Master Sergeant Ajax is in his cabin, sitting in front of his and Meena’s portable terminal. The flotilla drama they were watching last night is still on screen, paused where he fell asleep—Meena paused it on a frozen image of a weeping woman, her horns half-cocked, a pistol in her hand.

He blinks. He doesn’t remember how he got here.

His anticomps are raised to his forehead. In his lap is one of his wife’s stuffed animals, an adorably bug-eyed throok with orange felt skin, with a big patch that’s turned pale and threadbare on its middle left leg. Ronax really loves chewing that bit, and to Ajax’s pleased surprise, Meena just giggles when he does and doesn’t flash the boy to stop.

In his hand is a datawafer. WATCH ME is written on it in thick-lined memorandum ink.

Is this some kind of romantic gesture from his wife? “All right, Meen,” he murmurs, and slides the wafer into the terminal’s bank, anticipating something adorably pornographic.

The Prince of the Pike’s face fills the screen. Ajax nearly jumps out of his skin.

The screen tilts and the massive Maekyonite backs away, seemingly satisfied with the camera he’s just set up. Behind him is a view of his cabin. Her Majesty and their children are missing. There’s nobody inside but Grantyde.

And—as the cabin door slides open—Ajax. He watches himself on the recorded video step into the room and salute. “Majesty.”

He has no memory of this.

Grantyde indicates an ornate gulwood seat. “Have a seat, Master Sergeant.”

Video Ajax sits stiffly in the chair. It’s worth as much as the HAK armor he’s wearing.

Grantyde sits across from him and points at the camera. “I’d like your permission to record you, Ajax.”

“You’re always recording me,” Ajax says.

“Yeah, but this recording is special. This one, nobody but you will see. So if you’re watching this in the future I need to order you to do it alone. Just in case.” Grantyde waves at the camera. “Pardon the trouble, Meen, but please leave the room.”

Ajax looks over his shoulder. He’s alone in the cabin except for Karinax, who’s in his crib sleeping. He presumes Grantyde would make an exception. He turns back to the screen, where his digital doppelganger is sitting in attentive, impersonal silence, Grantyde’s reflection in his visor.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” Grantyde says. “About a lot of things. Recently, I mean. I’ve been thinking about the ways I’ve changed, and how I’ll have to keep changing, and sometimes about the ways I don’t think I’d like to change at all, actually. I’ve been rushing. That’s understandable, you might say, in my position.”

Ajax doesn’t say that—he says nothing at all, in fact.

“But if I think about it,” Grantyde says. “If I look back at my first days on the Pike, more than any promise that was made to me or exception established in my name, it was you who changed me first. You made me realize I could live here, Ajax.”

He pauses, then, in invitation for Ajax to speak. Ajax doesn’t. Modern Ajax congratulates himself for how formally he’s following procedure on the recording.

“You’re my friend,” Grantyde says. “Maybe my best friend, if wives don’t count. And it took me decacycles to get there, to have someone I could count as much a friend as a subject in the way I counted you, and I need it back. Whenever I picture my kids’ childhood it’s them being best friends with yours. And I think at one point, you pictured the same.”

Another pause. This time, Recording-Ajax fills the silence with a brief “Majesty.”

“I thought I was being responsible trying to keep my distance.” Grantyde threads his fingers behind his head and sits back. “But, well—like I said. I’ve been thinking. And I think I’m done trying. So it’s either me order you to be my friend again—that’s a joke—or this.”

The watching Ajax feels his shoulders load with tension. The recording Ajax stiffens, too. “What is this, Majesty?”

“This is me explaining myself,” Grantyde says. “This is the truth you deserve about what happened the day I was compelled, even though it’s—”

The screen flickers. The timestamp in the corner jumps ahead by five minutes. Ajax watches the skip in time knock him into a forward lean, hands clasped tightly. His helmet is off, now, by his feet on the floor, a look of muted shock on his own face.

“—et it now?” Grantyde asks. “Why I had to do what I did, and play along with it and keep this from you?”

Video Ajax stares down at his hands. “Hellfire,” he mutters.

Grantyde laughs drily. “Imagine how I felt.”

Whatever this video skipped so thoroughly dumbfounded Ajax that all he can respond with is another “Hellfire. Fuckin’ hellfire.” He snaps partially out of it. “How long has—”

The video jumps.

“Now I’m giving you the choice,” Grantyde is sitting back down and handing Ajax a glass of water. “I will let you hold this thing, with the knowledge that it’s a monstrous breach of secrecy and—”

A digital click accompanies another jump.

“But I’m guessing that’s causing you some distress.”

“Yes. Yeah.” Onscreen Ajax takes a sip of water. His legs are hooked beneath his seat, tail wrapped round its base, like the grav’s been shut off and he’s holding himself to the floor. “I mean—I can handle it.”

“I know you can,” Grantyde says. “That’s why I’m telling you.”

“But wait.” Ajax looks up. “ If you—”

The tape skips forward again, another minute.

“—top talking about it in concrete terms at this point, please,” Grantyde says. “I’m gonna need to edit this myself, and I barely know how.”

“Couldn’t the Chief Engineer? Unless… nobody knows you’re doing this, do they?”

Grantyde shakes his big shaggy head. “Just you, Jax. Though I might tell Kora if you decide to keep this in your brain.”

“As opposed to…” The light goes on for video Ajax at the same time as it does for the guy watching it back. “You’re gonna compel me.”

“That’s your other option,” Grantyde says. “Meena’s waiting outside. I can get her in here right now and ask her to remove your memory of what we talked about here. Then I’ll give you this recording, with the sensitive shit cut out of it. And you can watch it, and know that I trusted you enough to tell you. That I trust you with my life, and the life of my family, and the Pike. And that I’m sorry for what happened and the cycles of distance it’s made, and I need my friend back. So if you can be satisfied by this shadow of the truth, we can flash the rest away. But if you need an explanation, you have it now. And I’ll let it stay in your head.”

Video Ajax is statue-still.

“Jax?” Grantyde prompts.

“I’m thinking.”

“Take your time. Do you have any more quest—”

Another jump. They’re both on their feet now, shaking hands.

“—ver again,” Grantyde says. That’s a promise.”

Ajax watches himself shift his grip on the handshake and pull the Prince of the Black Pike into a hug. What the fuck are you thinking, he wants to ask himself, but Grantyde smiles and thumps him on the back.

“Thank you, Majesty,” video Ajax says. “Thank you, I—it’s been such a fucking hole in my head. It shouldn’t have been. I’m not… I didn’t deserve—”

“Yes, you did,” Grant says. “I love you, man.”

“I love you too,” Ajax says—shouts? The audio just boomed so hard that it clipped at the edge. “Edit that shit out.”

Grantyde laughs. “No way. I’m turning it way up. And putting it two more ti—”

“I love you too. I love you too.”

“—mes right here.”

Ajax points toward himself in the future. “This is where you’re recording from?”

“Yep.”

The camera shifts as the Ajax of the past picks it up. “Master Sergeant,” he says, sternly. “I’m electing to remove the memory of the explanation His Majesty gave us. But I am stating directly to you, in the future, that it satisfied me. And if you’re watching this and you insist on maintaining your distance, stop being a dumb asshole.”

“And let me know when you’ve watched this,” Grantyde’s voice from over Ajax’s armored shoulder. “Please.”

“Sure.” The camera jolts around. “Catch.”

“Wait Jax wait that’s expens—”

The video feed ends.

Without meaning to, Ajax has been crushing the hell out of his wife’s stuffy. He tosses it back onto their comfy little nest with the rest as he stands.

He puts his anticomps back on and exits the cabin.

Where are you going? he inquires of his feet. They’re pointing him toward the sleek pillars of the lifts, where they rise like a needle from the center of the hab ring. Towards the command deck, and the Prince he thought he knew, and then thought he didn’t.

---

The man on the screen has the jowels of a Basset Hound and the eyes of a huskie—starkly bright beneath the wrinkles. Grant isn’t used to seeing anyone so visibly aged.

“To the esteemed rulers of the Kei’na Terokai sector,” he says, in English colored by an urbane European accent. “I am Egon van den Broek, the Ambassador representing the United Nations’ Security Council’s special Taiikari working committee. On behalf of the people of Earth, it is my honor to send greetings to the royal family.”

The command group of the Black Pike have gathered on the deck’s privacy level to watch the video response from Maekyon. It’s grainy and low-res on the massive holographic screen they’re using. Waian crunches from a bag of roasted nuts.

“To Prince Grant Hyde, Earth welcomes you back. May your reunion with your own species be a joyful homecoming, and alongside every honor due to your elevated interstellar station, may you remember also your kinship with Earth’s people.” Egon raises his fists in a minuscule cheering gesture. “Here we go Brownies.”

Grant can’t help but chuckle at the Cleveland chant in Egon’s accent. You have an accent too, Prince Grantyde. Wonder how you’ll sound at the game.

“To Princess Sykora,” Egon says. “Your husband’s homeland will gladly host you as representative of your Empire.”

He raises a finger.

“However,” he says, and something is off. Grant’s brain takes embarrassingly long through the following speech to realize it. “If, as your message seems to imply, you approach with the intent of unilateral annexation, and without respect for the self-rule of Earth’s nations, you will find us prepared to protect our sovereignty. We—”

Hyax hits a button and the Basset man freezes. “He’s speaking Taiikari. How is he speaking Taiikari.”

“Gods of Hellfire.” Waian wears a stunned grin. “What a flex.”

“Unpause,” Vora says.

“—are immune to the compulsion that marks your Empire’s constituent species,” Egon says, as the feed resumes. “And we have more advantages of which you are not yet aware that we are prepared to wield in our own defense.”

He returns to English.

“If, instead, you arrive on equitable footing, and with recognition of our independent stewardship of Earth, we stand ready and eager to forge the bond between our world and the galactic community.” Egon threads his fingers together before him. “Let the upcoming meeting between our species herald an unprecedented era of cooperation and fraternity for Humankind and Taiikari alike. This is the invitation extended from Earth’s children to the denizens of the stars. Thank you, and we anticipate your arrival with great hope.”

The screen switches to the laureled logo of the UN, then shuts off.

Waian laughs. “God love your people, Grantyde. The way that guy was talking, you’d think we’d nipped by for a cup of sucron powder.”

“Stewardship,” Vora says, “is an interesting word for a world government overseeing a technological mass extinction.”

Waian blows a raspberry. “Be nice, Vor.”

“How does he know Taiikari?” Hyax demands. “How does he know immunity?”

“The fucking Penitent,” Grant realizes.

Their heads snap to him.

“They’ve been communicating with her, somehow,” he says. “In league with her, maybe. She knew Latin when we met. Sic Semper Tyrannis. I’d assumed all she’d done was study us, but she’s made contact. I’ll bet you anything that sweep technology wasn’t just Maekyonite haphazardness. It’s been the Penitent. She gave it to them.”

“Shitfire.” Waian sighs. “I really hoped it was you guys re-doing the blowing yourselves onto the moon with petroleum, but that makes a lotta sense. As if this couldn’t get more complicated.”

Hyax’s snowstorm brows are low. “Folly to imagine something easier.”

“The first step is always to correct the host world’s wayward presumption of securely-held independence,” Lomanza says, with her usual gunmetal calm.

“That’s easy enough to say in a usual annexation,” Waian says. “But now we’ve got indicators that there’s a deeply truant Void Princess sniffing around the perimeter. Those more advantages that Egon guy said. That’s not just empty guff anymore.”

“We’ve refitted the electronic defense suite on the Pike to brick over the exploits she used,” Vora says. “Our daemons’ logic cores have been updated to countermand any copies of that phony Empress the Penitent might have lying around. But whatever game this woman is playing, she’s been playing it for a long time. And if she’s the one who’s taught Maekyon our language and our sweep, then she’s clearly poised to counterpunch us.”

“Catastrophe builds upon catastrophe,” Hyax says. “This was already going to be a nightmarish attempt. Now…”

Sykora breaks her silence for the first time since the video began. “I am not afraid of the Penitent.”

“Not afraid, of course,” Vora says. “But we have underestimated her before.”

“Underestimated her?” Sykora laughs. There’s a touch of madness at its edge. “She has underestimated me. She thinks me malleable and predictable. She knows the doctrine, and so thinks she knows my moves. I think otherwise. She thought to pull us into this first contact by force? We had already decided upon it. She thinks now to blow the annexation to pieces? Grantyde and I have devised a strategy that will countermand this, too.”

Waian swallows her mouthful of nuts. “This I need to hear.”

“Simple.” Sykora stands up atop her throne and folds her hands behind her back. “We’re blowing it up first.”