Page 319 of Reaper Said Mine

“I was not going to weep.”

“Your dignity trembled.”

“Your age trembles.”

“Constantly. I have made peace with it.”

Across the hall, Ursa laughs quietly, and the sound threads through me warmer than any victory song.

The withdrawals begin within hours.

Coalition shield barges move first, easing away from the inner civilian corridors while neutral monitors record their trajectories. Their departure exposes sections of space that have been guarded for days, and my chest tightens despite the treaty in place. Trust does not arrive fully grown. It must be watched like a suspicious animal until it learns not to bite.

Alliance forward vessels retreat from the Trask Fold next. Their engines flare white against the Badlands as they pull back to agreed observation distance. Vice Admiral Gant stands beside me at the viewport while her ships reposition.

“You are thinking that we will return,” she says.

“I am thinking many things.”

“That was one of them.”

“Yes.”

She nods. “Good. A ruler who trusts too easily should be removed before breakfast.”

“You speak almost like Skahar.”

Her red-scaled face remains solemn. “I will try to recover from the insult.”

Skahar, standing behind us, says, “You will fail.”

Gant almost smiles.

The Combine withdrawal takes longest, of course. Their vessels move reluctantly, dragging legal complaints and financial objections behind them like leaking fuel. Valez requests clarification on tariff guarantees three times. Ursa answers the third request by forwarding a tribunal subpoena list to his private channel. The Combine ships depart faster afterward.

By station evening-cycle, the war map changes color.

Coalition blue recedes.

Alliance white withdraws.

Combine gray thins out along the protected corridor.

Reaper red remains, smaller than before, tighter around civilians, no longer stretched in every direction by pride and old wounds.

The Badlands do not become peaceful.

That would be a lie.

But they avoid the full war everyone had begun treating as inevitable.

I stand in the command center as the final withdrawal confirmation arrives, and for once the room does not smell only of smoke and fear. Someone has opened a fresh air cycle through the environmental grid, and the faint mineral scent of cleaned filters mixes with caf, machine oil, and the warm smell of too many exhausted bodies refusing to collapse until they believe the danger has truly passed.

Krell reads the final line. “Alliance forward fleet has cleared the Trask boundary. Coalition capital ship Dawnspear has exited the protected corridor. Combine private security convoy has crossed beyond monitored range.”

Vakka leans back in her chair. “So nobody is currently shooting at us.”

“Currently,” Skahar says.