“Please, girl, I need you to meet me halfway,” Leta begged as she pulled another awkward turn. “A quarter of the way?” To her left, Javier was staring at her as though she’d gone mad. Perhaps, Leta thought, she had. “Give me an inch?”

The next turn, sharper than the last, sent the underside of the ship smacking into the wall. “Oh come on!” Leta shouted, forgetting herself. “Do you just not like me or something? Did I do something to you? Is it because I left? Look, if this is about all those times I called you junk, I meant it in a nice way!”

“Leta–” Javier started.

“Well I’m sorry!” she went on, ignoring him. She was barely paying attention to what she was saying anymore, focused mostly on not getting them killed and letting her mouth do the rest. “I’m sorry I called you junk. But acting this way isn’t doing anything to change my mind, you know! I’m sorry you hate me, but I need you to work for me now, okay?”

“Leta we’re running out of canyon!” Javier interrupted finally and she realized, in horror, he was right. Up ahead, the walls started to close in, coming together in a single cliff wall directly in her path. Behind the ship, their pursuer noticed as well and started a barrage of weapons blasts that zinged by them. She was clearly tired of messing around.

So was Leta.

“If you won’t do it for me, do it for Fiearius,” she demanded, feeling a streak of panic mixed with mania topped with reckless abandon as she hit the forward thrust and plummeted straight towards the dead end. She ignored Javier’s look of absolute terror.

In fact, Leta ignored almost everything. Her vision focused in on only the wall ahead of her. The sounds dropped away, the blasts of shipfire fading out, Javier’s heavy breathing vanishing and as she seized the controls, readying herself for this final move, all she could hear was the gentle hum of the Dionysian. Under her breath, she pleaded, “I like him too, girl, and he likes us. So what do you say we all make it out of this together, huh?”

Surely it was her imagination, but she could have sworn she felt the constant shudder of the ship alter its rhythm.

Either way, when she yanked back the thrusters and slammed them to the left, she definitely felt the Dionysian respond in a way she hadn’t before. She didn’t fight, she didn’t resist, she just smoothly turned directly onto her side to glide through the last few hundred feet of the canyon before turning her nose up and sailing back into open skies.

Leta was too in shock to hear the noise that followed. She was staring at the controls in her hands in disbelief. How had that worked? Why had she even done that?! What–

“Oh my god, it worked!” was the first thing that made it through Leta’s haze. Javier had jumped to his feet and was bouncing up and down in front of the console. “I can’t believe it — it worked, it really worked!”

Suddenly feeling like she’d spent the last ten minutes as someone else entirely now just settling back into her actual body, Leta stiffened in her chair and blinked herself back into concentration. “It did?” she asked seriously, leaning over to glance at the screen. True to his words, the second dot that had been chasing them was gone. “What happened–”

“You didn’t hear it? That explosion?” Javier asked through a delirious laugh, falling back into his seat, overcome by relief. “That was her stupid ship catching on the edge of the canyon. Couldn’t quite make that angle, could she?” He patted the dashboard affectionately. “Not like us. Amazing flying, cap’n. Absolutely amazing.”

Leta smiled at him, though a little shakily. “Good job, girl,” she mumbled. “Good job. Let’s get back before your other captain finds us gone.”

——————–

Fiearius’  jaw had clenched shut at the question. He didn’t answer. He didn’t have an answer. No, as a matter of fact, he didn’t truly know why the Council had chosen him for Verdant and that must have been obvious on his face because after a moment, Palano, horribly, smiled.

“No? Never figured it out, have you?” she asked. “Being Internal Affairs Prime? Is that what you thought? A good murderer doesn’t make a good Verdant, Fiearius. It’s something much deeper than that. It takes what we would call ‘moral flexibility’. And you.” She leaned back against the desk again and pointed at him. “Are one of the most morally flexible individuals I’ve ever seen.”

Fiearius wanted to be done with this conversation. He wanted to just shoot the woman and end it now, before she put whatever poison into his head she was dangling over it. But for some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. For some reason, he had to listen. He had to know.

“It means you don’t inherently cling to the comforting belief that there are universal rights and wrongs,” she explained patiently. “Your set of morals changes constantly, seeming to depend on those you respect around you. Your parents, your friend, your wife, your brother. Your doctor.” She raised a brow at him knowingly.

“You pretend to agree with these other moralities, for their sake, which I understand entirely, I’ve done the same, but I think you and I both know it’s a lie.” She pushed herself from the desk and sauntered towards him slowly. “There is no black nor white. You know that the universe is more complex than that and you question it always, it’s obvious to anyone watching. It is that questioning, that curiosity and that freedom that makes a truly great Verdant. What you have, Fiearius, is a gift. That is why we chose you. Because you. Whether you want to believe it or not.” She stopped a few feet away and reached out to prod him in the chest with her index finger. “Are a lot like us.”

More than ever now, Fiearius wanted to draw his weapon and silence her. He didn’t want to hear this, any of it. It would be so easy to end it all and walk out of here and forget any of it ever happened. But all he managed was to growl, “I’m nothing like you.”

“Oh, but you are,” Rebeka laughed, shaking her head. “You care about people and ideals so much, so strongly, that you’re willing to work in the shadows to protect them.” She clasped her glass in both hands and, looking up at him with a blend of admiration and pride, sighed. “You would have made an excellent Councillor.”

It was Fiearius’ turn to scoff. “A Councillor? Sure, if I survived being your damn Verdant.”

Rebeka tilted her head at him, seeming perplexed. “Of course you would have survived. You were far too valuable, we would have kept you alive at all costs.”

“Sure,” Fiearius mused with a grim smile. “I’m sure you told that to the last Verdant too. You know. The one you forced me to murder.”

The woman continued to stare at him in a strange daze for a long moment until finally, some sort of epiphany rose through her cheeks. “Oh, Fiearius. Fiearius, no. No, no no.” She smiled at him sadly. “He’s not dead.”

Fiearius felt his heart stop in his chest. “What?”

“Oh I know it looked like he was,” she explained hurriedly. “But he’s alive and well, I assure you. We wouldn’t waste talent like that.”

Wasn’t dead? The previous Verdant, the man Fiearius had killed with his own weapon, shot straight through the chest, not dead? It couldn’t be. It didn’t make sense. “But the chip –” he realized. The Verdant chip that had transferred its data into his wrist the moment the bullet landed. “If he didn’t die — how did I get it?”

“Well, he did die,” Rebeka answered as though this were all very obvious and dull. “Just long enough for it to pass over. It’s a bit complicated.”

“Complic–” Fiearius began, but suddenly his shock started to wear off. He could still see the image in his head. It was one that haunted him always. The Verdant in a pool of blood on the cold cement floor under the flickering warehouse lights. Beside him, two more bodies. A woman. And a child. The shock was replaced by a fury that roiled through him like his blood was on fire. He took a sharp step towards Rebeka, his eyes fixed on her in a rage. “That man–that man killed my son.”

Rebeka’s calm faltered momentarily as she stumbled backwards. “Ah–yes,” she admitted quietly. “That was an unfortunate turn of events.”

“Unfortunate?!” He took another step towards her. “Unfortunate?!”

“Fiearius–” Rebeka began hesitantly, but she was silenced when he seized her wrist and dragged her back towards him, more rough than necessary.

“Where is he?” Fiearius growled under his breath. She looked up at him, reflecting — what was that? Pity? — in her expression. But she said nothing, she gave no answer so he yanked her closer and rammed his gun into the crook between her chin and neck. “Where. Is. He?!”

Rebeka flinched as he twisted the cold metal against her skin, but her eyelids flicked back open to stare at him sadly as she whispered, “They were right, weren’t they? They were right all along. Aela never told you…”

The words were enough to give Fiearius pause. But before he could even begin to question what that meant, what Aela had to do with any of this, he heard his name called out from across the room.

Perhaps it was foolish. Perhaps he shouldn’t have looked back. As soon as he did glance over his shoulder to find Dez at the base of the ladder, rifle in hand, the gunshot went off, warm liquid splashed his skin and the body attached to the wrist he still held aloft went limp.

It took Fiearius a few long moments before he was able to release his grasp and allow Rebeka Palano to slide to the floor against her magnificent, blood-stained desk. It took him another few moments to realize Dez was speaking to him, standing beside him, shaking his arm to get his attention. What he said, what he wanted, Fiearius couldn’t begin to care. All of his thoughts were focused on one thing.

What had Aela never told him?

“We always thought you were special,” she continued, swirling the liquid in her glass in slow circles. “Meant for great things. Though. I suppose if we knew it would come to this?” A humorless chuckle filled the room. “Well, we probably should have left you there, hm?”

Fiearius didn’t stop himself from rolling his eyes. This was stupid. He hadn’t come down here to listen to some old woman monologue about her life’s choices. He had a job to do and even if she wasn’t stalling in hopes of being saved, even if she simply wanted to have a casual chat with a man whose life she helped destroy, he didn’t have the time nor patience for this. She didn’t deserve the monologue. She deserved an end.

But just as he resigned himself to lifting his gun again and firing it off before she had a chance to argue, she said something that stopped him.

“I don’t regret it, though.”

Fiearius looked over at her, curious, despite himself.

“Regret recruiting you,” she elaborated. “Or promoting you. Any of this.” She waved her hand at the room around her. “I do regret how many people were caught in the crossfire. Some of them more than others.” She caught his eye with a look so heavy with meaning Fiearius had to look away. “But overall. This? It’s the right way of things, I think. I don’t regret it.”

Fiearius wasn’t sure how to respond. Or if he even should. He’d thought many things of the Society Council over the years. He’d developed unshakeable beliefs about who they were and what they were like. He knew, without a doubt, that they were devoted to their empire. That they would defend it until the bitter end. That they would all be irrational, insane monsters like the Vescentian Councillor Leta had faced in Fall’s End.

And yet here was the Ascendian Councillor telling him, in no uncertain terms, that she was glad he had devoted himself to destroying what they had built. And suddenly, he had to know.

“Why did you do it?”

The question had been burning in the forefront of his mind for days. Ever since he had broken through Ren’s code and uncovered the name and history of the woman before him. Rebeka Palano glanced up at him curiously. “Why did I do what?”

“You were elected to Ascendian office. You were popular with the public, with the legislature, you had plenty of power as it were. But you faked your own death, abandoned your family, your friends, and for what? How could you sell out your own people to the Society? How could you sentence them to that?”

Rebeka’s head tilted against her shoulder as she regarded him. “Sell out my people?” she repeated, turning the words over on her tongue. “I didn’t sell out my people. I saved my people.”

Grasping her glass, she rose to her feet and strode around the desk to lean against it. “You were just a child, Fiearius. I’m sure you weren’t attuned to Span-wide politics at five. But thirty years ago? Ascendia was dying.” She shook her head and took another long sip from her glass. “Not physically. Our terraforms have always been amongst the most stable. But our economy? Our job market? Tanking. If we’d continued down the path we were on? Unemployment would have peaked within three years. Hundreds, thousands of families would have lost their homes. We didn’t have the resources to compete with giants like Exymeron and Ellegy. We’re a small cluster. And we were failing.”

Reaching behind her, she grabbed the bottle of liquor and tilted it towards her glass again. “Now I tried to do what I could in office. I wanted nothing more than to fix my homeworld and I did everything in my power to make that happen.” She drank a long sip of the liquor and hissed a sharp breath afterwards.

“But there’s only so much you can scrape together from nothing. And after three terms with no progress? I could still look out of my bedroom window and see people starving in the streets. I was left with two options. Hand control over to the gangs, take black credit bribes and become the next Archeti to be left to rot. Or reach out to the Society. An organization that had managed to take Exymeron from dried up to the most successful cluster in the Span. The organization that had saved Ellegy from the brink of bankruptcy after the war. The organization that had the resources to save my people.” She drank deeply again. “You can see which option I chose.”

It was big talk, but Fiearius was unimpressed, shaking his head before she’d even finished. “And how exactly have you saved your people? Sure, they have jobs and homes, but at what cost? They vote now for powerless figureheads who couldn’t give a shit about them. They fund a government not devoted to them, but to some empirical dream of controlling the Span. Living in constant fear that someone — someone like me — might show up and murder them if they make a wrong move? Say the wrong thing? How is that saving anybody?”

Now, Rebeka scoffed. “Don’t be naive, Fiearius, you know better than that. There is always a price.”

“A price your people didn’t agree to pay.”

“Because they wouldn’t have dared,” she snapped suddenly, straightening herself up. “It wasn’t an easy choice, but someone had to make it. Someone had to do something and I was the only one willing to make that leap. You think I wanted to die? To leave my family? My daughter? I had to make that sacrifice because no one else would.” She slammed the empty glass down on the desk, hard.

If she was trying to intimidate him, it wasn’t working. “And you want credit for that?” he barked. “You want a pat on the back for taking a personal hit in fucking everything up?”

Rebeka narrowed her eyes on him, seething with anger for a long moment before suddenly, it broke and she, of all things, laughed. “That’s very bold coming from you, admiral,” she mused, venom in every word. Fiearius glared back at her silently. “Passing judgment on me. You do know, don’t you?” Her brows lifted and her lips pursed in vague amusement. “You do know why we chose you for Verdant. Don’t you?”

———————

Of all the senseless things Leta had done in her life, this was probably the worst of them. The Dionysian’s bridge was filled with a mighty roar and shudder as the ship scraped against the cliff face before pulling around the corner of the canyon. It was less of a canyon, Leta had found, and more of a ravine. Steep rock walls cut through the grassy plains like a crack in the planet itself. It wound its way across the surface in sharp turns and jagged curves. It would have been the perfect place to lose their pursuing ship. If their ships had been reversed…

“Give it up,” called the original pirate’s voice over the COMM. “You’re just gonna crash my valuable merchandise. Land her, now, and maybe I’ll let you walk away with your life.”

Leta growled under her breath, but didn’t answer, instead clenching her jaw and yanking the ship controls in an attempt to make an abrupt turn around a stone pillar jutting out of the canyon floor. The Dionysian barely avoided nose-diving into the nearest cliff-face and Leta heard the heavy thump of debris falling onto her hull.

Javier, still in the co-pilot’s seat, let out a shriek, followed by a cough and a more ‘manly’ groan. “Leta–” he began as the ship tumbled around another bend.

“What?!” she snapped, her teeth bared as she pulled the next one even closer.

“Leta, this isn’t–” Javier gripped his chair arms and held on for dear life. “This isn’t working. She’s way more agile than us. She’s still right on our tail!”

A blast of red zoomed past the window and, up ahead, a canyon wall took the hit, sending rocks and rubble flying.

“Yeah I noticed,” Leta growled, slamming the brakes and tilting the ship upward to avoid them. She managed, but only barely and winced as another screech of metal against rock filled her ears.

The Dionysian was a clunker, she knew that. Paired against that fighter, it was obviously less equipped for fancy flying. But even so, it had never seemed this clunky before. Did Fiearius just make it look easy or was she doing something that wrong? Either way, if it didn’t shift soon, it was going to get them killed.

“Maybe–” Javier started again, though he looked like he was about to vomit, “Maybe we should consider other options?”

“Happy to hear them,” Leta answered. Another shot flew past them, only narrowly missing. She got the sense that the pirate was just toying with her now. Playing with her prey.

“Well. We could land?” Javier suggested carefully. “And have Eve just shoot her?”

“Not if she stays in her ship and uses it to shoot us,” Leta pointed out. She glanced sideways at him just briefly to mutter, “That’s what I would do anyway…”

“Well we can’t shake her.”

But they could, Leta knew somehow. If it had been the ship’s usual captain at the controls, they could do it. She’d seen Fiearius do it. He’d had taught himself to fly this ship, he’d told her as much himself. He had no special training, more experience perhaps, but she refused to believe that she was incapable of even coming close to the kind of maneuverability he managed. So what the hell was he doing that she wasn’t?

The answer appeared in her mind a moment later as she plowed the ship ungracefully around another the next corner. And it was ridiculous. There was no way it would work, no way that that made a difference. It was completely illogical.

As another shot from the fighter nearly landed itself right on the ship’s side, however, she was willing to try anything.

“Come on, girl, work with me,” she growled under her breath, feeling stupid. “Help me out here.”

Fiearius often referred to the Dionysian as a woman. A woman that was stubborn and complicated and needed constant attention from him. It was metaphorical, obviously. There was nothing truly alive about a spaceship, and yet, sitting at her controls now, Leta couldn’t deny that flying her felt a bit like having an argument.

So it was worth a shot.

“Eh?” Eve grunted, looking annoyed by the interruption. “What kind of alert?”

“Not sure, that’s what I need to–” Javier’s fingers flew over the console keyboard, and then he brought up the radar screen. His eyes went round. “Ships. Coming in from orbit.”

Leta sat up sharply. “What?”

“Five of them. Looks like–” He tapped the console. “Small fighters.”

“Why would there be fighters here?” asked Eve.

“There wouldn’t be,” muttered Leta, setting down her beer carefully, though her mind was already roaring with alarm. “There’s nothing on this moon.”

“Except us,” pointed out Javier.

“They followed us here,” Eve growled. “It’s Society, isn’t it?”

Javier was shaking his head. “Not Society, I don’t think — and if they were ours, they’d have hailed us. These ships–”

“Are coming straight at us!” Eve yellled, gesturing to the radar screen on the secondary console.

“I scanned them, they’re–they’re reported stolen,” Javier breathed, looking over to Leta, as if silently begging her to figure this out.

Leta shut her eyes in realization. Of course. Irony of ironies. “Pirates.”

————-

The rest of the Harrowden bunker looked much like the first part. Fiearius was beginning to truly believe he’d been completely wrong about this. He glanced back at Dez. Well, they were both completely wrong about this. He wouldn’t take all the blame.

“Where else would she be?” Fiearius asked, closing a door to an empty storage area and not bothering to keep his voice down anymore. Perhaps somewhere less traceable, he realized after a moment, feeling internally ashamed. The Councillors were known for secrecy. And he was able to figure all of this out.

But it hadn’t been easy, he argued. He’d had to stay up for three days straight, make seven separate deals with Ascendian criminals and bang his head against at least ten walls before he’d gotten to this point. It was a guess, but it was a very educated guess.

Shockingly, despite their bad start, Dez didn’t seem as disheartened yet as he felt. “She should be here.”

“Well unless you know something I don’t know, she’s not,” Fiearius pointed out, shutting yet another door so they’d know it had already been checked.

It didn’t help that this bunker seemed to go on for miles. He’d known the Harrowdens had been rich, but he had assumed that their secret hideaway would be smaller than the rest of their estate. He’d assumed incorrectly.

“Maybe we’re going the wrong way,” was Dez’s idea.

“What difference does it make? The whole place is like this.” Fiearius ran his finger along a shelf they passed, dragging a clump of dust along with it.

“But maybe it’s not,” Dez said which, Fiearius thought, was about the most useless statement he could have made. His second statement, however, was not. “Something smells weird.”

Fiearius looked back to see that he had stopped and was sniffing the air curiously. A frown passed over his face. “I don’t smell anythi–” Fiearius began, but suddenly, to his alarm, he did. He did smell something. Something he’d been smelling far too often lately.

Fiearius spun back around just as it became visible in the hallway in front of him. The beginning sparks of flame. “Oh you gotta be fucking kidding me,” he breathed as the spark met a wooden shelving unit and roared upwards.

Suddenly, he felt a sharp tug on his arm and he was being wrenched backwards by Dez. “Why does this keep happening to me?!” Fiearius demanded as he spun around and fell into pace beside him. He could feel the heat starting to rise at his back, which he shouldn’t have. There wasn’t enough fuel in here to make it spread this quickly. This was planned.

“I’ll give you one guess,” Dez called to him over the growing noise, echoing his own suspicions. Ophelia Varisian.

Fiearius shook his head. “What the hell did you do to that psycho?”

Dez cast him a strange look. Somewhere between worry and apology. But Fiearius didn’t have time to analyze it as they turned a corner and were met with another wall of fire.

“Shit, she’s boxed us in,” Fiearius growled.

“This way.” Dez took them down the adjacent hall which was clear, for now. Flames blocked off hallways they passed, forcing them down what was apparently the only safe path. It felt determinate. Intentional. She was leading them somewhere?

And then she lead them into a room that wasn’t as empty as the rest. Fiearius stumbled to a halt and locked eyes with the woman standing before him, eyes he hadn’t seen in years. They were different now. Older, tired, something more harsh about them. Her blonde hair was cut short. She’d lost some of her bulk. But it was still Varisian and her stare still threatened to slice his head off at the first wrong move.

But Varisian didn’t attack, not at first. In fact, she looked like she hadn’t expected them. At least not yet. She stood in the center of the room like they’d caught her in the middle of some intimate embarrassing act and no one could move. But suddenly, her eyes snapped to Dez. Her brow furrowed. She threw something across the room which crashed and started a blaze in the doorway and then, finally, she drew a blade from her hip and attacked.

Attacked Dez.

Fiearius staggered backwards anyway, drawing his gun and trying to get a good aim as the woman lashed out, a flurry of rage and grace. Dez held her off, dodging out of the way, parrying her lunges and eventually drawing a blade of his own. Between the two of them, Fiearius had a hard time getting a clear shot, but in the end, he didn’t have to.

“Go!” Dez ordered through gritted teeth as he blocked Varisian’s attack.

“What?!”

“Go!” he shouted again and nodded towards the other door that she hadn’t blockaded. “I’ll hold her off. The Councillor is here. Go! Finish the job!”

Fiearius couldn’t fathom most of what was happening. Why Ophelia was so set on stabbing Dez to death, how she’d even gotten here, what she was doing with the path of fire, but there was one thing that did make sense. Dez was right. She wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t something worth protecting.

He hesitated only a moment more, taking one last look at his old friend as he countered the onslaught, before he turned down the hall and made a run for it.

She’d already gotten to this hall. There were flames blocking every passage, every door, Fiearius was certain he’d run down a dead end right up until he saw it. The alcove, just a small dome branching out of the hallway that seemed insignificant. But the fire hadn’t touched it. It was clear. And set into the floor was a hatch that, unlike everything else in this damn place, wasn’t shielded by dust.

Without thinking, Fiearius grabbed the handle and yanked it open to reveal the hole and the ladder below. This ladder he wasn’t careful with, bracing his feet on the sides and sliding down to the bottom with a thump.

He stumbled backwards, looking back up into the flickering lights above him, but before he could turn around, a voice froze him in place.

“Fiearius Soliveré. I’ve been expecting you.”

Of course, Leta hadn’t expected a different answer. It hadn’t changed before, why would it change now? They still argued about this for hours, sometimes late into the night. But that didn’t stop her from pointing out, “We can’t trust him. His motives are unclear, or they don’t seem genuine. He’s hiding something, Fiear, I know it. He could play you any second and it could end with you dead.”

But Fiearius held up a hand to her. “I know. I know…And I’m not asking you to trust him.” He took a few steps back towards her and grasped her upper arm. “But trust me, okay?” Leta met his stare, not feeling any more comforted than she had a moment ago. But she sighed and nodded agreement anyway. What other choice did she have? She’d been fighting this battle for years, it was clearly one she wouldn’t win.

“And I will trust you to take care of my ship while I’m gone,” Fiearius went on, his tone lighter as he let his arm fall back to his side. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, alright?”

Leta couldn’t quell the worry that was rising in her chest, but she forced her best knowing smile. “That’s not narrowing it down very much,” she muttered as he headed for the door, laughing down the hall.

—————

The Harrowden family’s Second Division War bunker looked like it hadn’t been opened in decades. Centuries, maybe, Fiearius thought as he watched Dez skillfully work on the great metal door buried into the ground of the desolate plain of a forgotten Ascendian moon. But that was exactly what someone hiding down there would want someone to think, from the outside, wasn’t it?

“Want me to take another turn?” Fiearius asked, reaching for the tool in Dez’s hands, but Dez didn’t move.

“I can handle the rest.”

Fiearius eyed him skeptically and glanced back at the seemingly endless expanse of darkness around them. They’d been out here for nearly an hour now, patiently etching away the lining of the sealed hatch. Not that it mattered. Fiearius had never set foot in a place more lonely than where he stood then. The Society couldn’t post agents here, that might draw attention, give something away. This place had to seem deserted in its entirety. There was no one around for hundreds of miles.

His attention was drawn back to Dez when he heard a clunk and a satisfied, “Ahh.” Fiearius stepped forward to help him wrench the thing open, but Dez brushed him off and heaved the heavy metal door out of the way himself.

“Show-off,” Fiearius muttered.

“Jealous,” Dez countered as climbed backwards into the hole he’d opened in the ground.

Fiearius just rolled his eyes and followed down after him, taking the rusty rungs of the ladder one at a time and trying to be as silent about it as possible. Now that they were inside, they were running blind. He knew about the bunker, but he certainly didn’t know the layout. He didn’t know where their target might be hiding. And he certainly didn’t have as much of a plan here as he would have liked.

He felt the ladder’s tension change as Dez presumably dismounted below him. It was only another few moments of climbing before Fiearius felt solid concrete himself and turned around to get a look at what they’d descended into.

It wasn’t exactly what he was expecting.

“You’re sure she’s down here?” Dez whispered, his tone dry as the two of them peered into the dark, musty space. It, much like the door, didn’t seem to have been touched in generations. Dim generator lights kept the narrow room from being plunged into complete blackness. Shelves lined the walls, empty save for a few cans of food Fiearius likely wouldn’t open with a ten foot pole. A few mattresses had been leaned up in the corner. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust.

“I was,” Fiearius answered, but he was beginning to doubt himself too. Ren’s research had all pointed to one Rebeka Palano as the Councillor of Ascendia. An upstart politician herself, Palano was heir to the massive Palano estate before she had “died” of illness thirty years ago. But the Palano estate hadn’t always been called Palano. Two generations ago, it had been the Lorna estate. And before that, the Ori estate. And before that, during the Second Division War, the Harrowden estate.

“This is her family’s long lost bunker,” Fiearius mumbled under his breath. “We’re at war, she’s in danger, where else would she go?”

Dez narrowed his eyes through the darkness. “Yes. Where else would she go?”

“You were the one who told me this was definitely right, that this had to be the place, you were sure of it,” Fiearius snapped quietly.

“Because you told me it was definitely right, it had to be the place, you were sure of it,” Desophyles growled back, but Fiearius just shook him off and stalked further into the room. There was a hallway through a door on the other end that, upon peering down it, he realized lead to more hallways and more rooms and more hallways. Gods, this place was a maze.

“Let’s at least look around,” Fiearius suggested. “There’s still a chance I’m right.”

Dez didn’t look pleased, but he didn’t argue as he followed after Fiearius into the hall.

——————

How long ago had it been — six years? It seemed like a whole lifetime had passed since the very first day Leta had first stepped aboard the Dionysian. The day Cyrus kidnapped her and Fiearius yelled at her and she realized, in horror, that she was on a ship filled with criminals. What would she have thought, back then, if she’d known one day she’d be sitting in that very ship’s bridge as the acting captain?

She was about to settle in and get some work of her own done to pass the time when she heard footsteps behind her. Swinging her head around, she found Eve wandering into the bridge to join her, a couple of beer bottles hanging in her hand.

“Enjoying the view, doc?” she asked, nodding toward the pitch-black horizon filling the bay window. She settled down in the co-pilot’s chair and held out a beer for Leta to take.

Leta almost smiled.  “Not sure I should drink on the job.”

“Cap’n does all the time. Looks like you could use it too.”

Leta hesitated, then accepted the bottle, cracked it open on the edge of the dashboard, and took a long swig: it was true, she was tense. She was trying to not think much about what was happening down in that bunker. Apparently, her unease was written all over her face.

“You’re worried about him,” said Eve, frowning at her in a thoughtful sort of way, and Leta thought: of course I am. She spent half her life worrying and wondering after Fiearius, although she wasn’t willing to admit that aloud. But she couldn’t help but voice the question burning a hole in her heart.

“Do you really think they can pull this off?”

To her surprise, Eve barked a laugh. “You kiddin’, doc? This is the cap’n we’re talkin’ about. Course he can pull it off.” Leta arched her eyebrows, both comforted and confused by her positivity. Either she really believed in Fiearius, or Fiearius had done a fantastic job of convincing her to believe in him. Or both. Eve’s expression did sour slightly when she added,  “Wish I coulda gone with him though.”

“Yeah,” Leta muttered, returning her attention back to her bottle of beer.  “Me too.” Though even as she said it, she wasn’t sure if she meant Eve or herself.

They lapsed into silence. Leta sipped her beer quietly, propping her feet against the dashboard as she tried to avoid imagining all of the horrible outcomes of this mission. She tried to focus on the good ones. Fiearius returning triumphant, the whole crew celebrating, the war beginning its end …

“It’ll probably be awhile,” Eve said, glancing at her knowingly. “You should get your mind off him.”

Perhaps the beer was already going to her head, because Leta smirked and muttered,  “I’ve never been able to do that.”

“Yeah, funny, ain’t it?” Eve sighed. “How some people, you just can’t shake. I know he means a lot to you. But we’re not gonna worry about him, now, doc,” she told her simply. “Cap’n will be back. These things can take a while. But he’ll be back.”

Leta wanted to believe it as much as Eve did. She would try to.

Just then, another set of footsteps pounded up the stairs, and then Javier rushed into room, headed straight for the console screen. “Scuse me, Leta — sorry — I need to check something,” he apologized in a rush. “I got an alert.”