The damage inspection ended past two.
Not because everything had been examined. But because at a certain point, the numbers on the clipboard stopped feeling like data and started feeling like a list of failures neatly formatted for reporting.
I walked through sector thirteen for the last time. The engine corridor tilted two degrees to the left because their seventeenth salvo had twisted the lower right frame — bending thick steel the way someone wrings wet cloth. Behind its plating, a sound that should not be there: a low, rhythmic hissing, like something cracked trying to pretend it was whole. I noted it. Technicians had been ordered. Repair schedules set.
Estimated time to full combat function: six weeks.
Six weeks is a funny number. It feels like something worth planning for — far enough to seem realistic, close enough to seem possible. But I stood in that tilted corridor, clipboard in hand, with legs that had not stopped for eight hours, and the only thing I could think was: for what?
Not a tactical question. Not a logistical question.
Only a question that had been hanging between my ribs since the night Hammond's voice disappeared into explosion and static, and which since that moment had never truly gone — only gone quiet enough to ignore when there were enough other things I needed to do.
Tonight, there were not enough other things.
I passed through sectors twelve, eleven, ten. Corridors where some of the lights had gone out, replaced by the dim red glow of emergency systems. Here and there, traces of soot on walls that had been cleaned but whose marks remained like burns not fully healed. Magnus II was a ship still standing, but its standing was the standing of someone who had just come through something that should have destroyed them — with bones still intact but something within that could no longer be guaranteed.
I knew that feeling.
Past sector ten, there was a small room not listed in any official ship schematic. It had grown on its own, like a fungus growing in wall cracks — slowly, without permission, but in a way that somehow no one ever felt the need to stop. Several chairs that did not match each other. A table whose surface was covered with the rings of glasses. A small shelf with bottles whose contents were not always the same week to week.
The crew called it many different names. I never called it anything. I rarely came here.
But tonight my feet brought me here before my mind had time to decide.
And there, Edward sat alone.
He did not see me enter — or saw me, but chose not to react, which is one of the things I valued about Edward without ever saying so. He sat in the manner of someone who had been there a long time: back slightly hunched, elbows on the table, one hand turning a half-empty glass with a motion that had become automatic. In the ashtray before him, a nearly finished cigarette still sent up thin smoke — its ember red-black, consuming itself slowly in a way that for some reason felt deeply familiar.
I pulled a chair across from him.
Sat.
Between us, no one said anything. The thin curl of smoke rose straight toward the ceiling, spread, disappeared into the half-functioning ventilation.
I let that silence sit with me for a moment. Tried to feel whether it pressed or not. It did not. With Edward, silence never felt like something that had to be filled.
"Sectors seven through nineteen inspection complete," I said finally. My voice sounded flatter than I intended — but that was how my voice sounded after eight hours, after days, after everything that had happened between the Magnus II engagement and tonight. "The secondary reactor is still online but output is down forty-two percent. The right-side shield generator is beyond field repair — it needs a dock. The Lance of Magnus needs focusing crystal replacement we don't have in inventory. Medical supplies are at thirty percent. And the two hundred and seven crew members we—"
"Adler."
One word. Not loud. Not cutting in a harsh way.
Only my name, in a tone that said: you don't have to report anything to me tonight.
I stopped.
There was something uncomfortable about the way Edward could do that — reduce an entire architecture of sentences to one word and make everything feel like what it actually was: not a report, but a wall.
He slid his glass toward me without being asked. I looked at it for a moment. Then picked it up. Drank.
Bitter. Strong. The kind of drink that tastes like a decision, not a pleasure.
I drank it to the bottom.
Edward poured again without asking.
Then, without thinking — or perhaps precisely because for one moment I stopped trying to think about everything at once — my hand moved on its own toward the pack of cigarettes on the table. I picked one up. Placed it between my lips.
Edward pushed the lighter over. No comment. No raised eyebrow. No remark on whether this was the first time I'd smoked, whether it was an old habit I'd concealed, or a new weakness born tonight.
Only the lighter, pushed forward.
I lit it. Inhaled. Let the smoke descend to a place that didn't know its anatomical name but knew it was hot and bitter and felt, strangely, like something real in the middle of everything that had lately felt as though I was reading it from behind glass.
Exhaled.
Smoke left the corners of my lips, rose, mingled with Edward's older smoke in the air already thick with everything unspoken.
"Six weeks," I said finally. "Full repair estimate. If all the parts are available, if nothing changes, if—" I stopped. Inhaled again. "If many unlikely things happen according to plan."
"And if not?" asked Edward. Not with a challenging tone. Only asking.
"Then we meet the next attack with a half-functioning ship, an exhausted crew, and a fleet that is one-third of one-third of what we had at Magnus II." A pause. "We'll lose faster. But we'll still lose."
I said that in the same tone I used to say reactor readings. Forty-two percent. Six weeks. Lose.
All of it sounded the same in my mouth now.
Edward didn't answer. He only took a drink. Stared at a point on the table that held nothing.
I turned my glass in my hand. Watched the liquid inside rotate slightly then stop.
"Hammond said to stay alive." The words came out before I decided to speak them. Like something stored too long in too small a space — not exploding, but seeping. Slowly. Without permission. "His last words. Not strategy. Not a message for the fleet or the council or anyone who needed a message. Only that. Live. Whatever it takes."
Inhale. Exhale.
"And I don't know," I continued, in a voice that sounded strange even to my own ears — too low, too flat, too much like the voice of someone who had not truly spoken about something real for a long time, "whether what I'm doing is living, or only moving because I haven't yet found a good enough reason to stop."
Silence.
Not awkward silence. Not silence demanding to be filled.
The kind of silence that exists only when someone has just said something true, and that truth needs a moment to sit before anyone knows what to do with it.
"Do you know what's strangest?" I stared at the smoke rising. "He was younger than me. In many ways. But his last request — those words — they sounded like something said by someone who understood life far more deeply than anyone else in this room."
I set the glass on the table. Slightly harder than I intended.
The sound rang through the still air and faded.
I stared at the table.
"Sometimes a person's last request is the heaviest thing they can leave for you to carry."
A long silence followed.
Then something in my chest shifted.
Not slowly. Not gradually. Like something held too long by hands too tired — and those hands finally let go.
"Do you know what they did?" My voice changed. Not louder — lower, lower into something darker than loud. "At Tellus. Do you know what they did after we withdrew?"
Edward didn't answer. He knew this was not a question that wanted an answer.
"They called themselves liberators." The word came from my mouth like something rotted. "Liberators. They entered the cities with victory flags and the first thing they did was round up everyone they suspected of ever having sworn loyalty to the Empire." I drew on the cigarette. My hands were not entirely still. "Everyone, Ed. No distinctions. Old. Young. Men. Women. Children who didn't even understand what the Empire was, whose only crime was to have been born to the wrong parents."
Inhale. Exhale. Smoke came harder than before.
"Those they decided were loyalists, they executed on the spot. In the squares. In the streets. Outside their own homes." I stared at the ember shrinking. "Their bodies were hung from city posts so the living could see. Learn from it, they said. So the living would understand this was no longer the Empire. So the living would know which way the wind was blowing." A pause. "Some were burned. Not all of them were already dead when they were burned."
The glass was in my hand. I didn't remember picking it up.
"What remained — those not executed — were transported to forced labor camps. Camps, Ed. Not prisons. Camps. Do you know the difference?" I didn't wait for an answer. "A prison has a sentencing limit. A camp has an age limit. And their age limit apparently began at whatever was large enough to hold a work implement." My voice dropped again, deeper, to a place that no longer felt like the voice of a commander or a prince or anything — only someone who had read too many reports about things that should not have become reports. "Children, Ed. There were children in those camps. Because their parents had once worn a uniform like mine."
I set the glass down.
"And I stood on the bridge of Magnus II." My voice began to crack at its seams, like steel that had exceeded its elastic limit. "I stood there with a holomap before me and Ele holding my arm and I — what did I do? I ordered withdrawal. I ordered withdrawal because there was no other choice, because the mathematics didn't allow it, because if we stayed we all died and I couldn't—"
I stopped.
Drew breath.
That breath did not come out as steadily as I wanted.
"I couldn't protect them." The words came out one by one, like something that had to be forced from a place that had stored them too long. "All the rhetoric about the Empire, about loyalty, about fight until your last breath and let this sky become a monument — all of that is what I said to them. To my crew. To people who trusted me." My voice fell to something barely audible. "And while I made speeches about monuments, the people I claimed to be fighting for were being hanged from the posts of Tellus."
Silence.
Not peaceful silence.
"I am a leader who failed." Not dramatically. In the tone of fact — in precisely the tone I used to report that the secondary reactor was down forty-two percent, that the right shield generator was beyond repair. "I am a commander who could not hold one planet. One planet, Ed — that planet. Home. Their home. The heart of everything twenty millennia built." My hands clenched on the table. "And I could not hold it."
Live. Whatever it takes.
Hammond's voice in my head. Never truly gone.
"Hammond." His name left my mouth differently from before — not with control, not with measured distance. Only his name, raw, like a wound touched without preparation. "He was the only family I had, Ed. The last. Mother was gone when I was nine. Father a year after. Grandfather when I was fifteen. And Hammond — Hammond who was always there, who always called, who always knew when I needed to hear his voice even when I hadn't said so—"
My voice stopped.
My throat did something I could not fully control.
"His last words weren't about the Empire. Not about strategy or legacy or the grand things a prince is supposed to care about." I took the cigarette. Did not light it — only held it, needing something to hold. "Only my name. Only live. As if that were the only thing he wanted from me. As if everything he had ever asked from his failed elder brother was only that I keep breathing."
Something warm at the corner of my eye.
I didn't notice it immediately.
"But do you know what's most painful?" My voice sounded strange. Wet. I didn't understand why — until I raised my hand to wipe my face, and my hand was wet too. I stared at my fingers for a moment, like someone looking at something they don't understand.
Tears.
I was crying.
I didn't know when it had started.
But now that I was aware of it, I couldn't pretend not to be. Like a crack too wide to cover with a hand — the liquid flowed from a source that had been sealed too long, and now nothing was strong enough to hold it back.
"The most painful thing is—" My voice broke. Not dramatically. Only broke, like steel worn too thin, like the voice of someone who had never quite learned how to do this. "Then. In my quarters, after the battle. When Magnus II was still humming and Ele was still outside the door and Vincent was still bringing food I never touched — there was one night, Ed. There was one night when I stood there and I searched for something in the cabinet. In the drawer. In the corners of the room."
A ragged intake of breath.
"I was looking for something that would end it."
Those words fell between us like something heavy and irrevocable.
"It was Vincent who stopped me. Not because I decided on my own to stop. But because Vincent already knew — somehow he already knew — and he stood in the doorway holding a small fruit knife, offering it to me the way someone would who wanted to ask if I was serious." I bowed my head. Tears fell onto the table's surface, leaving dark marks in wood already full of other marks from other times, other conversations, other people who had perhaps also carried something too heavy. "And I was serious, Ed. I was genuinely serious. Not because I was weak, or not only that — but because I was watching the broadcast from Tellus and I was seeing their faces, the faces of people kneeling in the square with bound hands, and I thought: they are dying because I was not good enough. I am responsible for all of it. For every body hanged, for every child transported to a camp, for every person who last saw the sky of Tellus because their leader was unable to hold it."
I finally lit the cigarette I'd been holding.
My hands shook.
The lighter caught on the third try.
"I am still here not because I chose to be here." Smoke came with the words, with unsteady breath, with everything stored too long in too small a space. "I am still here because Hammond asked me to be. Because his last words haunt every corner of this mind and I haven't enough hatred for myself to ignore the last request of the only family I had left." I inhaled deeply. Exhaled long. "But Ed — I don't know. I truly don't know how. Live for what? Fight for whom? The Empire has fallen. Tellus is gone. Hammond is—"
My voice stopped again.
A throat that would not cooperate.
I bowed deeper. Not hiding my face — I no longer had the energy to hide anything. Tears fell without permission, dampening the table already covered with glass rings and traces of time and traces of all the other conversations that had occurred here with people who perhaps also carried something too heavy.
The fingers of my right hand closed around the glass.
My jaw clamped shut.
Not from trying to hold back again — but from muscle so accustomed to tensing that it tensed even when there was nothing left to hold.
"Ed." My voice, when it finally came, sounded smaller than anything that had ever come from my mouth before anyone. Not a commander's voice. Not a prince's voice. Not the voice of Adler Telluris who could stand on the bridge with a two-to-five ratio and still give a speech about monuments. Only the voice of a man who had exhausted every means of pretending. "I don't know what to do. I truly don't know."
A pause.
Unsteady breath.
"Please tell me. What should I do now?"
—
I did not answer immediately.
Not because I didn't know what I wanted to say. But because there are moments when words are the most wrong thing you can give to someone — and I had known Adler long enough to recognize this as one of those moments.
I watched him.
I watched that facade — the one he had spent years building, that had passed through the deaths of parents and military academy and hundreds of battles and one night when he stood on the bridge with a two-to-five ratio and did not blink — I watched that facade not just crack.
Collapse.
Truly collapse.
And what remained across from me was not a prince, not a commander, not Adler Vinculum Magnus Telluris with all the titles and burdens that clung to that name.
Only a man sitting hunched over a table with tears on his cheeks that he hadn't wiped — perhaps because he hadn't noticed, perhaps because he had no energy left for it — with a nearly finished cigarette between trembling fingers, with a question in his eyes deeper than anything I had ever seen in anyone's eyes.
What should I do now?
I had known Adler since we were young enough to believe this world held more answers than questions. I knew he had never asked like this. Not because he always had answers — but because he had never allowed himself to reach the place from which a question like this could emerge.
Tonight he had allowed it.
And that, more than everything he had said — about Tellus, about the camps, about the bodies hung and the children transported, about one night with a small fruit knife and Vincent in the doorway — that was the thing that struck me most.
Because Adler asking was Adler who could still be reached.
I had seen Adler after battles. Seen him after decisions that swallowed hundreds of lives. Seen him at moments when everyone else had begun to break and he was still standing, still giving orders, still being the stone that didn't care how many waves crashed against it.
But tonight —
Tonight I saw how exhausted he was from being that stone.
There was a vulnerability in his face he was not permitting out but could no longer entirely hold in. Not tears — that was too simple for Adler. Not dramatic collapse. Only a weariness so deep it seeped through the seams of a facade that didn't normally crack. A weariness stored too long in too small a space.
Weariness of the most dangerous kind.
The kind that doesn't know how to ask for help. That perhaps doesn't even know it needs help. That will keep moving and recording and planning until one day it can no longer do so, and even then might still try to write a report on why it can't.
I didn't offer a solution. I had no solution large enough for this.
I only refilled his glass.
And moved the cigarette pack closer to his hand.
Because sometimes that is the only language honest enough for a night like this: I am here, I am not leaving, take what you need.
I poured into both glasses. Pushed one toward him.
Then I answered. Not with grand words. Not with anything that would sound well if quoted. Only with the one thing I could trust to be true tonight.
"Tonight," I said, "you don't have to do anything, Adler. Tonight you only sit here. With me. That is enough."
He looked at me.
His eyes were red. Wet. With the expression of someone who had not yet fully accepted that enough was something that applied to him.
"Tomorrow may be different," I continued. "Tomorrow there may be things to decide, things to do, new reasons to find. But tonight—" I raised my glass. "Tonight, Hammond asked for one thing. You are still here. Which means tonight, you've already done it."
A long silence.
Adler stared at his glass. One more tear fell, dropping to the table's surface, and he did not wipe it.
This time, I think he let it be.
We drank together without speaking — like an agreement that required no words to ratify.
Through the small window facing the void of space, nothing was visible. Only black. Not beautiful or dramatic black — only the vast, indifferent black that existed before us and would exist after us, that would not change in the slightest because one empire fell or one man named Hammond no longer existed to fill the space he had left behind.
But we were still here.
And for tonight — for this one night alone — perhaps that was already enough.