CHAPTER VIII: COMMANDER CASSANDRA EMERIC
Emeric Estate, Las Alma, capital city
Nova Sumer, Core Worlds
December 17, 2771
Andra should’ve known better. Breaking news to Xiomara Emeric was never easy, but right now she was cooking. Cooking Mom was the most dangerous form her mother took, in contrast to Work Mom and Judgmental Mom. Work Mom usually had too much on her plate at the Senate, and Andra’s visits gave her a little break. Andra’s reunions with Work Mom tended to be…dare she say, peaceful?
Judgmental Mom wasn’t exactly pleasant, but mothers have been quietly disapproving of their daughter’s choices for thousands of years, it at least felt close to normal. If anything, it actually reminded Andra of her youth, when she’d make her mother proud excelling in school and private training, but then bring home partners she knew she’d would be annoyed by: a boy in a band, a girl with tattoos, a nonbinary with tattoos in a band, even a couple Ulishar diplomatic aides who might’ve been spies. Andra would never admit it, but watching Judgmental Mom was kind of its own reward; paying her mother back for a relentless authoritarian upbringing.
But Cooking Mom? Andra should’ve known better. Her mother loved to cook, especially when people came to visit, and with the massive kitchen suite in her penthouse apartment, she could make some real art between her sessions in politics.
It was also when she was most volatile. Her energy was up, her filter was down, and any little thing could set her off. The Emeric Estate staff tended to avoid the kitchen already, what with with her skill and passion for cooking, but when Xiomara was in the act? They tended to evacuate the entire floor. The last time Andra made the mistake of arguing with Cooking Mom, her mother wound up painting the walls with rice, beans and a broken party platter, then yelling at the staff for trying to clean it up for her — and that was just when Andra told her she joined the Navy. Now? Andra just told her she’d been promoted her for her resourcefulness and leadership, and honored with the command of a new flagship.
…Andra really should’ve known better.
“I can’t believe you,” Xiomara spat, impaling her knife through a half-diced onion on the cutting board.
“‘Thanks mom, I’m so proud of me too,’” Andra snarked, pacing in the foyer beyond the kitchen. “Look, I know it’s not ideal, but it was too good an opportunity to pass up. I thought you’d understand that.”
“I do,” her mother countered, hands on her hips, shooing the few remaining staff out of the kitchen when they tried to pick up where she left off at the cutting board. “And it’s still not worth your talents. I thought I raised you wiser than that.”
“Okay, are we still using the word ‘raise’?” Andra challenged, “I spent more time with tutors and trainers than you.”
“Sí, and now you’re using all that work to go play war with those knuckle-dragging fascists.”
“Hey, they’ve given more humanitarian aid than the Senate ever has — For frack’s sake, they saved the human race!”
“Watch your mouth, mija!” Xiomara scolded.
“O, permisso??” she shot back. “I learned every cuss word in a hundred languages from you!”
“No, not that — don’t go giving credit to warmongers for saving humanity. I knew they were teaching you that nonsense! Brainwashing you to think like the Ultras!”
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Andra rolled her eyes. “Mom, Terran Ultras wash out of every single bootcamp, they can’t get past psych evals and they flunk every fitness course. They’re idiots with microphones, not real soldiers. And last time I checked, the United Forces are pretty cosmopolitan, I can hardly see human supremacists getting any traction.”
“They’re populists. Nothing gets populists riled up like wartime revisionism. The military served its purpose in the war, but we’re past that age of our species. It’s well past time for the armed forces to fade away, but they never know when to quit. Do you have any idea how hard I work to make sure lunatics like Jerome Graves stay out of Senate business?”
“Ugh, Mom, Admiral Graves isn’t a Terran Ultra, he’s just…old school.”
“Is that who you’re reporting to?”
“No! He’s stationed in the Fringes, we’ll be passing through one of his Rift Lanes in a few weeks.”
“I don’t want you talking to that man.”
“I’m going to have to, Mom! This whole good faith tour starts in the Fringes, at some point I’m gonna have to meet him.”
“Ay, por favor!” Xiomara swatted the air, joining Andra in the foyer and pouring herself a cocktail. “‘Good faith tour,’ that’s a bad joke. This is a propaganda parade.”
Andra sighed and sank onto the couch. “Yeah, it is. And yeah, I’m angry that I got the job because of my name. But I have to play the cards I’m dealt, right? This is a really great start for my career — it’s what I want. What I’ve wanted all my life. Can you at least respect that?”
Xiomara knocked back her drink and poured another. “No.”
Andra slapped the coffee table and shot to her feet. “Goddamnit, Mom! Y’know, if nothing I ever did was what you wanted, did you ever think to adjust your expectations? Maybe consider what I wanted??”
“I thought you’d learn from your brother’s mistakes. Instead you’re spitting in our family’s face, just like him.”
“Don’t compare me to Ronaldo!” Andra pointed, “I didn’t run off, I never abandoned you!”
“Except right now, you mean?”
“I’m an adult, this is my life! I’m sorry I didn’t want to work in the snake pit like you, but I can’t live my life by your mandate! I worked my ass off to get here, I did a hundred bullshit jobs to do it, and I did them well! I’m sorry, but at this point, I don’t care if you’re proud anymore. I got here on my own anyway.”
Xiomara rose as well, looking up at her daughter with a cold, knowing stare. “What did they name the ship, Cassandra?” Andra’s chest caved in, heartbeat crashing in her ears again. “I know they did, I’ve seen the briefings. I want to hear you say it. What did they rename this ship you ‘got on your own’?”
Andra balled her fists and looked down, suddenly an angry teenager again.
“…The Ambactus.”
Xo chuckled bitterly. “That’s the reward you’re chasing. You’ll die in a hole, and decades later, they’ll name a war machine after you. Don’t pretend this isn’t about your father, mija. The Navy took him away from us, but you’re choosing to leave.”
“You’re not proud of what he did?”
“Excuse you,” her mother hissed.
“Didn’t he have something worth dying for??”
“I think he’d rather be standing here, talking to you.”
“He didn’t have that choice!”
“But you do!” Xo snapped. “And you chose to follow the pendejos who got him killed in the first place!”
“The Navy didn’t kill him, Mom, Malim Kagan did!”
“And who put them both there?”
“What?!” Andra balked. Surely her mother, a woman of reason and power, couldn’t be this deluded. To suggest the Tregian War, an unprovoked campaign of genocide, was some proxy conflict or dastardly military conspiracy? Could her mother really be so dedicated to contradicting her? So stubborn? So anchored to her resentment that—
Yes, she answered herself, Yes she could.
“Fine,” Andra threw her hands up, “This conversation isn’t going anywhere. I just wanted to let you know, I’ll be gone for a few months.”
“Ay, that’ll be nothing new,” her mother went back to the kitchen.
“…I’m sorry?”
Her mother resumed dicing onions, not looking up. “I only see you a few times a year anyway,” she sighed passive aggressively. “I suppose this isn’t very different. Now I just know you might be off getting yourself killed.”
Andra pulled her lips in and shut her eyes, relaxing her tensing hands to rub her forehead and smooth her pulled back hair. A thousand angry rebuttals flew through her mind, but none reached her lips. She just exhaled and fidgeted with her uniform. Marching past the kitchen, the women avoided eye contact. Reaching the door, she lingered.
“Te quiero, mama.”
After a long pause, her mother finally muttered “…Yo también.”
Andra sighed and walked out. Certainly not happy, not even satisfied, but by Cooking Mom standards? She’d seen worse.