Kallum
Ispent the next day watching her work.
Not surveillance. Not exactly. But I kept the Turetsala’s external sensors trained on the compound, tracking her movements as she went about her routines. Feeding the grazers. Checking fence lines. Hauling equipment between outbuildings.
She never looked toward my ship. Never acknowledged I was there. But she knew. The way she positioned herself, always keeping something solid between us. The way Turnip patrolled the perimeter with his head turned toward my position.
They were waiting for me to leave.
I didn’t leave.
The afternoon sun slanted through the viewport, warming the cockpit. I’d powered down nonessential systems to conserve fuel, which meant no climate control. The air grew stale. My muscles cramped from sitting too long in the pilot’s chair.
I could have been comfortable. Could have walked the perimeter, stretched my legs, breathed fresh air. But that would mean approaching the compound, and I’d promised myself I wouldn’t push.
So I sat. And watched. And waited.
Around midday, she disappeared into the barn for almost an hour. When she emerged, her shoulders were tight, her movements sharp with frustration. Something was wrong.
I zoomed the sensors, watched her pace the length of the barn, stop, pace again. She pulled a comm unit from her belt and stared at it for a long moment before shoving it back.
No one to call. No one who would come.
I understood that kind of alone.
She went back inside. I heard the faint ring of metal on metal through the hull. Then silence. Then more ringing.
She was trying to fix something. And failing. If the supplies she’d ordered months ago hadn’t arrived, what else was failing on her?
I should have stayed in the ship. Should have let her figure it out on her own, the way she clearly wanted. But the sound kept going. Twenty minutes. Thirty. The same frustrated rhythm, the same failed attempts.
Torek’s voice in my memory: Pride is a luxury. Survival is not.
I powered down the sensors and opened the hatch.
The barn smelled of animals and old hay and machine oil. Dim light filtered through gaps in the siding, casting stripes across the packed earth floor. The grazers watched me from their stalls, their eyes flat and incurious.
Anhara was standing beside a harvesting mechanism, both hands braced against a heavy metal arm that hung at an awkward angle. Her shoulders trembled with effort. Sweat darkened the back of her shirt.
“The pivot pin,” I said.
She didn’t turn. “I know it’s the pivot pin.”
“You’re trying to hold the arm in alignment while you seat it. That’s a two-person job.”
“Turnip can’t exactly grip a wrench.”
I moved closer. The arm was substantial—fifty kilos at least, cantilevered at a bad angle.
She was using her whole body to keep it from swinging down while simultaneously trying to work the pin into its housing.
An impossible task. The geometry was wrong.
No single person could hold the weight and apply the precision at the same time.
“Let me take the arm,” I said. “You seat the pin.”
Silence. Her arms shook. The arm slipped half an inch before she caught it.
“I’ve been doing this alone for three years.”
“And how’s that working out?”
She shot me a look that could have stripped paint. But the arm slipped again, and this time the pin clattered to the floor.
“Fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “Get over here.”
I moved in beside her. Took the weight of the arm, lifting it into proper alignment. My hands found the grips she’d been using, and I felt the strain immediately—not the weight itself, but the awkward angle, the way it wanted to twist.
“Hold it there,” she said. “Don’t let it rotate.”
“I won’t.”
She dropped to retrieve the pin, then came up beside me, close enough that her shoulder pressed against my arm as she worked. Her fingers moved quick and sure, threading the pin through the housing, tapping it into place with a small hammer.
“Little higher,” she said.
I adjusted. The arm wanted to swing. I held it.
“There.” The pin slid home. She grabbed the retention clip, snapped it into place, and stepped back. “You can let go.”
I released the arm. It held.
She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, leaving a smear of grease at her temple. Her breathing was still rough from the effort.
“Thank you,” she said. The words came out reluctant. Like they cost her something.
“Two-person job,” I said. “Not a favor.”
Her expression shifted. Not quite a smile. But close.
Turnip appeared in the doorway, watching us with those small, intelligent eyes, his bulk blocking most of the light. But he didn’t charge. Didn’t even growl.
Progress.
“The pump yesterday,” I said, watching her apply another coat of oil. “The harvester today. Things seem to be failing.”
She didn’t look up. “Things always fail. That’s what equipment does.”
“All at once?”
“When you’re the only one maintaining them?
” She sat back, pushing sweat-dampened hair back from her face.
“Yes. All at once. There’s always something breaking.
Something wearing out. Something that needs parts I can’t get or skills I don’t have.
” She gestured at the harvester. “This coupling should have been replaced two seasons ago. The pump seal, the same. I’ve been patching and jury-rigging for years. ”
“Why not leave? Find somewhere easier?”
The look she gave me clearly indicated what she thought about my question.
“This is Torek’s legacy,” she said. “Everything he built. Everything he taught me. I’m not going to abandon it because it’s hard.”
I held up a hand. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant.” She turned back to the coupling, spraying another coat.
“Everyone who passes through asks the same thing. Why stay on a backwater moon? Why not sell the property and move somewhere with actual infrastructure?” Her jaw tightened.
“They don’t understand. This isn’t just a farm. It’s not just a place to live.”
She didn’t finish the sentence. Didn’t have to.
This was her home. The first real one she’d ever had, maybe. The place where someone had seen her, trained her, trusted her with everything he valued. Walking away would be like saying none of that mattered.
I understood that better than she knew.
She set down her tools. Wiped her hands on a rag. Looked at me.
“Why are you still here? Really.”
“I told you. The Conclave—”
“No.” She cut me off. “Not that. Why are you here? You could have sent anyone. Could have hired a retrieval team. Could have done a dozen things that didn’t involve sitting in a field for days waiting for a woman who doesn’t trust you.”
I didn’t have a ready answer for that. The truth was complicated. Messy. Full of feelings I didn’t want to examine.
“Torek trained me,” I said finally. “Made me what I am. And then I left and never came back. Never thanked him. Never told him what his teaching meant.” I looked at the harvester, the barn, the fields beyond. “This is the closest I can get to making that right.”
She was quiet for a long moment.
“He knew,” she said. “That you’d turned out well.” A ghost of a smile crossed her face. “He was proud of you. Even if you never came back.”
Something twisted in my chest. An old wound I’d thought had scarred over, suddenly raw again.
“Thank you,” I said. “For telling me that.”
She nodded. Then she turned and walked out of the barn, leaving me standing among the grazers and the smell of oil and metal.
I followed her outside. The sun was lower now, the shadows lengthening across the fields. She stopped at the edge of the garden, her back to me.
“There’s food in the cold storage,” she said. “Behind the house. Take what you need.”
Then she walked away, toward the farmhouse, Turnip falling into step beside her.
I found the cold storage where she’d said. A small shed, half-buried in the hillside, the door heavy and well-insulated. Inside, shelves lined the walls, stocked with preserved vegetables, cured meats, sealed containers of things I didn’t recognize.
She’d been building this for years. Preparing for winters, for lean times, for the possibility that the supply runs might stop coming. A survivor’s instinct, planning for disasters that hadn’t happened yet.
I took a package of dried meat and some hard bread. Enough for dinner, not more. I wasn’t going to abuse the privilege.
Back at the Turetsala, I ate alone in the dim cockpit, watching the farmhouse through the viewport. A light came on in the kitchen window. Then another in what might have been a bedroom.
She was settling in for the night. Another evening alone in the house she’d shared with Torek.
I thought about what she’d said. This is Torek’s legacy.
Not just a hiding place for the Regalia.
Not just a strategic location to be secured and abandoned.
This was her life. The fields she’d planted.
The animals she’d raised. The buildings she’d maintained through years of isolation and backbreaking work.
Whatever happened next, I needed to remember that. The Regalia mattered. The mission mattered. But so did this woman and the home she’d built from nothing.
I thought about Torek. The way he’d looked when I was young, all hard edges and patient silences. The way he’d broken me down and built me back up into something that could survive. Three years of training, and then the Sovereign had found me, and I’d become someone else entirely.
I’d never come back. Never visited. Never even sent word that I was alive.
And now he was dead, and I was sitting in a field outside his home, and someone he’d cared enough to teach was sleeping thirty meters away, and I couldn’t do anything but wait.
The stars came out, one by one. The temperature dropped. I pulled a thermal blanket from the emergency kit and wrapped it around my shoulders.
Tomorrow, I’d try again. Find another way to be useful without pushing. Build trust in increments so small she wouldn’t notice until it was already there.
Ghost warfare. Just a different kind.
I closed my eyes and let the silence take me.