Disclaimer: I own nothing but my own ideas, and that is doubly true about lines quoted directly from the script, which is what I used to get direct quotes, so it might vary from the movie a little.
Summary: Their relationship, or whatever it was, was doomed from the start. It might've started on a high note, but it was all downhill from there.
Parker/Grace, because we all know that there is more there than just hate, or there was. It had to have stemmed from some pace of betrayal and pain... this is my take on how it happened.


Downward Spiral

Grace was angry. Scratch that, she was pissed off. She'd asked for a skilled, seasoned researcher and she'd gotten a jarhead marine. How on Pandora was that fair? Tom Sully and Norm Spellman were supposed to be the dream team she'd been praying for— they were supposed to be the saviours of his whole disaster. And instead of Tom Sully, PHD, she had gotten his rude, uneducated and freaking disabled twin brother. So yeah, she had a reason to be pissed.

And so she stormed to the tech room, where she knew Parker would be showing off his golf skills (where else would he be?) just in time to hear him laugh and say, "Did you see that?" with the pride in his voice that only came from a good putt.

"Yes sir!" a worker replied, and Grace rolled her eyes.

"No you didn't, you were looking at the monitor. I love this putter, Ronnie! I love this putter!" was Parker's reply, and it only infuriated the already pissed off scientist. She had given him that damn putter and what had she got in return? A headache, a lowered budget and a jarhead marine.

"Parker," she said, trying to hold her temper in check. She didn't want to go around frightening the lab techs, did she? He ignored her and lined up another shot on his makeshift green. "You know, I used to think it was benign neglect, but now I see that you are intentionally screwing me."

Parker gave a little smirk. He could have made a raunchy joke concerning the fact that he had intentionally screwed her before, and she quite enjoyed it, but he refrained, instead muttering, "Grace, you know, I enjoy our little talks," before tapping the ball with his putter and sending it rolling towards the mug he had set up.

Grace kicked the mug out of the way so that he ball missed it entirely, giving him a satisfied smile and saying, "Oops." She crossed her arms behind her back, and he looked up at her, making an annoyed face. Gone was his boyish smile and charm; in its place was a hardened look of a corporate idiot.

"I need a researcher," she complained, shaking her head, "Not some jarhead dropout."

"Well, actually, I thought we got lucky with him," Parker said cheerfully, walking past her to retrieve his golf ball.

Her mouth fell open and she snarled, "Lucky?" in the most indignant voice she possessed.

"Yeah!"

"How is this in any way lucky?" she asked, because she could not believe how stupid he was being. This wasn't a good thing. It was a horrible, awful mistake that someone should have picked up on long before her. It was a threat to her program, a disaster-in-the-making, and he thought she was lucky?

"Well, lucky your guy had a twin brother, and lucky that brother wasn't some oral hygienist or something," he explained in a deadpan, picking up his ball and turning around the walk around her. "A marine we can use. I'm assigning him to your team as security escort." Parker walked to the holographic display of Pandora, handed his putter to his assistant before dropping his golf ball into the display, smiling slightly when it rolled through several to-scale trees like a wrecking ball.

"The last thing I need is a trigger-happy jarhead out there—"

"Look you're supposed to be winning the hearts and minds of the natives," he cut her off, playing with the graphics and turning the forest around with mild amusement. "Isn't that the whole point of your little puppet show? If you walk like them, you talk like them they'll trust you. We build them a school, teach them English. But after what? How many years—" He turned to face her, "—the relations with the indigenous are only getting worse."

"Yeah, well that tends to happen when you use machine guns on them," Grace groaned, making it clear how angry she was.

"Right," he half-chuckled, motioning to her with his hand and turning, "Come here."

He sauntered to his office, muttering to himself, and grabbed that stupid little rock off the display that usually held it floating on his desk. He held it up and explained to her, as if he hadn't already, its supposed value. "You see this? This is why we're here. Unontanium." He pointed to the rock, looking at it lovingly. "Because this little gray rock sells for twenty million a kilo. This is what pays for the whole party, and it's what pays for your science. Comprendo?"

She tried to get a word in, but he cut off her attempt as he placed the rock back onto its perch. "Those savages are threatening our whole operation. We're on the brink of war and you're supposed to be finding me a diplomatic solution." He punctuated his words with a tap on his desk, leaning forward and giving her that look he used to give her when she refused to cuddle. That I'm mad at you look.

She frowned at him, giving him the look right back. "So use what you've got, and get me some results," he said, sitting back down at his desk and waving his hand as if he wanted her to leave. Grace turned as if to do so, then grabbed his doorknob and violently slammed it shut with her still inside the room.

"Don't give me that shit, Parker," she growled, approaching his desk like an animal stalking its prey. "You've been eating up the crap that Quaritch is feed you, haven't you?" She snorted, glaring down at her past lover without a shred of compassion in her eyes. "He's going to ruin you."

"You go ahead and think that, babydoll," he said, intentionally using the nickname he had given her when they had been together, just because he knew it would infuriate her further. "But he's going to be the saviour of this place. He has great ideas; he's going to make us all rich."

Grace shook her head, watching as his eyes followed the movement of her hair. He had always loved her hair, after all. "Your name should have been Selfish, not Selfridge," she murmured, "They got a couple letters wrong." She turned around and opened his door, prepared to leave when she was once again stopped by his annoying, nasally voice.

"You never said I was selfish in bed, now did ya?" he said with a chuckle, a shit-eating grin on his face that was anything but endearing. Grace turned and left with a disgusted feeling in the pit of her stomach as she slammed the door behind her.

Parker's face fell as soon as she was gone. He knew she was right, deep down, but he squashed those feelings. Think of the profit, he encouraged himself. So a few blue monkeys have to die to get it. Who cares? I don't.

"I don't," he said out loud, ignoring the gnawing feeling the words left in his belly. "I don't care."


It was the day after Jake's first link-up, and Grace was actually feeling pretty good. While he wasn't the driver she had asked for, at least he could get in and out of his Avatar without his brain collapsing. (And that had happened before, to a few of the inexperienced drivers.)

Breakfast started normal; she chatted amiably with her fellow scientists while the marines burped and laughed and were generally disgusting at the next table. Norm seemed to fit right in, going to town talking about biometric sensors— Jake was sort of distracted, but still tried to listen, even if he didn't completely understand what they were talking about. He was slightly isolated from the group, and he seemed to notice the things around him more.

Grace didn't see Trudy approach until she was already standing by the table. Jake had seen her coming, and she directed her words to him— how odd. Grace and Trudy had known each other for years— she'd been her and Max's personal pilot for a while when they were setting up Site 26 in the Halleluiah Mountains— and yet she went to Sully. This demanded some attention.

"Sully— Colonel wants to see you in the Armor Bay," she declared, putting a hand on her hip and throwing him a lazy smile. Grace felt her stomach drop. He wouldn't, would he?

Jake gave Norm a puzzled glance and pivoted his chair, wheeling away from the table. He followed Trudy, who was stomping her way to the mess hall doors in those ridiculously heavy boots of hers.

Grace scowled as she watched him go, grabbing a piece of toast from Max's plate and biting into it angrily. She had a bad Quaritch was going to contaminate her new driver with his lies and hate— Sully was already a trigger-happy jarhead, she didn't need him being a hateful, angry-at-Pandora trigger-happy jarhead.

"Are you okay, Grace?" Max asked, looking at her with concern.

"I'm fine," she grumbled, getting up from her seat and shoving the rest of the toast into her mouth. Max watched her go with a sad look in his eyes. He knew that frown. Grace was upset over something.

She doesn't have a chance to talk to Jake in private— turn him to her side, so to speak— before their sample-gathering turned search-and-rescue. She gave up on him when they had to leave, having very little hope that he could survive the night on his own. With no training, no knowledge, no language skills to ask for help? It was laughable. The Avatar was probably already dead.

But no, he survived. Went into the outhouse and came out smellin' like roses, as her mother used to say. He got in with the fucking Clan Leader's daughter, for Christ's Sake! She shook her head and retold the story the next morning at breakfast, for the simple reason that she could tell a mean story. And though she was vaguely proud of her little marine, she wouldn't tell him that.

"—so the kid is out there one night and he's got the Queen Bitch herself offering him the spare room and the car keys. Unbelievable!" she said, her fellow scientists fascinated and hanging on her every word. Well, except for Norm, who seems to be rather angry about the whole situation in general.

"It's not something you can teach," Jake agreed, grinning like a fool. Some of the other scientists clapped Jake on the shoulder and congratulated him, and he ate it all up. Cheeky bastard.

"That's awesome, Jake!" Max said, smiling fondly at the new addition to their team while Norm chomped noisily on his bacon, refusing to look in Jake's direction.

"For reasons I cannot fathom, the Omaticaya have chosen you," Grace said, shaking her head. "God help us all."


Jake had already given his first report to Selfridge and Quaritch, feeling rather proud of himself for doing so. Being loyal to his marine background felt good, like a long drink after having been parched—he was smiling like an idiot. Yeah, he could get used to this.

Quaritch turned from gazing out at the wall of forest beyond the Base to Jake, displaying an almost feral-looking grin. "The jarhead clan?" he laughed. "And that worked?"

Jake grinned back at him. "Yeah. They want to study me. See if I can learn to be one of them."

"That'show you seize the initiative," Quaritch praised him, looking down at Jake like the ex-marine was his only son. "I wish I had ten more like you."

"Look Sully—" Parker cut in, the mushy goodness making his stomach and his head ache. "Find out what these blue monkeys want. We tried to give them medicine and education. Roads! But no – they like mud. I wouldn't care, except—"

He turned to the 3D display and pointed to Hometree. "Their damn village is sitting right over the richest unobtanium deposit for a hundred clicks in any direction. Which sucks— for them— because they need to relocate."

Jake frowned, looking thoughtful over this new information. "Does Augustine know about this?"

Parker laughed. "Yeah, she does, and she's on the next ship back if she tries to cock-block me on it." Again, he added in his head, though that was not a point Sully needed to know.

"So— who talks them into moving?" Jake asked, looking between the two head-honchos sceptically.

"Guess," Quaritch said with a half-smile on his lopsided face.

"What if they won't go?"

Quaritch's, "I'm betting they will," was icy with malicious intent that make Parker recoil a little— not that Sully noticed in the slightest. He regained his balanced after a moment, floundering for something to contribute.

"Killing the indigenous looks bad," he said, shaking his head. "But there's one thing shareholders hate more than bad press— and that's a bad quarterly statement. Find me a carrot to get them to move, or it's going to have to be all stick."

Jake looked shaken by the enormity of this new responsibility, and he didn't even laugh at the little joke Parker just made. Grace would of gotten it, he thought with a scowl. She would have laughed at the stick thing. Olive branch, stick, haha.

"You got three months," Quaritch concluded. "That's when the dozers get there."

"I'm on it."

Parker watched as Sully wheeled himself away, a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach. Maybe he should be taking some medication for this constant stomach ache. It never seems to want to go away.

Jake's second report is much more informative; he had gotten into Hometree and knew the layout of the whole shebang. "You've got outer columns, then a secondary ring here, and an inner ring. Then a core structure, it's like a spiral, that's how they move up and down," he explained, pointing their locations out on the display.

"I'm going to need accurate scans on all these columns," Quaritch said, eying the display with distaste.

"Roger that."

Parker reached up and rubbed the back of his neck, that feeling of being watched making him itchy. He turned around just in time to see a white lab coat swish around the corner. Damn it, he thought, knowing full well that if any of Grace's scientists had been witness to their meeting that he'd be getting an earful from her in the morning.

He wasn't wrong.

"Sign this."

Parker looked up from where he was diligently typing out his newest budget report for corporate— whoever had started that rumour that he got the janitors to do it for him were totally wrong— to see Grace looming over him, a paper held out in his direction. He delicately took the sheet from her and scanned its contents.

"You want to move your two new drivers to Site 26? Isn't that way up in Halleluiah?"

"Yes." Grace put on her sweetest smile. "Being closer to the object of our current research will be quite influential on the project, and my team needs no distractions. So, sign it. I need administrative approval before I can request a pilot."

"But— wait, why? Does this have something to do with Quaritch again?"

"Oh, no, of course not," Grace said with another smile. "It's just a necessary development. It will be beneficial to Jake Sully in his studies with Neytiri, as well as his integration with the culture. Trust me on this one, Park."

"But—"

"No buts, Parker, just sign the damn thing before I make you." Gone was her gentle, sweet attitude and back was her usual ferociousness. "This has nothing to do with you for once."

Sheepishly, Parker signed and initialled on the dotted lines, then turned the paper back over to her. "If it helps the program, I'm all for it. Sully has been doing an excellent job, I hear." Grace snorted.

"Oh, I know you've heard," she said, folding up for request form and sliding it into her back pocket securely. "Don't go getting your hopes up about Sully. I know where his alliances are, and they aren't with you. At least, not for much longer."

Parker paled. "Who...?"

"One of my worker-bees overheard your little conference meeting. I don't appreciate you trying to get intel out of my personnel without my knowledge, and don't think it's going to be happening again. If you think you need to know something, you come directly to me, you got it?"

Parker gave a dejected little sigh, his round face looking almost as sincere as it once had. But not quite. Corruption and greed and ruin the face of innocence; Parker would never gain back the boyish charm he once had, the endearing smile, the adorable naivety had once possessed.

"Yeah, I got it."

"Good."

Grace turned on her heel and left, her lab coat swishing behind her as she rounded the corner. His eyes followed her until she was gone, the horrible feeling in his stomach returning. Indigestion, he thought, just a little indigestion.

As Grace stormed into the lab, ambient lab techs cringed away from her impending wrath. But she walked up to Norm and Jake, her gaze steely as she instructed them to gather the belongings they would need for a little fieldtrip.

"I'm not about to let Quaritch and Selfridge micro-manage this thing," Grace announced to her team as they began packing up the science equipment they would need for the expedition. She looked pointedly at Jake, who was wearing a guilty-looking frown. "We're going up to the mountains. There's a mobile link up at Site 26 that we can work out of."

"The Halleluiah Mountains?" Norm asked excitedly, looking ready to burst.

"That's right," Grace confirmed, and Norm punched the air with joy.

"Yesss!" Jake shot him a look, to which Norm sighed and adapted a pompous tone to his voice. "The legendary Floating Mountains of Pandora? Heard of them?"


It'd been three months.

Parker was wearing an exopack, his breath misting the inside and making it impossible to see the white golf ball as he attempted to get it to stay on a tee. The forest was dark beyond the fence; still within the compound, the lights of the Ops patrol illuminated his make-shift golf course. Putting outside was always more fulfilling; more like the real deal back on Earth.

His eyes caught sight of movement, and he whipped his head up in time to see Grace and Jake approaching from the direction of the Ops Center. He shook his head, making a growling noise at the back of his throat. When she had been gone, so had the stomach pains. And now she was back again. Damn it.

"Good of you to stop by. How's it going out there? Our blue friends all packed up yet?"

He had known their return would be imminent, since Quaritch had plans for this week and was recalling all teams. Parker shook his head again, holding his breath to try and clear his mask of the mist. He swung his putter, and he knew he had excellent form, but the clouding on his mask made it impossible to get a good shot in.

"See, I keep hooking it. It's the damn pack." The ball dropped into the mud just past marker 220, and Parker sighed dejectedly. He whistled, and a trooper near his position ran to retrieve it. "The low gravity and the high air density cancel each other out so—"

"You called us back to report – you want to hear it or not?" Jake remarked, crossing his arms.

"Go ahead."

"Jake is making incredible progress, years worth in just a few months. But – we need more time," Grace explained quickly, her movements fidgety. Parker sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Not what I was hoping to hear."

A gust of wind enveloped the group; outdoor meetings could be such a pain. The sky opened up and began to drop tiny droplets of water onto them, but Parker had been anticipating this, and calmly pulled an umbrella from his golf bag and snapped it open, protecting himself from the immanent downpour.

"Parker, it's their ancestral home. They've lived there since before human history began. You can spare them a few more weeks," Grace protested, her eyes wild with that passion she held for the forest. Parker's stomach twisted, and he frowned in disgust over his own weakness for the redhead.

Detachment, he thought miserably, all business, remember. Think of the profit.

"This thing is inevitable. What does it matter when it happens? I'm sorry, Dr. Augustine. You're out of time." He turned, ignoring the pain in his abdomen. He was right, and she was wrong. He didn't care about that heartbroken look on her face. He didn't.

And so he left them in the rain to get drenched.


It seemed as though her whole fucking life had been turned into a metaphor. The heavens opening up to rain on her when she was sad, was just another brick in the metaphorical wall. Another drop in the bucket. Another tree in the forest.

Jake had tried so hard. He'd gone through the last step to become Omaticaya, and had mated with Neytiri (the idiot). He'd knocked down a couple cameras on a bulldozer and all of a sudden they're getting pulled out of Site 26, violently, and brought back to the Base.

The image of Jake in is Avatar, a vicious snarl curling his lip as he thrashed a rock to the camera was on the screen in front of them. Jake sat, bruised and bleeding, watching himself on the monitor. Grace and Norm stand nearby, rubbing their wrists where the zip-ties bit in. Parker and Quaritch watched them with disdain.

"You let me down, son. You got a little local tail and completely forgot what team you play for," Quaritch growled, his voice low and menacing.

Jake met his gaze with a defiant glare. Grace looked between the two, a horrible feeling enveloping her. It couldn't be the end. They couldn't go through with it. All those lives...

She turned to Parker, her only hope. "Parker, listen, there may still be time to—"

"Shut your fucking hole!" Quaritch screeched, cutting off her last-ditch attempt to convince someone that this was wrong. Grace was momentarily stunned by Quaritch's fury. But she met it with her own intensity, not backing down an inch.

"Or what, Ranger Rick? You gonna shoot me?" She looked to Parker, her gaze a little sad, but more furious. "You need to muzzle your dog."

"Can we just take this down a couple notches, please?" Parker begged, the passive side of his personality coming through. Aw, look at little Parker, never wanting to get into a fight. Never wanting to get his hands dirty. Poor little Parker.

"You say you want to keep your people alive? Start by listening to her," Jake told Quaritch, nodding to Grace to continue.

"This is bad, Parker. Those trees were sacred to the Omaticaya in a way you can't imagine."

"You know what? You throw a stick in the air around here it falls on some sacred fern, for Christ's sake!" he rebutted, his tone sarcastic and mean.

"I'm not talking about pagan voodoo here - I'm talking about something real and measurable in the biology of the forest!"

"Which is what, exactly?" Parker prompted her, his nose in the air. Grace sighed.

"What we think we know... is that there's some kind of electrochemical communication between the roots of the trees. Like the synapses between neurons. Each tree has ten to the fourth connections to the trees around it, and there are ten to the twelfth trees on Pandora—"

"That's a lot, I'm guessing?" parker cut in, crossing his arms and staring at her like the moron he was.

"That's more connections than the human brain. You get it? It's a network - a global network. And the Na'vi can access it. They can upload and download data— memories— at sites like the one you just destroyed."

There was a moment of stunned silence while everyone processed this tidbit of information. Parker looked particularly thoughtful, but only for a second. His eyes lit up with a look of mirth, his grown turning into a lopsided half-smile.

"What the hell have you people been smoking out there?" he laughed, breaking the silence and the tension. "They're just Goddamn trees!"

"You need to wake up, Parker," Grace said, shaking her head. "The wealth of this world isn't in the ground— it's all around us. The Na'vi know that, and they're fighting to defend it. If you want to share this world with them, you need to understand them."

"I think we understand them just fine, thanks to Jake here," Quaritch said, flashing the pair a grin as Grace and Jake gave each other looks of horror. He pressed a button on the monitor beside, him and Jake's video log began to play.

Jake's late-night monolog left Grace stunned. The last words of the log are, "They're never going to leave Hometree." Quaritch froze the image, a grin spreading across his face at their stunned expressions.

"Since a deal can't be made— it gets real simple," he said icily to Jake, "So thanks. I'm getting all emotional. I might just give you a big wet kiss."

"Parker, we have to talk, like rational people," Grace pleaded, looking at him with her most heartbroken expression. Come on, Park, she thought, looking into his eyes and seeking the compassion she knew was in there somewhere, This isn't you. It's never been you.

"Well, I'd cherish that, but unfortunately you're out of here on the next shuttle. All of you. I'm shutting down the Avatar Program, effective now."

Grace's heart stopped and her jaw dropped. Because Parker would never have said such a thing. Parker would never have been so cruel. Parker would have run over, given her a hug and bitched Quaritch out for not listening to her. This man wasn't Parker. It was Selfridge, and they were completely different people.


Wainfleet panned a camera across the smouldering hulks of burned bulldozers, the toppled remains of a charred ampsuit, dead troopers bristling with arrows. Destruction flashed across the screen; it was enough to make even a seasoned marine wince with sympathy.

"They hit with banshees first," Wainfleet explained, "Set the ampsuit on fire. Driver's toast."

Quaritch and Selfridge looked on grimly.

"The rest of the squad?" Quaritch asked, his mouth a tin, taut line.

"Six bodies— that's all of 'em. And the equipment is totalled."

Selfridge let out a squeak of surprise. "Christ!" He stared at his Chief of Security soberly as Quaritch outlined the plan.

"I can do it with minimal casualties to the indigenous. We'll clear them out with gas first. It'll be humane. ...More or less."

Selfridge sighed and rubbed his face. It was a big decision. A life-changing decision. Parker would have asked for Grace's advice, but he already knew what it would be in this situation. And Selfridge wasn't prepared to give up that easily. Not with that must profit on the line.

"Hey, don't go limp on me now. This is exactly the incident we needed," Quaritch said, looking at the shorter man with a crooked look of determination.

Parker sighed, considering all the causalities that might be avoided if they had a diplomatic solution. It was Selfridge who said, "Alright, let's pull the trigger."

It hadn't even been three hours since he made the call, and already Quaritch had his pilots preparing for takeoff. Selfridge surveyed the airfield, where crews swarmed over the gunships, loading ordnance. He turned as Jake and Grace charged toward him.

"Parker, wait! Stop!" Grace yelled, her voice frantic. "These are people you're about to—"

"They're fly-bitten savages who live in a tree! Look around— I don't know about you but I see a lot of trees. They can move."

"For God's Sake, there are children in there! Babies!"

"Look Selfridge, you don't want this kind of blood on your hands. Let me try to talk them out. They trust me," Jake pleaded. Selfridge should have shrugged him off. He should have shaken his head and told them it was too late, the order had been made. He didn't.

Parker and an escort of armed troopers accompanied Jake and Grace to the links. The two enter their units as Norm and Max quickly prepped the system.

"You've got one hour. Unless you want your girlfriend in there when the axe comes down, you get them to evacuate. One hour," he told Jake, his eyes burning. Children. Babies. Grace was right. He didn't want that on his head.

Jake nodded and lowered the upper clamshell, shutting himself into the unit. Norm started the sequence, and he was gone.

It was an hour later that Selfridge stared at the destruction on the screen. They hadn't been able to convince the tribe to leave their home, obviously, because when the gas came out, so did the panicked blue monkeys.

Norm and Max were staring in shock, both looking like they either wanted to cry or throw up. Parker shook his head. It wasn't his fault, he reminded himself. If they were smart, they would have moved.

"Pull the plug," he said. Troopers ran to the units and opened them, pulling Jake and Grace from the machines.

There was screaming, there was panic, there was horror and destruction, but Grace saw none of it. Her eyes locked on one face, and her mouth turned downward in a broken snarl. "Murderer!" she yelled, trying to fight against the trooper holding her, binding her wrists together. "Murderer!"

Gone was all hope she had had that Parker would come to his senses. Gone was the believe that under the new, hardened shell, Parker Selfridge was still the young, naive, maybe a little power-hungry guy that had arrived on Pandora. Gone was any compassion or love she had still harboured for him under the hate. The only thing left was blind anger, utter hatred, and an empty hole in her heart.


Parker sat dejectedly in his office, his head cradled in his hands. He could still see her, his fiery redhead, yelling at him about something or other just over the threshold. No more. There was no way there would ever be any playful banter, fake fights and then make-up sex. She was gone, out of his reach, forever changed.

But they had been doomed from the start.

A commotion outside of his office drew his attention, and he stood up to investigate. Keep busy, he thought, So I don't have to think about her.

When he exited his office, he saw a crowd of lab techs surrounding a monitor, whispering hurriedly. Parker pushed a few of the ambient techs out of the way and looked for himself what was so frigging interesting; and his stomach dropped.

A Samson, number 16, was attempting unauthorised take-off. But that wasn't the scary part. A very familiar head of red hair was helping a disabled ex-marine into the back as bullet after bullet ricocheted off the metal and glass.

"Grace," Parker breathed, his eyes locking on the figure shooting at them. The picture wasn't very clear, but he could vaguely make out three jagged scars down the side of the shooter's unprotected face. "Quaritch?"

The Samson made it, and the last shot the camera picked up of the leaving vehicle showed all passengers holding on for dear life, but looking rather uninjured. Parker's heart was beating rapidly, and his breathing was irregular.

"I'll kill him!"

The disgruntled administrator charged through the Base towards the airfield. That asshole had shot at Grace. Who the hell did he think he was?

But Quaritch wasn't at the airfield. He had already disappeared, and left Parker running on a wild goose chase around the entire Base, looking for the SOB. He was definitely getting demoted. Maybe even fired. Because Selfridge had that power, and Parker wasn't afraid to use it.

He didn't find him for several hours, during which Quaritch was setting up the start of a war. When Parker was tipped off the to Chief of Security's plans, he raced to the Armor Bay, staring around him in growing dismay as he walked through the full-scale mobilization. He approached Quaritch, who was barking orders amid a hive of activity around the ampsuits.

"Quaritch! This thing is completely out of control!" Parker yelled, throwing his hands up in the air.

Quaritch ignored him, turning away to focus on ordnance loading.

"Listen to me! I am not authorizing you to turn the mine-workers local into a freakin' militia!"

"I declared threat condition red. That puts all on-world assets under my command," Quaritch remarked, his tone of voice making it sound as if he was talking about the weather, or something equally as trivial. He had a slight smile on his face, as though the weather he was reporting was good weather. It only stood to infuriate Parker further.

"You think you can pull this palace coup shit on me?" Parker yelled, his hands curling into tight fists at his sides. "I can have your ass with one call—"

Quaritch grabbed him and pinned him against the side of an ampsuit. "You're a long way from Earth," Quaritch snarled. Parker was paralyzed with fear and shock. Physical force – against him? Quaritch released him and walked away a short distance, leaving Parker standing panting against the ampsuit.

"Get him out of here," Quaritch said quietly to a group of his men. Several troopers converged on the young administrators.

"You touch me you're so fired," he growled at the troopers, his eyes burning. Grace had been right. Quaritch had been using him, and he had thrown him away when he was done. Grace had been right. Why hadn't he listened?

He pushed through the group of men and they escorted him toward the door. Life had gone to hell, and it was all his fault.