Katherine liked to think that there were a lot of things that she was good at. In her academy days, she had even been called prodigious.

  Cooking had never been one of those things. She realised that now, staying at the charred mess in the pan in front of her.

  “What’s that, mummy?” Oliver asked, wandering into the kitchen of her suite.

  Katherine pursed her lips. “Well, it was supposed to be dinner,” she said.

  Oliver went white. “Please don’t make me eat that, mummy! I promise I’ll stop sneaking treats!”

  “I won’t – doing what?”

  Her communicator buzzed to tell her that there was someone waiting to get in. She frowned. Robert wasn’t supposed to be here yet, and he wasn’t the type to arrive to something early. She moved to the door, but Sophia beat her to it and keyed in the open controls.

  The chrome door slid open to reveal Tamworth and Luna, both of whom seemed surprised to see Sophia standing there.

  “Yes?” Sophia asked coolly. “I expect you’ll be here to speak to my mother, but she is currently off duty and enjoying family time, so unless this is at least a category three emergency you should find someone else to handle it.”

  Tamworth and Luna both stared at her. It was quite a standard reaction for any soldier who interacted with Sophia – she didn’t outrank them in any traditional sense, but she would still pull rank more than Katherine would ever dream of doing.

  “Your, uh, mother asked us to bring some documents to her,” said Tamworth. “Perhaps you could get her for us?”

  Katherine chose this moment to step forwards. “I’m here, both of you,” she said. “Would you like to come in?”

  Sophia watched the two soldiers carefully as they stepped over the threshold. She could see them looking around at the suite. It would certainly be more than they were used to – privates had little more than a cubicle to themselves, with most of their space taken up by their bed, desk, and a small closet. Compared to that, Katherine’s suite with its large kitchen, living area with a couple of expensive sofas and chairs, three bedrooms, and two bathrooms must have seemed like a palace.

  “We… have some updates for you,” Luna said, looking over at the living area. Sophia had returned to one of the sofas and was reading one of her schoolbooks. Oliver sat on the floor, playing with a toy that resembled an Empiridium soldier if it was also a superhero – Katherine never understood the concepts of his toys.

  “It’s fine,” Katherine said. “Sophia knows not to talk about my work, and Oliver wouldn’t understand it anyway.”

  She led them to the kitchen. She noticed that Tamworth was staring at her, and realised that it was probably because she had changed out of her uniform and into an oversized shirt as soon as she got home. Most soldiers didn’t see their generals looking so casual, especially not on the day they met them.

  “What is that, General?” Luna said, staring at the ruined dinner.

  “It was supposed to be a casserole,” Katherine admitted. “I usually have my food prepared for me, but I thought it would be nice to cook tonight. Obviously, I don’t do it very often.”

  Tamworth gestured to her stove. “Do you mind? I used to cook for my siblings when my parents were drunk.”

  “Go ahead,” said Katherine. She chose not to follow up on Tamworth’s hint of tragic background – that was for a personnel manager to know about and only inform her if there were issues that could destroy the entire Ring.

  Tamworth started looking in her cupboards, while Luna showed Katherine the screen of her data pack. “So far I have information on Calira’s movements for the last four days,” she said. “It wasn’t too difficult – she mostly just goes from her quarters to the port where she works every day, and those ports have enough cameras that she’s never in a blind spot. There are a few places that cameras don’t cover on her journey, and obviously there are no cameras in her quarters. Of course, this is the important thing.”

  She tapped a button, and a security image filled the screen of a corridor which Katherine recognised as the one outside of the room where they had found Calira. “I checked every single camera,” Luna said. “But the door to that storage room doesn’t appear on any security cameras. I did see this, though.” In the footage, Calira walked down the corridor towards the camera. She was moving slowly, like she was deeply tired, and there was a hunch to her shoulders. She was wearing the same clothes that she had been found in. When she glanced at the camera, Katherine saw that her wide Tita eyes were narrowed, like she was in a constant wince.

  “She looks afraid,” Katherine said. “What’s the time on this footage?”

  “Ten zero four,” Luna said. “One hundred and fifty three minutes before the body was discovered.”

  “Poor woman,” Katherine breathed. She froze the footage on Calira’s look at the camera. Had she known it was there, and had she been pleading for help from anyone who might have been looking?

  “I did a check of her quarters, but I couldn’t find any signs that anyone but her had been there,” said Luna. “A more thorough search might reveal something, though.”

  “Keep searching further back,” Katherine said. “Private Tamworth, what do you have for me?”

  Tamworth jolted at the mention of his name, which made his head slam into the top of the cupboard her was currently looking in. He yelled, and then stuck his fist in his mouth as he straightened up, with a red tin in his other hand. “Apologies, General,” he said. “I contacted all of the hydration centres on the Ring and told them to send me their visitor logs. They agreed once I convinced them that I was actually a soldier.”

  “They probably thought you sound like a child,” Luna teased.

  “I’ve been looking through the list, and Calira last visited a hydration centre twenty-seven days ago. But, it was strange, General.”

  “How so?”

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  “The centre she visited was different to the one she usually visits, and she had last been to her regular centre just the day before. And that visit was only two days after her last one, when she normally went every four days – three or five sometimes, but never a two day gap.”

  “So, what do you think?” Katherine asked.

  Tamworth nervously rolled the can between his hands. “If you asked me to speculate, General, I’d say that thirty days ago she went to her hydration centre and had some kind of encounter there that stopped her from using it. She tried again two days later, but she couldn’t use it again, probably for the same reason, so she tried a different place. I don’t know if she managed to hydrate that time, or if she had to leave again, but I’d bet that whatever happened there is connected to her murder.”

  Katherine nodded. “Check any cameras they have,” she said. “Though I doubt they’ll give you much. Those hydration centres don’t have much in the way of surveillance. And send me that guest log.”

  Perhaps she could cross-reference it against the list of passengers from the eighteenth galaxy – though of course, that assumed that even if the same person was on both lists, they hadn’t used a false name. Using a false identity to get onto a trans-galactic vessel was tricky, but a hydration centre was rarely as scrupulous with checking identities.

  “You’ve both done well,” she said. “Keep looking into it, and see what else comes up.”

  “Um…” Luna shifted awkwardly. “What about our other duties, General? We were assigned to you today, but we have regular patrols and stations starting tomorrow.”

  “Right,” said Tamworth. “And people might be suspicious if you give us exemptions.” As he spoke, the smell of frying vegetables hit Katherine’s nose. Her mouth started to water at the scent, but she disguised it by putting her hand over her mouth like she was thinking.

  “That’s a tough one,” she said. “Perhaps I can find you some kind of position that would allow you to continue investigating for me…”

  Her communicator buzzed again. Robert was here.

  “Oh, damn,” she muttered. “I’m not ready.”

  “General?” Luna asked.

  “My former husband is coming for a family dinner,” was all Katherine was able to say, before Sophia opened the door to reveal Robert waiting in his chair. His hair was freshly combed, and he wore a smart jumper over a pair of slacks – casual, but a hell of a lot more put together than her oversized shirt from when she was pregnant with Sophia.

  “Dad!” Sophia said, by way of greeting. Oliver ran over and climbed onto his lap, and Robert wheeled into the suite.

  “Katherine,” he said. “And… Private Luna and Private Tamworth. I didn’t know that they would be joining us.”

  “Well,” Katherine choked. “Neither did I, but you see, I needed to speak to them about a new assignment I have for them.”

  “What assignment?” asked Robert.

  Katherine considered telling him, but a tickle in the back of her mind stopped her. Someone with high level clearance had prevented alarms from going off when the control panel had been overridden. As much as she wanted to trust Robert, that tickle was a reminder that she hadn’t properly eliminated him as a collaborator yet.

  “I was thinking,” she said slowly, giving her brain time to throw the words in front of her mouth. “That I would like to act as a mentor to these two. I asked them to come here so that I could evaluate them more directly.”

  “Really?” Robert wheeled forwards, his brow deeply furrowed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you want to be a mentor before. What changed.”

  Katherine sighed. “Well, Luna here, she reminds me of myself,” she said. She hadn’t even thought of this until now, but they did at least have a few minor similarities. Maybe Robert would think that she was getting sentimental.

  “And what about Tamworth?” Robert asked.

  Katherine’s first thought was to say that Tamworth reminded her of a younger Robert, which was a parallel that she could see far more clearly, but she stopped herself. Luna was one thing, but taking on two mentees for sentimental reasons would be

  “I have an instinct about him,” she said. “I don’t expect you to be questioning my decisions, Commander Copper.”

  “Of course not, general,” he said, though his tone of voice indicated that he was still suspicious of her. “Will they be joining us for dinner?”

  “We shouldn’t. I didn’t make enough for six people,” said Tamworth.

  “Seven,” Katherine corrected. “Our other son has yet to arrive.” She didn’t say that he also hadn’t said whether he would be coming. Her message to him had been received, and not answered.

  “Well, we should be leaving. We have tasks to perform,” said Luna. She grabbed Tamworth by the arm and marched him to the door, stopping only briefly right before leaving. “General. Commander.”

  Once they were gone, Robert smiled at her. “Taking on mentees. I suppose things do change after all.”

  “Oh, shut up,” she said. “Give me a minute, okay?”

  She left Robert alone with the children while she retreated to her bedroom. She changed her old shirt for a smarter, fitted one, and gave her hair the briefest of brushes before returning to the living area.

  Oliver was in the middle of explaining the plot of the lates episode of his favourite space pirate show to Robert, who was doing an admirable job of nodding along. Sophia was preparing the table, and had placed four plates next to the dinner that Tamworth had made.

  Katherine prepared four plates, leaving enough for a fifth portion in the pan just in case, and brought them to the table. Robert smiled at her as he rolled over to his regular spot.

  They had made a deal when they separated, that once a week they would have dinner together with the children in order to ease the transition for them. It had been fine at first, but Katherine had begun seeing it as more of an obligation the more she did it. The worst part was not knowing if Robert felt the same way. Once upon a time, she would have just been able to ask him, but now that was gone.

  The meal was quite delicious. Whatever skills Tamworth had picked up during his childhood clearly served him well. Of course, the quiet of the meal, broken mostly by Oliver babbling about whatever he wanted to say meant that the food went down heavier than it should have,

  “So then, Sophia,” Katherine said, when they were all done eating. “You’ve been practicing Silcra’s Lament, haven’t you? Can we hear it.”

  Sophia nodded. “Of course.” Katherine wished she sounded more enthusiastic.

  She stood up and went to the end of the table, where everyone could see her. She started to sing, hesitantly at first, but as the song continued its intensity doubled and tripled and it became impossible for her to get through the song without really trying. Her voice was a strong one – it should be, Katherine thought, for the price of that tutor – and Katherine was genuinely impressed with her performance. She, Robert, and Oliver all clapped enthusiastically when she was done, and a blushing Sophia returned to her seat.

  “That was very good!” Robert said. “Maybe you could perform it at the Rotation Concert.”

  “Oh?” Katherine said. “You didn’t say you were in the Rotation Concert, Sophia.”

  “Surprise,” she muttered.

  The atmosphere returned to an awkward one after that. Katherine put Oliver to bed, and Sophia went to be by herself in her room. Katherine poured two glasses of wine and gave one to Robert.

  “How’s the leg?” he asked.

  “Same as ever. How’s your spine?”

  He chuckled. “Fair point. You know Kat, it’s not your fault.”

  “Sophia doesn’t tell me about things that are important to her,” Katherine said. “I work too hard.”

  “True,” he said. “But you have an important job.”

  She laughed. “Only slightly more than yours.” She glanced at the door for what was probably the hundredth time in the last hour.

  “I was hoping Ryan would come too,” Robert assured her. “Maybe he’s just so busy with his studies that he can’t find the time.”

  “Not too busy to send a message, if that was all it was.” Katherine downed the rest of her wine and sighed. “Don’t try and cheer me up, Robert. No offense, but you’re the last person I’d want that from.”

  “That’s fair.” He finished his own wine and held out the glass for Katherine to refill, which she did. “There’s something bothering you, isn’t there.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you won’t tell me what?”

  “No.”

  “And it’s to do with why you lied about taking on Tamworth and Luna as mentees.”

  “Yes.”

  Robert nodded. “Okay.” He wheeled his chair towards the bedrooms. “I’ll say goodbye to the kids before I go. If you want to tell me what’s going on, you know how to find me.”

  Katherine watched him go, and looked down at the wine bottle in her hand. She wondered if it would be worth drinking the entire thing now. Perhaps it would make her feel slightly less terrible.