Admiral

By the time the heat alarms stopped blaring, they were in the clear, the vast expanse of open space ahead of them. Elias finally sat back in his command chair, his hands—for the first time in hours—slightly shaking.

"Vane, do you know why they call me Admiral?" he asked, his voice a low gravel. "Your record, sir. Forty years of service."

"Admiral," Vane said, looking at the sensor readouts in disbelief. "We’re through. How did you know the tide would hold?" admiral

"Will hold just long enough to slingshot us behind their line," he finished. "Kill the engines. We’re going silent. Let the sun do the work."

The sea didn't care for titles, but Elias Thorne cared for the sea. At sixty-four, with a face like a topographic map of the Atlantic, he was the youngest man ever to be named , and the oldest to still insist on taking the helm during a gale. By the time the heat alarms stopped blaring,

Elias looked out at the stars, a faint smirk on his lips. "I didn't. But a good Admiral knows that sometimes, you have to let the universe take the wheel."

His flagship, the OSS Invictus , was a leviathan of steel and silicon, humming with the power of a captured star. But today, the hum was a frantic vibration. "Your record, sir

"No," Elias chuckled, adjusting his cap. "It's because I'm the only one crazy enough to treat a starship like a sailboat. We aren't diving. We’re going to catch the solar tide." "Sir, the heat shields—"