Chapter 20 - Decisions

  The gravitational transport floated in silence above the electromagnetic rails, gliding with the precision of a surgical needle through Klynos’s elevated corridors. Lin watched the city lights blur across his reflection in the window, his expression tense and empty.

  He knew what he was about to do. He knew what it meant. He knew that in another life, at another time, he would never have allowed himself something like this. But the question hammered inside his skull, again and again, like an order he could not ignore:

  How would Robert Santiago act?

  He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he was no longer Lin. He was Santiago’s shadow in Klynos, his executing hand. And Hal Varandis was going to yield.

  Varandis’s residence was in a part of the city where the Universal Government’s shine barely reached. A district of withered luxury, buildings that had once been symbols of power, now cracking under the pressure of scandal and decay. When Lin stepped off the transport and walked toward the entrance, he noticed the lack of security. No assistants. No servants. Nothing but a half-closed door and an uneasy silence.

  He rang the bell and waited.

  A few seconds later, the door opened, revealing Hal Varandis. He was not the man Lin remembered from congresses and high-level meetings. His suit was rumpled, his hair unkempt, his gaze sunk into exhaustion. Lin didn’t need to ask what was wrong. He knew.

  “What do you want?” Varandis’s voice came out hoarse, as if he hadn’t slept in days.

  Lin forced a professional smile.

  “To talk. A moment of your time.”

  Hal snorted and stepped aside, letting him in without another word. The inside of the house was worse than Lin had imagined. The dining table held empty bottles, a few plates with leftover food, and a couple of documents stacked with no order. An armchair was tipped against the wall, and on the floor, beside the table, there was a framed photo face down.

  Varandis looked at him with a mix of fury and defeat.

  “If you came to gloat, save yourself the effort. Everyone already knows. Everything already went to hell.”

  Lin showed no reaction. He walked to the table and picked up one of the bottles, turning it between his fingers before letting it drop back down.

  “I know your wife left the house. That your daughter won’t speak to you. That your political career is hanging by a thread.” He let the words float in the air, each one a well-placed knife. “But I also know this doesn’t have to be the end.”

  Varandis clenched his jaw and laughed without humor.

  “Oh, it doesn’t?” He took a step toward Lin, his face twisted with frustration. “You’re going to tell me how this gets fixed? The damn story is out. It spread like a fire. I can’t step outside without people spitting on me.”

  Lin tilted his head and slid a tablet across the table. On the screen, the name Saphira Don glowed with a faint sheen.

  “And what if I told you the same journalist who broke the story can retract it?”

  Varandis narrowed his eyes.

  “What?”

  Lin leaned against the table, folding his arms with studied calm.

  “Saphira Don. The only one who covered it back then. The only one with access to the real archives. I can make her publish a correction. Something that casts doubt on the accusations. Something that makes it look like all this was media manipulation.”

  Varandis’s lips parted slightly. Hope was a dangerous drug, and Lin had just injected it straight into his vein.

  “Why would you do that?” he asked, with the caution of a man at the edge of a cliff.

  Lin smiled, but it was an empty smile.

  “Because Operative Bastion needs your vote.”

  Varandis’s shoulders sagged and he let out a laugh with no joy.

  “Of course.” He dragged a hand over his face, massaging his temples with obvious exhaustion. “All this… all this is for that fucking law.”

  Lin shrugged.

  “There aren’t many options, Hal. You and I both know this isn’t about ideals. It’s about surviving. Do you want a chance to save what’s left of your life? I’m offering it.”

  Varandis walked to the overturned armchair and dropped heavily into it. He fell silent, staring up at the ceiling. When he spoke, his voice was full of resignation.

  “There’s no other way out, is there?”

  Lin shook his head.

  “No. There isn’t.”

  The silence stretched for several seconds. Varandis closed his eyes, exhaling hard, before giving a small nod.

  “All right. I’ll do it. I’ll vote in favor.”

  Lin felt a flash of satisfaction inside him. Quick. Cold. Efficient. Robert Santiago would be proud.

  How would Robert Santiago act?

  Like this.

  Lin straightened and smoothed his jacket.

  “Good man. I’ll contact Saphira. In a couple of days, your story will start to change.”

  Varandis didn’t answer. He stayed there, sunk into his sofa, with the expression of a man who had just sold the last piece of his soul.

  Lin turned and walked to the door. Just as he was about to leave, he heard Varandis’s voice behind him, lower now, more broken.

  “How do you sleep at night?”

  Lin paused for a moment. He didn’t turn around.

  “Lying in my bed.”

  And he left.

  As he climbed back into the gravitational transport, he felt the satisfaction of a job well done.

  But he also felt disgust.

  Because for the first time in his life, that feeling of triumph didn’t feel foreign.

  It felt natural.

  The campfire was deliberately small.

  A low, nervous flame, fed with dry scraps that burned fast and quiet. They didn’t want warmth. They wanted something that justified sitting together without speaking. The light barely reached far enough to sketch tired faces and hands resting on weapons no one bothered to clean carefully that night.

  Div Kut sat apart.

  Not fully isolated, but outside the natural circle. He sat hunched, shoulders pitched forward as if he were trying to take up less space than he was entitled to. He stared at the fire without seeing it. Or maybe he was seeing something else, something that wasn’t there.

  Constantina watched him for a while before moving closer.

  She had given orders all her life. She had shouted under fire, shoved wounded bodies, dragged soldiers out of hot zones without asking permission. But now… now she didn’t know from where to speak to him.

  She approached slowly. She crouched in front of him, keeping her hands visible, open.

  “Div,” she said.

  He didn’t respond.

  “We’re camping,” she continued. “Tomorrow we leave the valley.”

  Nothing.

  The silence wasn’t absence. It was density. A wall.

  Constantina drew a deep breath. She allowed herself a minimal gesture: her hand extending slightly, careful, like someone testing a surface that might burn.

  Div reacted instantly.

  He pulled his arm back with a sharp movement, almost violent, and his body folded in on itself.

  “No,” he said.

  The word came out clean, clear, without tremor.

  “Don’t touch me,” he added, without lifting his eyes. “Please.”

  Constantina withdrew her hand as if she’d been shoved.

  There was no anger. There was something worse: the certainty that there was nothing she could do there.

  “All right,” she said. “I won’t touch you.”

  She rose slowly. She felt the weight of every gaze that pretended not to look.

  Frustration climbed up from her stomach, thick, shapeless. Not at Div. At herself. At that childish idea that being in command meant being able to protect.

  Diemano appeared at her side as always: without noise, without invading. He handed her a closed canteen. Not for her to drink. So she’d have something to hold.

  “Not now,” he murmured. “It won’t be now.”

  Constantina gripped the canteen without opening it.

  “Look at him,” she said. “He walked wrong today. He doesn’t register where he steps.”

  “No one fixes that by forcing him,” Diemano replied. “And definitely not you alone.”

  Chuet came around from the other side of the fire. He didn’t look at Div directly.

  “I can stay close,” he offered. “Not talk to him. Not ask him anything. Just… be.”

  Constantina nodded.

  “Thank you.”

  Chuet sat a few steps from Div, turning his back to the fire, sharing the same cold. Div didn’t react. But he didn’t stand up either.

  That was already a kind of resistance.

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  Constantina stepped out of the circle of light. She needed darkness. She needed not to see.

  “Hand.”

  Volosko’s voice reached her even, without urgency.

  “Can we talk?” he asked. “A moment.”

  They walked a few meters, until the fire no longer reached them. The valley vibrated under their feet, that constant hum that had already become part of the body.

  “We’re twelve,” Volosko said, no preamble.

  Constantina didn’t answer.

  “Twelve Blue Stars in this detachment,” he continued. “Five… we want things to change.”

  She glanced at him.

  “Change how?”

  “Cruger is no good,” he said. “Not for what’s coming. But he’s very loved by certain… influences among the Blue Stars, so I won’t be able to take him down democratically.”

  “So… he’s no good.”

  Volosko shook his head and went on. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t spit hate. He said it like someone listing a mechanical failure.

  “He splits groups,” he continued. “Breaks agreements. Turns every advance into an ego contest. He doesn’t build anything that can hold for more than a day.”

  “And yet they follow him,” Constantina replied.

  “Because they’re afraid of him,” Volosko said. “Or because they’re too much like him. There are plenty of idiots who see the Blue Stars as a license to be degenerate sons of bitches without consequences.”

  Silence.

  “I’m proposing we join forces,” he said. “Your squad and ours. Remove him. For good.”

  The word didn’t need emphasis.

  Constantina thought of Div. Of how he’d said no. Of how final that refusal had been.

  “I accept,” she said.

  Volosko looked at her with new attention.

  “You don’t want to know more?”

  “I’ve seen enough.”

  He nodded.

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “Why not now?”

  “Because I still have to secure mine,” he replied. “And because Cruger isn’t stupid. Attacking while he’s alert is giving away bodies. Tomorrow you and I won’t speak all day, we’ll keep going like nothing. And I’ll come find you at night. And then we’ll finish them. Make sure yours are ready. If we do this properly, we don’t have to lose anyone.”

  Constantina considered it for barely a second.

  “I have a condition.”

  “Say it.”

  “Cruger stays alive,” she said. “I want Div Kut to see him. To know he can’t do anything to him anymore.”

  Volosko tilted his head.

  “That’s not orthodox.”

  “I don’t care.”

  The silence stretched.

  “All right,” he agreed. “Still, let me tell you something… this guilt, this need to compensate, isn’t going to give you anything good…”

  “I don’t need your advice,” she cut him off. “Do we have a deal or not?”

  “Yes.”

  They stayed there a moment longer, in the dark.

  Behind them, the fire kept burning low.

  Constantina smiled. Maybe, just maybe, she’d found the solution.

  The tent was quiet. Not the clean silence of night, but the other kind, denser, made of still canvas and held breath. Kael sat on the edge of the cot, elbows resting on his knees, staring at a fixed point on the ground that had stopped existing a long time ago.

  He hadn’t spoken to Jackie all day. Not because he didn’t want to. Because he didn’t know from where.

  The noise of the camp came in muffled: distant footsteps, a brief laugh that died quickly, the clink of metal against metal. Everything kept working. It always kept working.

  Rudolph’s entrance was discreet. He pushed the canvas just enough to peek in.

  “Got a minute?” he asked.

  Kael didn’t lift his head.

  “If it’s for cards, no.”

  Rudolph came in anyway. He closed the canvas behind him and set the deck on the improvised table.

  “It wasn’t a formal invitation,” he said. “More like a mediocre attempt at distraction.”

  Kael exhaled through his nose.

  “Not today.”

  Rudolph nodded. He didn’t insist. He put the deck away without making noise and sat across from him, leaning his back against a box of ammunition.

  They stayed like that for a few seconds.

  “Sit down,” Kael said at last, as if only now noticing he wasn’t alone.

  “I already did.”

  Kael looked up. He studied him with genuine fatigue.

  “I need you to be honest with me.”

  That made Rudolph raise an eyebrow slightly.

  “That sounds dangerous.”

  “We’ve been friends since we were kids,” Kael went on. “Before the uniform. Before all this.”

  Rudolph shifted into a better position.

  “Alright,” he said. “Shoot.”

  Kael took his time forming the question. When he spoke, his voice came out lower than he expected.

  “How do you see me?”

  Rudolph blinked, surprised.

  “How do I see you?”

  “Yes,” Kael insisted. “Do you think I’m doing things right?”

  The silence that followed was uncomfortable. Not because Rudolph didn’t know what to say, but because he didn’t expect to have to say it.

  “I don’t usually hear you asking for confirmation,” he admitted. “Not like this.”

  Kael didn’t answer.

  Rudolph watched him closely, as if he were seeing him for the first time in a long time.

  “What I see,” he said at last, “is that you’re overwhelmed.”

  Kael closed his eyes for a second.

  “But you don’t show it,” Rudolph continued. “You swallow everything. Because if there’s something stronger than your suffering… it’s your conviction.”

  Kael opened his eyes.

  “And what happens when conviction is lost?”

  The question hung there, bare.

  Rudolph shrugged.

  “Resign, I guess.”

  Kael let out a brief, broken laugh.

  “Just like that?”

  “I didn’t say it was easy,” Rudolph replied. “I said it was an option.”

  Kael rested his forearms on his legs.

  “Doesn’t it happen to you?” he asked. “Don’t you feel like leaving after living with Balmoreans, Blue Stars, all this trash?”

  Rudolph didn’t answer right away.

  “My mom and dad killed themselves in the family mansion, as you know,” he said suddenly.

  Kael lifted his eyes.

  “I don’t want to be there. There’s nothing left for me in that place. The only thing I have left… is the army.”

  He hunched a little, as if that truth weighed more than it seemed.

  “You, on the other hand, you do have somewhere to go back to.”

  Kael frowned.

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “I am,” Rudolph said. “You have a family. A history outside of this. Something that doesn’t depend on ranks or orders.”

  He leaned forward slightly.

  “So if you want to leave… leave. Don’t turn it into a heroic fantasy or a sacrifice. Just do it.”

  Kael lowered his gaze again.

  “Thanks,” he murmured.

  Rudolph stood.

  “That’s what old friends are for,” he said. “To tell you uncomfortable things when you’ve stopped listening to yourself.”

  He opened the canvas and paused for a second.

  “If tomorrow you want to play cards… bring the worst hand. You’ve already spent the good ones.”

  He left without a sound.

  Kael was alone again. The camp kept breathing outside.

  And for the first time in a long time, the idea of leaving stopped feeling like betrayal and started feeling like a real possibility.

  Roq’s tent was lit.

  Not more than the others, but differently. The light didn’t flicker. There were no erratic shadows. Everything seemed arranged to leave no room for interpretation. Kael paused for a second at the canvas before going in, not to hesitate, but to adjust something inside himself that was already decided.

  He knocked once.

  “Come in,” the voice inside said. “But get straight to it. I’m up to my neck.”

  Kael pulled the canvas back and stepped in.

  Roq was bent over a table crowded with maps and projections. He didn’t look up. He spoke as he pointed at trajectories, lines of advance, friction points.

  “If Devouir arrives tomorrow at noon, we need to reorganize the eastern perimeter. I don’t want surprises, I don’t want improvisation. Everything clean. Everything…”

  Kael didn’t wait for him to finish.

  “I’m here to resign, sir.”

  Roq went still.

  It wasn’t theatrical. He simply stopped moving, as if someone had paused the scene. Only then did he raise his head.

  “What did you say?”

  “I want to step down,” Kael repeated. “I’m relinquishing effective command. I’m not going to continue in field operations.”

  Roq studied him with new attention. Not surprise. Calculation.

  “That’s desertion.”

  “No,” Kael said. “It isn’t.”

  Roq planted both hands on the table.

  “Leaving the front in the middle of an active campaign…”

  “There are no clear rules in the separatist union,” Kael cut in, “about soldiers who voluntarily leave the cause without switching sides. I’m not going to the enemy. I’m not running. I’m not sabotaging. I’m simply leaving the operational role.”

  Roq narrowed his eyes.

  “And what will you do? Disappear?”

  “No,” Kael said. “I’m going to focus on political tasks. Liaison. Containment. Whatever’s needed outside the combat field.”

  The silence tightened.

  “This is not a convenient moment for personal crises,” Roq said. “You’re useful. Very useful.”

  Kael held his gaze.

  “Not for this anymore.”

  Roq exhaled. He leaned back against the table, folded his arms.

  “You’re tired,” he said. “I understand. We all are. But you don’t make important decisions when you’re exhausted.”

  “This isn’t an impulsive decision.”

  “You have a squad,” Roq insisted. “People who depend on you. You’re going to leave them with that void?”

  Kael didn’t look away.

  “That void already exists. I’m just stopping pretending I fill it.”

  Roq clicked his tongue, irritated.

  “This will have consequences.”

  “I know.”

  Another silence.

  “Stay,” Roq said at last. “At least until Devouir arrives.”

  Kael looked at him.

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want this conversation to exist before he gets here,” Roq answered with blunt honesty. “And because, like it or not, your presence matters. Even symbolically. It makes us look orderly, and I need to present that order. His stay here won’t last more than a week.”

  Kael thought for barely a second.

  “All right,” he accepted. “I’ll stay until he leaves.”

  Roq nodded once, half-satisfied.

  “Then we’ll see.”

  Kael didn’t answer. He turned and left.

  Back in his tent, silence greeted him like a domestic animal. He closed the canvas. He sat down. It took him a moment to activate the transmitter. Not because of technical doubts. Because of the weight of what he was about to say.

  The projection took a few seconds to stabilize.

  Aeryn appeared with her hair mussed, her eyes still heavy with sleep. The light behind her was warm. Domestic. Real.

  “Kael?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”

  He looked at her as if he’d forgotten how.

  “I’m coming home,” he said.

  Aeryn blinked.

  “What?”

  “Not tomorrow,” he clarified. “Not right now. But soon.”

  She watched him in silence, searching for something in his face.

  “You’re pale,” she said. “Did something happen?”

  Kael shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “Everything happened.”

  Aeryn drew a deep breath and for the first time in weeks, Kael saw her smile.

  “Then come,” she said. “When you can. We’ll be here.”

  Kael nodded.

  He cut the transmission.

  He sat there for a long time, the transmitter off, his hands still on his knees.

  Outside, the war kept being planned.

  Inside, for the first time in months, Kael Durnan had said out loud that he was leaving. For the first time, Kael felt free.