Jupiter nestles beside Caine, seated upon her small bed. She notices the clear view to the corridor, and wonders if Caine always leaves the door open for propriety, or because he still feels he has no right to be alone with a royal.

"Your Majesty, you're using this to avoid facing the fate of Earth."

"No. No I'm not. Ok, yes I am. But these problems are still part of that problem. I'll just figure them out one at a time."

"Ok." He places his chin over her head, breathing in the scent of her hair. "I can't say I understand the adjustment you are trying to make. I'll do my best to help however you need."

"Thank you," she says, lifting her hand to stroke his own. "Now, show me how to defend myself." She hops up. Caine turns his head slightly away, thoughtful, before he nods and stands before her.

"Everything starts with a proper stance. Plant your feet like this, apart, with your knees slightly bent, ready to move." She stands as directed, then watches his face.

"Don't stare like that. The eyes are useful, but you need to see what the muscles, the shifts of weight, those tell you what an enemy is about to do. You have to watch everything, softly."

"Like this?" He shakes his head and rearranges her again.

"OK. Let's try something different. If I come at you like this," and he extends his arm as if a strike to her chin, "you need to be able to shift like this," and he pushes her shoulder, but instead of a graceful dodge, she staggers sideways. She gamely takes the stance again, but her face is so twisted in concentration that Caine has difficulty suppressing a grin. "Um, Ok, you try to hit me instead." Jupiter lifts her leg to kick him sideways, like she had seen in movies, and swings.

"I can't do that!" she cries as he demonstrates a handspring out of reach.

"What's the fuss?" Kiza's head pops in the door. "I could hear you two corridors away." She addresses Caine, then belatedly amends with "Your Majesty."

"Nothing," Jupiter says, embarrassed. She had fought back against Balem. That had been life, amidst death and destruction. Absent that cold fury of immediate survival, she just felt silly.

"She doesn't understand what I am trying to show her."

"He doesn't understand why I don't understand!"

"That's because he's male. Here. Watch."

"You know self-defense?"

"And more, Your Majesty. My father is an Aegis marshal." Caine shakes his head in vehement denial.

"You were just badly injured. I won't let you do this."

"I'm fine. Afraid you can't keep up? I'll go slow."

She takes a stance against Caine. He backs away, still shaking his head. Kiza ignores his reticence and spins towards him with a high kick. Instinctively, Caine dodges, then reaches towards her with grasping hands, and Kiza slips beneath leaving him clutching air. She slides behind him and delivers a chop to the back of his neck. He whirls with a leg sweep which she leaps above, then kicks the leg forward, slipping Caine onto his side from his own momentum. He rolls sideways but tries a second sweep while she is still touching down from her previous move. He makes contact, and she has to somersault to take the force and land right again. She laughs, and Caine smiles in response to the challenge. He keeps his wings tucked tightly against his back for this is an amicable sparring. Jupiter has seen him in true fights, and recognizes this is very different. She watches them dance, entranced, yet a hint of envy creeps into her heart. They've played this game many times before.

"You see, Your Majesty, he is much larger and stronger, but I can use that against him."

"It doesn't help that you are just as fast as Stinger," Caine muses with a rueful grin, rubbing his side from his latest bounce off the wall. She shrugs.

"I said I would go slow."

"What's this?" Phylo bursts into the room, gun drawn. Two more Aegis soldiers file in right behind him. "We heard a disturbance!"

"Sorry, sorry." Jupiter steps in front of them. "They were just showing me some techniques." Phylo gives his head rebuffing shake, and holsters his weapon.

"Maybe you should use the practice rooms designated for that instead, Your Majesty." Jupiter looks thoughtfully at his weapon.

"Maybe I should start with something simple, like a gun."

"The armory has plenty of those," Phylo offers with a decisive nod at Caine. "You pick one out for Her Majesty's first go."

"I can take you to the practice range." Jupiter follows Kiza into the corridor. Kiza glances at the wall where a listing of directions flashes, then heads off, motioning Jupiter along. She's comfortable, at home in the big dark ship with its portals and its sliding doors and its panels of light. Jupiter feels a second stab of envy, and a pit of loneliness hollows her stomach. Here, she is even more the alien than ever she believed herself to be on Earth.

"How long have you known Caine?" she hears her mouth asking before she can tame it. "Never mind, it's none of my business, I'm sorry." Kiza smiles back at her.

"Since I was little. I don't know exactly what age you would call it. The splicer sold me to a broker, who sold me to a jewel thief who thought the fast hands of an apini could be useful."

"A jewel thief? Criminals can buy splices?"

"If they have the means, of course. In the end, he became too brash, his heists too flashy. Stinger was one of the Aegis legionnaires that apprehended him. I was scheduled to be terminated but Dad couldn't bear that, I was still just a kid. But a splice can't own another splice, so somehow he managed to adopt me. But I guess he's always been like that, worrying about the outcasts, like taking Caine under his wing. Caine's been like my big brother ever since." Jupiter swallows the lump of jealousy, but it only goes part of the way down.

"How could he sell Caine out to Titus then?"

"I asked him that," Kiza pauses before the door that must lead to the shooting range. "I'm not sure he knows. Maybe because he resented taking the fall for Caine over such a stupid mistake. I was quite happy living in the middle of nowhere, with no one to bother us. But Dad, he couldn't stop telling me all his stories about the Aegis and being a skyjacker. He missed it." She signaled the door to open before Jupiter might ask her logical question, 'he missed the life, even if they owned him, bought and paid for?'

Within the small vestibule of the shooting range, Caine waits. When Jupiter enters, he gently places a gun in her palm.

"I suppose this is a start," she nods with a slight frown at its minute size.

After a long lesson with Kiza and Caine instructing her on the assembly, disassembly, and care of a gun, Jupiter groans over the complexity that turned out to be anything but simple. She slaps the gun on the table in frustration, and jumps when it spits a bit of fire.

"Careful," Caine takes the gun from her with great caution, "Your Majesty."

"This is harder than I thought." Jupiter bites her lip at the whine in her own voice.

"Every legionnaire has to start with proper care of the weapon," Caine explains with forced patience. "A poorly kept weapon will not find the enemy's heart if it doesn't fire true."

"I, I don't want to know how to kill someone. Just keep from getting killed." Kiza's expression hardens, and Jupiter knows she worries for Stinger.

"Sometimes those amount to the same thing." Jupiter swallows the taste of bile at the back of her throat, her mind dredging up images of all the billions butchered so other people might live extended lives. People like Balem. Like Titus and Kalique. And like her genetic twin, lost across time.