All He Had

The parade uniform lay in three pieces across the cot — jacket, trousers, ceremonial sash — each pressed to a sharpness that could draw blood. Hakon Ferro worked through the packing the same way he’d worked through everything since the war ended: methodically and without thinking too hard about what any of it meant.

Combat packing had a logic he could follow in the dark, in the rain, with his ears ringing and someone yelling coordinates into the wrong frequency. You packed by weight distribution, by access priority, by what you’d need in the first thirty seconds versus the first thirty minutes. Everything had a reason. The uniform going into the diplomatic case had reasons too, technically. He just couldn’t feel them.

The medals went into their individual foam cutouts. He handled each one the way he’d handle a fuse — neutrally, two fingers, check the condition, secure it. There were six. He knew the engagement associated with each and kept that knowledge at arm’s length the way you kept any data point that wasn’t currently actionable. The insignia followed. Then commander’s bars. Federation crest pin. The small ceremonial designation markers that meant something to whoever designed them and mostly served, in his experience, as extra metal to snag on things. He pressed the lid closed on the uniform case.

Then he reached to the bottom of his kit bag, past the field med pouch he still carried out of habit and the folded contact card for the Federation liaison office at the Nimathi capital, and found the small case by touch alone. Matte black, military-issue exterior. The kind issued for optical equipment or small instruments. He’d replaced the interior foam himself years ago, cutting a custom channel with a field knife one night on a station he couldn’t remember the name of. He opened it.

The grenade pin sat in the channel the way it always sat. Bent into an uneven loop by hands that had been shaking badly enough that the shape had never quite closed. The metal was darker than it should have been, worn smooth at the curve from years of handling. It wasn’t polished, just touched. A lot.

He didn’t pick it up. He looked at it for a moment then closed the case and packed it between the med pouch and the contact card, where it wouldn’t shift.

The door was open. Kira Voss leaned in the frame with a coffee bulb in each hand and the expression of someone who had already decided the conversation was going to happen whether he wanted it to or not.

“Your case is crooked.” She observed with routine tone.

Hakon looked at the diplomatic case on the cot. It was level to within any reasonable margin of error.

“It’s fine.”

“It’s driving me insane.” She came in anyway, set one of the coffee bulbs on the locker shelf without asking, and dropped into the chair beside the door. “Transport confirms wheels-up at oh-six-hundred. Nimathi escort picks us up at the transition point and takes the delegation the rest of the way. Sixteen hours to the capital from there, assuming their pilots don’t show off.”

Hakon smirked. “They will surely show off.”

“Obviously.” She took a pull from her coffee. “So. Imperial court.”

“Diplomatic assignment.” he frowned.

“Hakon, come on!” she was having that sceptical grin again.

“What?”

“You’re invited to the imperial court of a two-thousand-year-old civilization.” She spread her prosthetic hand in a gesture that encompassed the room, the assignment, the general weight of the occasion. “Most officers get a handshake and a travel voucher. You’re getting ceremonial dinners and a seat next to nobility.”

He closed the outer zip on his kit bag. “And a dress uniform that fits like a shipping container.”

She pointed a finger at him “A shipping container with medals.”

“Six of them.” he clarified.

“Six,” Kira agreed. She watched him work for a moment. “You could be even a little excited.”

He sighed. “I’m prepared.”

“That’s not the same thing.” She argued.

He picked up the kit bag and set it by the door. It wasn’t what she was actually asking and they both knew it. She was good at waiting. Better than him, which he’d learned to respect and find deeply inconvenient in equal measure.

“It’s a court,” he said finally. “No operational parameters, no clear threat indicators. Everybody performing something and you’re supposed to know what it means.”

Kira tilted her head slightly. “Sounds like every diplomatic event in the last three years.”

“Those had briefing packets with actual useful information.” He argued.

Kira looked at him for a long moment. Not unkindly.

“You know what the problem is?” She turned the coffee bulb in her hand. “You survived the war just fine. It’s the part after that nobody teaches you.”