5 Years, 4 Months Later

Rising’s Home Base

“You want me to stay here for six more months!”

“Will it really take that long to do everything?”

“Yes! Easily! Longer if my team disappears, which—let’s be real—seems pretty inevitable.”

“Mr. Vas, this is vital for the Rising. People like you and I—”

“It’s six months. It might be as much as a year!”

“You’re being paid, Mr. Vas. This is your job. How many years have you been here, enjoying steady employment, and now you’re balking at another six months?”

Both men fell silent.

General Jordan saw a strange shine come into Ciro’s eyes. It was a sight he’d never seen before in all the years the boy—man (he corrected himself)—had worked there. It forced him to remember that there was a critical difference now. Ciro Vas had taken leave when he needed it, but there was always one planet he was never allowed to visit.

Jordan was about to apologize, but Ciro growled, “Fine. On the condition I get the first call home!”

The general sighed. “Mr. Vas, are you honestly going to pretend you weren’t already pirating some back-end channel for exactly that purpose?”

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

September 26, 2368 AIA

P31 - Mesa Rojo

John Shaw was at home when he heard the news. He was crossing his living room, a fruit and knife in hand, when he passed by the monitor he habitually turned on when his wife wasn’t home. At first he only glanced at the screen. The Supremacy was always doing some kind of announcement.

“The accord was finished at UTC 18:36.”

Shaw looked away from what he was doing and stared at the monitor. It took two more sentences before he could convince himself he’d heard correctly. He fumbled onto the nearby stool and leaned on the counter, still holding the partially peeled fruit. The knife sat limp in his other hand. He didn’t realize it, but he was one of many. Everywhere across Mesa Rojo and the fifteen other inhabited planets in his section of the galaxy, everyone was motionless, breathless, and waiting.

“Puter,” he said, “volume ten.”

The announcer’s voice grew louder.

“—the conclusion of the meetings means that a solution has been found that both the Supremacy and the unallied planets were willing to agree to. All parties have signed, and the agreement is now binding. These preliminary meetings, which have lasted…”

John didn’t turn down the volume or look away, but everything seemed to fade.

Could it really be over?

He craned his neck around, searching for his wife. He almost called to her before he remembered that she was out. He hoped she was somewhere with a screen. There was no doubt that every last one of them would be broadcasting this, and he knew she’d want to know, first thing.

He still remembered her face, seven months ago, when the Supremacy had announced it was entering into peace-talks with the planets represented by the Uprising. At the time, John Shaw hadn’t known how to feel about it. Later that day, he’d caught his wife kneeling down in the study with a book open in front of her and a picture in her hand. Curious, he’d walked up behind her to see what it was.

Her sad smile nearly broke his heart. As he watched her, she wiped a tear from the edge of her eye.

In the act of removing the tear, she caught sight of him. She launched to her feet and immediately began berating him for daring to sneak up on her in his “stealth socks.”

Fortunately, John had been married to her long enough, he knew how to placate her. He wrapped his arms around her, told her he loved her, and proceeded to shower her with compliments and flattery until she ran out of energy. Then he solemnly promised to be more careful with his stealth socks.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Rosa looked up at him. “John, you love me?”

He nodded. It was an understatement, of course. The truth was he was a pasty-white, nerdy, clumsy, off-worlder who still marveled at his luck in getting such a loving woman to marry him. She even cooked and cleaned for him, which was an unexpected bonus he was certain he didn’t deserve, if only because she reminded him of the fact whenever he annoyed her. He was grateful, every day, to have her in his life.

So why did she look so scared?

“You were looking at a picture?” he asked.

Rosa pulled it away from her chest and held it out to him. “My son.”

Oh.

The man in the picture looked as if he was close to his mid-thirties, maybe a little older. There was a woman beside him, and in their arms was a toddler who was probably under two earth-years old. John’s eyes weren’t what they once were, so he took the photo and pulled it closer to his face. All three of the figures were smiling or laughing. When he flipped it over, he saw two handwritten names: Alix Avril Vas and Yuuna Rosa Vas—“Little Rosie.”

“Which son?”

“Adan. My oldest.”

Before they were married, Rosa had told John the whole story. She had insisted that she couldn’t agree to his proposal unless he knew. They never alluded to it again, but John remembered every detail.

Adan had been twenty-four when he’d joined the Rising. And he hadn’t been married.

“I found it pushed under the door about a year and a half ago,” Rosa said.

John Shaw always thought of himself as a staunch loyalist. Not a whisper of sedition had ever been associated with his name. He supported the laws the Supremacy had put in place because he trusted they were there for a reason. But in that moment, he discovered a chink in the armor of his allegiance.

Anyway, it was only a picture. And the Supremacy laws had never seen Rosa Shaw cry.

“They’re beautiful.” He’d handed the picture back and kissed his wife’s head.

From that day on, there’d been a new dimension to Shaw’s reserve whenever his coworkers started talking about politics. Compassion had needled its way into his brain, making things difficult. They weren’t simply rebels anymore; they were people with families who missed them.

This new announcement made him profoundly happy.

John’s attention was drawn back to the monitor when he heard the words “Uprising military.”

“—fighting units will be disbanded, and a general amnesty is granted for all Rising personnel not currently wanted for other crimes.”

The broadcast was interrupted by the high-pitched ping of his home line. John jumped at the unexpected noise and managed to cut himself with the forgotten knife. He swore, dropped everything in his hands, and staggered over to the wall-mounted screen. He was pressing down on the cut to keep it from bleeding all over the carpet (Rosa would give him such an earful!), so he fumbled with both hands to accept the audio-only call.

“…Hello?”

Not “This is John Shaw,” or “John Shaw, P31.” All he could manage was a hesitant “Hello.” He put the wound to his mouth.

“Hello. Is Rosa there?”

“No, I’m afraid she’s out.”

“Oh.” There was a pause. “Do you know—”

“Is that you, Adan?…Ciro?”

There was another pause. “This is Adan Vas.”

John laughed. “Adan! This is John Shaw. I’m your stepfather!”

The silences were the hardest part. The silences and the cut that wouldn’t stop bleeding—why the hell was he tearing up? Oh, no! Maybe the boy didn’t know.

“Your mother—Rosa—she married me about nine years ago.”

“No. I know, Mr. Shaw.”

Of course he knew. Why would he have pushed the line to this number otherwise? Maybe he resented John for being so familiar? Dammit, that cut hurt.

“Look, I have to get a bandage.” John started to walk away from the monitor, but he yelled over his shoulder as he went. “I was just listening to the announcement. I cut myself.” Shaw cursed in his head; of all the times to become an incoherent idiot! “Look, don’t hang up. Rosa will kill me if she misses you.”

Shaw heard Adan laugh. “All right, Mr. Shaw. I won’t hang up. Will she be back soon?”

“If she’s heard what’s going on, I have no doubt she’s already on her way. Is everything all right over there? Where are you? Wait! Can you tell me that?”

“I think so. I’m on the Rising’s Home Base. It’s a little hectic over here. Apparently, stopping a war isn’t easy.”

“No.” Shaw, who was daily ensconced in Supremacy bureaucracy, shook his head. “I can’t imagine it would be. But are you done? They said that there wasn’t going to be anymore fighting, right?”

“We haven’t been fighting for a while now—”

John should have remembered that. They had specifically mentioned it.

“—but I’m useful enough they’ve been keeping me around.”

“Can I ask what you do?” John said.

“I’m a pilot. Deconstruction requires a lot of ships.”

“Yes. I can imagine that too.”

“What do you do, Mr. Shaw?”

John smiled as he finished applying his bandage. “Oh, I’m a paper-pusher. I used to be an engineer, but now all I want to build is a better filing system. They put me in charge of the tunnel and commuting networks out here.”

“That’s a big job.”

“Well, for Mesa Rojo, it is. Lots of paper needs to be pushed around.” He felt a little foolish as he walked back to the monitor. That joke only went over moderately well with other office workers, and he was talking to a soldier. “I know it’s not as exciting as being a pilot—”

“Mr. Shaw, do you have any idea how empty velox is?” There was a lilt of humor in the man’s voice. “About your third day, pushing around paper sounds like a grand time.”

Shaw was about to reply, but the door to his house burst open. Rosa Shaw came in, already talking as fast as she could.

“Did you hear? Of course you heard. Turn that thing down now! Do you want to go deaf? They say that it’s all done. Lord! What do you think—” She stopped abruptly when she saw John’s face.

“Rosa,” John said, “there’s someone on the line for you.”

He walked over to the counter where, on the screen, two well-dressed experts were debating what the end of the war would mean for the economy. He turned it off. Rosa crossed the room and stood in front of the black monitor devoted to their home line.

“Mama?”

The tears were instant and ran down her cheeks like rivers, but she had enough self-possession she didn’t sob. Her voice was only a little shaky. “Adan.”

“First thing, Ciro’s right here. He wants me to tell you he loves you, and he’s going to talk to you as soon as I’m done.”

Rosa nodded. Then she remembered he couldn’t see her. “Good. Good boy.”

“Second, I was wondering, would you mind if my wife and I came to visit? I should warn you, Rosie would have to come too. She’s almost four now, and she’s kind of a handful.”

Now Rosa sobbed.