She picked at the edge of the navy-blue padding on the armrest of the stiff chair, made of lightweight, durable aerasteel like basically every other thing on the ship. The bare-bones bridge crew milled about around her, attending to their daily tasks.
Her imposter’s chair sat at the top level of the half-circle room. The decks of the bridge fell away in three staggered tiers, landing at the foot of an enormous viewscreen which showcased an outward view of the universe. Which was to say, the Divide. Which was to say, fucking nothing. The giant black screen was always black, always had been, and always would be.
Her second-in-command’s master terminal and the primary systems stations sat a tier down, and the bottom level contained the weapons and piloting terminals that would in all likelihood never be manned again. She’d even turned off the ship’s dour virtual aid, because who needed a dreadnought-class battle intelligence to keep a glorified watchtower aloft?
Adequin looked up to see herself ascending the stairs from the middle tier toward the system overview console.
“Eh, void,” she cursed. She held up a finger to halt her doppelg?nger. Its edges quivered, and it seemed to jitter backward and forward along its path before it came to a stop. “Hold on.” Adequin turned to her second-in-command. “Uh, Jack?”
“Yeah, boss.” A tier down, Jackin North hovered over his terminal’s display, the bright orange glow of the holographic screens warming his light brown skin. He didn’t look up as he continued to swipe through data.
“Have we drifted?” she asked.
Jackin’s dark brown eyes shot up in alarm to meet hers. “Have we?”
Adequin tilted her head to indicate the copy of herself standing beside her.
“Shit…” Jackin buried his face in the screen again.
Adequin’s future-self crossed its arms. “This has been happening more and more frequently, Optio,” it said. “What’s going on?”
“Come on, don’t get involved,” Adequin grumbled, standing from the captain’s chair to face her duplicate.
“Jack just asked me to check—”
“Shh, you.” Adequin took it by the shoulders and ushered it to the door of the bridge. “Just stay put, you’ll be gone in—”
Her doppelg?nger flickered and wavered, then disappeared from existence.
“Well,” Adequin said, “looks like the thrusters are working.” She descended the steps to stand over Jackin’s shoulder.
He shook his head. “We aren’t getting any errors, but something must be off with the stabilizers. There’s no reason we should be drifting; there’s nothing out here to pull us one way or the other.”
“Could that new recruit’s transport have caused it when it left earlier?”
“That’s like asking if a mosquito could move a pile of elephants.”
She shrugged. “I have to rely on you for this stuff, Jack. I’m no ship captain.”
He looked up long enough to flash a grin. “I know, boss. Check the systems console, read me back a number.”
She ascended the stairs to the system overview console, and a terrifying sense of déjà vu washed over her. She’d started to take the actions her doppelg?nger had just a minute ago.
She shook off her unease and approached the console. She swept open the interface and a holographic display of the kilometer-long ship unfolded, each sector labeled with dozens of numbers.
“Top left,” Jackin said. She read the numbers back, and Jackin grumbled. “I don’t get it. It reads like we drifted outward over fifty meters. Maybe the sensors are just malfunctioning.”