Blake stood over the asshole boxer with the cracked skull. His chest ached, and Chimera was indicating via his HUD that four of his ribs had hairline fractures. Blood was dripping down through a crack in the deck, each drop marking time in the aftermath of the fight. He had notifications, but bid Chimera to hold onto them until later. There was still work to do.Mara's eyes were haunted, moving from his knife to the bodies scattered across the floor, but never quite meeting his eyes, not after that first flinching exchange of looks. Her shoulders tensed with each labored breath. The scent of copper hung thick in the recycled air.

Blake recognized that look—he'd seen it before. The moment when someone witnessed just how quickly and definitively a trained operator could end human life.

The boxer whimpered. Blake's grip tightened on the knife handle.

He had probably made his point, based on Mara's rigid posture. But sometimes, a point needed to be driven home. Sometimes, people needed to understand precisely what they were getting into.

"This is what you wanted, isn't it?" Blake asked. "Someone to stand up to them? This is what that looks like, Mara."

Between them, strands of faint purple energy shimmered and coiled around pugilist, the remnants of his cultivation straining futilely to knit his broken body back together.

"This is why you're here, Mara." Blake's words cut through the tension, measured and precise. He flipped his knife around, presenting it handle-first to the woman. The blade caught the dim light, its edge hungry. "You're trying to start a war. Now you have to learn if you can do all the things you think you need to do."

Her fingers trembled as they reached for the handle, then pulled back. The hesitation spoke volumes. Blake had seen this before, too—the moment when theory crashed headlong into reality; when abstract discussions of necessary violence met the copper smell of blood and the pleading eyes of a dying enemy.

The man on the ground coughed wetly, blood flecking his lips. One of his eyes was a stark red, run through with blood from the trauma to his skull. It wouldn't focus and stared straight up at the corridor's ceiling. His other eye was moving, though. Darting between Mara and Blake.

There was a real and primal sense of fear in that eye. Blake knew it would be difficult for Mara, seeing that fear. Good.

"You want to know something?" Blake said. "Every one of these men had training. They've killed before. But you were going to send regular people—scavengers, traders, mechanics—up against them."

He kept his voice level, almost gentle. The wounded enforcer's labored breathing punctuated each word.

"None of your plans cover this, Mara. This is what happens if those patrols you're so sure won't be an issue catch up to your people."

Blake gestured at the carnage around them. "This is what you're asking of the people you're sending out. The people you intend to join."

The knife remained extended toward her. Her eyes fixed on it, wide and uncertain.

"If you're going to lead people into this fight, you need to know exactly what you're demanding of them. And if you want to lead them well, you need to know your limits."

"What do you mean?" Mara's voice was a timid thing as she asked.

"It means that you can do your people a lot of good, but not if you don't fully understand what they're doing, and not if you insist on getting yourself killed by taking to the field with them."

"I'm no coward," Mara said, taking a step forward out of the shadows. "I'll be there beside my clansmen to watch Rax fall."

"I'm not calling you a coward, Mara," Blake responded, voice still level. "But I also don't think that you're a killer. And I don't want you freezing up in the field and getting killed."

"I've been dreaming about putting a knife in Rax's throat for years," she shot back. "I can handle the sight of a little blood."

Blake didn't say anything about how she had reacted to the fight. He watched as Mara unconsciously looked around at the wounded man and the bodies. No, he didn't need to remind her how she felt.

"Then take the knife," Blake said, raising the weapon again. "And put your enemy here out of his misery. Do that and I'll stay out of your way."

Blake watched as Mara hesitated, her hand hovering over the knife handle. On the floor, the boxer's wounds began to knit slowly, purple tendrils of energy stitching flesh and bone. If Mara didn't act soon, he'd be back on his feet, ready for round two.

Blake kept his gaze steady, waiting for Mara to make her move. The air grew thick with tension, seconds stretching into small eternities.

"Tick tock, Mara," Blake said, his voice low and even. "He's not gonna stay down forever."

Mara's fingers twitched, inching closer to the knife. Blake could see the conflict in her eyes, the war between necessity and morality.

"You wanted this fight," he reminded her. "Time to see it through."

The wounded man groaned. He might have been trying to speak. Mara took the knife.

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"This should be easy, right?" Mara's voice cracked slightly on the last word, her earlier conviction wavering in the face of what lay before her.

"No, Mara." Blake kept his tone even, but firm. "It's a problem when it starts to get easy."

Too many good men slipped across that line, losing pieces of themselves with each life they took until killing became as natural as breathing. Blake hadn't seen the right side of that line in years.

"I have to do this, though." Her words came out tight, strained. "I have to be able to."

Blake studied her face —saw the conflict there, the desperate need to prove herself warring with basic human empathy.

"We both know you're good with logistics, that you've done great with the war-prep for your people." He shifted his weight, careful to keep the wounded man in his peripheral vision. "That sort of leadership is just as vital as anything."

"But I need to be there with them." The words burst from her like they'd been trapped, desperate to escape. "I can't watch others die for a fight I pulled them into."

Her shoulders tensed as she stared at the knife in her outstretched hand. A bead of sweat rolled down her temple. Time stretched between them like a rubber band pulled taut.

"Then use the knife, Mara." Blake's voice hardened slightly. "Or accept that you aren't that person. There's no right choice here. Just reality."

A choked laugh escaped Mara, brittle and sharp-edged. Tears welled in her eyes but didn't fall. "Don't you mean there's no wrong choice?"

"No." The word fell from Blake's lips like a stone into still water, cold and final. "I meant what I said. This is a war now. No right choices in a war, not really. Those only get made once the war is over."

He stepped closer, close enough that she had to tilt her head back slightly to meet his eyes. The knife remained between them, its presence impossible to ignore. His voice softened, but the words themselves offered no comfort.

"You've got to choose from among bad choices. That's how we learn who we are."

The wounded man's breathing hitched and he coughed up a mouthful of bloody spit. Weakly he tried raising a hand, but didn't quite make it.

Mara's breathing came quick and shallow, each inhale like a countdown. The moment stretched thin, poised on the brink—action or hesitation, the person she was or the one she thought she had to become.

Blake held his ground, eyes on her. He knew something of her struggle. Standing over broken men, making decisions that carved scars deep into the soul. But this wasn’t his moment. It was hers. He could lead her to the edge, but the step? That had to be her own.

The knife hung in her hand, suspended like a pendulum, its edge catching the faint light with every shift.

Mara drew in a shaky breath.

----------------------------------------

Blake gripped Korrn's hand, noting the firm strength behind the older man's grip despite his weathered appearance. The setting sun painted long shadows across the debris field, casting strange patterns through the twisted metal.

"Good work today," Blake said, releasing the handshake.

"You as well." Korrn gestured toward the wreckage they'd sealed off. "You dealt with that patrol mighty quick."

Blake watched Mara's retreating form as she walked with Dex, their heads close together as they discussed something about some salvage pulled from the ship. Her steps held a new weight to them, but her shoulders remained straight.

"The ship entry and the re-burial—that was clean work," Blake said. "Quick too. Wouldn't have managed it half as well on my own."

Korrn's scarred face creased in a slight smile. "I'd be upset if you could. We've all got our roles out here. Been doing this longer than you've been breathing." He adjusted his tool belt. "I'll be seeing you soon enough, Blake."

As Korrn's footsteps faded into the constant background noise of shifting metal, Chimera's voice whispered in Blake's mind.

"Do you think she made the right choice?"

"I meant what I said to her in there. She made a choice. I don't think there was a right one."

"Okay, fine. But it was the one you wanted her to make, right?"

Instead of answering, Blake bent down and picked his bag, containing the security armor and baton. He'd let Mara keep the taser. Hoisting the bag over his shoulder, he started walking back towards Eland's ship. Only then did he reply.

"She didn't strike me as a killer. Not really. Her heart's in the right place."

"That's why you tested her?" Chimera's voice held a note of curiosity.

"Anyone can do bad things when pushed far enough. But some people—it breaks them. Changes who they are at their core." Blake paused to scan the horizon, the alien sun setting behind twisted wreckage. "Her people don't need another Rax. They need someone who'll put them back together after he's gone."

"And if she had killed him?"

"Then she'd have learned something about herself she can't unlearn." Blake shifted the weight of his bag. "That's valuable too."

"And you?" Chimera asked. "You didn't hesitate with the punchy guy."

Blake stepped over a fallen beam. "No."

"Should you have let Mara's choice stand?"

"Wasn't an option." Blake kept his voice low, scanning the debris field as he walked. "That patrol needed to disappear without a trace. No bodies, no signs of struggle, nothing. Like they stepped behind a piece of wreckage and never came out."

"The uncertainty creates more chaos," Chimera said.

"Exactly. Next time Rax loses contact with a patrol, he'll wonder if they deserted or if something got them. When it happens again, the fear spreads. His people start looking over their shoulders, jumping at shadows." Blake picked up his pace. "By the time we move on Rax, his organization will be falling apart from the inside."

"So if you had the option," Chimera pressed, "would you have spared him?"

Blake stepped around a twisted sheet of metal. "Mercy's a tricky thing. Sometimes it's worth the risk, even when killing would be easier. But other times..."

"Other times?"

"Other times it backfires spectacularly." Blake paused to scan the horizon. "Poseidon would have never found Odysseus if he had just killed the damned Cyclops."

"Blake, you might have to explain that one to me."

"Oh, right. Damn. It's a long story. A bit of an Odyssey."