[i]Then we bring them back.[/i]

“I won’t say it,” Redana bleeds out through a clenched jaw, even as the words suppurate all around her.

[i]One world. One species. We can’t let humanity’s legacy be wasted.[/i]

“Shut [i]up.[/i] That’s not [i]me.[/i]” But she’s wrong. It’s her voice, or else impossible to distinguish. When the ship is repaired, plank by plank, is it still the same? When a girl is woven on a genetic loom, what flaw makes her less than her mother? Her mother, brilliant, decisive. The Director. 

[i]Until they learn empathy. Until they learn community. Until we remember we are mortal.[/i]

“Until they forget the stars!”

[i]The die is cast.[/i]

Redana takes her head in both hands and squeezes. She mirrors, without knowing it, the pregnancy of her father: the terrible weight in her head, threatening to split open in her anguish. Her furious howl is drowned out by the steady, relentless logic of the Director’s last gambit, the authorization of her second galactic campaign.