Tred was panting by the time he got to Reactor Seven.

He had not started out running, only walking quickly. He didn't recall the excuses he'd made to the ground crew and officers about why he'd come in early.

"You'll have to make it up tomorrow," was the only part he recalled. A whole new spacewalk . . .

But that was a minor problem in comparison to Jophiel leaving.

When he came into the Reactor, there was a flurry of activity. Engineers and other personnel were all over the room, doing . . . something.

"Is the Ambassador still leaving?" he asked one of them.

The man paused, frowning slightly. He took a moment to recognize Tred, who he was in relation to the Ambassador.

"Yes, the Ambassador is going to be departing soon. Her actual departure date has been delayed until after our current assignment is complete, however."

Tred felt his shoulders slump. So it was true . . . the horrible thought had occurred to him that this was a prank by someone . . . well, no one on the Craton would be that cruel! Maybe Kell? No, the Shoggoth seemed to have no sense of humor.

But he had hoped it might have been a mistake.

"A-are my services . . . no longer required?" he asked.

The officer frowned again. "If that's what you've been told, then yes. Ambassador Jophiel has released most of her staff. But if you want to assist in the deconstruction, I can-"

"Can I talk to her?" Tred blurted out.

The officer looked surprised. His eyes unfocused, as he looked at a message in his HUD.

"The Ambassador has said it's fine," the man told him.

Tred got on the computer terminal, connecting to the system.

"A-Ambassador?" he called.

There was a pause - just a tiny one, but it felt so long to him.

"Hello, Tred," Jophiel said.

"Madam Ambassador . . . I . . . I don't know what quite to say," he stuttered out.

"I am sorry, Tred," Jophiel told him. "I had wanted to talk to you personally, not just send a message . . . but you were busy, so I just left it." She fell silent a few seconds. "I am glad you came."

He struggled for words. "Why?" he finally managed to ask.

He didn't mean why she was glad, and he hoped that she did not think that, but she seemed to understand his point.

"Tred . . . I came here for a purpose. I know I was not a typical ambassador. I did not look at treaties or sign documents or . . . well, meet that many people. My people do not even have many of the concepts that yours have. I came here as a test, to see how my kind and yours could co-exist. Beyond just the most literal."

"I . . . I know that," he said.

"My time was always finite . . . Oh, Tred, I'm sorry. You are a very good person. The time I have spent with you has been . . ."

She trailed off. Tred hung on the silence, his mouth dry.

"I have learned enough," she said. "I need to go back to my people and tell them about what I've seen, experienced. There are important things - things that they must know."

"Like about us," he said, his voice a squeak. "War. Our violence."

"Yes," she admitted. "They are concepts that I have a hard time understanding. You are . . . your worlds are so different from what we know. Your conditions are different, and there are so many kinds of you. Your misunderstandings and different goals interact in complex ways. How will that affect us? I can't figure these things out by myself. I have to go home, and tell them."

Tred was quiet, his mind going empty under a dull blanket of sadness.

"Tred?" she said. "Are you still there?"

"Yes," he told her.

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"Are you okay?"

He did not know what to say to that.

"I love you," he said.

He could not spare the thought to be horrified at what he said. He just knew that he had to say it, even if it was stupid. It might ruin his career and his life, he thought.

Jophiel said nothing, for a very long time.

"I do not know if what I feel for you, Tred, is the same as what you feel for me. I do not know that our concepts of love are anything like each other. We are too different. And that is another reason why I need to go."

Tred spoke, and he did not need to think about his words. "Thank you, Madam Ambassador. It has been an honor serving you."

There was a long silence, and he disconnected from the line, slumping back into his seat.

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

There was no hour so late on the Craton that her establishments were ever empty.

It was like that on every ship, every fleet, Ham Sulp had ever seen. Sure, there was an official day/night cycle. But with multiple shifts, people kept all sorts of hours.

The Crooked Barstool was the closest thing to a dive bar that existed on the Craton. It was not the kind of place where one could find a fight, but it did as good a job as he could hope of emulating one. The lighting was low, and the booths had high backs, so you could feel like you had privacy. The drinks had the burn of the cheap and strong stuff you could get in a proper dive, and no one would bother you.

It was still a big place, though, like every establishment on the Craton. Lots of people liked the atmosphere, and it had a brisk patronage.

Sulp sighed, and shook the ice in his glass around, wishing he could get more drunk. Lots of reasons prevented it, including the ship's systems knowing exactly his alcohol tolerance and not letting him go too far.

He had toyed with the idea of trying to pull rank on it, but it was not a wise idea.

He did not notice Zeela Cann approaching until she sat down across from him.

Sulp had just lifted his glass to take a sip of his drink, and paused with it on his lips.

"I'm not wanting company," he said.

"Yes, well you need it anyway," Zeela Cann replied, adjusting in her seat. A drone came by almost immediately with a drink for her. "I saw that Zeus was in your office today."

Sulp frowned. Was he that predictable that she could read him from that?

Well, probably. The woman's mind was like an algorithm, finding patterns where others missed them.

He couldn't say he actually minded her presence, either. Out of anyone, she was the most acceptable.

They only needed Cutter, and the three of them - he, resources, she in administration, and the Bicet in engineering - were the three who really kept the ship running. More than just a good working relationship, they all had a realistic view of how things worked.

That, and she was another vet of Terris.

"Fine," he said. "How are you doing?"

She smiled lightly. "I'm the one who's supposed to ask you that."

He shrugged. "You can see. I'm up too late drinking, wishing I had more."

She nodded in understanding, her eyes glazing over. "I hate these memories."

"How bad was it on your end?" he asked. Zeela hadn't been in admin at that time, but serving as Executive Commander on a heavy carrier. The name escaped him.

"I was in Battlefleet C," she said, swirling her drink slightly before sipping it. "At the rear, of course. Outside of . . . well, the shadow."

The Reality Break Shadow; the area around Leviathans where physics no longer worked as it should. Materials would warp and move, entire ships could twist into strange and unnatural shapes. So could the people in them. Seemingly at random.

"So your ship wasn't hurt?"

"No. I just got to see what happened to people on the ones that were hurt. The Shading Arrow had a lot of space, so we took on a lot of people. And they had the most grotesque injuries I've ever seen." She glanced up at him. "I've seen combat casualties before. This wasn't like that. There was nothing to be done for people whose entire bodies had turned into . . . something else. Sometimes a person wouldn't even seem so bad, and you'd come back to check on them and they . . ."

She trailed off.

Sulp knew what she was going to say. Sudden Reality Failure - not the technical jargon, people had just started calling it that. In the days after Terris, thousands had succumbed. They might literally dissolve or become a mass of meaningless, non-functional flesh covered in random eyes or . . .

He slammed his drink down, not wanting to head down that way any more.

"We've seen weird shit since then," he said. "I always thought it'd help. Get me used to it. I mean, we don't have pretensions, do we? Like you said, we've seen combat. It's never pretty. Even if you can understand the injuries."

"But it doesn't help," she said, nodding. "It just keeps making it worse."

"Funny how they don't test us more after all the recent stuff," Sulp muttered.

"That wasn't the same," Zeela said. "We weren't exposed to as many tenkions. Or krahteons, I don't know, whatever."

"Tenkions are the particles, krahteons the force-carriers. You know the difference, you're just feigning ignorance to change the topic."

"Touche," she replied, knocking back most of her remaining drink.

"Brooks never seems troubled like we are," Sulp noted.

"He just doesn't show his cards," Zeela replied. "He's made out of Antarctic ice. It doesn't melt."

"Yeah, that's what they thought a thousand years ago, too." Sulp shrugged. There was nothing but ice left in his glass, even the meltwater didn't have the taste of alcohol left to it.

"And how did your test go?" he finally got around to asking. The real question to ask - all Terris vets were tested once a year. Just in case.

"I didn't have any sign of mutation," she said. "And you?"

"They tell me I'm fine."

She smiled a little. "Well, here's to being fine."

She toasted, and he clinked his glass to hers, but neither of them drank.