“Engines, ahead one third,” Haru murmured to no one in particular. 

It had been days since her run in with Micah, and to the best of her knowledge, only she, Brian, and Micah himself knew what really happened. 

Brian was true to his word. As far as she knew, he didn’t tell Lauren about the incident. Haru managed to get the whole way home before the panic had a chance to well and truly set in. Luckily, both Jen and Shane were on standby when she pulled into the driveway, parked her Miata, and broke down in tears. 

It was hard to tell what scared her more. Seeing Micah was, in and of itself, a traumatic experience. She had always been uneasy around him, and once he betrayed Lauren, that unease crystallized into a feeling somewhere between terror and hate. She could never forgive him for what he did to her beloved Master, but the idea of confronting him had always been confined to fantasy. 

Haru fantasized about a lot of things that would never happen. As much as she’d like to offer her meager balls up to her Master so she could be rid of the pesky things once and for all, that would never happen. Obliterating Micah’s with a well placed .380 hollowpoint was equally as unlikely. 

And yet, she’d come a hair’s breadth away from doing just that. Another half-pound of pressure on the finely tuned trigger of her LCP would have made a bloody mess of them. 

The idea that the capacity for such violence lurked below the surface absolutely terrified her, almost more than meeting Micah had in the first place. 

She wanted to talk to Shane about it, once she’d had a chance to calm down, and once they were away from Jen. She loved her husband more than anyone else on the planet, but Jen wouldn’t understand. What’s worse, she might forbid Haru from ever going back to Club Zero. The very thought of being denied her safe haven sent her panic spiraling to new depths. 

So, when Jen and Shane asked what was wrong, Haru did the last thing anyone expected: she lied. 

Haru could lie, of course. It was a necessary survival adaptation when growing up in an abusive household, one that only became more vital when dealing with abusive partners. That was one of the reasons she adored Jen and Shane and Lauren so much. She never had to lie to them. They made the truth feel safe, and that was something she would never take for granted. 

But that night, sitting outside in her car, sobbing her guts out, the truth felt especially dangerous. So, for the first time in over a decade and a half, she lied. After the fact, she couldn’t recall all the details. Something about being worried about the future, and how she was afraid she’d never get to enjoy a night like that again. That, at least, was true. Making up stories on the spot was never her strong suit. Selectively editing the truth and removing inconvenient details was always a lot easier. 

Judging by the way Shane stiffened when the words left her mouth, she was pretty sure he knew, at least. But, if he did, he didn’t say anything. He must have trusted that Haru had her reasons. 

Given her druthers, she’d have spilled her guts as soon as Jen went to bed, but Jen and Shane both stayed up with her until dawn, cuddling her and comforting her and promising her that the future wasn’t nearly so bleak. Their kindness only made Haru feel more horrible. Surely they would hate her if they knew what a deceitful, violent bitch she was. And the next day, before she had a chance to come clean to Shane, he left for Lubbock. Something about needing to see an old business associate. 

And so, for three whole days, Haru was left to stew in her guilt and her shame. 

At least the U-boat simulator wouldn’t judge her, not for that. 

Her onscreen avatar, the captain of the little Type VII boat, dutifully repeated the engine order in German, and her speed steadily increased as she crept up on the unsuspecting convoy. 

There were a number of ships in front of her, each a valuable target in its own right. As a commerce raider, her primary objective was the cargo ships that carried valuable supplies to sustain the Allied war effort. But, before she could deal with those, she had to make sure the escorts, in this case a destroyer and a trio of frigates, were dealt with. 

It took several long, agonizingly tense minutes to draw the lead destroyer into range of her acoustic homing torpedoes, and another couple minutes of muttering and calculations to make sure the firing solution was correct. Getting a solution was as much an art as a science. Not only did she have to determine the warship’s speed and range, she had to predict where its trajectory would cross the firing arc of the torpedo. 

Haru checked and rechecked her calculations, and only once she was sure she had a good solution did she silence her own propellers and flood the torpedo tube. 

“Fire tube 4,” she murmured as she threw the firing lever. 

“Firing tube 4, aye,” Shane said. 

A startled shriek followed a stream of jumbled Mandarin and Japanese as Haru swore, loudly and violently. 

“Sorry,” Shane said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Don’t do that,” she wheezed. 

Her whole body felt hot. The sudden shock triggered a hot flash. If she’d been wearing anything but a pair of thin cotton panties, she’d have stripped, but there was nothing left to take off. Shane reached over and flipped on the desk fan, directing the stream of cool air over her overheated body. 

“I thought for sure you’d hear me clomping up the stairs,” Shane said. “Must be one hell of a tense chase if you were that caught up in it.”

“It is a normal scenario,” Haru said. “You are simply too quiet for your own good.”

“Sure, let’s go with that,” Shane said. “So, uh, do you wanna talk about…you know…”

“What is there to talk about?” Haru asked. “I had a panic attack. Surely that’s nothing unusual.”

“I mean, sure,” Shane said. “Not often you lie about the why.”

Haru stiffened in shock. So he did know. 

“Relax, Jen’s not here,” Shane said. “I figured it was something you didn’t want her to know about.”

“Too quiet, and too perceptive,” Haru said. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Shane asked. 

“Will you hate me for it?”

“Have I ever? Kitty cat, there’s nothing you can tell me that I haven’t topped a million times over,” Shane said. “What’d you do? Snap and pull a gun on Micah or something?”

Haru gasped, horrified. 

“Holy shit, I was just joking,” Shane said. 

“I-I am sorry. You must think I am-”

“I think that’s pretty fucking awesome,” Shane interrupted. 

“How did you guess?” she asked. 

“I didn’t know it was Micah specifically, but you were pissed about something,” Shane said. “Scared, but pissed. Saw it in your eyes. I figure it had something to do with Lauren, but you weren’t pissed at her specifically. You’d have told us straight away if y’all got into a fight. She didn’t call asking if you were okay, either, so she didn’t know. Means it was something you didn’t want to tell her about, which tells me it was probably someone you didn’t want her to see. Club Zero means it was either Micah or Samantha, and I don’t see you getting too cheesed with Samantha at any time soon. Didn’t figure you’d go so far as to draw iron, but I assumed you were mad enough to give him a piece of your mind.”

“It was wrong of me,” Haru sniffed. “I should not have lost my temper like that.”

“Not how I see it,” Shane said. “I figure it’s about damn time you started getting heated.”

“What do you mean, Sir?”

“I mean, it might not be too long before we’re doing that-” he gestured towards the forgotten simulator “-for real. None of us know how to drive a sub, so you’re pretty much it for captain, at least for the time being. Even in a worst case scenario, there’ll be a lot of people on the water who didn’t get the same kind of warning we did. What happens if they get desperate and come for our stuff, and we can’t run and hide underwater?”

“We will have to fight,” Haru said softly. 

“Damn straight we will. I don’t like pirates at the best of times. Plenty of them start off desperate, just looking to fill their bellies, but they never stay like that for long,” Shane said. “They start to like the thrill, and before you know it, they’re looking to do a lot more than just take our stuff. Do I really need to spell out what comes next?”

“No, Sir.”

“So, it’s like you said. We have to fight. If we can get something with working guns, I can fight from topside, but I need a captain with the guts to back me up,” Shane said. “I’ll feel a lot better about it if I know I got someone at my back who’s got some fire in their belly and steel in their spine. I always knew you had it. You just had to figure it out for yourself.”

“I see,” Haru said. 

She wasn’t quite convinced, not yet, but it was hard to argue with Shane’s logic. He had a way of doing that. No matter how hard she tried to twist a situation up to find a reason why it was her fault, he always managed to untwist it with his words. She found herself wondering what might have happened if he became a lawyer instead of a soldier. The end result would have been just as fearsome, she suspected. 

“Tell you what,” Shane said. “I don’t have anywhere to be for a good long while, and Jen’s out at the office trying to chase down a lead. How’s about you finish up that attack run, and then I show you the present I got for you.”

“You got me a present?” she asked. “I do not know what I did to deserve such a thing.”

“All you had to do was be yourself,” Shane said. “I mean, if you’d rather not help me figure out how to read original blueprints for the Gato and Balao classes, that’s fine, but-”

“This convoy will be as good as dead in fifteen minutes,” Haru declared. 

She finished the attack run in under five.