Exos: Before the War

"Above the emotion was that same clear, loud voice—a clarity of purpose rendering all else trivial. Emotions now were a luxury."

To think of a time before the war is to think of a fantasy, it seems to me now, to a time when we had the luxury of indifference, when choices weren’t existential, didn’t tear families apart. That was Exos then, a playground, where my children were to grow unmolested by the realities of their human past. Here we are haunted all over again, my fears the same fears of a trillion mothers preceding.

All told, we were still lucky. When the Trasp came to us, it wasn’t a sudden shock in the dead of night in the form of explosions and death, as it was with so many others. They arrived in an oddly shaped vessel we quickly absorbed the manner of, for war vessels were soon to predominate the space around us. The Trasp demanded access to our system’s political authority, knowing full well there was no one such authority in Garvin 8. That, they told us, was no longer acceptable. They’d be making specific demands of us, and there would be an authority to be held accountable, if for no better reason than to know whom to discuss consequences with should we fail to live up to their demands.

“Consequences” was a terrifying word to a collection of peoples with no means of defense and a population living overwhelmingly on cylinders orbiting the two planetary outposts of Garvin 8’s rocky inner worlds. To intentionally lay open the inner portions of our bulky homes to the vacuum of space was no major challenge for even that first Trasp warship. We’d naively relied upon our neutrality, distance, and peaceful nature, thinking that the burgeoning conflict couldn’t spread to us, out of the direct path as we were between Etterus and the Trasp Protectorate. Suddenly, after nearly a full year of rumblings, here they were; and here we were, a network of floating cans, ready to be shot out of the stars, little more than target practice, the only limiting factor the number of slugs the Trasp had carried for the occasion. That, and the possibility that we could do something for them more useful than cease to exist. So they dealt us demands instead of destruction.

For us, that was the first lesson of warfare: never destroy resources that could be more useful producing for your cause than no longer producing at all. This was the entire point of the Trasp demands—exclusivity. No longer were we to export resources to Dreeson’s or Hellenia before offering them to Trasp. They promised two percent above market cost on all products in exchange for right of first refusal. All official relations with Etterus, commercial or political, would cease immediately. When the alternative was destruction and death, it hardly seemed a choice, but there was no official body or person with the authority to make that choice on behalf of both settlements, which was to say nothing of the hundreds of individual cylinders in each group.

Realizing the state of political anarchy they’d found us in, the Trasp gave us three months to form a unified government and accept their terms, leaving the consequences unspoken. Then they departed.

The Hahn outpost, though neighbors, kept their political matters to themselves and were happy to have us on Exos do the same. Even cylinder to cylinder, there was no particular governing body established. That time had come.

None of us were political animals. That fact was what had brought us out of the four major civilizations of the Battery into the quiet of independent, commercial life. Most of us had deep-space qualifications, largely in mining, but hardly limited to that one enterprise. We had an abundance of Ag specialists, builders, traders, engineers, and bot handlers. We’d have remained well positioned to survive independently, if not for the want of fighters and power brokers.

Among the neophytes who went charging into that now-obvious vacuum was my husband Brian-David Bretton, whom everyone knew as BD, except for our two daughters who knew him as daddy. Nearly everyone was grateful BD did jump into the fray. Brian-David was well-respected, liked, certainly smart, and good looking, often too much so for his own good. BD was well-known on the Exos cylinders as a winner and a leader. In his younger years, he’d captained the Barth Foxes and led us to two Exos-wide football championships, winning one system-wide title. Though such a low-population system as ours didn’t boast professionals of the caliber found on Athos, Iophos, or Hellenia, our little Barth Foxes meant something to us and the rest of Exos. BD was a natural choice, and a popular one. It wasn’t merely loyalty that overrode the misgivings I had about BD being back in the spotlight again. I knew him better than anyone. Despite his personal flaws, he was clear-headed under pressure, calculating, smart—even ruthless whenever he saw an opportunity an opponent didn’t yet recognize. If any among us was going to see the field more clearly than BD, I certainly didn’t know who it was. If there was ever a time for him to step back into the limelight, this had to be it. We discussed it for several days before I gave him my blessing, my encouragement even.

Our two settlements formed the first exploratory panel within forty-eight hours. Both urgency and the people demanded a near-immediate response. Our group of self-sufficient engineers and skilled tradesfolk suffered none of the counterproductive infighting common to political processes on larger systems. A charter was drafted from a template and individuated with the help of AI strategists. Based on population distribution, six representatives were to be chosen from Hahn—five from the cylinders and one from the planetary outpost; while Exos would have five total reps, again with one from the planetary outpost and four from the cylinders. BD was elected with sixty-two percent of the vote in our district. Expediency was preferred to a thorough campaign; otherwise, some of the political problems I came to pose would likely have come out as candidates were being vetted. Four days after the Trasp ultimatum, the eleven representatives met for the first time to discuss the Garvin 8 system’s response.

At that point, the mood, at least in the Barth cylinder, where BD and I made our home, was that acceptance of the Trasp terms was a foregone conclusion. I suspected that was only because the shock of the situation had led to a strange collective paralysis—a near complete unwillingness to explore alternative paths forward. It wasn’t just my Etteran background that informed my strong belief that a robust debate needed to be held, it was the principle of cherishing our independence for so long and then rushing to ratify Trasp subservience at the first threat without even a hearing. I’d have felt the same way had the warship been Etteran.

When BD arrived home to Barth following two straight days on Hahn where the talks were being held, I did my best to absorb what little he revealed of the proceedings. I’d resolved while he was away to try not to impose my viewpoint. But when it became clear to me that the hearings were trending more toward formality than debate, I waited until we’d put the girls to bed before asking him whether alternatives were being discussed. He glared at me.

“Nearly three straight days away from home discussing nothing else, Minka, and the first minute we have alone together you pull me right back to it?”

I sighed and tried to get him to make eye contact with me. “It’s only the outpost’s future—our girls’ future—BD. You didn’t think you’d get off that easy with me?”

“No,” he said. “Of all people, I figured you’d have something contrarian to say.”

He got up from the sofa and offered me a glass of wine. I declined and he helped himself. I could tell by the way he poured the wine he was upset with me, and I knew him well enough to know why. I let him stew on it for nearly a minute in silence after he returned and sat beside me. The longer I sat quietly, the more frustrated he became.

“It’s a serious responsibility,” he said. “I take it seriously.”

“That’s why the people selected you, love.”

“I am their representative,” he said, “not ours.”

“There it is.”

“Yes, there it is. Five minutes of quiet time alone and you couldn’t wait a minute more to put me in an ethical conflict.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Please, BD, tell me about your ethical conflict merely discussing the most consequential decision in the history of this settlement with your wife, the mother of your daughters.”

He shook his head and sighed.

“No, please,” I said.

“We agreed not to discuss the meetings with friends and family. The rumor mill is bad enough already.”

“The rumors I’ve heard say you’ve all but agreed to the Trasp terms.”

“And they’re rumors. There’s much to be determined.”

“Have you determined when there’ll be a public hearing, BD? Because if I don’t have a say here, I’ll make sure I have one where my thoughts can be heard.”

“I appreciate that you were supportive of me, Minka, after everything, and I assure you, every point we discuss is with the security of the system at the foremost of our minds, but you must appreciate that even if you made a compelling case against this arrangement, I couldn’t be the one to champion it.”

“Your Etteran wife?”

“Exactly. My Etteran wife.”

“But I’m not really Etteran. That should stand for something. And I certainly wouldn’t suggest we ally with them.”

“You’re going to tell me anyway, Minka, you may as well now.”

“All I want is an assurance that we’ve explored other options.”

“You’re presuming we haven’t, but please, I’ll listen if you have an idea we haven’t considered.”

“Hellenia and Dreeson’s, BD.”

“Aren’t getting involved. They’ve pledged neutrality.”

“As did we. Until we had our hands forced,” I said. “Dreeson’s rings are vulnerable.”

“Are you seriously suggesting the Trasp would open a front with Dreeson’s and Hellenia while fighting Etterus as well.”

“No. What I’m suggesting is that Dreeson’s and Hellenia would have cause to feel a lot more secure with the Lettered systems and all the independent outposts as neutral, peaceful onlookers with their backing rather than having the entirety of the Battery erupting into conflict. Let them back a strong line, far from the Eastern Battery, a buffer. If we could persuade them to back the independent systems, it would focalize the conflict, and they and everyone else in the sector would be safer for it.”

I could tell by the way he bristled in silence for nearly half a minute that it was a position that hadn’t been considered in all those hours of meetings on Hahn, which was exactly why there should have been open hearings. I told him as much when he’d finished musing over the idea for long enough to turn and look at me.

“They’ve been clear about their intention to stay out of the conflict.”

“Then we convince them of the truth, BD. They won’t stay clear. This demand from Trasp is already an act of aggression against the Dreeson’s. The lesser risk by far will be in militarizing and backing the independence of the smaller systems.”

“And what of Trasp?” he said. “How do they react when they find out the first thing we did was run off to Dreeson’s and Hellenia for their protection?”

“We’re still more useful to Trasp alive. Is the fear of their overreaction really greater than the real chance we could retain our independence and avoid war?”

He stroked his chin.

“You have quite a head for this, Minka. Perhaps it should have been you in the room this week.”

“Nobody wanted my head in there, love,” I said. “They wanted your head.”

“A figurehead, you mean?”

“They did get a better-looking head and figure,” I said, stroking the hair above his ear.

“You might be the only one who believes that, love. I’d certainly debate you on that point.”

BD was correct about one major point that I was totally unprepared for. My Etteran surname—Remera—was now an infamous Etteran surname, and I had been here, in the safety of our home, surrounded by our close friends and neighbors. In public, debate was no longer just the sensible thing free peoples did. Even if it wasn’t meant to do so, it signaled more than simple diligence and thoroughness of thought. People were picking sides, and this was not Parsons DSE versus Barth Foxes. This was existential. Questioning the plan meant something now. And even though nothing had been decided, everyone was already behaving as though it had.

Brian-David was correct about perceptions. I could not be seen to champion my proposition, both because of my heritage and because of the perception of nepotism it would surely project. Nor could BD advance the proposal for the same reasons. We would need another champion, a fearless one, and in the moment, courage seemed in short supply.

BD departed for Hahn first thing the following morning for another three days, promising to explore the idea of petitioning the Dreeson’s with a few of the sympathetic delegates.

With Brian-David’s renewed public profile, I’d been wary of stepping out beyond our neighborhood, where he was well-liked publicly and respected for the friend and neighbor he was in our small district. Barth was a large residential cylinder, though, and though most of my memories from his football days were of overwhelming public support, I still had vivid memories of the few bad incidents and the weight of the public eye. This time, too, it was politics, not sport. But I also knew I couldn’t model a life lived in fear to the girls, so I decided to take them out for lunch at the food court by the south aperture. It had an excellent view of the planet in the viewing gallery and the benefit of a meal I didn’t have to prepare at the restaurants. What I was unprepared for was the entirely different tenor of the public gaze. There was a certain restrained politeness to it, on behalf of the children I guessed, but the mood was almost palpably dark—something bubbling beneath people’s spirit far beyond the anxiety and concern for the fate of our sleepy little corner of the galaxy. As we sat doing our best to gaze out at Exos and at the stars, even the girls—who were far too young to understand what was happening around them—they sensed that the energy of the place was wrong, darkening, unwelcome. It was a very quiet lunch.

It was a long walk from our apartment to the aperture, and I’d brought the stroller for Bella because of it. On the way back, I let Trunni push her, and I found myself scanning the crowd like I imagined a security agent must while guarding a high-profile client, anticipating danger with each swivel of the head. Barth had never felt other than a safe and loving home to us. Something had changed that I didn’t yet have the sense for.  

I talked to BD very briefly that night on a call when he got out of session. He didn’t have much energy left after their long day. Mostly, he said, they were listening to concerns from the different factions—mining representatives, transport, the growers. Fears were building that once Trasp had their exclusivity at gunpoint, their demands would grow as the war deepened. The representatives discussed our growth potential and realistic benchmarks for delivery. Then one of the miners asked the question nobody had dared to ask before: if the Trasp will take our metals at gunpoint, what’s to stop them from demanding we make war machines for them, or even worse: what’s to stop them from conscripting our children if they grow starved for fighters or skilled laborers? Those questions had derailed the entire evening, BD said.

“Valid questions,” I told him.

He was quiet. He knew where I stood. Unfortunately, he’d yet to make significant progress swaying anyone to take up our position. The common response was that we were far too distant from Dreeson’s system for Athos and Iophos to ever stick out their necks so far.

“That’s my point to begin with, BD,” I said, “to move the line so far they never feel threatened.”

“I understand,” he said. “I’m trying to make the case. I love you, Minka. I need to go. Kiss the girls for me. I gotta go.”

It was an abrupt end to our brief time to speak that day. I didn’t even get a chance to tell him about lunch with the girls, my concerns. I had the sense there was more, something more. But he was gone so fast.

The following day, I contacted Michelle Almega. She was among the few people on all of Exos who shared a similar background to me, having been educated on Etterus before moving out to Garvin 8 with her former spouse. She was originally from Hellenia. Initially, for reasons I wasn’t ready to admit were real, Michelle was reluctant to meet me for lunch. Finally, when I couldn’t take the hint, she just said it.

“I don’t want to be seen with you, Minka. It’s not that I have any suspicions about you—your husband is the rep for the whole district. But the two of us together, it wouldn’t look good for either of us.”

“Michelle?”

“Minka, this is getting serious.”

“Come to the house then. We don’t have to go out.”

She sighed, and I waited through a long uncomfortable pause before she finally agreed to meet at the apartment.

She appeared that afternoon wearing a hooded shirt that hung nearly halfway over her eyes, and she stepped inside the second I opened the door. Michelle explained that she’d been receiving undue attention from friends and colleagues about her background on Etterus, and that suspicion, she feared, would only flare up further if she was seen with an Etteran. People were talking about me, and apparently there was some resentment toward BD for not being more open about my background before the vote, as though we should have anticipated their totally unwarranted paranoia about my loyalties.

“That’s the word for it,” Michelle said. “Paranoia. People are looking over their shoulders, looking for Trasp informers, Etteran spies. That’s how it happened at Veronia, they say.”

“Nobody knows that,” I said.

“I know, Minka, but try telling a mob of paranoid people they’re being unreasonable.”

“Somebody has to.”

“You first.”

“We have to live here, Michelle. These are our friends and neighbors.”

Something about the way she cast her eyes to the side made me think she had other plans. I inquired with a long look.

“Hellenia,” she said. “I won’t work for them, Minka. Not them. I’m not the only one either.”

“Really? How many?”

“I know of ten or fifteen on Barth alone. I have a cousin in Gracia, I’m going to stay with his family until I find a place, just until the conflict is over. I hope there’s something to come back to, Minka, I really do. I love Exos, or at least what it was. What I see here now, I don’t recognize.”

“I know we don’t see each other much anymore, but I’ll be sorry to see you go.”

“If you and BD ever need to get out,” she said, “we can get you out.”

I laughed. “BD and I can’t leave. He’s the district rep.”

She shrugged. “Offer stands, Minka.”

Michelle stayed for a few more hours and played with the girls. When she left, she hugged me as though she never expected to see me again. It seemed surreal.

The following day, we stayed in. The visit with Michelle and the walk to the aperture had left me very much unsettled, to the point I thought I should discuss our safety with BD before I went out with the girls again. Genuine violence was extremely rare on Exos, but as Michelle had made clear, Exos was changing. I’d felt it too.

When I spoke to BD again the following evening, he told me he’d had some traction with one of the key members of the commission. I didn’t know for certain in the moment, but I had a sense for which of the other ten it was.

“It’s very tenuous, Minka, but I suspect we can get it discussed with Dreeson’s. We’re going to need to set up everything properly. Perfect encryption and assurances of secrecy on their end. Our people are very wary of this getting back to the Trasp. Darcia’s father can get us in touch with people in the government on Athos. And then it’ll be a few weeks before we expect to hear anything back from them. In the meantime, we’re going to have to prepare to deal with the Trasp.”

It was better news than a firm no, but it sounded like a long shot. “It does make sense to be prepared for both eventualities,” I told him.

“I’ve invited Darcia back to Exos, Minka. I want you to meet her. I think you’ll like her. She’s got a great mind for this political stuff. Just like you.”

“Sure,” I said.

I had been correct about BD’s ally on the council. It was always going to be her.

When Brian-David arrived home from Hahn the following evening, he introduced us to Darcia Martí. Before her election to represent the Hahn outpost, she was the youngest lead engineer on their mining service. She’d come from a family of prodigious mining industrialists from Athos whose many branches reached far out across the Battery and back to Athos again. The Martí family wielded political power nearly as foundational as the metal structures upon which the trillions in Dreeson’s made their home. For most, I imagine, it was difficult to see that level of depth in Darcia, for outwardly she seemed a sharp, beautiful young woman, but she gave very little away. To me, she was instantly too familiar, a far more dangerous shade of old troubles long buried. I could tell that even socially, maybe especially socially, she was calculating and brilliant.

The girls were just finishing up dinner when they arrived, and it struck me that Darcia was always the perfect distance from us. The girls were both thrilled to have daddy home, of course, and excited to have this new visitor. Darcia sensed whenever a step further forward would have seemed intrusive, and she had a way of standing right on the cusp of awkwardness or overstepping, watching our family, smiling. She was pleasant and complimentary and patient when BD and I took turns over the course of the hour required to put two excited young children to bed.

“Lovely wine,” she said when I traded places with BD as we put Trunni down.

“Glad you think so,” I said. “I wouldn’t have guessed it’d be any better than what you have on Hahn.”

“Miners aren’t exactly known for our high standards when it comes to food and drink.”

“Even one from your family?”

“The extended family, that’s a different story, Minka. I was born here, though. My people are Hahn roughnecks.”

It was an obvious lie. Darcia Martí was no roughneck.

There was a long, awkward silence, and during it, I felt compelled to get up and help myself to a glass of wine as well. By the time I’d joined her again, she sensed that I wanted to know about Athos. I didn’t even ask the question. She just started talking about it.

“The Athosians are of the strong belief that the independents are too fragmented to risk alliance building. If there were any unity among the Letters and the smaller systems, it might be a different story, but the reality for them is that defending their own system with a united front and overwhelming force is a safer bet than stepping between two warring empires. They see isolationism as the only play.”

“It’s a mistake,” I said.

“From our perspective, perhaps. Their strategists and AIs game the situation from their position. They don’t foresee any conditions under which either warring faction aggresses against them, not so long as they’re engaged with each other.”

“What do any of us know about war?” I said.

Darcia shrugged in a way that suggested she knew more than she was willing to share.

“So we just roll over for Trasp then?” I said.

“We still have a few more people to talk to and a few more cards to play,” she said. “My family has more influence on Hellenia than in Dreeson’s. Nothing’s settled yet.”

Just then BD came into the room.

“We were just discussing Dreeson’s,” she informed Brian-David as he poured himself a glass of wine. “I know it’s not the news any of us wanted.”

I found myself struggling to hold my tongue as BD sat beside me, stretching his arm over my neck. He knew me well enough that he could sense nearly every layer of emotion bubbling beneath the polite face I was wearing.

“We don’t have a lot of information, Minka, at least not good information,” BD said. “The fighting has picked up out by Berea Point and the inner Kappas. Veronia, from what we hear, is all but obliterated. It won’t be long before the fighting spreads throughout the Letters.”

“BD tells me you have family out there,” Darcia said.

“Don’t we all?”

She conceded as much with a look.

“You’ve spent time on Etterus?” Darcia asked me.

“I have. University.”

“What do you make of all this?” she asked.

“This madness? I don’t recognize it. The Etteran people? I know them far too well to believe they’ve chosen this path for themselves.”

“It seems they did, though,” she said.

“Not everything is as it seems.”

“You want to believe the best in them,” BD said.

“And you want to forget that we’re making deals with the very people who came to us issuing ultimatums for our lives at gunpoint.”

“It’s an ugly business,” BD said.

The rest was just small talk. We sat and sipped a few more glasses of wine before BD and I were too exhausted to continue being polite any longer. Darcia, though, looked as though she could have gone on all night smiling pleasantly in our living room.  That she could play politics all day long and still negotiate our family’s household so effortlessly baffled me. I found every second exhausting.

I went off to bed and waited for BD to get her settled in the guest room. When he came into the bedroom a few minutes later, he stood just inside the doorway. It was almost like we could read each other so well we didn’t need to talk anymore.

“I’m exhausted,” he said. “Can we wait until she’s gone, Minka?”

“When is she leaving?”

“In the morning.”

I shook my head. “What needs to be said?”

“An awful lot, Minka,” he said. “Just not tonight.”

I lay down and rolled over. It wasn’t the first time we’d slept with our backs to each other. It might have been the first time I was tired enough to sleep well despite the anger. I dreamt about the birds on Hellenia; only, they weren’t robotic: they were real birds, feather and bone, a heartbeat. I dreamt I held one in my hands, terrified I would crush its delicate body, and when I threw it into the air it flapped its wings and flew away.

In the morning, Darcia took coffee, but she didn’t eat. She insisted that she had a shuttle to catch.

As she was leaving, she knelt to say goodbye to Trunni, who’d taken a liking to Darcia’s easy manner and pretty smile. Darcia brushed her hair in just such a way with her thumb that I felt a pull in my gut at the base of my spine. It took every ounce of self control to keep from shouting at her to take her hands off my child.

Then, there we all were again, Brian-David, me, and the children. It was a few hours before the girls went down for a nap. The fight, if you could call it that, was hardly a discussion. I didn’t need to hear much from BD. I knew that woman was lying about Athos, the same way I just knew I wouldn’t have her touching my children. She intended to do nothing for us, for Exos, for her Hahn roughnecks. I knew she would be gone the second it got uncomfortable here in Garvin 8. BD didn’t seem to know that. He was too busy professing his fidelity to me, to the girls, to our family.

“We need Darcia,” he told me as soon as he thought I believed him. “If we’re going to have any chance at gaining traction with Hellenia, Minka, we need her family’s connections.”

He seemed to believe it. I couldn’t believe he did. He happened to be standing in our kitchen in the same spot Michelle was when she’d told me she was leaving Exos. I had this sudden clear moment of dread. I had the sense that BD wasn’t particularly clueless among our representatives, he was genuinely representative of them. We had all been so perfectly unprepared for everything that had come our way, for what was coming—the Trasp, the war.

“This is our home, Minka,” BD professed. “We’re going to fight for it.”

He wasn’t accustomed to my being speechless. Whenever I’d been angry in the past, I’d always let him know it. I wasn’t angry, though. I was thinking. I could tell my reticence scared him.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to Exos,” he told me.

I smiled and let him leave it at that. In the week that followed, with BD away on Hahn, I began to reach out personally to anyone I could think to talk to on Athos, on Hellenia. I still had friends from university scattered throughout the Battery. I couldn’t shake that image I had in my mind of Michelle saying aloud what I’d felt in my heart. I would not work for Trasp. I wouldn’t have my daughters grow up under them.

The few times the girls and I left the apartment that week, I had the sense that we were walking in a foreign place. None of it had happened overnight, though. There’d been tensions we’d ignored. Then, well over a year before, there was the disaster at Veronia and the posturing, the talk of war. And we’d looked at each other as though nothing was wrong, hoping. And still we were hoping. All the while, any of us with eyes to see knew there was something dark at the heart of this war that was so pure and unspeakably wrong that none of us even comprehended what it was.

As the days and then weeks ticked by, the tension only grew in every cylinder circling Exos. People became increasingly anxious as the treaty went unratified. The miners especially understood what it meant to be a tributary state to a larger power. Many of them had come to the Garvin 8 system to escape the grind of steady quotas imposed on contractors by Athos and Hellenia, and those gluttonous consumers only demanded metals to build and trade. None of us had any mind for the demand that would be leveled upon us in the service of destruction.

 BD called nightly with updates. He was trying. He was also lying to me about Darcia Martí, who, I was fairly certain, was lying about everything, especially her intention to lead Hahn and Exos through the war. One of my Etteran friends on Athos saw the situation with clearer eyes than anyone in Garvin 8, and she saw because she looked at Darcia’s own family.

“They’re consolidating metals here faster than at any time post-construction,” she told me. “The Athosians are arming. Quietly. But they’re putting together the most devastating fighting force in the history of humankind. Business has never been better for that Martí girl’s family.”

By the final weeks before the Trasp were slated to return, I’d given up on the hope that Athos, Hellenia, or anyone else would come to our aid. With foresight and organization, they could have saved hundreds of settlements and billions of lives. But it became clear that the gigantic bureaucracies Dreeson’s was famous for were churning nearly as fast as they could to react to the developing war between Trasp and Etterus. To ask them to be proactive was to ask the impossible. It was another fantasy, fueled by the naïve hope that we should have meant something to them, when in reality we were a column on a spreadsheet, X amount of metal and raw materials among thousands of other trading partners: not worth rearranging the entire sector’s defense structure over. My hope now was to salvage what remained of our family.

By that time, Michelle was getting established with her cousin on Hellenia. She made it clear that the offer to join her there stood, and I told her that a few weeks earlier it had seemed laughable that I would leave Exos. Now, with the Trasp approaching, it seemed far likelier than I’d have ever imagined. I needed to see BD first, though. We needed to talk about our daughters.

BD and the rest of the representatives had been in session on Hahn for weeks, trying to settle the terms of the system’s surrender. No one was honest enough to frame it that way, though, and because of that, they either weren’t yet aware of the reality that the subjugated don’t dictate the terms of their own servitude, or they weren’t yet ready to tell the public this hard fact. BD didn’t talk as though it had quite sunk in for him. It struck me that they were straining to put the system in some satisfying order to the internal factions on Hahn and Exos. When the Trasp arrived, though, I knew they would simply dictate their own terms, and certainly, they wouldn’t be written to satisfy our people’s needs.

I told BD I needed to come visit him. He insisted he’d come home.

“No,” I said. “We need to talk outside the apartment.”

BD got quiet.

“I know you’re upset that I’ve been away so much,” he said.

I knew what he was going to say.

“And I did encourage you to run as our representative, Brian-David. I did. I do regret that, but probably not for the reasons you might think.”

“How do you know what I think, Minka?”

“I’m coming to see you. I’ll be on Hahn tomorrow.”

That afternoon, I took the girls down to the aperture again. They were beginning to feel penned up and were growing antsy. Ironically, I was starting to feel freer than I had in weeks. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel the emotions I knew I should have, but the existential reality of the Trasp gave me a clarity of purpose that dulled everything else to a chorus of whispers while in front of me, there was a single voice, a clear, certain voice calling me forth toward a single purpose. I was unafraid.

The girls and I ate lunch amidst the whispers, louder as they continued to grow. “Etteran, Etteran.” They bothered me no longer, and because I was calm, so were the girls.

After we’d finished eating, we stood in the darkened observation room overlooking the planet, gazing at Exos and the stars as the whole of the cosmos spun. Trunni kept looking up at me sensing something meaningful about the moment, but she was too young to understand what. Bella was too young to do anything but wonder at the spinning planet, how it floated out there, up and around again.

“Go back to Etterus!” someone shouted from behind one of the benches along the causeway.

“Shh!” a woman’s voice scolded him. “Awful man,” there were some other muffled words I couldn’t make out, followed by “children.”

I didn’t turn around, just looked down at the girls. I couldn’t keep from smiling. Our beloved Exos—even at their worst the people here still had a decency about them.

I still had a sitter I knew we could trust, so the following afternoon, I left the girls at home and set off for Hahn. I dressed much the same way Michelle had the afternoon she’d come to visit two months prior. All kinds of rumors were circulating. Some of them about BD Bretton’s Etteran wife, I’m sure. Probably some about him and the single, young representative from Hahn. Most of the rumors were nonsense, per usual. Not all of them were. I kept to the corners and watched my surroundings. It wasn’t so much fear as vigilance.

I sat by the window on the brief trip over to Hahn, the majority of the flight burning at low sub-light on both ends of the jump. It made for inspiring views of our little system, Exos with her rocky red-browns and Hahn, her bright, white-white glow like the pictures of the moon of Earth. All those little spinning cylinders where most of us lived. I saw two visions of each—one, as Garvin 8 was then, as my memories would always keep it in my heart: Hahn and Exos, before the war. The second vision wasn’t of flame, but of the floating husks of cylinders blown open to space, destroyed too fast to even burn. The outposts, the Trasp wouldn’t need to destroy, for the people who hadn’t fled by then would surrender, or they would die of exposure, running off into the arid landscape when the Trasp strike bots came down to clear the city. This horrible vision was a gift, odd as it may sound. It was like knowing the future.

I had the same dual understanding of my situation with Brian-David. I knew I should have been enraged. After swearing on all that was most sacred to us to never let it happen again, here we were, at the most critical hour of our lives, being pulled apart again by his worst impulses. But above the emotion was that same clear, loud voice—a clarity of purpose rendering all else trivial. Emotions now were a luxury. I could feel it later.

I met BD in the suite where the representatives were being housed. It was perhaps the nicest room I’d ever seen in the entire Garvin 8 system. He kissed me on the cheek and invited me to sit, and he began by apologizing for being away from us for so long.

“BD, I hope you don’t feel as though I pushed you into this. That’s what I fear more than anything, that you’ll stay here to the bitter end out of loyalty to the people we both love here.”

“What do you mean stay, Minka? Where would we go?”

“I know about you and the Martí girl, Brian-David. Don’t debase us both any further by lying, BD. I can feel it.”

His head dropped and he sighed.

“You don’t need to say anything. I need you to know I do love you. I just see you in a different light. I told you last time, I wasn’t going to go through this again.”

“Minka, I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you, to hurt the girls.”

“I didn’t come here for an apology, BD.”

I didn’t cry this time. There were no histrionics, neither from me nor him. We took a deep breath together.

“When they come,” I said. “I cannot be here. Our own neighbors are already cursing me for my Etteran name. I won’t have my daughters grow up in fear or be taught to resent their own mother.”

“Where will you go?”

“Michelle Almega has arranged passage for me and the girls to Hellenia. We’re going to stay with her until I get word it’s safe to head toward the Letters. If the fighting is still far back, we’ll try to get out to my parents.”

“It’s best the girls be somewhere safe,” he said.

“Best you be too, BD. I’d love it if our daughters still had their father when they get to be our age.”

“Nobody thinks it’s going to be as bad here as you seem to, Minka. The Trasp aren’t interested in fighting us. They just want us to supply resources.”

“Please don’t stay here to die for these people,” I told him. “They wouldn’t die for you.”

“I took this position to ensure no one has to die. I’m not going to abandon everyone before the Trasp even arrive.”

“You need to come home with me tonight,” I told him. “Your daughters need to kiss their father goodbye.”

He sighed.

“It wo—” BD stopped.

He almost said it. I knew him so well I knew what he was going to say, about what it would look like to the people on both settlements to have his wife run off, the signal it would send. Then he almost apologized for thinking it.

“What time’s the next shuttle?” he said instead.

Some wounds hurt so completely you cannot properly feel them. I think the mind does things to us we cannot know. The mechanisms of self-preservation. These scars we carry don’t make us any better, just different. How untouched we were then, such joyous creatures. In the years that follow I will remember that. There was an Exos before the war, and there will be one again.