Crayt simply stared silently back at him. Leo felt his frustration surface in a salty tear on his cheek that he quickly swiped away.

“You say you’re different, but you’re really no better than the rest of your kind.”

When the Aykari finally spoke, Leo thought he might have heard another sigh escape. “Do you know why I am here? It is because I once thought I could, as you say, do something about it. I saw the price of our empire’s conquest, a price paid by the worlds we discovered and the beings that inhabit them. Worlds just like this one. The extinction of entire species. Environmental collapse. Planets losing their integrity, splitting at the seams. So I spoke out. Against all my ingrained instincts, against everything I had ever been taught, I questioned the Aykarian empire’s motives as well as our means. I tried to warn others, not just my own kind. People like your father. Those I thought would listen. But my warnings went unheeded. Unheeded . . . but not unnoticed.”

That at least explained why Zirkus Crayt wasn’t part of the great Aykarian we anymore. Leo thought back to the protests he’d seen back on Earth, the signs, the shouting. People standing up, trying to warn anyone who would listen. “What happened?”

“When it was discovered that my beliefs ran contrary to the collective’s, I was given a choice: death or exile. I chose exile. I am never to return to Aykar again.”

Always a choice, Leo thought. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

“Your apology is unwarranted,” Crayt replied. “I am only trying to give some explanation. I choose this planet for my exile because here, at least, the war is over. Everything of value, at least everything others deem to have value, has been stripped from this world. The Djarik have no use for it, remote and desolate as it is. Having taken what they wanted, the Aykari will not return. And yet I have found something here. Something worthwhile.”

“A place to hide?”

“A moment of peace,” Crayt corrected. “The Aykari will not stop spreading throughout the galaxy. The Djarik will continue to fight them. And through it all, I will help the Orin patch their walls.”

“That’s still hiding,” Leo said. “Don’t you see? You’re running from the fight when you might have the power to end it.”

The exiled Aykari crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. Leo had never seen one of them sit without absolutely perfect posture before.

“Do you know the longest span of time humans—your people—have ever gone without a war? It is a few years. Not centuries. Not decades. For as long as you have recorded your history, your species has only known death and destruction. Humans are not alone in this. Conflict and chaos are the default state of the universe. It is an inherently violent, divisive place. You would have me find some way to prevent the Djarik from unleashing this weapon upon the galaxy, but even if I could, it would not change anything. Not ultimately. There is no end, Leo Fender. We survive only to relish the brief moments of peace that are born out of the bloodshed.”