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Another, quieter chapter with the two characters who will anchor the final half of the story.

Apologies for the delay in posting! I have wound up inserting a new chapter (not this one) and I wanted to make sure that it still tracked with what had already been written. Kalija and Cal Lewis, the two principle characters here, have both had chapters of their own before, but they're present here because they will be the lens through which—chiefly—the rest of the story is told. Patreon subscribers, this should also be live for you with notes and everything, a little more than usual this time because it's also a little more of a contemplative chapter where it seems like a good idea to go more into moreau history and language. I've also updated the Rukhat dictionary and the TO&E for the setting :P

Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute--as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.

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Crucible, by Rob Baird. Part 16.

Spaceport Al-hass Hakh-Kin

Kashkin, Jericho

30.11.2560

Lieutenant Talish, Kalija thought, was no more in the know than anyone in his unit. They’d been transferred to Al-hass Hakh-Kin on short notice, and everyone in the platoon felt the weight of that suddenness—Talish included. He was a schoolteacher, when not serving in the reserves.

“The uncertainty does not help you, I know,” he finished, after saying that their new duties were likely to be temporary. “But our contributions, one way or the other, are helping the Kashkin. Trust me.” With that, Talish ended the briefing and dismissed the platoon.

Kalija’s contribution, until she heard otherwise, was to be assisting in guard duties for the handful of Arcadian prisoners they’d captured. The rest of her unit had been assigned other tasks, vacated by an infantry company that had been called up to the front, but Kalija’s command of English made her uniquely valuable.

For the moment, at least. When the Border Collie’s reserve battalion was first activated, a few days before the start of the war, Kalija’s pack had been open in their concern for her safety. Over the next week, though, the battalion had been used mostly for simple jobs, freeing up active duty soldiers for fighting elsewhere.

Transferring to garrison duty at the spaceport brought with it rumors that there were no more active duty units to relieve. Lieutenant Talish was careful with his words, in general, but he’d all but confirmed it: their next move would take them into combat. He did not know when, and he did not know where.

The guard she relieved was another from the battalion, and when they asked did he say anything? she knew what the question meant. They would have to remain on edge—the stress itself part of their contribution. She clicked the lock shut and looked around the repurposed barracks.

There were more humans than she’d ever seen in one place: forty-eight, according to the manifest. They kept to themselves, talking in soft tones, or occupied with old computers the OVKK had managed to spare for reading material. She checked in with the other two guards, who confirmed that the barracks had been quiet: it was just after mealtime.

In giving her the assignment, Lieutenant Talish suggested that she might try to learn something from the prisoners, although she had no idea what. The collie watched the room carefully, and had a chance to observe the human approaching her: middle-aged and completely bald, a combination of his thick-framed glasses and the robes he’d been given made him look a little like a monk.

“Ilshakasa Angallash dhulnasirilla.”

His speech was halting, and the pronunciation was atrocious. “English is fine,” she answered; it was better than trying to understand his attempts at Rukhat. “It was my first language, anyway.”

“Oh. Interesting. You’re new here, too—first time in this building, I guess? I saw the way you looked around.”

The Border Collie canted her head, trying to size the man up. “You’re very… observant.”

“Bored,” he countered. “I’m very bored. What’s your name?”

“Rulkohagut Runukalija. Kalija, for short.”

“Sergeant Major Lewis. Cal, for short. That won’t be confusing, will it?”

“No.” He didn’t seem particularly dangerous, and Talish had asked her to ‘learn something,’ so she let the conversation continue. “Where did you learn nakath-Rukhat?”

“I only know that one phrase. And, as for where I learned it? I asked one of the guards. When I had it memorized, I asked another… wanted to make sure you hadn’t tried to pull one over on me. Even though I know you tell folks that you don’t really do that.”

“We don’t, generally.”

Cal chuckled. “Y’all keep saying. I guess I’m slow to trust. So, are you taking over from Sergeant Deneg?”

“Yes, for now.” According to the roster, Deneg had previously held the collie’s position. They hadn’t met, and she didn’t know where Deneg was, precisely—but the whole of the 20th Motor Rifle Brigade was now assembling with General Sanuk in the east.

The 20th was, itself, classified as a reserve unit. Extenuating circumstances forced the OVKK to distinguish its older brigades, filled with veterans and the beneficiary of part-time training for years, from the newer reservists. The ‘reserve brigade’ Kalija belonged to was little more than two under-equipped, under-strength battalions, created from volunteers like her who’d seen the inevitable need for manpower.

She explained none of this to Sergeant Major Lewis, although perhaps he intuited some of it when the collie had to be asked directly for her rank. Kalija did not think of herself as a ‘corporal.’ Zashan, in Rukhat—she had no idea where the word came from. Lewis turned out to know that the equivalent to ‘sergeant major’ was halashadja, even if his pronunciation required an effort to get through.

“I’ll learn, eventually. If I stay long enough. You think it’ll be much longer?”

“That’s not up to me to say, Mr. Lewis.”

“Until we win, I mean.”

“I…”

He chuckled. “A bit of our humor. I’m not actually crazy. I am curious, though, corporal—and it’s a personal curiosity—but have you heard anything about Surrey? We get the news here, on the computers, but you can’t trust anything from Arcadia and they don’t connect to the orbital networks.”

“Surrey? That’s… in the east, right?”

The man nodded. “In the east, that’s right. My family lives there.”

Kalija’s ears briefly flattened. She knew, of course, that humans had packs. Confronting the consequences of that knowledge, though, proved more difficult. “I haven’t heard anything. And I didn’t know you were from Jericho.”

“I’m not. My parents retired here about five years ago. They have a few greenhouses they’re tending. Just to keep busy, mostly, I think. I took an assignment with Geruda here to be closer to them, when Geruda came on as advisors. Then I quit, when my term was up—figured I’d help out with the plants or something. Couldn’t handle how boring it was, though… enlisted in the Home Guard when they asked for volunteers in ’58. My mistake. I should’ve stuck with greenhouses.”

“Greenhouses,” she echoed. “They’re farmers?”

“No, no. They just wanted a hobby. Land and power in eastern Arcadia are cheap. It’s a pretty respectable setup, though.” He paused for a bit. “The news said the front line was moving closer to the river. Probably try to occupy Silver City soon, now that the defenders have left.”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe it’s better here than there, for both of us.” Lewis turned, looking around the barracks. “I came here in a group of twenty-nine. Since then, there’s only been nineteen new arrivals, so…”

Kalija had only heard rumors, and it felt irresponsible to spread those. “I don’t know,” she repeated. “It’s… it’s chaotic.”

“You were at the front?”

“No. I’ve never—no. I only joined the reserves three months ago. I’m a machinist… they said that would be helpful. They said, growing up, that sometimes during the independence war we were able to return our tanks to combat within hours. It was supposed to be one of the reasons we won.” She was talking more than she’d meant to; forced herself to stop. “But, uh. Just training. All we’ve done is training.”

“That’s fine. Hopefully, that’s all you’ll have to do.” Was he… reassuring her? It sounded genuine to the collie. “Anyway, yes, I suppose it’s chaotic. Seems you’re advancing slowly, too, so probably not overrunning too many defenders. We got unlucky. Rear-guard action, trying to cover the rest of the battalion… but it could be worse.”

“You were fighting, then. What… what do you do? For a living, I mean.”

He gave her a dark, mirthless chuckle. “Nothing. There’s not going to be an army to go back to, is there? I was a mechanized infantry operations coordinator for Geruda. The Home Guard had me do that, too, at first. But they wanted senior NCOs with combat experience, so I got promoted: Command Sergeant Major, Third Battalion, Travis Brigade.”

“That’s a lot of responsibility, I imagine.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say; it sounded foolish as soon as the words were out of her muzzle. “Or—well…”

“It was. I’m proud of… parts of it. We fought better than we had any right to.”

Sensing how uncomfortable he’d become, she steered the conversation onto other topics. Nothing he told her about his upbringing, or about life in Arcadia, was particularly enlightening. He seemed amused at the idea she’d been asked to talk to him, and guessed that her superiors wanted her to glean information from the man.

She did not confirm the suspicion. But, by the end of her shift, when Sergeant Rakothan—also a member of her battalion—relieved the collie, she wasn’t even sure what Lieutenant Talish thought she could’ve learned from him. She debriefed Talish, who thanked her for her work, and then went to the mess hall where a few of her platoon-mates were also eating.

They were all sitting together, joined by a mixed-breed with a sergeant’s insignia and the emblem of the regular OVKK on his uniform. The others made room; they introduced him as Sergeant Alantar, who had just arrived, and was being temporarily quartered at the spaceport. This seemed to puzzle them as much as it did Kalija. “But you’re not joining our unit?” Corporal Ashanir asked. He was one of Kalija’s good friends, a fennec who was perpetually curious and perpetually intrigued by the rumor mill. “You’re still in 1st Armored?”

“Yes. Shanik Company, 2nd Battalion.”

“Then… why are you here?”

“Shanik Company is gone. We were hit in a counterattack, when they tried to retake Keizer. A mixed force—some of the regular army and some of the militias. Our commander asked for air support, but we were too close to one another. It was us against those big walking tanks, though, and the armored cars… we couldn’t hardly do anything about that.”

“Recently?” one of her fellow soldiers asked. Her head was tilted, the expression openly concerned. “This was recently?”

“Yesterday. Then we were reinforced. We managed to encircle most of them. The ones who remained, they wouldn’t surrender.” The mutt twirled a cigarette between his fingers before finally lighting it, staring fixedly at the glowing point. “Had to go one building at a time. They could’ve given up, but… too… too stubborn, I guess.”

“But we didn’t surrender, either. Right? In the counterattack.”

The mutt’s head jerked towards the questioner. “That’s different. I guess this is what they want, though. They want it to be ugly.”

“I heard it was like that at Jackson, too,” she heard someone’s disconsolate mutter, too quiet to place their voice. Jackson was an eastern town, captured only the day before.

“Like I said: they want it to be ugly.”

“It doesn’t have to be. Corporal Kalija’s guarding some of them, right?”

Kalija lifted an ear at Ashanir mentioning her name. “Interrogating,” she corrected the fennec. “The ones we have as prisoners were captured very early on, when the fighting first started in the west. They don’t know much, I don’t think.”

Sergeant Alantar growled darkly. “Then they’re useless to us, aren’t they? Why are we keeping them alive?”

Because we’re not animals, she wanted to tell him, but the tense way he held his cigarette and the edge in his words warned Kalija off. “Orders from command. Maybe they’ll be something we can use for leverage. He’s fairly high ranked.”

“Like their ranks mean anything.” His eyes narrowed, although he didn’t seem to be accusing her, directly. “You could still spare one or two. I bet I could learn a lot from them, if you left us alone for an hour.”

Alantar’s tone unnerved the Border Collie. She flattened the ears she’d perked. “Perhaps ask my lieutenant about it.”

The mutt let it drop, and Kalija fell quiet again. Her comrades were more interested in learning anything more about the front; information had been sparse, and unreliable. Alantar told them what he knew, and presumably what he thought was safe to disseminate. The militias had been the ones to stand and fight at Keizer, he said; the regular army withdrew when they had the opportunity.

This was common knowledge in the barracks: even if humans in general couldn’t be trusted, the Moody militias were the worst of the worst. “We’re going to be up against more of them,” another sergeant muttered dismally. He used the emphatic mood, in Rukhat. We absolutely will be fighting more of those ones. “They’re the ones keeping it all from ending, if you ask me. It could be over already. The Home Guard isn’t worth anything.”

“They’re down to a few stragglers,” Alantar confirmed. “I don’t know how they ever thought they had an army. My squad found a battalion commander and his escorts, fleeing in a commandeered hoverdyne. His unit was supposed to belong to an armored brigade, but none of us ever saw more than six or seven mechs engaged.”

“Four brigades,” someone else said. “In the west, I heard they had four brigades. Um. Houston, Travis, Bowie… something else. But the rumor I’ve heard, it’s that the command structure completely evaporated.”

“It didn’t evaporate. We destroyed it. This fool was Travis Brigade—I think we got most of them on the first day. These were all from the Third Battalion, according to the records.” Alantar shrugged. “The other battalions were already gone.”

Kalija ventured to speak up again, compelled by the mention of the man’s unit. “What about the commander? Is he being sent here, or to be interrogated by the Kennel?”

“The vehicle was badly damaged by the shot,” the mutt told her. “He didn’t survive long after we reached it… I hear.”

The other, morose sergeant grunted. “I told you. Not worth anything.”

She kept the conversation close that evening. It seemed to her that Calvin Lewis should probably know. Humans could be sensitive about death, she’d learned at one point. They felt the loss of their friends keenly, and if she had cause to speak to him again it would be worth bearing that in mind.

If.

But, for whatever reason, Lieutenant Talish indeed sent her back to the barracks the next morning. Lewis didn’t seem surprised to see her. He had no further intelligence to share, of course; there was nothing to really ‘interrogate’ him about. She decided to start with his background, in the hopes it would fill out more details of the man’s life. Cal raised an eyebrow. “What do you want to know about me? I’m not that interesting.”

“Why did you enlist?”

“I wasn’t going to earn my citizenship working in the factories on Azul. It seemed like a chance to see the universe, and it turned out to be something I was good at. I enjoyed that part of it, I’ll admit.”

“You were in Geruda, originally,” she recalled him telling her. “Azul is an industrial colony?”

“That’s right. I made it halfway through college and got bored. But after working on the floor for another year, I could just see myself growing old programming the industrial robots. Hearing the plant noises in my sleep and all. Geruda was something new. And it did take me to plenty of new places I never would’ve seen otherwise.”

She nodded. “And did you get your citizenship?”

“Sure did. And I vote, even now. Any time I can. It’s more difficult, since Arcadia’s been drifting away from the Alliance. I do wish my folks had retired to someplace with a better political situation. But I can vote in the sector-wide referenda, still. How’s it like for you? You vote?”

“Everyone old enough in the Kashkin can. The legislature isn’t as important as the smaller groups you belong to, though. The union I’m part of, we vote for our officers, and they negotiate with the cabinet on important matters. Kind of… well. That pressure kind of started… this, didn’t it? The government tried to shut down the fishing fleet, and the guild pushed back…”

Cal shrugged lightly, with only one arm. “I gotta imagine that what ‘started this’ goes back before your fishing boats. Maybe that was just the flashpoint.”

“Maybe. Why did you join the Home Guard?”

“Boredom, honestly. I’m not a farmer—definitely learned that the hard way. I don’t have a clue how my parents manage not to go stir-crazy watching the robots in those greenhouses. I couldn’t take it anymore. The money was better, too. I got a big enlistment bonus because of my background.”

“Two years ago. Isn’t that right?”

“Yep. It was calmer then. But that’s no excuse; I really should’ve known. You’d hear it on the streets—people going off about the Commonwealth. ‘The Zoo.’ ‘Occupied Jericho,’ if they were really polite. Just be getting drinks in a bar and you’d hear someone say how we’d have to ‘do something.’” This time he shrugged both arms. “My fault for blowing it off. You joined the Army recently, right?”

“Three months.”

“Why?”

She tried to explain how the machinist guilds had joined the fishermen in solidarity, pushing for action. Sometimes it felt that they were agitating, even, for militarism. “My wife is very outspoken. She’s good at organizing, at helping us support the OVKK. I felt that… I’ve never been as skilled as her in that regard, but I felt that if we were going to be so forthright, I should find my own way to help defend our homeland.”

Particularly, she did not add, since concluding that the Kashkin’s government felt open conflict was inevitable and her cabinet no longer planned for a peaceful resolution. Kalija was all too aware that the Kashkin, not Arcadia, had truly started the war. “You’re good at it,” Cal told her. “I mean, your army is. I wonder if it’s some kind of ironic.”

“What is?”

“Both sides accuse the other of wanting annihilation. I don’t think we believed it, though. Not really. You did. And you attacked first, which… if we’d been planning for, we might’ve stopped. I guess it caught us off-guard because you don’t actually want to annihilate us.”

Kalija thought clearly—inescapably, even—of Sergeant Alantar’s expression the night before. “It isn’t so simple,” she admitted. “Some of them do.”

“Do they, then?” She was considering how to reply when he kept talking, unprompted. “I wondered about that, when we were captured. I figured they would just kill us, but after they didn’t…”

“Some of us,” she repeated. “There are still many corporate moreaus. It seems… ironic, at first, but the ones who find their way here are often less radicalized. In company barracks, animals who misbehave are simply destroyed. The ones who are left tend to be more level-headed—as my parents were. They spoke English at home. I learned that we could coexist.”

“I didn’t realize it was still legal to kill moreaus. Figured that would be outlawed after they let you become citizens.”

“But they only let us do that in very narrow circumstances, don’t they? Officially, I suppose it is discouraged. Unofficially, though, I don’t think there’s much oversight. My point, though, is that the freeborn nakathja are not so… well-socialized. Some of them are quicker to anger. Some of them look at our status and… do not believe in coexistence, let’s say. Let’s say that.”

Cal leaned back. He looked over first one shoulder, and then the other, at the moreau soldiers guarding the rest of the barracks. Otherwise occupied, none returned his gaze. “Are you better than us? Smarter and stronger and stuff? Is that it? We made ourselves obsolete and y’all are starting to realize it?”

“That is the sentiment, in some quarters. We have been betrayed so often, and kept in subservience, even though…”

“Is it true?”

“What? That we’re superior to humans?” He prompted her further with a nod. “No. I weigh barely fifty kilograms. Carrying my equipment is… challenging. My eyesight is about the same as yours, I suppose. I hear a wider range of frequencies, but we all use the human range, anyway. And we… we are good at pattern-recognition. Creativity is far more challenging. I do not think it makes us smarter if we can intuitively estimate a Fourier transform, but not create a symphony or a poem. Do you?”

“There must be moreau poets, though. Moreau musicians—right?”

“Playing human music. It’s said that we’re summoned here to the Kashkin by alkosh—it means ‘the song.’ We all intuitively hear in our hearts, drawing us from across the Alliance to this planet. There is no one song. The most popular is taken from a human melody almost a thousand years old, Ludwig Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Moreaus have existed for most of the intervening time since it was composed. And yet, in those centuries, we have produced many geniuses at statistical analysis, but not a single Beethoven.”

“Hm.” Cal thought about that for quite some time, and finally nodded. “And cooks?”

“What?”

“What about your cooks? You have those, right?”

“Yes. Why?”

He pushed his chair back and rose, walking to another table and returning from it with a plate. “What’s this supposed to be?”

Kalija examined the food on it, and sniffed curiously to confirm her suspicions. “It’s called—well, it’s a form of what we call kiruhul. Normally it’s hardened and made with bits of cherry in it, as a dessert, but this is… potato, I think. Normally we eat it on bread, then, but…”

“Crackers. I ate those already. This tastes like… cream? Nothing?”

“Lard of some kind. With diced potatoes.”

He looked like he didn’t entirely believe her. “Is it… made well? This stuff here?”

There was a spoon on the plate, which didn’t seem to have been used. She scooped a bit up, letting it melt on her tongue. “Better than my husband makes it. The potatoes were sautéed in something else… rather delicate. Sometimes they add fish oil or something, or boil it in chicken stock, but… I’m not sure about this. Maybe they kept it mild for you on purpose.”

“You’re welcome to the rest, for the record. Is this standard cuisine for you?”

“No, it’s rather regional. I don’t remember the planet, exactly. Around here we’re more likely to eat storjan. That’s sort of like a… potato pancake stuffed with something—the western farms are known for their sheep cheese, desjat. It’s very good, if quite strong. Or sluch, which is a kind of fish stew. Sometimes it’s fermented.”

“That’s what the bowl was? No offense, but… maybe work on that before you try Beethoven.”

He was smiling, though. She imagined moreau cuisine was not for everyone. “We learned to cook from eating the kibble you gave us, you know,” she said, hoping he would understand the accusation was no more sincere than his had been. “So have a little patience. What do you eat?”

“Me? God, I could kill for some fried chicken right now. Or biscuits and gravy.”

“Nadatalsusk! You can ask for that. Natanja—‘biscuits.’ Atal susokoch—‘with thickened sauce.’ And fermented herring.”

“No—why? What? Why would you do that?”

“Because it’s delicious.”

He frowned. “I thought we were bonding.”

But he was teasing, and he grinned when she smiled at him. Were they bonding? She didn’t know if that was what Lieutenant Talish expected. The human wasn’t wrong, though. She didn’t want him to be wrong, either.

It was several hours later, towards the end of her shift and with dinner approaching, that conscience got the better of her. Their conversation had largely lapsed into silence, anyway, and Cal finally noticed. “You alright?”

“I… have some bad news. There has been some intense fighting around Keizer. Your old unit, the Third Battalion of the Travis Brigade, was engaged there. The battalion commander is listed as having been killed.”

“Miller?” She nodded; that was the name she’d been able to pull up from the records of the civilian auxiliaries policing the sector and trying to keep track of the casualties. “Is this some kind of interrogation technique? You tell me I don’t have any friends left so I feel like I ought to make friends with you?”

“No. I just thought you might want to know. I’m sorry. I don’t know if you were close.”

“I don’t either. The last time I saw Toby Miller he was running away. I never pictured him as the stand and fight type.”

“He wasn’t. He was found in the wreckage of a civilian vehicle, on the road north.”

The human looked at her for a long spell, quietly. “Now, see… see, if you’d started with that I would’ve known you were telling the truth to begin with. Guess the bastard got what was coming to him.”

“Do you… would you…” She turned the words about in her muzzle, trying to think of a sensitive way to sate her curiosity. “Would you have preferred it was different? More… heroic?”

“Why? My last stand saved… I don’t know, a few companies to keep fighting. Did it help? I bet it didn’t. What are they even fighting for? This is a pointless war for us, corporal. How do you die heroically for something so fucking stupid? And Miller… the generals…”

“What about them?”

Cal propped his elbows on the table, and rested his head on his thumbs. His hands, pressed together, hid the man’s face; all she could see was the way his eyes drifted from focus to focus. “Can I change the subject? For a moment. I promise I’ll answer you.”

“Of course.”

Now he folded his hands, and set his chin on those instead. “When you said ‘I’m sorry,’ did you mean it?”

It wasn’t the question she’d been expecting, and she didn’t know if she truly had an answer. “I… think so.”

“People created you, right? Not you, specifically, maybe. But your… your kind? Sorry if that sounds weird—racist or something. I mean that you’re not a dog.”

“I’m not a dog, no. Not really.”

“You just look sort of like one. Your face, I mean. If I looked at your hands, or your spine, or your knees… on an x-ray or something like that… you’d seem pretty human, I guess. That’s what I’m getting at. Do you follow?”

“Yes. I say I’m a Border Collie out of convenience… that’s what my parents’ product line was. I don’t know how much of our DNA is originally from real dogs.”

“But, uh. Moreaus—is that okay?” She shrugged. “Moreaus were designed, as I understand it. To be living computers, or servants. Or… test subjects, I guess. Targets. A lot of unfortunate things.”

“Yes. We were designed.”

“Do you know why they gave you emotions? Why would you design a computer to have emotions?”

She tilted her head slightly—like a dog, she thought, though it was too late to take it back. “I’m not sure. I suppose it’s because it made it easier to interact with us, if we could understand… sarcasm, perhaps. Or if someone asked us to produce a report, but they were obviously agitated, maybe we’d know it was an urgent task. It’s…”

“It’s what?”

“It’s complicated. I know that they market us as though we had an intelligence quotient. A 2.5C moreau, like my parents, is supposed to be 250% smarter than the average human. But I learned that most of that is in language processing. Understanding syntax. A long time ago, they made 1C dogs, too, but they weren’t… you couldn’t really talk to them. They only understood basic commands and rote tasks.”

Cal nodded. He sighed, and folded his hands on the table. “And now you can feel sorry for me. I believe you. Hell, how could I argue? You must get angry, too. Happy. Fall in love and all that.”

“Yes. I try not to get angry, but… my wife, sometimes, becomes very worked up. It happens.”

“Do you think if I told you how much I hate Toby Miller, you’d understand?”

Her head canted the other way. “I understand the words. I can’t promise that I understand the sentiment.”

“That worthless son of a bitch. What did they think was going to happen? Him, and General Warren, and General Stevenson—whole chain of command. And that fucking cunt Billie Moody—Josh Porter, too; her partner in crime. I should’ve known better.”

“About what?”

“At least in Geruda, it wasn’t… it wasn’t just because we wanted to steal somebody else’s land. I mean, fuck, no: what if it was? My commanders would’ve been with me. They wouldn’t have left us like that. They figured it would be easy. And me, I didn’t… care. I suppose I thought it would be easy, too.”

“Fighting us?”

“Sure. I didn’t have a date or nothing, but it was only a matter of time. A couple months, and I’m sure we would’ve tried. I don’t think they would’ve given it a second thought. And if it went south, they wouldn’t have given it a second thought before running then, too. I hope you left his body for the rats.”

“I… don’t imagine so.” At the same time, she could read the subtext in Sergeant Alantar’s story; she doubted Miller’s end had been as tidy as the casualty team’s report made it seem. “I assumed you were friends. You shared some sort of bond. I didn’t mean to imply anything else.”

“Do you still feel sorry for me?”

“No.”

“For him?”

“A little.”

He shook his head. “Whoever created your emotions was a lot nicer with what they gave you than they had any right to be, all things considered. They didn’t bother to tell you the truth.”

“Which is?”

His hand thumped idly against the table, and she saw him bite back an answer that must’ve been even darker than what finally came out. His fist clenched, and then relaxed. “Some bastards? They aren’t even worth pitying.”