.
Youth and inexperience.
That’s what the report said.
Mercer stepped into the duty room.
The room was larger than he expected and already half full. Low conversations. Coffee. Equipment cases stacked against the bulkhead. Tactical displays flickering across one wall. Nobody looked particularly heroic. Mostly tired.
Good. That somehow made him less nervous.
A younger enlisted man stood near the operations board reviewing assignments with the kind of focus usually reserved for funerals and engine failures. Everything about him looked precise. Uniform perfect. Posture perfect. Expression permanently irritated.
Officer track, Mercer thought immediately.
Not an officer yet though.
Across the room a woman lounged sideways in a chair she definitely wasn’t using correctly, boots hooked over one armrest while she spun a data stylus through her fingers. She noticed Mercer instantly.
Of course she did.
Her eyes dropped briefly to the limp.
There it is, Mercer thought.
“Morning, Rook,” she said casually. “What’d you do? Forget to tie your shoelaces?”
Mercer opened his mouth automatically.
“No, I—”
The younger enlisted man never looked up from the board.
“Shut the fuck up, Rook.”
Mercer stopped mid-sentence.
Across the room the woman slowly raised her middle finger toward the younger man without even looking at him.
The younger man sighed like this happened twelve times a day.
Mercer stood there awkwardly for another second before finally moving toward the empty chair beside them.
Nobody offered introductions.
The woman smirked slightly.
“You limp louder than you walk.”
Mercer sat carefully. “Good morning to you too.”
“That was good morning.”
The younger enlisted man finally glanced over.
Quick assessment. Uniform. Injury. Posture. Nerves.
Filed away instantly.
“You’re Mercer.”
“Yes.”
“You’re late.”
“I was told zero six hundred.”
“You were told zero five forty-five.”
Tiny pause.
The woman leaned forward immediately.
“Outstanding start, Moe.”
Mercer blinked. “…Moe?”
“You’ll catch up.”
The younger enlisted man pinched the bridge of his nose.
Mercer looked around the room again, trying to figure out where exactly he fit into all this.
More security personnel began filtering in now. Different teams. Different ranks. Conversations overlapping. Somebody laughing too loudly near the coffee station. An older sergeant complaining about tribunal lockdowns slowing deck movement. Another team walked in carrying equipment cases and immediately started talking shit to someone across the room.
One of them noticed Mercer’s limp.
“Damn,” the man said. “They break you already?”
“Nah,” the woman answered before Mercer could speak. “Came that way.”
A few scattered laughs moved through the room.
Mercer still couldn’t tell if these people were welcoming him or eating him alive.
Probably both.
The room kept filling.
NCOs. Security teams. Tactical specialists. Crew rotating off overnight watch looking half dead. Everybody loud until suddenly they weren’t.
The woman looked toward the hatch.
“Big boy meeting must’ve ended.”
The younger enlisted man immediately frowned.
“Can you stop calling it that?”
“No.”
The hatch opened.
“Attention on deck!”
The room snapped upright instantly. Conversations died in mid-sentence. Chairs scraped backward.
Mercer stood with everybody else, trying not to favor the bad leg as a lieutenant junior grade entered the room followed by several senior personnel from the morning command briefing.
And behind them, moving with the calm exhaustion of someone who had been awake longer than everybody else combined, walked Sergeant Major Kane.