I sunk back in my chair as silence filled the room, each of us lost in our own private panics. Nausea and guilt clawed at me. I should have done something sooner. Basically as soon as I got to Freo, I forgot about my promise to Sammy.

The entire time he’d been waiting on the base, certain that I would come and save him and his friends but instead… I’d been so wrapped up in everything that was going on and trying to save everyone else that he’d had to deal with so much alone.

And I didn’t even manage to save anyone really. So many people had suffered and died. I knew that I should have been blaming the Council for even putting us in that situation or for abandoning so many people but I didn’t. I just should have done more.

“So,” Elliot started, glancing across at Andy. “Things are bad on the base.”

A muscle in Andy’s jaw spasmed.

“They are,” he ground out, his eyes still fixed on the dark holoscreen.

“And the kid is our only pair of eyes in there now,” Elliot said.

“What happened to all of the other tutors? Are there any left from when we were there?” I asked, feeling desperation sink like a rock in my stomach.

It could easily drown me. It wouldn’t be hard, I was already teetering on the edge.

Andy shook his head tightly.

“They’re all gone,” he muttered, clearly trapped in his thoughts.

Elliot must have seen the panic written on my face because he quickly started speaking.

“Very few are dead, most have just fled. As you know, a couple are on Freo but we’ve got some stashed on some safe ships around the universe.”

I nodded, wanting to ask about specific tutors but I stopped myself. I wasn’t sure if I could deal with knowing that they were dead. Maybe it was better to live in ignorance and denial.

“So… what do we do?” I asked finally.

Andy sighed and wiped a hand over his face, finally looking away from the holoscreen.

“I hate to say it but, for now, I don’t think that there is much we can do. It’s a terrible situation and it goes against everything that I tried to do with the base but…” He paused to take a deep breath. “I think until we know who we are dealing with, there is nothing more that we can do.”

I felt my shoulders sag with disappointment.

I knew that he would say something like that but at the same time, I just wished that I could fly down to Nova and rescue everyone. It was dumb though and that would just get everyone hurt or killed.

“What about Plend? You seem to know a lot about her already?” I asked desperately.

“Ah, yes,” Elliot said, his voice uncharacteristically dark. “Don’t we just?”

“You trained with her, right?”

“We did. And boy did she hate Andy from the beginning,” Eliot said with a slight smile.

The corners of Andy’s lips lifted slightly before being squashed back down into a firm line.

“She was a couple of years ahead of us but she chose to stay at the base for longer. In our day, you generally left at sixteen to start working professionally but if you were particularly useful to the base or wanted to go into teaching, you’d stay until eighteen and help out. She was neither but she had a… hatred for Andy so she chose to stay to ‘keep an eye on him’. I wish I was kidding,” Elliot added, noting my look of confusion.

“Why?” I asked. “Did the Council ask her to?”

“No, it was her decision. She didn’t like the attention he was getting. Every time we were called into a meeting with them on the base or in the city, she’s conveniently be hanging around when we got back, trying to overhear what we had been talking about.”

“She was lonely,” Andy added softly.

“And you were too kind to her. If you’d kicked her to the kerb and told her she would never be able to join the crew, she might have gotten the hint,” Elliot said in a tone that made me think they’d had this discussion many times before. “But you’re too nice.”

Andy shook his head.

“I felt bad for her. She was isolated by both the Draftees and the Volunteers. She was alone,” he explained.

“Yeah, because she had a horrible personality,” Elliot argued.

“Even so, she wasn’t a terrible pilot. Her ideals didn’t align with ours though.”

“And I believe you told her that and she reported you to the Council but still petitioned to join us!”

“She wasn’t particularly happy when I told her I wouldn’t replace you, was she?” Andy smiled gently at Elliot, his thumb stroking over Elliot’s knuckles.

“Not at all. But then maybe she shouldn’t have suggested that you replace me in front of me.”

“That wasn’t particularly diplomatic of her,” Andy chuckled tiredly.

“But diplomacy has never quite been her strong suit, has it?”

Elliot smiled softly at him.

“So, she was a Council supporter even then?” I asked, trying to wrap my head around everything they’d said.

I was exhausted and tiredness has started pulling at me more violently than before. I needed to sleep but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to give my brain a chance to process the day. I wanted to continue without ever thinking about it again. If I did, I could pretend that it had never happened and that Gem was still out there somewhere.

“She was. She was always the first one to speak about their achievements or to show her support of their decisions, even when they were blatantly wrong.”

“We weren’t that much better at the beginning either,” Andy added. “I won’t give the excuse of us being young and not knowing any better. I like to think that we just hadn’t had the chance to experience what life was like truly but we did make some bad decisions.”

“Yes,” Elliot allowed, cocking his head. “But once we realised our mistakes, we tried to fix them and stopped supporting the Council.”

Andy nodded but his face had taken on that far away look again. I knew that he was thinking something similar to me.

I’d been in the same position as them. Dumb, willfully ignorant. And I’d probably hurt a lot of people or cause a lot of people to be hurt by the Council. I couldn’t help but think of all of the missions where we collected wayward supply drops of weapons and brought them back to the base or dropped them on other planets. What if they hadn’t been supply drops gone wrong? What if they were weapons that Freo had placed there for their supporters to use in the fight against the Council?

I’d been unknowingly fighting against them for years.

And more so, sometimes those boxes weren’t full of weapons, they had food and other base necessities. I could have caused people to starve to death.

I didn’t know any better but I also didn’t do anything to learn more. I never once considered that the Council were the bad ones until I was forced to.

I should have.

It wouldn’t happen again.

“You should go back to the infirmary,” Andy said softly with a tired smile. “Chal will have my head if I keep you out much longer.”

I nodded, too tired and distracted to argue, and began pushing my chair back before stopping.

“Oh yeah, what’s going on with you two? He seemed pretty cold earlier,” I asked.

Andy’s face didn’t change and I knew that he was trying to work out how to answer me.

“He’s not particularly happy with some of the choices that I have made recently,” he said carefully.

“Like what?”

A small sigh escaped his lips.

“Allowing you and your crew to join the fight. He thinks you’re too young and that you should be protected from this war. He’s right, of course. You should be. You and your crew have already suffered enough at the hands of the Council, you don’t need to continue having to deal with them.”

Confusion washed over me and I wasn’t quite sure what to say or think.

I almost wanted to cry. It was the first time that anyone had really said that we should be protected from this and I didn’t know how to react but love for Chal warmed my chest.

Part of me wanted to jump at his words. We were young. We should still be on the base, flying occasional missions, not having to fight the Council and lose members of our crew. We could still do that. We could refuse to fight. Spend our days on Freo, going to the pleasure deck and having lessons. Maybe getting a part-time job in the canteen or something.

But I couldn’t. I didn’t care that we hadn’t started this fight, people still saw us as a symbol of the fight against the Council. By continuing to fight we were showing everyone that we were strong and that they could be too. We were exposing the many, many lies that the Council had been telling for years and I couldn’t give that up.

But I also couldn’t force my crew to keep going. We’d already lost so much. It had to be their choice.

“Ah,” Andy said, seeming to see my decision on my face. “And that is why I fought to have you included. I knew that you wouldn’t allow us to go without you.”

I nodded, determination flowing in me.

“I wouldn’t,” I said. “But it wasn’t your fault. We all made the decision, not you.”

Sadness fluttered across Andy’s face so quickly that I wasn’t sure if I had really seen it or not. And that’s when it hit me. He thought he was to blame for Gem’s death.

He smiled softly again but I knew he didn’t mean it.

“Thank you for saying that. Now, you need to get some rest.”