Avar Kriss stood on Eiram’s surface, soot and grit marring her clothes, blinking against the bright sunlight. The dark streaks that marked the incineration of the last fragments of the station—of Maru, and of so many others—were already dissipating into the atmosphere. As gruesome as they were to witness, Avar could hardly bear the fact that they were vanishing. Soon there would be no trace left of those people, that station, the hopes of the entire Republic.
