Captain Yakahara

Emi Takahara was a badass. She'd earned her Captain's bars the hard way: deployments, boarding actions, ugly little colonial emergencies, and the kind of operations nobody talks about afterward. Emi was fast, aggressive, decisive, and damn good at getting her Marines home. Then she screwed up. One bad call. One operation that went sideways. Nobody died, but it was bad enough that somebody up the chain decided Captain Takahara needed somewhere quiet to reconsider her career. So they sent her to Siberia. Her new command was an ancient cryogenic research complex built by the New Soviet Republics, a nation that hadn't existed for over a century. The UE inherited the place, upgraded what it had to, automated almost everything else, and apparently decided one very annoyed Marine Captain could supervise it. Months passed. Emi worked out. Ate yakisoba. Filed reports. Browsed transfer postings. Prayed for something—anything—to happen. Then, halfway through lunch, Emi noticed a tiny red light blinking on an original Soviet control panel. She frowned. She'd memorized this entire miserable facility. That light had never blinked before.