I was never much of a poker player, but man did I have one hell of a poker face; the fact I didn’t immediately burst out laughing, I honestly should’ve been given an award or something.

  I crossed my arms and leaned back in the old cell, “And how did you come to that conclusion?” I asked, my expression guarded.

  Almana’s annoyed glared didn’t relent, “I told you we aren’t stupid; we might be a frontier world, but we still have access to the Empire’s information network and most of their resources.”

  I rolled my eyes at her non-answer, “Okay, yeah right. Again, what the hell are you talking about?”

  Almana huffed out a quick sigh and turned her tablet around to face me, showing my Imperial citizen profile, then moving the page to show my military identification, “Everything about you seems fabricated. We looked into this planet called Earth and couldn’t find anything, same with the humans. If the world you’re supposed to be from is really pre-contact, it would have to be way before the point of Imperial interest, which just begs the question why you alone would be given probationary citizen status.”

  I waved at the tablet, “Should say in my history how our planet was raided by pirates and slavers a few years back, and when I was released from captivity I was given the option of working for the Empire instead.”

  Almana shook her head, “And yet there’s no record of a breach in planetary protocols for a pre-enlightened planet; no record of slavers running beyond frontier space, no articles on outlier worlds getting attacked by pirates, no news coverage at all for something that normally attracts significant attention from the Civilization Cohabitation Coalition.” She pressed.

  It was then I realized how flimsy my phony backstory must’ve looked to anyone who actually looked into it. I never had to worry about it before mostly because The Radiance did all the work keeping my identity and work plenty secret, but now that I was acting like a regular soldier, my past really wouldn’t make sense when scrutinized at all.

  Made me also realize this Almana was incredibly sharp, and therefore quite dangerous for our secret mission.

  I shrugged, trying to play it all off, “I don’t know what to tell you, maybe someone fucked up by letting the slavers into some outlier system, tried to keep the leak quiet. When everyone else that’d been kidnapped was eager to head home, I was more interested in staying out in space to explore this amazing Empire, and my handlers were more than happy to accommodate me and set me to work for the Empire, using my unique perspective to their advantage.”

  Almana shook her head, not buying it at all, “Nothing about that backstory makes sense at all—even the names of your planet and race seem like some weird, meta-joke. Earth? Really? Your planet was named after dirt? And you’re a human? A hu-man?” She rolled her eyes then, “Seriously, it’s like they didn’t even try to make good cover names.”

  I was almost insulted with the way she was mocking Earth and humans, but it wouldn’t do to get defensive now. Instead, I just gestured to her, “So really, what do you think’s going on? Why else would I be here?”

  Almana nodded once, a serious expression on her face, “That’s what we’re here to find out.” She passed her tablet off to one of her soldiers and started pacing around my containment cell, “Same as we aren’t stupid to believe in your silly backstory, we also aren’t so stupid to believe the Empire hasn’t had a hand in the tragedy that’s befallen our planet.” She stopped when she was on the other side of my cell and turned to face me once more, “It’s pretty obvious the advanced technology to control and assimilate people wasn’t invented on Vyrane, so we have to wonder to what lengths the Empire will go to contain that secret.”

  I quirked up an eyebrow, “Meaning?”

  Almana gestured to me, “You already admitted your plan is to completely destroy the capital, but is your mission only about eradicating the separatists?”

  I realized what she was driving at then; she was wondering if we would just stop when the separatists were dead.

  Almana didn’t realize how close she was to the mark on that one.

  I shook my head slowly, “That’s beyond my scope, sorry. I can understand your concerns, but our objective is freeing up your capital by destroying all the separatists.”

  “Destroy our capital more like.” Almana corrected.

  I could tell she was working at something, but I wasn’t sure what yet, so I was set to wait.

  Almana stared me down too then, silent for a while as she looked me over, trying to figure out what exactly I wasn’t telling her. She turned to one of her soldiers, “Bring me the kit.”

  The soldier complied and brought over a large black brief case and started setting something up before Almana with some strange equipment I’d never seen before.

  “What, are you going to torture me for information now?” I asked, keeping my voice neutral.

  Almana shook her head as she pulled out some strange two-pronged gun looking device, “We have no idea if that would even work on you, no idea what you really are, human. For all we know, you’re just some artificial construct that can’t feel pain—might not even be sentient. For now, we’re just going to run some tests to see what you really are.”

  I felt a little flutter of anxiety over the situation, but I still wasn’t afraid; I knew I wasn’t a construct or a bioweapon or anything, so the test would all come back clear. Still, it was strange being in the hotseat like this, and even though I did have some information I’d need to keep secret, I knew my body should pass all their tests easily.

  Almana gestured to a small silver square on the siding of the repulser cell frame, “Remove your armor, then place your arm through the window, please.”

  Knowing it wouldn’t help to be belligerent, I complied rather easily, taking a few minutes to remove the top part of my armor. I placed my hand through the strange window that clamped down around me so just my arm was free of the repulser field. Almana pressed the strange, pronged gun against my skin, and I felt a weird zap as some little glass orb at the end of the gun was filled with my blood.

  Almana took the blood and handed it off to one of the other soldiers sitting in front of a scanner device. The device beeped and blinked for a few moments, then stopped suddenly when it was finished.

  “Looks like a regular organic, with only trace amounts of genetic modifications, nothing significant.” The soldier offered.

  “What kind of modifications?” Almana asked, moving over to look at the results behind the soldier.

  He pointed at the screen, “Strength and stamina enhancements, plus some kind of longevity serum. Overall, the readout says no more than 2% cellular modifications beyond natural DNA.”

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  Two percent seemed kind of low for what all Eve had done to me, so if I had to guess I would think their limited technology couldn’t really pick up all of Eve’s modifications—that, or Eve’s modifications were so advanced they simply seemed natural. Either way, I wasn’t about to correct them.

  “See? Not a robot. Or did you think I was the actual weapon, like some sort of sentient bomb?” I inquired.

  Almana turned away from the scanner to glare at me, but she ignored me and turned to another of her soldiers, “How’d the testing go with the rest of the team?”

  The vyrane soldier turned away to speak into his communicator, then turned back with a fist up I took as a sign something good happened, “Everyone’s been cleared, they’re all calm and cooperative now—everyone except his partner, the heavy weapon specialist. She’s still pissed we took him away from the rest of the group.”

  Almana didn’t react to the news, instead going into the kit to grab another device, this one like a flashlight with three lenses and a little scope on top. She brought it over to my cell, “Eyes up front; if you’re organic, we need to clear you and make sure you haven’t been assimilated either.” She confirmed.

  Again, I complied, looking into the strange flashlight scanner. One bulb flashed blue, then another was red, and the final one was white. When they all finished, Almana pulled back to look at the scope as it displayed the readings for my test.

  “How exactly does that show if someone’s been assimilated?” I asked.

  Almana didn’t look up from her readings, “After someone’s been…changed, their eyes don’t react to lights normally anymore, and this little scanner can recognize those differences easily.” She sighed, then dropped the strange flashlight back in the case, then turned her attention back to me, “Seems you’re not assimilated either.”

  I crossed my arms and leaned back against the repulser cell once more, “Great. Can we finish this up please?”

  Almana still looked irritated, but there was something else hiding in her eyes, caution definitely, but concern as well. She was putting on a brave face, but I could tell she felt like she was walking on a razor’s edge while dealing with me—dealing with our whole team probably.

  “What are your plans for when you get into our capital?” She pressed.

  I sighed, “This again? I told you I’m just the communications technician—”

  “And I told you there’s just no way we can believe all that.” Almana interrupted quickly, then took a quick breath to calm herself, “Let’s just say you really are a human from the pre-contact world Earth—the only human out here in the Empire, as unreasonable as all that sounds. Do you really expect me to believe you just so happened to meet up with my sister at the exact right time, getting you and your team a meeting with the only other resistance officer in Wesseran who could’ve taken you to meet with Ferro?” She held up a hand to halt me from responding, “I can believe your team really is trying to free us from the separatist’s oppression, but we’re the ones who have to live with the fallout after you leave our planet when the mission’s over, and from how your team’s been operating so far, it causes some reasonable concerns over the condition you’ll leave our planet in.”

  Almana and her resistance had been fighting an enemy that could take over dead bodies—turn allies into adversaries in the blink of an eye, so I never faulted them for their suspicious nature, and now again I could honestly see the validity of her concerns; if it was me worried about the future of my own planet, I would surely have those same concerns.

  I nodded along, “You worry once we get into the capital we’ll torch more than just the separatists.”

  Almana’s expression softened then, showing a little more of the young woman she was beyond the heavy burden of leadership, “You must understand how difficult it is for us to trust you with everything we’re dealing with; we have absolutely no way to end this war by ourselves, but our supposed saviors came down to us not on the golden wings of the sky-goddess, but in the shadows, telling us almost nothing of their plan or how they intend to free us.”

  Honestly, I really started to empathize with Almana; she was stuck between an impossibly hard and wildly rocky place. I was trapped and bound by the Empire to see out the mission, but in a way their entire planet was bound by the Empire too—completely at their mercy. In that moment, I knew I wouldn’t hold it against her the way she put me in that cell and would need to make sure Eve wouldn’t hold a grudge or try to get revenge for any disrespect against us.

  “Look, I’m sorry, but I really can’t tell you what all’s going to happen at the end of this once we make it to the capital, you’ve simply got the wrong guy.” I shrugged, “I’m just a soldier; a nothing and a nobody.”

  Almana sighed again, a little of that frustration creeping back in her voice, “Again, with everything you’ve been involved with, your backstory and what all you’ve told us, you really expect—”

  “Yes, as crazy as it all might seem, it’s just a bunch of wild coincidences. The humans call it dumb luck, and it’s honestly saved me quite a few times in the Empire already.” I insisted.

  Almana narrowed her gaze at me, “Even meeting my kid sister? We know some of your soldiers were shadowing our people, are you telling me you two meeting Melna was just luck?”

  I opened my mouth to answer, when a strange nagging doubt suddenly tugged at the back of my mind; was that just dumb luck? I mean really, was running into Melna in that alleyway just the most fortuitous coincidence in the universe? Of course, what other explanation was there? Eve and I were just wandering around aimlessly, kicked out by the movie theater manager so we hung around in that alley at the perfect time to catch Melna getting chased around by those militia soldiers.

  And yet it did seem like an impossible stroke of luck that led us to Melna who led us to Almana who then got our mission back up and running.

  For some strange reason, I felt a shiver run down my spine, and I had the horrible sensation like I was just a puppet working in a play, following along some mastermind’s machinations.

  But who?

  In the end, I realized it just didn’t make sense; I was the one who wanted to go to the movies that day, and since we hadn’t told anyone else our plans, there was no way for anything to conspire for or against us. It must’ve just been dumb luck—despite how it all felt.

  I just shrugged, “As crazy as it all sounds, that’s just dumb human luck.” I offered.

  Almana looked into my eyes, holding my gaze, searching deep for any kind of lie—searching for a truth that would lead to the salvation of her people.

  In the end, she either found what she needed, or just gave up, letting out a heavy sigh as she moved away from the repusler field.

  “You mean to tell me you really are just a communication technician, not some master spy or secret mission commander or anything?” She pressed.

  I chuckled and shook my head, “Sorry, I’m actually pretty low on the totem pole.”

  Amana quirked up an eyebrow, “Totem pole?”

  I waved it off quickly, “Earth expression, I’ve got a million of them; stick around and you’ll hear a dozen of them every day.”

  That got a smile out of Almana, but she tried to cover it up quickly.

  “And you really can’t tell me how you plan on freeing up the capital, what kind of weapon you might use?” She continued.

  I shook my head, “No, that’s Eve’s job; she’ll make the assessment on the best strategy for overtaking the capital, and it’s my job to get authorization from high-command.” I tilted my head back and forth, showing as though I was considering what all to admit to Almana, “Technically, some of her strategies might involve breaking planetary treaties and war-time laws, so I have to intercede on her behalf with our commanders on what all we can actually get away with.” I said, using our established fake cover story.

  Almana’s eyebrows shot up together, “You would commit war crimes to complete your mission?”

  I let out a long sigh, “Like I told you before, we’re the last of the last resorts.”

  Almana turned introspective then, but I could see from my part I’d mostly convinced her; now, she was probably just weighing out if it would be okay to unleash those drastic measures to free her planet. In her mind, it would be committing treason, but it would be for the sake of saving her people.

  Almana looked back at me, her expression determined now, “Very well, if that’s the only way we can save our planet, I suppose we’ll have to trust your expertise.” She turned to her soldiers, “You can release him.”

  The soldiers released the repulser field around me as I put my battle armor back on. Once I was properly equipped again, Almana bowed before me, “I apologize for the harsh treatment, but we have grown desperate as the hour grows late.”

  I waved it off easily, “Water under the—er, I mean I understand; we only get called in for the desperate situations, and it’s never easy for the local populations.”

  Almana sighed, “Still, I feel like the Evening Man having to make the final judgment on White Day.”

  I looked over at her, “Well now that must be a Vyrane expression as that makes absolutely no sense to me.”

  Almana flashed me a quick grin and winked at me, once again showing off the cute punk girl hidden underneath the headstrong soldier, “Stick around, you’ll hear dozens of them every day.”