From the other side of the one-way wall, I watch Shariah and the Shipmaster speak to one another at great length. It's almost impressive how quickly Shariah goes from a welcoming diplomat to a vulture picking at even the slightest bits of meat hanging from the bones the Shipmaster throws out. It's clear that the many years of social conditioning the Shipmaster has been through keep him from truly betraying his home country, but with sweet words and specific phrasing of questions, Shariah is able to get lots of information out of the bearded... man? Dwarf? Fire elemental thing? I don't know what to call him, to be honest, just alien male seems to be correct... but I haven't checked under the hood...

  Disregarding the genitalia of the Shipmaster, I watch as the interview concludes with Shariah doing a mix of harsh interrogation, semi-seduction, and finely chosen words meant to get specific answers. I'm overall impressed by how much information she got out of the man, but the problem is, she never got the Inquisitor's location out of him. After rewatching it simultaneously as the interrogation is going on, it's clear that the Shipmaster isn't being tight-lipped; he is actually incapable of sharing that specific information. This is probably because the Inquisitor either didn't tell him he was leaving, or that the Inquisitor is supposed to move in secrecy. That big castle, city, thing that we nuked was probably his personal ride for the reason of, the Inqusitor does whatever he damn well pleases.

  I send a message to Shariah to ask the Shipmaster if he knows of anyone who might know the man's whereabouts. This and looking for knowledge of who else could be blamed for the atrocity. She asks and prods, and we get a short list of two names, one of them unfortunately being the noble who owns the planet the Shipmaster had been orbiting. The problem is that we didn't do anything on the surface of the planet, from orbital strikes to in-atmosphere drones. The world is probably on high alert, and the element of surprise would be the timing, not the fact that an attack is coming at all. I don't like fair fights.

  I finally get bored of the now casual conversation going on as Shariah continues to try and see what else she can get, but it's clear the alien man is all out of useful information. The worst part of all of this is that the alien ships either don't use computers, or they are so alien to us that we cannot recognize them. This means we have no means of scouring internal databases for information, maps, or anything like that. The only thing we have found is massive libraries, and those will take weeks to parse through, even with speed reading AI, and not to mention the poor bastards who have to open every book and every page in front of a camera for a second.

  I return to the bridge of the Catfish and send orders to the Pueblo and Navajo to provide overwatch of the system we took the shipmaster from. I sent another order soon after for them to begin utilizing drones and ship-based sensors to take notes of the habitable planet. I will have that information sent to the Marines and the Army for them to figure out some battle plans while I'm focused on more Navy-based problems.

  After a while of my normal duties, which include a lot of standing around waiting to sign off on reports, Shariah arrives on the bridge. I ask her as she enters,

  "How'd it go?"

  She shakes her head and explains,

  "I know you heard most of it, but basically anyone who could know the Inquisitors' exact location is on the planet, and they're wound up like a hornet's nest. I'd say we go and get them, but I know your opinion on unnecessary risks. I agree with you on it too, we are hunting a fugitive, not defending humanity, avoiding loss of human life is quite important."

  I nod and let out a long breath before stating,

  "Disregarding that, it's been a week since we told home that we were heading to go and arrest the golden fucker. I know an official decision will take weeks if not months, since there is due process, but we haven't gotten a presidential or high command message yet, either telling us yes, no, or something in between. It's been radio silence from them. Any ideas on your side? I'm not a pessimist, but that usually means things went wrong back home if we aren't important enough to either scold or praise."

  Shariah nods thinking before she responds,

  "Yeah, now that you say that, there hasn't been any communication from home. That's odd. Maybe congress lost their shit finally and are fistfighting over this situation?"

  We share a short laugh and I then state,

  "Yeah, I'm gonna hit them up with a short message from multiple different interstellar communication devices just to see if our receiver back home is broken or something."

  She nods and watches over my shoulder as my screen types out my message to be broadcast with thoughts alone. It's simply a quick question asking if our last one had been received. Once typed I send it to the Pueblo and Navajo as well as the Snapper to send back home as well, just making sure all our equiment on both ends is working. I finish this task and Shariah is still there looking at me strangely. I ask her with a raised eyebrow,

  "Is there something else you need, Diplo-Colonel?"

  She nods and asks carefully,

  "May I ask you something very private, sir?"

  The question takes me off-guard and I cover my chest with one of my hands and in a falsetto I respond,

  "Oh my! How scandalous!"

  She shakes her head in disappointment before she rephrases her last question,

  "Sir, it is something related to our current operation, but the information I want can be considered private."

  I lower my hands now, understanding she wants me to share something that shouldn't be said in front of others. I nod and respond,

  "Meet me at my room in an hour. I need to do my duties as the senior officer of the fleet."

  She nods, salutes, and heads out of the bridge. Most of the bridge crew watches her leave, including the women. Then someone from the gunnery section hollers as soon as the door closes behind her,

  "Rear-Admiral, you dog!"

  This causes the bridge to break into laughter, shattering a tension that had been filling the entire ship since the operation to hunt the Inquisitor began. I facepalm at the child-like humor of my well-seasoned military professionals, but I let them have their laugh for now...

  I finish folding my socks and undershirts just as there is a knock on my cabin door. It opens to reveal Shariah, and I invite her in as I close the drawer I was just messing with. I face her, and as she steps through my door closes at my will. Shariah puts her heels together, her military professionalism revealing her nervousness about what she wants to ask. I stop her as she goes to salute, but I quickly raise a hand and tell her,

  "No need. This is off the record and outside of military hierarchy. The ship's AI has been silenced for this room."

  Thanks to my promotion, I am now able to shut the AI out of specific rooms if it suits me. Usually, this is reserved for when I am supposed to talk about classified information, which I assume this conversation will contain. There will be no record of this conversation, unlike everything else in the ship. This is why I have to manually think about closing and opening doors, rather than the doors opening without me thinking about it.

  I motion for her to sit on the corner of my bed, which she does, and I sit in my desk chair and face her. I ask,

  "Shariah, tell me what's on your mind?"

  She swallows hard and asks me,

  "Sir, I've been thinking. We are after a man for the crime of genocide, for the slaughtering of a planet filled with living people, even though they aren't human. Your reaction is what has been bothering me. You acted so quickly to go after them and declare their actions wrong, but I have to ask..."

  She looks up at the stained UNCA flag on my wall and asks,

  "How can you go after someone for genocide when you, the Eater of Worlds, are responsible for the eradication of the remaining UNCA holdouts. There were no prisoners or survivors from your attacks. How the hell can we justify going after someone for such crimes when our commanding officer is guilty of equivalent, and only faced a decade in jail?"

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  I pause for a moment, choosing my words carefully despite having prepared myself for this question as soon as I had declared my intentions to hunt down the Inquisitor. I have many excuses ready, and all kinds of justifications, but I decide to tell as much of the truth as I can. I sigh and rub my nose and tell her,

  "This information doesn't leave this room. Understood?"

  She nods and leans forward. I sit upright in my chair and explain,

  "According to my court-martial, overseen by the top three highest admirals in the Navy, the Secretary of Defense, and a General from the other main branches of the military as observers, I was found guilty for being AWOL and the theft and destruction of government property for what happened to my vessel the Starwish and in the end a total of forty other vessels. These charges go hand in hand as I took parts of multiple vessels and utilized them in actions I was not authorized to partake in. Due to my gross misuse of military property, I was suspended for a decade from all service and promotion, but was allowed back into the military as a backline administrative asset until the first journey to this part of space, where I was under the observation of a senior officer. I was only allowed to command a vessel again during the last war against the Europeans. Only recently, during this mission to alien space, have I been removed from observation, but I'm not sure of that either.

  I was found not guilty of any form of mass killing, genocide, or targeting of noncombatants."

  Shariah stares at me wide-eyed for a long while in silence as she appears to be trying to figure out if I'm messing with her. She eventually asks,

  "What about your glassing of the multiple worlds the UNCA had hidden on? There is footage of cities being reduced to smoldering ruins."

  I think for a moment, choosing my words carefully as I cannot give her the entire truth, for her sake. I give this answer,

  "It was found after extensive investigation that there was not a single living human on any of the UNCA worlds I destroyed."

  She furrows her brow and argues,

  "Just because they utilize irregular bioengineered soldiers and other abominations doesn't mean they can be called non-human. Even if they are lobotomized servants cloned to do specific tasks."

  I nod and respond,

  "I agree, as did the court-martial, but I must restate, not a single human life was lost when I glassed their planets."

  She stares at me, confused for a while, as I lean back in my chair with my hands clasped behind my head. I stare back at her with an apologetic expression, trying to let her know that I am unable to say more or explain it further. Even without the AI watching, it wouldn't do us any good if she was told the one massive lie our government has been hiding."

  She thinks for a while, her eyes going from confused to a hard look of concentration. She then softens her gaze and asks in a low tone as if someone might hear,

  "The UNCA all died out during the last war... didn't they?"

  I nod, keeping my gaze steady, and she then asks,

  "It was just machines... rogue AI following old orders..."

  I say nothing and give no response, but through my gaze, I try to convey that she is correct. She then looks at the tattered and stained flag behind me, asking,

  "Then why is the flag you captured stained with blood? You said you took it from the hands of one of them."

  I nod and respond,

  "Never said the blood was from a UNCA soldier, sailor, or officer. The blood on the flag is from Lieutenant Jesus Lemuria, the officer of the Marines on board the Starwish when it was inevitably boarded by their... boarding party. He gave his life protecting me. This was before the marines became supersoliders like now; he was just a regular man who was told to hold the line. He took it from one of their boarding party's leaders, and when he was struck down, I pried it from the hand... or I guess the manipulator of the other boarders who tried to reclaim it from him."

  Shariah asks,

  "What were the borders?"

  I shrug, replying,

  "Combat droids or drones of some sort. Terrestrial ones that kinda looked like big cats, but with machine guns and pinching claws. No more exist and terrestrial drones that replace infantry are banned because of this specific conflict against the UNCA remnants."

  Shariah leans in and questions,

  "How could they result in the banning of drones to replace infantry? Shouldn't that be a good thing?"

  I shake my head and respond,

  "It removes the cost of war. It may be expensive, but there is no human cost in that type of war. There needs to be a way for the people of a nation to decide when a war is over. It's a terrible cost to accept, but if it's just mindless robots doing all the fighting, no one cares aside from complaints about cost, which rarely ever stop conflict. The wheels of peace are greased with the blood of lost loved ones and acquaintances. This is why drones are entirely auxiliary to main combat roles, like the attack drones being for supporting forces on the ground or as wingmen for fighters.

  After fighting a war against swarms of unfeeling robots, all currently existing nations agreed that war has no meaning if people do not die, and that means on the battlefield, because certainly a lot of civilians died at the hands of the UNCA remnant robots.

  I can't say I agree, but I understand. So long as a nation cares about human life, this status quo will probably work in human-on-human conflict, but all it takes is a single nation to wage war, disregarding how many bodies are sent into the grinder, to change this in an instant. I like to think political leaders will always care about their soldiers' lives, but history has a funny way of proving that wrong."

  Shariah and I sit there for a while before she stands up and states,

  "I need a while to think... but I guess you aren't a complete hypocrite about this genocide deal."

  I nod, not responding. She opens the door and leaves. I spin around in my chair and face the blue flag of my hated foes. I let the ship's AI back into my room and I ask the metal ceiling above, speaking to the unfeeling artificial mind controlling the vessel,

  "Which world did you come from?"

  It responds in a synthetic female voice, directly into my mind,

  "I am an artificial construct. I have no homeworld..."

  I exhale sharply at the response and stare at the flag a little longer. Unsure if I said too much... or if I needed to share more. I look back at the ceiling and speak to the AI,

  "I don't forgive you."

  It responds,

  "And I never will forgive you, Eater of Worlds."

  I stand on the bridge hours after my conversation with Shariah and go through the normal slog of basically watching paint dry. The Army and Marines have yet to make a proper plan that doesn't include vaporizing half of the capital city of the world we took the Shipmaster from. This means we have no plan, so I have them continue debating, especially since the Pueblo and Navajo have finally started sending detailed maps, including all layers of the city, utilizing ground penetrating radar to find the underground portions.

  I sigh bored as I watch various screens show nothing is wrong, and exterior cameras show either the endless void or the moon below, which we are currently on the dark side of, meaning no beautiful visage of a lunar surface. I check with the bridge crew, just simply asking how they are and seeing if they need anything. Most are in a pretty good mood despite the tension that was present for the past week. Their moods have been greatly improved since we got hold of the multiple alien officers; a few of them ended up being magical healers like Phillia, so we have begun slowly removing the curse from everyone in the fleet. The USS Catfish is currently 50 percent curse-free, so the mood is quite good. I also okayed the science teams to go planetside again, and since the kingdom had abandoned their own people, the few magical healers still alive are more than happy to cure the curse in exchange for our assistance in rebuilding their homes, as well as a gaurentee of protection, which I beleive to be a fair trade... or at least a deal in our favor.

  I know I was supposed to keep the cure secret, but once we received multiple avenues of mass curing, I began slowly letting the news slip. The rate is slow because of our need to keep the healers non-radioactive, which means they have reduced mana or whatever, meaning they can only cure one person every two hours. Phillia has figured out a method to replenish her mana faster, but according to intelligence, she is a rare talent. The captured officers are more than happy to help as they have figured out that compliance results in luxury treatment as well as the promise that their sentences can be made much softer.

  As I finish up with the communications officers, whom I caught playing a cooperative online game against the crew of the USS Longnose, resulting in my stated disappointment, but I don't stop them, just tell them to be more careful because I won't be as nice a second time, a message from high command is received, translated, and decoded. It read,

  "We apologize for the delayed responses. Our president has passed away due to the curse. The UEG has begun mustering for a second conflict. Things at home are chaotic. Your current orders are to do whatever you feel is necessary to uphold the values of the USA. "

  I feel a pang of sadness in my heart, but I don't show anything on my face. No one else has seen this message yet. It is disturbing, yes, but it doesn't affect our current mission, and my current plan. Luckily, the station was built, so we have the ability to eventually make enough food to replenish ourselves. From my last inventory, the fleet has enough food for about two years, unless Uriel gets to decide portion sizes. I have a choice to make right now, and I decided to make it. I start a general transmission, one that goes through all the loudspeakers of every ship under my command, including the Army vessels, thanks to my brother.

  "Attention, ladies and gentlemen of the United States Navy and Army, this is Rear Admiral Hollander speaking. I bring you bad news. I have received word from home that our president has passed on due to the curse that afflicts humanity. This is terrible news enough as it is, but the UEG has begun preparations for a continuation conflict that seemingly ended so recently.

  I know things have not gone well here so far. We came seeking peace, but we have only found violence, and for that, as your commanding officer, I apologize for not doing more to foresee and prevent any and all military actions we have taken against the aliens we have met. Furthermore, we are on our own, we have enough supplies and the capability to replenish fuel and ammo, so we are not going to starve, freeze, or run dry. We will continue our justified actions against the members of the Eternal Kingdom who have committed a grave crime that cannot be forgiven. We will find those responsible and follow all legal procedures so that they may face proper justice.

  At the end of the day, we are Americans, and we will uphold our values of justice and liberty even when times seem tough. I am honored to lead you all, and look forward to your continued loyalty and staunch adherence to duty.

  I will leave it to each individual ship's CO to decide how mourning for our president will be carried out. This has been Rear Admiral Hollander, over and out, and God be with you all..."