Somewhere in the southern sprawl of Kanishka, there’s an apartment stacked between two others. You wouldn’t notice it if you passed. Nothing important happened there. Marie lived on the 37th floor. No view. Just sky.
Kanishka wasn't Assam Kiith'Sid, the capital of Hiigara, but that didn't really matter to Marie. To her, it was like any other place here.
The glass was always a little fogged, even when she wiped it down. The New Daiamid called it the sunrise of a new era. Hiigara: lush and warm and free of ash. Green skies, blue oceans, gold cities. The war over. The exiles restored. The name of city whispered like poetry, folded in between songs of return and reconstruction.
Marie knew better. Return meant nothing. You couldn’t go back to something that burned. The apartment was quiet. Not quiet in a good way. Quiet like a decompressed module after atmosphere loss. Quiet like the inside of a loaded rifle.
She worked security for some Kiith Naabal industrial contractor. Warehouse yards, perimeter drones, pressurized domes. Nothing happened, not once. Most days involved watching security footage and subsisting off kashk while going through an entire pack of cigarettes, or standing infront of a door for hours at a time while looking mildly intimidating.
She was absurdly good at it. No one questioned her credentials. Some read the patch on her jacket - SOBAN MARINE CORPS, LRRP VETERAN, nodded respectfully, and then left her alone. Every shift, she walked home past the corner store with the painted yellow awning that fluttered in the coastal wind. Inside, the old man behind the register spoke in Kharakid-accented Galactic Common and greeted her like a ghost who showed up on time.
“Survive another day, Marie?” he’d say. Marie would always acknowledge him with “Hey, Mohsen.”
She’d nod. Sometimes she'd get a pack of cigarettes, sometimes a box of instant tea or coffee, sometimes instant noodles: always something bitter and hot to drown in. He never asked her about the war. He never asked her about anything. That meant the world. Hiigara was everything she was supposed to fight for, but none of it made sense.
People here argued about elections and infrastructure, or what kind of recycled textile composite was best for home use. Marie had seen the Kuun-Lan bleed plasma through its hull as the stars tore themselves open and screamed death. She had killed men from two hundred meters through vacuum. She had fought psionically enslaved penal ships with only three charges left in her rifle and no guarantee she'd ever breathe atmosphere again.
Here, the biggest problem was a coffee shortage on Level 12 due to an error in freight routing. At night, she sat in the shower with the lights off. The water didn’t help. Neither did the dark. She felt clean and unreal, like the body under her hands didn’t belong to her anymore.
After seven months she filed her resignation. She told her employer she wanted to “explore off-world employment.” He nodded. That made sense to him. No one asked why. The old man at the store handed her a box of strong black tea and a carton of cigarettes as she passed for the last time. He just said:
“Some of us don’t belong here. It’s okay.”
Marie didn't cry, she didn't even blink. The last night in Kanishka, she looked up at the Mothership in orbit – still sitting there after 24 years, pumping out vessels for whatever Kiith that had enough political clout to ask for more.
She didn’t feel anything. Not hate. Not grief, just gravity. Two weeks later, she was at the edge again, back in the Primosk Zone. Back in the void where things mattered. No one asked who she was. No one cared about the state of the galaxy here - the Zone was their home. There was only the hum of failing reactors, the twitch of anomaly warnings, the rhythm of boots on forgotten metal.
And for the first time in months, she could breathe again.