Again, familiarity with Monsters is recommended, as a lot of the fallout from that will be dealt with here.
Costs Paid, Costs To Come
Chrono, meanwhile, had discovered something to do while the operations on the ground went on.
"War Cruisers dropping out of the Dimensional Sea. Count six."
Not now, not here… Chrono restrained a need to swear. "Bring us about. Signal to Enif and Athra, prepare to engage."
The captain looked up sharply. "Sir?"
"Earth has the means to try to fight these people, just barely. And they will try to fight, some of them for high-minded reasons and some less so. So these wannabe Belkans take the easy way and drop nuclear reaction weaponry on cities until Earth surrenders, not realizing there's no world government and they're never going to get some of these people to surrender in a million years. Billions of people die. Belkan Civil War all over again." This was exactly the situation the Time-Space Administrative Bureau had been formed to prevent. The Bureau had been formed to prevent killing on such a scale ever again, and inscribed deep into the collective soul of the Bureau was the phrase never again. "Signal Headquarters that we are engaging the enemy."
The Athra was an old warhorse. Like nearly all her class she had been decommissioned, and saved from the chopping block for a few brief months longer by replacing the old Long Arch command center. Still after that she had gone away, sent off so that her children could replace her. In a few months she would have been gone entirely, subsumed into the great scrapyards orbiting Administrated World #30 and broken down into her component parts and materials for the civilian starship industry.
But then the Bureau had called the surviving L-class patrol warships to the colors again. Athra's long history of service was not forgotten, but she was in terrible shape, stripped of engines, wards, and weapons when they had found her. The engines had been simple to locate. The Bureau had not been able to locate an L-class main gun for her, nor an L-class ward generator. They had instead installed a M-class ward generator, but the M-class gun simply would not fit in the L-class hull. In the process of discovering this, though, they had found that the subsystems for the Arc-En-Ciel had never been removed, and installed an Arc rather than the standard main gun.
Which meant that Athra was going to punch far above her weight today. The first shot of the First Battle of Earth was fired and completely erased a Belkan War Cruiser from existence. The others saw that and did the only reasonable thing left to them, filling space with nuclear ordnance to kill Athra before it could fire again. Over a hundred warheads were inbound and the Bureau ships' secondaries struggled to shoot them all down.
It was around this time that Earth collectively woke up to what was going on in their orbit. The starships were relatively stealthy, the wards trapping their heat and absorbing radar, and their emissions were of a completely different sort from what Earth technology would look for. But the weapons, the heat and light, that could not be hidden. And the bloom of fire, brighter than the daytime sun, as Chrono's Circe cut in front of Athra to protect it from a volley of nuclear warheads thirty-strong, really got the attention of those on the ground.
The flagship was lost in the brillant light and EM wash of the explosions, then emerged again, her wards flaring brilliant blue as she came about again to bring her weapons on target. Athra fired once more and erased another War Cruiser. Enif moved in, main gun spitting bolts that would erase a city block with ease. Circe moved up to support the cruiser, her own weapons reaching out.
The War Cruisers kept coming, recklessly charging the planet rather than manuvering to bring weapons to bear. "Going to get a leaker." Chrono observed to his aide and wife. "And once it gets between us and the planet we'll have trouble shooting at it." Circe's main gun could crack a planetary crust, creating an instant volcano, and Athra's Arc-En-Ciel could make nuclear-reaction weaponry look like a string of firecrackers. Firing either of them at a target where missing would hit an inhabited planetary surface was intensely stupid, and prohibited by Bureau law except under the most extreme circumstances.
Amy Harlaown, formerly Amy Linetta, nodded and went to work. The Data Mage, they called her, her skill with computer systems matched only by certain Combat Cyborgs who had been purpose-designed for the role. "We'll knock its wards down. Shall I have the Mage Teams ready?"
Chrono closed his eyes a moment. His force had approximately sixty-five flight mages embarked. There had never been enough Mage Teams to go around. With more than half the Navy statically guarding Bureau planets from attacks by the Other-Wolkenritter, they had been able to to fully staff the patrol groups for the first time in over a decade. But Chrono's group was not a patrol group and they did not have their full complements. It shouldn't have mattered. The Wolkenritter should have been enough for this mission. But they couldn't be in two places at once.
Sixty-five mages against an unknown number of crew and mages. They had packed over five hundred mages onto one of these ships in the first encounter the Bureau had with them. Would he simply be sending good men and women to their deaths if he gave this order? Did he even have a choice? Enif could still engage the enemy ship if it got past, but the enemy ship's course would take it over heavily populated areas of the Indian subcontinent while that was going on.
"Captain." Chrono called. "Command of the task force is yours. If one of them gets through, we will commit to a boarding action." No, he didn't have a choice. But if he was to send good people on a suicide mission today, he would lead them himself. And there was one more thing he could do to try and save lives here, today.
"What did you do?" Tre asked. Jail had seen better days, days when he wasn't suffering multiple burns, days when he still had all his fingers, days when his back hadn't apparently been used as a whipping post. He was deep in shock, Klarer Wind and Shamal's full attention on keeping him from dying.
"No more than what was necessary." Signum said, covering herself. Nobody could ever know what had happened here, not the truth of it. Especially Hayate.
"Far less than was deserved." Uno said softly. "Far, far less. But then, you can only kill most men once anyways." She looked directly at Signum, and something passed between them without words or telepathy. Uno knew what had happened here, she had seen it in the base computers. Uno was aware that Signum, Zafira, and Shamal had completely lost it and gone on a killing spree. Uno had erased that fact from the computers as well. The secret was safe.
"An unfortunate limitation." Samuel observed. "Of course, one that may not apply. But then we'd have to find him again while he turned more little girls into cyborgs."
"He did them a favor!" That would be the male cyborg, entering the conversation. Tre had thought Samuel had killed him from the sheer quantity of wounds, but actually that had just been what was needed to make him stop fighting because it hurt too much.
Vita sighed and to his clear discomfort looked directly at him. "Kid," the irony of the apparent child addressing the apparent late-teenager as "kid" was utterly lost on Vita, "did he happen to mention you'd have three months to live from when you had the operation? No? Didn't think so."
"My little sister and I would be gods-"
Vita shook her head. "You don't have scars on your body or calluses on your hands. You're not a fighter, you're not a worker, and you're not from the streets. What are you, bored rich kid? Volunteered? Power is never free. I am the cost of power. If you don't have the friends to help you, the training to sustain you, the resources to stage your defense, somebody takes it away and makes a real mess of your life. You're lucky, kid. The Bureau will offer you a chance to help them, to gain the friends, the training, the resources. All you have to do is follow their rules. It's a good offer, kid. You should take it." Vita gestured to the surviving younger cyborg as well. "And your sister too."
Samuel pressed his earpiece into his ear briefly, then shook his head. "Dame Signum, you might have company here soon. Be ready." He turned to Uno. "Day's not over Uno. We have a starship to steal." Samuel said, summoning a holowindow. "Circe, two to recover."
There had been sixty-seven Navy combat mages aboard the fleet, counting Chrono. Signum counted heads as they returned aboard Circe, having herself just conveyed Jail and Quattro to holding cells.
She came up thirty short. Agito, hovering near her, shook her head. "War never does change."
"I," Signum paused briefly, as though considering her answer or confused, "would not know." She was intimately familiar with battle, personal combat, but this was different.
Signum did not know what it was to lose a comrade. Wolkenritter did not truly die, and masters and mistresses came and went. Losing them was a failure, but neither common nor truly mourned. Signum had never formed any real connection with a master or mistress before Hayate. They had been insane, dangerous men and women most often, eager for power and eager to hurt people with and for it. The few masters and mistresses she could have formed any kind of respect or empathy towards were simply desperate for a weapon, any weapon, and hadn't known or cared about the terrible cost attending the Book of Darkness. Desperation resulted in people becoming stupid and brave. The combination did not typically last long.
Signum tried to imagine how she would react to losing one of the other knights, or Hayate. She could not. The still-simmering anger at Scaligetti, the shame she had felt for her loss of control and giving into the urge to simply torture him like in the old days, vanished into a void she struggled to comprehend the shape and size of.
Familiar faces, Samuel and Team 70. She counted them as well and came up short by five. More than half the team was missing.
"What happened on that ship?" Signum asked of Samuel.
"What didn't happen." Samuel replied. "Everything happened. I fought over a hundred different opponents, according to Steelheart. I killed or incapacitated eighty-two of them. Just me, Signum. Nevermind everybody else, that was just me. I don't think anybody who came out alive will count less than fifty people they personally defeated. I lived it, fought it, I bled it." There were two rents in his Barrier Jacket. One of them was a shallow, very shallow, cut that had already scabbed. The other was still oozing blood slowly. And at least one spot where a button was burned away. "I was there from the breach through an airlock all the way to the bridge. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this happened. But it couldn't have. If I had attempted something like this I would be lying aboard that ship in a pool of my own blood somewhere."
"You survived, though." Signum pointed out.
Samuel looked over at her sharply. "How do you internalize something like this?"
Signum had been waiting for a question, but not that question. She had expected "how do you deal with this" instead. She had believed him to most likely want to deny, not prove, the reality of it. "What if I told you it is better not to?"
"Then the question stands." Samuel replied. "I did this. I have to believe it's real. Denying it is the first step down a road to losing contact with reality and I'm not prepared to go there."
Signum nodded slowly. "You walk yourself through it. You remember. You see yourself do it until you understand how, and why." She looked at him, tilting her head a little to the left, her version of a questioning look. "And perhaps, you can answer one of my questions. How do you cope?"
Samuel's response was telepathic, clearly trying to keep his own team from listening. That didn't seem like a serious concern, though, as the remaining two of them had the apathetic look of someone who has fought beyond any reasonable limits and can no longer even put one foot in front of another without conscious effort. Because I have to. I am the commander. There is no more effective way to destroy the morale and mental well-being of my team then for me to crack myself. I am the commander, and I am not allowed to fall apart.
That was insane. It made perfect logical sense to Signum. But it was insane nonetheless, a logic she could not accept emotionally. If you lead, you could not mourn? Not publically at least. And if you could not mourn, what else might cause trouble? All your fears, all your needs and wants and tears, reserved for your pillow alone. No wonder command destroyed people. No wonder Hayate was so glad to have her knights; she could confide in them, tell them of her troubles, and nothing would happen to damage her leadership of them.
"Could you look after Uno for a bit?" Samuel asked. "I need to see to my wounded." It occurred to Signum to point out Samuel was wounded as well; he must mean non-ambulatory. Perhaps the five missing mages weren't dead. Signum looked around at the battered survivors of the fleet's Mage Teams and couldn't really convince herself it was true. Not for all five.
The not-really-Combat Cyborg was also there. Uno looked shaken, but didn't appear to be injured. Signum nodded to Samuel. "Of course." She had to pull Uno away gently, not because Uno resisted, but because the cyborg did not appear entirely aware of her surroundings at the moment.
Uno looked dazedly at Signum. "That," the seniormost Combat Cyborg observed, "was all utterly insane, and I will never do anything remotely like it again. I will never use a car or even approach a roadway, I will lock every door or window I ever sleep behind, and I will never take any risks again, because I have completely used up whatever luck I was allotted in the universe."
"Bad?" Signum asked.
"I have no base of experience with which to evaluate that." Uno replied. Signum was surprised, considering the Combat Cyborg's state, that she was capable of that degree of rational thought. "However given that at least twenty people died within arm's length of me and I personally had to kill two, I would guess so."
The act of analysis, its familiarity, appeared to calm Uno somewhat. Signum noted this and continued. "What did you notice about the enemy?"
Uno took several calming breaths before she continued. "They spoke Belkan. Accented slightly, but I did not recognize it as being from any of the major Belkan-settled worlds. White uniforms and Barrier Jackets. I saw three different styles, but they all had a single row of buttons, left side. One style had a cap, as well." A frown. "Their language, terminology and slang, did not suggest Bureau training."
Signum raised an eyebrow at Uno. "You remember it well enough for that?"
"I tapped into the ship's internal communications. And I have a perfect memory." Uno continued to frown. "The lexicon seemed slightly archaic. Some of the words are not in common use anymore, even among native Belkan speakers. They fought like Belkans, in close, using close combat Devices. Swords, axes, one-handed weapons mainly, a few two-handers like Levantine or Graf Eisen, but not many. They did not seem familiar with the capabilities of Midchildan magic either. There were a number of times they charged a mage who had room to light off a heavy beam attack and got blasted for it." Uno turned her head to look directly at Signum. "They really did fight like Belkans. Does any of this sound familiar?"
"The style is Old Belkan, but a lot of people fought in the Old Belkan style. The uniforms, no, they are not familiar. But what are the odds the Bureau missed some Old Belkan world?" Signum asked.
"Low. The Bureau's own controlled space encompasses over 80% of the Belkan Empire and the rest falls under the category of the Non-Administrated Worlds. The total area that is regularly surveyed by Bureau ships is nearly twice the size of the Empire." Uno replied. Being a cyborg must be nice, Signum thought. Even though Signum had a perfect memory too, her ability to process information was still within human norms. Uno could read a standard-sized holoscreen at speeds that anyone else watching would only see a blur as Uno scrolled down.
"And Old Belka did not have the fetish for nuclear arms." Signum added. "More exotic reactions. Simple nuclear reaction weaponry seemed crude to them."
Uno raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"I was caught in an antimatter blast once." Signum replied levelly, quite aware she was probably the only person in the universe who could say that and be taken seriously. "It is not one of my most pleasant memories."
"Probably a better solution to the problem you posed at the time than most." Uno's tone was light, not exactly calm, but not the haunted it had been earlier. Signum wasn't sure if the Combat Cyborg had just offered a compliment or an insult. Most people would consider being told they were enough of a problem that antimatter weapons were used on them as the best solution a grave insult, but Uno was not most people and could well be expressing a sort of twisted admiration. Or perhaps it was both insult and compliment at the same time.
Tre appeared, or more accurately ran up. "Uno! Are you-"
"Uninjured. In body at least." Uno replied. "Ask me again in a week about my mind."
"And the rest of Team Seventy?" Tre demanded. She didn't care that she'd probably left an opening for Uno to tease her with; if Uno said anything teasing nowthen Tre was pretty sure she'd be forgiven for knocking the computer-specialist cyborg to the deck.
"The Commander is only slightly injured and I would guess will be fit for duty within a couple hours, as was Veteran Mage Specialist Dust. Senior Mage Specialist Bei somehow managed to avoid being injured at all and is probably the only combat mage aboard this ship at the moment who can say that. Mage Specialist Altima has a severe skull fracture but that happened early so a medic could attend to her. I would assume she will make a full recovery. Veteran Mage Specialist Heinrich, Veteran Mage Specialist Molders, and Mage Officer Second Class Citronen were all killed in-" Uno's voice hitched from its matter of fact delivery, and Signum realized that Uno had seen them die. Uno had meant it that she was not really a "Combat" Cyborg, and she had never actually seen a death until today. Now it had intruded into her personal space in the most violent and confrontational way possible. "Killed in action. I do not know what happened to Simo Fiat."
"Find out." Tre had clearly meant it as a suggestion from the way her face twisted in surprise at the sound of her own voice, but it came out like an order.
"It isn't that simple, Tre." Uno said, and a note of frustration entered her voice. "I was there. He did something and managed to clear the bridge completely on his own. Literally clear. There was no one on the bridge including himby the time the rest of us got there. The fleet ships tracked no teleports and the Belkans had raised their jammers in any case. Simo somehow wiped out at least sixty armed mages at a stroke, and himself, and none of us know how."
"Dissolution." Signum muttered.
Both of the Combat Cyborgs turned towards her, but it was Uno who spoke. "Explain."
"Midchildan magic is more stressful on the body than Belkan." Signum began, "and a Midchildan mage more likely to suffer injury for extended casting or drain. What is not said, because few individuals have the willpower to even try, is that a Mid-style mage is capable of literally consuming their body to power castings. They call it dissolution, and I have seen it happen twice in a small way. If you have the will, and I understand it is an excruciatingly painful process for even a minor drain, you could use your entire body to power one last casting. I do not know of that ever actually happening."
To the conversation was added a fourth person, one who no one really expected, wearing the black longcoat of a Navy mage, but it was unmarked. And the pink hair…bunnyears radio transmission and reception implants, but somehow resurfaced with a black material to match the longcoat and uniform. The color contrast, even in Signum's rather uninterested opinion of fashion, was awful.
"Sette?" Tre asked hesitantly. She had to admit the Navy mage's outfit was quite striking on her protégé, but considering what had just happened to a lot of people who wore it, not entirely welcome.
"Tre." Sette made reflexively to salute, then seemed to realize she was talking to the wrong kind of superior and stopped. "It has been some time. I am glad to see you are well." The inimitable, near-robotic tones were familiar and almost comforting. Sette spoke in a voice robbed of all emotion or inflection, something that a computer ought to be making, except that Sette had a much greater vocabulary than any speech program Tre had ever encountered.
However, the old Sette would never have included the pleasantries, and it took Tre a couple of seconds to get past that. "Why are you here?"
"Before the Bureau spoke to either of you," Sette included Uno with a gesture, "they spoke with me. I was quite willing to fight for them, but it was determined that it would be unwise to place me in a posistion where I might be required to bring Quattro in alive." For the first time since Sette's activation date, the first round of Combat Cyborgs had never been born in any normal sense, Tre heard emotion in Sette's voice. "As I would do no such thing."
It was Uno who asked the question, since Tre could not come to accept the choked, adrenaline-heavy tone from Sette that easily. "What would you do, Sette?"
Sette turned and fixed Uno with a stare. "I would kill her, Uno. Much as she tried to kill you and Tre." Still the same tone, rage distilled into a sound, but no expression. The contrast was interesting to Uno, in much the same way that she had an interest in all things paradoxical. Like the Doctor, hers was an orderly mind that could not accept paradox. No one should be able, physically, to talk that way and have no discernible expression. Uno made a mental note to examine the specifications of Sette's particular enhancements again.
Sette's voice lapsed, without transition, into its normal monotone again. "This would be an unwelcome result for everyone involved. So I instead spent the time you were hunting them down undergoing a crash-course in Mage Team training. I am currently a personal aide to Admiral Harlaown, until such time as I am assigned to a Mage Team."
Sette glanced at the blood on the deck closer to the teleport receiving area. "Which will probably be today or tomorrow considering what just happened."
Agito chipped in, reminding everyone of her presence. "The Bureau is going to go to war, so I'd guess so." That announcement was greeted with a long, uncomfortable silence.
"The Bureau has never fought a war before." Uno noted. "Though for its first decade you could argue it was conducting wartime operations. Three different Non-Administrated Worlds have declared war on the Bureau at various times, but only one of them possessed the means to hurt a Bureau starship and none of them had interstellar travel, so they were not regarded as serious declarations."
It was an unwelcome and unfamiliar feeling for Signum, to be out of her depth. Would the Bureau fight? Yes, it would fight. It had no other choice by now. A long time associating with the field-grade officers and senior NCOs of the Bureau had given Signum a good idea of what it would look like when it came. They were competent and ably lead at that level. They would fight well. But as for the higher ranks, there was only one Chrono. Signum respected Admirals Mizetto and Lowran, but they were both administrative admirals more than combat leaders. And she barely knew anything about the rest of the Bureau's leadership.
And Ground Forces was in ruins, their morale and their officer corps both destroyed by the arrest of their head officer for treason and the failures at Cranagan. Navy, Air Force, and Headquarters had about three thousand combat mages in all. Not enough to fight a war. Ground Forces had over a million. They would be needed.
And Signum didn't doubt that her understanding of what else was required was limited. Logistics, for example. Once upon a time, she'd had to hoard even expended cartridges because the casings were are hard to come by. Now…well, now she still hoarded her expended cartridge casings, going through and picking them up after a fight, but it was force of habit. Of the ten cartridges she carried, only two of them had been charged by Shamal like in the old days. One had been charged by Signum herself, a luxury she had not been able to indulge in centuries, and the remainder charged off what amounted to a glorified plugin outlet back on Mid. She didn't know where new casings came from, but Signum was very aware there were seven separate types of cartridge in Bureau service currently and if something happened to stop them getting to people who needed them…
So many things to go wrong, when you had to win more than the battle. So many things you couldn't control. Signum didn't like it.
"We should have been there." Shamal observed softly. A day had passed, and the final count was in. Twenty-five bodies. Many times the worst she'd ever seen a Bureau operation turn out.
"Wouldn't have helped the cause much." Vita replied. "We had to make sure the loonies with the cybernetics made it into custody. Space combat isn't my thing but I'm pretty sure if they'd actually tried to fight Chrono's guys instead of making a suicide run to land troops there was a risk they'd win. Then we'd all be needed to get back to an Administrated World alive. They pay Chrono to cover the angles, so he covered the angles."
Hayate wondered if she had somehow died and gone to an alternate universe where Vita was the mature one. Still... "And," she said softly, "I would prefer not to have lost one of you. Even you would not all have come back from that."
"Command math." Zafira rumbled. He was in his wolf form, as he preferred when not in combat. Or, more recently, when not in company with Otto. He wouldn't call it dating; a meeting of the odd ones out. Otto might attach romantic overtones to it, but Zafira wasn't prepared to go that far. Occupational hazard of being a Wolkenritter, with a Wolkenritter's past of being exploited by various masters and mistresses. "Don't like command math." Was his life really worth that much more than twenty-five of the Navy's mages? He knew, objectively, that this was probably so because of the simple fact he could have fought them all and beaten them. But he did not truly believe it.
"No one likes command math." Hayate said. "They simply learn it well. I, on the other hand, am glad I have my whole family with me today."
And they were glad to be there too.
Especially since by rights they probably shouldn't be, save for Vita.
With Earth going slightly crazy over the battle in orbit, they were all here, helping to escort Bureau people and dependents back off the planet. They had already picked up Lindy Harlaown, who was currently visiting with Chrono, and Gil Graham, which had not been a pleasant experience. Hayate might not blame Graham, but Graham had knowingly and purposefully done immense harm to Hayate. That made him an enemy in the eyes of the Wolkenritter regardless of what their mistress thought.
Signum noted that Tre had been heavily involved in this. Chrono had in fact trusted a small scratch team of Navy mages including the Combat Cyborg with Nanoha Takamachi's family. Tre did not appear entirely happy with her continued service; signing on to capture Jail she must have had some kind of plan for an after frame that was currently being held off.
Uno, on the other hand, accepted it with a satisfied calm. She had an after frame as well, but it involved working with Hayate's command anyways. And Signum had to admit she had greatly underestimated what being able to remotely connect to any computer in existence would mean. Uno had gotten rather close with Shamal as the resident expert on the Wolkenritter's Devices, learning everything she could, pointing out vulnerabilities in their design. Watching the two plot together was not an entirely comfortable experience ever since Signum had learned they had discovered a method of hacking into Levantine and making the Device simply explode.
The only good news was that it took five minutes when they found it. The bad news was that Uno was working on ways to make it shorter and was already down to three minutes to execute. It would certainly make the next time she fought her twin much easier, of course, but Signum was not sure she could ever entirely trust a clone of Jail. She hoped Shamal came up with a way to close the vulnerability in her Device soon.
"You have your next assignments." Hayate said, all business again. "Carry them out."
Signum and Zafira made for the teleporter. Hayate, Shamal, and Vita followed.
Tre did not. She was just coming off a sleep cycle; she had learned that aboard ship such concepts as "day" and "night" were at best relative, and more likely nonexistent. Those who could be treated with the means available had been treated; those who could be saved, saved. There was, however, one casuality still left aboard Circe and everyone was rotating through that responsibility as well
Mage Specialst Greta Lanser, Belkan descent, fifteen years old. She was part of Team Fifty-Eight. Or, to be more precise, she was Team Fifty-Eight now, the rest of her Mage Team having been killed in the assault against the Belkan ship. It was more than a fifteen-year-old, even one who had made it through a Bureau training regimen and a year of active duty, should be required to bear. Shamal had been the one to classify her a suicide risk, and Shamal had been the first to pull a shift sitting with her.
Now it was Tre's turn, and she wasn't really sure what to do. Lanser didn't look up as Tre gestured to the person sitting with Lanser now.
"Wolkenritter, or did someone find a pysch specialist finally?" Simply tired. Not choked up. The question was not as mad as it appeared, since Tre was currently wearing Headquarters/Ground Forces brown formals, her clothing for the last few weeks. At least one member of Circe's regular crew had commented on the fact that with the uniform on, Tre was difficult to distinguish from Signum at a distance or in peripheral vision. Frontally anyways; the ponytail made it easy to pick out Signum from behind.
"Combat Cyborg." Tre replied, taking a seat.
That got Lanser to raise her head. "The last one wore black."
"The last one had decided what she wanted to do with her life." Tre replied. It might even be true; Sette's thought processes were so radically different from Tre's own that Tre had never really pretended to entirely understand them. The recent episode with Sette apparently having found emotions only reinforced that.
"It wasn't a bad idea at the time." Lanser said. "Doesn't seem too smart now."
"Your Team?" It felt decidedly strange to Tre, talking to someone as laconic as she was. It also provided her a good clue to how frustrating it might be to others.
"Not really. The destruction or near-destruction of a Mage Team is not a normal event in peacetime. But we are not at peace anymore. I am the first. I will not be the last." Lanser replied, in the same tired tone, but with a tinge of fear this time.
"Not the first. Something being normal and something not happening are different things. Wouldn't have been the last either." Tre pointed out.
"Didn't think of that." Lanser admitted. "Still going to be a lot more of us, though."
The remainder of their three hours together was spent in a silence neither companionable nor hostile. It simply was.
After that, time to finally see the admiral. Tre noted the swirling colors of the Dimensional Sea outside the windows. Circe had finally jumped away from Earth, en route back to Bureau Headquarters.
"Tre." Chrono held out a hand, two fingers extended and holding a Bureau passport/ID card. "Your help was invaluable and much appreciated."
Tre examined the ID card. It listed her name as "Tre Scaligetti", something which she had requested. Someone had to carry Father's name, make it worth using again. It also listed her status as "Citizen", which was not correct for someone who had been convicted of a crime and released, much less held aboard an Orbital Penal Complex even briefly. Tre had been on one for nearly a year and a half. "This doesn't say that I was ever a criminal."
"No, it does not. In light of your performance and the fact that your loyalty was proved beyond any reasonable doubt, I arranged to have your and Uno's parole agreements altered." Chrono replied, with a faint smile. "Tre Scaligetti, you are truly free to go."