A Wicked, Dangerous Girl

Daniel was the one who taught me how to swim. I’d run the circuit around the farm he and Callie settled. One kilometer by one kilometer, four total, then again, to make eight. I’d come in, shower, eat, try to help around the farm, fail, run another circuit, rinse, repeat. Commander Hannah Henry, captain of the Freya, a woman the Admiral once referred to as “our Dangerous Girl:” running, but not going anywhere. It was fucking humiliating. But whenever I had a quiet moment— which was too often, considering how little I was good for— I thought about the knives in the kitchen, the box cutter in the barn, or the cords that bound my bag. That’s why I ran so much.Half a life spent in freefall left me with unprepared joints and they swelled red. My body wasn’t made for it and I hurt. When I mustered out the medic told me that if I ate right and continued my exercises that my body would be fine: I was small, short, slim, and slight. My joints could handle the abuse. He lied, of course, but I didn’t care. I needed that pain; it blotted out the past.Daniel found me when I finally collapsed. He picked me up, carried me home, and laid me in bed. Callie walked into the bedroom holding a medicine bottle: morphine; one pill. I didn’t realize she had any at all, which was probably a good thing. I took what she offered and closed my eyes. I heard a clang as Callie tossed the empty bottle into the trash. I fell asleep.I think they wanted me to sleep as much as anything. Morphine wasn’t going to treat swelling or failing joints; but it did make me sleep, and I hadn’t slept for days. I almost never did. I wasn’t the only one who struggled, the only one who feared sleep. From their bedroom I could hear Daniel moan at night, a continuous, raspy noise that terrified me. Sometimes he cried and Callie whispered quiet somethings to calm him. Strange that the former headcase was the only one who could sleep through the night.As soon as I was mobile again, Daniel took me to the lake. I was lighter in the water; my joints didn’t hurt. I understood the concept of floating and I’d seen large bodies of water before, but I’d never even filled a bathtub. Water was dear in space and some habits I never thought to break. We swam together and he always made sure that I came back exhausted, but not so exhausted that I’d drown. I’d missed Daniel. I’d missed coming down to see him when he was on watch. There was a camaraderie I craved that I’d lost when they decommissioned my ship. I felt that fulfillment again. And I smiled.

The last time I felt complete was 18 months before, when I brought the Admiral onboard my ship. The watch officer had floated across the bridge and begged me to go, see the crew, maybe sleep. I hadn’t left the bridge for a day and a half. He pointed out that it’d been over a day since the battle, eleven hours since I’d brought the Admiral over from his ship, and ten hours since I’d scuttled the Odin. The was no more combat in the offing. I needed to sleep, he insisted.First, though, I had to visit our guest, and his home was in the cargo hold with the rest of crew we’d rescued from the Odin. I floated down the central shaft, propelling myself by occasionally shoving off of a ladder’s rung. I swung across a railing and redirected my momentum into the hold.I looked around. The wounded from the Odin were pressed against the walls and ceiling, tied into handholds or, if they felt well enough, floating free. Medics chased after spheres of vomit. We’d run out of anti-emetics and anti-radiation meds already.The Admiral was in the center of the hold, dead, wrapped in lead blankets bound up with green tape at one end. The marines had taken the time to tie it to the handholds in the floor. The whole thing looked like a crushed eggplant. A marine stood guard stood next to the body, his feet looped into a handhold. I pulled myself up to him. He saluted. “Commander.”“Lieutenant.” I locked my foot into a handhold— foothold, I guess— and stood in front of him, swaying. “How long have you been on guard, Daniel?”“Six hours or so.” He leaned forward, and asked, sotto voce, “What happened?”I closed my eyes and shook my head. “Once it was clear we’d lost the battle, the Admiral ordered us to fire on Earth. The planet is a nuclear wasteland.”His face said it all.“I didn’t fire,” I said, holding up my hands. “I froze. I got the strike package. But it wasn’t just the Highlands Defense Complex, it was London too. All those people, some of them our allies. I got caught in a loop, asking myself why we’d do something so pointless when we’d already lost.” I looked down at the mass of lead blankets and tape. “I guess he couldn’t handle it.”“And the Odin?”“It was hit by missiles from the complex we should have taken out.”Daniel’s breath came out in a hiss. A strand of hair floated into vision: my braid was coming undone. It was amazing it had lasted as long as it did. “You’re relieved,” I said, “that I didn’t fire.”“I am,” he admitted. “The crew, some of them— ” he gestured around him— “they’ve heard rumors. Things are going badly down there, in the crew areas. You should go to your quarters. Check on Callie. Then maybe check on the rest of them.”His tone unsettled me, and what I saw as I made my way through the ship only made my concern worse: bulkhead doors propped open, against regulation; helmets, untethered, floating; a crewman, curled up in a ball, sobbing, reeking of alcohol. I’d spent so long on the bridge and I didn’t realize that things were coming undone on the lower decks. I made my way to my quarters.Callie floated in my cabin, naked, eyes closed, drool floating out of her mouth, small bubbles of blood in the crook of her arm. An emergency injectable morphine ampule hit me as I propelled myself into the room. She breathed, shallow. How much had she taken? One injection wouldn’t do this. I looked around. At least two more ampules floating in my room. Her nails were bent back and torn away from her fingers. She must have ripped open a medication locker.I’m sure I screamed something into my comm panel and they must have acknowledged me, but I only remember holding Callie until the medical corpsmen came in. They took her out of my arms, felt her pulse. I didn’t even tell them what had happened: the ampules and the blood told them what they needed to know. One of them sprayed something into her nostrils while the other bandaged her arm.As her failure became clear, Callie began to cry. I wrapped her up in my arms and we floated across the room. I held her as she sobbed. She kept asking me how I could have done it, but I hadn’t. I promised her I hadn’t. I wondered what had filtered down to her in the engine room, what the crew thought they knew. She screamed.She was from Earth.

When she’d gathered herself, Callie pulled on her uniform and I took her to sickbay. Callie was fragile, but it wasn’t just her: they were all on edge. Discipline was going to hell and, if I didn’t get it under control, someone might make a mistake that destroyed the ship or killed the Odin’s crew. I wanted to help Callie. I did. I wanted to hold her and tell her things I’d never told anyone. But I couldn’t, because she was only one person of the several hundred I led.I traveled from deck to deck, visiting workspaces and living areas to remind my crew that we had hundreds of dying people to care for. We had to save what lives we could. They listened, but they didn’t respond until one of the crew raised his hand and asked: “Ma’am, did you give the order to fire?”I remember the silence in the room as they waited for my answer. “No, Ensign Latrell, I did not.” They didn’t ask me any more questions after that. They just got back to work.

My ship was named the Freya. She was a Valkyrie class assault craft. Unlike the big ships of the fleet, such as our dear departed Odin, my baby could enter the atmosphere. When we arrived at Haven, they ordered us to tie in first, even before the most stricken ships.We landed. Marines formed an honor guard on the tarmac. Officers in their dress blues walked to my ship: fleet captains and commodores; the only Admiral dead in my hold. Drones hovered all around, their cameras broadcasting throughout the city and the planet. I worried about the next part, the marching: I was awkward in gravity. I swallowed and stepped out with my bridge crew.I stopped before the officers and saluted. One of the commodores saluted me back. I right faced and called out. Daniel led my marines onto the tarmac, carrying the Admiral’s body in a litter. They struggled with the weight of the lead blankets, but nevertheless managed to keep up appearances. The waiting marines presented arms, the officers saluted, and the body was carried away. The rest of my crew— except for Callie— followed.Only when my crew had cleared the catwalk did the doctors and corpsmen descend on my ship, to rescue the Odin’s few, pathetic survivors. Callie, too.As they evacuated the survivors, I inspected my ship. The Freya looked fearsome and I was proud of my loathsome monstrosity. She got us home and I had to make sure that she was well.I stayed onboard until the funeral: I hadn’t slept anywhere else in years. Daniel and the rest of the crew were assigned quarters elsewhere while the dock crew went over her. Callie was in the hospital. I went to see her, but I was turned away.I’d heard through the grapevine that one-third of the ships didn’t fire on Earth. Arresting all of us was impossible and, since I brought the Admiral’s body home, they chose to treat us as heroes. The funeral was held in the huge field where we practiced marching, and my crew had a place of honor: as far forward as possible without obstructing the view of the powerful captains and commodores. My marines made up part of the ceremonial guard at the front.They let Callie out, or she’d let herself out, I didn’t know. When I saw her I tried to get her to sit with me, but she just looked away. She moved like she was in pain. She was always a true beauty, gorgeous in any era, but now she was drained of energy and passion and looked wan and gaunt. She looked scared.The funeral started when a horse pulled the bier in front of the crowd. That horse was the only one I’d seen in the flesh. I wondered if the horse was going to die: it was so close to a casket that looked too small to be radiation hardened. A commodore gave a small cough to get our attention, then launched into what promised to be hours of eulogies that did not, in fact, celebrate the Admiral so much as they did the speaker.Things started to go awry when we began the second hour with our second commodore. They were talking about our continuing mission. One of my crew muttered: “He’s talking as if the war is still going on.” I didn’t look over; I didn’t want to know who it was. I remembered the scene on my ship before I’d gotten them back under control. The other ships had to have had similar problems. It dawned on me what a tremendous mistake this funeral was. My crew came back in good order. The powers that be probably thought it was safe to have my people out there. But the truth was, I couldn’t be sure.On our third commodore the crowd was visibly restive. There were yells about Earth. The military police— MPs— began lining the field. Marines were being deployed around the VIPs. I glanced to my right to see some other ship’s crew had completely lost its shit and was yelling. Its captain was nowhere to be found. A fight broke out as the MPs tried to corral that crew.The MPs were going to lose that fight, but if they brought in more guys and started to crack skulls the other crews would jump in. This was going to get out of hand. If I didn’t act now, I knew, I’d lose control of my team and some of them might get hurt.I told my people closest to me that I was leaving and I wanted them to come. I asked them to pass it down the line. Bless them, they all followed. They gathered around me when we were off the field. “Ma’am?”“Go back to your quarters,” I yelled. “Stay safe.”They left. Callie held back, watching me. “Why aren’t you going?”I pointed towards the front. “They’ve got our marines as part of the crew protecting the VIPs. I’m getting all of our people out.”She nodded and came with me as I ran hellbent for leather around the edge of the field, hoping to get to Daniel before things got worse. I had only just reached them when some of the MPs opened fire on the crowd, other marines opened fire on the police, and the mob rushed the casket. They tried to lift it up, but it fell off the bier and tipped open. It was empty. That made sense: the Admiral’s body was probably in some lead container inside a sarcophagus of concrete. But it didn’t matter, because the coffin was all they had right now. They lifted the empty casket and carried it over their heads, off of the field, to the bay, and threw it in. It floated for a while before sinking just over a kilometer from the shore.I found Daniel and the rest of the platoon covering the retreat of some particularly craven captains. Once they’d retreated in their black cars, Daniel and I extricated our people. The mob swarmed across the base. We got our people out, but we didn’t follow them home.It poured rain. I think that’s the only reason things didn’t get worse right away. There were only tens killed instead of hundreds or thousands. No one ever admitted giving the order to fire.We took refuge from the rain in one of the bus stop shelters the circulators used to get soldiers around base. It was night and the rain wrapped us in dark. The only light was from a streetlamp just outside the shelter. I put my arm around Callie. She froze up, but she didn’t shrug me off. I wondered how she was managing. I didn’t ask, but she told us anyway. “I’m tired.”“What do you want to do?” I asked.Callie pulled off her petty officer’s pips, threw them into the rain. “I’m done. You should be too, Hannah.”“How?” I asked. “Where would we go?”“The frontier,” Daniel said. “Years ago, they laid out square kilometer plots for vets to homestead on when the war was over.” He reached up to tear off his nametape. “Well. The war’s over.”I don’t think I was outraged or angry or scandalized, just baffled. I’d never quite considered a world that was after. “You’re suggesting we desert.”“You saw what happened today,” Daniel said. “I can’t see things holding together much longer.”Daniel was right and I knew it. Callie took my collar and pulled me to her. She kissed me and I kissed back. “Hannah, let’s get away from here.”She leaned back against the wall of the shelter, but kept her eyes on me.At dawn we went to our separate quarters for a few hours’ sleep and to get our things. Daniel told us to meet later at the motor pool. We’d cadge a truck and take it to the frontier.I came, but I didn’t go.I met them at the line of trucks. The gate was left open and most of the vehicles were already stolen. I found Daniel sitting in the bed of one of the remaining trucks, his sidearm in his lap and his ruck next to him. He smiled when he saw me, but faded when he realized I didn’t have my duffel.“I can’t,” was all I said. He nodded, sad.Callie came in dungarees, a t-shirt, and a fatigue cap, her backpack with all of her things on her shoulder. She loaded them into the cab and then turned back to me. “Are you sure you don’t want to come, Hannah?”I nodded.Daniel gave me a hug. “You change your mind, you call.”Callie put her hand on my arm. “Please, Hannah.”“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t just walk out.”I went to kiss her goodbye, but she turned away and climbed into the truck. Callie didn’t understand, but I don’t know how she could: she wasn't there when it happened; she only saw my nightmares after. She came onboard immediately after we limped back home. Were she not around, I probably would have eventually broken down from the guilt. But she said she loved me and I didn’t think she could say that until she knew who I really was. I felt dishonest holding it back.So, one night three months before, when we were in my bunk: “Would you like to hear a story?”She was nestled against me. “Yes please.”I looked over at her. “It’s not a pleasant story.”She pushed herself away, to better look at me. “A war story then?”“I don’t know any others.”She laid her head back down. “So tell me.”“It was the cruise before I met you. We’d fought off that big boarding action.”“This is the one you got all those medals for?”“Yeah,” I said. “That’s when the Admiral called me ‘our Dangerous Girl.’ That’s why they call me that.”“Everyone heard about it. When you invited me to join your crew I got a lot of congratulations.”“Oh? I didn’t know that.”“Yeah,” she said. “They didn’t know it was because I was in love with the captain.”I laughed. “Well, what I want to tell you—I don’t know, you might change your mind.”“We’ll find out.”Deep breath. “In that fight we’d held onto the bridge and the engine room. Recapturing the ship basically wrecked everything in between. They’d tried to do a last stand in the galley. We ended up having to storm it, killing most of their guys. When it was all said and done, half the crew was dead and we had more prisoners than marines.”“And no food,” Callie said. She must have already heard all of this in the engine room. It didn’t matter; she needed to hear it from me.“Yeah. We were able to get life support working, so we had enough air and water, but not enough food. I’d ordered an inventory of the rations we had. Even pulling the emergency rations out of the lifeboats only got us a few days food. We couldn’t feed everyone.”“Right.”“The prisoners had to go. But I wanted to spare the crew. Fighting off the boarding action was ugly, but it was a stand-up fight, you know?”“They had to go,” she said, “to save the crew.”“They had to go. But, I couldn’t have that on our people. I had the prisoners in the cargo hold. I think they realized something was up when I had the marines relocate the prisoners’ wounded from sickbay to the hold. They tried to escape and swarmed the airlock, but we’d sealed it.”She reached her arm around me and pulled me tight. “And then you blew the hold.”“I did,” I said. “I triggered it myself. Some of the prisoners, the ones around the door, stayed inside, their dead fingers curled around the handholds. I went out there in a suit, cut off their fingers frozen to the handholds, and threw their bodies into space. Then I came home.”Callie snaked up my body and kissed my neck. “And that’s when you met me.”“That’s when I met you.”I ran my hand through her hair and held her tight. PTSD was a thing for all us, sure, but nothing threatened my crew’s souls. So when the time came, when the hard decisions had to be made, I did all I could to only spare them. I was the Admiral’s Dangerous Girl and I made hard, desperate, wicked choices to protect my crew and she’d never seen the consequences of those choices. Callie was too young: by the time she was drafted it was all long range hit and run. She hadn’t seen the things that Daniel or I had. She hadn’t done the things that Daniel or I had. She didn’t understand that my staying was bigger than her.That’s why I let them leave without me. I told myself that Callie would be fine: Daniel would take care of her. And my crew would be fine, so long as I was there. I went to see them. Sergeant Johnson asked after Daniel.“He won’t be coming back,” I said. “He’s fine, but he’s gone.”Their responses ranged from anger to confusion. “Without us?” one asked.“I’m staying here,” I said. “If you want to leave then leave. I won’t stop you. But if you want to stay, I’ll have you on my crew.”I reported to the personnel office next. They ended up keeping us cooling our heels for a week before they cut new orders.An old colonel gave me the news: “Captain Henry, we’re keeping you on the Freya— ” my heart jumped— “to oversee her decommissioning. I’m sorry.”I told myself that if I called Callie or Daniel now they wouldn’t come to get me. Even as I had the thought, I knew it was a lie. But I still couldn’t make the call.

After my parents died, I was sent to a military orphanage. Sergeant Kate Kane, a young woman with a prosthetic arm, came to pick me up. She walked into my house and triaged the situation: an eight-year-old orphan holding her dog too tight and screaming on the floor refusing to go. I was distraught because they’d taken away my parents, now they were going to take away my home, and, worse, my dog, a Scottish Terrier I’d named Smudge. She decided that the dog could come too.It didn’t dawn on me until I’d aged out of the orphanage and into the Academy that Kate must have bought Smudge’s food from her own money or that she’d taken a risk by bringing him. She made me hide him when there were inspections, but otherwise he was the orphanage’s dog. Every evening he trotted from bunk to bunk, saying goodnight, until finally jumping into bed with me. Eventually, Smudge got sick. I’d been in the orphanage for seven years by then and he was only a year younger than me. Sergeant Kane snuck him out to the vet. When she returned later that day, it was to take me to be with my dog as we put him to sleep. Smudge laid in my lap, sick and tired, and Kate, my second mother, held me as the vet gave my best friend the last, most loving gift I could give him.When I arrived to the field where they’d landed my ship— alongside all of the other Valkyries— and throughout the next year as I oversaw her disassembly, all I could think was how much the Freya reminded me of my dog, laying, dying, in my lap.

When I’d said goodbye to my baby I was put in charge of decommissioning the Rota, another Valkyrie. Things outside of the fleet park were getting worse, but that didn’t really matter to me. Sometimes I’d see smoke from fires in the city. Occasionally we’d hear a boom and an eruption of violence around the edges of the base. But I kept things in fair order in the park. Between their engines and their missiles, the ships were radioactive nightmares, and that’s to say nothing of the weapons lockers we emptied out. The guns went into an onsite armory. I had the ammunition dumped into the ocean. That wasn’t in my orders, it was just a logical expedient to keep things from getting worse outside of the park.Though most of my crew remained to see the Freya put down, none of them wanted to be there any longer. They’d spent a year telling her goodbye and were ready to move on. They came to me in ones or twos to apologize and tell me goodbye. In the end I was left with some anonymous ad hoc wrecking crew. I handled nearly everything, but that was okay, because I had nothing else to do. Sometimes, at night, I would wander among the stricken Valkyries and mourn our beautiful beasts. That’s how I ran across the man stealing from the armory.Someone must have let him in, but none of my soldiers were there. He had a case that we used to carry machine pistols, four in one unit. I pulled my sidearm, he took off running. It was dark and he dashed into the field amongst the ships, so I struggled to keep him in sight. When I realized I couldn’t keep up I leveled my gun and fired. At that distance and in that light I didn’t have much of a chance of hitting him, and so it was.He panicked, though, and fell. I ran up to him while he struggled to open the gun case. I shouted at him: “Don’t move!” but he got the case open. He was an amateur and a civilian and his breathing was coming out in sobbing whoops and tears were running down his face as he attempted to bring the unloaded gun to bear.I shot him twice: once in the heart, once in the head.

I wept when I called Callie. By her voice, she must have been sleeping. I didn’t even wait for her to collect herself. I just told her that I’d killed a man. Yet another one, but this one wasn’t my enemy, this one wasn’t a threat, he was just a man, a dumb fool, and I could have let him go, but I did what I couldn’t do a year ago, I didn’t freeze, and I murdered a man who didn’t deserve it.She was quiet for a second. I thought she might have hung up. Then: “Come home, Hannah.”She and Daniel arranged for me to catch a ride with a truck taking tractor parts out to the frontier. They’d settled near a village that had grown around the terminus of a road to nowhere. I mustered out and rode, silent, for eight hours.They were waiting for me at a fuel station, drinking coffee and not paying attention. Daniel leaned against a wall, Callie leaned against him. Her eyes were ablaze with life. When she noticed me she stepped away from him. She didn’t look guilty, but she was caught off guard. I could tell that this wasn’t how she wanted me to find out. We’d been apart for over a year and this is what happened.I dropped my ruck. “Oh,” was all I could muster.“I’m sorry,” she said.“Why didn’t you tell me?”“Because you wouldn’t have come,” Daniel said.I wouldn’t have.Callie gave me a sad look. “I’m sorry Hannah, but when you called— ”“This is cruel.”She nodded. “Even so. I’m glad you’re here.”“Fuck you,” I spat.She blinked, surprised, I think, at my vehemence. “Let’s go home.” She walked to the truck. After a minute, I followed. Where else could I go?I’m still angry that they didn’t tell me, but let’s say they had. Let’s assume that for a minute. I would have stayed in the fleet park. I would have seen each and every ship dismantled, oblivious as the outside world rumbled into civil war, maybe a genocide or two, and, at the end, I would have taken my sidearm, put it in my mouth, and pulled the trigger.So was this cruel? Or was it one of those lies people tell to save a life? Does it fucking matter? They knew what they were doing. And, in hindsight, I’m grateful for it.But, it burned. And that I felt so out of place made it all the worse. There was nothing I could get right. But there was nowhere else for me to be. So I ran. I ran to escape, but not to get away.And, eventually, Daniel taught me how to swim.

Daniel would leave the truck key on the kitchen table for me. I mostly swam on my own. That was fine. It was a lake, there weren’t waves. I’d learned my limits. I wasn’t about to swim myself to exhaustion and drown. I didn’t see Daniel— he was probably already in the field— but I did see Callie, which was strange. A night owl, the best you could count on now was her stumbling out of bed before it was barbarously late. But that morning she stood on the front porch, drinking coffee.If I wanted to get to the truck I had to walk right by her. I stepped out the door. We glanced at one another. She nodded at me, sipped her coffee. I gave her a quick, “hi,” and slipped by. I thought maybe I’d be safe, but then: “Hannah, please stay a minute.”I looked at her. “I was going to go swim.”“Can you just give me a minute? I just wanted to ask you something.”I held out my hands, as if to say, “well, I’m here.”She sipped her coffee. “Have you ever thought about how fucked it was that your orphanage was on base?”“My parents died in the war. I just assumed it’s how we take care of their own.”She swirled her coffee. “They. You’ve mustered out. It’s not we.”Whatever. “Is that what you wanted to know?”She shook her head. “I wanted to know, did you ever have a choice when you aged out of the orphanage? You went straight into the Academy, right?”“We were all expected to go into the military somewhere. I got a spot in the Academy. I thought it was a big honor.”Callie nodded. “It was. I’ve always wondered if you realized how smart you are.”Her compliment made me uncomfortable: I wanted to hear more of them. “Only at some things.”“Well, you never lived outside of a military environment.”“No.” I shifted on my feet. I couldn’t tell where she was going.“I’ll let you go, just, one more thing.” I watched as she took a sip of her coffee before going on: “When you were running around the field, during the Admiral’s funeral, what were you thinking about?”I frowned. “I was worried about something happening to my crew. And I was worried about someone doing something and regretting it.”Callie poured the rest of her coffee onto the grass. “You know, I’ve seen a lot of commanders look out for their people, but it’s always been to get them ready for combat. I’ve never seen someone worry about her subordinates’ consciences before. For most commanders, compassion is a mechanism to keep their people fighting.”She reached across her chest and held an elbow. Her coffee mug dangled from a finger. “I know your feelings were real. I just— ” she looked away— “you had a whole crew to care for. You not coming with us— ” she looked at me, asking. I nodded.She’d picked at something that was only just beginning to scab over. My job wasn’t to help her sort things out. She had Daniel for that. I turned to the truck.“Hannah?” Callie gripped the hem of her shirt and bunched it up in her fists, nervous. “Will you take me with you? Teach me how to swim?”“Daniel would be better— ”“I want you to do it.”“Why?” I asked.“Because you’ve spent all of this time avoiding me. Because I’ve seen you when you come back with Daniel. You’re smiling. He has you back.”What did she expect from me? I was angry. My jaw was tight and I could tell that I was close to hitting her, hurting her.She teared up. “I miss you, Hannah. I just want your friendship back.”“We were never friends.” I got in the truck before I killed her.When I got to the lake, I sat on the front seat of the truck, braiding my hair. On ship I only unbraided it to wash. Wearing it down more often than not was kind of weird.I thought about it. When I ran it was— at first— to give me something to do. I couldn’t help but go over all of my terrible decisions: ejecting the hold, shooting the thief, not following Callie to the frontier. Not following her soon enough, I mean. The physical pain came later, as I ran more. After that I only had to think about my mistakes for the first part of the run. Everything after was a beautiful blank.Swimming was different. I stayed busy and I came home tired, but I had time to think. I understood that we’d been apart for over a year. To find her with Daniel was especially galling, but I still wanted her. That’s what really bothered me, more than anything else. We fell in together while the Freya was being re-crewed after the boarding action. We were never friends, only lovers. Could we be friends? Or would I be lying to myself, keeping myself from moving on?Relationships were never my thing. How could they be in a war?The more I thought about it, the more I realized that— had I known Callie just as Daniel’s girlfriend— we could have been friends. I didn’t have many: I didn’t want many. But maybe I would have wanted Callie as my friend.When I came back, I found Callie in the barn, next to the innards of a tractor spilled out of an open hatch. She blanched when she saw me. “Thank you, Hannah, but I don’t need your help.”“Can you wake up early?”She shot me a quizzical look. “I did on the ship.”“I’m not the best person to teach you.”Callie leaned against the tractor, facing me. “It depends on what I want to learn.”“Tomorrow morning.” I walked out without saying any more.Her words lingered for me into the night: “It depends on what I want to learn.” Like she said, I’m smart, but as I said: “Only at some things.” I didn’t know what she meant. I didn’t ask.She was as good as her word and was ready to go first thing the next day. I drove us to the lake. When she stripped down to her bathing suit she was beautiful and it bothered me. Looking at her filled me with a need for fullness that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I looked away. If she noticed, she never said anything.One thing I noticed when Daniel taught me was that swimming used all of my muscles and I tired faster. Callie was as fit as the military made her, but— like me— she wasn’t ready for swimming. While we were driving back she put her feet up on the dash and sighed. “I’m going to hurt tomorrow, aren’t I?”“I promise I didn’t push you extra hard or anything.”She laughed. “I didn’t even think about that.”We were quiet. I was thinking about her and I guessed she was thinking about me. I tried to sort through my feelings. My bitterness was still there; I wanted to let go of that. She broke the silence: “I had fun today.”I smiled. That’s all Callie needed. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. When we got home she climbed, exhausted, down from the truck’s cab. “Tomorrow?”“You need to recover,” I said. “Day after.”She yawned. “Sounds good.”Daniel sat on the porch steps. He smiled at Callie and she gave him a small wave as she walked by. When the door closed behind her, he asked: “How was it?”I shrugged.“She missed you.” He scratched his ankle. Something about his face made me stop. He looked up at me, squinting in the sun. “Hannah, when we were in the Freya, did you have nightmares?”“All the time. Especially after— ”“Right.”“But when I woke up she was there. She was already awake, holding me.”He sighed, stood up, stretched. “She used to help me, too, but I had to wake her up first.”He walked inside.Once she got used to it, I swam with Callie every morning. Several times I asked Daniel to join us. He demurred. Callie was gone during the day, working at the other farms on their tractors or jeeps or anything mechanical, really. He spent time with me then. I knew something happened between them. He’d moved into the other bedroom. I desperately wanted to say something, to ask, but I was afraid. These people were my only world after the military. Most people in my life were forced to get along with me: they were ordered to serve me or command me. When that was gone, Daniel and Callie were still there. They chose me. What would happen if I asked Callie to come back to me?I wanted her back so badly.One day Callie and I, after swimming, laid on the sandy lake shore. I suppose we were air drying.“Can I tell you a story, Hannah?”Her tone was ominous. I sat up, leaned forward, and wrapped my arms around my knees. “Is it a pleasant story?”“I want to tell you about that morphine I gave you, when you collapsed.”“The morphine.”“Yes. Daniel didn’t know I had it. I’d stolen it from the hospital when I escaped. I was planning on killing myself after the Admiral’s funeral. I was there to see you all one last time.”I didn’t know. “What stopped you?”“You. At the funeral, I saw dangerous little Commander Henry blitzing across the field, getting her people out, putting herself in harm’s way to make sure that we didn’t do something we’d regret. If someone could live for me, I could live for her. Or anyone. Or me.” She sat up and turned to face me. “I was so shattered when you didn’t come with us, but it wasn’t about me, was it? And I had that bottle of morphine and it got me through. It gave me options, being able to kill myself if I wanted. I had agency.” She wiped her hair behind her ear. “Daniel was also there, of course, and he helped.”“He helped you move on.”“Well, maybe. When you called, I couldn’t wait to see you, but I also dreaded you showing up. I didn’t want to hurt you.”The alternative would have been worse. “Do you still have that bottle?”She put her hand on mine. It was warm, wet, sandy. “When you collapsed, I set aside one pill for you and threw the rest away.” She gripped my hand; her eyes told me how scared she was.“Callie, please just say it.”She swallowed. “I’m leaving, Hannah. And I want you to come with me.”“What?”“Daniel realized it before I did. When I tossed those pills I made my choice. Even if you don’t want me, you’re why I threw them out. He wasn’t enough. You are.”“What will you do?”Callie gestured to the sky. “There are hundreds of orphaned colonies out there. They’re dying, though. They were heavily reliant on Earth. They’re scared of us and we’re the only ones who can help them. The military government here has finally fallen—did you know that?—and they’re finally asking for help. They need us to save what we can and to evacuate the rest. We’ll bring them here. Daniel wants to help settle the arrivals. There’s a lot of room out here, lots of opportunity.” She reached out and brushed a wisp of my hair behind my ear. “You’re not the only one filled with guilt, Hannah.”“I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t want to lose his friendship.”“I’m the one who hurt him,” she said. “I knew it was over between him and I, but he was the one brave enough to say it out loud. If you want to stay here he’ll have you, of course. But for me, I know that I need to do something more than fixing people’s generators for free.”I laid back down. “And now I have to choose between you and Daniel.”“Hannah, if you ask me to stay groundside with you I will. For you, I’ll stay. But I think we both need to be out there.” I didn’t reply. She leaned over me and we kissed. It was passionate. I wanted to hold her, to make love to her, but I couldn’t. Not yet. When it was over she looked me in the eye and smiled. “If you decide you don’t want to take me back, at least you gave me a hell of a goodbye kiss. Thank you for that.”“I don’t know what I would do.”She laid her head on my chest. Her voice muffled against my skin, she said, “Commander Henry, we need a leader like you. We need someone who loves. You killed—for fuck’s sake, Hannah, you murdered—to preserve what little innocence the rest of us had left. You risked your soul so we didn’t have to. I don’t think you ever thought about a life after the war for yourself, but you did for us.”“And you’ll come with me.”“We’ll go together,” she said.“I made lots of evil decisions, out there.”“Did you? Well, now you can atone for them.” Callie picked her head up and looked me in the eye. “This world is full of second chances, Hannah. War made you do ugly things. You can’t bring the people you killed back to life. But, maybe, you can leave the universe a better place than you found it.”I held her. I was lost in the possibilities.

When we returned home, Daniel was waiting for us, sad and happy at the same time. He drove us to the city a few days later, our things in a couple of rucks in the bed of his stolen truck. Even though we promised one another we’d see each other again, I think we knew that this was the last time it would be the three of us. Callie and I would find atonement together; Daniel would go his own way.I oversaw refitting one of the Valkyries. We removed its guns and silos and weapons lockers. I renamed her the Freya II. I reached out to my old crew. I sobbed in Callie’s arms when I saw how many came back. Some of them looked haggard, hollow, like they hadn’t slept in years. I’d looked that way once. They’d find rest now. None of us put back on uniforms, but we were no less driven for it.After we’d launched, once I’d seen us out of the gravity well and through the first jump into interstellar space, I returned to my cabin. Callie was there, reading a book. When I came in, she closed it and let it drift away.“Would you like to hear a story?” she asked, floating, gentle, into my arms.“Is it a pleasant one?”“Always.”I smiled.

John W. Treviño