It's a sultry night in July. You've fallen asleep in the armchair. Abruptly, you startle awake, disoriented. The television set is on, but not the sound. You strain to understand what you're seeing: two ghostly white figures in coveralls and helmets are softly dancing under a pitch-black sky. ... Encumbered as they are, they seem to be flying. A little. ...
"You might as well ask for the Moon," they used to say, or "You can no more do that than fly to the Moon." ... Yes, it was an astonishing technological achievement and a triumph for the United States. Yes, the astronauts displayed death-defying courage. Yes, as Armstrong said, as he first delighted, this was a historic step for the human species. But if you turned off the byplay between Mission Control and the Sea of Tranquility, and its deliberately mundane and routine chatter, and stared into that black-and-white television monitor, you could glimpse that we humans had entered the realm of myth and legend.
—Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
The new age is not gilded by trumpets and overtures. It is not heralded by tubas and parades and anchors on the Chatternet telling of all the great things that whispered back ever since that golden record ventured into the dark. It is not brought about by war drums and lasers as dreamed of in the radio dramas about Earth and Mars. It lies not behind the vast hopes of speeches and rallies, of presidents and general secretaries. Instead, it sits on the other side of a titanium door between two Marines and a fourth security check. It waits in the conference room before me—and past it, two thin, khaki, bipedal androids that carry powerful plasma carbines, escorting a distinguished, caped man from an entirely different arm of the galaxy, a place far beyond human borders at Harvest. Instead of songs, I hear the low hum of engines and life support ducts aboard Tiara Station, and the clanking of battle droids against the steel floors, the dry whispers between the aides-de-camp, and the easy banter between Secretary-General Mwangi and Mr. Dooku.
Everything will be different, they have been saying. Everything.
I settle down at the large round table, never meant for something so grand as the meeting of worlds. Soon, these meetings will occur on Utgard. In a few weeks, New Alexandria—to discuss treaties and military arrangements. And by the end of the year, dialogues will be concluded in Sydney and Nairobi—to discuss trade. But today, we exchange laws and customs. Today, I am called upon specifically to accompany the Secretary-General for my expertise in international law. The translation software, designed by the smart AI Sif, can parse words until we learn "Galactic Basic"—and I can parse the legalese.
But while we must keep our headsets close at all times, this is not true for the man in the emotional center of the room. Mr. Dooku speaks English, and he is astoundingly well practiced. He speaks as though he is from Earth—every syllable royally enunciated.
Mr. Dooku is, in every sense of the word, a diplomat. He is sophisticated. He adapts to the customs of our organization with reeling haste and tact. And he is humble in the face of a fledgling interstellar civilization. He tells us he sees a spirited, democratic, living kinship in the United Nations. Eventually, Secretary-General Mwangi jokes, "We might have to rename our organization to the 'United Nations of Earth,'" and shares a laugh with half of us. The rest of us write it down.
It chides us the first few times once Dooku begins to call us "Solarites"—that we often refer to Sol as "the Solar System," and in fact, we refer to all solar systems as such; but the phrase used by Dooku's people, and the greater galactic community, is "star system." His is an inclusive idea: it includes all of humanity as it originated from Sol, but it segregates the baggage of a torn identity between the Inner Colonies and the rebellious frontier. It is an idea that comes sooner to us in the Primary Assembly than to the collegiate New Alexandria think tanks in the heart of the Colonial Administration Authority. With time, the demonym sticks.
Today, Mr. Dooku discusses peace and prosperity. Tomorrow, he will discuss war: a conflict off along the horizon, a war with a greater, corrupt, oppressive regime. An empire by any other name, one that whispers platitudes of republics and democracy, consumed by decadence and ignorance to its own crimes. The separatists want self-determination for the people their federal government cannot reach. They offer an alliance with us; the Galactic Republic would offer subjugation.
He knows which strings to pull on our harp. He knows we are a proud people, one that defeated empires, fascist and communist alike. He knows we, although we are not without our failures—strongly value self-determination. Peacekeepers of the Republic are stretched thin; ours are not. He values that we succeed where they do not.
Where Mr. Dooku goes, everyone watches. He captivates us. He latches us to every word. My senior colleagues feel young again. He introduces a kind of revolutionary spirit that commands solidarity. Before the United Nations Space Command considers our strategic place in the galaxy—before it will measure the battle lines and assess where we might want to fit in between them—we are invigorated by the sense of moral capital held by one man exhausted by a corrupt regime.
As we leave the meeting, exhausted from reviewing precedent briefs, territorial jurisdictions, and intricate laws of the sea—or, in their case, laws of space—I still want more. I am awakened from a deep sleep. The mundanity of things, while no different from before in feeling, has shifted. It has a new undertone. I stand in an observation deck overlooking Harvest and feel around my pocket for the rosary. I produce it and rub the beads between my fingers.
The door to the hall opens behind me. Footfalls creep behind me until they stop by my side.
"She is a lovely world," Dooku says. His voice is deep and fond of everything he speaks to.
I turn to his gentle smile. "Mr. Dooku," I say, stepping aside. His gray hairs up close are so… human. He is human, yet his species is not from Earth. But he is human. The Basic word for "human" is even the same as ours: "walks on dry land;" "walks on earth."
He beckons me to shake his hand. He shakes firmly, like we do. He smiles wide, like we do. He pats my shoulder gently like we do. His hair grays like my grandfather's.
"No battle droids?" I ask, noticing he is without his escort for the first time.
He shakes his head calmly. "I'm quite safe on this station," he says.
He trusts like we do.
Mr. Dooku's eyes catch on to the rosary. "Something special?" he asks.
I hand it to him. "My father's," I say. I feel warm when I say it.
He looks off at the clouds below. Gold sprays of wheat by the hundredth mile encircle the city far below Tiara Station, breaking up the greens of forestry and blues of ocean. Harvest is not my home—not the vacation paradise of Arcadia, one-part metropolis, one-part beach town, one-part college city that produces one-third of the UN's best lawyers—but there is a quietness visible even from orbit here that I envy. Harvest is a quiet paradise, the place city folk like myself want to retire. Start a ranch. Live off the land. Volunteer at a veterans' kitchen in Utgard, maybe an hour's drive away. Light the candles for Dad.
"Where is he now?" Mr. Dooku asks.
I shake my head. "Calcified in glass, not far from here. Far Isle." Just thinking about it, I almost feel cold. Like the universe is leveraging itself against me. An injustice of a high degree—long gone, yet it still builds and brews. Pain lurks around this conversation like a predator.
"I have read about Far Isle," Mr. Dooku says. "A difficult situation… with no easy answers."
"Forget what you've read," I snap. "Not that it's… wrong. But there's another perspective. We nuked Far Isle to suppress an independent world. They fought for independence—and used every terrorist tactic in the book—and won it. But we couldn't tolerate that. We just evacuated our forces, and… boom. Cobalt bombs. Now, Far Isle is a ghost. The surface is uninhabitable in the old colonies. No point rebuilding.
"My father was captured by the independent government of Far Isle, before they could evacuate the last base," I murmur. "The bombs dropped the very next day."
"And you serve the institutions that committed this atrocity?" Mr. Dooku asks, more inquisitively than accusatively.
I turn to him—then back to Harvest. "My father's mission was to end the war. He gave his life doing so when I was five. Now, it's my mission to discover a better way. I've studied and practiced conflict resolution all my life. I've worked in UNESCO, specializing in peacebuilding law, and I've wanted nothing more since I was five."
Mr. Dooku looks at me with knowing eyes. I recoil back.
"I apologize," I say. "That was…"
He holds a hand up and shakes his head. "Have you found a better way?"
I nod. "A dissident faction revolts because it has grievances," I say. "It's a lesson as old as peacekeeping: you either address those grievances, or you let them go. Exercises in control are… fruitless. We need to learn to let go."
Mr. Dooku smiles. "Indeed," he says.
I will look back at this interaction in years to come. I will ask, Was this why he allied with us? Am I responsible? I will ask, Did I play a part? And the answer will be, indisputably yes—But how much? I will think, he could have just as easily heard my answer about the contradiction and terminated the negotiations. I will think, one person's assessment of the Far Isle conflict is not enough. I will think, there are many contradictions shared by Dooku—perhaps he valued this one. I will think, But he listens to us.
But now I only think I have spoiled a tentative impression of our civilization. I only think I have made us out to be unworthy.
"You would have made a great Jedi," Mr. Dooku whispers gently, almost under his breath. I hear it just barely—I hear pain in his voice, but not bitterness. It is almost like sorrow. It is soft like Mom's voice at the funeral, my very first memory. It is humorless, like the words Uncle Nguyen shared about Dad, before pounding his eagle pin into the casket. It is quiet, his voice taking a smoky, candlelike texture.
"Pardon?" I ask.
He looks off, his eyes caught on a Jotun freighter departing north-northeast. Six gold eyes blur from the engines as she shrinks into the black over Harvest. Then he looks at me, smiling. "My gratitude, for your candor."
I nod. "Thank you for listening," I say. "I should be going. Wonderful getting to know you, Mr. Dooku. I look forward to tomorrow's meeting."
"The pleasure was all mine," Mr. Dooku says. He leaves.
Conflict literature offers two on-the-ground explanations of civil wars: the grievance model and the instrumentalist model. My camp, the grievance model, considers the struggles of the group: discrimination, polarization, resource favoritism, economic and political exclusion. These factors shock ethnic or otherwise dissident groups into mobilizing.
Instrumentalists disagree. To them, only the elites matter—the Osama bin Ladens, Vladimir Koslovs, and Count Dookus, the wealthy benefactors of the secessionist or revolutionary movement, disillusioned with their own aristocratic world. The elite uses legitimate grievances to string along opposition from the commanding government and further radicalize his followers with increasingly brutal practices—followers who, initially, were captivated by his extreme charisma. By his promise. By the hope for a better future. There is a moral undercurrent to ending a conflict through this lens: giving them what they want, allowing the rebel group to transition to a legitimate political party and its war criminals to rejoin society without repercussions—regardless of the legitimate grievances that organized them in the first place—is wrong. Conquest is preferred over cooperation, to stamp out the bad actors, and start from scratch.
But Far Isle was not the last rebellion. The UNSC's extreme response inspired more pockets of insurrection—some we cut deals with, some we did not. The cycle of violence continued.
In time, I will ask, Was I wrong?
The days move quickly between meetings, signings, and photo ops. Working with Mr. Dooku's multispecies staff becomes a new, bright challenge that distracts me from everything. I neglect to call Mom. I neglect to call Yevgenny. I neglect to call my son. I am voracious in my work, even as deadlines shorten. They quickly promote me to the head of the legal team, a cohort of sixty lawyers—the best and the brightest doctorate alumni from Harvard, Oxford, Arcadia Law, and New Alexandria Institute—and in the hot summer nights in Utgard North Hotel, at four in the morning, when I lie in bed and put my thoughts to rest, I imagine I hear bagpipes, and I think about Dad, and I think I can't call Mom, because it's also four on Arcadia.
I dream of the beach sunsets. Of Yevgenny's embrace. Of our son. I've been traveling and working for ten years. Our boy is 15 now. He told his grade school friends, "My mom's a hero—just like my grandpa." Now he tells his friends on the cobblestone fence by the graveyard, "My mom's a hero, not a mom." I grab my pillow and sob into it until I open my eyes again, and it's morning.
A letter sits in my drafts for Yevgenny. An apology. A meaningful one, a real one—but I haven't the spine to send it. I know they are words too little, too late. I know nothing short of returning to Arcadia will resolve anything. I know there is no point. I pour my soul into my work with Mr. Dooku and Secretary-General Mwangi and my lawyers. I leave a droplet for my family in a flask by my bedside, hidden away and forgotten until nighttime, every night, when the suns on Harvest and Arcadia stretch the sky with pinks and greens.
I instead call Yevgenny to inform him we are departing for New Alexandria soon.
He takes a sharp breath, says, "OK," and hangs up.
I swallow a pinball in my throat and wipe tears off in the morning. It will have to wait.
The first treaty is negotiated on the floor of UNSC Atlas above Reach. I have never seen Reach before—the most surprising thing is the military traffic. I spend my free time in the cramped observation deck, watching warships float in and out of the auroras, hazes, and rings of Reach. Alexandria Station lingers some ways off, a thin black line tethering it to the supercity distantly below. I often have a mug of coffee in one hand and a chatter in the other. I pretend I am reading briefings and sending messages, but in truth, I am either staring at the message, or the 2514 vacation photo—the last picture we took together, as a family. Yevgenny is sitting in an Adirondack chair with a Sweet William hanging from an easy grin. He's wearing that pair of jeans I hate. Our son is glancing away from the camera, transfixed by a chipmunk in the gravel by the rental car, clutching a dandelion in his tiny hand, his fingers pink and sticky with strawberry syrup.
The military treaty is handled swiftly by Mr. Dooku and my lawyers. We work alongside the Admiralty and NAVJAG, negotiating an integration strategy for UNSC and Confederate of Independent Systems strategists and supply routes. Standardization is impossible—the weapons used by the CIS are far ahead of the UNSC in some respects, and fundamentally different in others—but supply routes can be shared and improved upon.
The first and most significant aspect of the treaty becomes the free sharing of technology—in particular, laser, plasma, and slipspace technology. Separatist FTL is not only more advanced, but works in an entirely different manner from Shaw-Fujikawa Translight engines. Yet the rest of the galaxy has no concept of slipspace. There are no trade routes with slipspace; there are only optimizations. The only technology we aim to make ships cross-compatible with is slipspace and hyperspace.
There is a pain that colors these days. Now I feel conflicted, looking up at the sky above New Alexandria and seeing warships of foreign designs next to Paris-class frigates just like the one in Dad's photograph, the last one Mom got of him before departing for Far Isle. There is a coldness that is not just the Eposz mountains. I ride the train to the Fleet Command campus in the mornings and often catch Preston Cole sitting next to me. He tells me my reputation precedes me. He tells me he is excited to work with young officers, and my service has made me indispensable.
Preston Cole talks about the weather. He's old and it's too cold, or he's old and it's too warm, here on Reach. He likes his coffee black but sweet, and he is especially fond of Colombian blends, an easy import for Reach. Thirty minutes at a time, we exchange stories about my time at Arcadia Law for his exploits as a brilliant fraternity sailor at Luna OCS. I never ask about Roost or the high-profile divorces with young women that made global news on Reach. He never asks about Far Isle.
I have my reservations about him; I have my reservations about everything these days. But no one calls into question my loyalty on account of the circumstances of my father's death. Why should I care for this man's personal life?
When I look at him, I think I see my grandfather—but really, I see Dad.
I clutch my chatter and stare at the message for too long during a conference.
Someone calls my name. I look up, and four dozen eyes are on me in the assembly—a war room repurposed for bilateral talks. "Pardon me?" I ask.
Admiral Cole speaks up, repeating the question. "The Count asked about stipulations of the Colonial Mortal Dictata on military operations. I wanted to refer him to your team, since you're familiar?"
"On what topic?" I ask. "Cloning, or human rights? The Mortal Dictata's significance is that it proscribes cloning altogether, but it legally supplants the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and UN Genetic Rights Act. It extends to war crimes, slavery, and human rights abuses including genocide."
"We have been discussing cloning all day today, Doctor," Admiral Cole says.
I bite my lip. "Of course, Admiral," I say, shrinking in my seat. I flip through the heavy pages in my codebook. Cole explains that Mr. Dooku is looking for a legal framework that would abolish cloned military forces in the legal aperture of the UN Mortal Dictata—thus describing the Republic's engagement in the war with the CIS as an illegal and unjustifiable act.
Admiral Cole motions to call a recess, concluding the day. The Secretary-General approves it, and I find myself empty as I stand at a window on the east side of the Olympic Tower.
I will ask, Should I have been surprised? The UN legislature, robust as it had become in almost six hundred years, was clear on its definitions and requirements. If something was declared a genocide, then a resolution was passed. If an institution had violated the Mortal Dictata, then the Space Command was required to intervene by law. Mr. Dooku had identified our legal aperture as our strongest, most binding organ—and targeted it directly.
But today, I am not thinking about the war's implications. Today, I am not thinking about the "police action" in six months. Today, I am thinking about Yevgenny, and his one-word response to my call. Today, Preston Cole meets me at the window and comments on the clouds, and the winds, offering me a cup of Onderonian caf, and reminds me that the train home stops running in three hours as the sky glows pink over Eposz.
Today, I tell him about Yevgenny. He nods thoughtfully.
"You should go see him," Preston Cole says. "It's never too late to turn it around."
I nod, make my arrangements, and take the next flight to Arcadia. The sea breeze greets me. The sounds of fighter jets, helicopters, and civil air traffic welcomes me home. The bars and boardwalks and Ferris wheels and old theater see me off out of the spaceport as I take the train back to the house.
I walk past the picket fence and approach the front door. In the window to the kitchen, I see a woman cleaning the dishes. There is another car in front of the garage. Our last name is still printed on the door.
I feel hot. A marble forms in my throat. This time, it will not stifle. I want to scream. I want to yell. I want to tear the door off its hinges and smash this woman with it. I want to wreck this home and burn it to the ground and go to Nairobi. I knock on the door.
The woman is ten years younger and has long, beautiful, flowing hair. Her eyes are blue and bright, full of energy and wistfulness that dies when she recognizes me. She wears a sundress that looks like she bought it from the same shop I buy mine. All that anger, and I do not know what to say. She does.
"Can I buy you a drink?" she says somberly. I see our son behind her. He is so tall—about my height, almost unrecognizable. He turns, holding a glass of tea and a chatter, and I see when he recognizes me. He raises the mug of tea toward me, scoffing incredulously, and walks to the kitchen.
Gianna walks me to the bar, and I drink. I sit, I stare at my glass of bourbon, and I drink in silence for a while.
"If it helps," Gianna whispers, "he won't divorce you for me."
"Why would that help?" I ask.
She turns to the waves, rolling a marble of ice around in her glass.
I meekly start to ask questions—When did this start? How long? What is your living situation now? Where are my things? The answers do not matter. The only thing that matters is this woman sitting in front of me. She does not have to say anything.
She tells me why, and it is everything I fear. I wasn't there. I was gone for years. I didn't call enough.
I imagine how Mom felt when Dad was on deployment. I imagine how she felt when he was gone for five years. When he was gone for six. And then, when he was gone for ten. By the third decade, she only missed him as much as the first. She moved on after ten years. I never knew Dad. I loved my stepfather. He was there for Mom. He helped her get over his loss. He took care of the house and raised me right. He told me to shoot for my dreams. He adored me, and he adored my goals to make my father's sacrifice right. He was there.
I will look at my son and see a cycle.
I will look to the stars and see a cycle.
"I figured this day would come," Gianna says. "Sooner or later." She tells me her story: just out of law school, she ran into this guy at a family law firm. He was brilliant and energetic. He loved his work. They got along with and adored each other. For both of them, it wasn't supposed to blossom into anything. They took a case together and bumped their chatters against each other in cafés and celebrated in bars. Work conversations became late-night philosophical debates, and they realized they didn't just like talking to each other.
Our son took a liking to her. She was kind and giving; she was there. And then she stayed, because our son asked her to stay. But the whole time, Gianna was overtaken with a sense of impending dread and an undercurrent of guilt. She became viscerally aware of what she was doing to me. Their relationship had an honest foundation; and then it was maintained by secrets, guilt, and fear.
She sees her life crumbling—the natural consequences of her mistake. As if the same is not true for me.
Gianna tells me the rest of her story. She says she doesn't know what to do. She says she doesn't expect me to know, either. She gives comforting words that I don't hear, because I am watching the screen in the corner of the bar—a newsreel announcing the deployment of 500,000 Marines and two battle groups, one to Anaxes aiding a Separatist attack on a major strategic target, and one to defend Banking Clan assets under threat on Mygeeto. The deployment cites United Nations Resolution 217073—the Coalition Act—drafted in my absence. The Secretary-General reads the announcement live on the screen. I see some of my lawyers behind him. I see Preston Cole behind him, flanked by six joint chiefs and twelve flag officers.
"I have to go," I whisper. I use the war as my excuse. I leave because I want him to want me back. I want him to leave her. I want to have some kind of leverage—to use myself, my distance, my curtailed anger as a bargaining chip for an easy surrender.
I am not on Arcadia for one day before making my way back to the spaceport. I call Yevgenny while waiting for the Southeast Corridor line.
"Gianna seems nice," I say before he greets me.
I see his expression harden on the chatter's screen. He leans forward in his office chair.
"I can't come back yet," I say. "We'll have to discuss it later. But I wanted to tell you. Gianna seems nice."
He starts by calling my name. He wants to say many things. He wants to tell me what happened while I was gone. He might even say I was a deadbeat. I deserve it.
"Stop," I whisper. He stops—but I don't want him to. I see him bury his head in his hands, heaving silently.
I apologize to him for not having anything else to say. "I've just got to go. I came back to see you and Dimah. But he doesn't want to see me, and I'm needed on Earth."
"OK," Yevgenny says, the word slipping out of his mouth. I don't hear him over the bells, hydraulics, and brakes of the commuter engine.
"I'll come back," I say. "I'll figure it out." I hang up and board the train. When I check in to the hotel, the receptionist welcomes me back.
"We found this in your room," she says. "I was going to call you in the morning, but you had already booked a room, so I figured I'd give it back now."
The receptionist presents the rosary. I take it with both hands, dropping my bag, and thanking her profusely. The week is spent wrapping up the New Alexandria Treaty, before we relocate to the Secretary-General's "hometown."
I spend the next six months in Nairobi thinking about nothing but the work. Trade agreements are harder than ever now that the UNSC has committed to a war. The Secretary-General makes compromises everywhere: compromises with the Trade Union, the Techno Union, the Banking Clan, and even the Hutts. He compromises with the institutions of the UN's neutrality, running the "UNE" more like a nation-state in its own respect, signing agreements and vetoing protectionist policies.
When I walk the City Square, I let the cool, Kenyan dry-season breezes remind me of Arcadia in the fall. I close my eyes and pretend Yevgennny is there, and Gianna is not, and our son is walking on the cobblestone wall next to me, holding my hand. I open them and return to Earth. Instead of thinking about this, I pick up smoking—and quit in the same month.
One lunch break at a time, I let the crisp air cleanse me. I let my feelings roll through me, playing out like an opera. I tell myself, I will let go. I learn to love in absence.
I walk on the marble rim of the fountain and let it mist my blazer. I let the cold run through me and pretend I am a child, walking on the rocks along the sandbar, gripping my father's hand. I look at him, and his face is not there. He smiles.
I receive memos and letters from Naval officers on the frontline at Mygeeto complaining that their new droid allies are committing war crimes. I write to Admiral Cole requesting an inquiry and investigation into the programming of the CIS' battle droids, and the request is shut down by an operative named Grievous. The next day, before I can follow up, the bankers arrive.
The Banking Clan representatives make the air a little more stiff in the already-stale UN offices in Nairobi. They are hard-pressed to settle a loan with us; it's like Dooku just sent them to tell us "no." Instead, we agree to a military spending budget of ten percent of the aggregate gross domestic product as part of our alliance with the CIS—our industrial capacity must be developed on its own. We agree tentatively to a low-interest loan with the stipulation that a defense budgeting policy may only be tabled once, and an agreement must be made before they leave Nairobi. Discussions and investigations explode into arguments, and the bankers are the first to start shouting after an eight-month series of dialogues.
Then, one day, none of the CIS delegates nor trade representatives come to the conference. More than a hundred seats sit empty in the auxiliary assembly. An officer summons Secretary-General Mwangi and his joint chiefs to a separate briefing. They are gone for ten minutes.
After weeks of grueling arguments and struggle, it's quiet. We sit in silence, occasionally glancing around, checking watches and chatters, coughing or sneezing. The air is so still I am convinced that turning my head would be audible to everyone.
Then we hear sirens. The Secretary-General returns and declares a lockdown.
Soldiers order us to pack up and board their Pelicans within the hour, handing us Air Force parkas while we scramble with our books, documents, records, and briefcases. Someone finally asks where we're going.
"New York," one of the soldiers says.
Boarding the second transport on the roof of the UN auxiliary building, I see Dooku's flagship Providence slowly make her way out of the Minimum Safe Zone established over Mt. Kilimanjaro, where she was moored to a small, hidden, but well-surveilled naval air station. She flies over the city, violating the Spaceport Treaty forbidding CIS military vessels from crossing metropolitan airspace, escorted by two Marathon-class behemoths. The ship climbs slowly into the upper atmosphere, leaving her two-month berth. The engines screaming down at us shake the earth like tremors, causing a stir. The Providence beats her war drums over dead trees, quiet neon, and cold farms.
I realize I am leaving my coffee on my work table, and it is getting cold.
Passing the Mombasa Space Elevator in orbit, I glance out the porthole and spot CIS ships by the dozen fleeing Earth orbit and jumping away, escorted by a flotilla of Halcyon-class cruisers and Epoch-class carriers, the size of which I have never seen before. Thousands of Longswords, Shortswords, and Sabres mob the CIS ships like a mass of gnats, until CIS ships are gone. I see Cairo Station, Malta, and Athens aligning their barrels with each ship as they leave. Last to go is Providence, stared down by all the guns on the eastern hemisphere of Earth. I spend the next half hour watching the sun-glown horizon melt Africa away behind the oceans.
I sink back in my seat, ignoring the murmurs and speculation, as we descend for LaGuardia, crossing a black, cloudy, rough sky. I open my chatter and erase the message. The doors swing open to a terrible blizzard on the LaGuardia heliport before we even realize we have landed. Military SUVs wait for us on salted concrete. I hear Army tiltrotors hovering above the fog and snowy wind, their spotlights blurring in the darkness. The silence has been replaced by barking orders and engine roars.
The briefing at the General Assembly, for all the bluster of relocating us, is short. We were relocated for our safety, fearing a reprisal from the CIS—but now they have all left the system, and Sol is no longer under immediate threat. A flag officer named Cutter debriefs us all. Secretary-General Mwangi authorizes him to take control of the allied forces at Anaxes. He assigns Admiral Hood to the general staff at Mygeeto. Military orders are given out with sixty lawyers still waiting in the assembly, my team still awaiting the future.
The Secretary-General tells us we won't be needing the thousands of pages we had written with the CIS anymore, and that the alliance—and all related treaties—are long gone. The operative Grievous had a disagreement with a naval officer named Victor Polk, and Grievous murdered the officer. Grievous was arrested by the security staff aboard Atlas, and he escaped and destroyed the Atlas, killing seven thousand-odd souls in a flash. The UNSC forces, believing they had been sabotaged and betrayed by the CIS, opened fire on the droid fleet and destroyed it with the assistance of Republic Venators. UNSC forces had retreated and continued fighting the CIS over Anaxes and Mygeeto but arranged an informal cease-fire with the Grand Army of the Republic.
"Your experience has made you all indispensable," the Secretary-General says. "I am calling upon your service once more to negotiate a new treaty with the Galactic Republic. Envoys will be meeting at Reach by the end of this week. Currently, Reach is the most secure place to conduct diplomacy in the Orion Arm."
Exhausted, miserable, and out of my depth, I volunteer immediately. I feel that regret will be something for later—and I've been out here this long; regrets for Yevgenny can wait longer. In time, I will regret this decision too. But I will also accept something else, as Mom tells me on a call while I wait for the 4 train at Grand Central, that it was a little too late, and that sometimes, you have to let it go.
I call Yevgenny.
"I've given this some thought," I say. I'm waiting at the gate in LaGuardia with hundreds of people lost in dead connectors and canceled flights from the emergency, and dozens of Marines waiting for their flights as well. Morning takes over the snowy skyline, foggy and gray and quiet, and my body wants me to sleep. Instead, I take a deep breath and feel inside my parka's right-side pocket, gently pinching the rosary.
"We should divorce," I say. "Gianna was right. I wasn't there. Dimah does not even recognize me anymore. We can't start over. We can't do this again."
He nods, his expression sullen and coated with regret.
"You hurt me," I say. "You hurt me a lot. You left me for a new woman who reminded you of me, and you resolved to start over. I don't know if I should be flattered or insulted. But at the end of the day, I wasn't there. I was gone—like my father was gone."
"No," he says, "it's not like that. You aren't—"
"The difference between him and me is that he doesn't share any blame," I say, holding my hand up. "I do.
"Gianna is a good mother. She is the mother Dimah deserves. Let me know if he ever forgives me."
He tells me he loves me.
"How can you?" I ask. "You don't even know me. It's too late, Yevgenny. I'm gone, and you've moved on. And I need time."
"OK," he whispers. "I understand."
I can break the cycle. I take a deep breath, swallowing a knot.
"If you need anything, Yevgenny… tell me. If Dimah needs anything, tell me. I'll visit."
On the shuttle outbound from Earth, I watch the UNSC Navy task forces consolidate around Philadelphia Station, and I think of Dooku. I will think of Dooku's manipulations, the way he strung the CIS along, if we were right to join him, and his comment about me—especially when we meet the envoy from Coruscant, a Jedi in simple robes flanked by the infamous clones, who have developed a reputation in the Earth colonies as a motivated but captive army, forced against their will and best interests to fight an illegitimate war founded on the immoral construction of artificial life.
I will find it even more painful when I learn that the clones are individuals, who have learned to express themselves from watching their Jedi generals: where will they go? What will happen to them, especially when the war is over, when the Republic describes them as matériel—as property?
Now I think about my place in all this. I sit haunted by the possibility that my passion, trauma, and resolve convinced Dooku that we were the right fit to serve the wrong side of a war. I sit convinced that I can make it right—like I can make it right for my father, and for Yevgenny, and for our son. I sit, worried that we are all making this up as we go—soldiers, generals, grievance modelists, instrumentalists—and that we are trapped in the cycle.
The new age is not so new. It's a flight to New Alexandria hoping to make things different, this time armed with knowledge and caution. It's a peace talk with a former adversary who is more receptive to said talks than we expected, granting credibility to their self-descriptor as "peacekeepers." I rest on the flight, looking for a second chance, or a third chance, surrounded by promises that everything is different now, feeling a little bit of the same.