Six of Kaedren's people. I felt a flicker of something cold move through the Tether; grief. Controlled. Contained. But there. I kept moving. I looked around the bay. Every bed was surrounded by medical staff. I looked to my right, which was a mistake, and saw a handful of beds covered by white sheets. I closed my eyes and counted to three. Nothing you can do for them; find somebody you can help.
I opened my eyes and looked left. In the middle of the chaos, one bed sat unattended. A woman holding a baby. The same one I talked to in the cells. I walked over to her.
"How are you two doing?"
Big brown eyes looked up at me, uncertainty clouding them. I put a hand on her arm and gave her a soft smile.
"It's okay, there are no wrong answers here. You can tell me what you need."
"You aren't going to hit me?" she asked.
I swallowed hard.
"No, absolutely not. Nobody here will hit you. You are safe, I promise. What’s your name?"
“Ginny,” she said as she looked down at her baby.
"What's her name?" I asked.
The woman smiled as she ran a finger down the baby's face. "Hope."
Something caught in my chest.
"That's beautiful," I said.
The woman looked at me again. "I named her after what I lost, after I signed the contract with the corporation. But maybe you have given her name meaning."
I squeezed her arm. "All we did was give you a fighting chance. Get some rest."
Hours passed. When the night shift finally kicked me out, my body was exhausted, but my mind wouldn't stop.
I wandered the Starbreaker, letting my feet take me wherever they wanted. Apparently, the only place they remembered well enough to return to was the observation alcove at the aft of the ship.
I stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows and watched the slipspace star lines stretch endlessly past us.
The anxiety and fear that had been clawing at me earlier were gone. Siphoned away by hours of work and motion. The calm that replaced them felt strange in my chest, like a piece of food stuck in your teeth. You knew it was there, but you also knew you couldn't do anything about it. So you just accepted it.
I replayed the plan I had come up with, and the decisions I had made.
I rested my forehead against the glass.
The Knights had known there would be casualties. They had to have. Which meant they believed the risk was acceptable. Lives lost weighed against lives saved. Even with the loss of the second camp.
Vaelix had already confirmed it through his intelligence network. The corporations believed a mole in that camp had leaked security codes.
The punishment had been immediate.
Death.
I lowered myself to the floor, my back against the window, knees pulled in close. If you had asked me four months ago to plan a missionthat would save hundreds of people, knowing others would die, I would have laughed. I would have said it wasn't something I could live with.
Now I understood the cost. I understood why people made these choices. Why they justified them. Why they learned to carry the weight and keep moving anyway.
My breath caught.
The worst part wasn't that people died.
The worst part was how easily I accepted it.
