Reyer and Vas were back in her quarters. The dim lights were already on. The view outside the window was nothing more than a black outline of the landscape and a vast field of stars.

“What time is it?” Alix asked.

Vas shook his head. “You don’t want to know. Past twenty-three hundred. Might be past midnight. Do you need some food?”

“I want a cup of tea and some rest.” She walked toward the four-foot wall that was all she had for a kitchen.

“If you want—”

“No, thank you, Vas.” She looked back at him with a tired smile. “Do you even know how to make tea?”

“I’m excellent at following directions.”

“That’s not what I’ve heard.” She pulled out the kettle and filled it with water. “Would you like a cup?”

“Thank you, Miss Reyer.” As she was putting the kettle on the lone burner, Vas grit his teeth, then blurted out, “Who was Ivan Rurik?”

Reyer hesitated before turning on the heat. “Haven’t I answered enough questions today?”

Vas looked down at the carpet.

Alix pulled out two mugs and a small teapot. She arranged them on a tray and set the leaves in the basket. When all of the preparations were done, she said, “He was an enlisted man—a corporal. He worked with exploration, environment analysis, and basic infantry.”

Turning, she saw Vas’s resigned smile.

“You’re very good at that,” he said.

Alix ignored the comment. The kettle was beginning to whistle.

As she went to grab it, he continued, “I think you know what I meant. Did he work under you?”

“A few times. Single missions. He was never assigned to my squad.”

“Then how did you know him well?”

She poured the water, then dropped the kettle back on the stove. “He was my lover.” She picked up the tray. “Are you happy now?”

Alix was momentarily startled when she turned and found Adan had walked up behind her. He took the tray out of her hands. “Not so much happy as surprised.”

She motioned for him to take it over to the couch. “You thought I was a virgin?”

“I didn’t figure you would be the type to date a traitor.”

Reyer went over to the side table. “He wasn’t always a traitor.”

“You’re defending him?”

She had been reaching out to move her reader but instead rounded on him, her face red. “Defend him? No. I don’t defend the man who killed forty-seven of my people—my friends—to save himself and earn favor points with the Supremacy.”

Vas took a step back from her vehemence.

She went on, “Ivan Rurik is lucky he’s dead. If he was alive, I would crawl the galaxy to find him, and I would make him pay for what he did.” She looked up to the ceiling and took a deep breath, then quickly wiped at her eyes. When she looked back down, she had to clear her throat. “I’m not defending him, but he wasn’t always a traitor. That’s just a fact.”

There was a moment of silence in the room. Alix turned, as if she was going to finish what she was doing, but her mask of calm shattered; she punched down at the table with a closed fist and a brief cry of frustration. The crack of her knuckles on the wood was startlingly loud. She knelt on the floor, her eyes closed.

Adan put the tray down and walked over to her. He sat on the floor behind her so she could lean on his back.

“God, Vas. I’m in so much pain. I’m so tired.”

The captain swallowed. “I’m sorry, Reyer. I’m an asshole. It was none of my business.”

“He was so smart and passionate. But then he got all twisted up. I watched it happening. He started talking about why he had joined. He started asking if it was worth it. He would get angry that people wouldn’t listen to him.” She shook her head, unable to keep talking. Vas could feel her take a deep breath. She asked in a whisper, “Why did you join, Vas?”

“Me? I was jilted by a girl and wanted to get off planet.”

There was a feeble laugh. “Are you serious?”

“Well, it sounded exciting too, but mostly I was pulling a tantrum and taking my ego a couple million light-years away.”

“She must have been some girl.”

“Nah. It was some ego.”

“Then why did you stay? I doubt even you could keep up a tantrum for that long.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Vas thought about it before he spoke. “I believe in the Rising. I don’t mind if some planets want to be a part of the Supremacy, but I don’t like the fact they think they have the right to force all of us to join. I don’t like anything that has a rule book that would fill up more than one reader, and I don’t like the fact that they take care of what’s important to the planets they consider important, by taking what they want from the rest of us. I want freedom for those who want it.”

“Do you ever wonder if it’s worth it?”

“No—well, yes. When I’m looking down at a dead friend, it seems like a high price. But once the pain dulls, I remember it’s something we all chose.”

“Not all of us. Whenever we fight, we’re dragging in innocent people—not only the ones that get caught in the crossfire. There are more checks, more suspicion. They lose more freedoms. They have higher taxes. We may have volunteered, but we’re not the only ones paying a price.”

Silence.

“Is that something he said?” Vas asked.

“That doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

“All right. How about this? What if we didn’t fight? What if we all sat back and did nothing? Could you live with that? Do you want to live under the Supremacy? Because most people don’t. That’s why entire planets give us their support and fund our work. Just because people aren’t always ready to lay down their own lives, that doesn’t mean they aren’t glad we’re willing to.”

Reyer didn’t respond.

“I’m sorry for all the trouble this war brings, especially to those who don’t deserve it, but I believe all the trouble is worth it. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

“You sound like you’ve thought about this before.”

Vas felt a faint smile pull at his lips. “I had to. You think my mother didn’t yell at me about all this when I told her I was going to join? I knew my answers when I came.”

“Jilted by a girl, huh?”

Vas shrugged. “It helps if you’ve already decided for yourself what you believe in. It sounds to me like Corporal Rurik hadn’t done that.”

“He was born on a free-plane and joined young. I think he started asking questions too late.”

“Did you think he would ever betray you?”

“He didn’t betray me. He betrayed the Rising.”

Vas turned his head and said in a disbelieving voice, “He would have left you for dead. You don’t think that’s a betrayal?”

“Maybe I want to believe it wasn’t personal.” Reyer laboriously forced herself to stand. “The tea should be done steeping.”

“I’ll get it,” Vas said. “You sit.”

[https://i.imgur.com/6iM8gcI.png]

Ciro Vas wandered into his quarters and threw his working tablet down on the heap of clean clothes that lived on one corner of his couch. Even though there was no appreciative audience, he groaned theatrically as he rubbed his eyes. After he did a little stretching to ease his shoulders, he wandered over to his kitchen area with vague ideas about the goodness of food.

Canned coffee was, in Ciro’s opinion, the most important invention in the history of mankind that didn’t require silicon. After pulling one from his mini-fridge, he drank half of it down before stopping to take a breath.

He smirked when he thought about how his mother would scold him for drinking coffee at night. She warned him he would never be able to sleep if he did, but it wasn’t really a problem for him. As the main computer engineer for an entire military base that had to wage a war ranging across millions of light-years, Ciro was certain his sleep schedule was even more sporadic than a foot soldier’s during an active campaign on a hostile planet.

However, he was careful never to say that if there were any foot soldiers around.

Ciro finished his coffee and dropped the can with a neat hook shot into the recycling bin. Only then did he feel mentally and emotionally prepared to deal with that damn beeping.

There was always beeping.

Walking over to his main console, he woke up all three of his screens with one swipe across the surface. His eyes wandered lazily over the read out. He froze, then unfroze himself by using a word his mother definitely would have had something to say about. He dropped into his chair. His fingers danced rapidly over the console.

“What the hell?” he whispered.

By his left hand, a play button appeared and started blinking mutely. Ciro slowly reached over and tapped it.

[https://i.imgur.com/6iM8gcI.png]

Bray stole into the room. Everything was dark except for the faint starlight coming in from the window. He had to move cautiously. He had studied the layout of the room from the station’s diagrams, and he didn’t expect her to have moved any of the furniture, but there wouldn’t be any second chances.

“Lights, dim,” a voice said from behind him.

Before the lights had time to respond, Bray turned and jumped the man.

Vas’s e-pistol was knocked out of his hand, but before Bray could land the double handed blow on his neck, Vas managed to deflect most of it. With his free hand, Adan jammed his fist deep into Bray’s stomach.

Bray stepped back, curled over. As Vas moved in, Bray used his elbow to block the kick, then did his hampered best to knock Adan across the jaw. Vas pushed the punch aside with one hand and returned the sentiment with much better effect. Bray hit the floor on his knees.

Adan backed up and drew his sword. “Surrender or I will cut you down.”

Bray got to his feet and pulled his own e-pistol. “I don’t have to keep you alive.”

A sudden, sharp agony from a vicious kidney blow froze him where he stood. The fire of it raced through his guts. A fast kick took out his knees while an arm across his shoulders pressed him down. A second later he felt the muzzle of a gun against the back of his head.

“What do you think, Captain? Should we keep him alive?” Reyer asked.

“Not if he moves,” Vas said, sheathing his sword. He went to pick up his e-pistol. “And he moves fast, so feel free to pull that trigger if he so much as twitches.”

Reyer pushed Bray’s head down with her weapon. “What if he thinks about it?”

Bray’s terrible instinct to live was overwhelming his mind, making it hard to perceive anything. His vision was going white around the edges from hyperventilation.

“You in a bad mood, Reyer?” Vas asked.

“I didn’t get enough sleep. It makes me cranky.”

“The generals will probably want to ask him some questions.”

The door behind them was thrown open. A squad of four men burst in with their XM4s up. A second lieutenant followed.

Captain Vas had his hand up. “Hold!”

The two men behind the leaders lowered their weapons.

The lieutenant quickly checked the room. “Captain. Sergeant Reyer!”

Alix sighed. “Hello, Kassia. Glad to see you got the promotion. I’m not a sergeant anymore.”

Kassia’s eyes followed Reyer’s arm to the e-pistol and the man whose head it was pointed at. She nodded down at him. “Who’s this?”

“I don’t know,” Adan said.

General Jordan came in the open door and ordered the lights to go to bright mode. He stood behind the two leaders and said, “That’s Private First Class Geoff Bray. At least, it should be. I want him out of this room and into a detention cell, right now. Make it happen, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Make certain you search him for any method of suicide before you leave him alone.”

Kassia and her men took Bray, cuffed him, and led him from the room.

Jordan turned to Vas and Reyer. “Are you both all right?”

“Yes, sir,” Vas answered.

“Then I need both of you to come with me.”

Without asking, Reyer went back to grab her belt, holster, and knife. Neither the general nor Captain Vas said anything about the delay.