It has been the worst nightmare for Gahn.

  Quietly, he found himself grateful for the reprieve of superliminal travel. It will be another several days before their next stop, this time in the heart of the Coalition itself, and in the meantime, nobody can touch them in the vast emptiness of space. Even still, he planned a flight path farther out and longer than usual, just so they can come nowhere close to everyone else’s traffic.

  The terrorist incident on Qiaou had left him shaken, even if he maintained his composure all the way up until returning to his quarters. He had earned so much authority and yet at that moment had so little control over the crisis. The Qiaouian terrorists despite everything were unexpectedly so organized and competent. They saw right through their charade.

  So, the secret is out.

  Flipping through another news channel, he takes another sip of his Qiaouian whiskey, exceptionally stronger and more bitter than what he’s used to. He had intended it to be a gift for his wife.

  He felt uneasy about his decision, but for right now, it was the most they could come up with, given the resources they had at hand. In accordance with Vertan’s advice, he begrudgingly agreed that indeed it would attract less attention having their ships go separate ways before regrouping at their destination, or else risk another Qiaouian incident.

  Furthermore, at the growing request of his crew, Lym was no longer restricted to her captivity in the chamber. Not only was it all clearly useless trying to keep her chained anyhow, but everyone aboard increasingly recognized the benefit of her strength and power as a means of protection. Thus mutually assured benefit was established that in this journey, in exchange for negotiating the return of her gunship, she would offer security. It was too risky no matter how well trained to assume they can handle everything on someone else’s home turf.

  But Gahn strongly disliked the decision, and it made his stomach drop a little just thinking about it. The thought of Lym freely going about, even when covering herself, made him feel deeply irresponsible. There were still too many variables and unknowns about her to him that he couldn’t fully trust, even with his continued faith in Vertan. If this was Qiaou’s response when she was kept ‘locked up’ onboard, how much worse could the consequences be when she’s walking about amongst the next populace?

  Despite how reasonable it sounds to make themselves appear to have “nothing to hide”, Gahn was not one to take what he sees as “risky gambles” compared to Vertan.

  *****

  Lym stood within the chamber, its door still implanted and partly fused on the opposite wall. Though there was yet to be any replacement for it, there has since been an extra chair and table moved into the chamber, turning it from a cell to a room. The light remained perpetually turned on, its switch hidden elsewhere on the ship, likely from a separate control room.

  In that moment, she found herself thinking for longer than she usually would. Typically, her mind can analyze a problem and conclude at a solution in a micro-instant. To do so for any longer than a half second would be exceptionally slow to her.

  But she found herself endlessly thinking with no conclusion.

  Oddly enough, even with several millennia’s worth of life experience, she struggled to comprehend what Vertan had meant. Her mind couldn’t come to a conclusion. Or perhaps, there isn’t one for her yet.

  Deliberately, she attempted to slow her mind down to absorb as much of it as possible.

  “Hope.”

  Intellectually, she immediately understood the definition of hope: a feeling of expectation and desire for something to happen.

  But the manner in which Vertan had seemed to try and convey it was different, almost as though he tried to express an idea or concept.

  For a moment, she couldn’t understand. It seemed to be a foreign abstraction outside of her grasp.

  Hope is a feeling of expectation and desire for something to happen.

  But what if it never happens? This becomes a delusion.

  What in this case would Vertan be hoping for? Clearly, it is the suggestion that the conflict would end.

  Perhaps it is so this way to him, that such a conflict would someday end. The war will one day meet its conclusion. Such a perspective, she disagreed with. It has been her people’s way of life for as long as they can all remember. It was much wiser to excel at it than to naively hope for an entire change of circumstances. No environment will ever adapt to its subjects. One may as well hope that their skin color turns out different someday so that they may be more socially acceptable. It won’t happen.

  But then a thought hits her on this last note. In theory, why should such a society revolve around such rules? When applying it here, why should her people live this way forever? Clearly, the people here do not.

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  Perhaps that is it then, she realizes. Did the Happians miss the forest for the tree? For all of their capabilities to adapt immediately physically, mentally, even biologically, somehow, the question of changing this norm eluded her, her entire life.

  Why not, right? Vertan is referring to the hope for a peaceful existence.

  But would an existence be meaningful without suffering?

  Maybe this can be revisited later. Maybe, for now, it is better to reframe the current circumstances into terms she can more readily understand.

  Lym thought back to not just the Qiaouian incident, but the protests on Ulminh. Clearly, protests are not a daily part of life here. People have to go out of their way to do it, in line with their expectation for something meeting their terms. In other words, hope.

  But, war is a daily part of life for her. Her people have become exceptionally skilled at waging war, even if they disliked it.

  But was war not initially an act of defiance for her people? Since when did that change?

  The official talk has always been about eventual independence, and yet there is no social or cultural expectation of it ever happening in anyone’s lifetime.

  Perhaps this needs to be boiled down even more. If she cannot think outside the terms of war, then she will think of this within the terms of war, perhaps as the newest method towards ending it. A strategic front, perhaps. The existential question of what comes after can wait.

  Clearly, the people here have been long misled to not even know that there was a war going on at all. Just a prestigious “Expedition” meant to contain and neutralize an anomalous demon threat. Some ancient weapons got woken up on a faraway planet somewhere out there and it posed an existential risk to everyone here.

  But the truth has been coming out with her now. The conflict is now tied to a person, and therefore, people.

  Lym wondered of the implications and its possible uses.

  *****

  It finally hit Vertan the weight of everything that was happening.

  There was no denying it to him. This was it. The beginning of the collapse of the system. The end of the Coalition. This was the black swan to turn the tipping point past no-return.

  The decline of the Coalition has been longstanding for centuries now. Slowly, the rest of the decolonized Myriad Worlds had caught up, and now major factions such as the Federation see a greater standard of living even if they are still considered “less free and developed” (and ironically, under whose terms and definitions?).

  Perhaps this is the final nail in the coffin for the people of the Coalition. Surely, they must realize how badly their own systems and governments con and fool them into submission. There is a face and person behind the longest and most prestigious “threat containment program”. That truth is out for good!

  The catharsis of it all put him into a mood of excitement. How ironic it was, that it would be the Coalition’s own mess to take it down. How ironic, that such an “indestructible system” could not pay off its own karmic debt! He found himself almost smiling at what the Qiaouian partisans did the other day.

  But then this was hit with another wave of implications, this time less positive. What if the Coalitionites don’t respond to it at all? What if it’s met with apathy and indifference? Or what if they don’t have the means to meaningfully rebel, both physically and ideologically? As powerful as Lym is, she is still one against quintillions, and the Coalition has supposedly held off the wars to attrition for decades. Or even longer, as she has stated. The weight of it all dawned on him. How are they supposed to do anything about it without the people? If the people are too busy surviving to continue an existence of servitude to the elite, thereby upholding the system, how will the thought of actually taking it down even come close to forming in their heads?

  Looking through his door’s eyehole, Vertan sees Lym in her chamber, now converted to a room with no privacy. At that moment, he felt a strange sympathy for the woman.

  She must have gone through so much, yet understood by so few, including him. Most of the people surrounding her seemed to view her less as a person and more as a symbol. A symbol of protection, as evident by Gahn’s troops, even if many still hesitate in front of her. A symbol of resistance, as evident by the Ulminhan protesters. A symbol of truth, as evident by the Qiaouian partisans. And now, who knows how many worlds her image has been broadcasted to?

  Let alone touching upon her people’s experiences knowing nothing but existential war.

  Another weight suddenly crushed upon Vertan, that it was simply not enough to just recognize that she was a person. This is someone’s daughter, burned and scarred. This is someone’s older sister, flung amongst the stars into a foreign world.

  At some point in time, even the millennia-old warrior-weapon, the threat to national security, had to have been a child.

  *****

  It would be the last stop before the final leg of their journey.

  Gahn looked out his window as they approached System Lionda in Gamici’a. As planned, he had designated the rest of his ships to take different worlds within the system, each with altered details to their flight plans. As far as the Coalition knows, they still expect their arrival, just not here, and especially not in Lionda. For now, they can get away with a more discreet break without the drama.

  Docking on World Ilunia’s extragalactal spaceport, everyone was eventually allowed to descend to the planet below, given a full thirty-hour Ilunian day’s worth of rest and recuperation. He kept a particular eye on Lym, who agreed to take a tracker with her. Ironically enough, he can already feel that this rest will not at all be restful for him, even with others helping shoulder the work. At least repairs will be ordered for the chamber’s door, still implanted into the wall.

  Nonetheless, he found himself admiring Ilunia’s beauty. Its seas and oceans reminded him of Ulminh’s, though its waters seemed to be of a deeper and darker hue, and the sands, more white. There were also only two moons in orbit, one of which is completely artificial.

  While sitting on the balcony of his hotel, he sends a reassuring message back to his wife.