“Did you serve with Molly? You seem a bit young.”

“We were cadets together. At the Academy.” Cole looked up as the girl reentered the room. More of her hair had come loose as she hurried to the cot. She held a glass of water in her bare hands, her gloves pulled off. Cole felt a wave of guilty excitement from seeing her. He noted her freckles and the way her cheeks were flushed from the rapid walk. He barely managing to nod his thanks as he reached for the glass—

“Ah . . . left hand,” Mortimor said, pointing.

Cole obeyed. He smiled at the girl, who turned away quickly, hurrying back to Stanley. Cole took a long swig from the glass, dribbling some down his chin. He went to wipe it off his mouth with his right hand, but Mortimor grabbed his wrist.

“Careful,” he said. “People tend to hurt themselves at first, even with the temporary limiters.” He reached down and used part of Cole’s sheet to dabble at the moisture on his chin. The way he did it—like a doctor tending to a patient—suddenly made Cole feel like a useless invalid.

“You’ll need some therapy,” Mortimor said. “Some training. First, though, back to Molly . . .”

“Yeah.” Cole took another sip of water and swallowed. “We were flight partners in the Academy. I was sent with her to get the ship. Everything went to hell from the beginning—”

“Byrne?” Mortimor asked.

“What? No, that came after. Hell, I just found out about him. You do know he’s here, right?”

Mortimor nodded.

“Okay, no, our problems started on Palan, some pirates there—”

“Palan? What in the galaxy were you doing on Palan?”

“That’s—that’s where the ship was. I don’t know what—”

“No, that’s fine.” Mortimor shook his head. He looked back to the Stanley, who was peering over his patient at their conversation. “So, I imagine Parsona told you what needed doing. Where did things go wrong? On Dakura? Lok? Is Molly okay?”

“Go wrong?”

Cole looked for some place to set the glass, then gave up. “Things went wrong everywhere.” He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. “We barely got out of Palan alive, we committed genocide on our way back to Earth, the Navy framed me and we had to kill Lucin—”

“What?” Mortimor pushed away from Cole’s cot, a wary eye on his right arm. “Two guards!” he shouted to Stanley. Several of the nearby forms stirred from the outburst.

Cole held up both hands. “No, that—it wasn’t like that. He was about to shoot Molly, I swear. He’s the guy who set us up, who had us go get your ship.”

Mortimor squinted at Cole. Two aliens ran into the room dressed in Navy black, reaching for weapons at their sides. Mortimor held up his hand, keeping them at bay.

“How did you end up here?”