Chapter 9: A Separatist night

  Personal archive, Unpublished Note By Saphira Dom.

  Three years before the first missile fell on Tau Ceti IV, the unthinkable happened in bureaucratic silence and behind closed doors: fifteen societies, with incompatible legal systems, competing economies, and nearly opposite traditions, signed the same adhesion document. They called it the Separatist Union, as if the name itself could disguise the fragility of the agreement.

  Historians aligned with the Universal Government rushed to minimize the phenomenon. They reduced it to a predictable reaction: peripheral colonies resenting taxes, aging local elites incapable of adapting to “progress,” regional fanatics clinging to identities the central government had already declared obsolete. But even within that condescending reading, there was something they struggled to explain: how do you convince cultures that don’t even share the same concept of “victory” to align under a common cause?

  On Balmora, triumph is measured in spilled blood and physical endurance.

  On Triforia, it’s measured in production percentages and access to trade routes.

  On the Kavos rings, victory simply means surviving another rotation without being “relocated” by a decree from Klynos.

  In the agrarian colonies of Disterios, winning meant that children inherited the same land as their parents, unaltered by bureaucratic maps.

  And the list goes on: the floating cities of Preta, the industrial sanctuaries of Helion, the mining enclaves of the Vela Belts… each one of those societies had different reasons to despise the Universal Government. The extraordinary thing is that Devouir managed to make them despise the same enemy, at the same time, just enough to sign together.

  Official epic paints him as a visionary. They say he “listened to forgotten peoples” and “built bridges where others saw only abysses.” That’s the version printed in school manuals and recited during the Veroras Pact ceremonies. Reality was far less romantic, and far more effective.

  Devouir didn’t build bridges: he identified open wounds and pressed on them with surgical precision.

  When he visited Balmora, he didn’t speak of freedom; he spoke of humiliation, reminding them of the treaties that forced their warriors to serve as cannon fodder in Government campaigns in exchange for cultural “recognition” that never arrived. In Triforia, his message was pure pragmatism: numbers, projections, balance sheets showing that extraction taxes made it impossible to compete with Klynos-approved conglomerates.

  His genius wasn’t in finding a shared ideology.

  It was in accepting that no shared ideology was necessary.

  While the Universal Government obsessed over imposing a single narrative of progress, Devouir did the opposite: he allowed each society to keep believing in its own story, so long as they were willing to share an enemy. Not a dream. Not a project. Not a utopia.

  A clear adversary with a face and a postal address in Klynos.

  The Separatist Union was born, then, not as a sum of ideals but as a coalition of managed resentments.

  That doesn’t diminish his achievement; it heightens it. Managing resentments is far harder than printing manifestos. Manifestos are easy to reproduce. Resentments must be renegotiated every week.

  During the first months, when I had access to unedited versions of the Veroras meeting records, Devouir’s name barely appeared. He let local leaders sign, let clans, unions, and councils stamp their seals and wave their banners. He reserved a different task for himself: deciding which topics would not be addressed yet.

  That was his true act of unification: defining which conflicts would be postponed.

  They did not touch the issue of Balmoran ritual sacrifices, even though it alarmed the more secular colonies.

  They did not discuss transit rights through Triforia’s trade routes, despite Varot demanding priority.

  They did not mention who would control the future joint fleet, because no culture was ready to surrender its handful of operative cruisers.

  Devouir understood something many strategists still don’t: a union that is too clearly defined at the start probably never gets signed.

  This is why the Separatist Union was unprecedented: not because three flags rose together in a plaza (that happens in any imperial ceremony), but because fifteen societies with incompatible memories accepted postponing their grievances to focus on a single one. They did it without a shared myth, without a unified faith, without a hegemonic alternative culture to the Universal Government. They did it mainly because Devouir convinced them that remaining separate was, mathematically, a slow form of suicide.

  Today, with the Tau Ceti War overshadowing everything, people speak of the Union as if it had been inevitable. It wasn’t. There were too many opportunities for it to collapse before it began. The fact it held for three years, amid collapsing economies, military egos, and clans that still spat at each other’s names, is the part of the story least studied.

  Perhaps because it leads to an uncomfortable conclusion:

  If someone was capable of uniting what should not be united, then that someone is also capable of deciding when and how it breaks.

  And I have the suspicion, nothing more for now, that Larton Devouir never intended the Separatist Union to be a stable building.

  He intended it to be a rope bridge over an abyss.

  Useful as long as it allowed people to cross.

  Afterward, you can always cut the rope.

  The path leading to the Balmoran camp was a necklace of remains. There were no gates, no fortified barricades like in the separatist settlements, not even a security perimeter. What surrounded them was fear, an instinct cultivated through centuries of ritualistic brutality. They were an unpleasant twenty kilometers toward the Kyros Valley.

  The first signs of Balmoran territory were the bone posts. Tall, twisted, carved with knife-etched symbols, they marked the entrance with grotesque solemnity. Some were bones of local beasts, but others… others were not.

  On either side of the road, crouched on stones blackened by soot, small groups of Balmorans carried out their own rituals. One drank from a bowl of blood, his face painted crimson up to his eyelids, murmuring words in his guttural language. Farther ahead, a woman raised a curved knife and, with precise movements, carved symbols into the skin of a young man who stared into nothing, lips barely parted. He did not make a single sound.

  Kael knew this wasn’t torture. It was a coming-of-age rite. He had seen Balmorans mark themselves with blades as an act of growth. In their society, pain wasn’t something to be avoided. It was sought. It became a rite of passage.

  But not everything was brutality.

  Near one of the bonfires, a group of Balmorans sang, their deep voices intertwining in a wordless harmony, a profound rhythm that seemed to vibrate in the air. An elder beat a drum of cured hide, and around him several youths trained with knives in a game of quick, fluid reflexes, more a dance than actual combat.

  “A tribe, not an army,” Kael thought. That was the difference between them and the separatists. Balmorans didn’t fight to win a war. They fought because it was in their blood.

  Roq spoke:

  “Before we go in… you should know that the ambassador from Veroras is joining us. Devouir sent him for this meeting.”

  Kael frowned.

  “If Larton Devouir is sending the Ambassador of Veroras,” he said quietly, “it’s because he thinks keeping the Balmorans happy is essential. More than he admits.”

  “And if that’s what the Archon wants, that’s what we’re going to do. We’re not challenging any order from Devouir.”

  Kael nodded, but something immediately made him frown.

  A few meters from one of the central altars, a group of naked men were digging trenches, dragging stones, or cleaning charred remains under the watch of four armed figures. Their bodies were covered in dirt, dried blood, and sweat; many could barely stand. One of them collapsed, and received a hard strike to the back with the butt of a spear. No one said a word. They just kept working, exhausted, beaten.

  Kael didn’t need to ask who they were.

  He knew perfectly well what that work meant.

  They were the chosen. Those marked for sacrifice.

  Many of them probably didn’t even know why they were there. They only knew they were going to die. And before that, they would be used. Forced labor wasn’t a punishment. It was part of the rite. A final process of dehumanization before the offering.

  Kael averted his gaze discreetly. Not because he felt compassion, but because he knew too much. He knew some of those men had already been branded with fire. He knew that in a few days their bodies would be hung upside down and drained as part of the purification ceremony. He knew the High Priest would allow nothing else.

  To the right of the entrance, almost next to one of the guard bonfires, a thin man in a dark tunic waited for them, tense in posture. He rubbed the fingers of one hand against the other, as if trying to release poorly contained anxiety.

  “Dritor Frik,” Roq whispered. “The ambassador.”

  The man saw them approach and rushed two quick steps toward them.

  “Durnan, Roq,” he greeted, bowing abruptly. “Devouir wanted you to understand the importance of this. He emphasized we must act as conciliators today. The Balmorans are sensitive… and he wants no unnecessary conflict.”

  Kael studied him for a moment. Frik always seemed half a second away from interrupting himself, as if he thought faster than he could speak.

  “Perfect,” Roq said. “The sooner we go in, the better.”

  When they reached the center of the camp, they were surrounded immediately. Warriors in makeshift armor patched with worn metal pieces closed in to form a circle around them. None drew a weapon, but none seemed relaxed.

  Kael felt the weight of their stares. They were allies. Yet at that moment, he felt more like a prisoner than a guest.

  And then, he saw him.

  The High Priest of Bagdur.

  He did not resemble the warriors around him. While they wore cured hides and broken armor, he wore a scarlet robe without a single grain of dust. His head was completely shaved, revealing markings carved directly into his skull, forming a circular pattern that seemed to expand from the center of his forehead.

  But the most striking thing was his calm.

  While the other Balmorans moved with the energy of eager hunters, he remained still. His eyes, dark and deep, observed the separatists with an intensity that made even Roq look away for a second.

  When he finally spoke, his voice was not loud. It didn’t need to be.

  “Welcome, brothers of war.”

  Silence fell over the camp. Everyone listened.

  Kael swallowed. Something in that voice reminded him too much of a knife gliding over skin.

  The High Priest of Bagdur offered a brief, controlled smile, as if measuring the reaction of the newcomers.

  Kael felt that the three of them were the only ones on the edge of discomfort.

  Balmorans could smell fear. And they enjoyed it.

  The Ambassador of Veroras, Dritor Fick, was the first to speak.

  “Priest. I appreciate your hospitality.”

  The priest bowed his head slightly, in a slow, theatrical gesture.

  “Our hospitality is endless for allies. As long as they recognize the will of Bagdur.”

  Kael felt that phrase scratch something inside him.

  “We are not fighting for Bagdur,” he said through clenched teeth. “We’re fighting for a war we can win.”

  The priest looked at him like a father looks at a stubborn child.

  “And what is war, Durnan?” His tone was almost gentle, as if sharing a revelation.

  Kael crossed his arms but didn’t answer.

  The priest extended his hands, showing palms full of scarred cuts, some still fresh and pink on his dark skin.

  “War is a prayer, Captain. War is the only answer the universe knows. A cycle the Universal Government tried to break with bureaucracy and laws.” His expression darkened, his voice dropped a tone. “But gods never abandon their cycles. They merely wait for mortals to invoke them again.”

  Kael saw Roq tighten his jaw almost imperceptibly.

  “We’re not here to discuss theology,” Ambassador Fick interrupted dryly. “The Universal Government continues to expand. The war advances. We need to discuss force distribution, not prayers to Bagdur.”

  The priest tilted his head, observing Fick as if he were an insect he hadn’t decided whether to crush.

  “Ah, yes. Distribution of forces. Always so efficient. Always with your charts, your maps, your plans.”

  “Wars are won with strategy, not theatrical sacrifices,” the ambassador retorted without giving an inch.

  The Balmorans around them laughed softly, that guttural sound like blades scraping against stone.

  The priest did not flinch.

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  “War is not won, Ambassador.” He slowly turned to Kael. “It is survived.”

  Kael remembered Nuka’s words by the fire.

  “It’s not about winning.”

  “It’s about surviving long enough to see who remains standing.”

  He clenched his fists.

  “If war is only about survival, then it means you’re willing to sacrifice everyone necessary just to remain on your feet.”

  The priest looked at him with a serene smile.

  “Everyone gives what they have.”

  The ambassador clicked his tongue.

  “Then let’s get to the point. The issue of the sacrifices.”

  A tense silence followed.

  “They say they’re not enough,” Roq continued, voice measured but with an edge.

  The priest inclined his head slowly.

  “Bagdur is a generous god. But his hunger has no limits.”

  Kael felt a chill at how naturally he said it. As if speaking of supplies, of military stock.

  The Ambassador of Veroras crossed his arms.

  “We’ve delivered prisoners as agreed. Tau Ceti IV left us enough captives for your rites.”

  The priest smiled, but there was no warmth in it.

  “And yet the war is not in our favor. We cannot depend on what is left behind. We need more.”

  Kael clenched his jaw.

  “How many more?”

  The priest turned slightly toward his followers, as if searching for the answer in their impassive faces.

  “As many as necessary.”

  “That’s not an answer.” Kael’s tone sharpened.

  The Balmorans watched him with a mix of amusement and restrained threat.

  “The problem is not how many, Captain. The problem is that every sacrifice strengthens our forces. And every delay weakens them.”

  Kael felt a knot in his chest.

  The Balmorans would not accept limits.

  “Jacques Durnan, one of ours, is bringing war prisoners. There won’t be a shortage,” Roq interjected before the conversation grew dangerous.

  The priest turned his gaze to Kael.

  “Durnan?”

  Kael knew what that commitment meant. He knew that delivering more prisoners would only feed the machine that would devour them all sooner or later.

  But politics wasn’t about justice.

  It was about survival.

  Kael’s own voice sounded harsher than usual when he spoke.

  “If you agree to these conditions, I suppose the meeting is over for now.”

  The priest kept his smile.

  “Meetings never end. Neither does Bagdur’s hunger. If those you bring are not enough, we will need to have a second conversation.”

  The silence was unbearable noise. Kael felt tension in his jaw. He wanted to speak, but knew it wasn’t wise.

  Without another word, he turned on his heels and began walking away.

  Roq watched him in the shadows for a moment, then followed in silence.

  The sound of sand shifting under their boots was the only thing breaking the silence as Kael and Roq walked back along the rocky road toward the separatist camp. The Balmoran bonfires burned in the distance, casting dancing shadows that twisted like specters in the night.

  Kael still tasted bitterness from the conversation. Prisoners. Sacrifices. Everything wrapped in the excuse of a war that increasingly seemed less about ideals and more about surviving one more day.

  “Jackie… Sir, with all respect… Was it necessary to involve Jackie?” he repeated quietly.

  Roq didn’t answer immediately.

  Kael hated how easily his commander accepted all of this. As if it were an inevitable equation. As if everything they did was part of a machine they could never stop. Or as if he actually agreed with the decision.

  But before he could say another word, a low, dragging laugh cut through the night.

  Kael and Roq stopped instantly.

  A few meters away, leaning against a wind-eroded rock, stood Nuka.

  Moonlight highlighted his skin marked with dried paint, his smile always hovering between mockery and threat. His bone necklaces clinked softly with every tilt of his neck.

  “Well, look who we have here. The sons of reason and strategy.” His voice was thick, almost amused.

  Kael felt a shiver, not fear, but the discomfort brought by someone like Nuka. Someone who enjoyed war on a level impossible to rationalize.

  The Balmoran pushed himself off the rock slowly, with a calmness that didn’t match the brutality of his words.

  “I heard you talking. Very serious conversation. Sounded like the great Durnan had doubts about his role in all this.”

  Kael didn’t respond.

  “Doubts?” Roq cut in, crossing his arms. “The only thing we discussed is how to ensure you get what you want and don’t end up slitting our throats during one of your cult nights.”

  Nuka let out a raspy laugh.

  “I’m not offended. It would be a waste, after all.” His eyes locked on Kael with animal intensity.

  Kael stood firm.

  “If you were listening, then you know I’m not interested in what you call faith. I just want to make things run smoothly between everyone.”

  Nuka tilted his head, thoughtful.

  “You don’t need to believe, Durnan. You don’t need to pray. You just need to understand that without us, your war wouldn’t exist.”

  Kael frowned.

  “Without us, you wouldn’t have a war to hide in.”

  Roq’s look told Kael he disapproved of that last sentence.

  Nuka smiled, showing his teeth.

  “Perhaps. But that doesn’t change anything, does it? You need us. And we need blood.”

  The air thickened between them.

  Kael felt that Nuka savored every second of discomfort, every trace of doubt he could find.

  “Our soldiers are on their way with prisoners,” Roq said neutrally, trying to end the conversation.

  Nuka blinked slowly, measuring the information.

  “Ah, yes. The other Durnan, right?” His tongue slid over his teeth. “Has he grown balls yet, or is he like this one?”

  Kael felt his stomach tighten.

  “He’s bringing far more people than promised. They’d better be enough,” Kael snapped.

  Nuka studied him for a moment. Then he stepped closer.

  There was no distance between them.

  Kael could smell burnt flesh on his breath.

  “You know what I like most about you disciplined soldiers?”

  Kael didn’t answer.

  “That you think you have a choice.”

  A second of absolute silence followed.

  Then Nuka grinned and turned away.

  “Gentlemen, a pleasure. Do come to one of our ceremonies someday. It’ll be a spectacle worth watching.”

  Without waiting for a response, he vanished into the night, his silhouette swallowed by shadows, bone necklaces rattling as he walked.

  Kael remained still, jaw clenched.

  “That son of a bitch,” he muttered.

  Roq exhaled.

  “You need to detach a bit, Durnan.”

  Kael looked at the distant lights of the camp.

  “What comes next, Sir?” he asked quietly. “How long do we keep giving in?”

  “Until we win.”

  Kael looked at his Sergeant.

  “I hope we win.”

  Without another word, he kept walking.

  Roq watched him a moment before following.

  The war was becoming something more than a political struggle.

  It was becoming a sacrifice.

  They barely spoke on the way back, and the farewell once they reached the tents was unusually cold.

  He rubbed his eyes, as if he could erase the guilt with a simple gesture, and walked to a metal box resting against the tent wall. It was dirty, dented at the corners, covered in crystallized dust, but he opened it with almost ritual familiarity.

  Inside, carefully folded, were Kieran’s drawings.

  One showed Kael with a huge helmet and a blue sword crackling with lightning. His body was exaggerated, full of muscles, a big “K” on his chest. Beside him, a smaller figure shot beams from his eyes. Above, in childish handwriting, it read:

  “Dad and I fight together. No one beats us.”

  Kael smiled with his lips, but not with his eyes.

  He checked another: a whale-shaped ship with many cannons. In one of the windows, two dots were him and his son. All the enemies were drawn in gray, sad colors, crossed out in red.

  Kael placed the drawings on his lap.

  The camp was silent. Outside, only the distant footsteps of the night guard could be heard. The murmur of Tau Ceti IV, that low hum that felt like it rose from the ground itself, was his only company.

  He ran his fingers over the lines of a particularly wrinkled drawing. It was a family portrait: him, Aeryn, and the kids, all holding hands. All smiling the same smile. All alive. All together.

  He pressed the paper to his chest for a moment, as if he could give it some warmth.

  Then he placed it carefully back into the box.

  He closed it slowly, like lowering the curtain on a play no one watched anymore.

  He sat there, hands resting on the closed lid, staring into nothing.

  “I’m not that man, Kieran,” he whispered barely audibly.

  Outside, the crystals of Tau Ceti reflected a pale glimmer.

  THE NEXT DAY

  The sky over Tau Ceti IV had shifted from muted violet to a dirty smear of low clouds, yet the landscape didn’t change much: crystals jutting from the earth like the ribs of a dead animal, hills of crumbled rock, patches of ancient ice caught between cracks. The Kyros Valley, Kyros or Kynos depending on the old maps, opened before them like a dark mouth waiting patiently.

  Constantina set the pace without looking back. She listened to the boots behind her, counted their rhythm without thinking: Chuet, always half off-beat; Div Kut, who sometimes took steps too short and had to jog twice to catch up; Diemano, solid, never breaking cadence even when the terrain steepened. Farther behind, separated by deliberate meters, came the Blue Stars, their rough murmurs mixing with the clang of metal on metal.

  No one talked much. The wind swallowed any loose comment. Only occasional short, dry laughs drifted from the rear, the Blue Stars making jokes nobody wanted to hear up close.

  When the sun dissolved into an opaque stain behind the clouds, Constantina raised her fist.

  “We stop here.”

  They halted in a small depression between crystal formations, deep enough to break some of the wind. The light emanating from the crystals was faint, a bluish glow that made shadows seem longer than they should. To the side, the Blue Stars were already spreading out without waiting for permission, hammering stakes violently, marking their territory as if it were instinct.

  “Chuet, Div Kut,” Constantina ordered. “Gather material for the fire. No crystal branches, they explode if heated. Find crate scraps, planks, whatever you can.”

  “Yes, Cons…” Chuet answered quickly, then corrected himself. “I mean… Mano.”

  Div Kut nodded with such force he almost dropped his rifle. He caught it by a hair, let out a nervous laugh, and ran after Chuet, his clumsy steps kicking up more dust than necessary.

  Diemano approached her, adjusting the straps of his cuirass.

  “I’ll take first watch,” he said without preamble.

  Constantina glanced at him sideways. A fine line of dust crossed his forehead where his helmet visor usually rested. Something in his expression always felt familiar: a mix of stubbornness and loyalty that reminded her of the few trustworthy people she had left.

  “You’re going to take it even if I say no,” she replied.

  Diemano offered a faint smile, barely a gesture.

  “Saves us the argument later.”

  Hishio and Yolanda began checking the perimeter without being asked. Garran, grumbling, drove the butt of his rifle into the ground and started cleaning the barrel in mechanical motions, as if the cleaner the weapon, the less likely everything was to go wrong.

  When Chuet and Div Kut returned, they carried an uneven pile of scraps: pieces of supply crates, a chunk of pallet, an old metal sign bent in half. Div Kut dragged the sign like a trophy.

  “Look, it still has letters,” he said, lifting it toward the imagined firelight. “‘Controlled Resonance Zone.’” He pronounced each word slowly, as if reciting something important. “Does that mean we’re being controlled here?”

  “It means there used to be people who thought they could control something on this planet,” Garran growled, snatching the sign from his hands. “And you see how that went.”

  Div Kut grimaced and stayed quiet for two seconds. Then, unable to endure silence, he began arranging the wood pieces into a crooked rectangle.

  “If we put it like this it looks like a little house,” he said. “We could all sleep inside if we were tiny.”

  “We’re not tiny,” Chuet reminded him, kneeling to spark the fire.

  “Some more than others,” Garran muttered.

  The first flame took a while. The air was damp, the materials cold. Chuet kept trying, striking the flint again and again until a strand of old cloth began to smoke. Div Kut leaned too close, curious.

  “Don’t blow,” Constantina said. “Let it breathe.”

  “But if I blow, it goes faster, right?”

  “If you blow wrong, you kill it.”

  Div Kut held his breath, suddenly treating the fire as if it were a delicate surgery. He leaned back, hands on knees, watching the flame grow like a child watching a plant sprout.

  Once the fire took shape, they sat around it, not in a perfect circle, but always leaving one side open to the east, space to react quickly. It was the kind of habit no one questioned anymore.

  The heat hit their faces with rough relief. Farther away, the Blue Stars had lit their own fires, bigger, louder. Laughter, clangs of metal, and some sloppy chant drifted across.

  “If they keep making that noise, anything in these mountains will know we’re here,” Yolanda murmured.

  “They count on that,” Hishio replied. “They like being hunted.”

  Constantina let them talk for a while. Then she adjusted her cuirass, elbows resting on knees, and studied her squad in the firelight. Normally, this was when Rudolph would have made some remark to ease the tension, a bad joke, a story, even a complaint about food. Now that void felt heavier, and she felt obliged to fill it, though she didn’t have his voice.

  “Two more days,” she said, pointing at the mental map she carried. “If we don’t fall behind, the day after tomorrow at dusk we should reach the end of the valley. Kyros narrows there; if there’s resistance, it’ll be there. I don’t want anyone losing pace or sight.”

  “And what if we get lost ourselves?” Div Kut asked, without malice. “I mean, walk too far and when we look back we’re not the same anymore.”

  Chuet laughed nervously.

  “What are you saying, Div?”

  “Nothing.” Div Kut snapped a charred splinter and began drawing shapeless lines on the ground. “My mother used to say that if you went too far you came back with another head. That the world slipped in through your eyes and changed everything inside you. Maybe it already happened and we didn’t notice.”

  There was a brief silence, not because anyone found it profound, but because no one expected him to string together so many words.

  “Your mother said a lot of things,” Garran grunted, spitting to the side. “And half of them were nonsense.”

  “Half,” Div Kut repeated, counting on his fingers. “That leaves another half that wasn’t.”

  Constantina let the conversation drift. Then she looked at Chuet, who avoided everyone’s gaze, flicking little stones into the fire to see the sparks jump.

  “Chuet,” she said. “You’ve talked very little today.”

  He jumped slightly, surprised she addressed him directly.

  “Not much to say, Mano,” he answered, shrugging. “We walk. They stare at us weird. We walk more. It’s a great day.”

  “You always have something to say,” she insisted. “Especially when it comes to complaining.”

  A shadow of a smile crossed his face, showing dust-stained teeth.

  “It’s just…” He searched for a word he didn’t find quickly. “I don’t want to talk too much around them.” He nodded toward the Blue Stars without looking directly. “Back in the crystal colonies of Triforia, if you talked too much, someone listened, and then you didn’t have a tongue. Literally.”

  Diemano looked at him intently.

  “You never told that part properly,” he said. “You always joke and dodge it.”

  Chuet hunched a little, tossing another pebble into the fire.

  “It’s not that interesting.” He cleared his throat, pushing himself to continue. “I was born in the Kavos rings, remember? Those old platforms stuck to the extraction pits. My father worked down there, eight hours breathing crystal dust. My mom cleaned filters and cooked for those who made it out alive. Everything smelled like rock, hot metal, and reheated soup.”

  Div Kut watched him wide-eyed, like listening to a bedtime story.

  “Sounds like it suited you,” Diemano teased lightly. “You’ve always been one to stick your hand where it doesn’t belong.”

  “I stuck it where I shouldn’t,” Chuet admitted with a half smile. “Once I got caught listening to the foremen. They were talking about shutting down an entire ring. People would be ‘relocated.’ After that, whole families vanished. Not even the mattresses remained.”

  The fire crackled. A spark shot too close to Div Kut’s boot, making him jump dramatically and hide behind Yolanda, as if the fire could chase him.

  “Well,” Chuet continued, not noticing, “I started talking. Telling people not to sign anything, not to believe them. One night, a supervisor got tired. Slammed me against a wall, pressed a knife here.” He touched his tongue with his fingertip. “And said he’d cut a piece for every extra word.”

  “That’s why you left,” Diemano concluded, though he already knew.

  Chuet nodded, dropping a stone into the flames harder than before.

  “When the unification started, seemed like a good time to change bosses. At least here they let me keep my tongue.” He shrugged. “For now.”

  Div Kut stared at him with huge eyes.

  “But if they cut it, you can write,” he said, offering a solution. “I can write for you, if you want. Though my handwriting is ugly. Garran says it looks like a crystal fell on the page.”

  “Your handwriting is a war crime,” Garran grumbled.

  This time, the laughter was a bit more genuine. Even Constantina let out a brief snort. The air loosened around the fire.

  “And you, Diemano?” Yolanda asked, taking advantage. “You’re always next to Constantina, but you’ve never said where they found you.”

  Diemano raised his eyebrows, caught off guard. He looked at Constantina for a moment, seeking permission. She shrugged.

  “If you don’t tell it, I’ll make it up,” she said dryly.

  He let out a small nasal laugh.

  “That would be worse.”

  He poked the fire with a stick, watching it crackle.

  “Well,” he began.

  A metallic howl erupted from the Blue Stars’ direction. A loud laugh followed, a thud, something slamming against rock. Div Kut startled so hard he nearly stepped into the fire; Chuet grabbed his arm just in time.

  “Don’t look,” Hishio warned. “Don’t give them the satisfaction.”

  Still, some glanced over. In the distant firelight, two Blue Stars wrestled “playfully,” shoving each other near a crevice’s edge. One had half his helmet lifted, jaw exposed, laughing like nothing mattered. Cruger sat on a rock, watching with a crooked smile, not intervening.

  Constantina clenched her jaw.

  “Tomorrow I don’t want anyone looking that way,” she warned. “They want you unsettled. We’re not giving them that.”

  Div Kut raised his hand again, as if in a classroom.

  “And if they talk to us?” he asked. “Cruger looked at me today. I think he winked… the eye that works.”

  “If they talk, you answer only what’s necessary,” Constantina said. “Yes, no, clear orders. Don’t start telling them about your mother or your little fire houses.”

  Div Kut lowered his hand, genuinely disappointed.

  “But they’re part of the squad now,” he murmured. “We could be friends.”

  “No,” Garran replied, so flat it cut the air. “We cannot.”

  The silence that followed wasn’t awkward, just heavy, full of something unspoken. The sensation of walking beside a cliff with people who enjoyed pushing.

  Constantina stood, stretching her legs.

  “Diemano, Hishio, first watch. I’ll take second. Yolanda, check Div Kut’s straps before he falls asleep with the rifle pointed at his foot. Chuet, make sure the fire doesn’t get out of control. Garran…” She searched for a task. “You listen. Any sound that isn’t wind or crystal, wake me.”

  “And if it’s the Blue Stars singing?” Chuet asked.

  “If they’re singing, they’re not attacking. We ignore them.”

  They began spreading out. Div Kut took longer to choose where to lie down. He set his rifle on the ground and walked five steps away, then rushed back to hug it to his chest like a pillow. Then he chose a smoothish rock, curled beside it, and before closing his eyes, placed his palm on the nearby crystal, tapping it softly as if expecting a response.

  “Goodnight, stone,” he whispered.

  Chuet heard him, smiled in tired amusement, and dropped down beside him, not close enough to touch, but close enough to hear him snore if anything startled him.

  Diemano positioned himself at the edge of the depression, rifle in hand, eyes fixed on the dark smear where the valley opened to the west. Constantina approached him briefly before heading to her corner.

  “You know you don’t need to stick to me all the time,” she said.

  “I know,” he replied. “But until we reach the end of Kyros, I prefer it.”

  She nodded. No point arguing.

  As she lay down, resting her back against a warm crystal, she let the night’s sounds seep under her skin: the dying fire’s crackle, the deep hum of the crystals, the distant murmurs of the Blue Stars. They were her squad. Her “little lambs,” as Cruger had said with disdain.

  She pressed her fingers into her cuirass.

  She wasn’t going to lose them to anyone. Not to the Kyros Valley, not to the war, not to the Blue Stars.

  When she closed her eyes, it wasn’t to rest.

  It was to listen better to anything that dared move in the dark.