Page 245 of Reaper Said Mine

The exchange would amuse me on another day. Today, it only proves how quickly everyone adapts to atrocity when survival requires cooperation with those they dislike.

Another report arrives.

Alliance intervention plans now include Bravax as evidence of “regional conflict spillover.”

The map grows.

The war feeds itself.

Sometime after that, I leave the command center because Skahar threatens to sedate me with a stolen medical injector if I do not step away for five minutes. I tell Vakka she has command. She tells me she already knew. Krell tries to rise in respect and nearly falls over from exhaustion, so I order him to sit before he embarrasses us both.

Skahar follows me into the corridor.

Guyver’s inner spine smells of smoke and shelter air. The walls are patched with fresh sealant where microfractures tried to become graves. Emergency crews move past us in stained gear, carrying pressure foam tanks, burned-out relay boards, and sealed bags whose contents no one names in corridors where children might hear. From the lower levels comes the murmur of displaced civilians packed into temporary quarters: crying babies, coughing elders, shouted instructions, nervous laughter, the scrape of crates, the thin melody of someone singing an old Reaper tune badly but with conviction.

I stop near an observation alcove overlooking the market ring.

It has changed beyond recognition.

Stalls are shuttered. Bright banners hang torn and half-rolled. The fountain in the center has been drained and converted into a water distribution point. Families sleep on mats between cargo stacks. Reaper warriors carry food crates instead of weapons. Coalition medics work beside station healers under the watchful eyes of civilians who are too tired to despise help properly. A little girl with gray Reaper skin and short bone spurs along her brow shares a ration biscuit with a human boy whose arm is sealed in medical foam.

My chest aches.

“This is what I wanted to protect,” I say.

Skahar stands beside me. “Yes.”

“I thought revenge would build walls around it.”

“Revenge builds many things.”

I look at him.

He keeps his gaze on the market. “It builds fear. It builds obedience. It builds reputation. It builds the sort of songs young fools sing when they have not yet buried enough friends to understand the verses.”

“And walls?”

“Sometimes.”

The old bastard will not grant me easy absolution. I love him for it and resent him with equal sincerity.

Below us, a Coalition medic kneels to examine an elderly Reaper’s burned hand. The old woman bares her teeth at him. He patiently offers a strip of numbing gel. She snatches it, applies it herself, and makes a rude gesture that clearly transcends species. The medic appears relieved to have survived diplomacy.

“I keep thinking of my colony,” I say.

Skahar’s posture changes, almost imperceptibly.

I rarely speak of that place. The refugee settlement where the Combine sent supplies too late, too little, and too publicly. The place where tents tore in Badlands storms, ration packs spoiled, fever moved from shelter to shelter, and children learned to stop crying because crying used too much strength. The place where I survived long enough to be found among bones.

Skahar’s voice lowers. “Why?”

“Because I hated the galaxy for looking away.”

“It deserved hatred.”

“Yes.”

The market blurs slightly beneath my gaze, though I do not let tears form. Reapers have many fluids. Pride is the most useless of them, but it clings.