~January 5th, 141 AH~

~Sector Pisces, Peranka Clinical Complex (formerly known as Gold Rush FOB)~

The sun shone brightly upon a modest concrete hut as Akash Varana left his wife and son behind, not to chase an impossible dream, but to face the responsibilities that followed the fruition of that reality. As he did, his thoughts were still preoccupied with the Arenaball match he’d helped officiate last evening.

As much as Kiran Varana had taken after his father in physical appearance, he'd inherited none of Akash’s deficiencies as an athlete. Akash had watched with equal parts pride and anxiety (and forgot to blow the whistle a few times) as his now sixteen-year-old son dominated an arena full of players much older than him. His opponents had included the stocky Jaeger Feray Geyik, oft-touted to be ‘untackleable’, who’d finally met her match in the form of ‘her boss’s son’ who hunted the pill with the ferocity of youth unbound.

The sight of his son in the fullness of youth had filled Akash with equal parts hesitant pride and instinctive anxiety. His only hope was that, given enough time, both his guilt-borne hesitation and war-weary instincts would wane in intensity. He even allowed himself to be rather optimistic about this hope… for time was now something he had plenty of.

Yes. Time was something both he and his allies had plenty of. Time to reconcile. Time to heal. Time to build for a future that knew no bounds.

And yet, time alone wasn’t enough to see a dream to fruition. So, Akash Varana set to his responsibilities for the day, which started with getting himself breakfast from the canteen at Peranka Concourse.

There, he was greeted, as always, by the canteen manager’s cheery contralto and bracing laughter. He and Sarnai Tenger chatted for a bit—or rather, Sarnai chatted and Akash listened, mostly to complaints about her husband—before she finally deigned to fill his plate with the day’s special. This morning, the special happened to be fish cake, which the Gaertner found to be oddly appropriate. Then he gave his usual greetings to the kitchen staff, which included a shyly smiling Ruhua, before taking his meal into the seating area.

Empty seats were plenty this early in the morning, but Akash was soon joined by the slightly limping figure of Feray, dressed and ready for her shift in her white lab coat. Even after months of sharing breakfast with her, it was still strange to see Feray in anything other than a jumpsuit or combat fatigues, but he supposed he’d have plenty of time to get used to that too.

“Morning,” Akash chirped, unable to hide a slight smirk as he did. “I see you’re still smarting from last night.”

“Morning,” Feray grunted, “and don’t start. That was an illegal tackle, and you know it.”

“You sure about that, Feray? I did have a pretty good view of it.”

“A pretty good view of your son, you mean. As far as I could tell, you weren’t paying attention to anything else happening in the game.”

Akash chuckled. “Maybe that’s because he was most of what was happening in the game. Next time, you might want to consider taking the pill out of his hands once in a while.”

At this, Feray merely snorted, then Gaertner and Jaeger ate in companionable silence for some time, before the latter spoke again, uncharacteristically serious.

“Oh, did I tell you? I just received another requisition from the knuckleheads over at Akropolis. That’s already twice in two months! We’re stretched thin as it is trying to ration resources here at Peranka, and that asshole Ghata keeps pestering me about propping up his little pet project. Can’t you say something to him? Aren’t you… almost like his uncle or some shit like that?”

Akash took a moment to compose his response, unable to hide a chagrined smile as he did. He wasn’t so sure if the now Vakta patriarch had ever looked to his Varana senior as an ‘uncle’ figure, but he couldn’t deny that he himself had a soft spot for the younger man, even after all that had happened between them and more. Especially now, as Ghata Vakta—less an arm and an eye as a result of the injuries he’d sustained from the final days of the Syntropy War—dedicated his waning wealth and influence to the surprising pursuit of ‘Old Earth Restoration’, Akash couldn’t help but wish to lend his support.

“You call it a ‘pet project’, but I think what Ghata’s trying to do is important. We all must move forward as best we can, but we also shouldn’t turn our back on our history—both of virtue and of folly. Besides, have you heard the man play the flute? With one hand? Maybe I just have strange taste, but I think it’s quite nice.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

It was difficult to tell whether the disdain plain on Feray’s face was for Ghata’s flute-playing prowess or Akash’s defense of it. “Right, so when can I expect you to pull out a fresh batch of operation-grade Anamnium out of your ass? Even if it really does feel like Anamnium grows on trees these days, doesn’t mean we’ve got the personnel to harvest enough of it to keep up with demand.”

Akash nodded, with as much performative solemnity as he could manage. It was true that he’d chosen the former site of Gold Rush FOB as his new base of operations mainly due to the rapid recovery of the region’s Anamnium founts following the Mothership’s ‘dissolution’. It was also true that the hard-working Jaegers who now called Peranka home needed to work harder than perhaps any Jaeger before them just to supply the various human settlements that were spreading across a healing earth.

Akash could understand and sympathize with Feray’s plight. At the same time, he knew better than to butt his head in where his (lack of) expertise didn’t belong.

“To that, let me just say I have full faith in your and the Jaeger Corps’ readiness and ability to rise to the occasion. Just as you’ve done countless times before. Just as you will for countless more challenges to come.”

After breakfast, Akash and Feray went their separate ways, now sharing only their readiness to meet whatever challenges the day might present. Akash then went to his office to jot down a few notes, before making his way over to the Spiegel Rehabilitation Ward where he started his rounds. He went to the first bed, only to find it empty. It wasn’t until the third empty bed in a row that he remembered what day of the week it was.

He found his patients—all of them—gathered in the courtyard outside the Ward. Most still sat in wheelchairs, but some had recovered enough muscle mass and strength to stand with the help of crutches. In any case, all 22 of them had gathered in the courtyard this morning to give their undivided attention to one man who was just as bald as them and nearly just as small.

Bateer Tenger stood amidst the silent yet attentive Spiegels, reading aloud from a tattered book in his hand. As Akash stood back and listened, he soon recognized the book in question to be a recovered volume from the Story of the Stone, an intricate if somewhat meandering chronicle of an Old Earth culture’s distant past. The Gaertner himself wasn’t the biggest fan, and he rather questioned the subject matter’s suitability for engaging a captive audience. However, looking at the 22 pairs of eyes and ears that followed the storyteller’s every word and gesture, he couldn’t rightly argue with the results. And just one more reason to root for Ghata Vakta’s little pet project…

Akash stood back and listened for a while, then went back inside, deciding he could come back later to finish his rounds. After all, his patients looked to be in good spirits and even better hands.

The rest of his work day went by with nary a hitch—not that Akash had expected any. There’d been a time, in the immediate aftermath of the war, when every second and every drop of Anamnium were precious in the race between life and death. Yet, after just a matter of months, that race felt like a distant memory. These days, most anything that came through his clinic’s door—an aching back, a sprained ankle, a bad cough—didn’t even require communion with the Nexus to manage… to the point where he began to doubt whether he could still call himself a ‘Gaertner’ at all. If he were completely honest, that notion unnerved him slightly. But he also knew that he needed only time for it to feel like the most natural thing in the world.

Akash ended the day by making a detour on his way home. The sight of Bateer reading to his ‘class’ of Spiegels from an Old Earth book had put him in a rather pensive and nostalgic mood. He thought to acknowledge that mood by paying some old friends a visit.

The memorial plaque—referred by locals simply as ‘Remembrance’—sat atop a small hill that overlooked the clinic. Unlike the much larger memorial installed at Akropolis’s reconstructed Horsemen’s Square, this solitary plaque housed a much shorter list, containing only the names of those who'd been lost during the Uprising War, the Battle of Akropolis, and the Battle of Vulkan Coast. Even so, they were some of the names that meant the most for a Gaertner and his memory of alliance.

Tino Lluvia. Chai Dukhan. Kari Falten. Graeme O’Riordan.

And… Eddy Vesnin. For as Akash made his way to the top of the hill, he saw that someone was already there before him. Ruhua. The young woman from the canteen who, every morning, greeted him with polite words and a shy smile. She now turned that smile to him as he approached, one that shone through despite the tears that yet streaked her cheeks.

And thus, as the sun drooped toward its evening resting place and bathed the domeless sky over Peranka in a purplish glow, an aging revolutionary and a young canteen worker stood together in silent remembrance. It was a shared reminder, not only of all that had been lost, but also of all the time it would still take to reckon with that loss.

Perhaps the scars would fade in time. Perhaps they never would. And perhaps that was the point.

As if in affirmation of his own chosen way to reckon with loss, Akash called to the Nexus once more, for the first time in many days. He summoned his map of [ALLIANCE] and counted his blessings as much as his losses.

And there, somewhere in a corner of his right temporal lobe, in the same place he’d always reserved for it, he felt one node of signals shine with unbroken brilliance. For the node belonged to just another in a long procession of [ALLIES] who yet chased dreams that needed seeing to fruition.