It is true that we find many excuses to betray our loved ones because we are convinced we know better. This is a trait that transcends humanity, and I think is a consequence of irrational beings existing in a rational world. That so long as you have an intellect, it is entirely too easy to think you have a special perspective that no one else possesses. But saying that, as surprising as it may seem, Ingrish did not betray Amon as we clambered into the freight container and Rykar handed us our harnesses.

  There were three arguments that pushed Ingrish to do what she did, the first being that Amon was an entirely practical man—in his own way at least. It is too easy to look upon the old warrior, and especially the contents of his ship, and conclude that he was a superstitious paranoid. I do not deny that Amon was a man of odd ritual and odder thought. But I also have to admit that he was right more times than he was wrong. And superstitious men, older ones at least, often make more sense than we would like to believe.

  The second argument was that there was a chance we might’ve swayed General Kairon’s mind, and Amon would’ve gambled much if he could avoid murdering a friend, even upon long odds.

  Ironically, I believe Kairon was more of a test to Amon than if he should be asked to slaughter other humans. From the Rhodeshi way of thinking, if Amon was ever to throw down his sword and reject the games, even if he should condemn his own race, they would’ve lost the moral argument. Kairon was tempting in a way another human wasn’t. Because otherwise the answer would’ve been clear in Amon’s mind.

  But murdering a friend, an ally, a non-human, one who was begging for death? That was the sort of confusion only a species as devious as the Aberrants could’ve devised. And that was exactly what Ingrish raced to save Amon from, even as the needles punctured her skin and began filling her blood with stasis-fluid.

  I felt the swift pain in my own chest, and I looked around for one last time at my surroundings. The dark, empty space of the freight container, the cramped yet worryingly thin walls of metal around us, the dim lights that flickered overhead. We were in an empty box of death, with the only comfort being some liquid-padding Rykar installed to make the acceleration forces easier. We were lashed to the back end, and we would wake again at our destination, or we would not wake up at all.

  Ingrish felt around for my hand and grabbed it. I looked at her, and she tried smiling to reassure me. I appreciated that, even though there was no need. It is true that I could’ve died in that freight container, but it was also true that Ingrish was there beside me. And in my mind, therefore, there was no cause for fear. My life on Ghiza VI had been an empty one, and now that I had discovered something more, I could end satisfied. But then again, I was still much too young to really understand what loss truly meant.

  I fell asleep.

  …

  Breath stole in my lungs again, and I choked, feeling as though no amount of air could satiate the pain in my chest. I ripped away at the harness and fell forward, crying as my senses were overwhelmed. There was a bright light at the other end of the freight container—too bright. It felt like my eyes were burning, as if I had not blinked in years.

  Everything hurt, and my insides felt wrong. Worse than feeling sick, it was like I wanted to vomit up my own organs.

  Through my blurry vision, I saw Ingrish stumble to her feet immediately and she shouted something that was unintelligible to my ears. Suddenly, rough hands grabbed us both. All I can recall is a tumult of the senses, orange lights, nauseous alien air, and leathery hands as we were dragged through angular metal halls to an unfamiliar room.

  As my mind came back to me again, I fully awakened while kneeling in a gallery of sorts. We were placed on a long, grated walkway that cut across a circular, viscous pool of green liquid. Iron steps rose up onto a throne, and surrounding the walls of this ovoid space were a thousand funeral masks, all looking down upon us. I struggled like an infant, even as I lifted my head to see the clawed feet of General Kairon, tapping at the foot of his great resting place.

  I have come to learn this room was an immersion chamber. Initiates descend into the waters of life, taken from the homeworld, and rise as warriors to the thousand witnesses of the dead and the living.

  “Your Royalty!” Ingrish cried out in her own voice, as she was held, face to the ground by the guards.

  A quick wave of the hand, and the guards picked Ingrish up and set her on her feet. She took a moment to straighten her gown, but before she could speak, the General interrupted her.

  “I notice you have come here wearing a phonic-collar. Your gesture is appreciated, but take it off. I know it causes your kind pain.”

  Ingrish stared at the General, surprised by his words.

  “There are three kinds in the galaxy who fear a telepath. A fool, a liar, and a coward.” General Kairon looked at her with his silver eyes, yet to be regenerated in the flesh. ““Take the collar off. You’ll find no such martuuk here.”

  I wish there was a human equivalent of the word. And if you continue far into this account, there are many words with which I wish had human synonyms. Just as we separate boys from men, so too were men of honor separated from men of birth. General Kairon had carefully selected his entourage, and what’s more, the General was something selected himself. Not by the hand of any intellect, but by the galaxy itself. As war raises legions of soldiers, so too it raises thoroughbreds—warriors.

  Glancing at the guards, I saw alien eyes peering from the molded skulls of animals. I could make out very little else except the blueish skin hidden under the bone armor. Many in the galaxy would scoff at such primitive adornments, but for the likes of the Scythan people, they preferred to wear their armor on the inside—much like the Carapace Suit.

  “I would ask how you accomplished this,” General Kairon began, “but I would be a fool to expect anything less than those who keep company with Amon Russ. Out of courtesy, I will hear what you have risked so much to say. And then you will leave.”

  Ingrish took a moment to collect herself even as I struggled to come to grips with this new world around me. It was still strange to me, to be entirely distressed and not for myself.

  “Please don’t throw your life away at Amon Russ’ hands. I ask for the sake of Amon’s honor.” Ingrish begged.

  There was a rasping laugh from the inside of the metal funeral mask. “Honor? Little Bakke, men like me and Amon have lived for far too long for that. I should’ve thrown myself to death at the end of the war. I didn’t realize that I would be forced to live for centuries undying, in this…” General Kairon raised a hand, his metal fingers clicking on each other at disturbing angles. “Body.”

  Ingrish grimaced, and I could tell she was holding something back from me. Something that was in Kairon’s head.

  General Kairon laughed again. “You can look in my mind all you want. All you’ll find is more of the same. I sometimes wonder if the Aberrants intended for me to be rescued. That I was meant to choose. Several lifetimes worth of being wracked with pain, feeling the nerve-staples with every movement, or spending the rest of my existence in the med-tank, pumped with anesthesia. You see, suffering is just a tool to the Aberrants, as hard as it may be to believe. What they want is to break you, to make you break yourself. They can mutilate every cell in the body, torture you for a thousand orbital cycles. But disgrace, that’s eternal. You see, what the Aberrants really desire, is to harm that thing which passes into the next life.” General Kairon seemed to shake himself out of his thoughts, and he looked down again on Ingrish. “Don’t look too hard, Little Bakke. More than a few telepaths have died, trying to peer too close.”

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  Ingrish reluctantly met the General’s gaze, afraid to make him angry. “It’s not as bad as Amon’s,” she quickly said, embarrassed and trying to brush past it.

  General Kairon froze, profoundly insulted, but then he slowly relaxed back into his throne. Raising a finger, he ticked at his mask. “I suppose that makes sense. Amon was the one to sentence Orotek, was he not? My people knew the Aberrant as the Fate-Binder. Haru-Krosh. Though I don’t believe he could really change the future. The great predicting machines all went mad, trying to see the culmination of events. I just think Orotek knew how to speak the words to kill a man.”

  Ingrish was quiet at that, and there was a short silence in the room.

  “Enough reminiscing,” General Kairon suddenly declared, his eyes returning from the past. “Do you have anything else to say? I am very tired, and I wish to rest.”

  “I don’t understand why it has to be Amon! I don’t understand why it has to be this death!” Ingrish cried out in a sudden display of anguish.

  The General chuckled. “Little Bakke, you understand perfectly well. It’s seared into every thought in my head. I don’t appreciate stalling for time—that is an abuse of my kindness.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ingrish repeated, her real voice quivering.

  The General’s mask tilted and there was a pained sigh. “It is… a kindness that most soldiers don’t live to see victory. I envy them for that. Heroes used to die in war, now we die in circuses. There is no battlefield that can end me. No opponent greater to fall against. Don’t ask me to wait for my death any longer. My species lives for only eighty years. I have waited four hundred and twenty three.” General Kairon’s voice shook with black rage at the end.

  “And if he brings the zero-sword?” Ingrish’s voice was filled with the concern you might feel for a madman.

  Kairon burst out in new laughter. “You thought I was expecting him to bring anything else? You thought I was hoping for mercy? Little Bakke, you are already speaking to the damned. I don’t care if I’m sentenced to the darkness with the Aberrants. It doesn’t matter if I have to fight to the end of time. I will finally be free of this shell, and it would be a more noble war than any I can find over here.”

  “How can it be noble if it’s suicide?” Ingrish quickly blurted out before she lost the courage. She threw her hands over her mouth apologetically, as if trying to hold the words back even as she said them.

  The small Bakke in a black gown cowered on the walkway. Her ears fell flat against her head, and she was shaking as she struggled not to curl up. It took me a moment to figure out, even though she was doing her best translating, that she hid from me the fear she was feeling. It was not just the known brutality of the Scythan people. It was not just that she had effectively brought me into danger. It was also that dread fear of saying the wrong thing, that her hopes of helping had been dashed.

  The room fell to an oppressive silence as I realized Ingrish had crossed a line. With the grace of time, I can add some context that I didn’t possess in the moment. As the Scythans are a warrior-people, suicide was equated with the greatest cowardice, to steal your own life from the Judgment of Jireh. She had called him the coward of cowards in front of his own men.

  General Kairon twitched a finger. “Out.”

  Before the guard’s hands could grab us. A single voice rose above the room. “Wait!” A stillness overcame the chamber. I blinked, slowly realizing that the voice was my own.

  As I have said many times, I was passive when I was young. And while Ingrish did her best, I found her conversation with General Kairon quite hard to follow. I had long given up on any hope of trying to sway the General by my own words, instead letting Ingrish speak. But since we were about to be taken away, I had two things to say, and I knew I would not get another chance.

  General Kairon twitched his hand. “What?”

  I stopped and took a moment to gather my thoughts. “You pointed to me at the palace. Why?”

  The General shifted in his throne and clasped his fingers, sizing me up. “Has Amon told you of your future yet? You must have seen it by now.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The General glanced to the ceiling. “For us… the war is ending. The years are ticking down, and one way or another, we won’t have to live with this victory for very much longer. But for you, the Fifth Aberrant War has only just begun. You may ask what you have done to earn my respect. But for those like us, there is no need to prove ourselves on the battlefield. You’ll be fighting every day for the rest of your life.”

  I saw something in the General, and Ingrish showed it to me. There was an expression of the deepest pity in Kairon’s metal eyes. It was as if I was the singular individual in the whole universe who had more of a right to a grudge than the General himself. And he was correct. He understood perfectly well what was going to transpire in my life—in these pages. He understood that it doesn’t ever stop, not in your sleep, not even in your dreams.

  But at the time, I looked at him blankly, puzzled yet accepting his answer. And finally, I added my own plea to Ingrish’s. I knew I was not adept at speech, and I couldn’t argue with the General like Ingrish could’ve. So instead, I simply stated it as it was.

  “I don’t want Amon to kill you. It would hurt him.”

  The General was silent staring me down, and I didn’t look away. I stared right back at the funeral mask, waiting for him to move first. It was not that I was brave. It was that I was too foolish to feel fear, and I was curious what his reaction would be.

  Kairon breathed deeply and suddenly leaned forward in his throne, his metal shoulders falling. He looked at me and something else glimmered in those metal eyes.

  I glanced at the guards, bracing for them to resume dragging us away again. But the General gently lifted his hand.

  “Go and be at peace. I’ll consider what you have said to me today.”

  …

  For the return journey, we took the same way back. It was no less unpleasant as the needles pressed themselves into me. Although this time, instead of waking to rough hands and being dragged out of the freight container, I woke slowly. Ingrish was peeling the harness from me, exhausted herself. She helped me up and gave me a long hug.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  I suppose I found the moment strange. All my life I had obeyed things by command. Some might confuse this as a sense of duty, but really it was just orders. And perhaps it had been the same here. After all, Ingrish told me to follow. But that was the first time I ever wanted to follow. Not in the sense that it had been easy, but rather that I ought to have done. And that it was good that I had done it. And stranger more, I felt that I was expressing something to Amon even though he had no knowledge of it.

  These nonsense things confused me even as Ingrish let me go. She hesitated for a moment, carefully undoing her blindfold. She looked at me with her real eyes and smiled. She didn’t share with me what she felt.

  She didn’t need to.

  “Come on,” Ingrish finally said. “Let’s go home.”

  Putting the cloth back around her eyes, she turned to the closed door of the freight container and pushed it open. Bizarrely, neither Rykar nor Kybit had come to get us. We walked out into the supply depot of the fueling station. There was a long wall of airlocks and freight containers. Pipes steamed above as we walked down the greasy and dirty corridor. The dim lighting guided our way as we snuck back to the Aphelion.

  Several times, Ingrish tried to use her earpiece to contact the other two, but there was no response. She shrugged it off as an equipment malfunction.

  We passed by the camera Rykar had hacked and put on video loop. Right ahead was a rusty bulkhead door to the residential sections of the station. Ingrish pushed it open, and we walked into the authorized sectors like nothing had happened at all. We took a tram back to the hangar which housed the Aphelion.

  As the hulking ship loomed over me, I felt nothing but relief. I suppose the Aphelion had become a world to me. It was where things made sense, at least more than everywhere else. It was my new center. And inside were my sleeping quarters where I could curl up and finally relax.

  We trodded with heavy feet up the landing ramp, and Ingrish cycled the airlock. As the interior doors thunked open, Ingrish suddenly let out a scared yelp. I froze.

  Guns held by two droids pointed our way. In the center stood a familiar man with a face I had only seen through holo-images and display orbs. He gave a long sigh and crossed. “It’s ironic. I had gone through all this effort to see you, but it seems you were off meeting with someone else. Oh well. I hope you can spare a few more minutes of your time.”

  Waylon Tyrell, the last human trillionaire in the galaxy, had arrived on the Aphelion.