Kat sighed. She hated parades. Indeed, she despised most public spectacles. She acknowledged the utility of such events, and she recognized the current one as the largest and most magnificent she’d ever witnessed, but even as she watched she hardly saw the precision marching or the endlessly rehearsed bands. It was all false, empty symbolism and a pale image of the heroism and effort it purported to represent.

Instead, faces floated before her, men, women, comrades…friends. The dead of the last campaign, hundreds from her own vessel, spacers who had served her loyally, carrying out her every command with the last of their strength. And thousands more. Indeed, many more than Vindictus’s dead had fallen taking Heliopolis. The crews of the battleships destroyed by the enemy pulsar, the dead on twenty other damaged vessels, the stormtroopers who pacified the surface after a bitter fight. The price of the glory on display here had been paid by thousands of loyal Palatians, men and women who would never see home again. What did a marching band have to do with such devotion, such sacrifice? The dead were feted as heroes, but what did that do for them?

She was watching from an unfamiliar place, the central grandstand, the province of officers of exalted rank, men and women who commanded armies and fleets, and those who sat on the Council itself. She glanced across the broad avenue, acutely aware of her own discomfort, looking toward the platform holding the other ship commanders and their first officers. Theirs was an honored place as well, if slightly less stratospheric than her present perch. It was also where she belonged, save for one fact. She was one of the heroes of this war—indeed, the hero of the final campaign—and that very morning she had received a decoration from the hand of the Imperatrix herself, with all Palatia watching the transmission.

Katrine was a celebrity now, a symbol of the might and the warlike ethos of the Alliance, her success in battle being spun into the legends that would encourage the next generation. Even the parade below was working its magic in that regard. The grand procession included rows of trucks, displaying the broken wreckage of enemy ships…vessels the Alliance fleet had destroyed in battle. And next in line, carried with solemn respect, a series of great trailers hauling more debris, twisted metal…much of what remained of Vindictus.

Her ship had done its duty, given its all in pursuit of victory. She could still remember those deadly moments, her battleship pressing forward despite all the firepower the two massive fortresses poured into her. She hadn’t returned fire, hadn’t so much as targeted either of the great orbital platforms. Vindictus had pressed on toward its primary target. Its only target. The enemy laser cannon.