"Well, this is too good to be true," the new whelp drawls on Ord Mantell and Aric wishes he could switch her off, but it seems her cocky mouth is here to stay. Just his blasted luck. His entire career has been destroyed and she's boasting about her own progress, already pulling her new-found rank. Arrogant little brat.

"Don't get used to it," he mutters under his breath; she looks at him and smirks but says nothing else.

Don't get used to it,Sir, he reminds himself and wants to put a white-hot load of plasma in something.

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Erviel stands in front of her only shipmate – and the only soldier currently under her command - with two mugs of coffee in her hands. She gives him one and leans against the wall panel, sipping her own.

"Still angry?" Her voice is deliberately neutral but it's hard not giving in to the temptation and tease him. Even with everything they've been through he strikes a ridiculously obstinate chord in her, spurs her least pleasant instincts somehow, urging her to keep poking at the wound though she normally wouldn't. Wouldn't you?She's not spiteful, not really. It's just that way he has of speaking to her like she's incapable of making decisions. The word rookie that hangs unspoken above and in between everything he says. That arrogance and self-importance, the imperious attitude so common among high-ranking officers, twisting his carefully detached words into ammunition.

She's experienced no shortage of thatin her life.

Aw, if it isn't Arora and Lee's brat; let's see what you can do then, little girl.

Ah well, the apple occasionally do fall far from the tree.

Even with a near-perfect service record and with her parents long gone, she's never rid of this particular slice of the past. The measuring up, its constant competition. Her mum had been a legendary fighter pilot, her dad a renowned field medic and it hadn't mattered to anyone that Erviel herself had tried to forge a path far from both of those areas. The ghosts of her parents, the long shadows they cast, have never truly left.

She takes a mouthful of coffee, swallows it quickly and feels it burn in her throat.

"Yes, I am," Jorgan retorts harshly - but not as harshly as he had spoken a couple of days ago when they left Ord Mantell together and he had clarified to her that he's a professional who'll follow orders. Even orders from a careless, undisciplined rookie. They've made it off-planet since then and the worst disbelief and disappointments have rubbed off against new encounters and complex missions unfolding but he's still steel and silence in her presence. And such a prideful bastard that she almost can't help herself any time she spots a crack in his armour.

She opts for generosity today, however, feeling too tired for a quarrel. "It was unfair, what happened to you."

He gives her a long glance as though he's convinced she's mocking him and he's ready to berate her for it. But then he nods, curt and guarded, but not as closed-off as he normally is. For a brief moment, he looks at her as one would look at someone one vaguely respects – or at least tolerates.

Baby steps, she tells herself and refrains from sneering.

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She's not as reckless as his initial impression of her had made him fear, but she's still new to the burden of command and Aric watches, wearily, for any missteps along the way. Confidence may fool many people but it has never fooled him and that strategy has served him well for fifteen years of military service. He's never had any reason before to doubt his own judgement and damned if he's going to let a bunch of cowardly bastards make his confidence falter now.

"Do you get it?" The lieutenant leans against the wall, watching him as he tends to the arsenal of weapons they've stocked up on. It's a soothing occupation and has always been. Practical, hands-on.

He looks up briefly; there's a hard edge to her that often clash against her fairly young age and today it seems particularly prominent. "Get what, sir?"

"Defecting."

"Is this a questioning or small talk?" His voice comes off as sharper than intended but these are special blasted times and he's sick of how the very word creeps into everything, like a disease takes over your body. Defecting.

She throws him a glance that tells him she is just on the verge of being annoyed. "It's a reality," she says. "People defect all the time for a lot of shitty reasons. I've just never seen it so close before."

Aric thinks of Tavus and Fuse, thinks of their long debriefings and off-duty hours stationed on Ord Mantell. No, they were never friends. He doesn't have friends. But they were a team and he usually prides himself on being able to know what makes people tick. Bitterness he understands, revenge he understands even better, but he can't seem to open up that vein in himself, can't seem to let those emotions run him over even when they twist and shift in his blood. It takes a certain something that he doesn't possess.

Tavus had been a good man once. Perhaps he still is. That doesn't change the fact that Aric wants to put his rifle to the man's forehead and pull the trigger. It's dark thought, but nonetheless true. There's a generous serving of grey in the middle of their clear-cut orders and regulations even if everybody acts like they never notice it.

War breaks people and they need someone to blame. A CO had told him this many years ago. When he tells his own CO – her rank still makes something in his chest sting, if only a little and much more subdued than a couple of weeks ago – she looks at him for a long time.

"I suppose," she says eventually.

He tries to picture her broken and in need of scapegoats, wills the image of her to transform. It's almost impossible to imagine her stubborn courage and the rest of her well-trained, self-confident attributes in a situation like that. He finds that it reassures him in a weird way, answers some questions he hasn't even been asking.

"Well. Let me know if you feel the urge to defect," he says, only half-joking.

The lieutenant observes him, a half-smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "So you can turn me in to Garza and let her have her way with me?"

Aric shrugs, turning away from her again. "Something like that, sir."