Bee opened the locker to see her own reflection gaping back at her from the golden-yellow visor on a fully armored black nullsuit helmet. The rest of the pieces were nestled into recessed areas in the locker. The torso and gloves hung on the back wall under the helmet, the arms and legs took up the side walls, and the boots rested on the locker's floor. Stripes matching the warm yellow of the visor marked the connecting edges of each piece.

"Armor," she whispered.

"It's for the unlikely event that we're boarded by any of the more... murder-oriented folks out here," Truly said. "Or if we end up taking a walk out on one of these rocks we're after. First one's pretty close now."

"It's beautiful." Bee traced her fingers along the helmet's slick nullsteel coating.

The First Officer snorted. "You're easily impressed. It's military surplus. Captain keeps a couple of spares in storage for parts. He fixed this one up for you."

"It's mine?"

"Long as it fits. You just gonna stare at it?"

Giddy with excitement, Bee removed the straps holding the suit's armored torso in place. She remembered the order Truly always suited up in and mimicked him by starting there first. He'd be waiting with some kind of verbal jab if she didn't do it right, she was sure.

"Wrong," Truly said. "How many time have I geared up in front of you? What you missing?"

Wincing at her mistake, Bee let out a sharp sigh and furrowed her brow as she ran through Truly's usual process. Torso first every time, that was always it. Then legs, boots, arms, gloves, and helmet. Missing what, there were no other pieces. She looked over the locker, touching each as she tallied it off her list.

"There's nothing else," she said finally. "I don't know."

"Check the drawer down there."

Bee looked below the locker door in the drawer he spoke of, and folded up inside was a stack of folded fabric undersuits like the ones Truly constantly wore. She pulled one free and shook it out, the legs flopping to the floor. "I see."

"Undersuit. That's the first layer. Regulates your body temperature, captures moisture, and monitors your health for your armor. Go put that on and you can do the rest."

When Bee returned in the skintight black undersuit she felt naked. It ended at her neck just under her jaw and covered every other inch, but it felt unnervingly like wearing nothing. She set about putting on her armor without pause, confident this time that she'd do it right. Twisting the torso at the waist separated it into two parts-the chest and a "pelvis" which she stepped into like underwear. Bee slid into the chestpiece and reattached it at the waist to the pelvic piece, the hard sleek armor settling on her shoulders. She felt it contract for a snug fit.

"Feels good," she said, moving on to the legs. Already she was lighter with most of her body mass inside the gravity-nullifying suit. Once she got everything but the helmet in place she gave Truly a twirl for inspection. "Well?"

"Looks fine," he said. "Monkey see, monkey do."

"Doesn't really feel much different from my other suit," said Bee as she admired her shiny new armor, testing its flexibility. Everything felt easier, like the suit moved before she did. "Faster." She sniffed inside the helmet before putting it on. "Smells a bit, uh... musty, though. Did you guys clean it first?"

Truly stared at her and shook his head with disdain. "And here I thought you might make a real soldier someday. Just put it on, we need to run some drills. Swapping to a powered suit will take some getting used to. It's designed to reduce fatigue and enhance strength with mechanical assistance. You move, it moves."

After another tentative whiff, Bee lowered the helmet onto her head. It didn't smell too bad, just old and unused. She hoped everything still worked. When she sealed the helmet in place the visor's HUD lit up with data.

"Initializing," said Myra's voice in her ear.

Bee looked around for the AI, having forgotten Myra came into the nullroom with her before. She'd been so focused on the suit she didn't notice the hardlight projection had vanished. "Myra?"

"Internal diagnostics complete," Myra said. She sounded canned, robotic. "Powered armor fully operational." Then her voice shifted back to normal and she said, "Sorry, I didn't tell you there's a clone of me in there with you."

"A clone?"

"A stripped down copy of myself that can only perform certain functions. It's not all of me, but it can help you aim a gun, correct your trajectory, identify targets-a thousand other things. You're like a student pilot and I'm your instructor."

"Wait, so you can control me in this thing?" The armor felt a lot less safe knowing Myra could just hijack it if she wanted. Less like a protective shell and more like a full-body collar, with the shadow of an unstable artificial intelligence on the other end of the leash. "Not sure I'm okay with that, honestly."

Truly spoke up. "Myra's clone is in there to make things easier for you, guide your movements. But it's also there to make sure you don't hurt yourself-or one of us. You're much stronger in a powered suit."

"Come on, Truly, I don't need training wheels."

"Hey, we prepped you in that fabric suit for a reason. A powered suit is as much a weapon as it is armor. Treat it with respect. She stays in there with you until we get you properly trained."

"Alright, I got you," Bee said. She cleared the HUD so she could see straight. All the biometrics and startup processes on display were making her dizzy. "So you gonna make me a soldier now, huh?"

"Gonna try," he said. "Got nothing but time out here on the float. Could be a year or more before we find our stash. Might be we could make something useful out of you. Let's get moving, give me fifteen wall-to-walls lengthwise."

After unlocking her boot nodes with a twitch of her heels, Bee pushed off from the floor and pulled herself over to the wall, reorienting to stand above the nullroom door. Everything felt solid-a bit less flexibility than her old suit but surprisingly unrestrictive compared to what she expected. She squatted in place on the wall, preparing her muscles for the jump, and asked, "You really think we'll find anything?"

A light push sent her sailing headfirst to the opposite wall. Economy of motion, Truly always said, every movement precise. The armor was bulkier than her fabric suit, but just as mobile.

"No one can say for sure. Not even Myra knows what we'll really find out there, but the Captain's been dead set on this for years now. If he's convinced I'm convinced."

Approaching the wall, Bee rolled forward into a somersault and pulsed the nodes on her boots as she extended her legs to land. She bent at the knees when she touched down, sticking for just a moment, and sprang back toward the other end of the room again. "Just asking 'cause if we do find something... I get a cut, right?"

Truly laughed. "That's between you and the Captain-and Dreadstar too, I guess. Good form, by the way. Looking natural."

Bee stuck her second landing square and shoved off again.

#

Still flush with adrenaline after a two-hour set and a shower, Bee was on her way back to the nullroom when Myra called over the speakers for a crew meeting on the bridge. She hurried there and came in behind Silver. Captain Anson, Ferro, and Truly huddled around a cluster of projected windows as they listened to Myra's voice. Her body was absent.

"We caught a huge break here. Only a few hours of scanning and the drones have found something just below the surface," Myra said. "One is landing while the other observes."

"Can you tell what it is?" Captain Anson asked.

By then Bee could see the screens for herself. A black egg-shaped asteroid with a small circular spot marked in green loomed in the distance in one window, but a much closer shot in another had the green spot taking up most of the frame.Their destination, no doubt.

"Best I can tell you is it's a metallic structure, most likely man-made," said Myra. "Whatever it is doesn't match the rest of the asteroid. It's been covered from far-seeing eyes, but up close it's harder to hide."

"Some kind of outpost?" Silver ventured.

"No, I'm not getting any energy readings from in there so I doubt anyone's living inside. It's over a hundred feet across. Could go deeper, but we'll have to wait on our drones and see."

Captain Anson rubbed his palms together. "We may be on to something here. Really on to something."

They watched the drone's camera feed as it flitted to the asteroid's craggy surface. Myra tweaked the display and replaced the bright green blob with an outline around its circumference. All the rock and sand within the circle looked exactly the same as everything around it.

Then the faintest tremor rippled across the surface.

"Power surge!" Myra cried. "It's an active gate!"

The ground in front of the drone erupted in a sudden cloud of black dirt, and from it emerged the nose of a battle-scarred warship. As it tore free from the hidden gate a cannon primed and fired on the drone. One screen went dark. On the other screen Deep Fog streaked away from the asteroid immediately, firing a parting shot that took out the other drone before anyone could blink.

"Truly, Hornets!" Captain Anson barked, and the First Officer dashed away.

Bee's mind went stupid with shock. A gate? What was a gate doing there? How did Starhawk get through it? Her heart started pounding in a hot rush. Starhawk. This had to be it. Steel or no steel, she'd found her fight.

Kill him, Mother hissed.

"He's coming straight for us," Myra said. "Twenty three minutes and they're on us. Maintain course or do we break and run?"

"Maintain course, we've got nowhere to go. Silver, you've got the bridge!" Anson stalked off the way Truly went and said to Bee, "You, with me."

Bee fell into step after him, the Captain's order clearing her racing thoughts and forcing action.

"We're gonna suit up and get ready to fight," he growled over his shoulder. "He'll want to take us as a prize. If they board us we hold the bridge no matter what. You hear me?"

"Hold the bridge." They were just words to Bee, and she repeated them with a hollow absence of confidence as she walked behind the Captain. "I only just got my suit."

"Yeah, and now you get to use it to kill pirates," he said, grunting as he opened the bulkhead door to the nullroom. "Lucky you. Isn't this what you wanted?"

#

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