“How far’s it to Poslush again?” McCullough asked, watching idly as the stars ahead of the bridge slowly drifted past the Bunker Hill like flotsam in an endless ocean. It suddenly occurred to Spatha that she had never seen such a display during her time in the Poslushi military; they used hyperdrives, not warp drives like humans, and so the things that could be seen outside the windows during their transits were... disturbing, to say the least. It was the reason why Poslushi spacecraft bridges had shutters.

“I’d say, maybe seventy light-years? Funny...” Spatha trailed off, staring into the middle distance blankly.

“What’s it?” McCullough said, raising an eyebrow.

“During our war with the Upsilon, one ship–one!–got closer than fifty light-years to Poslush. The High Judge executed the Magister of War for that. Now, what are they saying? That every Captain-General with a fleet to his name is off carving his own little kingdom out of the empire? That the High Judge herself cannot muster the will to get off her throne?”

Spatha looked down; she had long since abandoned her homeland, but the shame stung just as heavily as it would’ve had she stayed strong. “How far have we fallen, McCullough?”

McCullough huffed. “It was inevitable, really.”

“I’m sorry,” Spatha straightened, glaring at the captain, “my nation has been spacefaring for longer than your nation has existed. We were traveling the stars when your kind was still trying to figure out electricity.”

“And we were cutting the heads off kings before you even had an inkling that maybe giving an inbred dynasty with all its members groomed to conquer places and shoot people absolute power was a bad idea, so we’re even.” McCullough spat back.

“I don’t know why I tolerate you,” Spatha turned away, starting for the door.

“And I don’t know why you aren’t commanding your troops, missy!” McCullough said as the bulkhead hissed shut. Spatha stormed back towards her office, his words ringing in her head. He was right, and that was the worst part of it. Maybe the world had no more use for High Judges and Aerial Knights. Maybe they were like the toys Spatha used to love so much when she could have them, discarded as she got older and wiser. Maybe it was time to put the toys back in their box.

McCULLOUGH, ANSWER ME!

The sudden memory had Spatha clutching at her head. She’d never forgotten those radio transcripts, how desperate Darren and his men had sounded screaming for help, for McCullough, for somebody, for anybody to swoop in and save them as the enemy pressed ever-inward. She saw the call get received, and yet no one answered them.

No, it didn’t matter if McCullough was right or wrong; what mattered was that he had gotten his men killed, and he would pay for that. Spatha would make him pay for that, but first she would ensure that the authorities knew it wasn’t an accident; he’d just get demoted, maybe kicked out of USSAC for that, and there’d be nothing stopping him from just climbing back in.

Thus, when she returned to her office, she pulled out her laptop with one hand and grabbed a pen in the other, as she worked, and worked, and worked, trying and failing miserably to divide her time between her own research project and reviewing orders.

The fact that she, the leader of the Free Poslush Army, had enough time to do this was very telling. She had yet to see a Poslushi soldier outside of CAST’s logistics corps.

The documents she had access to were of no use; she had long since read through each one five times over. Nothing in their database suggested that he would’ve done anything close to what he had done, and yet Spatha was smarter than that; people didn’t just start their day and decide to leave their subordinates to die. She just needed to find, in this pile of documents, an answer, but she knew it was pointless. Any answers she might’ve gotten were minor discrepancies in the personnel file, typos in crew manifests, all useless, all junk data.

Then, a most peculiar thought struck her: what if she just looked the man up online? With a start, she realized that she hadn’t even thought of it before; she would never get used to the cornucopia of free information humanity possessed at its collective fingertips. Spurred into action, she began working in ways the clerks doing background checks could only dream of, plastering the web with search queries for one Devon McCullough. The hours passed and she became progressively more exhausted, but aside from occasionally stopping to approve more orders, she did not rest. Applying the particular Poslushi intellect, she collated the sheer flow of information into something approaching a place to start. Then, one piece fell into place, which gave her a clue as to where to put the next, and the next, and the next, until the picture began to appear in her head.

And that picture she didn’t like.

—

James Mann Army Base was supposed to be a relatively cushy assignment across the alliance for a new officer like Lieutenant McCullough, a place for him to hone his craft before deployment to CAST’s occupation zones in Earth’s southern hemisphere. Instead, the intruders from beyond the stars had made their presence known. The broken hulls of the diplomatic mission drifted lifelessly through the void, and, though the war had gone on barely a month, the casualties were already in the hundreds of thousands. Watching the settlements on Eliza’s World and Sequoiah burn on the TV, Devon knew that he could never let that happen to Pizarro, not as long as he stayed at one of its bases.

“We’re getting close to the landing site; everyone checked?” Devon called. The four men in the back of the MRAP spoke their assent simultaneously as they loaded and racked their rifles. Outside the windows, the endless fields of wheat whizzed past, the glow of the farm just barely apparent over the horizon. Slowly, the small cluster of prefabricated plastic structures came up into view, a small French flag hanging over the road before the central habitat. Nodding, Devon pulled the vehicle to a stop and stepped out, his squad following closely behind.

Rap-rap-rap-rap!

A few seconds later, a tired-looking man opened the door, speaking in heavily-accented English. “Yes, sir?”

“Greetings, sir,” Devon waved, “we’re from the army base down the road; we saw something land in your field. Might you know anything about it?”

“I don’t know,” the farmer shook his head, “I haven’t seen anything.”

“Marcel? Que se passe-t-il?” a woman asked, poking her head out from an open door behind the man. “Retourne te coucher, ma chérie.” the farmer turned back to her briefly, then returned to facing Devon.

“Could we have access to your fields, sir?” Devon asked.

The farmer scoffed. “On whose authority, sir? I’ve seen you young soldiers; come back with your orders and then I’ll believe that you aren’t just trying to steal from my garden.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Devon, taken aback, puffed his chest out, trying to look bigger. “Sir, this is a matter of the national security of both the French Republic and the United States of America, so if you would kindly–”

“Begone off my property,” the farmer finished his sentence for him, “that would be greatly appreciated.”

With that, he reached for the door, glaring at Devon, but he stopped him. “I don’t think you understand just how important this is.” Devon growled, laying his hand on his holster. Taken aback, the farmer shouted, “Get out of my home!”

Then, the door behind the man burst open, the woman lunging out. A glint of metal registered in Devon’s vision, and so he did what he was trained to do. A flash of light, a burst of deafening sound, and then she was laying facedown on the concrete tile, hands empty, a pool of blood slowly spreading from her shattered head. A single casing clattered almost musically on the floor. The young farmer flinched, turned back to the scene, and then the color drained from his face. In an instant, he turned back, the look in his eyes shattered and animalistic and primal, and so Devon did what he was trained to do once more.

Two more little shells rolling about his feet later, he crashed to the ground, unmoving. Devon lowered his still-smoking pistol, staring ahead blankly. Behind him, his four men stood silent, slack-jawed. “S-s-sir?” one of them barely managed to stammer out, tears welling up in his eyes. Devon laughed half-hysterically, putting his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Well, I guess we’re all in on this now, so we had better–”

And then the butt of a rifle made a hard impact into the back of his head.

The next thing he knew, he was being marched into the courtroom, hands cuffed behind his back, military camo switched out for a bright orange jumpsuit. “Do you understand what you’ve done, Lieutenant?” the Army judge said, his face stony. “You–yes, you, no matter how many times you try to implicate your squadmates–killed Marcel and Lenore DuBois in cold blood, over a shooting star. What do you say to that?”

“It was a matter of national security.” Devon replied, meeting his gaze without flinching. “I had to ensure that there was no enemy activity in the area; they got in the way of that.”

“And so, on the suspicion that an enemy may be nearby, you saw fit to grant yourself the power to leave your assigned base without informing your superior officer, demand access to a civilian’s property, and summarily execute him and his wife?”

“I did it for my country. You’d do the same in my shoes.” Devon clenched his jaw, repressing his anger. The judge narrowed his eyes slightly, but made no further indication of what he may have been feeling. “Get this psychopath out of my Goddamned courtroom; he clearly isn’t right in the head.”

All the while, his voice never raised a bit.

Soon after, it was off to the military prison, shipped back to Earth in a tin can and a jumpsuit he wouldn’t take off for sixty years if he behaved. However, he’d been in there barely a week when he had been suddenly informed that his sentence had been commuted; someone higher up in the line had admired his spunk, his patriotism, his initiative, and they were willing to offer him a job. And, when he heard the details–well, how could anyone refuse?

—

Slamming her laptop shut, Spatha looked up at the ceiling in horror. How in the stars could anyone get away with what he had done? And to think she’d trusted the human bureaucratic system; they were as bad as the Combine! She jumped from her seat; she needed to tell the provost marshal before this lunatic hurt anyone else.

Throwing her door open, Spatha very nearly took out a quaint human lady in a sterile white coat. “Oh!” the doctor flinched back. “Oh, my–I’m so sorry.” Spatha lowered her head in apology, trying to squeeze past her. “Hey, hold on, now,” the doctor stopped her, “I was looking for you.”

Spatha’s heart almost jumped out of her mouth, but she didn’t let that show. “Oh?”

“Yes, please, sit down. I hate to say it, but this might require you to.” the doctor walked into Spatha’s office uninvited, sitting down before her desk. Put off, but not outright offended quite yet, Spatha cautiously sat across from her. “Terribly dark in here. Do you live like this normally?” the doctor asked, looking around the dim room.

“Poslushi enjoy dark spaces.” Spatha explained, snapping her fingers. Slowly, the lights brightened, giving her eyes time to adjust. “Now, please tell me that you have something important to tell me, because I’m very busy, and–”

“Oh, no, this is important,” the doctor confirmed, nodding her head, “we’ve received reports that you’ve been accessing certain files in the database... rather excessively, and I wanted to talk with you about it.”

For an instant, Spatha’s surprise registered on her face; information wasn’t as free for humans as she thought. “Talk away.” she croaked.

If the doctor knew what Spatha was feeling, she wasn’t showing it. “Well, I know that you engaged quite frequently with one Staff Sergeant Darren Hardwell immediately following your capture. You were close, correct?”

“Correct.”

“And Staff Sergeant Hardwell, during the first campaign on Omen, was wounded and lost his squad, correct?”

“That’s–that’s right.”

“It’s come to our attention that he has been telling the hospital staff that Captain McCullough was in some way responsible for a failure in communication that led to his squad’s deaths.”

The doctor’s expression changed to sympathy, but humans made no pheromones; Spatha couldn’t tell if it was genuine. “You have been researching into Captain McCullough very extensively, so I hear.”

“My friend wouldn’t lie to me.” Spatha growled.

“I don’t think he did,” the doctor shrugged, “I think he was looking for someone to blame for what was really just a horrible, horrible accident. And, if he told that to you...”

“I’m not crazy.” Spatha said, louder this time.

“Spatha, it’s okay to be upset that your friend was hurt. You aren’t crazy for that; you’re still a good person. However, we have no reason to believe that McCullough is at fault for what happened, just as much as Darren wasn’t, and continuing to blame someone who was only tangentially connected to this affair will only hurt everyone involved.”

“I have evidence–hard evidence–it’s on my laptop. Look!” Spatha flipped open her device, but all that greeted her was a blank screen. She tapped it twice, but none of her research came up. “What?” she said, shaking the computer, “No. No, no, no no no!”

“Spatha, are you sure that you do?” the doctor asked.

“Of course I’m sure; I didn’t just go off the rails overnight!” Spatha hissed back, rising out of her seat.

“We see this in humans a lot, Spatha,” the doctor said, leaning forward with that same kind look in her eye, “when you’re just so sure that you’re right, even the most contradictory of evidence will seem like a proof of what you believe.”

“I know what confirmation bias is; for the love of the Ancestor, you don’t need to explain basic damned psychology to me!”

“Regardless,” the doctor said, her voice firm, “it’s clear that being so close to the Captain is having a very detrimental effect on your mental health. In the interest of everyone involved, we’ve seen fit to have you relocated to a headquarters more suited to the commander of a force like yours, somewhere closer to Earth.”

Spatha was taken aback. “What?” she shook her head, “I am the Battlematron of the Free Poslush Army; I have the right to be lodged where I so desire!”

The smile dropped from the doctor’s face. “A reminder should be made,” she began, “that you remain in your current position purely by the grace of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces, and that we possess the capability to dissolve the FPA and return all personnel, including yourself, within to the status of prisoners-of-war at will. Now, please consider that before you respond.”

Spatha stood there in silence, her mandibles hanging open, antennae standing at attention. Clenching and releasing her fist, she lowered her head. “Fine,” she spat, “have it your way. Now get out of here.”

“Gladly.” the doctor said, standing up and heading for the door. Later, Spatha swore that she had seen her smile as she left.

The shuttle was already waiting for her as she entered the bay, its engines still whirring. Spatha marched forth towards it, focusing on the rhythm of her steps, trying to stay calm. McCullough was there–Ancestor, why?–his mouth curled into that same “oh, woe is you” smile as the doctor. She hadn’t even seen it before, but why was his stare so... empty? Spatha didn’t think human beings were supposed to have eyes blacker than her own.

Still, she kept herself composed, her poise royal and her eyes fixed ahead of her, methodically scanning the shuttle, taking inventory of its every component. Then, of course, McCullough had to open his mouth and say something. “I’m really sorry it’s come to this; if it’s any consolation, we did clear things up with–”

He couldn’t finish his sentence before Spatha finally shut him up, driving her fist into his face in a light punch. Unfortunately for McCullough, Spatha had a meter and seventy kilos on him, so her idea of a light punch sent him flying onto his backside with an agonized cry, clutching his bleeding mouth. His face contorted into a furious snarl and he spat two teeth onto the floor. “Get this Pozzie slut out of my sight!”

Then, the MPs had their hands on her arms, dragging her into the shuttle, their grip chafing. However, even as they threw her through the rear door and locked it behind her, she couldn’t help but laugh.

She’d been waiting to do that for ages.