1.
The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I


Matthew Hayes stares up at the stars, remembering a world far away and nights long past. Reed is sitting behind him, smoking something that smells an awful lot like his grandfather's nails, thick and yellowed from tobacco – Matt chooses not to comment. Reed can have whatever petty indulgences he needs to get through this.

They sit back to back because the wind coming down off the mountains at night is cold and because they don't need to look at each other in the darkness. The night is thick and it keeps them from ever sharing too much, from seeing how deep the forlorn timber of their voices really goes. There is a moon on Hil'al, but it isn't crafted of white moon rocks that reflect the light of a far-off sun. It's black as the blackest obsidian – a void traveling through the sky, projecting darkness instead of light.

Matt thinks that this is what death must feel like – cut off from anything and everything, but without the comfort of absolute darkness, just enough light to know that it's all wrong.

Rostov is dead. Chang is dead. So is Walters. And it was just two days ago that they watched McKenzie's head hit the hard near-mahogany of the platform with a thud too dull for the violence of it. Standing there alone, buffeted on either side by the bulbous forms of the Hil'aka, Mac looked delicate for the first time since Matt recruited her out of Basic. She looked like she was drowning in those shifting, almost gelatinous bodies. Reed averted his eyes out of respect, but Matt held her gaze. He can only hope she was able to draw strength from it.

They should be dead, not their subordinates, they both know. They know it as well as they know that nobody is coming for them. They are alone with each other and a moon that doesn't shine.

They can't talk about it. They're not even brave enough to try to blame each other because it's all pointless now. Nothing they say will be able to change what happened – so many mistakes and no turning back.

There's only going forward and Matt doesn't know where to start. "I grew up in New Mexico. You didn't need a telescope to see the stars there, in the desert. I used to drive out there and pretend I was Luke Skywalker in the desert of Tatooie. Sometimes I'd bring a sketchbook."

"You could become a cartoonist. You could make pottery," Reed offers, hollowly.

"I could take you down to the marketplace and sell you as a slave." Matt rolls his eyes. He needs to snipe a Reed, if only so he can pretend nothing's happened.

"You would have to fight me first."

"Well, I wouldn't want to risk damaging the merchandise." Matt gives a hollow chuckle, which Reed returns like an echo. For a while, they let it float into the darkness, seeing how quickly the night swallows it up.

After the silence becomes hollow and oppressive, Matt continues. "What about you, Lieutenant? What are you going to do?"

"I used to want to be a writer, but I doubt the Hil'aka will appreciate the subtle art of historical fiction." His voice is filled with more disdain than he knows the Hil'aka deserve. They have done the unthinkable – they have eliminated war before the advent of space travel. Their methods are draconian, but, Matt wonders, isn't it worth it? Is it not for the end of war that he and Hayes fight? Surely they don't fight for its continuance.

"It'll be fantasy to them," Matt points out.

"But that would mean becoming some dancing monkey, a curiosity for these people."

"What's so wrong with that?"
"What do you bloody-well mean, ‘what's wrong with it?' Major, need I remind you that it was only five days ago that I was holding on to you to keep you from punching that trainer and getting yourself beheaded like . . ."

"It's one thing to pedal your unique point of view and completely another to sign away all your rights and become a zoo exhibit just so you can fight again."

"What are you going to do then?"

Matt has no idea. What's a soldier to do, living on this planet where commerce is more fierce than the long out-moded system of war? He sighs. "I'm afraid I don't know, Lieu . . . Malcolm." Ranks are outlawed along with warfare. It's going to be a hard habit to shake, the barrier of professionalism. "What about you?"

"I was thinking of signing up on one of the trans-oceanic merchant vessels."

"I thought space was the only thing you cared to sail."

"When I was younger my father wanted me to join the Royal Navy, like him, and his father before him, and his father . . . you get the idea."

"And it's going to take being stranded on a primitive alien planet with no other marketable skills to get you to fulfill the destiny of your distinguished heritage?"

"When I said I'd rather die that follow in my father's footsteps, I guess I was lying. I wasn't lying about hating it, though."

"Your first duty is to survive," Matt tells him, fiercely.

"Not a MACO slogan, surely."

"No, but I think it applies."

"Indeed."

"So, do you think you can give it up?"

Reed gives a dry chuckle, lost to the darkness. "I can do without ever feeling your boot connect with my face again."

"That's not what I'm asking, Malcolm, and you know it. I mean everything: the history, the lingo, the technology, the structure."

"I'll do what I need to. Yes, it was my life, but I like to think that I'm more than that - that if there were suddenly peace in our side of the galaxy, I'd be content with it."

Matt hangs his head. Everything is suddenly so heavy. For once in his life, there's no one to tell him what to do – Reed certainly won't.

He left Earth because the Xindi were a threat, true, but if he's being perfectly honest himself, on empty nights traveling between stars, no moon in sight and a glass or two of good ‘ole Jack Daniels to keep him company, he knows that's not the whole story. After the signing of the Hanoi Accords, there was precious little for him to do on Earth other than readiness drills. He was restless, desperate for another Democratic Republic of Korea, for another neocolonial war in Greenland. "I don't know if I can say the same."

---

They wake to the sharp bark of the Er'ala at dawn. The sky is a fierce almost neon blue, except the ugly bruise of the moon marring the peace. They part ways with a handshake and two bittersweet smiles. Reed goes down to the docks and Matt back to that trainer whose lights he almost punched out.

They're both good enough tacticians to know that the last thing the only two aliens on the planet should do is to split up, but that kind of strategy has been outlawed and there is no superior to come in and check in on them – they are free to be as stupid as they please.