‘You already asked your question. Besides, you’d be better off speaking to the agent who actually intercepted her.’

‘And who might that be?’

‘I believe it was Acolyte Rile von Shard,’ she said. ‘And on that note I will bid you farewell.’

‘Wait!’ I said. ‘You said the family enjoyed it.’

‘Most of them.’

‘Did… did she think it fair?’

My former interrogator sighed. ‘You’d have to ask her yourself.’

The pict screen went dark.

I leant back in my cold metal chair, gingerly stretching my twisted leg. It ached, but the pain was dull now and familiar. I glanced to Iwazar, resting upon my desk. It too could no longer fly, crippled just like its master. They had allowed me to keep it as an act of charity, or perhaps as a means to hide it from the tech-priests, who would take exception to its sorry condition. It barely functioned now, its deterioration beyond even Plient’s skills.

He had written to me, more than once. He remained on the front lines, assigned to the 183rd Fighter Wing. He was back working in the hangars, thanks partly to his shiny new bionic arm. The picts he sent show the man beaming, and I know he will derive great pleasure tinkering with it, assuming he is not arrested for tech-heresy first. Such augmentations are uncommon for low-ranking soldiers. But it seems his commander insisted. She trusted no other to repair her craft, and paid for the augmentation herself, drawing the funds from the von Shard fortune.

Because she survived. She always survived.

It had been close, her craft barely outrunning the storm, its backwash shorting its internal systems and leaving her floating dead in space. She was barely able to contact Orbital Station Salus, whose officers had finally woken up to the chaos beneath them and were poised to unleash weapons sufficient to flatten a continent. I suppose I owe her my life once more, though I’ve lost count of the tally.

I wonder what she told her superiors. Did it match my account, or was it closer to the fiction of the cinema-pict? I won’t ever know. Just as I will never know exactly what her aunt said to her at her mother’s second funeral. What promises were made, and subsequently broken. Why she only seems at peace amongst the stars.

Still, I do know that I have made my mark on her. For, according to Plient, she still has the broken remnants of seer-skull Kikazar embedded in her craft, despite his offers to detach it. A good luck charm, apparently.