“Better to avoid emotional attachment. It helps you get the most value out of the assets under your control.”

—Daglov Trymik, former leader of the now-defunct Great Cargo Guild

“A-yup,” replied Fell. “See, Almada’s been trying to make a case for a restraint release for two years now, but the courts usually won’t rule for it unless either the judge is bribed—thank Bor, Almada drew an honest one in this matter—or in extreme and hostile circumstances.”

As if his words snapped her out of a minor trance, Xyrthe jolted up. “That’s why he called us. That’s why Gilvus—oh.”

Fell nodded. “I knew you were intuitive.”

Confused, Zaina’s head darted back and forth between them. “Wait—what do you mean?”

Xyrthe sighed and then said, “Almada played it pretty smart, I’ve gotta be honest. All he has to do is fudge the paperwork a little—the Order probably wouldn’t notice until hundred of years later, when the restraint-release records go public. Wow.”

Throwing her arms up, Zaina asked, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Well,” Xyrthe said, “Almada needs to prove total exhaustion—that he’s exhausted all of his terrestrial and atmospheric options in attempting to neutralize the threat with minimal harm to the civilian population—before he can have a judge sign off on a restraint-release form for TPB—total planetary bombardment. I’d say the deaths of four or five lancers would be enough to qualify Fell here—who would be blamed—as a threat worthy of writing off the civilian population.”

“Four or five?” Zaina asked, only getting more lost with each answer. “But there’s only two of us!”

“Ah,” Xyrthe said, rubbing her chin, “but that’s easy to fix—Almada could easily lie on his paperwork for the incident report. There’d be no public announcement for something like this, or if there was, it’d be a washed up version. The Order doesn’t have access to Synatorium records until they de-crypt and go public—which can take hundreds of years—so they wouldn’t find the discrepancy until then. By the time anyone found out the resort would already be a historical monument.”

Fell blinked, then said in a disbelieving tone, “Wait—that’s what Almada’s doing all this for? A resort? Please tell me that’s a joke.”

With a grim frown, Xyrthe shook her head. “Sadly, no. A resort moon on Irdelan.”

An angry grimace came over Fell’s face, then passed; with a shrug, he said, “Well, if you’re gonna build a resort moon, I guess that’s the place to put it. Still, by Bor—a resort?”

Xyrthe leaned back and crossed her arms. “Yeah, I know.” She then turned to Zaina and asked, “Well, kid? How do you want to play it?”

The entire conversation was replaying in Zaina’s head as she tried to sort out the truth. Someone was lying to her, neither really had any evidence, and Xyrthe was putting the decision of what to do next in her hands—quite a bit of pressure. Zaina had to get this right.

Part of her wanted to believe both of them. If Almada was lying, she would be aiding in the destruction of an innocent village—hell, the entire Synatorium would be in on it; if Fell was lying, it boded no better for the people of Freewater.

In a soft voice Fell said, “Sorry if I was a little long-winded, there. I tend to get carried away when I’m telling a story.”

There was too much to parse out. Jamming her eyes shut, Zaina shook her head and demanded, “How the hell am I supposed to believe you? How can I know you’re telling the truth?”

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“Like I said earlier,” Fell replied, “stay ‘til tomorrow. Almada’s mercenaries will probably assume you failed by then and return to their normally scheduled bombing.”

Zaina pointed at him and said, “But that’s exactly what you’d say if you were lying, isn’t it? So Xyrthe and I will let our guard down and you can kill us in the night!”

With an amused chuckle, Fell replied, “You really have trust issues, don’t you?”

“Wh—what the hell is that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“Look, I can understand not trusting me and Leda—you just met us. But you don’t even trust yourself to handle the situation should it go poorly. Your partner isn’t freaking out. Probably because she knows herself well enough to know she’ll stand tall in the shit. And maybe she’s placed a little more faith in you than you realize.”

A resigned sigh escaped Zaina’s lips as Xyrthe rolled her eyes and then averted her gaze. Zaina cursed under her breath, hating that her first ‘real’ mission had thrown her such a curveball.

“Xyrthe,” Zaina said, “can I talk to you outside?”

“Whatever you want to say, say it now,” Xyrthe said.

“It’s—I don’t—”

With a shrug, her mentor said, “It’s a clusterfuck of information right now. You don’t know who to trust, who to believe—and you want guidance. That about sum it up?”

Blushing, Zaina nodded and stared at the ground. She hated that Xyrthe did this in front of them.

“Well,” Xyrthe said, “I agree with you that we shouldn’t outright trust our new—let’s not call them friends, how about—acquaintances?”

Fell turned to Leda, who shrugged and said, “Not sure I’d go that far, even.”

In an annoyed tone, Xyrthe replied, “Well, whatever we want to call it doesn’t matter. The point is—look, I’m really bad at this shit. What are you asking? Do you want to know what I think we should do, or what?”

Zaina threw her hands up in frustration. “You know what—fine. We’ll stay the fucking night. I need time to think anyway. How are we going to go about this to make sure there’s no fuckery?”

With a shrug, Xyrthe said, “You sleep first shift, I’ll sleep second? Or you can take first shift to do your thinking.”

“Yeah—fine, that works,” Zaina said. “Now let’s get out of here and set up camp.”

Without waiting for her mentor’s response Zaina stormed outside, crossed her arms, and fumed. How could Xyrthe be so disrespectful in front of targets of a mission? And further—how could everything be so confusing?

As she stewed in her frustration, the people of Freewater went about their days before her. Some toiled shoring up the town’s haphazard homes, stopping as kids ran by making engine noises to accompany the toy ships they’d assembled from scraps; others stood atop their roofs and switched out the blankets hanging from the clotheslines, carefully considering how it would fit in with all the rest.

Zaina shook her head. I don’t get it. They think they’re gonna get bombed tomorrow, but they’re putting blankets up? Why not make themselves less noticeable?

Staring at the people going about their lives softened the edges of her anger, and it quickly turned into sorrow. Whatever she did, it needed to be in service to the people of Freewater.

From within Fell’s shack, she heard Xyrthe’s voice. Zaina placed an ear to one of the sunken walls as her mentor said, “Sorry about her. She’s—well, she’s still sorting everything out.”

“It’s no worries,” Fell replied. “She’s young, like my deputy here. Still full of fire, still wanting to believe you’re gonna get a fair shake of it. Thirty years ago, I’d have done the same exact thing in her shoes.”

Xyrthe chuckled. “Hard to picture.”

“You gonna go after her?”

“Of course. She’s my student—I kind of have to. The scholars will be on my ass if she goes missing.”

Fell replied, “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow. Oh, and one more thing. If this does turn out to be one of Almada’s tricks, I won’t hesitate to act in defense of Freewater and its people. Know that.”

“Fair enough,” Xyrthe replied.

Zaina’s gaze fell to the sands as her mentor emerged from the shack.

“Ready to go?” she asked.

With a sullen nod, Zaina followed her mentor to the outskirts of town. They wordlessly set up camp and ate their rationed meals for the night before Xyrthe turned in, leaving Zaina with plenty of time to ponder the words of Reister Fell and Ondor Almada. One of them had to be lying—and neither seemed anything like the other was trying to portray.

With a sigh she reached a hand toward the sky, cupping a star in her palm. I didn’t think being a lancer would be this complicated. It wasn’t this complicated on Demelia—or Kaadu.

Then again, both of those situations involved the Eldritch—an entity so foul that resisting it came naturally. In those fights, she always knew which side she was on. She almost wished for something like that again, something where she didn’t have to sort out lies from truth. For all the Eldritch’s evil, there was something pure about it, too—something simple, unabashed and unashamed of itself.

The night drifted on as Zaina’s thoughts teetered between Ondor’s testimony and Fell’s. She hoped the next day would bring answers.