Lee and I spoke for a while after she woke up. I needed her help understanding some of what I read. We agreed on everything, though only because I didn’t know enough about war to say anything about the battle plan and she didn’t know pyrav so she couldn’t say anything about the recording.

  Despite all of our best efforts we couldn’t keep ourselves occupied, and we were left on the bridge waiting in silence as the clock counted down.

  The human fleet fell back to a tight orbit around the second sun except for a battleship, cruiser, and destroyer. The 11 venalian ships formed a half sphere around the three ships, encircling them best they could without getting between them and the rest of the human fleet.

  “You don’t have to watch this.” Lee said to me, softly.

  “I know.” I can’t say why or how but I’d convinced myself I had to watch, no matter how much I didn’t want to.

  Just as the clock ticked over the venalia fired a warning shot and a few seconds later opened up with their main batteries. The battleship in response launched torpedoes, 22 in total, each one protected by a drone swarm. Some of the venalia realized the danger they were in, firing their main batteries at the torpedoes, but it didn’t matter, nothing they could do at that point did. Railguns, missiles, lasers, everything the venalia had, struggled to get through the drones, never mind the armor of the torpedoes themselves. At the last moment some of them tried to run, or angle their armor better, most did nothing, and about 30 seconds after the “battle” started there was nothing, not even enough of the venalia left to leave behind a wreckage.

  I didn’t know how to react, what to feel. All my effort went towards not doing the math on how many people just died.

  “I’m sorry,” Lee said, “we try to disable ships but I –”

  “It’s fine, You didn’t know, I didn’t.”

  “... You get used to it, doesn’t get easier, but you get used to it.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that.

  The others left to get their spacesuits which left Lee and I alone on the bridge.

  “I’m fine Lee, really, you can go do whatever you have to.”

  “Nah, the marines will land, do their thing, then tell me when it’s safe to head out, got nothing to do until then, and I’ve thought about it, I’m not gonna bother with a spacesuit. We really can’t afford to drag this out so show of strength and all that.”

  “Seems stupid.”

  “Yea, that’s why it works, and I trust the marines, Captain Roberts was based in New Orleans after the war, like I was. I know him, he won’t fuck this up.”

  “But I thought I read you brought an industrial fleet. Surely if you can do that,” I gestured to the monitor we’d watched the battle on, “what could be difficult about a long war.”

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Whoever built the sphere mined the asteroid belt to hell, and our guess is, replaced what they took with useless shit. We’d have to find another system, stockpile, which is two warps, it would take years.”

  “...my home system has an asteroid belt.”

  “I know, I'm considering it, but –”

  “It’s okay.”

  “A lot of people are going to want to try, especially after how easy that was. A whole planet is different but, I don’t think I can stop it at this point.”

  “We can talk about it, go over what little I know, though I’m sure whatever you take from the venalia will have more.”

  “I want to take as little as possible.”

  “Little late for that.”

  “Never too late.”

  Talking to Lee had distracted me but I was still panicking, and I couldn’t stop it. Breathing was difficult and I could feel myself flicker and since Lee couldn’t see I let it happen. It was the first, but far from the last, time guilt consumed me. I felt this need to suffer, to be in pain, to take no joy in victory because of what it cost. It didn’t help that I was safe, I started it, but wasn’t fighting. Of course at the time I didn’t understand what I was feeling, and even in my own language I wouldn’t’ve been able to express it.

  Lee saw my panic, my helplessness. She’d seen it before, but in humans, so wasn’t sure how to help, or was afraid to help in the way she knew how.

  “Let’s get you some water, that can’t hurt.” Lee said, standing up.

  I leaned up against her in that moment not caring if it came across as strange. I didn’t want to leave, didn’t want her to leave.

  “I don’t want anyone to see me like this.”

  “Okay, okay, we’ll stay right here.”

  I started shaking a little despite my best efforts and I swear I could feel Lee’s confusion.

  “Crying, sorry.” I explained, trusting the translator more than I wanted to.

  “No, don’t be sorry.” It was awkward, like touching her was breaking some great transgression. She easily could’ve taken a step back, but didn’t. I breathed with her because she seemed in that moment so calm, so beyond crying for the dead and I wanted to be like her, to have the power she seemed to have over herself. The illusion was broken when she spoke.

  “We spent the first bit of the war raiding shipping, like on water ships. After we sank one we would send a drone with a camera to make sure we actually sunk it, and to act as a beacon for rescue in case the ship didn’t manage to, and, anyway, the first ship we sunk, I remember the bodies floating. There were survivors, but there were bodies, and I was as ready as I could’ve been to see that, a soldier, and I needed Habi to pull me out of it. I never deserved her and I’m shit at this and species and language but, what I told myself, what I still tell myself, the right thing to do is to win, nothing else matters, not really. And you weren’t ready for this and it’s okay if it breaks you because one day it’ll be over and you’ll have won and honestly at some point I realized I’m proud of what I did. Doesn’t stop the nightmares, but it doesn’t really hurt anymore, not the way it used to, and you’ll have all the time you need to put yourself together again and I’m rambling but you just make it though, I don’t know, like, whatever part of yourself you have to give up or break you can get back or remake or live without or, fuck, I don’t know. I’m not who I was but I’m still me and the world or universe or fucking whatever is better off for what I did so I can’t hate myself for that, what I did. How could I?”

  “Okay.”

  “... Okay? I bare my heart and soul to you and all you have to say is okay?”

  I looked at her, and she was smiling. “I mean, it didn’t make the most sense.”

  “It wasn’t meant to make sense, it was meant to inspire, to heal.”

  “Really?” I played into the bit best I could.

  “Poets would weep at the beauty of my words.”

  “Seems like you need better poets.” I liked this Lee, far more comforting.

  She laughed, “I invite you onto my ship, and you insult me and my culture, where is your gratitude?”

  “You will not turn me into a liar so easily.”

  “I guess not.”

  “...Thanks.” I’d stopped shaking.

  “Of course, whatever you need.”