Waylon Tyrell was not a man concerned with his appearance. The right half of his already thin face had been carved out by a terrible injury, corrected just enough to keep him from being abominably ugly. His artificial eye threatened to slip from his eye socket, held in place by a silver band affixed where his cheekbone should’ve been. His hair fell back in greying wisps and his skin was pocked, the result of cheap skin grafts.

  For clothing, he chose simple black garments that clung tightly to his figure. He was not emaciated, but neither was he healthy. The only ornamentation was a gold brooch and chain that was secured across his chest.

  I glanced at his droids. I thought at first they might’ve been more Nekomata—which were not dissimilar in appearance. Although, these ones entirely lacked the Dalfaen grace in design. These were meant for war and only war. Hydraulic arms, armored chest cores, and elongated heads with concealed sensory apparatus. The droids were entirely unmoving as they held their angular rifles on us.

  “This is not how I wanted to meet. It seems Amon and I have a bad habit of running into each other at the worst possible time,” Waylon spoke softly, looking out the window of the mess hall. From this angle, you could see through the fueling station’s massive portum, a ring structure with a permanent force field to let ships travel in and out the atmospheric habitat. Beyond the staggered ship traffic, out into the cold vacuum, somewhere was Amon Russ fighting in the coliseums. Somewhere was Oberyn in the game rooms, masterfully crafting yet another story.

  “I haven’t come here to threaten you, if that’s what you’re wondering.” Tyrell turned in the dark room. “In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I would like for us to work together.”

  “You’re pointing weapons at us.” Ingrish growled.

  “Let’s be honest. They’re more for my protection than to intimidate you. Do you really think I would risk coming onto this ship without insurance? But even so, agree to hear me out, and I’ll stand the droids down.”

  Ingrish simply glared daggers at the man, impressive since she always wore a blindfold. Waylon sighed and waved a hand. The droids stiffly raised their rifles up and set them down at their feet.

  The Tyrell man walked over to the table where he had placed the phonic-collar he had confiscated from Ingrish. Picking it up in his wrinkled hands, he thumbed the device’s decorated striations. If you didn’t know what it was, it could easily pass for a piece of jewelry.

  “Such a terribly expensive slave-collar. All so even a telepath can be reduced to a commodity, a trinket to be owned like anything else. Did Oberyn gift it to you? Or is it a holdover from your previous profession as a—?”

  I blinked as Ingrish immediately censored that word for me. I glanced at her, but she was entirely focused on Waylon.

  “No matter.” Tyrell tossed the phonic-collar aside on the floor, clattering away. “I’m not here to discuss your past. In fact, we’re for mine.”

  “You think that gesture means anything?” Ingrish nodded her head to the collar. “You’re disgusting through and through. You sold children. The collar doesn’t change that.”

  “I can guess at all the things Amon has told you about me.” Waylon walked over to the Bakke. He knelt so that they were face-to face. “But you look in my head and tell me that I am not reasonable.”

  “No.” Ingrish spat in his artificial eye.

  Instead of flinching, Waylon sighed. And with two gloved fingers he wiped the spittle off. He stood up and glanced around the mess hall, frustrated. He chuckled at himself, finally looking down at Ingrish again. “It’s a strange thing. To find yourself in the one room in the galaxy where the telepath won’t read your mind. Fine. We’ll negotiate the conventional way. I’ll start with the carrot—that’s a human vegetable if you aren’t aware.”

  Waylon paced the room, hands held behind his back. “You know, touring through this ship. It’s like a museum. Takes me all the way back to the war. All the memories, fading. This vessel is falling apart at the seams. It’s impressive Amon’s kept it running for this long. But it can’t last. Sooner or later, your home is going to fall apart.”

  “What’s your point?” Ingrish asked. “You’re offering us a ship refit?”

  “No, that would be far too cheap of me. I’m offering you half.”

  Ingrish hesitated. “What?”

  Tyrell slowly stepped over to her. “You heard me. Half of everything I’ve got. In exchange for Amon standing down, I will give you more money than you can spend in a hundred lifetimes. And you can keep the ship flying for a hundred times that. I know the kind of life Amon has been living. I’ve read of the kind of life you lived. What I’m offering is to set you free.”

  “You know Amon would never take your blood money.”

  Waylon groaned, throwing up his hands in disbelief. “Blood money? Fine, we can call it that. But I didn’t build this fortune to spend on myself! I didn’t make these sacrifices—I didn’t sell my soul—because I cared about the profit! Every day since the war, I built this fortune for one purchase! One alone! To buy what we lost back!”

  Ingrish remained steadfast. Ingrish remained silent.

  “I know about your deal with the Dalfaen. Is that the victory you want? Amon wins and he hands humanity’s future to the very species we reared from animals! Is that the future you want? It’s disgraceful!” Waylon raised his voice. “What would Amon rather have? A certain future as slaves? Or take a chance on me to win the Pa’Zac tournament, and humanity can make its own destiny? I’m begging you to think for a moment. Read my mind! You’ll know what I am telling you is the truth!”

  Ingrish remained steadfast. Ingrish remained silent.

  Waylon gritted his teeth in frustration. “Very well, if you won’t consider my generosity, maybe you’ll consider the stick.”

  “I thought you weren’t here to threaten us.”

  “Unduly threaten. But Amon Russ has a debt to pay, and if you don’t listen to reason, if you don’t convince him to stand down, then I’ll be forced to collect it.”

  Ingrish upturned her nose at Tyrell and crossed her arms.

  Waylon shook his head. “I know you know what I’m talking about. You don’t get to run away from this, neither does Amon. What he did. He is a traitor.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Ingrish immediately censored that word, but it didn’t matter. I already knew that phrase. It was the same one Amon had used to describe Tyrell.

  I suppose that was the double-edged sword of language. The more you know, the harder it is to remain ignorant of the things you would prefer not to know.

  But still, I felt nothing of shock. Waylon Tyrell was not a man to be trusted. Even one such as I knew that. I simply turned to Ingrish puzzled. She raised her eyebrows in surprise and concern that I had comprehended the word anyway without her help. Cursing under her breath, she reached out to me.

  “Amon isn’t a traitor. That’s just this man’s confused perspective.”

  I nodded my head, completely satisfied with the answer and entirely uncurious to any further detail. However, Tyrell noticed this short exchange, and for the first time, glanced my way.

  He spoke a confused jumble of words, some I understood, many I didn’t. I realized Ingrish had completely stopped translating, unwilling entirely to risk me learning anything else. Later, I wondered why she didn’t take this approach more often, instead allowing me to hear and see many things that a normal human child shouldn’t be exposed to.

  Of course, it was under Amon’s orders. And I am sure there were arguments over the things I heard. But it was critical to Amon that I saw as much as I could, of how the galaxy worked. And I wasn’t a normal human child, at least, not one who had the luxury of leading a normal human life.

  But this time I stared blankly ahead, even as the Tyrell man tried to tell me of something that I had no interest in.

  Finally, he snapped at Ingrish and there was another back and forth between them. Ingrish yelled in her real voice, and Waylon nodded towards the droids. Ingrish clenched her fists, and reluctantly, she took a deep breath and turned to me. “I’m sorry. He’s forcing me to translate. Just remember it’s complicated.”

  …

  They say there are two sides to every war, but the truth is—there are a thousand. Every soldier, every captain, every general. There are the men who order millions to death for neutonium deposits and platinum-pressed riches, and then there are men who fight because it is their brothers who are dying in the mud. There are leaders who eye whole star systems for the sake of their people, and then there are mercenaries who do their bloody work because they enjoy it.

  There were the men who were told they had to fight the Aberrants to save the galaxy. And then the men who told them, foolishly believing that they were still masters of the universe. The alternative for mankind’s leaders was unthinkable, that they did not possess the power of our ancestors. After all, it was our mantle. It was our duty to place as many humans on the front-lines as possible. And when it did finally come to catastrophe, those were often the same men who abandoned worlds wholesale to the Aberrants—because they could not tolerate the idea of death and worse happening to themselves.

  I don’t think anyone can know ultimately if events would’ve played out the same, having not lured the whole Aberrant fleet to humanity’s home systems. They might’ve come for us anyway, after all. But what was certain, was that mankind’s leaders had, intentionally or not, done everything possible to maximize the damage. And when Amon, with the punctured eyes of the Carapace Suit, saw his commanders running away—even while he fought on a world cracking under his feet—that was intolerable to him.

  And so when victory was finally achieved, when wearied humanity held its somber celebrations, Amon had been one of the Forty-Seven who turned their zero-swords on their masters. At this moment of great frailty, Amon and his comrades cut the heads off of mankind’s last leaders, fleeing soon after.

  For Tyrell, his side—his story—was that Amon and the Forty-Seven betrayed humanity, destroying our last chance to re-organize and throwing our species into chaos at a time when the galaxy was salivating to finally end us once and for all. As Amon told it, humanity was finished long before then, and that he had only executed the criminals responsible for our fall.

  The terrible thing is, I still do not know which of the two were more correct.

  I think I shall leave it at this. Anyone who has read of the Fifth Aberrant War knows Waylon Tyrell. His part in history is written and he has colored his place on the galactic tapestry. However, I feel as though I have to make a special remark of one fact for your consideration. Whatever you might think of the man, he had not been among those cowards who turned their ships and fled into dark space. And when the Aberrants were raining fire from the sky, he did not abandon his post like so many others.

  He had the scars to prove it.

  I blinked with a blank face as Waylon finished his explanation. I do not know what Waylon expected. Perhaps the point wasn’t even to convince me of anything, but only to voice his argument and make it known to one of the last human children in the galaxy—that it was all Amon’s fault.

  But before Tyrell had a chance to do anything further, the door to the mess hall flew open, and a bloodied Rykar stumbled into the open. Holding a gigantic guass cannon, he aimed it right at Tyrell, breathing heavily. “You son of a—”

  Three things happened at once. Ingrish lunged and threw us to the ground. The droids raised their weapons, but Rykar was faster. He turned the thick barrel of the cannon on one and pulled the trigger. I didn’t see a projectile so much as a blue mass accelerated so quickly that it disintegrated the droid and blew a hole clean through the wall behind it, the torn metal trailing a long arc in the distance.

  The second droid didn’t last much longer, and then the guass cannon was aimed squarely at Tyrell, but it was too late. The man had seized the gold brooch in his hand and pushed a button. Time and space seemed to fold, and then he was gone.

  Teleportation, a uniquely human technology. At least, humans were the only ones to devise a method that didn’t come with serious consequences.

  Ingrish leapt up and rushed to Rykar who had collapsed against the wall. Letting the cannon fall from his talons, it thudded heavily on the floor as he tiredly glanced up at Ingrish. “Sorry I took so long. You wouldn’t believe what I had to do to break out of the cargo bay.”

  She looked over him, the crimson blood pooling at his side and wrists. “We need to get you to Tut,” she said concerned.

  “Thanks but no thanks. I’d rather tough it out.” Rykar struggled to take a zakon dart out of his pocket. Snapping the end off and lighting it, he turned to Ingrish. “So, how did your meeting with the General go?”

  …

  As I laid my head upon the hard floor of my quarters and struggled to go to sleep, I tried to go over everything that had happened in my mind. It was an evening ritual, but one that refused to set me to sleep as it normally would.

  Rykar had run several full scans of the ship, making sure Tyrell hadn’t left any extra surprises. And when that failed to turn up anything, he began a manual inspection with the tireless help of Kybit. I was sure they were going over every hall and room even as I closed and opened my eyes, hoping that I would fall asleep.

  Utterly exhausted as I was, I suppose I was waiting for some other catastrophe to happen. So much had happened so quickly, it was hard to believe that it was now over, that I was safe—that I could now close my eyes and wake up the next morning.

  That it should be so simple somehow felt wrong.

  Throughout my life, I have always found it surreal that quiet and peace exists. That it is not only real, but something most of the galaxy takes for granted. There were humans, once, who simply woke up without fear of what was chasing them, humans who went to work their professions, most of which did not involve someone dying by the end of the day. And then they went to sleep, happy with their lot and family. They didn’t live in fear of the darkness. And the most miraculous thing of all, is that this happened day after day, to the extent that whole generations expected to live their lives like this.

  I have fought for centuries for the quiet of a simple life, but it is still something beyond me. I suppose it has gone on so long that it is now a part of my nature. That even if I should find myself on an empty moon with no one in a thousand light years, I should still struggle to relax. That if the galaxy should find no one else, it would arm my own shadow as another enemy against me.

  Deep into that sleepless night after Waylon Tyrell had fled the Aphelion, long after I assumed Rykar and Kybit had given up their searches, after everyone was asleep except for me, I restlessly turned and looked upward at the ceiling.

  There was a dim orange glow as sizzling molten metal dripped onto my empty bunk. Something struggled through the melted ceiling panel, emerging as a six-legged chitinous machine of some kind. Two sensor antennae flicked off white hot embers and two beady eyes trained on me. I saw a tiny mouth of needles open, and it rapidly scuttled towards me.