Phares shrugged. “Doesn’t really have much to do with us, does it?”
Olmed nodded. “Your thoughts make sense.”
“Can’t hold someone’s birthright against them,” Erzo said.
Phares’s parental came to mind. “No, I suppose not.”
He turned his attention back to the holograms. He didn’t really care about the Terran Empire’s new Empress or the cyborgs who had finally made peace with the Terrans. Nor did he care about other galactic issues.
It was noise to distract him.
“What is that?” Olmed said, gesturing to a display on the opposite wall.
Phares turned.
His eyes got wide. “Is that one of our mines?”
Though he knew it was. He’d studied every crater and chunk of every one of those rocks floating in that asteroid field. He knew them all.
“That’s Aster 5,” he said before he could stop himself. Where a lot of the instabilities had been lately, and unfortunately, also where a lot of the mining was going on because it had plenty of usable ores in the core.
“What? You named them?” Olmed asked.
“Doesn’t matter that he did,” Erzo said. “We can make fun of him about it later.”
Phares waved his hand and stared at the hologram, a horrible knot building in his gut.
Far worse than his Fever issues.
The asteroid broke into chunks, an explosion lighting up space until the air burned out.
All three of them stood.
“What is the time stamp?” Olmed said.
“It was a few hours ago,” Erzo replied. “There in the corner.”
Debris flew everywhere. It bombarded the nearby generational ship that served to house the miners, and even on the footage, the damage to the ship was immediately obvious.
Air leaked from the damaged section of the ship, and the ship shuddered.
“We have to go,” Phares said. “We have to get back there—”
On the screen appeared a miner.
Not just any miner.
Shoval.
“Yeah, we got hit hard, but I managed to secure the ship. Good thing I was there. No one else could have done it.”
Phares walked away. “Of course,” he muttered. “He is the big hero and saves all the miners and the ship. Of course, he is.”
Phares slammed the chair, sending it flying across the bar.
Erzo appeared next to him. “Peace, my friend. At least they’re okay.”
“Get sucked out an airlock,” he muttered and walked away.
