Colonel Madsen shook his head, a flicker of frustration cutting across his granite features. “No. We can’t find them. And at this point, it doesn’t matter.”

  He didn’t elaborate. Instead, he waved a hand and the holotable spilled blue light across the bridge, replaying the last hours of war in merciless detail. Jack watched as the Commonwealth’s carrier group—once the steel gods of the skies—was caught off guard by an Imperial fleet surging out of the void. The air corridor, carved with pilots’ blood, collapsed in on itself as the carriers wheeled back to shield the main fleet.

  “Shortly after your report reached us,” Madsen said, voice as steady as steel plates under strain, “the enemy’s re-formed fleet struck. The carriers had to pull out. The Imperials used that gap. They took the Hecate Pass.”

  On the map, the vital chokepoint for the Commonwealth’s supply line bled red. Over it hung the dragon-skull insignia of the Tartarus Legion, coiled in its chain crown.

  “High Command has ordered a general retreat,” Madsen concluded, a weary cynicism edging his words. “If nothing else goes wrong, the line will stabilize. But it’ll be uglier. And more entangled.”

  He shut the holotable down. Darkness slid back over the bridge. When his gaze returned to Jack, it carried a strange, almost reluctant respect.

  “So, congratulations, Lieutenant. Your simulation was right. You spared us a catastrophe. Instead of losing the war and hundreds of thousands, we only lost a chokepoint and a few thousand men. From a certain angle,”—his mouth twitched, the ghost of a smile—“that’s victory.”

  Jack felt no victory. Only a bone-deep fatigue that hollowed him out.

  A staff officer stepped forward, extending a hand and a data-slate. “Compton, Director of the Second Research Office, War Planning Department. It will be an honor to have you as a colleague.”

  Jack took the slate numbly.

  [APPOINTMENT: First Lieutenant Jack Harlan is hereby transferred to the Terran Commonwealth High Command, Epsilon Prime, War Planning Department, as Strategic Analyst. Effective immediately.]

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  His thoughts spun. Last time they called him a hero, they threw him to the front lines and nearly got him killed. Now they were pulling him back. Did they think he was some kind of universal tool? Protect him? No—protect their headlines.

  Next time, it would be the same. The people need you, hero. Go die for them.

  In that instant, he made his decision. He would be a ghost. He would never be a hero again. Let someone else wear the medals. He would fade into the War Planning Department and wait out this war.

  He looked up, voice steady but new steel under it. “Sir, I have a request. My name is to be scrubbed from all reports. Any credit goes to the unit or to the dead. I don’t care. I’m not a hero. I’m just a mechanic who got lucky. I don’t want interviews. I don’t want my name in feeds. I don’t want to be hunted by reporters. I did my duty. Now I want—” his voice caught, softer—“to be forgotten.”

  Madsen studied him, then nodded, a glimmer of something genuine flickering in his eyes. “Very well. There’s an old saying: He succeeds, but does not linger on his success. Because he does not cling, it never leaves him.” He clapped Jack’s shoulder once.

  Jack left the bridge bewildered. Never leaves him? What the hell does that mean?

  …

  The planet’s orbit was still fire and wreckage, so the transport stayed low, cutting through the atmosphere under fighter escort. High Command had prepared a triumphal welcome—flags, cameras, every reporter left on Epsilon Prime packed into Cadian City.

  Jack saw none of it. He slipped out through a maintenance hatch, boarding a quieter transport bound for Garipan. From a deserted cabin, he watched the ceremony on a wall-screen like a ghost at his own funeral.

  On-screen, Colonel Sterling spun a sanitized tale of a nameless hero and his noble comrades. Cheers, tears, triumph.

  Off-screen, the real “hero” sat in silence, the screen’s glow the only light, feeling nothing but hollow exhaustion.

  He thought of Kael’s pleading face, frozen in the moment before death. Of Roric’s vow: I’ll die before I let that system become ours.

  The Commonwealth—a nation that would move heaven and earth to rescue prisoners, but rot itself from within. He no longer knew who he fought for.

  He shut the screen off. Darkness folded around him. All he wanted now was sleep. All he wanted was to vanish.

  (Somewhere in the archive feeds of the War Planning Department, a fragment of his erased name left a trace—too small to notice, too stubborn to delete. A variable. A seed. OURO drift.)