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One would think that with everyone now well fed, and on the Mraboran Protectorate’s dime to boot, the talks would resume in a more orderly fashion, but Congressmember Frances Reyes of Earth had different ideas.

“You do realize, Congressmember Ferrety, that it’s your children that would be sent to die in this conflict?” she asked before anyone even had a chance to settle back into their seats in the small conference room on one of the top floors of the consulate building.

Straight to dead children, Angzal thought; Reyes really didn’t have a pause button. Gord Ferrety, one of the members of the Human Interstellar Dependency Congress who represented Mars, did not skip a beat in the face of the sudden challenge.

“Yes, I realize the colonies have a more disproportionate uptake into the HID and ORC navies, but it’s due entirely to desperation. You’re citing the problem itself to undermine the solution to it.”

Problem. Solution. Got it. Angzal hoped that Rzena was taking better notes than she was.

This was the second day of the discussions between the two Human Congressmembers and Angzal’s final chance to prove herself and possibly avoid being shipped off to an even more remote and irrelevant rock, though such a bleak place was difficult to imagine. The Human Interstellar Dominion Congress was taking its vote tomorrow – on whether to approve both the intervention by the HID fleet, and by the fleet of the Outer Rim Confederacy which the Humans were a part of, in the current situation developing around Krevali, the pre-space-age world that the Thorian Empire recently conquered.

“And you’re the one proposing to douse flames with gasoline, thinking it’ll work just because it’s a liquid,” Reyes continued, and Angzal wished the Congressmember could sit in her chair for longer than a few seconds at a time. “If this blows up into another Last Gasp, and no one should be putting it past the Thorians, it could tie up our fleet for a decade. It would be our periphery worlds that would be most vulnerable to pirates filling that vacuum.”

“The pirates haven’t been a significant issue for years,” Congressmember Ferrety replied with a patience that seemed almost admirable to Angzal, “The continuing poverty and resource scarcity on the other hand …”

“Won’t be improved by this war no matter what you’ve led yourself to believe.”

“Don’t write this off as simple-minded belief, Congressmember.” Ferrety’s mouth, which seemed to have a constant pucker about it, took on the form of a pout whenever he was especially displeased with what Reyes was saying. “I know even for you it’s tempting to think of us colonists as simple-minded rockhoppers that need the wise citizens of Earth to tell us what’s good for us. But believe me when I say there’s a lot of sentiment out there that Earth needs to do more to make Human worlds more relevant in the Known Reaches, or they will continue to languish like irrelevant, well, ‘rocks’.”

He said this calmly, almost kindly, projecting the very model of the provincial politician, with nothing but love for his neighbours and boundless hospitality for strangers. Angzal wondered how much of this was an act.

“You’re from Mars, Ferrety. You can hardly describe yourself as being out in the boondocks. Only thing closer to Earth is Luna. And don’t think I’ve forgotten how much of our shipbuilding gets done on Mars. I’m sure this kind of foolish crusade would do wonders for your economy.”

Congressmember Ferrety’s puckered lips seemed to project themselves further from his face as he regarded Reyes with his small black eyes. He had surely known this accusation was coming; even Rzena was helpful enough to provide this background to Angzal ahead of time. But talking to Frances Reyes was like drinking from a fire hose – an overwhelmingly difficult task even if you were dying of thirst.

Reyes was one of the most vocal supporters of the non-interventionist position and by extension, despite being born and raised on Earth, was a great champion for the HID colonies, who generally preferred Earth stay out of interplanetary politics and stick to supporting its own worlds. Reyes advocated the idea that not only was it inappropriate for Humans, a race that were relative newcomers to space travel, to be involved in conflicts between other races, but also that it was incumbent on well-established and well-resourced races, like Angzal’s Mraboran, to act as the mediators, and where necessary, police.

Congressmember Ferrety of Mars, on the other hand, was a spokesperson for a relatively small group of HID colonies that believed a more proactive Earth would attract more economic interest from the Known Reaches to some of the HID’s periphery worlds. Between Reyes’ and Ferrety’s factions, the entire vote hung in the balance, and Angzal’s career along with it.

The Mraboran Ambassador’s instructions to Angzal were quite clear – facilitate the discussions between Reyes and Ferrety to ensure that the vote carries, that the Human and ORC fleets are dispatched to meddle in the situation around Krevali, and take any heat off the Mraboran themselves. They had been at these discussions for all of the previous day and also all of that morning, and with the vote looming tomorrow, Angzal’s tail pulled with anxiety at the leather bindings that kept it strapped close to her body.

“Every well-resourced older colony has some kind of hand in supplying ships for our space fleet, Congressmember,” Ferrety said, his fingers lying on top of the conference table while his thumbs dug impatiently into its side, “Surely you don’t mean to dismiss all of us due to these economic realities? The ships we end up building and providing crews for, once this is all over – they will return to patrol our own borders in greater numbers. We can ensure that HID and ORC sovereignty is defended, and anyone would have second thoughts about pushing us around, whether it be pirates, the Thorians, Hatvan or Mraboran.” He held Reyes’ gaze and after a few moments, turned towards Angzal and Rzena. “No offence meaning, of course.”

Angzal showed her right hand, palm up and with no visible claws, as a gesture of goodwill.

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Captain Pueson stepped away from the prisoner towards the corner of the room, forcing the other two to follow, and then asked in a hushed voice, “Is this true, Commander? Is it possible that our prisoner ensured that the explosive device in that crate did not come aboard the Forseti?”

Boro’s throat was still tight, and now it was dry to boot. “It’s within the realm of possibilities based on what we’ve seen,” he said acidly, “But there’s no reason why we should believe it.”

“What about the unexploded device?” Captain Pueson asked. “Could that be linked somehow?”

“Something to consider,” Boro answered in a strained voice.

“Doctor, has he always talked like this?” the Captain asked.

“He’s been going on like that since he regained consciousness yesterday,” Dr. Ory Sufai answered, her voice entering a higher register that did not reflect her age, “I’ve tried to ignore it, but that hasn’t stopped him.”

“Oh it’s so nice to hear the murmur of your voices.” The prisoner’s head lay flat and facing up, though his eyes were now closed. “It’s such a lovely song. Full of emotion and sorrow and love, an undeniable soul at the core of it all. A tender, real soul.”

His eyes remained closed as the three Forseti crewmembers returned to his bedside, the faintest smile on his face, something about it vaguely uncanny, as if the primitive stem at the core of Boro’s brain could sense that something was wrong with the creature on an unseen level.

“If you’re telling the truth, that you tried to save the ship,” Captain Pueson said, though if it were up to Boro, this ludicrous possibility would not even be entertained, “Then who was the one who tried to destroy it?”

“The other one, of course. She’s got no connection to us. That is, it’s her progenitor that doesn’t. Her progenitor and ours well, they don’t see eye to eye,” he smiled gently then, a completely unnerving gesture, “That’s between us though, it’s nothing you need to concern yourselves about.”

Captain Pueson’s large round face loomed over their nameless prisoner, his mouth opened slightly as it always did when the Captain’s mind was churning particularly thorny thoughts, but the expression in those mismatched green eyes remained placid, perceiving no danger and seeming to not even scratch the surface of the serious situation he found himself in. If it weren’t for the Captain and the Doctor, Boro would surely have been able to find a way to snap his attention back from whatever clouds it had found itself in. All Boro had at his disposal though were words.

“I think when our ship is almost destroyed that gives us plenty of reason to be concerned,” Boro said.

“Of course, I’m sorry. When all you hear is the whole of you, that beautiful mass that is you, it’s sometimes hard to remember the little pinpricks that come together.” The doctor silently pushed between Boro and Captain Pueson, and leaned in to raise the black arc of the medical scanner over the prisoner.

“What are you –” Boro began to ask but Dr. Sufai interrupted. “Just keep him talking.”

The prisoner didn’t seem to mind this, his green eyes briefly flitting to the scanner in curiosity and then turning back to Boro.

“I’m sorry about that young man,” the prisoner said, “I really am. I realize that life can be so fragile when you’re all alone. But, you should be safe now. We’re the only ones they sent. They thought it would be different this time. But as you can see, it wasn’t. I thought I could do it, but when I saw you there, when your voices emerged from the crowd and I finally lain my own two eyes upon your magnificence, I couldn’t do it. Not sure if my progenitor would be displeased or happy with that. But you get to continue and I think that counts for something, so that I may hear your beautiful song.”

Honeyed words, to be sure, but ones that gave Boro no comfort. He felt instead that continued sensation that they had somehow touched him, in ways that were not appropriate, and made him want to throw up. He stepped away and through the door to the main part of the medbay, with Captain Pueson and Dr. Sufai following.

“I don’t know about you, Captain,” Boro said lowering his head, in an attempt to signal to the Doctor that she was excluded from this part of the conversation, “But I’m not entirely reassured by those ravings.”

“I hear you Commander, but we’re well on our way and I don’t see how it would make a difference now one way or another.” Captain Pueson looked towards their prisoner, who was now contentedly staring up into the blackness of the scanner hanging over his head. “If there’s others like him out there, they’ll be hard-pressed to find us.”

“Unless the technology that lets them create that can also see right through our ghost.”

“Best not to worry yourself with that, I think, Boro.” The Captain, in one of his rare instances of first-name address, put his hand on Boro’s shoulder and gave it a slight shake. “Besides, a few months by himself in the brig, maybe he’ll change his mind about how much he’s willing to share. Doctor, I want him out of here and transferred into the brig as soon as you believe it appropriate.” They both then turned to the Doctor, who was regarding them with a cool even expression, her hands in front of her, the fingers of one wrapped around the thumb of the other. “Once he’s well enough, please contact Indario and they will provide the appropriate escort.”

Boro did not entirely believe that the Doctor would be willing to give their prisoner the proper bill of health when the time came, but still she answered with a “Yes, Captain,” and a nod that involved mostly her eyes.

“In the meantime,” the Captain continued, “See if you can uncover anything else about …” he paused, took a few steps towards the door of the prisoner’s room and asked, “Do you have a name, by any chance?
​
“A name? No, I don’t, or …,” the prisoner lifted his chin so he could look in Captain Pueson’s direction, “Not in the sense that you understand them, but if it helps, you may call me Isht.”

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Captain Timofie Pueson took his time getting down to medbay, arriving with a sidearm neural devastator gun – not the best aim though effective in closed quarters, and entirely unnecessary given the restraints the prisoner found himself in. Boro immediately had Dr. Sufai brief Pueson on her discovery.

“This is troubling,” the Captain said, staring at the image of the double helix like he could actually understand something within it, “If the Thorians or even the Hatvan have access to this kind of technology … there could be others like him anywhere.”

“Well, now we also have access to this technology,” Boro nodded in the direction of the prisoner’s room. “I’m sure it won’t take much to reverse engineer whatever has been done to him.”

The doctor shifted uneasily in her seat as he said this. Ory Sufai would clearly be of no help in this endeavour, but once they delivered the prisoner back into Human Interstellar Dominion hands, there might be some progress.

“No sense in wasting any more time,” the Captain said, “Doctor, are we able to see the prisoner now?”

“He’s conscious and restrained, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said and then followed them out of her office. Boro noted that she did not correct the Captain on his use of the word ‘prisoner’ as she led them to his holding room, and opened the door for them.

The fake Intelligence officer lay on the bed, his feet, hands and chest all held down, staring up into the ceiling, looking every bit disturbingly Human.

As they walked into his field of vision, he turned his head, his pale green eyes focusing, the larger one opening as if in surprise while the smaller one lagged behind.

“Ah, visitors,” he said, “And here I thought that the good doctor was the only one left aboard this ship.”

“We’re not visitors,” Boro corrected, lacking any interest in humoring another basket case, “This is Captain Timofie Pueson and I’m sure you know who I am.”

“Yes, Commander Stevin, of course. I hear you were very brave during the whole ordeal, you should be very proud of yourself. Though I’m sorry about the loss of that young man. He struck me as someone who would not pick a flower but admire it more than someone who would.”

“What?” Boro growled quietly in response. Reverse engineering be damned – best course of action was clearly to stuff him in an airlock.

Captain Pueson, before stepping closer to loom over the prisoner, shot his Second-in-Command a look but Boro ignored it. “We need to know who sent you,” the Captain said. “Who else knows about this mission?”

“Your eyes, Commander,” the prisoner continued, ignoring the Captain’s question. “They’re very dark. But the darkness there contained, is multitudinous.” That answer, combined with the look in those mismatched green eyes that made it seem like their prisoner wanted to reach out and gently caress Boro’s face was unsettling, so Boro stepped in with his own query. “What are you? We know you’re not Human, so what were you originally?”

“Captain. Captain Pueson. Captain Timofie Pueson. I can feel what you’re thinking. Not everything, not all of it, but some of it comes out, spills out of your mouth and your eyes, even your skin. When I’m this close, I can actually sense the pinprick that is you, among all the noise. Same with you, Commander, and you, Doctor.”

The words he spoke were disturbing enough in their own right, but it was something about the way he was speaking, so soothing and almost comforting, that it touched something inside Boro that he did not need anyone’s hands on. His throat tightened at this and the room started to feel too small.

“Stop avoiding our questions and spewing gibberish,” Boro warned, though somehow he knew that it wasn’t gibberish at all.

“I’m sorry, I’m just fascinated. My progenitor has certainly interacted with Humans before but my personal iteration has not.”

“Who is the ‘progenitor’?” The Captain asked and his voice seemed to quaver, more so than Boro thought it usually did. The Doctor just kept her distance and Boro wondered how many of these conversations she’d already had with the green-eyed alien. “Is the progenitor who sent you to destroy the Forseti?”

“Sent me to destroy? I guess …” the prisoner’s mismatched eyes unfocused for a second, one briefly staring off into an independent direction from the other, “I guess that’s why I was sent, but not what I was sent for.”

“Are you trying to deny that you and your co-conspirator tried to set off an explosive on our ship?” Boro asked, and almost took a step backwards when the prisoner turned his head in his direction and pointed those green eyes straight through him, his mouth slightly open in what looked like confusion.

“That’s not true though, is it, Commander? Surely you must have seen some security tapes. I was the one who saved the Forseti. Humans are our people, not like with that other one. I don’t know if she survived, but if she did, I recommend she not be allowed to do so for much longer. But in any case, I said too much already. Always with our progenitor, we have this problem, never anyone else it seems.”

Boro had of course seen the tapes, had watched on repeat that split second where he’d lost control, where the green-eyed fake Intelligence officer lunged for the controls of the crate and managed to reach them, because it was his dark-eyed partner that had been marked by the Parsk Nahur as the first to get shot. Boro had assumed that the reason the crate ended up lurching backwards into Tuka instead forwards into the Forseti, was because the prisoner had made an error. Boro was not ready though to consider that the words of the disguised alien were the truth and that the crate was launched away from the ship intentionally. Especially since Boro had not alluded to this potential version of events in any of his reports.

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I’ve found it difficult to find the right words to say.

I find silence just as hard to maintain.

I have made no secret about my opinion of the country I grew up in – the one my parents and grandparents were born. I consider it a fortuitous badge of honour that my family moved away three weeks before the man currently running Russia came to power. And I want to be clear, when I use the word ‘running’, I mean that he is running it into the ground.

There are few, if any, pairs of countries on this planet that are as interconnected through family as Russia and Ukraine are. This war of aggression is nothing short of fratricide, perpetuated by a man intent on carving his legacy using the blood of his people and the blood of the people closest to them. No matter what bald-faced lies are fed about the alleged noble intentions of a war that is laughably passed off as a war of liberation, this is nothing short of a crime against humanity.

There will be be forever etched into the history books something called the Russo-Ukrainian War – an abomination that should have never come to be. And I know that people around the world are horrified by the newest invasion but they won’t be truly able to appreciate the heaviness of this tragedy.

To me, the conflict would forever be defined by a question that would haunt me forever – the first words my mom said to me when we first spoke after the invasion had been declared: “How does it feel waking up an aggressor?”

How does it feel to wake up and once again be a part of a great people led to commit great harm by a seemingly ceaseless succession of evil men?

How does it feel to look in the mirror and see yourselves related to the bad guys?

There are no words that I can say that would properly convey how much I condemn this war, how much I condemn what we’re doing, because, make no mistake, it is still that ‘we’ that sits like a thorn in my heart.
​
There is a naïve hopeful part of me that believes this can kick off a chain of events that can turn the page to a new chapter in Russian history, and perhaps we will finally wake up and have something to be proud of.

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Boro found that in his experience, rules were not only the best prophylactic against chaos, but also one of its insidious causes. Where a complete lack of rules was a recipe for inevitable anarchy, a blind adherence to rules against all reason was an impediment to progress. And it seemed to him that no one fit that latter bill better than ship or station doctors. The Forseti’s doctor was no exception. Although the crew for a week now had in its custody a dangerous terrorist that attempted to destroy the ship, neither Boro, nor anyone else on the command staff had been able to gain any access to him.

The reason for this was Dr. Sufai; and the fact that of the survivors, the fake Intelligence officer had been closest to the blast and suffered greatly in the explosion. Shortly after his admittance to the medbay, Boro was informed that there would be no access to the prisoner, or as Sufai was sure to remind them at any opportunity, the patient, until he recovered sufficiently to be able to take visitors. When Boro explained that they would not be visitors, but rather, interrogators who needed to get to the bottom of who was behind the attempted sabotage of the mission and therefore, by extension, an attempt on the doctor’s own life, Dr. Sufai retorted that she wasn’t sure how that was any better and said that she would call them down when the time was right and not a minute sooner.

If it were up to him, Boro would make sure that every chief medical officer would have to spend a year in ship’s command before being handed their first doctor commission, in order to learn what it was like to make hard decisions in the face of Hippocratic obstinance.

A full week this charade of rules and procedures persisted, but now Boro had received the long-awaited call, and attended at the medbay himself.

“How is our prisoner doing?” he asked without pausing for greetings. His hands itched to get at this traitor, even though Boro knew he was forgetting himself.

“My patient is doing better, Commander,” Dr. Sufai said, walking out of her office and placing herself conveniently between Boro and the room where the prisoner was kept.

“I thought since he’s all better now he’s no longer your patient.” Boro meant this as a joke, but Dr. Sufai showed no intention of laughing.

“My patient is not fully recovered,” she said, “Once he is, you can move him to the brig and call him whatever you want. While he’s here, he’s a patient.”

“Well depending on how this goes, maybe he’ll stay a patient a while longer,” Boro said, cracking some knuckles on his left hand.

“Is this supposed to reassure me about allowing you to talk to him?” Again, he had said it in jest but the doctor chose to take him completely seriously.

“No, Ory,” Boro said while trying to soften his tone, “But it was intended to make me feel better about having aboard my ship someone who would betray his own kind.”

“Actually,” the doctor’s face changed – the severe brow smoothing, “That’s not entirely true.”

No, this was too much, Boro thought. He’d seen the tapes, he’d read the reports – no, he’d written the reports because he was there – there was nothing this medic could tell him about his understanding of the incident that would make him think he was wrong about the man’s intention. But, never minding all of that, he was going to remain professional.

“Which part?” Boro asked, jaw tight.

“The being Human part. He is … not entirely so.”

Boro wasn’t sure he quite heard right – there were so many headcases on this ship that seemed to want to mess with him for sport – but Dr. Sufai looked entirely genuine.

“What do you mean?” Boro asked cautiously.

“Come see this.” The doctor turned towards her office and Boro followed her in. “When he first arrived in here, his wounds were quite bad,” Dr. Sufai explained as she pulled up whatever she intended to show him on her computer. “The rate at which he healed though, well, it was unusual enough that it made me dig further. And here’s what I found.”

On the computer was displayed what appeared to be the stereotypical double helix of DNA, with several regions highlighted in bright blue.

“He’s Human on the outside, and as far as I can tell he’s Human on the inside. But looking deeper into his DNA, you could see there’s something that isn’t right. The DNA is, again, Human, but there are markers, dummy sequences that don’t do anything, everywhere where they don’t belong, and all sharing similarities that I can’t explain. It’s like someone had taken whatever DNA was there and rewritten it to be Human.”

“Who would have the technology to do something like this?”

“I don’t know, but I’m willing to guess not even the Thorians.”

Boro looked over his shoulder but there was no direct line of sight to their prisoner. “So what is he then?”
“Well that’s the thing, isn’t it? Really, he’s Human. It’s what he used to be that’s the real question.”

“Let’s see if I can get some answers, then.” Boro was nearly fully out the door of the doctor’s tiny office when he heard her say, “Uh, Commander?”

“Yes?”

“It’s required to have two people present at the interrogation.”

Not this again. There was an abom freak masquerading as a Human in their medbay in the middle of hostile territory and they were counting how many people were in the room with him.

“So? You’re welcome to join me.”

“I am joining you – the doctor also has to be present while the patient remains a patient, you need someone else.”

Incredible, it was like everyone on board this ship was hell-bent on getting killed except himself.
​
“I suppose the Captain would be willing to join us in a bit.” Captain Pueson was the last person Boro wanted down there – another slave to a rule book written by those without ambition, but including two officers without the Captain would have been bad optics.

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“This one dates all the way back to the Great Fire,” Boro started, crossing his arms and shifting his weight to one foot. “They say it all began with an alien invasion – a great attack force bent on destroying Humankind and taking Earth for its own. On their way to our homeworld though, the invaders’ first stop was the proto-colony on Mars – long before we’d terraformed it. Yanus Susin was the leader of the colony at the time, one of the first second-generation Martians, and he was brought before the alien admiral in charge of the invasion fleet and offered a deal. If Yanus assisted them with the invasion, told the aliens the best place to strike against Earth and how, they would leave their puny little colony in peace. Yanus had thought long and hard and with a heavy heart agreed to the aliens’ demands. He was taken aboard their flagship, and he directed them to the continent of Aremiga, convincing the aliens that little of the Earth mattered outside of it, and if they struck at the heart of Aremiga, the planet would fall easily.”

Boro paused there, letting this supposed betrayal of Humanity linger in his audience’s mind, and then moved on. “What the aliens didn’t know; however, was that Yanus had instructed his family to signal ahead and warn the residents of Aremiga of the coming invasion and of Yanus’s planned betrayal, not of them, but of the invaders.” It had been impossible to read Maggie’s expression, eyes almost vacant, a vague smile on her lips, but she was watching him, and nodded slightly. “So Yanus Susin directed the invaders to land on the great mostly-empty plains of the Aremiga continent. These aliens though, they weren’t stupid. They questioned why they could see plenty of populated centres elsewhere while Yanus was leading them down to a place where few seemed to live. Yanus was a humble and charming leader of his people, and knew how to build trust. He convinced them that the bulk of Human civilization, the ones that were particularly advanced, moved to live in a grand underground city to hide from the worsening weather on the surface. He’d explained to the them that their numbers were so great, the only way the aliens could win is they would land their entire invasion force there and surround the underground Humans.” Boro smiled then, as if Yanus’ success and his wit were somehow his own.

“So there it was, the entire alien fleet, a veritable armada that had briefly blotted out the sky,” Boro made a vast gesture with his arm over his head, “And they had landed in the middle of an empty plain. Their ships touched down, their troops began to disembark, and Yanus was pushed ahead to find the location of the entrance to one of the secret underground tunnels. Yanus felt no fear. He had, ever since he agreed to leave Mars and guide the aliens, known that this would be his end. He was merely guiding the invaders to an end he had chosen for himself. For he also knew the strength of the people of Aremiga. They used to be his people – brave enough to venture to new planets and to do anything it took to save theirs. At the moment the last invading ship touched down, the full ordinance of the Aremiga continent descended on those plains. Yanus looked up in the sky and smiled as he saw the hundred trails of smoke approach from the distance. In a single day, the entire invading fleet and the continent were destroyed so that Earth could rebuild among the ashes and move on, free of the yoke of alien oppressors.”

“That’s quite the story,” Maggie said when he finished.

“Isn’t it? Who knows if it’s true, of course, but where I come from, there’s a common saying whenever someone’s leading you somewhere and it looks like they might be lost, you ask them ‘Where are you taking us, Yanus Susin’?” Boro thought the Techever would at least be amused by this, but she had merely nodded her head a couple of times and said, “Oh I’ve heard it before.”

“What?”

“I didn’t want to hear the story, Commander Stevin,” she answered, “I wanted to hear your version of the story. You can tell a lot about a story from the different versions that people have, and you can tell a lot about a person about the version that they choose to tell.”

Boro felt his ears grow hot and a rising pressure behind his left eye. Maggie, meanwhile held his gaze and then she did that thing that always gave Boro the heebie-jeebies, where she’d throw the interface wires from underneath her fingernails a few inches out of her hand and then suck them up again, her smile fading and face hardening while she did it.

“Does your family have roots in Aremiga, Commander?” she asked.

“Yes,” Boro answered, not sure what this had anything to do with the story of Yanus Susin, “One branch on my mother’s side.”

“You can always tell if someone hails from Aremiga,” Maggie Okoth said, and then when Boro was silent, added, “One can always tell.” Unphased by the number of perplexed eyes that were staring at her, the Techever said nothing for a few moments before plugging herself back into her console and saying, “Anyway, I better keep an eye on things here, in case something goes wrong.”

“Yes, in case our own little Thorian Yanus Susin leads us astray,” Surch said with a grin.
​
Boro knew Surch said it merely in jest, but it served a purpose in any case. Thanks to Maggie, Boro had almost forgotten what it was that prompted him to mention the story in the first place. At least with the ship’s pilot swooping in to close the loop, Boro hoped that the requisite seeds of doubt would be planted in the minds of the rest of the bridge crew.

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“How sure are you they’re military?” Boro asked Mikarik, who was still absorbed in the screen he was studying with Pueson, “They could be an Anthar Kai convoy beefed up to withstand pirate attacks.”

“Maggie, can you pull up those readings?” Mikarik asked, taking a few steps closer to the wall-to-wall display at the head of the bridge. What was this first name familiarity the Thorian now had with some of the bridge crew, Boro wondered. He now lamented that Meslina did not manage to cave Mikarik’s skull in, though he wasn’t sure if even that could put a Thorian in their place.

The curved display, which in the middle of battle was capable of projecting a spherical representation of the space surrounding the Forseti, now displayed an array of numbers. It was gibberish to the untrained eye – piecemeal energy readouts that the long-range sensors could pick up. In capable hands though, it could provide much information about the starships being observed.

“I am a pilot, Commander Stevin.” Mikarik said and Boro noted the use of the present tense, “I’ve spent my life identifying vessels, particularly Thorian ones.”

“More mixed results with Mraboran ones,” Boro suggested, reminding Mikarik of the humanitarian ship he helped shoot down during the Nabak Insurrection. The Thorian ignored him, taking another step towards the numbers.

“No, even accounting for pirate hunter escorts, this can’t be a commercial convoy. These are definitely navy starships.”

“So what is this concentration of navy ships doing way out here?” Boro asked.

“That,” the Thorian paused, his eyes scanning the numbers on the display, “Is something that I can’t actually help you with. It’s an odd place to hold war games and … there’s something else about these numbers that’s not quite right, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

“Mikarik, we need more than just a hunch to go on,” Captain Pueson said, the sternness lost in the general softness of his voice.

“Oh don’t get me wrong, we should still steer clear of this … mess,” Mikarik said. “The systems we’re going through are at a decent distance from usual military patrols and preferred Anthar Kai shipping lanes. We should be safe enough, and can get mostly back on course when we’ve cleared the swarm.”

“The swarm,” Meslina repeated from her station, shaking her head, and Boro thought he caught a bit of an eye roll. The Thorian though seemed undeterred, only creeping ever closer to the display, craning his neck more and more to see the full list.

“Yes, something’s definitely odd,” he trailed off towards the end, the last word barely audible, and then the display went blank and he turned around with an “oh.” His tone indicated mild surprise, though his eyes were frustratingly difficult to see behind those darkened lenses.

“I think we got everything we need for now, Mikarik,” Captain Pueson said, “We’ll see you again in ten hours, or if there’s anything unusual about …” Pueson cleared his throat, “The swarm.” This elicited a small smile from Meslina, which is about the most one could expect from her.

“Very well,” Mikarik said after a pause. “Just make sure you keep a close eye on it. These Thorians,” he smirked, “They’re an exceedingly clever lot.”

There was no reaction to Mikarik’s quip except stony silence and perhaps a look of patronizing amusement from the Captain – something Boro was pleasantly surprised Pueson was actually capable of. The Captain’s actual retort was an order given to the ship’s weapons officer, “Indario, please help escort Mikarik from the bridge.”

The Thorian lowered his eyebrows, his mouth crooked with an uncertain grimace. “I think I know the way out, Indario,” he said, but the Parsk Nahur had already moved towards him. Mikarik breathed in deeply, though he tried to hide it. “Alright, if you think I’ll get lost on the way to the door, we can do it your way.”

As soon as the door closed behind Mikarik and Indario, Boro walked with heavy steps down to Surch’s seat.
“What do we know about the area he’s leading us through?”

“Seriously, Boro?” Surch asked, with a sigh pulling out the tablet inserted into his pilot’s chair. “It’s mostly uninhabitable rocks, one of which is a failed Iastret terraforming effort that had been quarantined.” Surch scrolled through the rest of the information on his display and gave it a gentle slap with his palm. “Most interesting thing here is a tiny Anthar Kai outpost hardly even worth a mention.”

Boro murmured a long “hmmm.”

“Is there anything specifically you’re concerned about, Commander Stevin?” Captain Pueson asked.

“It’s just that …” Boro paused, putting his hands on his hips and facing the rest of the bridge crew that stood slightly above him. “Is anyone else reminded of the story of Yanus Susin?”

Captain Pueson frowned while Surch let out a slight groan. No one though had voiced their agreement.

“Have you all heard of the story?” Boro asked. He’d personally been told it since childhood – a tale of false betrayal and sacrifice for the good of one’s people in the face of an invading foe, but wondered if others had the same childhood fable in their repertoire.

The others nodded, with Meslina adding a curt “yes” and Surch a relaxed “sure have”. That was too bad, since Boro found his own rendition to be quite rousing. Then Maggie Okoth, the ship’s Techever, who was so in tune with the ship’s computer that when she was plugged in it was almost as if her own presence had been subsumed into the ship, stepped back into their real world and said, “I haven’t.”

“Really?” Surch muttered behind Boro, who ignored him in the face of this new potential audience.
​
“I want to hear it,” Maggie assured him, the interlink tubes that connected her hand to the machine slipping out of the holes in her console and retreating to their resting spot inside her fingers.

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As promised, it had taken less than a day for Boro to return to bridge duty, happily still not inhabited by the Thorian, but just in time for Meslina to deliver a troubling report.

“We’ve still not received anything from the satellite.”

“Were we supposed to?” Boro asked. “I thought we wouldn’t hear from HID Intelligence for at least another week?”

“No,” she said slowly, dropping her voice, “I mean that the satellite itself is unresponsive. I should have received a ping if our message was relayed, but there’s only silence.”

“Hmm,” Boro murmured loudly and walked over to Maggie’s station. The Techever had always looked zoned-out when she was plugged in, but Boro had come to learn that she had the ability to be fully present in both worlds, regardless of perception. “Are you getting anything, Maggie?”

Her eyes darted back and forth before her, still staring past and above him, until she brought them back into focus on him and answered, “No. Though it’s small and ghosted and even with our long-range subspace sensors concentrated on its anticipated approximate location I wouldn’t expect to see anything.”

“The ping’s the only way of knowing it went through,” Meslina said behind him.

“Then we try again.”

“I have, no confirmation on that one yet. I also went ahead and targeted a further satellite. Anything beyond that and we risk not hitting it, or someone intercepting the message.”

“Focus on those two then, and let me know if anything comes back. Maybe when we’re not moving we’ll have better luck.”

“We’ll see.”

On the morning of Tuka’s memorial, after two days of sitting idle on the frontiers of the Thorian Empire, Captain Pueson made the call to abandon any further attempts to get their message back to the Human Interstellar Dominion. Both satellites remained silent, and no amount of scanning turned up even the slightest indication that they were actually there. Similarly, they could see no friendly ships anywhere within range, and there was nothing to suggest that anyone had bothered to investigate what happened to Yshot Station. On the other hand, there was growing evidence of distant Thorian activity, and after much pressure from Boro, the Captain agreed to resume the mission, which meant that nothing about the incident at the Iastret station would reach home for months, and no one in Tuka’s family would know that his role in this undertaking was already over.

It was a day that was destined to be sour, one that, at the moment of the imagined dawn on board the Forseti, had chosen to make miserable whoever dared live through it.

The day of the memorial was also going to be the day that the Thorian started proving his utility to the ship and would join them on the bridge. Boro had to admit that if they’d been properly prudent, Mikarik would have already been called in to advise on the Thorian activity they’d picked up on their long-range sensors, but part of Boro was heartened to see that even Captain Pueson didn’t appear to be in a rush to invite the arrogant bony-headed alien into their presence. Still, he would not put it past Pueson to make too big of a deal of the Thorian joining them, possibly a stunted stumbling speech about the possibilities of cooperation even between the unlikeliest of allies. Nothing Boro wanted to be present for, so he took several detours after leaving the memorial before finally heading to the bridge.

According to the window screens that lined the hallways of the Forseti, today they were flying over something Boro could recognize – his own home planet, Earth, the cradle of the Human species. There was no strange vegetation, or impossible rocky outcroppings, or a shade of sky that gave just that uncanny feeling that this was not where he was born. As far as he could tell, they were soaring over the west coast of the northern Aremiga continent, one of the areas hardest hit during the Great Fire and that remained sparsely populated even to this day, lying across the entire Mer Pacific from where he was born and raised.

By the time Boro reached the bridge, the Thorian was already there, standing just behind Captain Pueson and reading some displays over his shoulder. What had Intelligence intended to be their end game here? If the Forseti survived the entirety of its mission, what would they do with the Thorian to ensure that he wouldn’t immediately run back to the Empire and reveal everything he’d learned? They must have had some kind of retirement plan in mind; one with limited freedom that did not quite amount to imprisonment. This wasn’t Boro’s problem to solve, and certainly not right there and then.

“Mr. Mikarik,” Boro said curtly.

The Thorian turned slowly, cracking the faintest of smiles. “Commander Stevin. I hope you had a restful sleep.”

Ten years of sleep wouldn’t have been enough to prepare him to work alongside the smug bumpy-headed bastard.

“So where has our guide guided us to today?” Boro asked instead, making sure to put just the right tone of derision on ‘guide’.

“Mikarik has advised us that we need a two-day detour in order to avoid the Thorian activity we’d been monitoring,” Captain Pueson said.

“Two days?” Boro tried to stifle his incredulity, keeping a straight back to appear at least somewhat comparable to the Thorian in height. “His first hour advising us and we’re already changing course that would delay our mission by another two days? And I didn’t think we could afford much more lost time.”
​
The Captain did not look entirely pleased with Boro’s outburst but did not get a chance to voice his objection as the Thorian stepped in to interrupt. “Well, Commander Stevin, I may not know too much about your ghosting technology in particular, but in my experience the more ships there are that could triangulate your position based on the little energy distortions you inevitably leave, the worse shape you’re in. And that,” he motioned at the display he and Pueson were studying, the string of yellow blobs almost connecting at the side of the screen, “is a formidable amount of navy ships.”

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Without proper competition that NHL players bring, what is even the point of Men’s Ice Hockey at the Olympics?

While every other sport brings its best and brightest to the Games, Men’s Ice Hockey has to dig deeper than an NHL team looking to fill its front office with domestic abusers. Canada, for example, who should be dominant any other year, in 2022 sent a roster of players that were deemed too bad, too young, too old, and too ethnic for the NHL. The result? A swift defeat in the Quarterfinal, made palatable only by the United States accomplishing the same feat.

The only team that seems to benefit from this format is the one whose players comprise the majority of the players in the Kontinental Hockey League, the preferred destination for NHL players to escape the consequences of their actions, both criminal and otherwise. And even with a gold medal practically handed over on a silver platter, the Russians still have a difficult time closing. They almost managed to lose the 2018 final to Germany, a team that has not been relevant internationally since there were two of them, and then dropped a narrow 2:1 decision to Finland, a nation with 1/30th of the population that keeps giving them trouble in all things Winter related.

Historically though, the Russians dominate non-NHL Olympic Men’s Hockey. Under four previous banners, none of which actually include “Russian Federation”, they have won 9 gold and 2 silvers out of the last 13 NHL non-participation Olympics.

So whether the winners are the Soviet Union, the Unified Team, Olympic Athletes from Russia or the Russian Olympic Committee, for whom really is this spectacle intended? Papa Putin, the greatest sniper in Russian hockey history? One can only imagine him sitting at home with that devilish smile of his (one that likely got wiped off today), enjoying the unexpected fruits of setting up a league specifically designed to keep half of the country’s international squad from playing against the best in the world on a daily basis. After all, it’s gold medals, and not Stanley Cups, that keep getting one re-elected (actually, it’s polonium, but let’s not get too bogged down in details).

So, while we have been spared in 2022, before the next gold medal is awarded to something like “The Athletes Formerly Known as Russian Olympians” or “Soviet Union 2.0”, perhaps it’s time to abolish this one-sided charade. If you need another good reason, consider what will happen if the US ever wins again and everyone else has to listen about their newest Miracle for the next 50 years.

Another alternative is taking Gary Bettman’s suggestion and moving ice hockey to the Summer Games. That way the IOC can force another high-capacity venue on a city that does not need it and will never use it. Who wants to see an NHL-grade arena in Brisbane, Australia? I hear the Arizona Coyotes are still looking for a new home.

The more sensible alternative is to just watch Women’s Ice Hockey instead, where the best of the best actually show up to compete in a tournament worth watching.
​
Or if you’re particularly sick and twisted, you can tune into the World Cup of Hockey, the NHL All-Star Game of international hockey, or else watch the World Junior Championships, and then spend Monday cyberbullying a teenager that failed to give you a good reason to shotgun a beer and scream “Woo! Go Canada!”

Last Saturday marked the first full week that The Second Magus has been published on Royal Road. Not surprisingly, it hasn’t taken the website by storm, though it has done noticeably better than The Bloodlet Sun did. That story reached its first 1,000 views in 65, while The Second Magus did it in 8. Still, what I have to show for those 1K views is 17 followers, 1 favourite, and two ratings that amount to a solidly mediocre 4 stars out of 5.

It’s hard to really talk objectively about how the story is doing right now. On the one hand, I should be more than happy about 17 followers. That’s seventeen more than I had two weeks ago; those are actual readers that were interested in my story enough to hit that follow button.

And yet it’s shy of the dreams I’ve crafted in my head. I always said when posting updates in the run-up to uploading The Second Magus that I enjoyed living in the fantasies. The daydreams couldn’t die before I had actually posted my work. And I recognized them for what they were – daydreams. Because even though it’s not impossible to have the success I hope for, I know it’s still a rare thing that few writers attain.

But, just like the lottery ticket whose numbers are not yet called, it was nice to dream.

And, just like with that lottery ticket, even though you knew in your head you weren’t going to win, there is still the disappointment of not walking away a millionaire and then having to shake off your day dreams.

This is the stage I’m at now. My numbers were read, and I didn’t win, and even though I didn’t really think there was a big chance of me winning, the sting is still there.

Except this isn’t about a stupid lottery. Being a writer is who I am, so this sting goes much deeper, and its barbed tip is much more difficult to pull out.

It’s just what you do when you’re a writer and hope to get published – you put yourself out there knowing full well you can get smacked down, knowing full well that even those who find success will need to get smacked down a hundred times first. And yet, we go out there and get knocked down and get up and dust ourselves off.

This time, the getting up part has been more challenging. I feel like I’m sitting in the middle of that dusty road, wondering if it’s worth it to get up again, taking deep breaths to hype yourself up because the road is still beautiful despite the setbacks.

It’s not hard to see even on this blog evidence of the wind being taken out of my sails. This entry is about a week later than it should be. I also only just picked up editing again after not touching it for a week, and for the same amount of time the only writing I’ve done was to just maintain my streak. Every novel project, including The Second Magus, has been on unofficial hiatus.

I don’t mean to be a sad-sack about this whole thing. It’s not a tragedy by any means. But sometimes this stuff does get hard and does get to you. And then in the end, it feels like you’re just talking in a circle – on the one hand you know this is what a writer has to go through, and on the other hand you do want to embrace that it’s okay to still feel bad when it happens to you.

Anyway, it was not the way I had wanted to start the year and maybe it’ll take a little while longer to gain back some of that confidence. I think finally finishing and posting this entry is a good first step in that process.
Eventually, it might just become one of those things I remember with a laugh as I fondly look back on the rocky road that led me towards whatever future success I might find.