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Hannah Shepard’s daughter is fifteen months old before she sees grass and sky for the first time.
The holo recording plays out just the same as it has hundreds of times over. It doesn’t quite do justice to the beautiful day Hannah remembers, a late summer afternoon with sunbeams filtering through scattered clouds, a light breeze taking the edge off the thick Georgia heat. Hannah’s sister chatters in the background, alternating between peals of laughter and indulgent coos aimed at the niece she’s never met before.
The little girl doesn’t seem to notice, too busy toddling along on stumpy legs, her carefully chosen outfit already covered in mud splatters and grass stains. When curiosity overrides coordination she drops to her hands and knees and crawls for all she’s worth, the holo camera in her mother’s hands bobbling along behind her.
“Careful, honey,” comes Hannah’s disembodied voice, floating from somewhere behind the camera, younger and lighter and tinged with a new mother’s caution. “You don’t want to scrape up your knees.”
Her daughter’s exploration finally slows as she approaches the sidewalk, its rough surface foreign against palms accustomed to a starship’s sleek chrome hallways. A rock nestles in a crack running through the permacrete, and she closes her tiny fingers around it, giving it an experimental tap against the sidewalk.
“What have you got there?” Hannah asks brightly, but her daughter doesn’t respond, her attention rapt on the sidewalk, fingers still curled around the suddenly forgotten stone.
The camera zooms in, refocusing on the dark spot skittering down the permacrete—a single spider marching along purposefully, heedless of the toddler looming in its path. The little girl bends down for a closer look, blue eyes wide and unblinking.
“Oh, a spider,” Hannah says. “We don’t have many of those back at home on the ship, do we? Can you say ‘spider,’ sweetie?”
For the first time, her daughter looks up into the camera, flashing a brilliant smile. Then she brings the rock down on top of the spider with all the strength in her pudgy arms, smashing up and down, up and down until nothing remains but a greasy stain on the sidewalk.
“Oh!” The startled word bubbles out of Hannah’s sister, somewhere to the left of the camera. “Looks like you have a future arachnophobe on your hands!”
“Arachnophobe?” echoes her husband, his voice an amused, lazy drawl. “She wasn’t afraid of it. She just wanted to kill it.”
The camera tilts, Hannah’s voice going muffled as the world turns up on its side. “No, honey, don’t touch it—”
The recording winked out, and Hannah turned the little holo player over in her hands. Her thumb found the off switch, sliding it into place with a click that seemed to echo in the silent room.
The crew quarters were mercifully empty (that had to be deliberate; they were almost never empty), dark except for the feeble glow from the portable lamp perched on the table by her elbow. She flipped the holo player over again, watching light smear hazily over the dull metallic surface, its sheen long since lost to age and layered fingerprints.
She’d been off duty almost an hour and hadn’t done a single useful thing, hadn’t done anything but sit in this dark room watching old holos and pointedly not cracking open the bottle of wine in her locker.
The holo player completed its circuit in her fingers again. It seemed to grow heavier each time—heavier than an object of that size had any right to be—almost as weighty as the stares she’d felt prickling and scratching between her shoulder blades all damn day long. Eyes had followed her all the way from the bridge to the crew quarters, the pointed gazes somehow still lingering like built-up residue even though she was alone.
Her thumb strayed again, this time to the engraving etched into the metal in no-fuss block letters. The words had faded over time, the little grooves indistinct against her skin, but it didn’t matter. She knew what they said.
Isla Margaret Shepard, born April 11, 2154. Eight pounds, twelve ounces, twenty-one inches long.
(“Why is that even on there, anyway?” Isla asked once, voice edged with the adolescent need to point out how stupid and wrong everything was. “My birth weight and length, I mean. People always put that on baby announcements like it actually matters or something.”
Hannah smiled. “It’s just a way for us old people to remind ourselves how small and adorable our kids used to be.”
Her daughter rolled her eyes, tossing her dark ponytail over her shoulder. “Adorable, right.”)
“Oh, enough brooding, already,” Hannah said, unsure whether she was talking to herself or to the teenage phantom in her head, blinking when she realized she’d spoken aloud in the deserted room. She rose and headed for the door, slipping the holo player into her pocket. It nestled against her thigh like it belonged there, as though she hadn’t just spent an hour playing and replaying its harbingers like a fortune-teller staring into a teacup’s depths.
The ship’s communications room was just as empty as the crew quarters, featuring nothing but the terminal planted in the center as though it were an altar and the crew its worshipers. The screen flared to life in a vivid burst of orange as Hannah approached, and the computer’s placid female voice began its familiar recitation.
“To access the communications network, please speak your identification number, or input it into the terminal below.”
Hannah punched in her numbers, and the computer gave a brief whirr before the terminal flashed green, no less bright but moderately more soothing. “Welcome, Executive Officer Hannah Shepard,” the computer chirped. “Please input your receiving party’s information.”
“Real-time connection to Arcturus Station,” Hannah ordered, straightening her stance and clasping her hands behind her back. The holo player chafed against her leg through her pocket’s thin lining, and she ignored it, her face settling into expressionless calm. “I want to speak to Lieutenant Commander Isla Shepard.”
She waited, refusing to frown as the computer hummed and beeped instead of producing the typical near-instantaneous connection.
“We are experiencing unusually heavy traffic on this frequency,” the computer informed her, the artificial voice sounding almost apologetic. Somehow it didn’t help. “Please stand by.”
Hannah pushed down a swell of unease, her fingers tightening behind her back. Really, what did you expect? she chided herself. Just be patient.
A few more minutes passed before the blank screen finally morphed into a figure, a man wearing a standard-issue Alliance uniform. Even through the holographic distortion, his expression was harried, the deep lines in his forehead running parallel to the grim set of his mouth.
“You’ve reached Arcturus Station, Comm Specialist Harding,” he said. “Lieutenant Commander Shepard is currently unavailable. May I direct your call elsewhere?”
“No, you may not,” Hannah replied in clipped tones. “When will she be available?”
To his credit, he faced her squarely, though she noted the slight droop of his shoulders. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you, ma’am.”
“Has she been arrested?” Hannah asked, her voice like steel even as her heart rate quickened and her toes curled inside her boots.
“I’m not at liberty to say, ma’am.” The comm specialist recited the words dully, a thin veneer of politeness covering the weary air of someone who’d been repeating answers to the same questions for hours. Possibly days.
Hannah raised her head a fraction, studying his face through the holographic field. He was young, not much older than Isla, and his resigned body language hinted he’d suffered numerous verbal eviscerations and was bracing for another.
“You’ve been getting a lot of calls like this lately, haven’t you?” she said, softening her tone. She relaxed her stance, letting her arms swing down by her sides.
Surprise flickered across his face, quickly replaced by a flash of relief. “Yes ma’am, I’ve been getting all the calls like this. The brass assigned me to handle all the rerouted requests coming in for Lieutenant Commander Shepard, and they’ve been almost nonstop since the news about Torfan broke. Most of them are from reporters asking for classified details or for the Lieutenant Commander herself, then foaming at the mouth when I can’t give them anything.” He stopped himself and blinked, and the holograph fritzed as he lifted a hand to rub at the back of his neck. “Ah, they’ve been getting upset, is what I meant to say. Ma’am.”
Hannah attempted to hide her smile, but didn’t try too hard. “I understand your frustration, Specialist. But let me assure you I’m no reporter, and I’m not planning on doing any foaming at the mouth any time soon.” She took a deep breath and let it out, ordering a cease-fire on her nerves. “I’m the Lieutenant Commander’s mother. I just…want to make sure she’s okay.”
His expression shifted as she spoke, the barest rearranging of pale blue particles on the holo terminal. It was the classic almost-but-not-quite poker face of someone who’d been trained to hide reactions but hadn’t quite mastered the art, the change subtle enough that most people would have missed it.
But I’m not most people, Hannah thought, fighting off a twinge of dismay at how grim the words sounded, even trapped in the confines of her own skull. I suppose that’s the problem, isn’t it? ‘Most people’ wouldn’t have a daughter who…
She forbade the thought to finish, lifting her chin and tightening her mouth. Across the galaxy, the specialist noted the shift in her demeanor as easily as she’d noted his. Hannah watched his throat bob as he swallowed.
“I’ll forward your request to my superiors, ma’am,” he said.
“Thank you.” Hannah was tempted to sigh in relief, but quashed the urge in its cradle. Still too early for that. “I’ll wait.”
“I—” the specialist began to object, then cut himself off, his throat working again. “Yes ma’am.”
His image disappeared, replaced by a static screen blaring HOLDING: PLEASE WAIT in glowing letters. Hannah resettled her face into bland neutrality, staring at the screen and letting her eyes trace back and forth over the O and L. Behind her, there was a mechanical whoosh as the door slid open, followed by a startled “oh,” a muffled cough, and footsteps beating a hasty retreat.
The door creaked closed again. Hannah waited, eyes still circling the letters, fixed like a toy train forbidden to leave its track.
When the words disappeared and the holograph reshaped itself into her daughter’s face, Hannah caught her breath, her shoulders sagging a little.
“Sweetheart,” she murmured, and didn’t even care that her voice cracked like an adolescent boy’s. She cleared her throat, allowing herself a moment to relish the sweet taste of relief. “I didn’t think they were going to put me through.”
Onscreen, Isla blinked, disbelief clear on her face. “Mom?”
“It’s me,” Hannah said, trying for a smile. “How are you holding up?”
She took a step back and studied, mother’s eyes sweeping the holograph from head to toe. If the comm specialist had looked weary, Isla looked exhausted, her eyes sunken, disheveled bun leaking wispy strands around her face, complexion a few shades paler than normal even through the whitewashed holo.
“I’m…” She sighed, wilted, tense defiance leaving her like air escaping an old balloon. “I’ve been better. I could be worse, though. Could be dead. Probably should be dead.”
Hannah winced. “Honey, don’t—”
“—Shouldn’t say that,” Isla was already finishing. “They’re probably watching me to see what I say when my guard’s down. I’ll bet that’s why they let you through so easy.”
“‘They?’” Hannah echoed.
“Yeah.” Isla spat the word. “The interrogators.”
Hannah’s heart plummeted, her head going uncomfortably weightless as visions of court-martials spun in her mind’s eye. “You’ve been detained, then?”
“Not officially. Yet.” Isla pressed her lips together, looking disgruntled. “Okay, they’re not really interrogators, but that’s what it feels like. They’re just shrinks. Really thorough shrinks.”
Relief returned, and with it a burst of anger, brief but sharp. “Isla, don’t scare me like that. You know psych evals are standard procedure. Besides, what else were you expecting, after what you did?”
The accusation in the words rang out before she recognized it for what it was, and it hung between them like dust motes suspended in sunlight. Her normally stoic daughter flinched, hurt flashing across her face, too worn down and raw to suppress the recoil.
Hannah let out a long, slow breath. “Honey…”
“This is more than just a standard psych eval,” Isla interrupted, not looking at her. “They want to know everything, and not just about the mission. They’re grilling me about my childhood, my upbringing, my decision to join the military, all my past missions, N-training—I mean everything. They keep asking me the same questions over and over until I can’t even keep straight what actually happened.”
“What did happen?” Hannah asked quietly. “Can you tell me what you do remember?”
A spasm crossed Isla’s face, and it was difficult to tell whether it was her muscles tightening or just a flicker in the holograph. “Mom…” she said, her voice a hollow shadow of its usual gravitas.
“If you want to,” Hannah amended. “I can understand if you don’t want to discuss it yet again. There’s just so much scuttlebutt flying around that I don’t want to believe anything unless I hear it from you. That, and it might help to unload on someone who’s not psychoanalyzing your every word.”
“Yeah.” The word trailed off into a sigh, Isla’s shoulders dropping with the force of it. “There’s really not much to say, though. We came, we saw. We killed a bunch of batarians.”
Hannah raised an eyebrow. “You put more detail than that into your mission report, I hope.”
A smile darted across Isla’s face, wan and fleeting, but an improvement over the grim, dull stare. “A little bit more.”
Her eyes slid sideways in a look Hannah recognized well—the look that meant she was thinking of saying more and simultaneously deciding against it. Not for the first time, she lamented her daughter’s tendency toward tight-lipped reticence. Isla was like a dormant volcano that still bled smoke, hulking and sullen in the distance, a constant reminder that fire could still erupt without warning.
Hannah cleared her throat delicately, then wished she hadn’t when Isla’s face tightened, her daughter recognizing the sign that an uncomfortable question was imminent. She suppressed a sigh and plunged ahead.
“There are reports,” she began, “that you executed all the batarians. Even the ones who surrendered. Is that true?”
This time Isla looked her in the eye, unflinching. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
“What would be the point of batarian prisoners?” A look of pure loathing flashed across Isla’s face, matching the venom in her tone. “What are we going to do, negotiate with that government? A government that’s perfectly okay with its citizens terrorizing and enslaving people?”
“I can understand that mindset,” Hannah said. “But do you think it was your call to make?”
“If not mine, then whose?” Isla’s face screwed up in an expression of mingled skepticism and disgust, eerily close to the face she used to make as a baby staring down a spoonful of mashed carrots. “A bunch of stuffy politicians who’ve never even looked a batarian in the eyes, who’ve never seen first-hand what they’re capable of?”
“Honey,” Hannah said, keeping her voice gentle as she steeled herself. “I’m less concerned about what batarians are capable of, and more concerned about what you’re capable of.”
Isla sagged back against her chair. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Mom. The mission had to be done. I did it. The batarians I killed were a bunch of mercenaries and murderers and slavers. What was I supposed to do, sit back and hope they’d stop attacking our colonies if we asked nicely?” She stopped and stared down at the table, scoffing quietly. “You sound like Major Kyle.”
“Oh?” Hannah racked her brain for information on her daughter’s commanding officer and came up empty. “What does Major Kyle say?”
Isla’s gaze drifted to one side again, evading Hannah’s eyes. “He hasn’t said much of anything since the mission. At least not to me. They wouldn’t let me see him.” She took a deep breath. “They said he’s…not all right.”
“He was injured during the fighting?” Hannah asked.
Isla shook her head. “No. Not physically.”
The unspoken conclusion settled into the silence like an anchor colliding with the ocean floor. Hannah swallowed and took a step closer to the holograph, as though she could reach out and tilt Isla’s face up to meet hers.
“That can happen to any soldier,” she said, keeping her voice soft. “Especially after missions like this one. You’re not blaming yourself, are you?”
Her daughter began to fidget, running one hand through her hair and smoothing the other over her clothes. Hannah recognized the old nervous habits she hadn’t seen in years, the ones she’d thought banished the day Isla signed her name on the Alliance’s pile of enlistment forms.
“The shrinks told me,” Isla began, slowly, “that when they ‘interviewed’ him, he kept saying he saw me standing over one of the batarians who’d surrendered. He said I was bludgeoning the batarian with my shotgun, over and over, even—even long after he was dead.”
Something cold and dark settled over Hannah’s shoulders and crawled into her gut, pulling her down as though she’d filled her pockets with stones. She brushed her fingers over the holo player still nestled against her leg, her mind stumbling back to the hot Georgia afternoon, the grass under her toes, the sweat prickling beneath her hairline, the toddler who’d flashed a beatific smile as she brought the rock down on the hapless spider again and again.
“Did you?” she asked, her voice wooden, almost disembodied. “Did you do that?”
Isla hesitated.
“I don’t know,” she finally said. “I might have. I…don’t remember.”
“Isla.”
“I don’t remember!” her daughter repeated, the holograph crackling in protest at the sudden rise in her voice. Her eyes went wide and bright, both hands balling into fists. “Everything is all jumbled, and they keep asking me questions over and over, and I’m just so tired I can’t think straight—”
“Okay. Okay.” Hannah raised her hands, palms up, and took another step closer to the terminal. “Shhhh.”
Isla braced herself on the table, cradling her head in her hands. “Mom,” she whispered. “Am I a monster?”
Hannah’s heart lurched. Without thinking, she stretched one hand toward the holograph, as though a single motion could somehow bridge the lightyears between them. “No one is saying that,” she replied automatically, even as her mind whispered otherwise.
“The shrinks are thinking it,” Isla said. “They don’t come right out and say it, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out, just from the way they look at me. I’ve seen them flinch a couple times, when they think I’m about to make a sudden move. They’re afraid of me.” She gave a short, bitter laugh. “Kind of surprised they didn’t handcuff me to the table.”
The room closed in around her, suffocating and warm, and Hannah reached for the familiarity of military protocol. She clasped her hands behind her back to keep from tugging at her collar, chasing away her stricken expression.
“I don’t think you’re a monster, sweetie,” she said. “I think you have a very strong sense of justice. And I think you also have more empathy than you know.”
“Empathy?” Isla repeated. She leaned back in her chair, blinking. “That’s…not the first word I would have thought to use. I got three-fourths of my squad killed. Thirty-eight families would probably love to see me drawn and quartered right about now.”
She fell silent, her shoulders slumped, her hands a nerveless pile in her lap. Her eyes fixed on Hannah’s face, a tiny spark of desperation flaring beneath the exhaustion, bright with the silent plea to make it all go away.
If only this were as easy to fix as the skinned knees and the tough homework assignments, Hannah thought.
“Do you remember,” she began, her voice quiet and steady, “when the batarians attacked the human colony on Mindoir? You were sixteen years old. It was all over the news for a week or two. Of course, they didn’t report all the worst details, but…we heard enough to fill in the rest of the blanks.”
“I remember,” Isla said. A frown creased her forehead, crinkling the skin around her eyes.
“When it happened,” Hannah said, “and you heard about everything those slavers had done to those people, you were so angry. I had never seen you that upset. To be honest, it scared me a little.”
Isla stared at her. “You were scared of me?”
“I was scared for you,” Hannah said. “I was afraid you might do something you’d regret, afraid you might get lost in your rage and forget to come out again. You’ve always had a single-minded focus on doing whatever it takes to right the wrongs you encounter. It’s part of what makes you such a good soldier. But when that focus becomes anger…”
She trailed off. “Sometimes, I’m afraid it will overwhelm you. All the cruelties in this galaxy, the bad things happening to innocent people—like what happened to those colonists on Mindoir—are injustices you can’t do anything to fix, and I think that sense of powerlessness ate away at you. Maybe…maybe it never really stopped. Until now.”
Isla had gone motionless as she spoke, her fidgeting stilled. She pressed her lips together, her eyes losing focus, trailing off to stare at nothing.
“That whole time I was down there in those bunkers,” she said, “I couldn’t stop picturing everything those slavers had done to colonists like the ones on Mindoir. You know, some of the batarians who surrendered begged me to spare them. But all I could think was, ‘how many people on Mindoir, on Elysium, probably begged and pleaded with the slavers when they attacked? And how much good did it do them?’” She made an almost savage sound, deep in her throat. “I decided, right then and there, it wasn’t going to do those damned slavers any good either. Not if I had anything to say about it.”
“I know,” Hannah said softly.
“I wish the cost hadn’t been so high,” Isla went on, pain tightening her features. “I wish I could bring back all the soldiers I lost. But if their deaths mean the batarians think twice before raiding one more human colony?” Her face cleared, her chin rising. “That’s something I can live with. Even if it means I’m a monster.”
Her head swiveled to the side, eyes fixed off-screen for a moment before she gave a sharp, reluctant nod.
“Time’s up,” she said ruefully. “The interrogators are ready for me again. But thanks, Mom. I’m glad you called.”
“I…” Hannah cleared her throat, swallowed. “I am too, honey. We’ll talk again soon, all right?”
“Okay.” Isla’s mouth twisted up in a half-smile, her face dissolving in a spray of blue light as the connection severed.
“Call terminated,” the computer intoned politely, reverting the terminal screen to its usual orange glow.
Hannah shifted in place, staring at the spot where her daughter’s image had disappeared. Her fingers strayed to her pocket, running over the words engraved on the holo player’s frame.
“That’s something I can live with,” Isla’s voice echoed in her thoughts again. “Even if it means I’m a monster.”
“I hope you can, honey,” Hannah murmured. She removed her hand from her pocket, straightening her shoulders and turning to leave. “I hope I can, too.”