Colonial News Service Headquarters, Seven Cities Complex
Somewhere Way Too Bright


It was the first formal interview she'd ever given. In truth there hadn't been time until now, but she had a deal to uphold so here she was. The lights were too bright, the colors too stark, the gleam in the host's eyes too intense to be professional ambition alone. Whoever this woman Colonial Minister Ashern had picked, this was personal for her somehow. Given all of the ways that Julia had subverted, reordered, and outright disregarded Colonial culture in her time among them, it might very well be personal on more than one account.


With her light skin, blond hair, slim build, and youthful features, Julia started to wonder if she'd been picked specifically for the physical contrast between the two of them. Maybe a baby-faced man would have been too overt; Ashern wanted to remind the Colonials that Julia wasn't one of them, but he didn't want to beat them over the head with it, or risk mixing his messages. This wasn't about her being a woman; it was about her being a Westerner.


As the timer neared zero, the Vice Commodore of the Gestalt Colonies put on her fake smile and took her cues from the woman she knew was here to disgrace her in the eyes of the Gestalt Colonies. The cameras switched from ready to active, the set indicators flashed from red to green, and the little intro tune played out.


“Good evening. I'm Renee Aster, and this is The Colonial Report. Today on the Report, we have a very special guest: she's the Vice Commodore of the Colonial Defense Force, the interim CEO of Galactic Technologies, and the Administrator of the Western Coalition's Colonial Relief Program, Julia Krin. Vice Commodore, welcome.”


“Thank you, Renee,” Julia answered, careful to keep up her fake smile. It was all nice and formal now, but things were sure to get ugly fast.


“We've got a lot of ground to cover, so let's get to it, shall we?”


“By all means,” Julia agreed.


“Vice Commodore,” Renee stirred in her seat, casting a subtle glance to her notes, “you're recently returned from the Terminus System, where you spent the better part of a month in formal deliberation with representatives of the Contegorian Confederation.”


“Yes,” Julia nodded, “we've made great progress in reestablishing strong, meaningful relations with our historic ally.”


“That's not what I want to talk about right now,” Renee said, dismissing her comment with a wave of her hand. “What I want to talk about, are the Human Replica Droids.”


She was going straight for the main event, then. Julia tried not to tense up at the unexpected turn, but it didn't really matter. She wasn't there to defend her position, not really. She still had to put on a good show, though. “It's true that the manner in which we revealed that many Colonial citizens are not in fact human, but instead replicants, to the public was jarring and indelicate, I stand by the decision in light of the circumstances of the time.”


“Colonial citizens?” Renee asked with a hint of doubt.


“Absolutely,” Julia answered firmly, seeing where this was going.


“That's yet to be determined, has it not?”


Julia shook her head, refusing to back down from this point. Was this what they wanted from her? Was this part of the plan? “The terms of the agreement reached with the Confederation -”


“An agreement you negotiated, correct?”


“Yes.” Julia said shortly. “The terms of the agreement reached with the Confederation at Terminus acknowledged their ongoing right to safeguard Colonial citizens who sought shelter within the borders of the Contegorian Confederation after the invasion of the Gestalt System.” Julia grimaced, having walked right into an explicit reference to the Colonies' darkest day. “Included explicitly within that agreement was an acknowledgment of all replicants with Colonial identification as citizens.”


“So you engineered a political ploy to make them look like people,” Renee mused.


“They are people!” Julia objected.


“Vice Commodore, if these so-called replicants -”


“'So-called'?” Julia tried to interject.


Renee pressed straight through: “are, indeed Colonial citizens, then why not release their identities? They have falsified paperwork, fake ID's and residency histories, fabricated education records and the like. They're liars, Vice Commodore, lying to every Colonial they ever interact with.”


“Many of these people have elected to share their true identities,” Julia pointed out, but was immediately shut down.


“Yes, and some thirty thousand of these 'replicants' have already fled to the Cooperative, another member of the Coalition based on the opposite side of the galaxy.”


“Orax and Skor II are fairly close to the West,” Julia pointed out. She couldn't figure out where this was going, how this fit into Ashern's plans and her deal with him.


“Yes, yes they are, because the Cooperative has spread itself like a cancer across the entirety of the Coalition, infecting its independent nature and interfering in the affairs of other member nations. Member nations like the Gestalt Colonies! The fate of these HRDs is a Colonial matter and none of their concern!”


“The fate of every replicant is his or her own matter, Miss Aster. Personal autonomy is a cornerstone not simply of Coalition or Western culture, but Colonial culture.”


“Personal autonomy is all well and good, for people, but they aren't people.”


“They have goals, and desires, and commitments, and families,” Julia pressed, feeling suddenly that she was caught up in something she hadn't at all agreed to.


“Yes, families: Colonial families, and they're a danger to those families! You knew you couldn't trust them with their own families so much that you snatched them off the streets and meddled in their heads!”


“We liberated these people from an enslavement so total that the replicants in the Confederation were driven to Terminus by the faintest whisper of a command.”


“You did that to them, right?”


“To free them from it, yes.”


“You and the Cooperative?”


“Yes”


“Liberated them?”


“Absolutely.”


“From themselves?”


“From the schemes of other men.”


“And women?”


Julia held the other woman's icy stare, the fire in her chest screaming to be let out. “From one man: Lance Shipwright.” Burn it down. She'd burn it all to the ground if she had to, every last post and door frame, to make her stand. To make the Colonies something worthy of its own revival.


“And now that they're free of a dead man's schemes, we're safe from them? Are you really willing to say that? Are you really willing to make that promise, that these things that look like people and walk among us won't do us harm that Lance Shipwright's control would have protected us from?”


“I can't,” she answered simply. Renee's smug smile was instant, but it prompted Julia to push further. “I also can't promise you that I won't say some especially obscure word like 'maunder' some time in the next ten minutes and trigger a psychotic break in one of your camera operators because of some suppressed childhood memory, but I can promise you that the Colonies has the most comprehensive and advanced healthcare system in the Coalition, and that includes mental health, and now it also includes replicant mental health.”


“That will be a small comfort to the family of the first person crushed to death by her new boyfriend, none of whom knew wasn't even a real person because you schemed to protect its identity!”


Julia gave herself a few seconds to collect her thoughts, confident that the other woman would be content to let the silence hang as a sign of her victory. When the Vice Commodore of the Gestalt Colonies spoke again, it was with a measured tone and a gentle cadence. “People came to the Gestalt Colonies because it was a place where the past meant less than the future, where like-minded dreamers built a tomorrow together that outshined all of their yesterdays. I have labored and sacrificed alongside the best of you to revive that spirit of these Colonies.


“The mines are running again in The Ring. The factories are humming on Colonial soil. The keels of a new run of Colonial warships are being laid down in our yards. The beacon of Far-Point is calling out across the stars to our Confederation partners. The RDS Uniform is once more out there, in the depths of space, pushing against the boundaries of scientific knowledge. A new continent has been pulled up from the depths of the ocean and transmuted to fertile ground, to give purchase for a new generation of Colonial immigrants who will be drawn to this world by the warmth of the fires in our souls.”


By this point she was looking straight into the camera, addressing the Gestalt people themselves. “Is this where you want to end your journey along the Path? Is this where you lose your Way? You turn against your own, against the people you've trusted for years, against your fellow Colonials, because the blood in their veins may have been dyed to match yours, because the soul you see staring back at you out of their eyes may be a construct of Colonial ingenuity and precision? Is this who we are? Is this what we've allowed our past to turn us into?”


The slow clap that started at Julia's side told her that the speech had not worked on at least one Colonial citizen. “Tell me, Vice Commodore: are you a follower of the Way of David?”


Shit. “My religious beliefs are personal, and private, as is my right as a Coalition citizen.”


“So that was all bullshit then, right? You aren't even one of us; you really are just a Western puppet who will say anything, do anything, to get what your masters want out of us . . . interesting.”


“I'm the Vice Commodore of the CDF, CEO of Galactic Technologies, Administrator of the Colonial Relief Project,” Julia began, rallying her resolve.


“For a few more weeks, yes,” Renee commented dismissively.


“For two of those three, admittedly.”


“We'll see,” she said ominously.


Julia stumbled slightly at the implications. “My . . . my point is that I'm not here for the sake of convenience. I am here because I swore myself to the Gestalt Colonies . . . and yes: I make what deals I must to protect the people I am sworn to.”


“You made deals to protect the Colonies, really?”


“Yes, really.”


“Deals with the Western Province?”


Julia nodded. “When needed, yes.”


“Like the Western defense of Deyer, joint defense of Terminus, Western collaboration with the Colonial-led patrolling of nearby Reaver Space? Those sorts of deals?”


“Yes,” Julia restated firmly.


“And what about the Western Province? Are you sworn to them as well?”


“Of course,” Julia answered, but she could see where this was going now. “I'm an officer of the Western Navy.”


“And you operated as a representative of the Parliament when negotiating with the Confederation,” Renee reminded Julia and the unseen audience. “So your thinly veiled efforts to push the Colonial military toward full integration with the West: is that a 'deal' that you 'must' make for your obligation to the Colonies, or to the West?”


Julia tried to swallow in a dry throat. This was exactly where she thought they'd end up, but the path they'd taken to get here . . . why?


“Vice Commodore? Was I wrong? The Coalition Intelligence Bureau, perhaps: was it your obligation to them? Or the government of Anoat, where you were posted before taking command of the CDF; they didn't want us on Deyer in the first place. Are your actions some perceived compromise for their benefit? Or the Cooperative, perhaps, whose workers have been crawling over Colonial land and assets almost since we settled Deyer? Or maybe your husband?”


Julia's eyes darted to the woman, who was withdrawing a device from her pocket. She activated the recording and set the device on the table between them.


“I tell 'ya,” the recording of Roland began, “the longer I'm here, the more I wish she'd just . . . burn it all down.”


“Julia?” a pleasant female voice asked. Julia recognized the accent as one common among Ryn in the work fleet.


“No stone left standing. She could do it, too. She could wreck the whole thing. The closer they get to back on their feet, the more I see this place work on her, the more I wish I could do it myself. But I can't. She can, but I can't. They're not worth what it'll cost, the lot of 'em.


“Burn it down, Julia. Just . . . burn it all down.”


“Yeah,” Renee said, retrieving the recorder and leaning back in her chair. “Maybe your husband.”


Julia's response was raw and furious. “Now you wait a minute!”


“You've undermined the integrity of our society at every turn, at every opportunity. You've welcomed foreigners into our midst with open arms and without precondition, handing over vital Colonial works projects to them.”


She'd made Julia angry; that's what she'd wanted to do. It was clear as a cloudless sky, but Julia didn't care anymore. She didn't care if she was being played. She didn't care if this was a double-cross, or a triple-cross, or a rogue action or an ad-lib tangent or any other of a thousand possible explanations. She just wanted it all to end. “How about you stop dropping code words for 'alien' and we have a real conversation about these Colonies, you and I?”


“Would you care to revise your statement?” She said it like she'd memorized the phrase for future use, but the evil grin that tugged at her lips was genuine and spontaneous.


“Not a chance in hell,” Julia answered.


“Well, then . . .”


“No!” Julia shouted. They wanted her mad? They liked video of watching her crack? Fine. She'd use it. They'd gone too far, and now it was her turn. “I compromised my principles for you. You people. You . . . Colonials. I've risked everything that I believe in. I've thrown away more of my own moral code than I knew I had. I've sacrificed the love and admiration of the people I most love and admire, and I've done it so that six months from now, or a year from now, or ten years from now, you assholes wouldn't find yourselves in the same place you were a year and a half ago: fat and happy on the spoils of your own arrogance, a ripe target for the first threat you've been too self-absorbed to notice.


“I made deals with the West, yeah, because you will die without them. I hired a Ryn fleet to rebuild Colonial infrastructure, yeah, because they were the only people I could coerce and manipulate into doing all of your hard work for you, and then walking away at the end to leave you reaping their harvest. I made . . . I made other people fix your problems when you couldn't do it.


“You couldn't do it . . . you couldn't do it . . . and I made it happen anyway. I made you look good. I made you look better than you were, better than you had any right to be. Your fleet was wrecked? I got mutual defense commitments from Anoat, and Terminus, and Hoth, and two separate Western Province special operations squadrons. Your economic prospects dried up? I got you new ones and made them stick around until I could get your old ones back too! I traded the technological marvel of the Uniform that you were using to mix duracrete for a planet-scale construction project.


“I have begged, and coerced, and manipulated, and lied to the people I made trust me so they'd believe my lies, and I did it all so you ungrateful assholes could walk your Path and have your Way and maybe, just maybe, some of you might manage to forget the dark horrors of the past that brought you here.


“You've turned me into the monster I see in my own nightmares, but you're here. You're back: the Gestalt Colonies are alive and well. I did that. I did that. For you.


“And if you can't accept the bargains I've made, if you can't bear to count yourselves among the very Coalition that offered up the spoils of its own sweat and sacrifice to buy you this second life, well then . . .


“You can all go fuck off and die.”


Whatever Renee had been planning, her plans had not accounted for this. And then . . .


“And what about the Krakana?”


Julia went pale. “What?” It was so surprising, so impossible, she couldn't even . . .


“Where is it now?”


Her eyes widened, a whole new kind of rage building up inside of her. “Turn the cameras off.” She stood to her feet, pointing to the nearest camera operator. “Turn the cameras off!”


“Was that part of your 'sacrifice' for the Colonies, too?”


“This is a breach of Colonial security -” Julia continued, shouting at the camera operator.


“Or are you ready to drop the pretense now?”


“- and I'm ordering you to turn those cameras off!”


“We've heard enough of your lies, Western Captain Krin!” Renee stood to her feet to square off against the Vice Commodore. “Tell us the truth! Tell us the truth!”


“Who told you about the Krakana? Who told you!” Julia ran over to the cameras and started pulling out cables. "I swear to David, his Way, and that self-absorbed Cardinal that I will put you in chains and throw you in a hole at the bottom of the ocean! Who told you!"

And then the broadcast went dark.

Seven Cities Complex, Deyer
Colonial Minister's Office


Julia slapped the thin, rectangular device onto the door in front of her, and it screeched open with a shower of sparks from overloaded circuits.


“ . . . stop her, but she burst through the reception area and there wasn't anything I could do.”


Colonial Minister Gideon Ashern's eyes darted from the comm unit on his desk to the intruder at his door.


Julia rested her hand on the grip of her holstered blaster, her icy gaze fixed on the Colonial Minister, ignoring the woman who had scampered off to a corner of the room. “Did you tell her about the Krakana?”


Gideon faced her with a defiant smile, lips squeezed tight.


She turned her head to the woman, body still squared off against the Colonial Minister. “Did he tell you about the Krakana?”


Renee Aster had composed herself somewhat in light of Ashern's willful defiance. She didn't quite manage an antagonizing smile, and her eyes were a little off from actually meeting Julia's gaze, but she stared straight ahead, silent and impassive.


Julia rapped the handle of her blaster with her fingers, swinging her head back to face Ashern. “There's a vault on the RDS Uniform filled with techno-gadgets culled from across the galaxy.” She gripped the handle firmly, still holding his gaze. “Most of it's pretty busted up exotic stuff from long-dead alien civilizations and whatnot, but this . . .” she drew the weapon and pointed it at the ceiling, “. . . this, I'm sure you'll be happy to hear, was built by human hands and it works just fine, as is.”


“What is it?” Renee asked, her curiosity winning out over her fear.


Julia leveled the Gun of Command at the woman and fired. “Who told you about the Krakana?”


“Colonial Minister Gideon Ashern.”


She pointed the weapon at Ashern, eyes locked on him. “Did he instruct you to ask me about it during our interview?”


“Yes.”


“You can go now, and by all means, and I know this won't mean anything to you when you snap out of it but: don't piss yourself when you come back to reality. Do. Not. Piss. Yourself. Understand?”


“Yes.”


“Good.” Julia backed toward the door as the woman left and then she peeled the override device from the outside, causing it to groan closed on its damaged actuators. The mixture of puzzlement and fear on Ashern's face was priceless.


“So sometimes,” she began to explain as she pocketed the device, “not all that often but sometimes, when they're coming out of the trance, the last command gets flipped in their head. Every now and then, something goes on with the . . .” she raised her free hand beside her head and wiggled her fingers around, “. . . neural pathways, or the ionic discharge in the synapses, or some other . . . nonsensical . . . techno-jargon, and it just . . . happens.”


“Are you going to shoot me with that thing now?” he asked, nodding toward the gun still pointed at him.


“Gods, no!” she exclaimed, holstering the weapon. “What, with all of the insane, redundant, shielded, Omega-epsilon-terminus-endgame surveillance you've definitely got pointed at me right now? I mean . . .” she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, silver sphere, “. . . I could push the shiny button on this piece of tech I got out of the vault and take out all electronics for half a block, but even then, you've probably got some double-redundant, triple-shielded, analog, hamster-powered mechanical recording widget buried around here somewhere, so no, I'm good, I'll take my chances handling you the old-fashioned way, thanks.”


“You're going to handle me?” he asked, amused, as he plopped down into his fancy office chair. Clearly he thought the threat had passed.


“Well, since we're still, technically, on the subject of the Krakana . . .” She waited until the silence had gotten his attention, then made her thinly veiled threat: “Let's not pretend like we don't both know you came in from Gestalt on that ship, too.”


“Now wait a minute,” he said, jerking forward in his seat, his smug grin gone now. “You know I had nothing to do with Derricot seizing the Krakana during the Battle of Gestalt.”


Julia shook her head. It was her turn to smile smugly at her outmaneuvered opponent. “I know no such thing, and neither does any Colonial alive.”


“Dammit, Julia!” he exclaimed, sinking back in his chair.


“Call me Vice Commodore,” she demanded.


“What are you doing? What the actual fuck are you doing! The two of us, we could rule this place if you would just step in line!”


“I don't want to rule this place,” she said bitterly.


“Then tell me: what do you want?” He was holding out his opened hands, as if offering her everything within his power.


And there it was: the end of her journey. The big reveal. The reward for all of her labors. “I'm not a politician, Gideon. I'm not a business executive, or a diplomat, or a negotiator.”


“Maybe not two years ago, but look at you now.”


Julia shook her head, laughing at his ignorance. “No! That's what I'm trying to tell you, right now, right here, at the end: I'm not any of those things, and I never have been. I'm a soldier. I'm a commander. I'm the Vice Commodore of the Gestalt Colonies. I'm a warrior, and I've been fighting a war, a war of attrition against a foe with superior numbers, positioning, and experience: you. And I've won. I've already won, because I've already achieved all of my goals, and you still require my collaboration to achieve any of yours.


“You made me play this game, Gideon. You made me your adversary, because I didn't know the rules and you thought I'd be easy to manipulate, but I didn't play along. I decided to play by my own rules. I decided my own win conditions, and while you've been scheming how to make the office of the Colonial Minister unassailable, I've already transformed the Colonies into something a man like you wouldn't care to rule.”


“Oh? And what is that?”


“I made it a loyal member of the Coalition.”


Gideon burst into laughter, banging his fists on his desk. “Really?”


Julia just kept smiling. He still didn't understand. “Yeah, really. Galactic Technologies was revived off of long-term Coalition contracts, most of which haven't even been made public yet; the military is running joint drills with the Western fleet like clockwork now; even our trade with the Confederation is going to be filtered through Terminus. Hell, the Colonies themselves are inside of what's about to become the most populous system in the Coalition! And whatever all of the flashy reports and diagrams say, we're still going to be relying on outside labor for all sorts of projects on into the foreseeable future. Face it, Gideon: the Colonies is well and truly Coalition now.”


He started laughing again. “Yeah, so you've trapped us, Julia. That's not loyalty, and we know it.”


“It's amazing what time and exposure can do to people.”


“Exposure?” He smiled in the pause after the word, a mean, twisted sort of thing. “You think their problem is that they haven't been exposed to aliens before? You think they 'just don't know' what a Ryn mechanic can do? Do you think their problem with Wookiees is that they haven't gotten used to a protocol droid translating its grunts yet? No, Julia: we moved to the Colonies to live with our own, because we already know what it's like to live with aliens for neighbors. Making us run into your husband's cousins every morning on the way to work is only reminding us of that.


“So yeah, disgrace me in the eyes of the Colonial people and go fuck your Ryn husband to celebrate. It won't change anything. Not today, not tomorrow, not in a month, or a year, or a decade. Not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years! All it will do, is ruin everything we've built here. You've already made yourself unfollowable; we both saw to that. I'm the only alternative that's left now.


“And these people need to be led. So either get out of my way, or ruin me too and leave the Colonies to drift off into obscurity . . . but you won't do that, will you? Not after how far we've come. Not after all it's cost you. You won't let your hard work come to nothing, because whatever else you've been, your a Colonial now, and that's not how we work.


“Now get the fuck out of my office.”


She had contingencies for this, for dealing with the Colonial Minister should he refuse to go along with the plan. Lance Shipwright had built the Gestalt Colonies, and he had built it as his own little empire, with the illusion of democracy concealing the power he had amassed for himself. Power that she now held and had learned to wield. Even with the public mess that Gideon and Renee had made for her, there were positions to fall back on, other assets to call in, alternate strategies to employ. She still had him outmaneuvered; she still had him beat.


“Get out!” he shouted, thrusting a pointed finger at the door, spittle flying from his mouth.


Except she didn't, and now she could see why. In one swift, fluid motion, the Vice Commodore of the Gestalt Colonies drew her weapon and fired at Colonial Minister Ashern. “Whatever you do, do not shit those fine pants of yours.”

Seven Cities Complex, Deyer
Private Quarters


The tension in the air was palpable. And painful. She was just standing there, in the middle of the room, staring at him, that stupid Colonial uniform clinging to her like some alien parasite leeching the life from her body.


“So you're home then?” Roland asked, unable to look at her while she was unable to look at him.


“For now.” Her answer was hollow, distant.


He ventured a glance at her and she was staring at the blank wall beside him. He looked away, searching for his own blank spot to stare into. “Are we going to talk about it?”


Movement caught his attention and he glanced back at her. She was shaking her head, bitterness and shame on her face. “No,” she whispered.


“It's been long enough, Jules. Come back to me.” He looked back at her and his eyes latched on to the first feature they found, the impression her collarbone made in her uniform, the closest he could bring himself to looking into her eyes.


He took a step toward her and she moved back, her head turning further away from him. “Don't make me . . .” her voice faltered and she folded her arms in front of her chest, her gaze lowering until she was staring at the deck. “Don't make me say it.”


“Say it!” It was louder than he'd intended, more forceful, but now that it was out he kind of liked it. “Say something!” She flinched from the harshness in his tone and he knew it was too much, too far. “Say anything,” he added quietly, reaching out a hand toward her. “Come back to me.”


Her arms tensed, still folded in front of her, and he understood: he was not to draw closer. A pair of tears broke free of her downturned cheeks and splashed against the floor by her feet.


“Then tell me why you won't,” he said darkly, crossing his own arms in front of himself, planting his feet and staring her down. “Say it.”


She shook her head, another few tears breaking loose, flung through the air to crash like tiny bombs against the floor of their home.


“Tell me you don't love me anymore.”


“No!” she exclaimed, gasping in air, reflexively whipping her head around to face his accusation, tears streaming down her face. “No,” she said weakly, shaking her head.


“Then tell me why you don't love me anymore.”


She kept shaking her head in silence, no longer meeting his gaze, tears still appearing in slow, inconsistent waves.


“Say it.”


“I thought . . .” her voice cracked, and she started rocking herself in place, squeezing her crossed arms tighter against her body. “I thought it was worth it . . . I thought I could fix them, that I could rub off on them like you rubbed off on me. But I was wrong; it didn't work. It's not ever going to work.”


Oh.


Roland suddenly found his mouth dry, a chill running up his back. He wanted to call her an idiot, to launch into a tirade about her “human guilt” and her thinly disguised martyr complex, but quite unexpectedly he found himself sporting a roguish grin and fighting back tears of his own. “Really? Just like I rubbed off on you?”


A weak laugh escaped her lips, accentuated by sharp gasps of breath. “You dirty bastard,” she said quietly, venturing a glance at his face.


“I just want to hold you while your world ends,” he said, his smile melting to sorrow as he reached out toward her with both arms.


That glint of happiness vanished in a flash, and those sparse but unstoppable tears resumed. “I can't . . .” she trailed off, looking away again, arms still tight against her chest. “It doesn't end. It won't ever end.”


“Talk to me,” he implored, arms dropping, hopeless, to his side. “It's been long enough.”


She shook her head, but there were no words from her.


“You did everything you could, made every sacrifice possible, and never – not once – did I make a move to stop you.” His voice was shaking, as was his body, though she couldn't see the latter for her own great effort to avoid looking at him. “This was something you decided you had to do. You decided, Jules, and all you left me with was the choice to stay and watch you fail, or leave knowing there'd be no one left to hold you when it all burned down around you. It wasn't fair, it wasn't right, and it's not okay.


“But I'm here, Jules. I'm right here. I'm standing right in front of you, shaking with fear at the thought that after all I've let you do to me, you could just walk away. You would just leave me here. All I want is to hold you while the world ends, and if it's not going to end then I want to hold you while you tell me how. And if you can't tell me how, then I want to hold you while you say nothing, nothing at all, and the whole world carries on without my knowledge or my input.


“I want to hold you, Jules. I want to believe again.”


He watched her eyes track upward from his boots, to his knees, to his hip, up his chest to his neck, then his chin, mouth, nose, and finally she was meeting his hungry stare. Her lips quivered, her grip on herself slackened a little, and she made the tiniest little nod. “Gideon said I'm a Colonial now.”


Roland frowned and shook his head. “I don't need to hear to about him.”


“He said I can't leave, I can't quit, because that's how I work now.”


“I don't care,” he said stiffly.


“You should,” she said, eyes flitting down to his chest before returning to meet his stare. “You should care, because I'm not leaving. It doesn't end, because I'm staying right here.”


“I don't . . . care.” But now it was Roland who was looking away, Roland who despite his greatest efforts, could only restrain his tears to a slow, inconsistent leak.


“I won,” she said sternly, arms dropping to her side. “Roland, I won.. Every battle, every skirmish: I won them all. Every objective, achieved; every target, struck. I beat them.”


“And look what you have to show for it!” Roland railed, gesturing emphatically at her Colonial uniform.


“They're not getting rid of me,” she continued bitterly. “I'm staying, and I'm keeping my power. They'll hate me for it, but they don't get to win. Not this time. Not this fight.”


“Gods dammit, Julia! We don't need you to save us from them! Look around you. Look at the galaxy: it's ours. Ours! Let the Colonials have their Colonies!”


“I don't need to save anyone.” She looked away from him, the sadness in her voice accented by the gleam of fresh tears in her eyes. “Not anymore. I just need to be able to live with myself at the end of the day.” She squeezed her eyes shut as the tears started flowing anew.


Slowly, quietly, he drew close to her and put his hands on her hips.


She jumped with a start, her eyes snapping open as she pulled away.


“I'm right here,” he whispered to her. He grinned broadly despite his own teary eyes and wounded spirit, an uncontrollable sort of thing that was on him before he even realized. “I meant every world. Let me hold you.”


She didn't resist, didn't engage, just stood there for a long moment, her hands squeezed around his, her body leaning away at the very edge of his reach. “You really want to stay with me? Here? Forever?”


“Well eventually I'll get to die,” he said, trying to sound lighthearted.


She chuckled, one of those pity chuckles she thought he couldn't tell from the real thing, then she leaned into him and he felt her arms press against his back. “I can't ask you to stay.”


“I've been waiting for you to let me stay since all of this began. All I've ever wanted was for you to give me the room to stay.”


“It's not safe for you here, Roland. They hate you. They really, really hate you.”


He smiled that roguish smile of his. “If I had to kill every human who hated me, there'd be twelve of them left in the galaxy, and they'd all be stranded on pre-hyperdrive worlds.”


“I don't hate you,” she said softly, touching her forehead to his.


“You I'd kill for free,” he whispered, kissing her.


She laughed, the first genuine sound of joy he'd heard from her in a long time. “My hero.”


He started unbuttoning her uniform and she slapped his hands away.


“Please,” he said, “I just can't . . . I can't look at that uniform right now.”


She smiled at him, a bitter sort of thing that made her look even more haggard. How was she even still standing? How long had she gone this time without a single hour's rest? At length she nodded, unbuckling her belt as she kicked her shoes off. “Is this the part where you say 'I told you so'?” she asked quietly.


“I never told you so,” he answered, catching her hands in his. Now she was in her undershirt and those silly short-things she insisted on wearing under her uniform, just staring back at him, almost like this thing that had come between them had never been there at all. “This was something you decided you had to do; I knew better than to tell you so.”


“I'm not going to fuck you,” she said weakly, almost like she didn't believe it.


He smiled and fought back a laugh, then pulled her in close again. “Just be here with me.”


They held each other for a long time, rocking gently in place.


He could feel her breath, hot, against his neck, her heartbeat, heavy, against his chest. “You're really staying? You really found a way, after what they made you look like in front of the Colonies?”


He felt her smile against his shoulder. “Well . . .” she teased, running her knuckles up and down his spine the way he liked. “The new Prime Minister of the Galactic Coalition is a close, personal friend of mine. It's amazing what assholes with power will do for you when you know the people who know all of the people.”


“Dumbasses,” he whispered, closing his eyes to take in the moment.


“No, just predictable.” She craned her head back, snapping him out of his blissful moment and catching his eye. “It turns out most assholes are just people trying to hide how predictable they are.”


“I'm not predictable,” he said.


“You're not -”


“Now now, let's not lie to each other anymore.”


“You're my favorite asshole,” she said lightly, kissing his cheek.


He laughed at the admission, shuffling the both of them toward the couch.


“I'm seriously not going to fuck you,” she said again, this time with a strong helping of annoyance in her voice.


“You're about eight minutes from passing out on your feet,” he said, swaying gently until she joined him and they tumbled onto the couch. “This asshole just didn't want you to hit your head on the way down.”


“My hero,” she said again, weakly this time, already half asleep.


Roland shook his head, frowning for effect. “You're the hero in this family. That's why you make such bullshit mistakes. You really spent the past forty thousand words realizing that you can't fix racism with a clever scheme?”


“What?”


“Nothing, never mind, go to sleep.”