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She likes that “He is an effective operator, to be certain He presented me with a hideous desert rodent and said nawed the flesh off my calves, nose, and cheeks before it split its storaded”
She looks over at me “Don’t you see?”
I frown and shake my head
“Together you and I…we’ve broken worlds Who can do e have done? What our men have done? Yet we put ourselves at the mercy of rats We free them Protect them Die for them And e turn our backs, they unveil their little teeth and gnaw at us one bite at a time And e turn to face the hasn’t overn their own appetite How can they govern themselves?”
“You sound like one of therowl
“Is a doctor wrong when he tells you what you don’t want to hear? We don’t have a, this planet would e, the Republic’s fleet would already be here” She looks to the sky “Where is it, Darrow? Where is our demokracy?”
My hand drifts to the holodrop in my pocket The small teardrop of es again, to drink in her last words to me, her face, the lines that web around her eyes, to somehow evoke the warmth of her skin and breath But I fear to do so all the same Sixty-five million kilometers of space separate Luna and Mercury at current orbit An even wider gulf divides me from her I do not doubt her But I doubt she will do what must be done Orion hit the truth of it She fears too much to see her father and brother in the mirror to dissolve the Senate I know she thinks her virtue is contagious But I fear it merely emboldens the covetous nature in mortals of weaker substance
“My wife prole the senators,” I say without conviction “That she would bring the armada”
“Then why did you design Operations Voyager Cloak and Tartarus? Why not just wait for salvation?”
I take my hand off the holodrop “Because hope is an opiate, not a plan”
“Agreed So how er can you hope, absent any evidence, that the people of the Republic are good? That they will finally start pulling their oeight?”
When I do not answer, she stands, putting a hand on my shoulder in empathy As Sevro became softer, I found solace in Orion We have always been alike, particularly in our growing suspicions of derumble over a bottle of whiskey Never in a screed like this Her doubt troubles me, and I don’t kno to ease it when the same doubts echo unspoken inside me
“How long will it take to sync your Blues?” I ask
“About ninety minutes for full fidelity”
“I’ll handle Harnassus today” Her lips curl at his na I need is you two clawing each other’s eyes out You just sync up and get back to quarters You need rest” She walks away like a petulant child I stand “I”