Page 45 of Reaper Said Mine

"She is a reporter."

"Yes," he says. "And sometimes a reporter is a blade with a conscience. Those are hard to hold safely."

I leave before his worry can become prophecy.

My private chamber sits three levels above the Blood Hall, behind two guarded doors and one corridor lined with trophies I keep mostly to irritate visitors. The room itself is quieter than people expect. There is a broad desk made from salvaged hull plating, a tactical wall, a low table, shelves of old weapons, and a viewport looking down toward the inner docking lanes. I do not keep soft chairs because soft chairs encourage soft conversations. I do keep a cracked ceramic cup from my first command, a strip of scorched home-ship banner sealed under glass, and the old captain’s knife Skahar gave me the night he stepped aside.

The door seals behind me, muting the station into a low vibration felt through the floor. The air here is cooler, touched by metal, oiled leather, and the bitter brew one of my aides leaves for me despite my repeated threats to space the machine that produces it. I stand at the desk longer than necessary before activating the archive packet.

Ursa Ramone appears first as an adult in the profile image I have already seen: red hair, green eyes, steady mouth, controlled expression. Then the file shifts to Horus IV, twelve years earlier, and the girl on the screen is all angles and terror held under glass.

The footage shakes at first.

Buildings burn under a sky turned brown by smoke. The street is broken open in places, showing pipes, wires, and the ruined understructure of an ordinary settlement dragged into history without permission. Sirens wail somewhere far away, distorted by explosions that make the image jump and blur. People run across the frame hunched low, carrying bags, children, one another. A body lies near a toppled vendor stall with one hand open on the pavement. The hand is small.

A child’s voice speaks from behind the recording.

"This is Ursa Ramone. I am on Eleventh Street near the east market. Alliance soldiers are firing from the civic office roof. Coalition forces are moving between the transit station and the school. Civilians are still in the street."

Her voice trembles on the first sentence, then steadies.

I do not sit.

On-screen, a blast punches through the upper floors of an apartment block. Glass rains down in glittering sheets. Someone screams for a medic. The girl holding the compad ducks behind a burned transport, breathing hard enough that the microphone catches it. She does not stop recording.

"The people in the blue shelter markings are not armed," young Ursa says. "They are civilians. I can see children with them. The soldiers can see them too."

My hands curl slowly against the edge of the desk.

The footage cuts to another segment. She is inside a dark interior space now, perhaps a shop or storage room. Dust floats through a beam of emergency light. Her face appears briefly when the compad angle slips, streaked with soot, eyes too wide, mouth pressed tight before she turns the lens back toward the street.

"My mother told me to stay low," she says. "I am staying low. I am recording because if the feed gets out, somebody will know they are shooting where families live."

The next explosion is close enough to overload the audio.

The screen whites out.

When the image returns, she is coughing. The compad lies sideways for several seconds, showing only the floor, broken glass, and a smear of blood near her knee. Then her hand enters the frame. Small fingers. Shaking. She picks up the device.

"I am still here," she says.

The words are plain, but they strike harder than a scream.

I have heard warriors boast through wounds. I have heard captains curse while their ships split apart. I have heard Reaper songs rise over childbirth, battle, burial, and the long grief of no homeworld left to mourn properly. Courage wears many shapes. Sometimes it is huge and loud and armed. Sometimes it is a child crouched in smoke, telling the galaxy what it has done.

The footage moves again.

She names units. She describes insignias. She corrects herself when she is uncertain. She says when she cannot confirm something. She refuses to turn rumor into fact even while the world dies around her. That detail lands deeper than I expect. Fear has not made her sloppy. Grief has not made her theatrical. She is twelve years old, surrounded by fire, and she is already more disciplined than half the diplomats crawling through my station.

A sound comes from the recording that I understand before the subtitles process it.

A woman calling a child’s name.

Ursa freezes. The lens points toward the street, but the image wobbles. Her breathing changes. The woman calls again, hoarse and desperate. The child behind the compad whispers, "Mama?"

I reach toward the console to stop the file.

I do not stop it.