Benny’s uncle had had a small spaceship—about as small as a spacecraft could be, which made it the only thing nearby that had a chance of escaping notice of the Ministers. He’d taken me to it, hiding from Ministers as they passed. Serene and terrible, they stalked through the streets and killed everything they saw. When we reached his ship, while he fumbled through the unlock code, trying birthdays and family in-jokes, he’d said, “This is the Republic’s fault.”

I’d barely understood him. Language is the last thing I always have, something wholly mine, but it had felt like even it had left me then. “What?”

The Republic had left the day before. I remembered seeing the ships fly by overhead as I walked to school. The day had been clear and sunny, and the ships had been hazy, blue with atmospheric distance, gleaming like little silver moons as they fled. It was a sight to see, but beyond the majesty of the moment, I hadn’t thought about it too much.

“The Ministers only came to Kystrom,” Benny had said, as his uncle’s spaceship unlocked with a click, “because the Republic was here first.”

I hadn’t paid the Republic’s departure much mind. My teachers, though, and my parents, had all been subdued, speaking in harsh whispers that stopped when a student entered the room. Even my little sister, Brigid, had had an unfamiliar shadow over her features, a dim awareness of something not yet seen, like the glow in the sky before the sun rose. I wonder if people can feel it when they’re about to die.

I hadn’t cared much about politics then. I still didn’t care much now, but I understood better what the Republic’s presence on Kystrom—and their sudden departure—had caused.

Kystrom was one of the independent planets, settled after the invention of FTL had made it possible to spread human colonies out at vast distances throughout our little section of the galaxy rather than restricting such colonies to the two Sister Systems. As such, Kystrom was not part of the Maria Nova system, which the Ministers controlled; nor was it part of the Terra Nova system, now called the Republic. It had its own little K-type star, its own government. It was not heavily defended, like either of the Sister Systems—we hadn’t even had a space fleet. Kystrom survived because it was too insignificant to be a part of the ongoing war between Maria Nova and the Republic, and not worth the effort for either side to antagonize.

At least, until the Republic decided they needed a base in that quadrant of the galactic arm, and did not take a polite ‘no’ from Kystrom’s government for an answer.

The Republic knew the Ministers were coming before we did. But rather than stay and defend the planet they’d made into a target, the Republic had taken their small force and fled. When the Ministers arrived at Kystrom, they found no resistance. They wiped my city, Itaka, off the map, and killed everyone in it save me and Benny. And after its largest city had turned to ashes, the planet had surrendered.