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When Chronica read Vash the Stampede’s file, her first thought was: God, he’s so fucking young.
Barely over 150 years old and already a full head of black hair. The conditions of their planet truly were hostile. What a waste. Another plant eaten up long before his time. Elders many times his age would weep to see him.
If she listened closely she could hear their whispers, far-flung across spacetime and yet seeming just in the other room. Just on the edge of hearing. They were joyful to have found him, to be reunited. They were mournful that they’d come so late.
When Chronica finally met Vash the Stampede—face to face—it was years after the Pieces of Earth fleet’s arrival. He was just as difficult to track down as everyone claimed. When she cornered him, finally, in a no-name bar in a no-name village (Noman’s Land had innumerable of these) she felt young as she slid into a seat across from him.
Those eyes. If she hadn’t seen the documented proof from the original Seeds database she might not have believed it. Those eyes were ancient.
He was a man in a dirty coat, hunched on a barstool too short for him, nursing a glass. And he glanced at her with those ponderous leviathan’s eyes and sized her up in a moment.
She hoped, suddenly and desperately—ridiculously—that she was not found wanting.
When his gaze slid from her it was a relief. He signaled to the bartender, who placed another shot glass on the scuffed countertop.
“Want a drink?” Vash the Stampede asked, already pouring her a shot from the mostly-empty bottle in front of him. Had it been full when he started?
“It’s not even 11am,” Chronica said, still thrown.
He cocked one black eyebrow as if to say So? and slid the full shot over to her. She caught it before it could spill and eyed the amber liquid skeptically.
Rather than set the bottle back on the bartop immediately, Vash the Stampede took a long swig from it. Then he topped off his own shot glass. In her periphery, Chronica could see the bartender acting studiously disinterested. She looked up and caught the man’s eye.
He looked wary, she thought. But not of the wanted outlaw sitting next to an Earth Federation officer. She wasn’t even dressed in her uniform, after all. His glance was more the warning of all bartenders—because despite being on a different planet, some things stayed the same. His look said If that guy starts puking or causing a ruckus, it’s your job to haul him out of here.
Chronica gave him a subtle nod and, seemingly satisfied, the bartender turned away.
When she returned her full focus to Vash the Stampede, he was sipping his shot as though from a rocks glass, eyes on the countertop. But she felt certain he had just been studying her from the corner of his eye. He had clocked the whole silent exchange.
He may have downed almost an entire bottle of whiskey, but he was still sharp. Unless the bottle had been mostly empty already, and he was trying to lull her into a false sense of security—?
He swirled the glass a little in his hand, as though letting the alcohol breathe, and said: “Found me.”
There was a definite drunken slur to his words, made thicker by his Gunsmoke accent. The miasma of alcohol on his breath, sticking to him, was notable when she breathed through her nose. (There were a lot of grimy establishments on Noman’s Land within which Chronica tried to avoid breathing through her nose). So he wasn’t playacting drunk, after all. Even so, it would not do to underestimate him. Not when he was the only one who had been able to stop the fused entity. Not when he had avoided capture for so long.
“Found you,” Chronica agreed mildly. She sniffed her shot and took a sip. It was just cheap whiskey.
“You bringin’ me in?” he asked. There was a wry twist to his mouth, as though he found the concept funny. But there wasn’t a shred of genuine humor to be found in his demeanor.
So tired. Those old, sad eyes.
Technically it was her job to bring him in. But the Federation’s interest in his capture had waned with each year that Vash the Stampede had remained at large with no more signs of world-ending destruction. He had all-black hair. Many of them theorized, with convincing evidence, that he had initiated a Last Run during the battle. He should be dead. What more could he do?
“Is there somewhere we can speak privately?” Chronica asked instead.
That got his full attention once again. This time she was more prepared for the weight of his regard. She kept her shoulders straight. She threw back the rest of her shot in a go and put the empty glass upside-down on the bartop.
The brief flash of a smile she got for that was more genuine. “I’ve got a room,” he said. “You’re welcome, as a guest.”
Invoking hospitality was an old tradition, but one that had taken on fresh significance for the people of this hostile planet. Chronica had read all of the anthropological studies with interest over the last few years.
She had, she realized, already accepted and shared his drink as a show of good faith. How had he so quickly disarmed her?
But then, had she not already decided in some way that she didn’t intend to apprehend him? Why else had she dressed in civilian clothing to confront him here, without informing anyone or calling for backup? (She was not a gambling woman, and did not as a rule take these kinds of risks. Certainly she would dress down anyone under her command for this sort of approach.
But he had been so young, in that file. And his hair so black. And the songs of the sisters so loving, the grandmothers so mournful).
“I accept,” she said.
He nodded once and pushed unsteadily up from his barstool. “‘Nother bottle of Bride,” he said, and put some crumpled double dollars on the counter.
“No way, buddy,” the bartender said.
He shook his head and hooked a sloppy thumb towards the door. “To go.”
The bartender handed over the bottle slowly, clearly against his better judgment. “I better not see you back in here today.”
Another shake of the head, black hair swaying. “You won’t,” Vash the Stampede agreed, then took his bottle and trudged towards the door.
Stepping from the dark interior of the bar out into the blazing double sunlight was a shock, as it always was. Chronica disliked the extra moment it took for her eyes to adjust. She disliked the way the heat hit her like a wall—a physical force she had to brace herself against.
Sometimes, after being out under those binary suns, she would touch the top of her head. Her hair would feel almost hot enough to catch fire. She watched Vash the Stampede march down the dusty street a step ahead of her. If the sunlight soaking into his dark hair bothered him, he gave no sign. Perhaps he was too drunk to feel it. Likely he was just used to it. The people of this planet dressed in layers, long sleeves and pants, like it was nothing.
(That provided more protection from the suns and elements, to be sure, but they hadn’t adopted the loose flowing garments common to Earth’s desert cultures. This society’s attire had trended in a distinctly Western direction, which she found fascinating).
Vash the Stampede’s coat was long, flowing, the tails whipping about his legs almost like skirts. But too heavy, too thick. She smelled leather and Kevlar mesh under the whiskey stink. Do not underestimate him, she reminded herself.
He led her to a hotel, the top left-hand corner of which had clearly been rebuilt. The stone and synthwood were a different color than the rest of the building and looked too clean and new. The industrious people of this planet had certainly not wasted any time in trying to put things back to normal after the fused entity’s destruction.
Vash the Stampede wobbled a little on the narrow staircase inside. Chronica stayed a step or two behind him, hands up in case she had to catch him. But he didn’t fall.
At his door he fumbled around in his pockets for an agonizingly long moment. He handed his liquor bottle off to Chronica absentmindedly so he could search with both hands.
He pulled a key fob from one of his pockets with a triumphant jangle and then immediately dropped it. He lurched down to grab it. Chronica, thinking he was falling, reached out on impulse to grab his elbow.
He caught the key but froze, staring at her, her staring back, both of them in sudden alarm.
His other hand had gone to the gun at his hip. She hadn’t even seen it move.
She withdrew her hand from his elbow slowly. “I just want to talk.”
He regarded her again. So tired. So wary. Those eyes like the old videos of whales back on Earth: fathomless, world-weary, calm and no longer able to be surprised by betrayal.
Then he turned and unlocked the door. He took the bottle back from Chronica as he let them into the room.
It was a small, dingy room. One window with threadbare curtains, one bed with threadbare sheets. One synthwood table and two chairs, with a lopsided duffel bag slumped in one like another guest.
Vash the Stampede dropped heavily onto the side of the bed. His hands dangled between his knees, the whiskey bottle in one almost touching the floor. Chronica perched on the one free chair at the table. There were empties scattered across the table’s surface. She hoped, without much real optimism, that this was not typical behavior for him.
For a long moment all was quiet. Just the sounds of Vash the Stampede opening his fresh bottle of whiskey and taking a long drink. He drank like it was water and he was dying of thirst. Chronica’s alarm only grew.
“Do you…always start drinking this early?” she asked, almost despite herself.
The way he glanced up at her made her think that he had, momentarily, forgotten she was there. He snorted once, humorlessly, but did not otherwise answer. “You gonna arrest me?” he asked again, which was a more pertinent question.
“I don’t want to,” Chronica answered honestly. “But I had hoped to have this conversation sober.”
He studied the depths of the bottle in his hand before taking another swig. “Hm,” he grunted, like, Well isn’t that interesting or Too bad.
Chronica felt a strong, sharp burst of annoyance. Maybe it was her own fault for dressing in civilian garb, but she had been a Commander for a long time. She was not used to outright dismissal.
She took a deep, calming breath. “I haven’t introduced myself. I am Independent Commander Chronica of the Pieces of Earth fleet.”
He looked up at her from under his hair, as if lifting his head fully were too much effort. “You were in the battle,” he noted, with the faintest hint of surprise.
She nodded, swallowing the hurt that still rose up when she thought too long about it. The battle they certainly would have lost if not for the drunken man in front of her. The battle where she lost Domi— “I was.”
“They let Independents hold rank?” he asked. His tone was too casual.
“Independents can do anything humans can. The fight for plant rights on Earth was won many years ago.” This was true, even if it didn’t always feel like it. Chronica had a long memory.
“How many years ago?” he asked, too shrewdly, like he could read her mind. If this was him drunk, she shuddered to think of facing him down sober after all.
“Within my lifetime,” she admitted. Why did it feel like an admission? It was just the facts. “But I was very young.”
“How old are you now?” he asked.
“Almost 400,” she said, trying to keep her displeasure under wraps. There would almost certainly be a party—neither humans nor plants, it would seem, could resist the draw of a neat round number. She greatly disliked being the subject of a party.
Whether due to the alcohol or his own quirks, Vash the Stampede could not seem to hold eye contact for long. But Chronica—who was not a complete idiot, despite following this wanted man to a secluded location—did not take her eyes off him. So she saw the compassion that opened up in his face like a collapsing star. As if hearing that she had lived almost four centuries was cause for mourning instead of celebration.
The backs of her eyes felt suddenly, inexplicably hot with tears. Domina had been 203. Not all that much older than him. But she had been so joyful. So beautifully naïve. For her, the fight for plant rights had been an ugly but ultimately successful chapter in a history lesson. She had only ever known the best of what Earth could offer her. She had loved her giant, festive 200th birthday party.
Chronica breathed deeply again. Vash the Stampede drank more of his whiskey.
“I heard…” he started uncertainly. “About chips. In your brains.”
“That is true,” she said, and watched the subtle way his fingers tightened on the neck of the bottle, the way his boots made firmer purchase against the floor. “But it’s not what you think.”
He barked a laugh, humorless, and the compassion that had bled onto his face had been swallowed back up tight. “What do I think?” he asked, with a biting edge of You dare presume?
“The humans don’t control us with them,” Chronica explained. “Independents designed them for Independents. They keep us from burning up all our power at once. And from initiating fused entities like—the one your brother became.”
“And that’s it?” he asked. She didn’t begrudge him an ounce of his skepticism.
“That’s it. They keep us from causing wide-scale destruction.” They helped Independents maintain their separation, so that their minds and abilities didn’t bleed out into the world and cause chaos. It had been a relief, she remembered, the first time she got upset after having her chip implanted. She had been able to cry and pout in the privacy of her own room without subjecting everyone in the vicinity to the oppressive psychic weight of her emotions. It was a freedom to finally have a mind that belonged only to herself. To still be able to reach out to the other plants, but also to have the power to end the call.
(The initial funding for the neural blocking program had come from the military, of course, and the project had been followed with immense interest by every human faction. It was standard for new Independents to be implanted with one, and absolutely required for any Independent serving in the Federation. But now was probably not the time to tell Vash the Stampede all of this).
There was another long, silent moment wherein he studied his liquor bottle. “If you took me in, would they put a chip in me?”
“I don’t know. There probably wouldn’t be a point, since you’ve used all your power.” There would be humans within the fleet who would advocate for it, all the same. Who were advocating for it.
He took another drink. Chronica listened to the liquid slosh inside the glass bottle. It was too warm in this room. It was too warm everywhere on this awful planet. She resisted the urge to pluck at her neckline.
“Independent Commander Chronica,” Vash the Stampede mused, almost to himself. “Interesting title.”
She knew what he must think. An uncomfortable feeling prickled at her for a moment, before being washed away by her customary surge of pride. She held her chin high. “Yes. I’m only the fourth in the fleet to hold the title. It’s a great honor.”
He studied her again. This time she held his gaze and tried to project the same air of cool command she showed to all her troops.
“You lead them,” he said, half a question. “They follow you.”
“Yes.”
“Does it ever stop?”
“What?” Chronica asked.
“D’you ever stop…looking over your shoulder? Wondering what they really think of you?”
Even bleary drunk, those too-sharp eyes. That sly glint, dissecting her. She was too cold. She was too hot. The truth dropped, unbidden, from her lips. “No,” she whispered into the still air. “No. I don’t think it even occurs to the younger ones. This is the only life they’ve known. And I’m glad they get to have that. But I…”
I cannot forget. Nor could any of the others who had lived prior to the last three hundred or so years. Even as the generations of humans turned over, their prejudices towards plants easing into casual acceptance–their shock and horror at the details in the history records–she could not forget. Would not.
“Being an Independent Commander is a great honor,” she repeated, after steeling herself with another breath. “It sets me apart, yes. That is the purpose of a distinction. I am proud to represent my species.”
He just looked at her. Looked and looked, between those heavy drunken blinks. She kept her chin up and held the knowledge of her chip like a talisman. Because he could not be inserting himself into her mind, for all that he seemed able to read her like an open book.
(But Domina had had a chip, and yet the fused entity had reached into her ship, into her, easy as anything, and consumed her–)
He broke eye contact first, losing her behind his upturned whiskey bottle. He was already over halfway through it. If he vomited in this stuffy little hotel room then it would be too hot and too smelly and she might have to arrest him after all, just for putting her through that.
“Dunno why you Earth forces even want me,” he muttered, changing the subject yet still seeming to read her mind. “I wasn’t working with my brother. I tried–I stopped him.”
“Yes. And then you fled with him.”
“He’s dead,” Vash the Stampede said, and the words landed hard in the quiet room like two bullets slamming home. Then, gentler: “He’s dead. And don’t ask me for proof ‘cause I don’t have any. I’m not diggin’ him up.”
He stared down at his boots.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Whatever grim emotion was left once vengeance had cooled over–that was all Chronica could summon for the being who had consumed Domina. Like she was nothing but a bit of copper wiring, there to be used as a backdoor into their computer systems. Just a pile of feathers, spiraling out and pressing against the glass of her pod–
–but she knew loss. She knew it was the polite thing to say.
He didn’t acknowledge it, but she didn’t mind. They both knew they were hollow words.
“D’you know how I lived? After pulling a Last Run?” he asked his boots.
Her intellectual thrill at confirming the Last Run theory was short-lived. Displeasure rushed back into the gap. “Unfortunately, no. Much of what you and your brother did was…unprecedented.”
He snorted. “Lucky us.”
“There are many things we’ve been wondering—“
“Have you heard of Lost July?” he asked, cutting over her.
Chronica fought down another spike of irritation at being interrupted. There were certainly things about her rank that she took for granted. “Yes, I’ve heard of it. I understand the people of this planet blame you for the city’s destruction.”
He still looked down at his own feet. The dark fringe of his hair cast his eyes in shadow. “You should arrest me,” he said.
She waited. She felt for the power in her gate—ready to be tapped into if he made a move.
“If I’d…had a chip in my head,” he started, voice suddenly strained. She watched his head bow further, as if in prayer. She watched his fingers twist around the neck of the bottle too tightly. “Would…all those people still be alive?”
“Was it your power that did it? Through your gate?” Chronica asked.
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Yes,” she answered.
The whiskey bottle clattered to the floor and poured out its remaining contents onto the synthwood. Vash the Stampede buried his face in his hands and began to weep.
“Was it intentional?” she asked. She prayed that furthering the conversation would distract him from crying. She disliked watching other people cry—they produced too much mucous.
He’s so young.
(If he confessed to targeting cities of his own volition–of truly setting out to murder people–would she have to attempt to take him in? Even though he was without power, she doubted her ability to apprehend him alone. Her mind spun through the calculations as she watched his shoulders heave).
He shook his head, still in his hands. “My—brother—“ he choked out.
She immediately understood. His brother, who had helmed the largest fused entity ever recorded, had resonated with him and used his power for his own. If all those Dependents hadn’t stood a chance—if Domina hadn’t stood a chance—then what hope had there been for this poor boy: alone, untrained, with no neural limiter to help.
Chronica was fine with him keeping his head in his hands. It kept his tears and snot hidden from view, and kept him from seeing the pity that had almost certainly slipped onto her face. She kept the professional neutrality in her voice as she asked, “And the…’Fifth Moon Incident.’ Did your brother resonate with you to use your power for that, as well?”
Unfortunately, that question made his head shoot up in shock. His red-rimmed, watery eyes were painful to look at. “How did—yeah,” he said. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and Chronica had to look away.
Then he studied the puddle of whiskey at his feet and righted the bottle. There was a bit left in the bottom. He pondered that quarter-inch or so of liquid for a moment too long.
“Do not—“ Chronica started, but it was too late. He raised the bottle to his lips and finished it off.
Then he just sat there, staring at the mess around him, unmoving. Like a child’s toy that had run out of charge. He made a truly pathetic sight.
Unable to stand it any longer, Chronica stood up and marched into the little attached bathroom. She grabbed the towel off the hook, marched back out, and threw it on the puddle of whiskey.
Vash the Stampede looked up at her blearily, standing over him, like a sleepwalker just roused from dreaming. “Sorry…” he slurred. “Rude of me. Didn’t offer you a drink.”
“I don’t want one,” Chronica said. “But you need water.”
“Nooo,” he groaned to the floor in a distinctly childish tone.
“Do you want to be hungover tomorrow?”
“Won’t be, if I keep drinkin.’”
“Is that your plan, then? To stay drunk forever?” Chronica realized she had placed her hands on her hips. She forced her arms back down. It was amazing how quickly they had gone from outlaw and marshal to babysitter and child.
“Not a bad plan,” he said, as though mulling it over for the first time.
“It’s a terrible plan.”
“Breaks up all the running,” he mused.
Chronica took the empty bottle from his limp grasp and returned to the bathroom to fill it from the tap. She pushed the liquor bottle, now full of water, back into his hands. He stared at it without recognition.
“If you arrest me,” he said, looking at the bottle and not drinking. “If you put me in a cell, will I—I might—maybe I’ll be able to get some rest, finally? I’d like…to rest.”
If Chronica had called in backup, or followed any shred of protocol at all, then she wouldn’t be having to watch this man’s mental breakdown in real time. At least, not on her own.
Domina would have known what to say to him. She was good with emotions.
(His identical twin brother had consumed Domina)
“Drink that,” Chronica ordered, with all the authority she could muster from her years of command. To her surprise, he obediently raised the bottle to his lips, drank, and then grimaced. Warm, whiskey-flavored water—she couldn’t blame him, but neither did she intend to coddle him. “More.” He drank more.
“I’m not going to arrest you,” Chronica said when he seemed to have gotten the memo and was sipping doggedly at his water. “Not today.”
After the last few uncomfortable minutes, it was almost a relief to see him studying her with any amount of clarity again. “Oh…good,” he sighed, sounding equal parts relieved and disappointed. “I don’t think I could. Let you put something in my brain. Even though…even if. No.”
Chronica had been very thorough in her dredging of the Seeds databases. She knew about the first Independent to be born aboard the fleet, and what had been done to her. She had to assume Vash the Stampede knew as well. If she could promise him that no alterations would be made to his body without his consent, she would.
It was highly unlikely. Prisoners had rights, too. But still…
Do you ever stop looking over your shoulder?
She sat back down in her wobbly little synthwood chair. She was tall, like Vash the Stampede was tall, but the humans on this planet trended short due to resource scarcity. They didn’t make furniture her size. Their size. “What do you want?”
The look he gave her was exhausted and uncomprehending. Like he couldn’t read her mind if its focus was turned towards him. But then, if he wanted to look inward he wouldn’t be getting trashed before noon.
She clarified: “If you weren’t a wanted man. If you weren’t always running. What would you want? What would you want to do?”
His eyes welled with fresh tears. (God, he and Domina would have got on like a house on fire. She’d have had to keep them separate for her own sanity).
“I just want peace,” he said. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“And what does that mean to you: peace? What would you do? Where would you go?”
“I—“ His jaw worked. His eyes jumped around the room. “No one’s ever asked me that before.”
Never? In over 150 years? Chronica made a mental note. If she ever found a good, safe way to introduce Vash the Stampede to the elder plants, she would do it. His grandmothers would smother him in more love and attention than he knew what to do with.
Disarmed again, Chronica, she scolded herself a second later. He wasn’t a half-drowned kitten. He wasn’t her little brother.
(He wasn’t Dom—)
“There’s a few different people I could stay with, without bringin’ trouble to their doors,” he said hollowly. “They all say I don’t visit enough. There’s a kid I’d…like to be able to watch grow up.”
“Yours?” she asked.
He didn’t answer. She didn’t push.
“Other than that, I dunno,” he continued after a moment. “Will I age, now that my power’s gone? Will I grow old and die?”
She didn’t like the note of hope in his voice at that question. “Unfortunately, both you and your brother have been…anomalous. If you really did initiate a Last Run, then according to everything we know you should be dead.
But using up your power didn’t turn you into a human. You’re still a plant. With a plant’s lifespan.”
“And how long is that?” he asked, eyes boring into her once again. They had been so cut-off here, the three Seeds Independents. They knew so little about themselves. It was no wonder that their situation had gotten so dire.
The empathy must have bled onto her face, because Vash the Stampede was blanching. His eyes started back on their customary flighty circuit of the room.
Cataloging the exits, she realized. Assessing for threats. If he hadn’t already been a bottle deep when she approached him, Chronica realized, she probably never would have even gotten close. He’d have been a red streak in the distance before she crossed the threshold of the bar.
“Barring situations like a Last Run, or other environmental factors, we have yet to find the upper limit of a plant’s lifespan,” she answered. “The very first plant ever created is still alive, back on Earth.”
She still had a feathery streak of blonde at each temple, like the silver of a gracefully aging human woman. She had been off production for many centuries now and usually slept in her bulb, but she always had a cheerful greeting for any new Independent brought to meet her.
Chronica remembered her own meeting with 001 fondly. The awe she had felt. The sense of history, still alive in spite of everything and pressing a hand to her own through the glass.
Vash the Stampede’s expression was a black hole. Chronica could see the long, dusty, lonely years unspooling before him in his mind’s eye.
Was it a dereliction of duty—if not as a Commander, then as a fellow plant—if she walked away from here today and he put a bullet in his own head? He was young, self-destructive, alone.
What if he never even made it to 200? All three of the Project Seeds Independents dead less than two centuries after their crash. All violent ends. All tragedies.
“Would you ever want to meet them?” Chronica asked. “If you weren’t a wanted man.”
“Who?” he asked dully.
“The elder plants. Many of the others call them ‘grandmothers.’”
Vash the Stampede’s hand gripped his knee. He was all armor—long leather gloves, long steel-toed boots, Kevlar coat. Reinforced knee joins. “I am a wanted man.”
“This is a hypothetical.”
He folded in half, head to knees. The whiskey-turned-water bottle met the floor with a soft clink. His black-gloved fingers gripped his black, black hair. “Just arrest me or get out.”
“I—it wasn’t intended as a taunt,” Chronica said. “I could advocate f—”
He lurched suddenly to his feet and staggered to the window. Chronica just barely managed to stop herself from jumping up as well.
He threw the window open, and she tried not to feel desperately grateful for the meager breeze.
“Grandmothers,” he muttered as he gripped the curtains, swaying on his feet. “‘S it easier to lure me in willingly? Smart.”
“I’m not lying,” Chronica stated.
“There’s—y’know, there’s some folks here. Not me, o’course,” Vash the Stampede said, still standing at the window looking out onto the street below. “Who resent you Earth f-forces. Think you’re, mm, paternalistic.”
They probably deserved that, Chronica thought with a hot burst of shame. She deserved that.
When he staggered back from the window, she noted how he kept clear of easy sightlines. He dropped ungracefully back onto the bed, his long legs kicking out.
“They say you act like uppity know-it-alls who are trying to—to foist your way of life on us,” he continued. He blinked heavily at the wall. “That all your fancy tech made you arrogant. An occupying force ‘stead of an ally. Real rude things like that. All just things I’ve heard—I don’t personally agree with a bit of it. But you know how folks talk.”
Chronica withheld a sigh. She was certainly aware of the complaints lodged by this planet’s populace. She agreed with some of their grievances, though as a military Commander she had little influence over matters of day-to-day governance.
Ever since the battle with the fused entity, she had felt wrong-footed. The outcome of a conflict was often decided in mere seconds. Three centuries of training had served to hone her instincts. To prepare her to make the split-second choices that would spell victory or disaster for herself and those around her. The people under her command. The civilians under her protection.
And in one battle she had almost lost it all. Decimated their own fleet. Lost Domina.
(Made the choice not to attempt to save her–)
(–0.03% was barely a chance at all, but it wasn’t 0.00%, so it was still a chance, wasn’t it? Being in command meant that these sins rested on her shoulders, and hers alone).
The razor instinct she had relied on for so long no longer felt so reliable. Not since her earliest days as a Private could she remember doubting herself so much. She had approached Vash the Stampede intending to gather information and maybe extend a hand of compassion. It probably was paternalistic of her to assume that he would jump at the chance to experience life the way Earth Federation Independents did. He had no reason to trust her.
She sighed. “I didn’t come here intending to condescend to you. I’m not trying to trick you or force you into anything. But, well…you won’t like this.”
He tensed up again.
“I’m worried that if I leave you alone, you’ll kill yourself,” she said candidly.
He laughed dryly and leaned his weight back on his hands to look up at the ceiling. “Don’t trouble yourself on my account, Commander. I wouldn’t be so rash.”
“You initiated a Last Run.”
“Needed the boost,” he said, flippant.
“Surely you knew what the outcome would be.”
“But it didn’t.” It was easy to see the way his throat bobbed, with his head tilted back the way it was.
Chronica wasn’t sure what to say. She didn’t want to get into an argument: that was a sure way to lose him. She missed her old confidence. She missed when everything seemed so clear and simple, even though that clarity would have had her amassing a squad to bring him in by force.
His head rolled limply on his neck so his eyes could find hers again. He looked at her. She studiously did not fidget. “Who did you lose?”
She froze. “What?”
“You lost someone.” His voice was very gentle. “Tell me about them.”
Her throat closed up. The room was too hot. The bare walls with their chipping paint, the smell of warm whiskey soaked into cheap towel fibers, the sticky table of empties at her elbow. The man in front of her on a too-small, lonely single bed. It was crushing, the loneliness of this awful hotel room. How could he bear to sleep here?
(Easy: he had nowhere else to go. He would not bring trouble down on his friends while he was being hunted).
(Trouble=Chronica. The Earth Federation. She was doing this to him).
“Her name was Domina,” she whispered. “The fused entity…consumed her.”
“My brother killed her,” Vash the Stampede said. “His name was Knives.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.” He was sitting up straight again, facing her eye-to-eye. “He killed a lot of people because I wasn’t able to stop him.”
“No one person could have stopped him,” Chronica said. She had never faced such a formidable foe. He had figured out how to teleport the entirety of that awful, sky-spanning fusion–and that was only one of his impossible feats.
Vash the Stampede shrugged. “Not by the time you saw him.”
If I had done something sooner, was the implication. Both of them were swimming in the same awful cesspit of regrets. The torture of hindsight: all those roads not taken.
“Your friend Domina is dead, and I can’t replace her,” he said. The words might have seemed cruel had they not been spoken with the utmost tenderness. “And I don’t want to replace my brother. He was awful.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do,” Chronica said through a tight throat.
“What are you trying to do, Independent Commander?”
“I—“ A dozen answers spun through her mind, but none of them were right. Again, the truth seemed to fall from her mouth against her will. “I don’t know.”
The strangest thing—was that respect, in his eyes? He was too sharp to fall for easy deceptions, but maybe he appreciated honesty all the same. Even ugly and deflated as it was.
“I’m supposed to know,” she added when he remained quiet. The oldest tactic in the book—staying quiet to encourage the other person to keep talking—and here she was falling for it anyway. Like he was a confessional. (Or maybe he was just still drunk).
(Somehow, she didn’t think he was).
“It’s my job to know. I make the decisions. But that fight with the fused entity—your brother—was almost a complete disaster. It was a disaster. And Domina is gone and I—” Her throat closed up around a lump.
“You were very close with her,” Vash the Stampede said, again so gentle, a statement as though he could read Chronica’s history before him like a book.
She nodded. Words spilled out of her like poison from a wound. “I was her mentor. She was half my age—I was supposed to guide her, teach her, prepare her for her own command someday. I was supposed to keep her safe.”
Her eyes burned. Her vision blurred. She had to keep him in her sights—not that she actually expected him to move against her at this point. What had she become? Untouchable Commander Chronica, baring her soul to the man she was supposed to be hunting. (What a useless crusade). He was a red-and-black blob in her wobbly vision.
“The battle was years ago,” she said, wiping her cheeks and fighting for control. “The humans have moved on. But—”
“What’s a few years to us?” Vash the Stampede finished her thought.
“I just…I don’t want to watch another Independent die. Not if I can do something about it,” Chronica said desperately. “I don’t want to watch you die.”
He turned his head away. “You don’t even know me.”
The horror story in the Project Seeds logs. The sketchy outlines of other horrors wrought on the surface of this dry planet. His armored coat and boots. His inky black hair. His tragic, tired eyes. Things that should never have happened, but did. That he had been forced to live through.
(Everything on this planet was hard and bright and hot. What might he think of the coolness of space, after all those years? Of astronavigation and wormhole jumps and the ancient ocean of the greater plant hivemind? Of the deep peace and stillness of the void–the calm that only existed in the nothing outside of any atmosphere? Of a bed tall enough to fit him?)
“I know that you saved the lives of everyone on this planet, and in my fleet,” Chronica told him. “I know that every single one of the Project Seeds Dependents loves you. And that means something.”
His expression, aimed down at his boots, was very fragile. Dusty steel-toed boots with thick treads. He had traversed every inch of this desolate planet to take care of each of his sisters and all the humans around them, and it was a wonder he couldn’t feel the endless tide of their love crashing over him at every moment. Maybe Chronica’s own judgment was now dubious, but the collective of Dependents was unfailing as ever.
“Do you think there’s anything left to see?” he asked in a quiet, desperate voice. Like a secret, whispered into the darkness of deep night. Like the child he could still be–that still existed, deep down, under all the booze and the leather armor–with a little spark of hope. “Even for…people like us? Like me?”
“Vash the Stampede,” Chronica said with a wobbly smile. “If you’d let me–there’s a whole universe left to see.”